Category Archives for Aircraft.
On Friday just after 1 p.m. a flight instructor and their student in a Cessna 172 aircraft experienced a failure of their single engine over I-75 in Broward County, Florida. They couldn’t reach air traffic control on the radio, but a commercial pilot who heard their calls talked them down onto the freeway 12 miles west of U.S 27.
In February United Airlines made a splash ordering electric aircraft with the idea of transporting people from urban centers like Manhattan over to Newark. Now four months later American Airlines announces that it, too, is investing in urban air mobility, maybe.
The aircraft in question hasn’t had a test flight yet, but they’re touting that “certification of the aircraft [could come] as early as 2024” which means it will be farther out into the future than that.
Americans have gotten fatter, and that’s making a big difference for airline operations. Each aircraft has a maximum weight it can take off with, and the weight of passengers and cargo contributes to how much fuel a plane is going to burn on a trip.
American Airlines this week updated its passenger weight assumptions. That’s going to mean they need more fuel for some trips. It even means that some aircraft will be ‘weight restricted’ and not allowed to carry a full load of passengers and cargo.
American Airlines appears to be using safety cards that just say “737” on 737 MAX aircraft now. No wonder customers don’t seem to complain they’re flying on the MAX…?
If I ever became President the first thing I’d ask is about UFOs. It turns out I have something in common with Barack Obama, who asked about UFOs once he was sworn in. Because you’re President, you get to find out all of the secrets like Area 51. So why wouldn’t you?
Would you believe that you can buy seats off of an American Airlines Boeing 767 for just $20? That’s the price they’re selling at currently on Facebook’s marketplace.
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Defense Department blocked him from seeing UFO fragments retrieved by Lockheed Martin. Former CIA Director John Brennan thinks there may be life on other planets. And the last Director of National Intelligence reveals there have been undisclosed difficult to explain incidents which have been kept hidden.
What the government knows about UFOs is supposed to be declassified next month. How is this not the top story on the news every night?
What’s grosser than gross? Reaching into the seat back pocket in front of you and finding a used tissue. During the pandemic. Which then also makes you realize that all of the ‘clean commitments’ that your airline made aren’t really being carried out.
Fortunately there’s a product to both ensure a sanitary tray table and seat back pocket, and make that seat pocket more useful so you can have all of your items well-organized in front of you.
Travel has been picking up, and airlines haven’t always scaled their call center capacity to match. Add in some bad weather – take Denver, for instance, on Monday where there was snow and more delays than any other airport in the world – and wait times to speak to an airline agent really grow. This has been an issue across airlines, and even wait times for elite frequent flyers who get call center priorities have been longer than usual at times lately.
American Airlines customers, especially, reported long wait times on Monday and into Tuesday – 5 to 8 hours, even – and customers are bringing receipts.
United will stop offering change flexibility to passengers booked on the Boeing 737 MAX on April 7 less than two months after the carrier returned the plane to service.
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 »
