Let the mud throwing begin!
The head of the United pilots’ union (Steve Wallach) sent a letter to the head of the FAA last week, saying that safety conditions haven’t been as good in the past. The letter cites four engine failures on 737 aircraft in the past few weeks, which is more than usual. Of course, the airline is blaming management for these supposed issues.
It’s definitely bad if United is letting maintenance slide on the 737 since that plane will be eliminated from the fleet soon, but I’m doubtful. The unions blame management so often for problems that I become skeptical when I hear an allegation, especially in United’s case. The sick-outs from a short while back prove the relationship with management isn’t the best.
On a side note, this sounds somewhat similar to what some of the US Airways pilots did a couple of weeks ago.
Another weekend…more links!
- I know I’ve already mentioned it, but the Airplane Geeks are having a live podcast tomorrow at 8PM Eastern. Check it out here.
- American is now charging a fee to upgrade from coach to first or business class when using frequent flier miles. When will it stop?
- Upgrade: Travel Better reports this week that some US Airways passengers are protesting the $2 water fee by paying only in $20s.
- Frontier received a different investment offer which seems better. What’s interesting is that Republic is one of the investors – could we see E170s with furry animals on their tails in service again?
- JetBlue is dropping two California routes out of Boston. Long-haul flying isn’t as profitable as it used to be. I guess JetBlue made the right decision by deciding not to serve LAX.
- Brett over at Cranky Flier got to fly in the Emirates A380. I’m jealous. Here’s part one and part two of his report.
- The June report of on-time data was released this week. US Airways’ turnaround really impresses me.
- And finally Jon Heckman studies the relation between oil prices and airline stocks.
Well that’s it. Enjoy the days off.
Well this was an interesting press release. JetBlue want to start daily service between San Juan and Santo Domingo, starting December 18, with one E-190 flight a day. While this is certainly an interesting concept, I have a few questions and concerns about it.
First, American already has a lot of market share in this market. I checked OAG, and on the day JetBlue is starting service, American is slated to fly eight ATR-72s and one 737-800 between the cities. Even if JetBlue charges a great price on the flight, American has convenience for travelers on its side. Continue reading ‘JetBlue Wants to Start Intra-Caribbean Service’
For those of you that haven’t heard of Clear before, it’s a registered traveler program. Basically, one enrolls online, and then reports to a Clear office to confirm his/her enrollment information with some ID and provide some more things. The Clear staff takes the applicant’s picture, and obtain your fingerprint and an iris scan. Then the new member gets a card with all of this information on it. The benefit is that at some airports, customers will have access to their own security lane where the process is supposedly faster due to the previous registration and the fact that there are Clear employees to help travelers along the way. I haven’t seen this service or tried it, but it sounds pretty nice.
Anyway, the program hit a little roadblock recently. The company that runs the program, Verified Identity Pass, recently announced that it had lost a laptop with the records of about 33,000 people. Luckily, it was found (hat tip to my dad for sending me the link).
There are a few lucky things about this situation…
- The laptop didn’t have social security or credit card information, and it didn’t have fingerprints or iris scans, either. But it did have names, addresses, birthdays, and sometimes passport and driver’s license numbers.
- Many of the records were of people who were not completely registered yet.
- The company said in a press release that it doesn’t think any data was stolen.
There are a few problems, too…
- The laptop was password-protected, but not encrypted even though that is required by the TSA. I work in an IT office over the summer, and we’ve just started to make all laptop users get their machines encrypted. Yes, it can be kind of annoying because it slows down the computer a bit, but situations like this one show why it is important. Encryption can be much harder to crack than a password.
- According to Towers and Tarmacs, the laptop went missing on July 26 and reported that to the TSA July 28. But then, according to the PC World article again, customers weren’t informed until Monday of this week. Hmmm.
- Also, according to USA Today, the laptop was found in the same office it was lost in!
Anyways right now no one new can enter the Clear program for a few more days and hopefully all will be sorted soon.
Either way, this is bad press for Clear. While they were lucky this time, they should should’ve followed TSA policy in the first place.
Flight Global reported yesterday that according to an SEC filing from United’s parent UAL Corp., the airline is planning to terminate 42 orders it had for A320 and A319 aircraft. Here’s a quote from the filing:
As discussed in Note 3, “Impairments,” the Company recorded an impairment charge to decrease the carrying value of the advance deposits in the Company’s Consolidated Statements of Financial Position (Unaudited) to zero based on the Company’s belief that it is highly unlikely that it will take future delivery of these aircraft.
I’m kind of surprised by this move. I thought possibly they could sell off the aircraft on order. For example, according to this SEC filing, Delta is selling several of the 737-800s it has on order upon delivery to other buyers. I don’t know the specifics of the deal, but maybe Boeing gave Delta a great price on the aircraft so they can make a nice profit on resale, or maybe they just made the deals when demand was higher for aircraft. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
What impresses me, however, is that despite the eventual grounding of the entire 737 fleet, United isn’t dropping that many cities from its route map. United can use some RJs to fill the gap and will have the Ted A320s operating mainline routes, but I was anticipating a bit more.
Personally, I thought maybe United could cut some cities and focus on key markets for business travel, and maybe bring back the idea of a premium brand that was present when the carrier emerged from bankruptcy. From what I’ve read, the airline’s P.S. (premium service) brand that runs between New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco has done very well. I’m not saying that United should roll out that kind of service system-wide, but I think it does show that some passengers are willing to pay a fare premium if it means extra service.
Either way, I feel bad for the scheduling department that has to deal with 94 aircraft going away and a division being folded back into mainline service.
Today’s regular posting will be up later this morning.
If you haven’t had the chance to listen to an episode the Airplane Geeks Podcast yet, I’d highly recommend it as there’s lots of great information in each installment. The geeks (Max and Court) are hosting a live show Sunday at 8PM (Eastern Time) discussing “new media” (blogs, podcasts, social networking, etc.) in aviation. Anyone is free to listen in, and there will be a few guests as well.
You can find more details on the podcast’s site as well as Max’s blog.
Hope to see you there!
I know other blogs have covered this (Jon Heckman, One Mile at a Time, MIddle Seat Terminal), but I wanted to add my two cents.
Anyways instead of giving out free blankets and pillows JetBlue will charge $7 for a set that’s yours to keep. While this can sound nice because unlike the recycled blankets and pillows, you know where your stuff has been. And the $5 coupon to Bed Bath and Beyond is nice. But still, why not buy stuff online or at your mall?
While JetBlue dressed it up nicely, it’s a cut in service, plain and simple.
I’m sure some of you have have seen Lucky’s blog, One Mile at a Time. Lucky, who describes himself as “a complete miles and points junky,” is another college-age travel blogger who is a pure mileage runner. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is a person who looks out for great airfare deals as a way to earn as many frequent flier miles as possible at the lowest cost, often for elite status. So far, he has flown 124,701 miles this year! Anyways, he was nice enough to let me interview him. So on with the show… Continue reading ‘An Interview With Lucky’
Another Saturday, another set of links to interesting stories that I didn’t get to post on or other good blog posts from the week.
- British Airways and Iberia are considering an Air France-KLM type merger. The Middle Seat Terminal points out that if the merger goes through, there won’t be any huge changes for passengers.
- Fedex introduced the 757 into service as its 727 replacement aircraft.
- Check out this week’s posts on Cranky Flier. Brett was able to attend the NBTA (National Business Travel Association) conference this week and has some good reports from it, like this one on first class suites.
- PlaneBuzz has a very interesting post comparing how airlines report gains on fuel hedging and the effects on second quarter earnings.
- Emirates took delivery of its first A380 and is ordering even more planes, reports ATW Online. The superjumbo had a successful first flight to New York.
- The Lufthansa strike is over. Yay.
- Jon Heckman has started and is expanding a nice little page of common airline/aviation abbreviations that you might find useful.
- Towers and Tarmacs links to a great article about the lure of planespotting.
- Lucky has a great trip report on his recent Asian trip. You can start reading it here.
- And finally, if you were planning to depart from a Swedish airport with a dwarf in your checked luggage as a prank, just don’t do it. Apparently the employees don’t like it. (Hat tip to my dad for the article.)
Huh? When I read this story over at Aviation Week I was kind taken aback. I’ve never heard of an airport requiring an airline to perform trials like these before, but I guess I’m still pretty wet behind the ears.
Basically, Air Canada had to bring an A319 down to Orange County, push in some newspapers to make the airplane weigh as if it was carrying passengers, and do a few takeoff runs. This is primarily due to Orange County’s strict noise abatement policy. I guess SNA has some vocal NIMBYs.
While I understand residents would want to minimize noise, I think this goes a little too far. The noise performance of the A319 is pretty well-documented, and flying a plane down from Canada and back (empty, I assume) and doing these tests can be expensive.
In an environment where airports around the country are fighting or will be fighting to mainatin air service, places like SNA shouldn’t be too picky when an airline wants to start service, in my opinion. It’s not like Air Canada wanted to bring in DC-9s at 6 AM or anything like that.
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