Can You Fly and Virtue Signal Concern for the Environment at the Same Time?

by Gary Leff

sulfur dioxide emissions
Aug 05 2019

Hotels encourage you to fly out for a stay while they replace single use plastic toiletries with bulk wall mounted shampoo, and offer to let you skip housekeeping, telling you these cost saving measures are out of their concern “for the environment.”

The Dutch government wants to ban flights between Brussels and Amsterdam for the environment since apparently it’s more environmentally friendly to connect at Heathrow or Frankfurt.

Ponder whether you should fly at all, while you continue to have kids and eat meat…

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After United Cancelled a Flight Because of Intoxicated Pilots, They Downgraded a Passenger Too

by Gary Leff

united plane docked
Aug 04 2019

It’s been widely reported that United’s Glasgow – Newark flight had to be cancelled on Saturday morning when two pilots showed up to work intoxicated.

However United’s efforts to inconvenience passengers weren’t limited to two intoxicated pilots, they continued to inconvenience passengers through the decisions they made recovering from the incident as well.

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Uzbekistan Airways is Looking to Sell 18 Aircraft — on Facebook

by Gary Leff

uzbekistan airways plane
Aug 04 2019

Uzbekistan Airways now has Boeing 787-8s and those have 4.7 tons greater cargo capacity than 767s. They may not be able to carry a full cargo payload when full and servicing long flights, that shouldn’t be an issue for Tashkent – London for instance. It makes sense for the carrier to consolidate operations.

However given Amazon’s penchant for growing its cargo fleet I wonder if listing the planes on Amazon Marketplace might turn out to be a more effective platform.

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British Airways Reduces Fuel Surcharges, Coach Awards Can Now Make Sense

by Gary Leff

british airways plane
Aug 04 2019

British Airways settled a class action lawsuit over fuel surcharges. See, these fees had nothing to do with the price of fuel (as required by the Department of Transportation). They awarded cash or miles to a whole bunch of frequent flyers, but continued charging the fees — they just stopped calling them fuel surcharges, and started calling them surcharges. In other words, extra fees that no longer even pretend to have a purpose.

While fuel surcharges aren’t a government tax, they are a tax on frequent flyers, a fee for using miles for free travel (ironic, huh?).

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Slot Controls Don’t Reduce Flight Delays

by Gary Leff

airport newark
Aug 03 2019

Interesting research from Alexander Luttmann at UC Irvine suggests that slot controls don’t actually reduce delays at congested airports because large airlines at major airports “already internalize congestion” when planning their schedules.

That makes sense. Heavily congested airports take longer to get planes in and out. Flight times are longer. That means flights are more expensive — they take up more aircraft time and airlines have to pay their crews more, too.

While the busiest airports see plenty of flights, their largest airlines don’t just keep adding flights because that’s expensive, both for the new flights and for all of their existing flights which suffer greater delays and ultimately get longer flight times.

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Should You Avoid Traveling to Hong Kong as Protests Escalate and Risk Chinese Backlash?

by Gary Leff

philips center
Aug 03 2019

While violence has mostly been concentrated at major protest sites, police are using tear gas and there have even been protests at the airport. Protesters are planning to appear outside the gates of Hong Kong Disney on Monday.

Until now most tourist locations have avoided also being hot spots for demonstrations, though there have been protests outside the Intercontinental, and also outside the Peninsula. Some tourists have reported being gassed.

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