Posted by Seth on October 22, 2010 under frequent flyer, News, points | 
StarMegaDo is a little slice of heaven for aerophiles. Basically a week-long party with airlines, aircraft manufacturers, frequent flyer programs and even some hotel loyalty program fun mixed in as well. Frankfurt for dinner with Lufthansa and Star Alliance? Yeah, we’ll go there and back overnight for that. And, sure, you could fly from Houston to Seattle on a scheduled flight, but you’d miss the party with US Airways (including CEO Doug Parker) and flying into Paine Field, north of Seattle, for the exclusive tour of the Boeing wide-body assembly facility. Did I mention that the domestic segments are on a chartered 757-300 where we get to set the menu and catering policies.
The event is pretty much sold out at this point, but it is still possible to score a free seat, thanks to Lufthansa.
You’ll join us for the whole trip – from Frankfurt to Houston to Phoenix to Seattle and back to Houston. Hotel and airfare are included for the lucky winner and the event covers almost every meal (and most of the booze) in between. This is truly a unique experience and one worth going for, especially since it is so easy to win.
Check out the rules here: http://www.lufthansa.com/online/portal/lh/us/nonav/local?nodeid=2795872. Then get on Twitter and go for the win.
All entries must be received by 6pm Eastern Time on Monday, October 25, 2010.
Good Luck!
Posted by Seth on September 21, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
Getting to a meeting in Seattle shouldn’t be too hard. Thanks to the JetBlue All You Can Jet pass I managed to schedule a meeting that otherwise likely would not have happened so I’m pretty excited about that. Any opportunity I have to help share the knowledge of frequent flyer programs’ inner workings and the myriad of ways to calculate the value of the points I see as a great thing. But I also needed to actually figure out how I’d get to Seattle for the meeting.
Sure, there is the option of the non-stop JFK-Seattle but that’s not really very creative. There’s a flight via Boston but I have not had a ton of luck with those so far this month. And then there’s the Dulles – Long Beach – Portland – Amtrak option. Yeah, that’s right up my alley.
For no particular reason I’ve always wanted to ride the Amtrak line between Seattle and Portland. I tried to schedule it during AYCJ last year but I couldn’t get a flight out of Seattle. This year I managed to get that seat so I booked the train, too. I even splurged and spent the extra $15 for the business class seat. After all, I’m on my way to a meeting. Actually, I did it to avoid potential lines at the station in Portland in the morning. 
Turns out there were no lines but I did get a great seat – a solo on the double side of the train so there was plenty of room to spread out and work. I also got a great recommendation for breakfast from Jerry, the Amtrak guy at the counter. Turns out that the post office across the street from the train station has a cafe on the 4th floor that is open to the public and that serves up pretty good, cheap food. I put my Voodoo donuts aside, had the chicken-fried steak and then headed back down to board the train.
We pulled out right on time and I was then treated to some phenomenal views as we rolled north towards Seattle. The train ride was smooth, on time and mostly uneventful, other than the fact that the cafe car apparently didn’t receive the correct catering so they did not have breakfast available. They responded by offering up everything they did have for free which was a nice touch. At the second stop en route they finally got some of the catering resolved: a delivery of fried chicken showed up on the train. Needless to say, the announcement of “Last call for free chicken in the cafe car” made over the PA system was rather entertaining.
The portion of the ride around Olympia was probably the most scenic section of the ride but the whole thing was pretty impressive.
And then it was off to the meetings (more on that later) and back to the airport for my first AYCJ trip to the Caribbean. I’m flying three new lines today, from Seattle to Long Beach to Ft. Lauderdale to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. It is a beautiful day for flying.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on August 25, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
Unlimited flight access can be a dangerous thing. Even with (or perhaps because of) the somewhat quirky schedules and routing options JetBlue offers, it looks like I’ll be able to do a reasonable amount of damage (likely mostly to myself) during my month of flying. I managed to put the finishing touches on a doozie of a travel week last night. And the best part is that I’m actually going to be stopping in a few of the places in addition to simply flying a ton.
Starting on a Sunday afternoon, I’ll be flying to San Jose, California, mostly because I’ve never been to that airport, via Boston. I get back to New York on Monday morning and will immediately fly out to Dulles and then on to Long Beach and then up to Portland, Oregon. I actually overnight in Portland – 14 hours should be plenty of time for dinner and a good night’s sleep – before catching a ride on Amtrak’s Cascades train on Tuesday morning. Tuesday night is Seattle – Long Beach – Ft. Lauderdale arriving in Florida in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
The second half of the week will include my island adventure for the AYCJ month. I’ll head first to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic for 36 hours from Ft. Lauderdale. I actually am taking a better timed, more direct route rather than flying to get some completely awesome lines on the map. I’d like to think of it as maturity but I’m pretty sure that cannot really be there. So I overnight in the DR and then from Santo Domingo I head 432 miles east to St. Maarten. Of course, I’m flying via JFK for a total distance traveled of 3230 miles. I’ll even potentially get a couple hours at home and to sleep in my own bed before heading back out to JFK for the 10:20am flight to the plane-spotting mecca. I’ll sit on the beach all day and watch the planes come and go before hopefully heading over to the French side for some decent food and nightlife (assuming I’m at all coherent at that point) and then back to the beach and the airport in the morning before heading back up to JFK.
All in, that’s 17,851 miles flown in a seven day span. Somewhat miraculously, I’m going to do it while only spending two of the seven nights on red-eye flights. I’ll get to spend time in the Pacific Northwest (and maybe even get a business meeting in there) and two Caribbean destinations. I’ll even be home in time for a (rather late) dinner in NYC on Saturday.
Not a bad travel week at all.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on August 19, 2010 under News |
Aircraft delivery flights are often quite the party. The airlines have a new toy to play with and they are a great opportunity to show partners, vendors, employees and customers the happier side of flying. Gaining access to those flights, however, is hardly trivial. It is doubly difficult if you’re not actually in the industry.
Continental has made it a bit easier for 40 folks to gain access to this experience through their OnePass Auctions website. The airline currently has 20 packages available for a delivery flight of a Boeing 737-800 on September 25, 2010. Winners will receive two tickets to Seattle, two nights hotel accommodations, dinner & drinks at Boeing and again for the launch party, ground transportation in Seattle and two tickets from Houston back home. And, of course, the aircraft delivery flight.
While normally spending frequent flyer points on something other than travel isn’t a great value, this auction is currently very inexpensive (25K points wins right now, though it will likely go up a bit) and the experience is truly a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Sadly it is limited to OnePass-branded Chase MasterCard holders which excludes a lot of folks, but it is still a tremendous opportunity if you have the card. Alas, I’ll be enjoying my AYCJ pass and will have to skip this one. I’ll definitely be bidding should the Dreamliner delivery show up on the site.
Bid here: http://auction.continental.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prmenbr=73052744&aunbr=130595802&MoreSubs=.
Posted by Seth on July 30, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Getting to see a major musical act in an airport is definitely a rare experience. Many airports offer music of some sort – I’ve seen performances in Austin and San Diego and probably others I don’t remember – but those shows have been local folks, not Grammy-award winning artists. So when JetBlue announced that Sarah McLachlan would be performing at their flagship JFK T5 terminal in New York City this week it caught my attention. Were I a huge Sarah fan I’d have just purchased a refundable ticket to get past security (and a few folks at the company assumed I would anyways) but I actually didn’t have to.
Thanks to an awesome friend I got an email on Wednesday morning letting me know that I had access to a legitimate ticket. Woo Hoo! Apparently part of my qualification for getting the invite as her +1 was my known willingness to go hang out at the airport for no particular reason. I’m happy that has finally paid off in some manner.
And so it was that I found myself at JFK T5 on Thursday evening, chatting with a whole bunch of folks who had come to the show from near and far, plus all the people who just happened to be connecting through the terminal on their regular flights. There was the family from Queens – father, son, girlfriend and her friend – of which the father was the most excited for the event. Giddy like a schoolgirl doesn’t begin to describe the excitement. Watching him get his copy of the latest CD autographed was awesome, both for how friendly McLachlan was about it and for how happy he was to receive it. There was also the couple from Seattle who won a trip to NYC and Boston to see the shows, including airfare, hotels and seats at the Lilith Fair concert in Boston. Not only were they getting to see one of their favorite artists, they got to do it while celebrating their 5th anniversary this weekend. Good stuff all around.
JetBlue put on a great show, too, with a happy hour set up for the invited guests that was quite nice. A few glasses of wine and some finger food, as well as being basically in the middle of the “back stage” setup during the sound check.
In addition to getting the back stage access we also were able to access the opposite raised platform during the show. It is my normal place in the terminal so I was a little annoyed to see that it had been cleared off for the show, but getting to stand up there during the show made up for that. We were a bit back from the stage but well above everyone and with pretty good views of the performance.
And then, after the performance, Sarah hung out and took photos with fans and signed autographs and was generally just awesome.
Finally, for some reason JetBlue had their JD Power Award statue out in the terminal during the show, along with the bunch of summer interns that were helping work at and getting to attend the concert. Had I not been slowed by the wine earlier in the evening I think I would have had a chance to abscond with it when one of the interns handed it to me to look at. At least I have a photo of me with it and no police record. That cannot be all bad.
Posted by Seth on April 6, 2010 under News |
The more I think about the recently announced deal between American Airlines and JetBlue the more I am struck with just how similar JetBlue is to Alaska Airlines. And I cannot help but think that is a good thing for JetBlue; Alaska ha been incredibly successful in their strategy and the JetBlue approach seems quite similar.
Just how similar are they? The numbers tell the tale. Each is the dominant carrier in at least one airport in a major metro area. OK, that’s not too impressive since pretty much every successful airline has a hub in a major metro.
- The fleets are almost identical in size and are very similar in makeup. JetBlue operates 110 Airbus A320s and 41 Embraer E90s. Alaska operates 114 Boeing 737s and 58 regional aircraft (18 CRJ-700s, 40 Dash8-400s) through their relationship with Horizon Air.
- Both airlines focus significantly on north-south routes of about 1,000 miles or less, JetBlue on the East Coast and Alaska on the West Coast; they each also operate a few transcons and mid-con flights, but those are not the bulk of the flights. They each have a few international routes but nothing too long in the air; they’re limited in many ways by their fleet.
- JetBlue is actually a bit larger in terms of flights operated and passengers carried but the revenue numbers are very similar: both are in the $3 Billion annually range.
And then there are the partnerships they have. Neither is part of a major global alliance. They for partnerships of convenience for specific needs. JetBlue partners with Aer Lingus, Lufthansa and soon with American. Alaska partners with a whole bunch of folks, including codeshares with American and Delta. Both are stable and would likely survive without those partnerships but having them makes a huge difference in attracting frequent flyers.
The market opportunities that the Alaska Air’s partnerships offer are smaller than the global alliances but not by much. They have relationships with enough domestic and foreign carriers that folks earning miles in their Mileage Plan program can redeem for travel pretty much anywhere in the world. JetBlue isn’t quite there yet, but they seem to be moving in that direction and the new TrueBlue 2 program was designed to permit such opportunities.
It will be a while before the AA/JetBlue deal really plays out to the point that there are palpable results for either carrier. Further developments in the relationship will take even longer. In the meantime, it appears – at least to me – that JetBlue is following the same trajectory as Alaska Air, and they’ve got good reason to do so. They may actually be in a stronger position to make such a move given their positions in the New York City and Boston markets. Those are much harder to break in to than Seattle would be should someone want to challenge them.
Related Posts
Tags: Aer Lingus, Airbus, Alaska Air, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Boeing, Boston, Delta, Embraer, JetBlue, Lufthansa, New York City, Seattle
Posted by Seth on April 4, 2010 under News |
At some point recently JetBlue has quietly increased the prices they charge for their “Even More Legroom” seats. Previously offered in the $10-$40 range, depending on the segment length, the new prices range from $5-$75. And while the prices are still somewhat related to the segment length, the correlation is not quite as strict. Indeed, there are a few quirks in the new price structure that have shorter flights more expensive than longer ones (e.g. Long Beach to Portland, OR is more expensive than Long Beach to Seattle).
The increases come as Continental has introduced an up-charge for non-elites to choose their exit row seats, ones with similar increases in leg room, and with much higher prices than JetBlue charged previously or even charges under the new scheme. Perhaps JetBlue is looking to cash in on the perceived value of that extra legroom and still remain comparatively less expensive. Or perhaps they are just pricing based on what the market will bear in general. Las Vegas is a more expensive market now. So is Burbank. Apparently those look like good opportunities to realize a bit more revenue. And JetBlue realizes tens of millions of dollars annually from the EML sales and other fees; increasing those numbers is easier than raising fares and has the potential to increase the carrier’s profitability.
Here are a few maps and charts that show some of the new EML prices from a few JetBlue hubs.
From Long Beach:
| From: |
To: |
EML Price: |
| LGB |
SFO |
$5 |
| LGB |
OAK |
$10 |
| LGB |
SMF |
$10 |
| LGB |
SEA |
$30 |
| LGB |
PDX |
$35 |
| LGB |
IAD |
$50 |
| LGB |
BOS |
$75 |
From JFK:
| From: |
To: |
EML Price: |
| JFK |
SYR |
$5 |
| JFK |
BTV |
$10 |
| JFK |
BOS |
$10 |
| JFK |
RDU |
$15 |
| JFK |
FLL |
$25 |
| JFK |
MCO |
$25 |
| JFK |
PSE |
$29 |
| JFK |
HOU |
$35 |
| JFK |
DEN |
$40 |
| JFK |
PDX |
$40 |
| JFK |
SEA |
$40 |
| JFK |
SFO |
$40 |
| JFK |
DEN |
$40 |
| JFK |
SJU |
$40 |
| JFK |
BQN |
$40 |
| JFK |
OAK |
$40 |
| JFK |
SJC |
$40 |
| JFK |
SMF |
$40 |
| JFK |
CUN |
$50 |
| JFK |
LGB |
$60 |
| JFK |
LAS |
$65 |
| JFK |
BUR |
$75 |
From Boston:
| From: |
To: |
EML Price: |
| BOS |
MCO |
$25 |
| BOS |
DEN |
$40 |
| BOS |
LAS |
$40 |
| BOS |
SEA |
$40 |
| BOS |
CUN |
$40 |
| BOS |
SFO |
$50 |
| BOS |
OAK |
$60 |
| BOS |
LGB |
$75 |
From Cancun:
| From: |
To: |
EML Price: |
| CUN |
FLL |
$10 |
| CUN |
IAD |
$25 |
| CUN |
MCO |
$25 |
| CUN |
BOS |
$40 |
| CUN |
JFK |
$50 |
The EML seats were never really a compelling value to me. The fact that most seats on JetBlue have 33-34” of pitch is quite enough for me. I’ll take them if they’re free (who wouldn’t??) but paying extra for them was quite uncommon for me. With the new, higher prices that frequency will drop even more.
UPDATE (4.4.10 20:44 EDT): The new pricing is apparently a one month trial to “to better match the value of these seats with customer demand, based on the route.”
Posted by Seth on March 24, 2010 under News |
For about three hours this afternoon United Airlines offered up a sale in their first class cabin on four routes: Chicago to Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, OR. Travel was only available over Easter weekend, with outbound travel on Friday and Saturday and the return on Monday or Tuesday. The flights priced out around $400 round-trip, plus taxes. Overall that isn’t a bad deal at all, but was it really a brilliant marketing move like some are claiming?
By some I mean Business Week. On their Traveler’s Check blog the magazine has a post describing how
…airlines – especially United – are innovating beyond the traditional weekend specials. That’s good news. One can imagine these kinds of efforts spreading, assuming the math works.
Yes and no.
For starters, United certainly publicized this sale differently than others they’ve offered, but the carrier has frequently offered up first class seats on a number of routes for a similar price and without the incredibly restricted travel dates or sales window. So, yes, it is somewhat new in that they are openly pushing sales of these seats, but they do often offer first class seats at discounted prices. As a random example, Orlando – Detroit is currently selling for $500++ in first class right now, without the terrible date restrictions. Fares of this nature can be found using tools like FareCompare.com’s Y-Up Search Engine.
Beyond that, this new sale happens to have come only two weeks after the carrier dramatically changed the way they handle upgrades on domestic flights. Previously the carrier required their frequent fliers to surrender miles, points or electronic vouchers for most upgrades. This approach resulted in the airline receiving a bit of revenue or at least revenue offset (removing the miles from their ledger) for the upgrades. But as of March 19th the carrier has implemented Unlimited Domestic Upgrades for their elites. Now elites are upgraded based on status and available inventory prior to the flight time, similar to how US Airways, Continental and Delta handle upgrades for their elite travelers.
The new upgrade scheme means that the airline is essentially giving away all of their unsold first class inventory. Yes, they can oversell the coach cabin knowing that they have the extra seats to move folks into but that was always the case. Comparing the two schemes head to head it appears that the new program extracts less direct revenue for the seats in the front of the cabin. So what to do? Make up that revenue elsewhere by selling those seats. Of course, if the seats are sold to revenue passengers then there are fewer available for the elites to get for free and that means upgrade rates will suffer for the revenue gain. Selling the first class seats out from under the loyal customers is most certainly not a good way to ensure future loyalty, something else that the Business Week post suggests in in the works with such sales:
Building customer loyalty can take many forms.
The ultimate irony in this sale is that for flights on those same dates in the coach cabin one would have to pay more – as much as $225 more for the cheapest available coach fares on the same flights that the discounted first class seats were available on. So all those folks buying regular tickets – and they’re probably loyal customers at this point to be buying at those prices – are actually going to be in the back while folks swooping in for the cheap seats will be up front.
Doesn’t strike me as a particularly great way to build long-term loyalty, the type that is profitable.
Related Posts
Tags: Chicago, Continental, Delta, Flying, frequent flyer, Los Angeles, points, San Francisco, Seattle, United, US Air
Posted by Seth on January 24, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Standing underneath the wing of a 747-800F on the assembly line is an incredibly humbling experience. The plane is simply enormous in a way that being inside it or seeing it from the terminal simply doesn’t convey. But there we were, a group of about 20 aerophiles and a couple of Boeing employees, wandering across the factory floor of the wide-body assembly plant in Everett, Washington. It was phenomenal!
I was quite fortunate to be invited along on this behind-the-scenes event. We spent a full day touring the main assembly lines in the Seattle area, both the narrow-body facility in Renton and the wide-body facility in Everett. We were accompanied by engineers from Boeing rather than regular tour guides and we were able to ask random nitty-gritty detail questions. Oh, and were close enough to touch the planes in some cases.
Our morning consisted of a tour of the 737 assembly line in Renton, Washington. The line isn’t open to regular tours so getting inside was a special treat. We got to see planes at various stages of the 11-day final assembly cycle, from fuselage arrival to wing joining to interior fitting to rolling out the door for painting and first flight. The fuselages arrive on rail cars and are transferred into the assembly building. Two weeks later they roll out the other end as fully assembled airplanes.
Every plane in the factory is marked with its registration number – N1786B – so that it is ready to fly when it is completed. But they are all the same registration, something that is rather unusual. Boeing can do this because the planes fly only once with that registration number. The destination of that first flight is the paint shop a few miles away where the fuselage is repainted into the customer’s livery and the new registration number is applied.
A number of mementos from the history of the assembly facility are on display throughout the factory. It has a rather impressive history – over 60 years of assembly across a number of product lines – and the stories relayed by the memorabilia are wonderful. My favorite was the737 wingtip on the wall. It was a segment of wing about 18 inches long painted in the familiar colors of the Southwest livery and it sticks off the wall with a plaque underneath:
Dear Boeing:
Thanks for the new winglets. We don’t need this anymore.
Love,
Southwest Airlines
A cool souvenir celebrating the end of their winglet conversion project.
The second half of the day was spent on the ground in Everett, site of the wide-body assembly plant that Boeing operates. They build the 747s, 767s, 777s and 787s in Everett and the assembly lines are running around the clock these days on all the lines. Obviously much of the focus is on the Dreamliner but the 777 line is still cranking out new deliveries and the 747-800 line is working quickly towards having the first production aircraft ready for delivery. Our tour was very different than the one given to the public (that I took back in March). Rather than looking down on the assembly line from a platform six floor up we were down on the ground, walking amongst the planes so close that we could reach out and touch them. It was awesome.
The size of the planes is hard to appreciate when in them. I’m sitting in a 737-900ER as I type this and I have some concept of how big it is. But seeing it from the ground changes the perspective immensely. Even the two engines of one wing of the 747-8, two engines that are exactly the same, look to be much different sizes because of the perspective from which they are viewed on the ground. In reality they are both enormous.
Our tour included things like watching the wings be riveted together and sealed, landing gear tests of the 777 (they put the plane on jacks and drop the floor out from under it so the gear can swing) and a deployed ram air turbine (RAT) engine. The RAT is an emergency generator that deploys when the aircraft loses engine power. It is basically fan that generates power from the air rushing by as the plane glides. It can provide enough poser to keep the avionics and other critical cockpit systems operating while the pilots get the engines running again. Just seeing it is one thing. Getting to hear the stories of the design and testing of the system from the engineer who worked the certification flight was top-notch. It takes a special amount of faith in your design, engineering and manufacturing group to be willing to get in an airplane, climb to altitude and then cut the engine and hope that the backup system kicks in. But this guy did it and had a great story to tell.
We say about 30 different wide-body aircraft for a dozen different carriers in various stages of assembly – all in the same building. It isn’t surprising that bicycles are the preferred means of conveyance in the factory; the spaces to cover are too great for walking all the time.
Of course, like any good tour, we finished up in the gift shop. No complaints there, however, as they have all sorts of cool aero-geek toys to play with.
A special thanks to the guys who organized the event and invited me along; I hope I made the cut to be asked back for next year.
Posted by Seth on March 1, 2009 under Trip Reports |
With an eleven hour layover in Seattle yesterday I felt compelled to get out of the airport and actually do something useful with my time. And since the Seattle area is still home to the major assembly facilities for Boeing, a visit to see the big birds being put together made sense to me. A PriceLined rental car and I was on my way up to Everett, Washington (~45 minutes north of the airport) to visit the Future of Flight museum and factory tour.
The tour is pretty amazing. They don’t allow any electronics of any sort on the tour, so no photographs, but standing in the world’s largest building by volume and watching the planes being put together is pretty awesome. The doors for each of the six bays are ~350 feet wide and ~80 feet tall. Everything is oversized. We were able to see the last of the 747-400Fs being assembled (the line is converting to the 747-800 now), about nine 777s under construction – including the 777th 777 which will be delivered to Air France in a few weeks once it is complete. The assembly process for these planes is pretty interesting to see in action. Getting to see the planes in the various states of assembly and moving through the process was particularly cool. Hearing that they can put all 3 million pieces of a 777 together from start to finish in 17 days was downright incredible.
Most exciting for me on the tour was seeing the 787 Dreamliner assembly line. Despite all the delays that Boeing has experienced with the 787s the six or so on the line were looking very much like real airplanes at this point (and the windows really are a lot bigger than what you typically get today). I think they might actually be able to get one of them in the air in Q2 ‘09 as they’ve most recently revised their schedule to. One of the women on the tour was a Boeing employee on the 787 line. I overheard her describing to her mother the parts she works on and how the whole process was going from a point of view of an employee rather than a Boeing talking head, which was an interesting change of pace.
We also got to see one of the three DreamLifter planes that they have in service right now. These are 747s that have been converted into super freighters to carry pieces of the 787 assemblies from around the world to the Everett facility for final assembly. The thing is HUGE, able to fit a full pair of wings inside or major chunks of the fuselage. Very, very cool. Plus, we could see it from the parking lot so I actually got a photo of it.
One of the more interesting things about the Everett assembly facility is that Boeing actually doesn’t own the airport there. Paine Field is owned by the county and Boeing waits their turn for flight operations just like all the other folks who use it for their private planes. I saw a whole bunch of single engine props coming and going while waiting there, but no big planes flying as it was a Saturday and the majority of the factory was off-duty.
In addition to the factory tour there is also a small museum at the Future of Flight facility. It is not worth going to unless you are also going on the main tour. There was a traveling exhibit on display from Air France celebrating their 75th anniversary and it had some neat things from their history. There is also a 727 cockpit interior, the nose gear from a 777 and a model interior of a 787 on display, but the exhibits do not justify a visit unto themselves. That being said, there is the “stratodeck” on top of the building that has phenomenal views of the field, including the pads where the planes are parked while undergoing their initial flight testing and awaiting delivery to the airlines. Access to the stratodeck is free and they have the local ATC tower radio playing so you can listen in as the planes come and go. With a longer lens I am pretty sure I could’ve gotten some great shots of the planes waiting, and I’m sure that the deck will be packed when the 787 finally rolls out of the paint hanger and onto the flight line for its maiden voyage.
Closer to the Seattle airport is another Boeing facility where the 737s are assembled. That one isn’t open for factory tours but they do have the Museum of Flight (not a Boeing thing but at their airport) there. This is much more similar to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy facility in terms of what they have on display, lots and lots of planes from the history of flight. I got there after it closed for the day but there were a few planes out on the lawn that I was able to get a pretty good look at.
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If you’re passing through the Seattle area and have any aerogeek in your blood I highly recommend visiting the Future of Flight facility. There are a few other smaller museums around Paine field that I missed due to a lack of time, but they are also supposed to be pretty amazing. They include:
Definitely a worthwhile way to spend a few hours and see some very cool airplane stuff.
