Good morning I had another burst of intense self doubt earlier this week. Are airlines really as stupid as I say they are? Or am I missing something so thunderingly obvious as to imply I’m even more stupid than I suggest the airlines sometimes are? This was triggered by the confirmation that Delta is indeed buying an oil refinery, and was underscored by the near unanimous chorus of approval by the usual talking head commentators [...]
I nearly died of exposure a week or so back. Well, okay, so I’m exaggerating somewhat. What happened was my car broke down and I had to park it perilously close to fast traffic zipping by. The car’s problem was a failed alternator, which resulted in a dead battery and subsequent engine failure, so I couldn’t even turn on the emergency hazard flashing lights to hopefully help make the car more obvious and to encourage [...]
Good morning Happy 60th birthday this week to the illustrious Boeing B-52, still operational as a heavy bomber, sixty years after it first took to the skies on 15 April, 1952. 744 of the planes were built, including 102 of the final B52-H model, of which 85 are still in active duty and another nine are in the Air Force Reserve. Current projections suggest the planes will continue in service until perhaps 2040. The plane [...]
Good morning Another week with quite a lot of additional content, and it is hard to know which of the other three blog entries I posted during the week to point you to first. And, in a totally different context, it was a busy weekend, with the first stirrings of spring causing me to spend part of both mornings mowing the lawn for the first time this year. I guess that is a good thing. [...]
I dislike doing book reviews. It requires me to read an entire book, which usually takes a full day or more to do, and then to think ‘outside the box’ and come up with some original and creative comments and observations about the book, and at the end of the lengthy and surprisingly arduous process, there’s ‘only’ a book review to publish. I could write two or more other articles in the time it takes [...]
Good morning I had mildly commented on the computer system changeover for UA/CO last weekend, and suggested you keep on top of any issues that might be arising. I tried not to indulge in any greater fearmongering because I thought that surely this changeover would have been massively tested and trialed and would be routine and user-transparent. Boy, was I wrong. But if you’re not a subscriber to Joe Brancatelli’s excellent newsletter, and/or if you [...]
Good morning Sometimes I like to open these newsletters by mentioning an anniversary date that falls during the week. This week, I’ll instead refer to the pending demise of another of the major names in US aviation history – Continental Airlines. Continental was formed in 1934, originally trading under the name of Varney Speed Lines, an airline operating in the southwest. It was renamed Continental in 1937 after being bought by its long-time CEO, Bob [...]
Good morning Wow. Have you ever woken up on a Friday morning to find the better part of 2000 emails having come in from overnight in your inbox? That’s what happened to me last Friday morning with the flood of responses to the reader survey about what you do on airplanes. Read on, below, for the results of this survey, and see also the additional two articles also offered up this week. And here’s a [...]
On 20 February 1962, and after three previously failed launch attempts, John Glenn became the first American to fly into space – a five hour flight in a Mercury space capsule named Friendship 7 that had him carrying out three orbits around the earth before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. He was not the first man to leave the confines of the earth’s atmosphere – that credit fell to Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin who [...]
Recent Comments from Readers