The Chicago Tribune reports that on Saturday, a United flight, UA907, bound from Chicago to San Francisco, was left on the ground for seven hours before the pilots finally cancelled the flight. This comes after the Jetblue meltdown and in the midst of pressure and threat of federal action. At the last minute, the plane…
Reuters reports that Expressjet has reached a two year deal to use operate ten of its aircraft out of Delta’s LAX hub starting in June to and from Western ski markets. Last year former parent Continental Airlines cancelled a capacity purchase agreement that covered 69 of its 274 planes. Expressjet is using 44 of these…
Jetblue announced service from Boston to Charlotte and Washington-Dulles to Orlando beginning May 1st. The Boston flight will be once daily, the Dulles flight twice daily. It will also add once additional flight from Long Beach to Las Vegas, JFK to Portland ME, JFK to Charlotte, and JFK to Raleigh-Durham. Jetblue also announced increases in…
Reuters reported yesterday that the DOT will review this month’s service meltdown at Jetblue and December’s incident at American. The review will include the airlines’ customer service contracts and policies on ground delays and any recommendation could extend to airlines as a whole as well as the air traffic control system, and its operator, the…
The Associated Press reports that beginning tomorrow, coach passengers can use the front lavatory on American Airlines planes. The airline restricted it to first-class fliers on 2003. American had the only such rules. A Boeing 757, for example, has 22 seats in first-class, 160 in coach. It has two bathrooms in the front, and two…
Jetblue cannot seem to catch a break. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that Jetblue Flight 1050 from Pittsburgh to JFK was diverted to Philadelphia. The pilot was responding to a “Wing Anti-Ice Fault” indicator, which Jetblue procedure requires a plane not to land in locations with icing conditions…at the time, JFK. Fifty-four passengers and four crew…
Reuters reports that IATA, which supplies paper tickets to most airlines outside the U.S., plans to discontinue supplies by the end of this year. Airlines that want to maintain it after this year will be able to, but the supplies will be costly. IATA estimates that 96 percent of tickets issued by U.S. Airlines are…
Upgrade Travel alerted us to this developing situation in Chicago. Apparently, a group of Chicago’s alderman(city council members), are proposing a bill that would block airlines landing at either of Chicago’s area airports if they fail to have a passenger bill of rights in place. Mark Ashley, who runs Upgrade Travel, happens to be a…
Before Jetblue could put into place its new procedures for dealing with winter weather…winter weather once again hit the northeast. Jetblue was forced to cancel some…but not all flights out of all three major NYC area airports, possibly out of Stewart in Newburgh as well, in addition to scattered delays out of Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh,…
The Cranky Flier
We’re on Day 3 of the Wait for a response to our email to Jetblue about the definition of “Controllable Irregularity.” We decided to check to see if anyone had better luck figuring things out. The Cranky Flier spoke to Jetblue’s Media Relations office and was told a Controllable Irregularity was anything that was under…
American Airlines has announced a major initiative to increase its presence in New York. David Cush, American’s Senior Vice President of Global Sales, put it this way: “We want to make it crystal clear that American Airlines and American Eagle are the airlines of choice for the greater New York area. It’s no secret that…
After USA Today wrote of United abandoning passengers this past December, they were contacted about a similar incident on February 8th. A United Express and an American Connection flight, both heading to Denver from Madison, Wisconsin and St. Louis were abandoned in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Both Scottsbluff and Cheyenne are currently only served by turboprop service…
USA Today reported today on an incident that took place in December. One forgets, with Jetblue dominating the headlines, that other carriers are guilty of shocking neglect. Two planeloads of passengers were shocked to discover that they had been abandoned. On December 20th, at 9:32AM, United Express Flight 7529, with 59 passengers onboard lands in…
David Neeleman apologized in a Youtube message on the Jetblue website, promising reform. He assures the public that the events of last week and the way they transpired will never happen again. In the future, all Jetblue employees who do not work at the airport will be badged and trained to report to the airport…
The Boston Herald reports that 20 students from Waltham High School outside of Boston had their trip grounded in New York because Delta Airlines gave their seats away. The students planned and saved for a year so they could spend the week practicing their Spanish in Madrid. Delta stranded the students for nearly 12 hours…
Bombardier, maker of the Canadair Regional Jet(CRJ) announced today it has added a 100-seater option to its lineup after receiving 38 firm orders for it today, which included the conversion of previous CRJ900 orders. The CRJ1000 is a stretch version of the CRJ900(90-seater aircraft and originally referred to as the CRJ900x. It is 3 meters…
We are not sure if it is better for the government to regulate the airlines or for the airlines to regulate themselves…popuar opinion varies…but if an airline does hold itself to a standard, we are in favor of it. Jetblue announced today that it would unveil its own Bill of Rights after its meltdown this…
Icelandair is celebrating its 70th anniversary and is offering a hundred dollar discount off four packages to Iceland. Icelandair began in 1937 as a domestic carrier. In 1945, Icelandair initiated its first flights outside of Iceland to Scotland. By 1948, they served Scotland, Copenhagen, and Oslo. On August 26, 1948, the airline made its first…
“I don’t blame our customers for being upset with this,” David Neeleman, CEO of Jetblue commented about the recent events plaguing the airline. For Saturday and Sunday, it pre-cancelled 23 percent of its schedule in order to reset their operation. That includes all flights to and from: Austin, Bermuda, Charlotte, Columbus, Houston, Jacksonville, Nashville, Pittsburgh,…
An American Airlines plane enroute from Tokyo-Narita to Dallas-Forth Worth diverted to Honolulu, Hawaii. The airline blamed the diversion of the Boeing 777 on a squirrel that stowed away on the flight. Pilots feared the squirrel would chew through wiring or cause other problems. The squirrel may have boarded in New York, the plane’s previous…
ABC News reports that Kate Hanni, one of the passengers of the American Airlines flight that was held in Austin in December for an excessive period and has been advocating a Passenger Bill of Rights will be in Washington next week to do just that. Hanni will be pushing a bill that Representitive Mike Thompson(D-Ca)…
Coming on the same day the news announced passengers were trapped on planes at JFK for hours on end, the FAA’s press release on the subject records, the Next Generation Air Transportation System Financing Reform Act of 2007 would “replace the decades-old system of collecting ticket taxes with a cost-based, stable and reliable funding program…
ABC 7 New York reports that at least four Jetblue planes were stuck on the runway fully loaded with passengers and children for hours. JetBlue said the passengers were held on the flight because “we were operating as if the aircraft would be able to fly.” The airline says it was relying on forecast models that indicated…
Jetblue announced today it has entered into a marketing partnership with Cape Air. Cape Air will provide connecting service from Boston…a Jetblue hublet, to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Provincetown, and Hyannis. Cape Air operates this service using small Cessna 402 aircraft. The alliance will begin March 19, 2007. Cape Air might not seem like a good fit…