And it happens again. The lovely situation where people are left sitting in a plane that is going no where for hours and hours. Add to that they only get water and crackers (yummy).
This is just another incident that is re-sparking the debate about passenger protections.
The flight today is a little more difficult, since it is an international airline, Taca. Even is the US government had regulations about this, they would be immune.
I know the idea of a Bill of Rights for passengers, but I don’t know how it could be enforced. Normally a free market should exist, but it seems passengers quickly forget their multi-hour wait on the tarmac, when they see they can save $150 on choosing the same airline versus another.
As we covered a few months ago, China has been in the development of their aircraft.
We already talked about how this plane is hardly new in the last blog, so maybe will just talk more about how this actually happened and the Chinese are taking a real dive into the airline aircraft market.
The aircraft is designed to carry 70 to 110 passengers and have a range of about 2,000 nautical miles (2,300 mi/3680 km).
They are trying to stay on target to start the first deliveries in late 2009. They are produced 6 already and hope to be able to deliver 20 per year.
At about $27 million US Dollars per plane, it could end up being a deal for airlines, depending if the reliability and quality can be shown to be with par with the ARJ-21’s siblings, the MD-90 series.
I really don’t want to write about how air travel is down this holiday (mostly because of this great economy), I just want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!
I know using this picture might be a little cheesy, but oh well (saying anyone even gets it)!
