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News and notes from around the interweb:
- 100% bonus British Airways Avios on your next six flights register and book by April 19 for travel through December 31. This applies to all British Airways flights, plus their domestic UK and South Africa services and British Airways codeshares on transatlantic partner flights.
- Just what Boeing needed — Ralph Nader had a relative in the Ethiopian Airlines crash (WSJ)
- Silvercar comes to Boston April 15 and now offers pickup and drop off services in downtown New York and San Francisco locations (for a fee). Hopefully that’s a service which will expand. Don’t forget this 20% Silvercar discount.
- British Airways hopes to charge a revenue premium once it introduces new business class seats. It’s a little early though to be quoting $4.2 million prices on their website.
Credit: British Airways - KLM killed a dog and they don’t even partner with United.
- Indigo Partners has walked away from investing in troubled Wow Air, so the Icelandic low cost carrier is once again talking to Icelandair.
Wow Air, Copyright: zhukovsky / 123RF Stock Photo
Gary, “LUCK” has nothing to do with this.
poor design is not bad luck, it’s negligence.
“luck is preparation meeting opportunity” totally does not apply to Boeing. 737 Max was bad engineering and even the disclosures presented to aviation authorities did not correspond to the actual specification (eg MCAS) of the plane (criminal?). At the end though (with or without Ralph Nader), I don’t think Boeing will see commensurate consequences for the negligence or infraction incurred, just like for any well-connected companies in the US.
The headline from the 3/22/19 NY Times reads, “Doomed Boeing Jets Lacked 2 Safety Features That Company Sold Only as Extras.” This is not bad luck. Selling extras such as more aesthetic lighting seems totally acceptable; selling safety features that may well have cost 300+ people their lives sounds to me more like criminal negligence.
Poor design and management, greed, and attempts at self regulation is what caused Boeing troubles recently over the 737MAX and NOT bad luck!
Gary, buddy, let me ‘splain this to ya.
When you go to the car dealer and buy that new belchfire 8 and mortgage yourself to the company store for the next millennia, you may be asked to pay for the bigger, better speakers. You might have to pay dearly for the faux-leather seats and the mood lighting to go cruising down the highway. You might even have to pay extra for fancy steering wheel that allows you to make cell calls at 80 miles per hour. You will not be, and should not be charged extra for the brakes, seat belts, shatter-proof windows. These are there to protect you in the event of an accident. The newly designed MCAS system on the 737-MAX aircraft was sold with “….don’t worry, it is the same as the old 737, so you don’t need any recurrent training….”, when in fact that was totally untrue. That isn’t BAD LUCK, that is BAD BUSINESS, BAD ATTITUDE and continuing to do it that way will cause a lot of very BAD RESULTS to the company’s bottom line.
From the NY Times, 3/23/19 – “Boeing Was ‘Go, Go, Go’ to Beat Airbus With the 737 Max” – https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html?emc=edit_na_20190323&nl=breaking-news&nlid=3610533ing-news&ref=cta
100% agree with Wes. See the article that was just published by the NY Times: “Boeing Was ‘Go, Go, Go’ to Beat Airbus With the 737 Max” – https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html?emc=edit_na_20190323&nl=breaking-news&nlid=3610533ing-news&ref=cta