Airlines got a $373 million dollar gift from the government when it eliminated the Aviation Security Infrastructure Fee last year. What with the slide in fuel prices, these 37 U.S. and 71 foreign airlines have to be feeling pretty flush right now. The fee, called ASIF was imposed after 9-11 so that airlines would contribute to the government takeover of airport security – which up until the terror attacks was the airlines’ responsibility. In exchange for getting out from under the ASIF fee, I am told, airlines agreed to drop their opposition to doubling the security fee that air travelers pay.   For each one… Read More…

Hawaiian Airlines at New York For every up there’s a down, and no industry knows that better than the airlines. No, I’m not talking about takeoffs and landings, but the good news/bad news of declining fuel prices. As an airline, Hawaiian may have spent an unduly long time on the ground. It formed in 1929 but when commercial aviation reached its mid-century heyday it was the Pan Ams and the Uniteds and not Hawaiian that was lifting travelers by the plane full.   “The pathway to where we were then and where we are today has been a torturous one,” Mark Dunkerley the airline’s CEO… Read More…

Bookending the aviation news for the year 2014 is the Dreamliner battery; the sizzling lithium ion-flavored power source that I suggested in January was already being reviewed by the eggheads and pocket protector-wearing engineers at Boeing. The end of the year arrives and the Japan Transport Safety Board is asking for the same thing.  I’m not bragging about being prescient here because any reasonable person can see that the risks outweigh the benefits of using this high-density battery chemistry. It’s the recipe used more than a decade ago for laptops and handheld devices that started to spontaneously combust prompting the world’s largest industrial recall.  In a report… Read More…

Now. While we are celebrating the Wright Brothers historic flight 111 years ago, let me tell you the story of two other brothers; pilots and tinkerers who, in their own small way are commemorating the achievement and contributing to the Wright Brothers legacy. Nick and Giles English are founders of the Bremont Watch Company, based in Henley-on-Thames in England, who struck a deal with the Wright Family Foundation to embed in a limited edition watch, a scrap of fabric from the wing of the original Wright Flier. Even while the popularity and necessity of conventional watches is on the wane there is a small and… Read More…

This post has been updated to include comment from the U.S. FDA and from Patrick Murphy of laserpointersafety.com.  One of the largest sellers of high powered laser pointers has done an about face, discontinuing sales of devices that are styled to look like Star Wars light saber toys but are strong enough to blind in seconds. Wicked Lasers issued a press release explaining its decision and attributed it to the sale of the company to a “government-backed optoelectronics manufacturer” in China.  Wicked Laser got cross-wise with the Food and Drug Administration several years ago because it did not comply with all of the rules governing the… Read More…

Masnoor in his studio in April 2014 One night in Spain, I took a walk down to the edge of the Mediterranean where a brilliant white moon seemed to turn the water into a sea of graphite. I had no camera and so I challenged myself to recreate the scene with words. In his 2012 trip across the Atlantic in a Pilatus PC 12, Malaysian painter Masnoor Ramli Mahmud was asked to do the opposite, tell the story of trans-oceanic flight in pictures.  The result is the one-man show, PATHFINDER#PC12, which will open in Kuala Lumpur on November 27th. Riza Johari while at ABC News… Read More…

Flight attendant Kama Iona, on an Ohana by Hawaiian flight When I peeled back the foil on my in flight meal somewhere over the Pacific between Tokyo and Honolulu, I was not thrilled to discover a thin sheet of seaweed, a rectangular wad of rice and a chunky slice of spam. “This can’t be a traditional Hawaiian dish,” I harrumphed. “Where are the Waikiki meatballs with pineapple?”  But the funny thing about authentic cuisine is that sometimes it has a way of undoing Betty Crocker-inspired notions of what various cultures eat. Turns out Spam Musubi is a traditional island favorite. Judging from the hearty appreciation… Read More…

In a startling change of plans, Delta Air Lines today confirmed that it will retire four of its Boeing 747s beginning in September. Employees were notified in a memo penned by Glen Hauenstein the airline’s chief revenue officer.  Hauenstein described the decision as way to “reduce Delta’s footprint at Tokyo Narita” and to do less intra-Asia flying. Sixteen 747s came to Delta through its 2009 merger with Northwest. This spring, when I interviewed vice president of fleet strategy Nat Pieper for an article on the plane for Air & Space magazine, he told me executives spent a lot of time trying to decide whether to… Read More…

The first time I flew in an airplane, I was six. It was an Eastern Airlines flight from Miami to Newark, probably in a DC-8, but I can’t say for sure. I do remember that a flight attendant strung a cardboard bib in the shape of a Teddy Bear around my neck with my name and other information printed on it, and off I went. If my parents worried about me, I was unaware of it. Many years later when I bundled my own 8-year old daughter off to see her grandparents in Connecticut, I worried some, but I’d already done it myself. Try to… Read More…

Twice in the past, the pilots of JetBlue have turned down proposals to unionize.  That changed today when seventy-one percent of those voting, cast ballots to join the Air Line Pilots Association. With this decision they get the benefit of ALPA’s sophisticated negotiators and its 70 years of experience with issues unique to this profession.  They also get Lee Moak, the union boss who has learned to be a statesman while remaining, as he put it, “champion of the common pilot.” Sure, the two and a half thousand pilots of the low cost carrier are concerned about basic issues of pay, retirement and protection of… Read More…