Senator Charles Schumer, who publicly criticized Spirit Airlines for their announcement that they would begin charging for carry-on bags, has secured the commitment of five airlines that they will NOT follow Spirit in this practice.
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US Airways
Five Airlines Promise Not to Charge for Carry-On Bags
Flight Wisdom Briefing 15
This week, Flight Wisdom and the entire Weneca Media Group family are celebrating National Library Week. Support your local library.
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Flight Wisdom Briefing 12
Greetings from the Flight Wisdom Summer Palace. Today's briefing is hosted by the Infrequent Flier. If you enjoyed his presentation of the news, please drop him a line on Twitter @Infrequentflier.
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Flight Wisdom Briefing 10
After this Briefing, our editor will be heading on the road for a few days. Lots of interesting things going on, but we're bringing along our portable recording equipment to report on it.
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Flight Wisdom Briefing 9
Today, we introduce a new opener for the Briefing, recorded by special guest announcer, the Bow-Tied Blogger. Comments are welcome.
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More Developments in the Delta-US Airways Slot Swap
Back in August, Delta Air Lines and US Airways announced a deal to give Delta dominance at LaGuardia in exchange for Delta helping US Airways dominate Washington-National. The DOT advised that in order for them to approve the transaction, the airlines would have to divest a certain number of slots at each airport in...
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Flight Wisdom Briefing 4
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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Flight Wisdom Briefing 2
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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Followup – The Great ‘Religious Device’ Scare of ’10
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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Roundup: New Routes and New Developments
This week's latest in route developments.
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US Airways Cuts off Some Limbs
Image via Wikipedia US Airways announced it would lay off 1000 people, approximately 3 percent of its workforce, and focus on four cities and the shuttle service. Here are the details: Reducing Las Vegas from 64 to 36 daily departures – No one is really surprised by this. Las Vegas was a big hub...
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Rant: How Can Airlines Handle Conflicts
Yesterday, we were reading Chris Elliott's Travel Troubleshooter blog. He posted excerpts from letters sent and received by a regular flier and US Airways. And we started contemplating the issue of how airlines might handle things when the airline and the passenger cannot see eye to eye.
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Passengers Being Bumped at Highest Rate in 14 Years
The Middle Seat Terminal blog reports that the rate at which passengers were bumped in the second quarter of this year increased forty percent compared with the same period a year ago. As carriers have slashed capacity to the bone, and with overbooking a common practice, there are too many people crammed onto...
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More on In-Flight Wi-Fi
A lot happened while we were away. As we said in our Virgin America trip report, Every Plane should have In-Flight Wi-Fi. But, we felt there were a few things we didn’t mention during the trip report. There was actually a lot we didn’t mention. We wanted to touch on everything, but we’ve left...
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Swinging Service at Washington-National
Image via Wikipedia As part of our continuing coverage of Slotgate ’09(just kidding), we’re going to review some of what is going on down at National Airport. US Airways is gaining slots for 42 additional daily roundtrips at the airport. They will be adding new service to fifteen destinations, eight of which are new...
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Cities Losing Service to New York-LaGuardia
Image via Wikipedia Due to the discontinuance of US Airways Express service(Wilmington, NC excepted) from New York’s LaGuardia Airport, the following routes will be discontinued unless Delta picks them up. Albany, NY Hyannis, MA Raleigh / Durham, NC(Served by Delta and American) Baltimore, MD(Still served by Southwest) Indianapolis, IN(Already served by Delta, soon by...
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Monopolizing the Fortress Hub
Image by mtsofan via Flickr So, now Continental has gotten AirTran out of Newark in exchange for slots at LaGuardia and National, where they are hardly a powerhouse. Delta is taking over US Airways extensive regional slots at LaGuardia, and US Airways is getting international route permissions and greater dominance at Washington National. It...
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LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal
The saga of LaGuardia Airport began when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia struck a blow for all proud New Yorkers when he refused to call Newark Airport New York. LaGuardia was flying on a TWA flight which arrived into Newark, and pointing out his ticket said New York, refused to leave the plane until he was...
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Delta and US Airways Swap for Fun and Profit
Image via Wikipedia US Airways will be transferring 125 pairs of slots currently used to provide US Airways Express service at LaGuardia to Delta Air Lines. They will be getting 42 pairs of slots at Washington National. The plan will allow US Airways to expand service at National Airport and acquire the rights to...
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Flight Cancelled En-Route
Image by caribb via Flickr Charleston International Airport is having some major repair work done on its 7000 foot runway, which last received major repairs forty years ago. The airport will be closed from 12AM to 6AM till August 9th. The work has been going on since June 9th, and the airlines were well...
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US Airways Gear for Kids
For those of us who love the airline industry, sometimes we wish to show our interest by buying airline-related merchandise. For those of you with children, who wouldn’t be tempted to send their youngster to school with an airplane bookbag(seen left)? “This completely custom backpack features an airplane shape, US Airway colors and logos,...
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Man Claiming to Be God Delays Flight
View Larger Map US Airways flight 4423 was scheduled to leave Lynchburg, VA for Charlotte Airport at around 2:30PM yesterday, but was delayed due to an Act of God. God in this case was a 23-year old man who was overheard talking on his cell phone(we wonder what service provider He uses) commenting that...
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Roundup
British Airways will be adding nonstop service from London Heathrow to Las Vegas on October 25th. The service will be operated with Boeing 777 aircraft. Virgin Atlantic currently operates service from London Gatwick to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Virgin Atlantic is launching service from San Juan, Puerto Rico from London’s Gatwick airport via Antigua. The...
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Emotional Baggage or Baggage Emotions
The Boston Globe theorized last week that JetBlue would soon match other airlines in charging for a first checked bag. Southwest and JetBlue are the only major carriers who do not charge for the first bag. Dave Barger, CEO of JetBlue advised that no decision had been made and that he was “wary of...
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Remember Sully?
Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenburger , the pilot who landed a US Airways plane on the Hudson River, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the new Yankee Stadium. Last month, it was announced that he was writing two books, one on his life up until the events of flight 1549, in a deal worth...
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