Chef Anthony Thomas recently flew on a Southwest flight that was nearly empty. Southwest Airlines has open seating, and passengers can choose where to sit when they board. As seen in his tweet below, Thomas took a seat, and, out of dozens of empty rows, the only other passenger on the plane chose the seat…
In our travels, we have encountered several different boarding procedures. None of them seem to work particularly well, though all of them do have in common that we are somehow always the last allowed on.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it would seek more detailed inspections for cracks on the tops of Boeing 737-300, 400, and 500 series aircraft. This is a direct result of a hole that tore open in a Southwest Airlines jet back in 2009. They will be expanding rules to include new inspection methods with scanning…
Last week, Southwest Airlines apologized to the family of a terminally ill boy after they would not allow him use of a specially made car seat that allows him to sit comfortably. They have advised they are working with the family and hope to learn from the experience to improve their practices. The concern appeared…
On Friday, a Southwest Airlines flight lost cabin pressure after the fuselage ruptured. This is not the first time that this has happened, of course. There was an unrelated incident last year where a Southwest plane made an emergency landing after decompression, and Southwest has even grounded some of its fleet before.
Last week, Delta, the most expansive installer of wi-fi enabled planes in the United States, announced it would add onboard wi-fi to 223 Regional Jets configured in a two class configuration. This includes Embraer 175, Bombardier CRJ700 and Bombardier CRJ900 planes. Installations will begin in January and will be complete by the end of next year.
Southwest Airlines announced a tentative agreement by its pilots to add the Boeing 737-800 to its contract. Southwest currently expects to take delivery of its first 737-800 in the first quarter of 2012. The Southwest Flight Attendants have already had a tentative agreement of their own.
We were bowled over when we heard that Southwest is going to acquire AirTran. Even more shocking is that Southwest and AirTran apparently started discussing this acquisition in the spring, which means they’ve kept this under wraps for a surprisingly long time.That is surprising in this modern world. Everything seems to leak out.
We started the day this morning with surprising news. Southwest Airlines is going to acquire AirTran Airways. It is going to take us a bit to really think about this, and we’ll have more later in the day, but let’s go over the big points now.
Continuing its trend of going into overcrowded, delay prone airports it had previously avoided, Southwest Airlines announced it would be coming to Newark’s Liberty Airport. The effort is part of Continental and United’s effort to secure approval for their merger by agreeing to lease them 36 slots at the airport, which will allow for 18 daily roundtrips.
Southwest responded to the NTSBs findings on the incident on Flight 2294 last July. For those of you who don’t recall, that was the aircraft that made a landing in Charleston, WV when a hole suddenly opened up in the fuselage. The photos at the time were disconcerting for anyone who flies. After all, we like to think of planes as solid objects, but they are metal tubes that we put under pressure.
Southwest quietly made a change to its contract of carriage last month, making us here at Flight Wisdom wonder if being forced to to announce material changes in the contract of carriage should be part of the DOT’s proposed rulemaking.
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Welcome back. Our editor has been a bit behind with other things, but we’re trying to get back on track and back in the saddle. Stay tuned for more guests, and more information. For today, more from previous guest Dan Webb.
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Our editor is back from his trip. Check out his review on the Auto Train. Meanwhile, back into the swing of things. Lots of business to take care of.
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Our editor will be going on the road for a few days, as a roving reporter for our sister project, Transit Wisdom, reviewing Amtrak’s Autotrain. Until then, here’s all the news that fit to podcast.
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The Briefing is the first to feature a guest, Benet Wilson, who covers Business Aviation for Aviation Week. We don’t usually cover Business Aviation at Flight Wisdom, as it isn’t our area of expertise, but it is Benet’s business. Benet also joined our host for the first annual Aviation Geek Gilbert and Sullivan Day back in January, which we’re hoping to repeat next year. Pinafore, anyone?
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The ash cloud getting you down? Remember, as Bob Ross said…clouds are very, very free. A special shoutout to regular listener Steven Frischling, of the Flying with Fish blog, who compared the delivery style of the Briefing with the Joy of Painting. Perhaps we should rename the Briefing to the Joy of Flying.
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Greetings from the Flight Wisdom Summer Palace. Today’s briefing is hosted by the Infrequent Flier. If you enjoyed his presentation of the news, please drop him a line on Twitter @Infrequentflier.
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Today, we introduce a new opener for the Briefing, recorded by special guest announcer, the Bow-Tied Blogger. Comments are welcome.
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Lots of exciting new service in this briefing. We have tried a few different variations of our opening and closing. We’ll continue to mix it up a bit, but if you have any suggestions on how to improve the Briefing, please contact us.
It is very hard to write these sort of posts. When confronted with being called a Customer of Size, Kevin Smith complained. He was within his rights to do so, and anyone who feels wrongly singled out should.
We hate the debate over large customers, be they big, tall, or both. It never ends. And it invariably gets into an argument about the obesity issue in America. We’ve often said the only fair thing to do is size the seats to the statistically average American and accept that some people, many through no fault of their own, don’t fit the average. Airline seats, as we’ve mentioned before, are narrower than a standard office chair, for example.
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Southwest announced today it would add Saturday only service from New York-LaGuardia Airport to Denver International Airport. The rest of the week the service will be offered on a one-stop basis. Saturday-only service is the only option as Southwest is not securing any additional slots at LaGuardia, but Saturday service is not slot or perimeter…