Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

These are the 20 Airports With the Greatest Likelihood of Cancelling Flights

by Gary Leff

united
Mar 27 2019

You want to fly in the morning when you can. Flights later in the day are affected by each of the segments an aircraft has flown that day and delays stack up. When something goes wrong to delay a flight, usually subsequent flights with the same plane will be delayed too. At the end of the day crew may also be running out of allowable duty time.

And bring patience and plenty of backup planning because things inevitably do go wrong, whether because of weather or technical snafus. Find your own alternate flights (with availability that changes constantly). If the first airline agent doesn’t give you help try someone else. And if you can’t get through on the phone, try a foreign call center.

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United Flight Attendants are Selling Their Seniority – and the Airline Wants it to Stop

by Gary Leff

people posing for picture
Mar 26 2019

Unionized flight attendants — and flight attendants at airlines whose procedures mirror union work rules — get to work the most desirable trips based on seniority. Senior flight attendants at large international airlines can jet away to Sydney, to Buenos Aires, to Paris while more junior flight attendants overnight in Des Moines.

Those longer trips aren’t just more exotic. They pay more (more hours) in a short amount of time, have longer layovers, and may entail staying at better hotels. Secondary markets developed. Last year I wrote about American flight attendants renting out their seniority for $200 a pop. Now United flight attendants are doing it.

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Boeing 737 MAX Email Scam Can Infect Your Computer

by Gary Leff

airplane flying
Mar 25 2019

Police are warning about an email scam aimed at getting you to open an attachment that will infect your computer by preying on worries over the currently-grounded Boeing 737 MAX.

The email may be framed as coming from a “private analyst” and includes an attachment with “leaked data” that warns of another aircraft that will “go down soon” and encourages you to share the file with your contacts — not just infecting your computer, but virally infecting others as well via a trusted source (you).

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Why the FAA Delegates Certification to Boeing — and Why That’s a Good Thing

by Gary Leff

airplane flying
Mar 25 2019

One of the things many people have been shocked to learn, in the aftermath of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX crash, is that the FAA delegates much of the certification process to the aircraft manufacturer.

People are shocked, shocked, that a company would be able to ‘self-certify’ and suggest this is some sort of dereliction of duty when nothing could be further from the truth.

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Is Transatlantic Low Cost Carrier Wow Air Toast?

by Gary Leff

wow plane
Mar 24 2019

For the last several years fares between the US and Europe have been available at incredibly low prices, driven down by a generation of ultra low cost carriers — deep discount airlines no longer just flying short haul routes, but operating across the Pond the way that Freddie Laker’s Skytrain service once pioneered.

There have been too many players flying too many seats at too low a price for too long, in a market that’s long been challenging, and airlines trying to make it in this environment have struggled. Wow Air could be next to fall.

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