EU vs the Volcano: Round 2

European airspace continues to be shut down as conditions in the skies continue to remain dangerous. The following areas will likely have all flights cancelled:  Ireland, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, the north of France including all Paris airports, parts of Germany including Düsseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and the airspace…

Flight Wisdom Briefing 16

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Our parent, the Weneca Media Group, unveiled its own custom URL shortener for our blogs, n9n.us. All of our posts will now feature n9n.us URLs. We are looking for bloggers wishing to do editorials on the briefing. If you are interested, please contact us.

EU vs. the Volcano

Large portions of European airspace are closed today due to volcano ash due to the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Many airports in Europe have been closed till tomorrow, and thus there is much chaos as stranded passengers struggle to find their way home.

If you are flying to/from/within Europe today, please check with your carrier.

More on this later.

The Cookie is Gone But the Cookies Live On

Republic Airways Holdings, owners of Frontier and Midwest Airlines, has advised that the two carriers will merge, operating as Frontier Airlines. It means that the distinctive animal mascot tails of Frontier will remain. For those of you afraid about the loss of the signature cookies, Midwest’s signature fresh-baked cookies will be rolled out to Frontier soon. Repubican CEO Bryan Bedford promised that Frontier would add a plane with Wisconsin’s state animal, the badger, but this will take time as “it’s hard to find a cute badger.”

Flight Wisdom Briefing 14

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[caption id="attachment_1706" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Lavatory - Virgin America A320"][/caption] This is the Flight Wisdom Guru with Briefing #14, once again reporting in from Flight Wisdom HQ…We ran a little long today, and will try to have a second briefing out tomorrow afternoon, to catch up before the weekend rush. Show Notes Virgin Atlantic to Launch…

Spirit Airlines Beats Ryanair at Bottom Feeding – Charges for Carry-Ons

Effective July 1st, for travel beginning August 1st, Spirit Airlines will now charge for carry-on bags. You will still be able to take your small personal item onboard, but if you wish a carryon bag in the overhead, that will be $30 before departure. If you are member of their $9 Fare Club(which oddly enough costs $39.95 a year), you get to pay only $20. And if you forget or miss notice of this new rule, you can pay $45 at the gate.

Flight Wisdom Briefing 11

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We’re reporting in this week from the birthplace of Flight Wisdom, affectionately known as the Flight Wisdom Summer Palace. Flight Wisdom began in the summer of 2006, when a bunch of us decided to get into the habit of subject-based blogging. I, your usual host, the Editor, also known as the Flight Wisdom Guru, hope to give you the chance to hear some of the other voices of Flight Wisdom this week.

More Developments in the Delta-US Airways Slot Swap

Back in August, Delta Air Lines and US Airways announced a deal to give Delta dominance at LaGuardia in exchange for Delta helping US Airways dominate Washington-National. The DOT advised that in order for them to approve the transaction, the airlines would have to divest a certain number of slots at each airport in order for it to be approved. This week, the two airlines shot back with their own proposal. They will transfer up to five slot pairs each to AirTran, Spirit, and Westjet at LaGuardia. And at National, they will transfer five slot pairs to JetBlue.

Virgin America Suffers its First Major PR Issue

Virgin America Flight 404 circled JFK till it was diverted to Stewart Airport in Newburgh, which is also run by the Port Authority of NY & NJ, as is JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia, to refuel and wait out the weather. This is hardly out of the ordinary. But as the hours passed, supplies grew slim, tempers frayed, and things started to come to a boil.

Flight Wisdom Briefing 6

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This is Briefing 6. Welcome to our new subscribers on iTunes. Since last time, we did a bit of a movie opener in honor of Peter Graves and Airplane, we decided to try another random one that had been lurking in our heads. Feel free to tweet or comment with the movie title if you recognized it. We’ll continue to adjust the opening and closing until we find one or several with enduring amusement. If this is how it sounds at Brief 6, imagine how good we’ll be at it by Brief 60. Keep listening.

Continental to Become Last Domestic Carrier to End Meal Service

The Examiner reports that Continental Airlines will end its free meal program on flights shorter than six hours. We always find it amusing that companies, airline or not, spin taking away services that were previously free and replacing them with a paid option as an improvement for their customers. Certainly, we demand that if we pay for it, it be a better quality experience, but beyond that…

In Honor of Peter Graves – Watch Airplane this Monday

In honor of Peter Graves, who unfortunately passed away Sunday evening at the age of 83, we present a tribute to him in the form of the movie Airplane!, in which he starred as Captain Clarence Oveur.

We here at Flight Wisdom have decided to schedule a group watching of Airplane. So, everyone break out your copy of Airplane. We’ll be doing this at 8PM Eastern Time the evening of March 15, 2010 and again at 12AM Eastern.

We’ll be using a web-based chatroom if anyone wants to join us and will tweet the location a few minutes beforehand on Twitter @FlightWisdom.