Alaska Airline's Captain bringing out the first Copper River Salmon that is 46lbs.
Today I got up quite early for a special event. Salmon. Lots and lots of salmon.
After I woke up I headed over to Alaska Airline’s cargo facility by Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for a special delivery: 22,000 pounds of Copper River Salmon! If you don’t know about Copper River Salmon, you have been missing out. It is like the king of salmon.
22,000lbs might sound like a lot, but Alaska flew about 700,000lbs of Copper River Salmon last year and more than 25 million pounds of seafood last year. Yikes! Maybe it should be called sea-air food (ok I know bad joke).
That's me (in the awesome vest) and Alaska Airlines President Brad Tilden (he's one cool guy!) in front of Salmon-3-Salmon
“Alaska Airlines flies more Copper River salmon throughout the season than any other airline,” said Joe Sprague, Alaska’s vice president of marketing. “With enhanced food quality procedures and additional flights to support the Alaska seafood industry, we are going the extra mile to deliver fresh seafood throughout the country.”
Each year Alaska Airlines flies the season’s first catch of the fish from Cordova, AK to Seattle and beyond. Not only did I get to watch Alaska’s Boeing 737-400 Cargo land, but Alaska also had their Salmon-3-Salmon present to celebrate.
A 46lb salmon was the first one to de-plane and was filleted. Three chefs competed to make the best meal and a panel of judges, including Jay Buhner, Seattle Mariners Hall of Famer; Mike Fourtner, deckhand on the F/V Time Bandit, as featured on Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch;” Paul Wulff, Washington State University football coach (go University of Washington Huskies — my alum); and Alaska Airlines President Brad Tilden.
That is one BIG fish!
Follow @AlaskaAir on Twitter, to see the winning Copper River salmon recipe. The three recipes prepared for the Copper Chef Cook-off are available to download at http://bit.ly/CRSalmon. Fish lovers are encouraged to share their own favorite salmon recipes on Twitter, using the hashtag #CRsalmon. (if none of that Twitter talk makes sense to you, don’t worry, just pretend I just wrote something in Greek).
This means you will start to be able to find the Copper River Salmon at your local grocery store or seafood restaurant. You can rest assured that the salmon flying on Alaska will be fresh, since each employee is trained on how to handle perishable cargo. The salmon is kept cool and they make sure the journey is quick.
Copper River salmon might cost a bit more and is it worth it? HECK YES!
Check out all 71 photos of this morning’s event. A special thanks for Alaska Airlines for putting on this awesome event and of course the invite!
Here are six amazing photos of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Boeing 40C flying together. When I first saw these photos I thought they were too amazing to be real. However I did confirm with Boeing that they are very much real.
From the owner’s of the Boeing 40C, “The Pemberton Family wants to thank the visionaries at The Boeing Company for their support in making some history this past Saturday. Boeing test pilot Mike Carriker flew Dreamliner serial number 001, the newest Boeing commercial aircraft, for some formation flyby shots with the Pemberton’s Model 40, the oldest flying Boeing commercial aircraft. The flights were just west of Mt. Rainier, Washington.”
It is amazing to see Boeing’s oldest flying aircraft with their newest. A true enthusiast can’t help but get goosebumps seeing these photos!
Russia and Israel have recently had issues with authorizing flights between the two countries. On May 10th an Arkia Airlines flight with 260 Israeli passengers were not given authorization to take off from Moscow to return home to Israel.
The Arkia flight was ready to take off, when Russian clerks asked to see all the airline crew’s visas. The three pilots and six flight attendants were puzzled since Israel and Russia had signed an agreement over a year ago, stating visas were not needed. The Russian officials seemed un-phased and caused the plane to be grounded. The passengers, mostly senior citizens on a tour, had to spend the light at the Moscow airport, some with little to no money.
Arkia immediately employed the assistance of the Civil Aviation Authority and the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, but to no avail. “Although everyone agreed that it was a mistake, they just told us to come back at 8 am to solve the problem,” the airline’s deputy CEO, Nir Dagan, told Ynet. “It was unacceptable to us.”
Since normal negotiation methods were not working, the Airports Authority in Israel grounded a Trans Euro flight heading to Moscow until the Arkia flight was authorized to take off. Finally, around 4am the Russian officials gave authorization and both flights were allowed to leave.
An Israeli official said it was not the first time the Russian authorities had created difficulties for Israeli flights. “The Russians have a problem opening the Russia-Israel line for other companies as well, which hurts many Russian airlines.”
A senior airline official explained that although Russia and Israel had signed numerous bilateral agreements about the expansion of the flight options between the two countries, many Russian officials were unhappy with the large number of Israeli flights landing throughout the country because it harmed the Russian airlines.
Another roadblock is Israeli flights need to have a permit before each flight, which might not be granted until a few days beforehand. In a recent incident, an Israeli plane was forced to return to Russia after officials stated they did not have the necessary permits, but the flight did.
“We are familiar with the problem, but we don’t know whether it derives from Russian bureaucracy or whether a commercial consideration is behind it,” Tourism Ministry official Pini Shani said. “This instability is not good for tourism. We want as many Israeli and Russian airlines as possible flying between the countries. Every time there is a new flight agreement or one is expanded there are setbacks, but in the end the Russians always approve the flights at the last minute.”
Seems like a crazy political game, that is only hurting the citizens of both countries.
Ah, creative advertising. I love it. I also love ad-wars. This cleaver ad is brought to you by Germanwings and was filmed on a easyJet flight. At least easyJet made some money when the people paid for tickets!
Last week a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) worker at Miami International Airport ended up being arrested, after a co-worker teased him about his genitals.
Rolando Negrin was being scanned as a training exercise when a co-worker started to repeatedly harass him for the size of his “manhood.” Witnesses say Negrin lost it and started to hit his co-worker with a police baton. Negrin could be heard saying in Spanish, “get on your knees or I will kill you and you better apoligise [sic].”
The TSA has a zero-violence policy and stated, “we are investigating to determine whether other officers may have violated procedures in a training session with coworkers and committed professional misconduct.”
The TSA likes to note that this incident was internal and did not involve the general public. However, we have already seen the body scanners abused in public once and as they are used more, I am sure we will see them abused again.
When scanning passengers, the TSA says that a screener views the live image in a remote location and the images will be permanently deleted, never being stored. However, in a letter to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the TSA states they have 2,000 test images stored, using TSA personal, at its test facility. This means that the system has the capability to store images, not to mention workers could sneak in cameras or phones.
EPIC has tried to gain access to the test images to see how privacy might be violated, but the TSA has refused to release them. EPIC has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security under the Freedom of Information Act seeking details about the government’s use of advanced imaging technology. Many fear if the scans are publicly released, it will allow people to learn how to beat the system. Right now the system is really easy to beat, just refuse to be scanned and ask for a pat-down.
How much is all this wonderful security costing you, the tax payers? Only $6Billion per year. According to Stanford Daily, when airport security was still privatized in 2001, it only cost $700Million. Even in comparing with 2001 prices, that is $700million versus $4.6Billion.
It is frustrating to see stories like this continue to pop-up. I am sure this will not be the last story of a passenger’s rights being violated. Stay tuned…
