What a beautiful morning to fly. United Express (with white nose - N708SK) CRJ-700 with a United Boeing 757 and moon in the background at SEA.
Back to Seattle Tacoma International Airport probably the last time before they install body scanners. Waiting for my United Express flight down to LAX for a special event that United holds for all their VIP passengers to connect and get feedback. Be sure to follow me on Twitter (what’s Twitter?) to see all the action.
I am excited to check out one of these events and also for the flight down to LAX. This will be my first flight on a Canadair Regional Jet 700. Being based in Seattle, there just aren’t that many regional jets that fly out of here and most of my connections with-in the US have been on larger aircraft.
I enjoyed flying on the ERJ-145 with its 2:1 layout and interested to check out this CRJ-700 with mostly 2:2 layout. The United Express flight is being flown by Skywest and according to SeatGuru.com, this plane should have First Class and United Economy Plus seats. I ended up with seat 6D which should be economy plus and I didn’t have to pay a dime more to get it. Should be a good flight.
The old and new combined livery for Continental and United Airlines
When United and Continental announced their new combined livery, a lot of people were not happy about the font used for “United.” Well, they must have heard, b/c they have changed the font and I like it!
From their merger site: “The new logo displays the combined company’s brand name in capital letters (UNITED) in a custom sans-serif font, joined with the global mark which has represented Continental’s brand image since 1991.”
This doesn’t help those that will miss the United tulip, but I think this is a good compromise for both brands.
New British Airways Boeing 747-8F at Paine Field
Late last night I got word from Jon Ostrower (aka FlightBlogger) that a nicely new painted Boeing 747-8 in British Airways colors was out in the open. So, this morning I headed over to Paine Field (KPAE) to check it out. I found her, but it wasn’t so easy. First she was parked a bit off from the rest of the Boeing 747-8’s and she is not in full British Airways livery. She is painted all white with a blue belly.
I was also able to check out the other Boeing 747-8’s sitting, waiting to take to the sky.
CHECK OUT ALL THE PICTURES
Update: BA has announced it is updating its fleet of Boeing 747-400F with new Boeing 747-8F’s and will be leasing them through Global Supply Systems, which is 49% owned by Atlas Air. On the press release BA states, “It has also been agreed that the new 747-8fs will be delivered in British Airways livery and incorporate the British Airways World Cargo logo.” Flight Global reports that they will be wet-leased for five years by GSS.
An American Airlines Boeing 757 and Airbus A300 line up for take off at Miami International Airport
Airlines have to start getting pretty creative to come up with new fees to help increase their revenue. Even though I get frustrated to have to pay the fees myself, I at least understand why I am paying them. American has started charging a new fee and I am not sure if it is worth it.
Depending on the length of the flight, you can now pay anywhere from $19 to $39 to sit in the first few rows in economy and be one of the first ones to board. There is no question being one of the first to board to make sure you have room for your carry-ons and it is nice to get off the plane instead of waiting in the back for everyone else to. However, I am not sure if the added cost is worth it.
United has something similar called EconomyPlus, but at least when you pay more for those seats, you also get additional legroom. With United, you can purchase the seats at the time of booking, but with American’s Express Seats, they can only be purchased from a kiosk starting 24hrs before a flight to 50 minutes before take off.
Virasb Vahidi, Chief Commercial Officer for American Airlines states, “Express Seats highlights American’s focus on offering customers what they value most.” I am not sure if passengers really value paying more to sit in the front the most. However, I haven’t done the research and spoke with a lot of American passengers about it, which I assume American has and they got positive feedback. The nice thing for American is there is no need to change the layouts of their aircraft to make this work, which means it will be cheap to test and cheap to pull the plug if it doesn’t work out.
Story found: Flight Wisdom Image: AV8NLVR
1Time MD-83 with Zebra Livery.
1Time is a low cost airline based out of South Africa. They have a fleet of mostly MD-80 aircraft and fly domestically through Africa.
This MD-83 (ZS-SKB) was painted in zebra strips to celebrate the airline’s new route to Livingston, Zambia from Johannesburg. It seems the plane likes the paint job, look at her big smile!
Image: Daniel Fretwell