News and notes from around the interweb:
- Man strikes flight attendant, hurls racial slur, calls her overweight You know that always ends well..
- DFW airport is spending $25 million to buy and install ‘intelligent’ windows
- How Cathay Pacific plans to compete against low cost carriers from Hong Kong
- American is dropping their 737 MAX onto the Washington National – Los Angeles route effective September 5. It’s also being added to Los Angeles – Miami.
Having flown in economy on this plane I can say that 30 inch pitch, limited recline, thin seats are doable on a flight up to 3 hours. The aircraft was designed to fly long routes, even East Coast to Europe, but the interior wasn’t. Five-plus hours would be torture.
- Up to 1000 bonus United miles for online shopping (HT: Doctor of Credit)
- More Boeing 787 Rolls Royce engine problems
- 25% bonus on transfers from American Express Membership Rewards to Hawiian Airlines through June 26. You need to be logged in to see the bonus. (HT: hiima)
- Via Airline Weekly (subscription),
If Hawaiian Airlines were to put itself up for sale, would Alaska Airlines be interested in buying it, thereby merging the namesake airlines of the 49th and 50th states? The Puget Sound Business Journal poses the question to Alaska’s CEO Brad Tilden, who replied: “There’s nothing we can actually say about that.” Sometimes, the question is more interesting than the answer.
I would love to see Alaska expand and while Hawaiian is a natural partner, it strikes me as unlikely to be approved by regulators since their markets heavily overlap with each other. What Alaska really needs is East Coast expansion. It should try to get subsidies from some East Coast airport to have an East Coast hub.
We have noticed that my wife, who is a runner, suffers back and hip muscle injuries after traveling in these seats. There must be others who are also being affected.
So, which to agency should passengers log reports of possible injuries?
AA B757 used to be called slAAve ships in Y. B737 takes that concept to the MAX. Either way deployment of B737-MAX on DCA-LAX route is not a particularly smart move on AA side because a Congress member or an influential staffer could end up in Y.
If we are talking about possible back injuries, it is only time for a class-action for which we, the flying public, is going to pay in the end…
Just taking an informal survey. Do you think we could get away with a 28″ pitch if we eliminated the recline?
Respondents will receive 7 free Aadvantage miles
I avoid Boeing single aisle airplanes – less seat width and shoulder room than Airbus, Bombardier, and Embraer. Airlines and seat manufacturers control or define pitch and legroom, but the airframe manufacturer controls width. Boeing deliberately kept interior space the same as the 707 which was designed in the late 1950’s!
Every time the idea of an AS-HA merger comes up, someone claims regulators would stop it, but it’s hard to see why. The only nonstop routes that would go from two competitors to one are from PDX, the secondary Bay Area airports, and SAN. WN starting Hawaii service will likely add a new competitor on the CA routes in the next 2-3 years, and all of the west coast-HI routes have lots of one-stop options on UA, DL, and AA. Merging AS and HA may be a bad idea for other reasons, but I don’t think DOJ would be a major obstacle.