This is Briefing 6. Welcome to our new subscribers on iTunes. Since last time, we did a bit of a movie opener in honor of Peter Graves and Airplane, we decided to try another random one that had been lurking in our heads. Feel free to tweet or comment with the movie title if...
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The Examiner reports that Continental Airlines will end its free meal program on flights shorter than six hours. We always find it amusing that companies, airline or not, spin taking away services that were previously free and replacing them with a paid option as an improvement for their customers. Certainly, we demand that if...
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We wanted to get a special release of the briefing in commemoration of Peter Graves.
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Thus ends the first week of the Flight Wisdom Briefing. How are you enjoying it so far? Comments are open, as in Twitter. If you are interested in submitting a commercial aviation related story to the Briefing, please contact us. We'll be back next week with new briefs and we'll keep tweaking it to...
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Image by Dave Sizer via Flickr
As we continue to perfect the Brief, we offer a new opener, as well as a tribute to this Day in Aviation History. Tune in.
Notes:
American Eagle’s New Service to Augusta
WestJet Launches New Frequent Flier Program
787 Begins First Flight Tests outside of Washington
United orders 25 A350XWBs
Continental Airlines calls Tarmac Delay...
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WestJet has launched a new frequent flier program, called the Frequent Guest program. Now, the way that they are organizing this program is unique. It seems to be a program for the average flier, rather than the frequent flier. We recently bemoaned the fact that airlines have effectively devalued their miles by allowing people...
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For those of you who enjoyed the first brief, here's the second one. If you want to subscribe to the brief in your podcatcher, our podcast only RSS feed is here.
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We've decided to try a little experiment here at Flight Wisdom. We're going to record our news and service roundups that you can subscribe and listen to in your favorite podcast software. The new service, which we are calling the Flight Wisdom Briefing, will, if popular, come out at least once a week, if...
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We've spoken on the issue of Bereavement Fares before. Bereavement Fares are discounts offered by the airline to those traveling in a death situation.They were usually flat-rate discounts off the unrestricted(highest) fares. In the old days, that could be a significant savings. Now, with such a wide gap between lowest and highest...not so much....
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Canadian musician Dave Carroll released the final part of his United Breaks Guitars Trilogy this evening, with a live webcast. United Breaks Guitars was an Internet phenomenon, showing that someone, after making a legitimate effort to settle his problems with a company, can call them out in a public forum.
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We've spent a lot of time thinking about the issues of regional jets. Recently, we pointed out how the Colgan Crash last year had brought to light several issues with the system of regional carriers. The Regional Airline system is based on the idea that a major carrier, let's say Continental, can subcontract out...
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This week in Routes...Southwest to start Philly-Boston, United adds service in 13 markets, and more.
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It is very hard to write these sort of posts. When confronted with being called a Customer of Size, Kevin Smith complained. He was within his rights to do so, and anyone who feels wrongly singled out should.
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We hate the debate over large customers, be they big, tall, or both. It never ends. And it invariably gets into an argument about the obesity issue in America. We've often said the only fair thing to do is size the seats to the statistically average American and accept that some people, many through...
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A year ago today, on Thursday, February 12, 2009, Continental Connection flight 3407 crashed into a house in Clarence Center, NY. The flight, a Q400 turboprop operated by Colgan Air, killed 45 passengers, 4 crewmembers, and 1 man on the ground. The plane was on approach into Buffalo-Niagara international Airport from Newark's Liberty Airport....
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So, you've booked through a travel agent. That can include Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz...these are giant travel agencies, but they are still travel agencies, in terms of functions. They make reservations, issue tickets, change reservations, reissue tickets, etc. To put it into one simple term: they are authorized to act as sales agents for one...
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Enjoy the latest in airline service changes.
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JetBlue is switching its reservations system from Navitaire to SABRE this weekend. As a matter of practicality, this will cause disruptions. If you are travelling Friday, Saturday or Sunday of this weekend(January 29-31), you may want to show up early.
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We did want to followup on last week's story, where a religious Jewish teen caused a plane to be diverted by praying using his tefillin. In case you missed it the first time, the above is an Associated Press video of the initial announcement. Note the police referring to the device as an...
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On Friday, a passenger on a Northwest flight set off a small explosive device shortly before landing in Detroit. The man, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, was subdued. He had connected in Amsterdam to the flight from a KLM flight inbound from Lagos, Nigeria. He had been rescreened in Amsterdam, as is standard procedure there. The...
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Reports are coming in that an American Airlines plane overshot the runway, crashed, and broke in two. Flight 331 was landing in pouring rain at its final destination of Norman Manley Airport in Kingston, Jamaica. We will update this post as we receive additional information.
The plane was carrying 148 passengers and 6 crewmembers. Initial...
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Today, while we are stuck in our homes in the snow, our thoughts are with those stuck at the airports. In preparation for this storm, airlines around the Northeast United States preemptively cancelled flights, airports were closed for hours, and some people are being told it might be days before they get home. At...
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Last night, we upgraded the software that runs this blog to the latest version, which now supports embedded video from a variety of sites. We figured we'd see what sorts of things we could now embed. We've been posting Youtube videos for some time, but we've never tried some of the other sites. So,...
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The Latest Roundup...
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This evening, two of us headed down to the New York advance screening of Up in the Air, the new air travel themed movie starring George Clooney
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