Posts with the tag ‘Travel’
August 2, 2015
Updated Thursday August 6th with news from inspection in Dallas >Radome damage Glass half full: This American Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner, returned to Beijing safely after flying into a hail storm at 26 thousand feet (ish) after takeoff on July 27. All 209 passengers and a crew of 13 were able to continue on the way to Dallas albeit on a different airplane and with a delay. Glass half empty: Travelers had the beejeebies scared out of them during the encounter. Passenger Dallas Rueschoff told a reporter, “We were going sideways, up and down…we dropped a good few hundred feet at least.” Or as a 787… Read More…
July 30, 2015
In the past I’ve referred to them as the kids who couldn’t get a date for the prom. Now, I bet the engineers at the British satellite communication company inmarsat will be the coolest kids of summer if the portion of an airplane found in Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean turns out to be from Malaysia Flight 370. Jonathan Sinnatt, director of corporate communications for inmarsat said the company is not making any comment – certainly not before a determination is made about whether the 6-foot long piece of what appears to be part of a wing, is actually from the missing Malaysia Boeing… Read More…
July 17, 2015
>F-WWCF the Airbus A350 MSN #2 in Newark on Thursday The Airbus A350 XWB that flew into Newark Liberty International Airport this week on another stop on its tour of the Americas looked awfully pretty parked out on the ramp by Signature Aviation Services. But like many of us gals in the prep stage of a special event, one should not look too closely or the hairclips and Spanx might be visible. That’s because this plane MSN #2, just one of two prototypes with a full cabin configuration, is still running a variety of tests. Is the cabin too humid? How are the structure… Read More…
July 6, 2015
>N671US in Shannon days ago. Photo courtesy Kevin Corry This just in: The Delta Air Lines Boeing 747 N664US which was heavily damaged by hail on a flight to Seoul Korea last month will return to the United States late this week but it appears her flying days are over. This Queen of the Sky, I am told, is headed for Marana Aerospace Solutions, a enormous boneyard for retired airliners north of Tucson, Arizona. For more on this story, read on. This post has been updated with more information about the process of taking an airliner out of desert storage. First its Arizona retirement was… Read More…
July 4, 2015
>N671US in Shannon Photo courtesy Kevin Corry The Boeing 747 taken out of the desert in Arizona to replace the Delta jumbo jet pelted by hail over China, has itself gone out of service, at least temporarily after an emergency landing in Ireland on Friday. Flightaware.com shows N671US back on the ground in Shannon after departing Amsterdam for New York. The St. Paul Business Journal reported a smoke alarm triggered the emergency landing. There were 376 passengers on board. “Wow, just wow,” was the response I received from a Delta 747 pilot who has been watching the events unfold. He then turned his attention to… Read More…
July 1, 2015
>Photo by Brian Walker Armchair airline pilots may be asking why the crew of Delta Air Lines Flight 159 from Detroit to Seoul opted to fly through a hail storm on June 16th, rather than insist on an altitude deviation from air traffic control in China. The decision to maintain flight at 36,000 feet resulted in some dramatic looking damage to various parts of Delta’s Boeing 747 registration N664US and some shaken passengers – none of whom was injured. The answer seems to be that the crew was more concerned about possibly of flying into another aircraft having been told by Chinese controllers of traffic…. Read More…
June 23, 2015
When I travel I am often on my own so compact is best, especially since my Lenovo laptop and assorted techie accouterments alone need one entire (albeit small) backpack. So I was delighted to find that the portable, lightweight travel clothes washing machine sent to me by The Scrubba Wash Bag worked as billed. This product gets a free ride in my suitcase and starting position in my latest wrap-up of travel products for the aviation crowd. World’s First Packable Washing Machine The secret to packing spare is wearing things multiple times which means hand-washing, a manicure-wrecking, floor-soaking experience that I frankly don’t like. The Scrubba… Read More…
June 9, 2015
Airline executives meeting at the industry confab in Miami were pleased to be talking about a new app that coordinates with health monitoring programs for iPad, Android and Apple watch devices. The SkyZen wristband will “offer passengers personalized insights on their flight activity and strategies to minimize jet lag before and after flight,” said Tom Windmuller, Senior Vice President of lots of stuff including the passenger experience with the International Air Transport Association. At this point the SkyZen is in the experimental phase. No one is sure if travelers already keeping track of their steps, their heart rate andtheir stress levels want to elevate the… Read More…
Tyler addresses the executives Photo by IATA Writing from Miami – It seems strange to me that under the guidance of the soft spoken and urbane Tony Tyler, the airline industry should be experiencing its strongest growth and profitability but there you have it. Just four years after the former chief of the International Air Transport Association, Giovanni Bisignani nominated himself the best director general of the association ever in the pages of his book, Shaking the Skies, in waltzes his polar opposite and actually sees much of Bisignani’s big wish list getting accomplished. Yes, it’s a happy group of global airline bosses here in Miami… Read More…
June 8, 2015
Writing from Miami — If you want to see the down-to-earth impact of world events there’s no better place to be than Miami this week where the leaders of aviation are assembled for the International Air Transport Association‘s annual meeting. Like the wheels of an airliner touching down on the runway, the rubber meets the road on issues like civil war, international monetary policy and the technology boom. Each news event adds another multi-pronged piece to the 3 dimensional puzzle that one airline might incorporate and use to grow while another struggles to find a way to work around it. Executives arrive at a Boeing… Read More…
