March 2008 Archives

I was checking the weather for my flight to LGA tomorrow, and came across this New York Destination Guide on Weather.com. I like these, they're concise and offer lots of useful stats/info.

and you can dance to it...but you better not, because if you're standing up during the Delta Air Lines safety video, you'll get fussed at by the flight attendants:
this is a MUCH better video. For openers, they've dumped the cheesey easy-listening music for something with a beat. The pilot looks much younger than in the previous video. The grey-haird guy always made me think of Peter Graves in "Airplane." And the flight attendant (who really is a Delta flight attendant) is hawt.

Guns in planes are just a stupid idea. As much as these things sound good on paper, they don't work out in reality, when the guy sits on the bloody thing with the safety off, or does something deliberately stupid. And stupid it must have been, otherwise BushCo would have flaunted it as part of their overall scare-the-public meme of the last six years:

A US airline pilot has the dubious honour of being the first person to fire a weapon issued under a federal programme designed to thwart 9/11-style hijackings after his piece accidentally went off in the cockpit during an internal flight on Saturday. According to the LA Times, the incident occurred aboard US Airways Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte, North Carolina, as the Airbus A319 bearing 124 passengers and five crew was preparing to land. While the Transportation Safety Administration and airline have declined to name the pilot or "provide information about the position of the gun or what the bullet struck", the TSA notes that the pilot was "authorized to be in possession of the weapon and he completed the appropriate training".

All the cops that have done stupid things over the years had "appropriate training." It never stopped them from being stupid, so it's no surprise that it didn't stop a pilot.

I've always had a hard time believing that cell phones pose a serious threat to flight operations. After all, if they really were a significant problem, they would be banned like liquids over 3oz. Why would terrorists need guns if all they have to do is crank up their phones to crash planes? No, I suspect the real reasons behind the ban on cellphones has more to do with bidness than safety, which is par for the course for the airline industry.

Most planes still have the "air phones" in first class that you could use for something like $5 for the first three minutes and a buck a minute after that. Those phones were pretty much all removed from coach, since budget-conscious fliers gave up on those things ages ago. So, if it's all about money, then it's no shock that Emirates is the first airline to allow cell phone usage:

Dubai-based airline Emirates has become the first commercial airline to allow passengers to make mobile phone calls during flights. Emirates said the first permitted mobile phone call was made on a flight between Dubai and Casablanca. The aircraft, an Airbus A340, is fitted with a system which stops mobiles from interfering with a plane's electronics.

An Airbus A340 is a 4-engine, two-aisle, wide-body aircraft that's roughly equivalent to a Boeing 767. Emirates caters to higher end customers than Southwest or RyanAir, of course, and responding to the demands of SMS-ers is a good sign.

It will be interesting to see if the trend carries over to US carriers.

and we're off!