Saturday’s Saudia flight SV832 from Jeddah to Kuala Lumpur turned back to the gate because a woman on board forgot her baby at the gate and insisted the plane return.
Since communications between a commercial airliner and the ground are available, it’s worth a listen to this exchange. The pilot asks, “May God be with us. Can we come back or what?”
Australia has temporarily banned the 737 MAX. This affects only Fiji Airways which operates Boeing 737 MAX 8s on Australia routes.
Aeromexico has grounded its 737 MAX aircraft. Groundings have occurred in Argentina and Brazil. In the US Senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Blumenthal, clearly aviation experts themselves, have called for the grounding of the plane.
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There are untold human stories coming out of the loss of lives on that Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi.
One compelling story was told in the first person on Facebook — the passenger who was running just a few moments late and missed the flight while he watched the final passengers board and the door at the gate close in front of him. He declares it his lucky day, and indeed it was that, though of course luck probably had nothing to do with it — just a series of unrelated choices that put him in the position to make, or not make, his flight.
American Airlines has 24 Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in service. Plenty of customers are expressing concern over the aircraft after the Lion Air incident in October was followed by yesterday’s tragic crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX. China and Indonesia have grounded the jet.
Many airlines operating the plane, including Southwest and American, have expressed support for the aircraft’s safety. And it’s too early to know just what happened in yesterday’s occurrence. We’ll know more soon, especially now that the aircraft’s black boxes are being studied. It’s natural though to have concerns.
Lounge Buddy features airport lounge reviews and also sells single visit lounge passes often at a discount. The last time I spoke with the Lounge Buddy team they were also providing management software to lounges as well.
They’re now being acquired by American Express. As a result we’re promised there will be “additional [unspecified] ways” that American Express will “become an essential part of our…digital lives.”
I find that cleaners getting on the plane while passengers are trying to get off just blocks passengers getting off and as a result their getting on too early may not save time.
Since I wrote about the bottleneck deplaning due to aircraft cleaning, American rolled out a policy that focuses even more heavily on ‘D0’ and sacrifices cleaning. Here’s a notice from Dallas Fort-Worth:
Just as China’s move to ground the MAX conveniently serves political interests (in escalating trade tensions with the U.S.), Indonesia has an interest in blaming the aircraft itself versus their country’s largest privately-run airline for its tragic incident.
In the aftermath of today’s loss of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 carrying 149 passengers and 8 crew I’m hearing from many frequent flyers wondering whether the aircraft will be grounded, and thinking about whether or not they’re willing to fly on the jet.
China reportedly is grounding the plane. Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, Shandong Airlines, and XiamenAir all operate Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft.
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 »
