Federal safety officials have some concerns about Pratt & Whitney engines and are requesting that the FAA orders inspections. The concern stems from when a Delta Airlines plane loss power at the time of take off and had to turn to the gate back in August. However to date, no inspections has occurred. Personally I kind of want to know my engines are working fine. Both of them.
A first officer of United Airlines was arrested in London’s Heathrow Airport after having a failed breathalyzer. Authorities were alerted by concerned ground staff moments before the plane was to take off.
He was in the cockpit of the Boeing 777. Passengers witnessed the pilot being escorted off the plane. This had to be a good and bad feeling for passengers. Knowing they wouldn’t have a drunk pilot, but the idea their pilot could have been drunk is a bit unnerving.
Source: FoxNews Image: Thomas Becker
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