Questions but No Answers in Air France 447

Image via Wikipedia Our coverage of the Air France flight continues. We do not believe in speculation during such a serious situation, but intend to keep our readers updated. At this point, the plane has been missing for over twenty four hours. Four hours into the flight, and well over the ocean, the flight encountered…

Breaking News: Air France Flight Missing

Image via Wikipedia Air France Flight 447, an Airbus 330 operating out of Rio de Janiero en route to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris hit a patch of turbulence. An automated message was received indicating an electrical failure. The plane is now missing with 228 souls onboard. More information as it comes in. Update…

Fasten Your Seatbelts

Image by jasontho via Flickr Twenty-one passengers were injured recently after a TAM flight hit turbulence on a Miami to Sao Paulo flight. The plane went into a sharp dive, and three people suffered broken bones, and many passengers were slammed into the ceiling. While this situation is an extreme one, on almost every flight…

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 service…

History of Ithaca Aviation – Part I

Here is Part One of our Multi-Part Series on the History of Aviation in Ithaca, NY. We’ll see how it is received. It is exciting for us to use material we gathered years ago, when we used to spend a lot of time in Ithaca. Some of the material we had scanned already, and some…

Ithaca, NY: The Cradle of Aviation

View Larger Map Today in the Sky alerted us to the possibility that Continental would pull its service out of Ithaca-Tompkins Regional Airport in Ithaca, NY on June 11th. The airline offers several daily flights to its Newark Liberty hub. The most interesting part is flights after this point are still available for sale on…

AirTran Launches Wi-Fi Services

Image via Wikipedia We’ve stayed somewhat quiet about wi-fi of late. Every morning we get a notice via Twitter from Alaska about which flights have wi-fi that day, and we admit we haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing wi-fi at 30,000 feet, but we are looking forward to it. AirTran announced plans to become the…

Delta to Discontinue Baltimore-Boston Service

Image via Wikipedia Facing competition from both Southwest and JetBlue entering the Baltimore-Boston route, Delta Air Lines is cancelling its seven daily regional flights on August 18th. It is not surprising that Delta might want to remove its regional jets with all the capacity the competition is bringing in. Also, Delta has downscaled its Boston…

Musings: JetBlue

Image via Wikipedia We went on the road last week for a few days, courtesy of JetBlue. We often  use JetBlue, enjoying their combination of features. We don’t normally do trip reports, but as we sat there, many things occurred to us, and we thought we’d assemble them into this post. We tried, on previous…

JetBlue to Take on Southwest

Image via Wikipedia JetBlue will be announcing today its service from Boston’s Logan Airport to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The service will begin September 9th, and is the airline’s 32nd destination from Boston. The service is interesting in light of Southwest’s recent announcement of identical service, except in reverse. Southwest is flying from Boston, a new…

We’re Excited

Mobile Lounge – Image via Wikipedia [caption id="attachment_1007" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="The Cranky Flier - aka Brett Snyder"][/caption] Today, our guest post on The Cranky Flier appeared. Check it out here. We’re very excited by this, as we are a big fan of Cranky(pictured left) and enjoyed the opportunity to write something a little different. We…

Delta No Longer Outsourcing

Image via Wikipedia Delta Air Lines announced on Thursday that after years of complaints from customers preferring to speak to U.S.-based staff, they are no longer outsourcing calls to India. Customer calls were no longer forwarded to India as of the first quarter of this year. Foreign call centers remain in Jamaica and South Africa,…

Supersized and Overloaded

Image by afagen via Flickr United Airlines, as you may have heard, has instituted a policy for oversized passengers.  To quote United, courtesy of the Middle Seat Terminal: For the comfort and well-being of all our guests, today United has matched eight other U.S. airlines and adopted a new seating policy that requires customers to…

Southwest to Begin Boston Service

Image via Wikipedia Southwest, only a few days after announcing its schedule for new New York-Laguardia service, has announced a schedule for service to Boston’s Logan Airport. This continues a recent trend for the airline…opening up shop in larger markets. Southwest’s bread and butter for several years has been medium and underserved markets, opening up…

Passenger Lands Plane After Pilot Dies

Image via Wikipedia Happy Holidays to those celebrating them. We’ll be trying to catch up with things as the holiday week comes to a close. Today, however, a tragedy was averted when a passenger landed a twin-engine turboprop in Ft. Myers after the pilot had a seizure and died. One of the passengers was fortunately…