A year ago today, on Thursday, February 12, 2009, Continental Connection flight 3407 crashed into a house in Clarence Center, NY. The flight, a Q400 turboprop operated by Colgan Air, killed 45 passengers, 4 crewmembers, and 1 man on the ground. The plane was on approach into Buffalo-Niagara international Airport from Newark’s Liberty Airport.
So, you’ve booked through a travel agent. That can include Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz…these are giant travel agencies, but they are still travel agencies, in terms of functions. They make reservations, issue tickets, change reservations, reissue tickets, etc. To put it into one simple term: they are authorized to act as sales agents for one or more airlines.
Enjoy the latest in airline service changes.
JetBlue is switching its reservations system from Navitaire to SABRE this weekend. As a matter of practicality, this will cause disruptions. If you are travelling Friday, Saturday or Sunday of this weekend(January 29-31), you may want to show up early.
We did want to followup on last week’s story, where a religious Jewish teen caused a plane to be diverted by praying using his tefillin. In case you missed it the first time, the above is an Associated Press video of the initial announcement. Note the police referring to the device as an “Olfactory.”
This is not the first time this has happened, and that is sad. Today, a US Airways regional flight, flight 3079 operated by Chautaqua Airlines, from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Louisville, Kentucky was diverted to Philadelphia over a religious issue.
President Obama said today that the December 25th attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound flight was not a failure of the U.S. Intelligence gathering system, but a failure to analyze that information and respond to it. Instead of focusing solely on defending the performance of his government, which his predecessor might have done, he came out and said that this was unacceptable and we had to do better. We may not do better, but we choose to respect him for being so direct about making a mistake, if nothing else.
The Irish government is demanding answers after an unsuspecting passenger carried high-grade explosives on a flight to Dublin as part of a botched training exercise. Slovakian Agents planted RDX explosives in the bag of a 49-year old electrician without his knowledge. The explosive was one of eight items planted by the Slovakian authorities in the baggage of unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava airport this past weekend.
Around 5:20PM on January 3rd, a man was observed walking the wrong way down the exit lane out of the secure area of Newark Liberty Airport’s Terminal C. Why no one stopped this man, as we always see a TSA agent stationed at the exit, we do not know. The response of the TSA was to shut down screening, but then two and a half hours later, then ordered the terminal evacuated and all passengers be rescreened. They estimated this would be complete by half past midnight. The event caused a great amount of disruption, as inbound planes were delayed due to lack of gate space, as were outbound planes due to lack of passengers.
This morning, to cap off the TSA Subpoena Saga, blogger Steven Frishling of Flying with Fish appeared on morning show, FOX and Friends.
In time for the New Year, the Federal Aviation Administration approved the single operating certificate for the new Delta Air Lines. What this means is that Northwest Airlines as an entity ceases to exist. With this change, the only lingering reminders of Northwest is its separate reservations system, which will be integrated in the first part of this new year, and Philadelphia, the only station still branded as Northwest.
(“Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” – Benjamin Franklin). Last night, agents of the Transportation Security Administration visited the homes of two aviation bloggers: Steven Frischling, of the popular Flying with Fish blog, and Christopher Elliott, syndicated travel journalist and blogger.
We’ve maintained consistently that the most effective anti-terrorist tool in intelligence. Good intelligence can stop a potential terror suspect before he gets anywhere near the airport. Beyond that, we have screenings. The New York Times reports that the U.S. Government’s response to a warning from the man’s father that he developed radical views, had disappeared and might have traveled to Yemen, was not to revoke the young man’s visa to enter the United States, which was good until June 2010. Now, on some level, that makes sense. But their response was to flag him for an investigation should he ever apply for another visa and to add him to a list of over half a million other individuals with possible terrorist connections.
As my name(the Infrequent Flier) suggests, I don’t often have a chance to get up in the air. As a result, my trips form a time-lapse portrait of the flying experience as it has changed. Each time I fly, I am amazed at the new rules, regulations and procedures that have been put in place. It has become common to refer to this group of measures as “Security Theater”- a group of actions for show which have no real impact on security.
On Friday, a passenger on a Northwest flight set off a small explosive device shortly before landing in Detroit. The man, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, was subdued. He had connected in Amsterdam to the flight from a KLM flight inbound from Lagos, Nigeria. He had been rescreened in Amsterdam, as is standard procedure there. The device failed to fully detonate, and has been described as a mixture of liquid and powder, and were described as more incendiary than explosive.
In only another week, 2009 will be over. So much has happened this year. Sitting warmly here, thinking of Decembers past, and the holiday travel season, I think to my formative years. When school let out, my family and I would be on a flight out of town till New Years.
The Houston Chronicle reports that on Tuesday, a pair of otters chewed through their wooden cage and caused a nearly 90 minute delay as employees tried to recapture them. In fact, one employee was injured, although not seriously
Reports are coming in that an American Airlines plane overshot the runway, crashed, and broke in two. Flight 331 was landing in pouring rain at its final destination of Norman Manley Airport in Kingston, Jamaica. We will update this post as we receive additional information. The plane was carrying 148 passengers and 6 crewmembers. Initial…
As part of regulations unveiled today that were advertised as groundbreaking rules to protect passengers in the event of tarmac delays, a second, in our opinion, more significant portion of regulation has been unveiled. Airlines will now be required to adopt a Customer Service Plan. Airlines have been required to submit plans to the DOT before, but not quite at this level. These plans, which will apply to all airlines, must be audited by each airline for compliance.
This morning, the DOT announced a new rule that will take effect in 120 days which would address tarmac delays. The new rule prohibits U.S. airlines operating domestic flights from permitting an aircraft to remain on the tarmac for more than three hours without deplaning passengers, with exceptions allowed only for safety or security or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations.
Today, while we are stuck in our homes in the snow, our thoughts are with those stuck at the airports. In preparation for this storm, airlines around the Northeast United States preemptively cancelled flights, airports were closed for hours, and some people are being told it might be days before they get home. At least 800 flights were cancelled in the New York Area alone. We don’t have the magic bullet that will solve all of these problems.
Last night, we upgraded the software that runs this blog to the latest version, which now supports embedded video from a variety of sites. We figured we’d see what sorts of things we could now embed. We’ve been posting Youtube videos for some time, but we’ve never tried some of the other sites. So, courtesy of Hulu, we now are offering you a chance, if you missed it, to experience the CNBC documentary, Inside American Airlines. It is a good documentary that shows a lot of interesting aspects of the industry in general, and American in particular. To those of you outside the U.S., unfortunately, Hulu is U.S. only.
The Latest Roundup…
Today is a historic day in the history of flight, one of many, but one we are happy to share with our fellow aviation enthusiasts. We couldn’t be there, so we have sourced some of these pictures from David Parker Brown at AirlineReporter.com.
Earplanes are Air Pressure Regulating Earplugs that help with pain causes by pressure changes. Our editor bought a pair of them a while back, after flying with a cold and spending two days afterward barely hearing anything, and have been waiting to try them out.