Posted by Seth on February 5, 2010 under Trip Reports | 
Fly enough and strange things are bound to happen. I haven’t had to evacuate a plane or deal with oxygen mask deployment yet but I’ve had my share of aborted take-offs and “go around” missed landings. Those are unsettling but I actually understand what is going on in those cases and it doesn’t really seem all that bad when it is happening. Flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles today on my way to Hawaii I got to experience a final approach that was unlike any other. And I got a bit spooked by it.
The pilot had the Channel 9 audio feed on so I was able to listen to the cockpit communications throughout the flight. I heard the discussions of the weather with the controllers and our pilots’ requests to deviate around the worst of it. That was all good stuff. But having access to that audio also probably contributed to me freaking out a bit when we made a strange left turn about 30 seconds before touchdown. What I heard was something to the effect of:
Tower, this is United 817. We’re seeing wide variations on the localizer for runway 6R. It is all over the place.
The localizer is the radio beacon that broadcasts out the location of the runway so that the plane’s autopilot functionality can glide it it to a safe landing. If the plane is off course the autopilot will hone in on the localizer and correct the course. But if the localizer goes wobbly bonkers then the plane will change course to “correct” even if that means actually heading away from the runway.
And that’s exactly what our plane did this morning. The good news is that the pilots reacted quickly and professionally. They disengaged the autopilot, corrected the course of the plane and brought us in for a completely normal landing. Except the part where we briefly were headed in the wrong direction.
The pilot and ATC folks had a brief conversation about the incident while we were still flying. They checked with the plane behind us on the approach path to see if they saw the same issues with the localizer (they did) and then things continued on normally. Once we were finally on the ground the pilot gave the tower another tongue lashing about the localizer and clarified that it was the runway localizer and not the glide slope indicator (another piece of the autopilot system) that was having problems. And that was pretty much the end of it.
As we were deplaning I mentioned the event to the pilot and we chatted briefly about it. It was only after that conversation that I fully grasped the severity of what had happened. Probably a good thing as we were safely on the ground at that point and freaking out a bit wasn’t as significant an issue. But I was definitely feeling spooked by the event.
No real reason to freak out, I know. The pilots knew exactly what they were doing the whole time and they fixed the issue quickly and perfectly. In fact, had I not been listening to Channel 9 I’m not entirely certain I would have even known something went amiss during the approach. But it was still a bit freaky. Certainly not enough to prevent me from getting on the next flight, but a bit freaky.
Sadly the LiveATC.net feed of KLAX is offline right now so I don’t have access to the actual tower communications to get the verbatim conversation that happened with our pilot, the pilot behind us and ATC. I may have to dig a bit more to see if I can find it.
Posted by Seth on August 11, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Sure, airlines are mostly still cutting capacity, but every now and then a new route crops up on the schedules. This week it seems that Ft. Lauderdale is the winner of two such announcements in a big way. The first announcement came from Virgin America, indicating their plans to offer up four daily flights to California (two each to San Francisco and Los Angeles). Not to be outdone, jetBlue announced a couple hours later their intention to offer the “first nonstop service” between San Francisco and Ft. Lauderdale. And, while they are first, they are really only alone in the market for a day; the Virgin America service starts the day after jetBlue launches theirs.
The moves are certainly interesting and for several reasons. First, who knew that there was such a pent up demand for travel between South Florida and California? Right now there are seven daily flights between Miami and Los Angeles and another three from San Francisco to Miami, all operated by American Airlines. The represent a lift of some 1500 seats across the country. The introduction of these five flights will increase that capacity by about 35%, albeit from Ft. Lauderdale, not Miami. That is a huge increase in a market that has long been seen as questionable in terms of revenue. Oh, and jetBlue flies Ft. Lauderdale – Long Beach daily, too.
Beyond that, why Ft. Lauderdale? For jetBlue it makes a lot of sense. The New York-based carrier already has significant operations in Ft. Lauderdale and this is actually sortof bringing back a route they used to operate (Ft. Lauderdale – Oakland) that disappeared a few years ago when it wasn’t making any money. jetBlue can offer onward connections to the Caribbean and the rest of their network. For Virgin America, however, it is a strange choice. Operating out of Ft. Lauderdale is cheaper, and it also means they don’t really have to compete against American. After the heavy duty fare and bonus points wars in the Boston market earlier this year I’m sure that they’re pretty happy about that. But the smaller carriers are rarely too concerned about going for the jugular against incumbents. Is it possible that Virgin America sees the Ft. Lauderdale area as able to deliver better yields than Miami can? Lots of things have left downtown, including a lot of the wealthier residents, heading north along I-95. It seems that Virgin America is gambling that the business travel market is desperate to make a similar move.
The new schedule from jetBlue also has them removing their one-stop service via Austin, Texas. The good news there is that the San Francisco – Austin flights will now be at much better times for the locals on those routes.
Adding this much capacity to any market seems like revenue suicide for those involved; seeing it happen on transcons (more expensive to operate) in a market that has historically been very much focused on leisure travel is even stranger. Still, look for plenty of promotions and bonuses to be coming out in the weeks ahead as these new routes look to build up loads.
Posted by Seth on March 12, 2008 under Internet |
Aircell, one of a handful of providers competing to provide in-flight broadband access to airlines and their passengers, has announced that they expect to have planes operating with the service as soon as “this spring,” according to their president. AirCell’s two main customers today are American Airlines and Virgin America. They’re outfitting AA’s 767s with the service initially, with an option to scale up to 500 planes in the AA fleet if things go well. Virgin America is going to be installing the service in all of their Airbus planes as quickly as possible, as they were marketing the internet access as a big selling point in their plans.
What I find particularly strange is the way the article is selling the
service:
If you’re a frequent flier to New York from San Francisco or Los Angeles, or just like to jet down to Miami to get away from the bitter New York winter, then you’re one of the lucky people who will have in-flight broadband by this spring, according to Jack Blumenstein, president and CEO of Itasca, Ill.-based Aircell. The company is calling its in-flight broadband service gogo.
Specifically, AA is only operating the service on their 767s between JFK and SFO/LAX. Virgin America doesn’t fly to Miami (yet). I have no idea at all why Miami is mentioned at all in the story. At some point journalism crossed over with creative writing, and it hasn’t always been for the better.
Anyways, despite the poorly written article, it is good to see this option moving closer to operation. Aircell is the better service of the two main options (the other being LiveTV, owned by JetBlue) as I wrote about previously. I just wonder if the differences between the two services will be enough to drive passengers from one carrier to another. It just might be for me. Then again, Aircell is going to charge $13 for a transcon flight, while the LiveTV service is going to be free. Free crap is still crap, but at least it is free.
Posted by Seth on February 3, 2008 under Uncategorized |
A piece of cake from the west coast, and not even all that hard from the east coast, but when you make the trip for the miles instead of the destination, making it there and back can actually prove much more difficult, especially when you take four flights to get there instead of the non-stop. But given the price of the ticket, and nothing much else to do on a Saturday, I set out on a quick tour of train stations, airports, airport lounges and airplanes. Plus, I got to see a bit of America and meet some new people along the way.
The itinerary was PHL-IAD-JFK-SFO-LAS-SFO-JFK. I actually had tickets to continue on from JFK to IAD and then back to PHL, but it is Superbowl Sunday, and I’d miss opening kickoff, plus I have to pack for my trip to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year, so I skipped those flights. With a 6:25 am flight out of Philadelphia on Saturday morning I chose to head down the night before (hence the trains) and have dinner with a friend before heading out on the adventure. The train trip was uneventful, and dinner was a pretty good burger at Slainte across the street from Philly’s 30th Street Station. Since my friend was also arriving by train I hung out at 30th Street Station for about an hour waiting, and figured I’d take a few pictures while I was there. The architecture of the train station is typical of the grand old stations, with soaring ceilings and impressive steel structures to hold up the overhangs for the outdoor tracks that were added later.
It was rush hour when I was there, so there were a number of people passing through, queuing up and otherwise existing in a rather transient state. I think I captured that in a couple of these pictures, with the ghosts of the people in the images, but maybe that’s just me being a bit crazy.
So that was the night before. I had my tickets in hand and was ready to go the next morning, so I slept until about 5am and then made my way over to the terminal from the Airport Marriott. I learned that part of the TSA efforts to secure our air travel includes no fruit through the check-point, unless you’re willing to subject it to x-ray screening. Since I was actually in the act of eating the apple I had a couple last bites and tossed the core. But you should be happy to know that the TSA is protecting airplanes, one apple at a time. Back to the rest of the story… The Philadelphia airport is just as much of a dump as I remember it being last time I was there, about 5 years ago. One nice upgrade is that they now have ATT WiFi throughout the terminals, except in the United Red Carpet Club, where the signal was too weak for me to connect. As an added bonus, the WiFi is free on weekends for everyone (weekdays, too for students, though I don’t know how they patrol that). So I grabbed a replacement apple from the lounge, as well as this shot, and then headed out to the terminal to use the WiFi and wait for my flight.
Philly to Dulles was a piece of cake, and I had a few minutes in Dulles again to use the free ATT WiFi (not sure it was supposed to be free, but it was. That was a quick hour in the United Express “terminal” and then on to my Dulles-JFK flight. At this point the sun was finally rising over the east coast:
The JFK Red Carpet Club was OK, with some decent views of the runway, but nothing really to write home about. JFK-SFO was on one of the United p.s. planes, which offers a couple extra inches of legroom, a very welcome benefit on a 6 hour flight. Sadly, the entertainment options on the plane are pretty limited (just the overhead movie screen), so that’s not particularly good. I also met a couple people on the flight that know of the “mileage clubs” so that made for a very entertaining conversation for a few hours as we crossed the country. We were only about an hour late into San Francisco due to the storms out there, and I even had time to duck in to the RCC out there (the one by gate 80), but only because my onward flight was also delayed. I have to say that the RCC at gate 80 is, by far, the nicest of the RCCs I’ve seen.
My flight to Las Vegas was running about an hour late, leaving me only about 45 minutes for my connection there. Fortunately I already had my boarding passes for those flights so that wasn’t a big deal at all. The minor delay into Las Vegas also allowed me to see a rather impressive sunset, though the pictures from later in the “show” were too blurry:
Up to this point my schedule was getting tighter and tighter, but I’d been squeaking by. I also was at a point where I was now stuck for the night, as any other options headed back east were the redeye I was booked on or waiting until the morning. So when we pushed back from the gate in Las Vegas and sat there for about 10 minutes with no information from the pilot, I started thinking about where in the San Francisco airport I’d be spending the night. The captain opened up the cockpit during the wait (the Airbus 320 cockpit is huge compared to the 737s) and we discussed my situation. “We” decided that I’d just wait it out and hope for the best in San Francisco. We landed after my flight was supposed to have left, but it was also delayed, sparing me a night on the floor. I managed to get the last pizza from the food court and then finally settled in for the 4:40 flight back to JFK. That flight really isn’t long enough to get a reasonable amount of sleep (I’ve complained about it before, but United is the worst, with making announcements throughout the flight, especially the “seatbelts please” bit), but I got enough to make it through to nap time today. And 24.5 hours after I left Philadelphia, I made it to JFK. 90 minutes later I was in my apartment with a fresh bagel for breakfast and ~16,000 points going into my bmi account.
Not bad for a Saturday.
