Airlines

Airplane Seatbelts are Pointless?

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Is there anything Michael O’Leary won’t do for publicity? He’s gone on record claiming that seatbelt rules for aircraft are pointless. Apparently, he’s never heard of something called turbulence, or thinks it doesn’t apply to him…This is surprising. Back in September…

Codesharing: Why Bother?

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Back in July of 2011, we made the Case against Codesharing. But lately, we’ve seen a few articles that have made us revisit the issue. Codesharing is where the airline that operates a flight(operating carrier), allows a second airline(marketing carrier)…

United Reservations System Unsurprisingly Crashes

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In December 2010, United announcedit was leaving Apollo, the reservations system it had used for decades, to switch to HP’s Shares, which Continental used. United actually created the Apollo Reservations system in 1971. The airline evaluated Apollo, SHARES and “several other…

Flight Attendant Sues JetBlue over Dismissal

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JetBlue Flight Attendant Roberto Rodriguez is suing JetBlue, claiming he was unfairly dismissed from his job. According to Rodriguez, he and a fellow flight attendant he’d shared a room with arrived late at the airport for a flight due to…

United Loses Children

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In June of 2009, we reported on how Continental Airlines had lost a young girl who was travelling under its unaccompanied minor program. Another similar situation has arisen with United Airlines, which merged with Continental, to the point that there…

Comair to Cease Operations

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  It is always sad when we lose another airline.   Delta will shut down its subsidiary Comair as of September 30th. The writing has been on the wall for a long while. Comair primarily operates 50-seat regional jets, an…

Moving from the PNR to the Customer Record

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In the airline industry, the passenger name record(PNR), is a single record in a computer reservation system that contains a single reservation for one or more passengers. The problem is that PNRs have no memory. They represent one trip. They…

Spirit Airlines Tells Dying Man…No Refund

Jerry Meekins is on a mission to change the No Refund Policy of Spirit Airlines. Meekins recently purchased a ticket on Spirit, and subsequently was diagnosed with Terminal Cancer. It was his expectation, that under the circumstances, Spirit might make…

That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles

The last vestige of the Cookie, Midwest Airlines, is dying. Bad enough that Frontier Airlines, which swallowed Midwest, is slowly eliminating their routes, their hubs in Milwaukee and Kansas City, but now the most unique thing about Midwest…the symbol of…

PEOPLExpress is Back

PEOPLExpress is back…well, the name is, at least. The new PEOPLExpress is a low-cost carrier with a mission statement to serve markets currently underserved by major carriers. Despite the fact it has not even filed with the DOT to become…

Hundreds Tune In to Malev Funeral Procession

On Friday, Malev ceased operation. Late that night and into Saturday morning, fourteen Boeing 737 aircraft, leased from the International Lease Finance Corporation, were flown to Shannon, Ireland. Malev operated eighteen 737s, seventeen of which were leased from ILFC. The…

RIP Malev and Spanair

Last week, Spanair ceased operations after 25 years. The airline had been looking for a takeover partner to ensure operations, but was unable to do so and the government withdrew the funding support it had been giving the airline. Today,…

The Little Twin Engine That Can’t

Strong headwinds have led to sharp increase in the number of transatlantic Continental Airlines flights forced to make unscheduled stops to refuel, the Wall Street Journal reports.  The airline, owned by United Continental Holdings, has pushed the envelope by aggressively…

With Fewer Bags Checked, Fewer Bags Lost

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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.

Steven Slater 2008 on Steven Slater 2010

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The Daily News reported this week on an account on airliners.net believed to belong to Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who rode the chute. Airliners.net is a popular forum site frequented by airline professionals and enthusiasts.