Flying With Fish The Blog for Those Who Fly & Those Who Want to Fly Smarter

For the past week the threat of the looming Public Sector labour strike in Britain gripped airlines and airports with fear.  As UK Border Agency Immigrations Officers announced they would take part in the public sector strike action today some airlines readjusted schedules, other carriers cancelled flights and London Heathrow Airport warned that passport control [...]

Businesses going bankrupt immediately conjure up images of windows being boarded up, assets being sold at auction and phone lines going dead … but that is not the case with American Airlines following its parent company AMR filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection this morning in US Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New [...]

American Airlines was founded in 1934 and has long been America’s premier flagship airline. … or so Page 3, Section I, item 5 says in AMR’s bankruptcy filing that was submitted to U.S. Bankruptcy Court, in the Southern District of New York this morning.   In fact American Airlines was founded in 1930 as American [...]

The airline industry is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, despite the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 (Public Law 95-504).     Nearly every aspect of an airline’s operations are subject to regulation … but airlines are free to charge what they’d like for fares and services, provided they do not [...]

Security is a fact of life for airline travel and screening procedures vary from country to country … which leads to this reader mail from Gene R., from Pittsburgh, PA.  Gene writes “I just flew home to Pittsburgh from Paris with US Airways, as I have done a few times through Philadelphia.  When connecting through [...]

For some time the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has been monitoring the social media activities of airlines to ensure that airlines fully disclose fares up front to travelers.  Under DOT regulations any far, including promotional fares, must disclose taxes and fees up front. While DOT fare disclosure eats into Twitter’s 140-character message, regulations for [...]

On the 19th of November 2001 Public Law 107-71 (PL 107-71), the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), was enacted any the 107th Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush. With the flick of George W. Bush’s pen, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created and airport security through the United States [...]

The last time I wrote about Hello Kitty was in early 2008, three years into Eva Air’s operation of its two Hello Kitty themed Airbus A330-203s, which the airline then retired in 2009 … much to the disappointment of my kids who never had the opportunity to enjoy the Eva Air Hello Kitty experience.   [...]

The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) is the U.S. Government’s export credit agency, tasked with the mission of providing financial assistance in support of the export of products from the U.S. to international markets. The EXIM Bank allows for pre-export financing, with no transaction considered to large or small for the bank with [...]

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) frequently issues similar warnings. Over the agency’s nearly ten years in existence a pattern has emerged of not only the unsubstantiated travel security warnings the agency issues, but the timing of these warnings … with near Swiss precision.   With the busy winter holiday travel season set to begin in [...]