From caribb on flicker:
Air Canada ran their Tango division for a short while. It was a discount airline with fixed fares that has since disappeared into the Air Canada brand. It now only exists as a fare structure. It had a nice livery though.
Image: caribb
Four flights were diverted by a few traffic controllers to help train a newbie (new hire). Although no safety was compromised and in the whole scheme of things it wasn’t the biggest mess-up in the airline industry in a long while, but it did break quite a few rules and caused un-needed delays on four flights.
To make things even better for the pilots, they were diverted into thunderstorms, having to navigate around them causing even more delays.
Making sure the trainee was on his game, one of the controllers instructed one of the pilots to give a wrong altitude to see if the trainee caught the mistake (which the story doesn’t say if he did).
Obviously the trainee must have done ok since nothing worse happened, but next time, maybe try the simulator!
In a time where gas makes major headlines daily (or at least the consequences of gas prices) who doesn’t want to save a little money on it?
An analysis by the Associated Press found that if the airline industry could switch from their current (and completely aged) air traffic control system to a new satellite system it could save the industry up to $5,000,000,000 (yes billion) per year in fuel costs. This is because under the current system airlines are having to inefficiently having to fly from beacon to beacon and most times that is not the most (fuel or time) efficient route.
Currently the government is saying it would be amazing to have this new system up and running by 2020 (by which time I would probably be out of date again). But of course with the current airline economy, they don’t have too much money to spare to get NextGen (creative new name) started.
Source: MSNBC Image: FrancoisRoche
The idea of passing the time on a long flight by surfing the web (or maybe getting some work done) is very appealing. At a time where internet is pretty on all other forms of transportation (buses, trains, ferries, even your personal car), it is about time for the airline industry to catch up. However, with allowing access to the internet in a very cramped, very public place, American Airlines is planning to not allow passengers to surf any porn sites.
Although there haven’t been any reports of passengers surfing the naughty pages, it is probably a good idea to do this now before little Sally, the underage flying alone child, sees something she shouldn’t.
Source: NY Times
Not quite a surprise that alcohol was involved in this, but 29-year-old Ezra Wallace decided the two girls sitting next to him, ages 9 and 16, need to get their hands bound with athletic tape.
Wallace stated that, “he had half a pint of vodka, including two shots, just before boarding the plane.” He continues stating that he vaguely remembers tying their hands and it was all in “good fun.”
One of the flight attendants noticed his odd behavior and moved the two girls (whom Wallace did not know) to another aisle. It took action from the girl’s mother to prompt an investigation.