Tag Archives for boeing 737.
As the aircraft climbed through 12,000 feet, the left engine “emitted a series of bangs and streaks of flames.” Pilots returned to the airport after advising air traffic control of an engine stall, and the plane landed safely around 35 minutes after departure. United assigned another aircraft to operate the flight and passengers were delayed a little over 3 hours.
All seems pretty normal, right? Well, two things are notable about this flight:
When airlines purchase planes new they usually pay about 50% of ‘list’ price. But what about used aircraft? And how do airlines actually pay for their purchase?
A receipt has surfaced for an actual used aircraft acquisition – Swift Air’s $8 million 2014 deal for then-29 year old ex-US Airways Boeing 737-400 registration N418US.
Tuesday’s United Airlines flight 1274 from Hartford, Connecticut to Washington Dulles had to return to Hartford shortly after takeoff when pilots realized that a cockpit window had been left unlatched – and popped open once they took off and climbed to 4,000 feet.
While it was difficult for air traffic control to hear pilot transmission due to the noise of wind entering the cockpit with this window open, the plane was cleared to return immediately.
A Melbourne-based couple traveling on Virgin Australia couldn’t get seats next to each other in business class when they booked. Virgin’s Boeing 737 premium cabin has just two rows up front.
So they took a window seat and an aisle seat on the other side of the aircraft, and tried to switch with another passenger when they boarded.
China Eastern flight MU5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou, operated by six year old Boeing 737-800 registration B-1791, crashed near Wuzhou, China. After descending at a rate of over 30,000 feet per minute, the 123 passengers and 9 crew are presumed not to have survived though rescue crews are on the scene.
On Wednesday evening passengers on board United Airlines flight 2325 from Newark to Orange County, California were relieved to take off after three and a half hour delay. Finally on their way at 10 minutes past 8 o’clock in the evening, they had a much longer journey in store than they’d anticipated.
Even with the acquisition of more (used) Boeing aircraft, this move will make Delta less invested in aircraft from Boeing and its predecessors than before the pandemic since they’ve retired Boeing 777s, MD88s and MD90s.
American Airlines has been cancelling hundreds of flights a day for several days. They don’t have enough pilots, especially Boeing 737 pilots, to operate the schedule they published.
However it appears that the system American Airlines uses to try to find pilots to pick up overtime and crew open trips may be standing in the way of getting some of its pilots to cover trips.
On Saturday morning I was first to cover the ongoing issue American Airlines is having mass-cancelling flights. They logged about 125 cancellations on Saturday after a big cancel day on Friday. That’s about five times as many flight cancellations as United Airlines and Delta combined.
Today is worse than yesterday with 176 cancels already. That’s nearly 50% more than Saturday. And there are already about 100 cancels on the books for Monday.
A Boeing 737 was taken out of storage, flown (apparently illegally) into Bulgaria and then while supposedly being flown to the U.A.E. it declared an emergency over Iran – and some claim it was a ‘hijacking’.
The plane went missing over Iranian airspace, the airline has been silent about the incident, and there’s now speculation that the whole thing was a ruse by Fly Armenia Airways – a new airline that doesn’t appear to operate any flights – to sell the plane to an Iranian carrier in contravention of economic sanctions.
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 »
