Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 and Allegiant Air MD-83 in Las Vegas
Who doesn’t want more flights to Hawaii? Alaska Airlines recently announced they will be starting service from Bellingham (located about 1.5hrs north of Seattle right by the Canadian border) to Honolulu starting January 7th.
As Dan Webb points out on his blog, Alaska’s press release points out they have amenities included in their basic fares, which seems to be comparing them to another airline that does not, presumably Allegiant.
I wrote to Allegiant to see if they have a comment about Alaska announcement and not surprisingly they did not since Allegiant has been pretty tight-lipped about their future plans. I also spoke with Bobbie Eagen, with Alaska Communications, to see if this move is directed towards the possibility of Allegiant flying the same route and she told me, “The new Bellingham-Honolulu service is a natural progression of Alaska’s Hawaiian expansion,” she continued, “There’s great demand from customers living in Bellingham and the Lower Mainland and adding nonstop service to Honolulu, one of our most popular vacation destinations, made sense.”
Either way, competition is always good for the customer and watching a little airline route battle is good for us airline nerds…Game on!
The Southwest Boeing 737-700 was parked right next to some awesome planes.
This weekend was super busy, but beyond exciting. I was invited to join Southwest Airlines on their special flight from Midway Airport (MDW), in Chicago to the big AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI (OSH). How could I say no to that opportunity?
I got to meet so many awesome people that I have interacted with on Twitter, that I haven’t been able to meet in person. Some, who work for Southwest but many who also do not. Our flight leaving from MDW was leaving at 7am, so it was an early morning but worth it. The Boeing 737-700 was only about half full and it is always awesome to be on a flight with no “real” passengers but with airline employees, media and a few invited guests. The flight from MDW to OSH is the shortest flight I have been on with a Boeing 737 — only about 30 minutes. Enough time to take off, level out and back down again. Since there were no passengers, they were able to leave the cockpit door open, so we could go up and say “hi” while in mid-flight. When’s the last time anyone has been able to do that on scheduled service?
How many times can you see this view outside a Boeing 737 window?
The cloud level was low and we were able to come down below the clouds well before landing, skimming just over the water. We arrived to OSH to many people lined up and waving from the sidelines, it was very cool. Then we were towed from the taxi way, through the ground, feet from DC3’s and other amazing planes to the center of the Aeroshell Square, where a lot of cool planes are being displayed. Being pulled along with hundreds of people waving and stopping behind a C-5, next to a DC-7 and FA-18 is pretty surreal.
I felt like someone famous coming off the aircraft. I felt very lucky that a blog reader @IKluft was happy to show me and a few others around for the day. He was at AirVenture all week and was well versed with the best plane locations (thanks Ian!).
Talk about airplane nerd heaven. I don’t even know how to describe all the amazing airplanes, events and people that were at AirVenture. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words and I have quite a few pictures and a few videos to share:
CargoLux Boeing 747-8F taking off for a test flight at Paine Field (N5573S)
Last Tuesday a new Cargolux Boeing 747-8 took off from Paine Field to continue its test flights and unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it. Luckily two awesome guys from Portland, OR, Alex and Russell, were able to get up to Everett, WA in time to watch her fly. Russell got two amazing photos (see larger one of the one above and also a second one) and Alex was able to get a video of the Boeing 747-8 taking off.
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.
