New and notes from around the interweb:
- After laying off 400 staff in marketing, Uber laid off another 435 people across product and engineering mostly in the U.S. That combines for about 15% of their work force.
- I wrote that American’s Airbus A321T premium transcon planes would get better cleaning and a refresh but not a new configuration at this time. That appears to be the word via JonNYC as well (for now):
explicitly NOT related to the above (except the aircraft in question,) since these are going in for heavy checks: pic.twitter.com/l65zKxVXg2
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) September 10, 2019
- In April Delta announced they planned to reduce recline on their Airbus A320 seats by two inches. They weren’t squeezing seats closer together or adding seats, just preventing passengers from leaning back into each other. Recline matters most on longer flights than most of what the A320 operates.
This plan is expanding to their Boeing 717s as well and these jets operate short flights too, so I’m actually in favor.
- There are so many candidates in the Democratic field, traveling to the same places, that it’s inevitable they keep winding up on the same planes, sitting close by each other. In June Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were seated one in front of the other. (And a couple of rows back there was a doppelganger for Mayor Pete.
Now Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg found themselves together on a United flight.
Very funny, @united pic.twitter.com/6RZuvXXGBz
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) September 10, 2019
- 70% of new Amex credit card customers are paying annual fees (Bloomberg)
- ‘Boeing’s China problem’. China is Boeing’s second-most important market, by a wide margin. There are 500 737 MAXs on order there. China’s government is the key decision-maker. China’s own commercial aircraft manufacturing effort is something the government will want to support. And Boeing now becomes a pawn in the trade disputes between the US government and China.
Is the refresh of the A321T already in progress? Was stuck in MCE on N101NN a couple of weeks ago and the seats had different covers than the rest of the fleet – the old “blue hash” cloth (like on the 767) had been replaced with the “hard leather” (closest to the LUS A321). It was significantly less comfortable than the old seats. I do the roundtrip 1-2x a month and the first time I noticed this, not sure if it is related or not. I sure hope not a sign of things to come, I adore this subfleet despite being stuck in the back >50% of the time as an EXP, still very comfortable for the road warriors.
Yes, the A321T main cabin seats are having all of the cloth dress covers with e-leather dress covers similar to the rest of the fleet. All being done during S-Check, same timeline as the rest of the refurbishments.
How nice to see a United flight full of passengers who will never, ever be President!
@Willy. LOL. But they will all have nice personal slush-funds from morons that donated to them.
@Jose
Those slush funds are minuscule compared to the donations people made to the slush fund of a supposed billionaire… I mean, who donates money to a billionaire, right?
ugh the pleather seat covers are horrible and not breathable. Not good for an already warm cabin. But I guess it’s easier for Dougie’s cheapo contract cleaners to wipe down every 15 cycles or however infrequently they decide to clean the cabins.
I assume they’ll be taking out the seatback screens during this renovation, right?
If it’s like the aircraft I feel on the screens were still there, just seat cushion change. Nevertheless a huge devaluation of these aircraft, seats were miserable after sitting in them for an hour. Other airlines do fake leather fine, and even AA on other fleets, but these were miserable…
This is a travel blog not a political one so can we keep your comments to the purpose of the blog. If you want to make political comments go to fox CNN usatoday or yahoo. OR run for office. I do NOT want to read about it here.
@Tomri – what political position did I even take here? I showed presidential candidates flying in an airplane together!
Gary It are the commentators who are making political. @Jose @Willy @Vald P. The Blog was about travel of where as the commentators were pushing their own political view.