Category Archives for Aircraft.
Ahead of Tuesday’s planned announcement, Jon Ostrower breaks news about the identities of Boom Aerospace engine providers.
They couldn’t get any of the big engine manufacturers to bite, because no one thinks this project will succeed commercially. If everyone is wrong, and if the smaller players turn out to have the expertise, this would be a huge win all-around. But probabilities are stacked against success.
On CNBC this morning United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said he likes that pilot wages are going up, which is really saying he likes pilot shortages, because of what that does to competitors. Low cost carriers can’t hire pilots cheap, eroding their relative cost advantage against United.
He also revealed something interesting about business travel: it’s not continuing its recovery, and specifically that it has “plateaued”.
After former President Trump lost the 2020 election, he no longer had access to Air Force One and his private Boeing 757 was left in disrepair. At the time I wrote that if you wanted to know when he was ready to run again, just watch his private private plane which has gold-plated everything down to the seat belts.
The plane appears to have been repaired and is now flight-worthy.
By law, any plane that’s certified starting in 2023 requires new cockpit alerts. That’s part of the U.S. government reaction to problems with the Boeing 737 MAX.
Boeing doesn’t want to implement these new safety requirements for the 737 MAX 10, and as a result has been rushing to either get the largest variant of the MAX certified before the end of 2022, or get legislators to pass an exemption. Certification before end of year is not going to happen.
Delta Air Lines is considering an order for 20 Airbus A350-1000s, the largest aircraft that Airbus is currently producing. These may be the planes that Qatar Airways was going to buy, before Airbus cancelled their purchase agreement in a spat with the Doha-based carrier over paint.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence National Intelligence Manager for Aviation has introduced a new logo and it includes a UFO.
American Airlines confirmed UFO contact over New Mexico last year. Last summer the DNI Office submitted a report to Congress on what the federal government knows about unidentified aerial phenomenon. And it seems like we don’t know much. Something is out there, and we cannot explain ‘it’.
It’s possible to build a supersonic plane, but efficiencies and regulation killed the Concorde. Boom can presumably develop a plane, and a top engine manufacturer can produce an engine for it. But will it sell to airlines who see themselves able to operate enough of the planes, to enough places, with enough frequency – given a market that will pay a premium for the option – in order to buy enough planes and engines where the whole thing works out as a business? Engines can cost billions of dollars to design and tens of millions of dollars apiece to purchase.
There’s a video going around about an Airbus A321 aircraft in Russia where nothing in the cockpit seems to work. Even the fuel pumps seem to be inoperative. This is being shared as an illustration of the effects of Western sanctions on aviation in Russia – that airlines can’t get parts for Airbus and Boeing planes, and so their fleets are falling apart.
It’s been quite a year for Lufthansa. They banned Jews from travel in the spring and now they’ve barred a U.S. congressman because of his wheelchair. And any airline knows don’t cross Congress.
Russia’s Rostec – 92% owned by the government there – owns Irkut and the Yakovlev Design Bureau and they have a new single aisle aircraft that they say American Airlines may be flying in the next 5 to 10 years. They’ve mocked up the aircraft in American Airlines livery to show what it would look like.
The MC-21 (called the MS-21 in Russia) represents the “Main Aircraft Of The 21st Century” and was earlier known as the Yak-242.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
