United Express CRJ-700 operated by SkyWest in Aspen (N724SK)
The beautiful resort town of Aspen! It might be beautiful year round, but most people will associate amazing skiing and snow with the town. To help bring skiers each year, three major airlines served the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, but this ski season, there will only be one.
Frontier Airlines has been serving the town since 2008, using Q400’s. With Frontier’s new parent company, Republic Airways, wanting to phase out the Q400’s, they don’t feel it makes economic sense to fly their Embraer aircraft to the resort town.Frontier were trying to sell tickets over the winter to prove the route could be profitable, but they have decided to discontinue service as of September 30th.
Delta flew to Aspen from Salt Lake City and Atlanta and feel continuing the flights just doesn’t make economic sense.
Just because only one airline remains, don’t assume Aspen will turn into a ghost town. Even with the departure of Frontier and Delta, the town will only be losing 20% of their seating capacity. United Express will still be flying 12 daily flights from Denver this winter as well as three each from Chicago and Los Angeles and one daily from San Francisco.
The airport is planning a 1000 foot runway expansion in an effort to lure back Frontier and Delta. Since both airlines don’t see the economics with the smaller aircraft they are flying now, I am not quite sure how a longer runway will increase possible passenger loads.
Ah Meiegs Field in Chicago. Any of your Flight Simulator fans you will remember it as the default airport. There was quite a bit of controversy surrounding its closure. The Chicago Mayor at the time, Richard Daley, wanted the airport closed and a park made. Although people were trying to fight and keep the airport open, Daley had crews destroy the runway in the middle of the night, stranding the airplanes that were parked there. The aircraft were later able to take off using the taxi way, but it was an end to a special era.
This video takes a look at a Boeing 727 that was flown in to Miegs field to be barged to the Museum of Science and Industry. The issue is, the runway was never made for such a large plane, so the pilot had to be careful in his landing.
Impulse Airlines was founded in 1992 and was a low-cost carrier that operated in Australia. It brought low-cost competition to long standing Qantas and Ansett airlines.
In 2001 Qantas wet leased all of Impulse’s services, gave the airline cash, and opened an option to later purchase the airline. A few months later, Qantas decided to purchase the airline and Impulse’s fleet of Boeing 717s and Beech 1900s were absorbed into QantasLink. Later the Beech 1900s were removed and the Boeing 717 fleet was expanded for QantasLink.
In 2004, all operations under the Impulse banner was ceased, however what remained was used as a springboard to start Qantas’ lowcost carrier, Jetstar.
The Parrot really gives the livery a mascot and is much more “fun” than their first more standard style livery.
Southwest wingtip at Seattle. I am cheating, this is an older photo, but there are no Southwest planes at gates right now at SEA.
The air show of the year is going on right now in Oshkosh, WI and I can’t miss it. I am once again back at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (and loving their free Wi-Fi) waiting for my Southwest flight to Chicago (MDW). Then tomorrow, Southwest will be flying a special flight to Oshkosh from Midway just for the day. Only having one day to look around might be very, very hard, but I am excited to be going. I need to make a list of MUST-SEE’s.
Last time I flew Southwest, I slacked and ended up in the B-group. However this time I was vigilant and got in to the much coveted A-group. Window seat, here I come!
On Sunday I was looking at FlightAware and noticed that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner ZA001 (the first one) was set to make a visit to Paine Field. Since I live close by, I decided to go check it out and caught it doing a low fly over. The video isn’t the best since I was trying to video and take pictures on my iPhone (bad idea), but it works.
