Category Archives for Aircraft.
Saudia flight SV3818 from Medina, Saudi Arabia to Dhaka, Bangladesh reached 37,000 feet when the crew diverted to Jeddah. It made a go-around on its first approach because a landing gear hadn’t gone down.
Then the aircraft circled for an hour while it worked through emergency checklists. Ultimately they decided to land without the Airbus A330-200’s nose gear deployed.
American Airlines has ordered 47 Boeing 787s. 22 Boeing 787-8s will replace their 24 Boeing 767s, and 25 Boeing 787-9s will replace their 15 Airbus A330-300s and older 777-200s.
American’s CFO recorded a podcast to talk about the reasons for the big Boeing order.
American’s new Boeing 787 order was leaked and now it’s official.
And there’s more detail available about the airline’s fleet plans.
A couple of weeks ago there was a strong rumor that instead of American Airlines swapping out their orders for Airbus A350s for A330neos, they would be ordering more Boeing 787s instead.
Leeham News reported that an order announcement was expected by American’s earnings call later this month. But this appeared briefly on the Boeing website:
The Airbus A320neo or ‘new engine option’ was first delivered to Lufthansa in 2016. Over 6000 of the family have been ordered. The plane comes with either a CFM or Pratt & Whitney engine..
And the Pratt & Whitney version has problems. European air safety officials have issued emergency restrictions grounding affected aircraft after “several occurrences of engine in-flight shutdown.”
outhwest Airlines filed its 2017 SEC 10-K and shared some details of its frequent flyer program that may not already be common knowledge.
For instance whereas in 2016 American Airlines filled 6.3% of its seats on awards, Southwest fills twice as many of its seats with customers redeeming their points — and that’s increasing, too.
Two weeks ago Delta announced a supposed crackdown on fake emotional support animals. All they really did in practice was say they’ll require advance notice, proof of health and vaccinations, and insist passengers attest that their animal can behave.
Since American and United do what Delta does American says they’re studying similar changes and United announced that they’ve copied Delta’s changes also to go into effect March 1.
Doug Parker answered American Airlines employee questions this week. One thing he got asked about is the Boeing 737 MAX which has no seat back video on demand.
He still hasn’t flown the plane and he thinks it’s weird that anyone should care, “I haven’t flown the 737 MAX as people like to report for some weird reason.”
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 »
