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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In honor of Peter Graves, who unfortunately passed away Sunday evening at the age of 83, we present a tribute to him in the form of the movie Airplane!, in which he starred as Captain Clarence Oveur.
We here at Flight Wisdom have decided to schedule a group watching of Airplane. So, everyone break out...
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We wanted to get a special release of the briefing in commemoration of Peter Graves.
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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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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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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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President Obama said today that the December 25th attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound flight was not a failure of the U.S. Intelligence gathering system, but a failure to analyze that information and respond to it. Instead of focusing solely on defending the performance of his government, which his predecessor might have done, he came...
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The Irish government is demanding answers after an unsuspecting passenger carried high-grade explosives on a flight to Dublin as part of a botched training exercise. Slovakian Agents planted RDX explosives in the bag of a 49-year old electrician without his knowledge. The explosive was one of eight items planted by the Slovakian authorities in...
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Around 5:20PM on January 3rd, a man was observed walking the wrong way down the exit lane out of the secure area of Newark Liberty Airport's Terminal C. Why no one stopped this man, as we always see a TSA agent stationed at the exit, we do not know. The response of the TSA...
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This morning, to cap off the TSA Subpoena Saga, blogger Steven Frishling of Flying with Fish appeared on morning show, FOX and Friends.
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("Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin). Last night, agents of the Transportation Security Administration visited the homes of two aviation bloggers: Steven Frischling, of the popular Flying with Fish blog, and Christopher Elliott, syndicated travel journalist and blogger.
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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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The Houston Chronicle reports that on Tuesday, a pair of otters chewed through their wooden cage and caused a nearly 90 minute delay as employees tried to recapture them. In fact, one employee was injured, although not seriously
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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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This morning, the DOT announced a new rule that will take effect in 120 days which would address tarmac delays. The new rule prohibits U.S. airlines operating domestic flights from permitting an aircraft to remain on the tarmac for more than three hours without deplaning passengers, with exceptions allowed only for safety or security...
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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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Today is a historic day in the history of flight, one of many, but one we are happy to share with our fellow aviation enthusiasts. We couldn't be there, so we have sourced some of these pictures from David Parker Brown at AirlineReporter.com.
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Allegiant Air announced today that it will move service from ten U.S. cities from Orlando-Sanford Airport(SFB) to Orlando International Airport(MCO), effective February 1st. By March 5th, they will base 5 MD-80s at MCO, which will be their eighth base. The cities, which are roughly a third of the total they serve to Orlando, are:
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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.
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The first Air France flight to New York using the Airbus A380 landed today. The flight included the 380 winning bidders in an auction that raised 300,000 euros for five humanitarian projects for children in need. The plane will begin daily service on the route from New York-JFK to Paris-Charles de Gaulle on Monday.
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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...
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Image via Wikipedia
On Friday, the New York Times reported that Congress is starting to take a look at the fact that airlines have been increasingly charging for a variety of services from the checking of luggage to preferential seats. But they aren’t looking at it on behalf of the consumer, they are looking at...
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