On December 16, 1960, United Airlines Flight 826 crashed into a church in Park Slope, Brooklyn. While no memorial marks the spot, it was, at the time, the worst aviation disaster in American history. The crippled plane set fire to ten apartment buildings, the ironically named Pillar of Fire church, a funeral home, a Chinese laundry, and a deli. Six persons on the ground died as a result.
Continental Airlines is introducing a service called Farelock, which will be available when booking reservations on their website. Continental has long offered a 24 hour flexible hold, during which changes and cancellations are permitted without penalty. This is mirrored by many major carriers.
We here at Flight Wisdom are not big fans of Kevin Smith. This has nothing to do with his movies. Last year, Kevin Smith went on the offensive against Southwest Airlines over its long-standing customer of size issues, and we were not pleased with many of his comments. Now he’s on against Virgin America and the ten minute rule.
American Airlines is offering flights to and from New York from 30 cities starting at $49/each way in January and February. Tickets must be purchased by December 13. $49 fares are availaible to/from Washington, Boston, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. Want to visit New York? Live in New York and want to get away. Go to American Airlines website, and save.
Last week, Delta, the most expansive installer of wi-fi enabled planes in the United States, announced it would add onboard wi-fi to 223 Regional Jets configured in a two class configuration. This includes Embraer 175, Bombardier CRJ700 and Bombardier CRJ900 planes. Installations will begin in January and will be complete by the end of next year.
Though 1.5 million bags have been lost by American Airlines through September of this year, that’s 900,000 fewer than in the same period of 2008, according to a recent article by Scott McCartney at the Wall Street Journal. While this sounds impressive, it is impossible to assess how much improvement there has been without knowing the total number of checked bags during each period.
Tired of getting stuck sitting next to totally uninteresting people on your flights? Want to share a cab to your conference? Using Planely, you can. Planely calls it “the social flying revolution”. Simply register your flights, and planely will let you know what other users are on the same flights or at the same airports. Sit next to people with like interests. Enjoy a date while you wait for your plane(quick, trademark the term “Gate Date”). Pitch your new startup. The possibilities are endless. Could Planely make flying fun again? We haven’t tried this yet, but it sounds interesting. Have any of you tried it? We’d love to hear your feedback.
Southwest Airlines announced a tentative agreement by its pilots to add the Boeing 737-800 to its contract. Southwest currently expects to take delivery of its first 737-800 in the first quarter of 2012. The Southwest Flight Attendants have already had a tentative agreement of their own.
Leslie Nielsen, known to aviation enthusiasts as Dr. Rumack from the classic aviation spoof, Airplane, according to reports, has died at the age of 84. Airplane launched a second career for Nielsen as a comedic actor, delivering comedic lines with a deadpan expression.
That isn’t the junk we’re talking about. The TSA has a new multi-pronged security measure. If you’ve been missing the news, it has to do with the enhanced pat-down. We’ve spent a few days over here at Flight Wisdom wondering what to say about it.
Tomorrow, November 1st, is a key date in the TSA’s Secure Flight program. In short, the Secure Flight program requires the TSA to assume responsibility for watch lists from the individual airlines. which seems a good idea, if we much have watch lists.
United announced some new routes for 2011 that will start the process of optimizing their combined networks. They will add:
The new control tower that has been rising up over New York’s LaGuardia Airport will begin operations midnight Sunday morning. The old tower will be turned off and decomissioned.
United and Continental are…on paper, no more. They are now wholly owned subsidiaries of United Continental Holdings Incorporated. It will take until 2012 for them to combine into one airline. Until then, they will run as separate companies, despite the fanfare. That means separate websites, check-in operations, etc. The synergy will not even start till spring.
We were bowled over when we heard that Southwest is going to acquire AirTran. Even more shocking is that Southwest and AirTran apparently started discussing this acquisition in the spring, which means they’ve kept this under wraps for a surprisingly long time.That is surprising in this modern world. Everything seems to leak out.
We started the day this morning with surprising news. Southwest Airlines is going to acquire AirTran Airways. It is going to take us a bit to really think about this, and we’ll have more later in the day, but let’s go over the big points now.
After a lot of consideration(we started fiddling with this a few months back), we here at Flight Wisdom are proud to announce the beta launch of our latest spinoff site…Airporthistory.com.
Earlier today, September 13th, an ATR-42 turboprop crashed in Venezuela(More on that here). It seemed like a good time to share a few facts about the aircraft.
An ATR-42 twin-engine turboprop operated by Conviasa has crashed about twelve minutes after takeoff from the airport in Guayana, Venezuela. The plane had at least forty-seven people onboard, and twenty-three passengers were taken to local hospitals. Of those, up to eleven have died. There are some conflicting reports about the number onboard, injured, and deceased, and we will update as more definite numbers come in.
We’ve never been particularly fond of fifty seater regional jets. They don’t have the comfort that we desire in an airline experience. It is not that we object to a smaller aircraft, but merely the idea that a smaller aircraft has to be a significantly less pleasant experience than a larger one.
NBC New York has reported that a spokesperson for JetBlue has said that flipped out flight attendant Steven Slater is no longer with the airline, bringing an end, hopefully, to the Steven Slater saga. But that still leaves many flight attendants who wouldn’t do what he did, still frustrated in the sky.
JetBlue has announced an intention to fly from Newark Liberty Airport to Boston’s Logan Airport with four daily roundtrips effective May 2011. People often forget JetBlue is at Newark, but look at JetBlue in the New York area. Other than their hub at Kennedy Airport, they serve
Continuing its trend of going into overcrowded, delay prone airports it had previously avoided, Southwest Airlines announced it would be coming to Newark’s Liberty Airport. The effort is part of Continental and United’s effort to secure approval for their merger by agreeing to lease them 36 slots at the airport, which will allow for 18 daily roundtrips.
JetBlue Flight 262 from Long Beach to Sacramento, with 86 customers and a crew of 5 evacuated via slides upon landing due to a brake fire. Minor injuries have been reported and an estimated fifteen passengers have been taken to local hospitals.