We are continuing our series of posts on our Southwest Experience. We got a lot of wonderful material and pictures, and we haven’t even talked about our time onboard yet. To any other airline tempted, if you send us somewhere, we’ll take just as many pictures and talk to as many people as we can…
[caption id="attachment_1224" align="alignleft" width="372" caption="Yemenia Airbus A310, a day before its crash."][/caption] The Yemenia flight is the fifth passenger airline accident this year. In addition to the Air France crash, there was the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo, an accident in Brazil, and another in the Netherlands. The Yemenia plane(the picture is of the exact…
View Larger Map An Airbus 310 operated by Yemenia, the national airline of Yemen, crashed in the Comoros Islands with at least 150 onboard. The plane, Yemenia Flight 626(IY626), en route from Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, to Prince Said Ibrahim airport in Moroni, the capital of Comoros, crashed about an hour from its destination,…
Image by Getty Images via Daylife For those of you who haven’t heard, our Twitter account, @FlightWisdom won a trip on the inaugural flight out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Chicago’s Midway Airport. Southwest was even shocked they drew our name…to quote their tweet… “wow, can’t believe I just drew @flightwisdom you have 2…
Image via Wikipedia The National Transportation Safety Board revealed within the last five weeks two Airbus 330s have had incidents involving speed sensors. A TAM flight on May 21st from Miami to Sao Paulo, Brazil and a Northwest flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo on June 23rd both lost speed and altitude information. Details are…
Image via Wikipedia Ryanair is running out of things to eliminate. Now they want to eliminate checked baggage. ‘The Airline Blog’ actually felt this was a good thing, We tend to disagree. Ryanair has already eliminated ticket counters, and charges an insane amount if you can’t check in online, and a charge if you do.…
Image via Wikipedia Boeing will be delaying the first flight of the 787 Dreamliner due to stress where the wings attach to the side of the plane. Executives said that the fixes to the 787 would require only a few small parts to reinforce areas of one to two square inches that displayed excess stress…
Image via Wikipedia Republic Airways, the holding company that owns Republic Airlines, Chautauqua Airlines, and Shuttle America announced that it will sponsor Frontier Airlines in its reorganization plan, after which it would become a wholly owned subsidiary of the group. “Currently in its 15th year of operations, Frontier Airlines is the second-largest jet service carrier…
Image via Wikipedia Effective November 1st, Southwest Airlines will begin its new Milwaukee service. 3 Daily Roundtrips to Baltimore/Washington – Marshall Airport 3 to Kansas City 2 to Las Vegas 2 to Orlando 1 to Phoenix 1 to Tampa Bay Direct or Connecting service to an additional 49 cities Southwest will be competing with Midwest…
Image via Wikipedia Southwest Airlines unveiled its schedule out until January of next year today. Southwest has, with the help of new scheduling software, been optimizing its flight schedule for increased efficiency. It was this gain that allowed them to open up several cities without any actual growth. On a typical, non-Holiday Sunday this November…
Image via Wikipedia Alaska Airlines announced today the inauguration of service between San Jose, California and Austin, Texas effective September 2nd. They will also be starting Austin to Seattle service on August 3rd. The flight will originate in Portland, replacing a Horizon flight from Portland to San Jose, and continue to/from Austin, using a 737-800.…
Image by Getty Images via Daylife The recent crash of Air France 447 has created many questions about communications systems on aircraft. One of them being why GPS is not used to keep track of aircraft. The latest discussion involves the design and capabilities of the flight data recorders, also known as the black box(actually…
Air France will pay about $24,500 in initial compensation to the families of each victim of the crash of Air France Flight 447 this month and is providing them with counseling. So far, salvage operations have found around fifty bodies and dozens of pieces of debris, indicating they have pinned down the likely area where…
Image via Wikipedia Boeing is expected to conduct the maiden flight of the 787 Dreamliner this month. The plane has been plagued by delays. When the A380 was plagued by wiring problems, we said that Boeing had to make sure that it got the Dreamliner out on time to ensure the lead it got was…
Image via Wikipedia The pilot of Continental Flight 61 has been identified at Craig Lenell by several news outlets. Lenell, age 60, lived on a farm outside Houston with his wife and more than 32 years of flying experience. A third pilot is required onboard all flights in excess of eight hours, and was certainly…
Image by caribb via Flickr (Updated 06/19 with corrections courtesy of Mr. Kamens) The issue of unaccompanied minors has come into the news lately, courtesy of Jonathan Kamens. Kamens put his daughter Miriam on a flight to Cleveland out of Boston on Sunday to visit her grandparents. He paid the unaccompanied minor fee. The fact…
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Continental Flight 61 was en route from Brussels, Belgium to Newark Liberty Airport landed safely at 11:49AM local time today, after the 61-year old pilot died at the controls, apparently of natural causes. The flight included a relief pilot, who, with the co-pilot, landed the plane. To avoid panic,…
Image by matt.hintsa via Flickr JetBlue will be welcoming the inaugural flight from New York to LAX in a few short hours. At 10:45AM Pacific, at Terminal 6, Gate 69B at LAX. LAX is JetBlue’s 56th destination, and will be served twice daily from both New York and Boston. JetBlue also served Long Beach and…
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Delta Air Lines, in a memo issued to its employees and released as a press release on their site, announced it would be making additional cuts due to the current global environment and oil prices once again rising. Delta will initiate the following cuts, reducing international capacity from 15%,…
The search for the wreckage of Air France 447 continues. Search teams found a large section of the plane’s tail section and additional large amounts of wreckage. The Brazilian military doesn’t have the means of locating debris underwater, however. “Brazilian military officials reduced the number of recovered bodies from the 17 announced Sunday, saying there…
Image via Wikipedia Yesterday, the Brazilian navy discovered the bodies of two passengers from the Air France flight, and three additional bodies today, as well as a number of items associated with the plane, including a ticket for the flight. Items recovered include sections of wing, seats, and luggage. The Brazilian officials said their first…
Image by Getty Images via Daylife The reason why we are often hesitant to comment on investigations in progress is that the information changes from day to day. The Brazilian air force has said that the debris they initially reported as being from missing Air France Flight 447 is in fact…not. It has been verified…
View Larger Map Last month, we reported on rumors that Ithaca-Tompkins Regional Airport was going to lose its regional service to Newark on Continental Connection.The story prompted us to break out some old material about Ithaca’s aviation history. In good news, Continental announced last week that it would retain the service. The airline had cited…
The New York Times reports that the Brazillian Minister of Defense has issued a statement that “without a doubt” the wreckage spotted by Brazillian military planes is indeed that of the missing Air France A330-200. The debris included an “an orange life vest, an aircraft seat, a drum, kerosene and oil,†according to an earlier…
Image via Wikipedia Delta was forced to cancel the launch of two new routes to Africa today. The airline was set to operate its inaugural flight between Atlanta and Nairobi, Kenya via Dakar, Senegal today, but cancelled after federal security officials denied approval. It was also denied for their flight to Monrovia, Liberia, set to…