I’ve had a lot of people asking me about airplanes with parachutes lately, so I thought it would make for a worthy post here.

In short, yes, there is an airplane that has a parachute on it. It’s manufactured by Cirrus and it’s called CAPS (Cirrus Airframe Parachute System). If you find yourself out of control and expect that a crash may be imminent, you pull the handle and a 55 foot parachute is deployed to bring the airplane down to the ground. Go to the Cirrus site for more info and a video of it in action.

There have been a handful of successful deployments of the parachute, and for that reason alone it seems like a great idea to me. Why not have that extra level of safety built in so that you know if all else fails, you can still make it down alive.

Can this work for commercial airliners? Hmm, that’s a tougher issue. The Cirrus is a lightweight single engine plane. Commercial airliners are a lot heavier, fly faster and higher, and need a bigger area to put down. It’s definitely a much greater challenge, and I don’t even know whether it’s possible. Still, wouldn’t it be nice?

This afternoon a judge ruled that, well, he’s not ready to rule yet.

So he told the Northwest flight attendants they won’t be able to strike tonight at 10p Eastern as they originally planned. I haven’t seen a new date when a ruling is to be expected but it could be coming anyday I suppose.

You won’t hear much from me again until Monday. My girlfriend and I headed out today to visit her parents, but sadly our bag full of toiletries didn’t make it with us. Stay tuned for the rest of the story next week along with a full trip report.

If you own a Dell laptop, or even if you don’t, you’ve probably heard about the tiny little problem of laptop batteries catching on fire. If you haven’t heard about it and you own a Dell, uh, you may want to check here to see if you’re at risk.

Today, Apple announced it’s following suit and recalling iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 batteries from the past three years for similar problems. Both of these battery recalls related to Sony-made batteries.

As this continues to become a bigger issue, airlines are likely going to start looking at this much more closely.

First up to bat is Qantas. They have now banned the use of affected laptops if the battery is in and the unit is plugged in. Yeah, it’s that convoluted. So, if you use battery power, that’s fine. If you plug it in where they have onboard powerports, you must first remove the battery. And of course, this only applies to batteries that have been recalled. Not sure how they’re going to enforce that one.

That doesn’t affect too many people, but this could just be the tip of the iceberg. If more batteries are recalled, keep an eye on changing airline policies.

In what must be one of the more creative promotions around, Nantucket Airlines has decided to have a limerick contest.

Everyone knows the famous limerick that begins, “There once was a man from Nantucket.” If you don’t know it, you can probably guess what rhymes with Nantucket. So Nantucket Airlines has tweaked it a bit to incorporate the island’s airport code . . . ACK.

First prize of 10 one way tickets between ACK and Hyannis isn’t too interesting, but 2nd prize is a t-shirt that would be much cooler. All who enter get a sticker that looks like the image shown here.

So come up with your best entry and submit it today. Post if here if you’d like to share it with others as well.

If you’re interested in airports, you might want to check out Aviation Daily’s new airports blog. It’s written by the knowledgeable and always entertaining Benet Wilson. She worked in corporate communications for Delta until recently, so you know she must have a great sense of humor.

Anyway, in her first real post today, she talks about how airports are trying to bring local food providers into the terminals to give them an authentic feel. I must admit that I’m a big fan of this idea.

I really have no interest in eating at another Wendy’s unless it happens to be in its Columbus, Ohio hometown. And I really can’t handle Chili’s in the airport anymore. Sadly, that kind of food tends to be the best stuff around. Otherwise it’s pre-wrapped sandwiches which I can barely stomach.

So when Washington/National airport opened its new terminal in the 90’s with a Legal Seafood, I was simply amazed. To be fair, that’s a Boston establishment, but the trend was in the right direction.

Now when I go to Phoenix, I’ll choose Blue Burrito Grille (US Airways side of Terminal 4) over any of the other places there. At LAX, it’s, well . . . I guess LAX has a lot of catching up to do.

Anyone have any favorite local airport joints?

If you’ve never been to FlyerTalk, I’d highly recommend a visit. The website has become the main virtual gathering place for the frequent fliers of the world. There are dedicated forums for each frequent flier program as well as some more general forums.

As you may have guessed, frequent fliers are very unhappy at the prospect of having to check a bag, so they’re coming up with some pretty creative workarounds in this thread as well as others.

Seems like the thread starter had been able to find non liquid substitutes for all his toiletries with the sole exception of toothpaste. Sure enough, there were a few responses right away suggesting everything from “pre-pasted disposal toothbrushes” to plain old baking soda.

I know personally that for shampoo that you can buy things that look like a bar of soap. Stick deodorant is fine as well. Shaving cream, well, I haven’t figured that one out yet unless you’re willing to do it with just water. Ouch. And if you need makeup, well, you’re on your own there.

There are many ways that airlines have responded to terrorist threats, but I have to say that Ryanair is one of the few to have ever tried humor.

If you go to their homepage, you’ll see this picture of Winston Churchill promoting their new low fares. I’m going to just take a wild guess that he didn’t give his permission from beyond the grave for this one.

Oh but wait, there’s more. Click on the link that says New Airport Security Restrictions - Put fun back into flying. Um, but before you click, make sure you don’t mind nudity. Seriously. They do love to joke around.

Clearly, if Ryanair had lost a plane or one single person had died, they would never have done this. Actually, if anyone had lost their lives on any airline, I can’t imagine they’d do this. At least, I hope they wouldn’t do something like this. But since the plot was foiled, I think it’s pretty funny.

People are very tense when flying these days, and anything that can be done to loosen things up is probably welcome. I think Ryanair is like a smart little kid that knows just how far he can push his mother without crossing the line. They always make news, they do a good job of mildly offending and creating controversy, but they still fill their planes.

So . . . funny or offensive? (Or both, I suppose.) What do you think?

Well, I guess that’s the nice way to put it.

The New York Times had an article today talking about the additional data the US and EU governments want to help find terrorists. This means sifting through more than just your unmentionables. They want credit card data, phone numbers, email addresses, etc for people on flights traveling between the US and the EU.

Every reservation that is made creates a PNR, or passenger name record. This has all the pertinent info about your flight including your name, your contact number, potentially email addresses, credit card payment info, etc. If you booked through a travel agent, you might also see hotel or car reservations in there as well. This is the info that the government wants to use.

Apparently the US had permission to do this in a 2004 agreement with the EU, but it was struck down in court. This means that either a new agreement is signed by the end of September or the US can’t use it for anything.

And that original agreement was only to cross-check people on watch lists and nothing more. Now they want to be able to use that info to match up with a variety of law enforcement agencies.

I know that this is a very dicey proposition, but there are some very good and bad parts to it. I must admit that I have yet to fully decide how I feel about this, but I’m leaning toward supporting it. People readily give this information when they make a reservation, and they probably expect it’s being looked through anyway. The only data that I think is really sensitive is credit card info, but it’s not like there are social security numbers in there. Of course, any time that information passes from one agency to another, it opens up the risk of it being misused.

There’s a lot of good intelligence that can be done with this information. The question is whether or not it’s worth giving up privacy to do that intelligence work. It seems to me that it may very well be worth it, but I need to learn more.

Air Canada announced some time ago that they’d be installing in-seat audio/video on demand on all their aircraft (even the small 70 seaters), and it’s now coming to fruition.

The Toronto Sun has a “review” of the new system on its website. I put “review” in quotes because they don’t actually have much to say about it other than this gem of a quote:

“I don’t find that the navigation is very good at all when you get into watching the video programming,” says MacArthur, who tried out the system during a recent flight to New York.

Yeah, that’s helpful.

What we do find out is that the new system has “16 to 24 movies, various TV shows and 50 music CDs. Later this summer it will include up to 10 interactive games and an interactive moving map with flight-path information.” Sounds to me to be a little light on the number of movies when compared to other airlines, but really, how many do you need?

Oh, and this is cool. “A USB port next to the monitor will allow passengers to upload games, while each seat will be equipped with a power outlet, says McKenven.” Can’t say I’ve ever seen that before.

Unfortunately, it’s only on 27 planes right now, but it should be done sometime next year fleetwide. This will help it compete internationally with just about every non-North American airline and domestically with WestJet. That airline currently offers Live TV.

This will try to answer the age old question of whether or not people are willing to pay for this. I know that I personally am happy to shell out a few bucks for that kind of entertainment and even more than that if it’s a really long flight. On the long hauls, this is becoming standard issue. (Yes, United, that means your 747s with big projector screens need to be updated.) But on the short hauls, this is still a rarity. I do hope it becomes the new standard.

No, I’m not talking about Eminem. This time it’s Aerocalifornia that has risen from the dead.

You might remember them as the airline that shut down in April after angering the Mexican government. It’s unclear exactly what happened, but it seems like they were deemed unsafe and that was that.

Now, I would have thought this meant the end of them, but sure enough, they’re baaaaaack.

It appears they restarted operations earlier this month, and for now they only fly in Mexico. I’m sure they’ll be looking to come back to the US when they can. One very positive thing is they’ve finally decided to get themselves a website. Until now, no online booking allowed, and they didn’t even have a US site. But now, they’ve got a nice one at www.aerocalifornia.com.

Happy booking.