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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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.
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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.
Read more...
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...
Read more...
This week in Routes...Southwest to start Philly-Boston, United adds service in 13 markets, and more.
Read more...
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....
Read more...
Enjoy the latest in airline service changes.
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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,...
Read more...
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
Read more...
Last week, the Airline Industry Examiner asked the question Whatever Happened to United's Friendly Skies? We wonder about that too, although not always specifically in relation to United. For years, United Airlines was the free world's largest airline. Now they are third.
Read more...
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...
Read more...
JetBlue is having a One Day Sample Sale, Today only until 11:59PM MDT. Sale fares are valid for travel December 2nd through December 16th, and January 6th through January 28th. Fares on some routes as low as $29/$39/$49. Cross the country for $99 or less one-way.
Read more...
This week's latest in route developments.
Read more...
We're sad to say that we haven't flown on Delta much lately. For years, Delta was almost all we flew. We have a bunch of Skymiles, enough for a flight. But, then, other airlnes came to town, with new options, and we didn't spend as much time with Delta. And our Skymiles were set...
Read more...
The singer, who is Canadian, was flying to Colorado Springs, was forced to fly United again because they were the only carrier he could. For more than an hour on Sunday, he was told he could not leave the international baggage claim area at Denver International Airport, where he had flown from Saskatchewan, because...
Read more...
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 for America...
Read more...
There has always been a somewhat unrealistic concept that rail transportation, most notably Amtrak, should be self-sufficient. Airport construction projects are heavily subsidized by the federal government. Highways are subsidized. None of these are expected to be self sufficient.
Read more...
The Twin Cities Pioneer Press reports that the two pilots who overflew Minneapolis last week have advised the NTSB that the reason they lost track of time they were "discussing the new monthly crew flight scheduling system." The system was put in place as part of Northwest's merger with Delta Air Lines. They...
Read more...
