http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky Dan Webb on Aviation Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:26:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Starting August 2nd, JFK will resume having one weekly charter flight to Cuba. The always-informative Airline Route blog has some updates about Delta's international service. FlightBlogger reported this week that Boeing is set to purchase the 787 operations of Vought Aircraft Industries, a 787 supplier. Check out all the details here. Apparently, the ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/07/04/saturday-links-50/ British Airways just released their June traffic statistics, and passenger load factor compared to June 2008 was only off by 0.1 percentage points, down to 77.6%. The carrier also reported that premium traffic was down 14.9% compared to last year, though I guess that isn't as horrible as it looks when ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/07/03/british-airways-june-traffic-and-fleet-news/ One of the biggest changes in inflight entertainment/services in the past few months has been the introduction of inflight Wi-Fi, and carriers like AirTran, American, Delta, United, and Virgin America (which has the entire fleet equipped) have been adopting it. These carriers have all been using Aircell's ground-based GoGo service. Meanwhile, ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/07/03/alaska-and-southwest-tell-the-fcc-to-approve-row-44/ I think the airlines that have been tweeting successfully have received plenty of coverage of late, so I wanted to look into some of the airports that have been doing so. I really haven't seen much coverage in that area, except for this excellent post on Fish's blog. Anyway, out of ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/07/02/tweeting-airports/ As usual, Continental is the first to release June traffic results, and they really don't look all that different from past months. On the bright side, that means things aren't getting worse, but that's pretty much the only positive here - the numbers are still pretty bad. The airline was able ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/07/02/continentals-june-traffic/ Ah, the Stop Oil Speculation Now crew (which is basically just an extension of ATA) started following me on Twitter yesterday, and it looks like they're just getting started with that new medium. Apparently, now that oil has climbed up a bit it's time for them to get going again. ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/07/01/sos-rears-its-ugly-head-again/ Those who have been long-time readers of the blog know that I enjoy collecting inflight magazines (I finally crossed the 200 mark this year). My friend Martin Rottler was able to make a significant contribution to my collection as he was uber-generous and let me have one of his copies ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/06/30/a-little-piece-of-airline-history/ This week, Max, Rob, and I are joined by fellow BoardingArea blogger Ben from One Mile at a Time. We have a load of news stories, talk about Ben's mileage running activities, and more! Take a listen here. http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/06/30/airplane-geeks-episode-54/ My friend curbcrusher from FlyerTalk sent me this article from the Indiana Business Journal this past weekend, and while the article has a few errors (i.e. saying that Republic is still flying for Frontier), it brings up an interesting, point, especially: Republic’s foray into owning major carriers reminds Sorensen [an ex-Midwest ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/06/30/is-republic-becoming-the-next-independence-air/ Alaska Airlines is still a relative newcomer to the social media scene, but it's been using it effectively basically from the get-go in my opinion, which is a lot better compared to other carriers. I think one very good example is the airline's utilization of Twitter to get the word out about ... http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thingsinthesky/2009/06/29/alaskas-aviation-geek-night/