Posted by Seth on May 19, 2008 under Uncategorized | 
The NYC MTA has released another batch of retired subway cars to be recycled as artificial reefs along the East coast of the United States. As the city’s subway system modernizes the old cars are being stripped down and then sunk off the coast, producing reefs that are expected to draw fish and tourists. This isn’t the first time they’ve done it, but it is a reminder to me that I need to plan a scuba trip to go experience riding the MTA underwater.
Posted by Seth on May 18, 2008 under Uncategorized |
And it isn’t the planes that landed on top of each other at a small airport outside of Dallas.
A Hawaiian Air flight returned to Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport on Friday after rivets popped out of a non-structural wing panel and a panel actually separated from the plane. One passenger claims to have seen the rivets pop (which I’m not so sure about since they would’ve been flying at ~500mph and the rivets are pretty small and would go pretty quickly). Other passengers claimed to hear popping sounds, which is much more likely.
Either way, the plane was completely safe, even though the panel popped off and there were a bunch of loose rivets, according to a Hawaiian Air spokesperson. I’m not sure how they figure that, other than the “it is safe until it has crashed” theory of aircraft maintenance, so that’s definitely an interesting view. At least this one turned back, unlike the AA flight a couple weeks ago, so there won’t be a cat-fight between the pilots and flight attendants about the decision of whether to fly or not.
At least the airline is admitting that the situation is “highly unusual.”
Posted by Seth on May 16, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Though chances are that he won’t have much chance to hate it going forward. The emergency landing of a plane last week in North Dakota was originally blamed on an electrical fire in the lavatory. Now news has come out that a flight attendant on the flight has now been charged in federal court with setting a fire in the bathroom, forcing the landing. Apparently he was upset at the airline for assigning that route to him.
I’ve often not wanted to go to a particular client on a given day, but I never tried to burn down the building to get out of it. I foresee some time in a small room for this guy to consider his actions.
Posted by Seth on May 15, 2008 under Uncategorized |
For about eight hours today United supposedly was not charging fuel surcharges on a number of domestic routes. What is particularly interesting about this is that the carrier actually issued a comment about the event, calling it a “clerical error.” And there is also the fact that many people were not seeing the fuel surcharge missing on any fares. I looked a bit and everything I was seeing was the same price as always, so either the systems really were broken or they were doing something to try to drive sales by pretending that there was a special sale going on, when in reality it was just business as usual. My conspiracy theory loses a bit of credibility since some are claiming to be finding the cheaper fares, and also since the error was “discovered” by a data mining company that has a pretty good reputation, including finding the CDN$39 fare (in business class!) that we took to Cyprus a couple years ago. And Bloomberg is covering it as well, though without much original content.
The issue also highlights an interesting side bit of the travel industry. Because of the way things operate the fares can only be updated at specific times during the day. That meant that this mistake fare was available for several hours after UA discovered it, and there was very little they could do to remove it.
Either way I couldn’t make use of this deal, but hopefully others did. With fares much higher these days than in recent history any small discount is a welcome change.
Posted by Seth on May 13, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Being completely obsessed with flying, the National Air & Space Museum was always my favorite part of a visit to Washington, DC. Five years ago the Smithsonian raised the stakes, adding the Udvar-Hazy Center as another facility where they can show off some of the amazing pieces that they’ve collected. When you’re dealing with flight the pieces aren’t small, so it is not completely surprising that the new facility was built as a hangar out near Dulles airport. Fortunately the Smithsonian runs a bus service from the Mall downtown if you’re without wheels. Like all the other museums that the Smithsonian operates admission is free, though the bus ride or parking will cost a few bucks.
There are scores of planes on display, from some that are so small it looks like you could pick them up and walk away with them to the B-29 SuperFortress “Enola Gay” that is huge.
There’s also a Pan Am Stratoliner on display with its shiny aluminum skin
and propellers.
There’s a SR-71 Blackbird on display
as well as a Concorde.
There’s the original FedEx plane, the model Boeing used to build the 707 (the same body was also used for modeling the KC-35 and to test engines for the 727), bi-planes, gliders, flying wings, experimental craft, spaceships, missiles, war planes, human powered planes and many, many, many other things to see. And if that’s not enough, you can also head up to the observation deck and watch planes come and go live at Dulles International Airport.
If you’re into planes, it is a must-see on the list of aviation museums.
More pictures from my visit to Udvar-Hazy are here
Posted by Seth on May 12, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The idea of a destination wedding is hardly a new concept. But what about a layover wedding??
That’s the question of the moment right now, including just how long it will take to get the license at city hall and then to get a waiver for having the event the same day instead of waiting the traditional 24 hour minimum. So can it be done in NYC on a 6 hour layover at Newark airport?
I think it can, but only if the lines are short at the marriage licensing bureau, which is anything but guaranteed. But is sure would be fun to try…
Posted by Seth on May 12, 2008 under Uncategorized |
And boy is it UGLY.
The seats in economy are a beautifully pre-stained shade of green, while the business class seats have a strange salmon glow to them.
Images from the Herald Sun
Overall, it doesn’t really look all that terrible, and the first class seats seem to have a swivel built in to allow them to extend fully flat for sleeping. Still, there is a lot of new coming out with this interior, so get ready for a spate of “love it”/”hate it” debates.
Oh, and one of the captions announced that the flight of this particular plane up to Hamburg to be fitted with the cabin interior is the end of production troubles for the A380. Don’t tell Emirates that; they’re still waiting for their ~50 planes and Airbus keeps saying production is going to be slower…
Posted by Seth on May 11, 2008 under Uncategorized |
A two hour delay getting into New York might seem pretty bad, but what would that make a two and a half month delay in getting home?
Apparently a Ghanaian charter company paid to charter the outbound flight for a tour group headed to Barbados, but never paid the airline for the return trip. So the airline never sent the plane. And after two week on the island, the 80 passengers returned to the airport to discover that no plane was coming. Here’s where things turn somewhat strange. Since it was a charter flight and since there aren’t any other flights between Ghana and Barbados (though I’m sure there are connecting options) the tourists just stayed in Barbados, waiting to hear news of when they’d be able to return. Many got jobs and/or stayed with relatives in the interim. Ultimately the Ghana and Barbados governments managed to charter a plane to fly the visitors home, ten weeks after they arrived.
Puts “normal” delays in perspective, huh?
Posted by Seth on May 11, 2008 under Uncategorized |
It is a move that I cannot quite figure out, but it seems that China’s national government has decided that they want to be in the airplane manufacturing business. And they aren’t looking at smaller regional jets or prop planes. They’re going after full size and jumbos, planning to make airplanes with capacities of 150 passengers or more.
I get that having only two companies making planes doesn’t leave a lot of room for negotiations, and I understand that the demand in China, along with its population and vast cash reserves make it a prime candidate for an upstart in the industry. But either they’re being very coy or they have no intention of producing a plane in the near future.
General manager Jin Zhuanglong said in a Xinhua interview that it was too early to say when a Chinese-developed jumbo jet would be taking off, as it would take a long time to develop homegrown talent and do research.
“According to the development history of Airbus and Boeing, the development and success of civil planes cannot be realized by relying on one or two generations,” he said.
In other words, it is going to take a while. So while they may have money to burn, this seems a strange way to spend it.
Then again, Tupelov built passable replicas of the Boeing planes relatively quickly, thanks to some decent industrial espionage. I wonder if the Airbus assembly plant in China is looking at tighter security these days…
Posted by Seth on May 9, 2008 under Uncategorized |
There’s a big hullabaloo going on in airline land this week with American Airlines, again about a trans-Atlantic flight that many are saying shouldn’t have happened. Last time it was because they flew a pretty empty plane across the pond. This time the problem was a flight from Dallas to Paris that went with an exterior panel missing from the body of the plane.
The pictures (click that second link above) are pretty impressive, but more impressive is the back and forth cat fight going on between the pilots and the flight attendants over whether the pilot was acting safely in his decision to make the trip without inspecting the plane for damage following a “loud boom” and a strong vibration shortly after takeoff. It turns out that the plane made the flight safely and with virtually no difference in fuel burn versus what was expected, so the aerodynamics of the plane weren’t really affected. That doesn’t mean it was definitely safe, but it does add to the intrigue of the situation.
Anyways, reading the back and forth between the pilots and FAs on the comments section of the story linked above is really funny. “I’m never flying with that pilot again,” against “The pilot did nothing wrong,” is lots of fun.
