What’s New in Aviation

By | November 19, 2009
NEW YORK - APRIL 10:   Travelers look out at A...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We haven’t been writing enough lately. That does happen sometimes when real life interferes with this(which is unfortunately a hobby). Here’s what we’ve been reading about. If Pat Kiernan of New York City based station NY1 can make a name for himself reading the newspaper and running Pat’s Papers online, we can try to see if people like such a feature.

  • The Cranky Flier took a trip on Virgin America. You may remember our review of VA when we lost our Virgin-ity. He tried out Main Cabin Select, their premium economy product, something we didn’t. He found a few problems.
    • The extra equipment under the seat to support the IFE reduced storage space.
    • Few people were traveling without carryons, making Virgin’s policy of letting people who had none board first less useful.
    • The Captain said Hi to Everyone. (We loved that ourselves)
    • In-Flight Wi-Fi is great, if you can fit your laptop into the space. (We bought a netbook for this exact reason. Something we suggested Cranky enjoy)
    • The food he tried to order had been discontinued, and the backseat ordering system froze. (We waited 45 minutes for our first beverage while livetweeting it. Subsequent drinks came efficiently.)
  • David Parker Brown of AirlineReporter.com also tested the Virgin America In-Flight System, known as RED.
  • Sound Transit Light Rail trains will stop at a new station at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport parking garage. Yay, intermodal transportation. Any locals have any anecdotes on how useful it is for them?
  • The Flying Pinto guest posts on Flying with Fish with her recipe for First Class Cookies. If the way to make flying a happy experience is a hot cookie onboard…why was Midwest not more successful?
  • American Airlines is dropping a plan to bring mainline service back to Little Rock, AK, because they don’t have the extra planes to run it. Airlines are cutting capacity left and right. Why does American not have the planes they thought they had last month?
  • Boingo is looking to offer free wi-fi through sponsorship, either watching a video or signing up for something. Good idea for short leisure use, but not for business travelers. Perhaps 30 minutes or less.
  • Air Canada will offer Tokyo-Calgary nonstop service three days a week beginning March 27th.
  • Dan Webb has once again brought us another Ryanair Just Cracks Me up segment. They crack us up too.
    • Ryanair today (17 Nov) rejected EasyJet’s latest claims that it offered better value than Ryanair. Ryanair’s 66m passengers are never wrong. The only reason why EasyJet is able to carry 45m passengers is because many of these people could not get seats on Ryanair’s fully booked aircraft.
  • Continental Airlines will resume Newark to Munich service in March.