I know this isn’t entirely about the traveler experience, but I thought it would be a very interesting way to close the week nonetheless. I had the chance to speak with British Airways’ Head of Environment, Jonathon Counsell, yesterday. We spoke about a new program they’ve launched in cooperation with Rolls-Royce that will enable alternative fuels to be tested using engines on BA aircraft.

Basically, they’re inviting fuel suppliers to bring alternative fuels that are scalable and won’t have a negative impact on food, land, or water. Once they’ve got those narrowed down, they’ll run ground tests on the fuel and then eventually air tests as well. BA has always been very accessible, and I gladly took the chance to speak with them about this initiative. Read below for our discussion.

Cranky: What sort of interest have you seen from fuel suppliers to date?

Jonathon: We’ve had an ongoing debate with major fuel companies, so pretty much all the majors are interested. Three or four additional companies have approached us as well. We’re drawing up a short list of up to about a dozen companies.

Cranky: Other airlines, notably Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand, have run tests of biofuels recently. Would either of those fuels be eligible for testing in this program or do they not meet the criteria that you have set forth?

Jonathon: We’re not being overly prescriptive in terms of a particular fuel. It has to be what we call a drop-in fuel, meaning it has to work with existing technology. It has to be able to power the engines without modifying them, and it must work with existing supply technology. Also, it can’t compete with food, land or water supplies. I believe the Virgin fuel may not qualify because it competed for food crops. Apart from that, we’re not going to overspecify. We’ve intentionally called it alternative fuel instead of biofuel because it will be difficult for biofuel to meet those conditions because of the conflict with food or rainforest devastation. That being said, we’re not ruling out biofuel.

Cranky: Are there any incentives being offered to encourage fuel suppliers to participate? Is there a prize of some sort?

Jonathon:The big incentive is that any company that can supply fuel meeting the criteria will have a massive prize. Every airline around the world will want to buy it.

Cranky: What will you consider to be a successful test? Are there specific levels of fuel economy and emissions that must be reached for you to deem this a success?

Jonathon:We will lay out broad performance criteria. It needs to be commercially viable but we haven’t specified what that means yet.

Cranky: Are there any partners in this study beyond you and Rolls Royce? Have you involved any third party scientific organizations to oversee the data collection and interpretation?

Jonathon: No. Currently it’s just Rolls-Royce and ourselves. There will be a joint assessment between us. We’ll look at whether we need external experts on this or not. Rolls works with a number of universities, and so do we, and we’ll be looking at a number of contacts in the scientific field.

Cranky: You say testing will be complete by March 2009, but how long do you expect it to take before the results are finalized?

Jonathon:Quite shortly afterwards. Testing will start in January and it will take 4 to 6 weeks. Published results will be available shortly after the end of March.

Cranky: Will you be sharing the results of your study publicly?

Jonathon: Yes, we will be making the results public.

Cranky: What sort of response have you had from the community so far?

Jonathon: It’s been a very positive response from the community. We deliberately launched this prior to Farnborough and it’s certainly been a big topic of discussion.

Cranky: Have you spoken to any of your other partners about participating, like American Airlines?

Jonathon: Yes, we’ve had a couple of early conversations with American Airlines and certainly we’ll pick up on those.

So there you have it. It’s an interesting way to put this together. The idea is basically to say, “Hey, you got some good fuel? Come talk to us and we’ll let you test it on one of our engines for free.” I’ll be looking forward to seeing the results.

Let’s all raise a toast to those who owned a piece of L’Avion. They became the only (extremely lucky) shareholders of an independent all-premium class airline to actually get money back from their investment. That’s right, the new BA subsidiary OpenSkies announced today that they’re buying L’Avion for a mere 35 million euros.

This marks the end of the latest experiment in all-premium airlines. MAXjet is toast, so is Eos, and despite many rumors, Silverjet is officially done as well. Now that last man standing, L’Avion, is part of the BA empire and will be fully integrated into OpenSkies.

If you had a ticket on L’Avion to fly from Newark to Paris, nothing should change . . . for now. OpenSkies says it will “operate up to three daily flights between Paris Orly and the New York area,” it’s that “up to” piece that makes me believe these frequencies won’t last for long. Right now, OpenSkies flies from JFK and L’Avion flies from Newark. It wouldn’t surprise me if they end up consolidating at some point.

I guess we should have seen this coming when OpenSkies announced a codeshare with L’Avion right when they started flying. But that still begs the question . . . why are they doing this? Beats me. It’s not like they need more 757s, and I’m sure they could have driven out L’Avion if they really wanted to. Maybe they really wanted those extra slots at Orly, but that seems like an awful lot to pay for them, no? I guess I don’t know the going rate.

Either way, we’re going to see a quicker ramp up of the airline than previously planned. Keep an eye out for new cities to pop up from OpenSkies sooner rather than later. I would imagine this will continue to be focused on flights from New York to other points in Continental Europe.

Open Skies, the new airline from BA, is getting ready to launch flights between New York and Paris in the next couple of weeks, and we’re slowly learning more about their service. In last week’s blog post, Dale Moss, head honcho, announced that the airline will have a concierge service for those who fly with the airline.

Unlike Air New Zealand, this won’t be an onboard concierge. No, this will be a service on the ground to help you plan your trip. Dale has apparently gone and hired as many people with fancy pants names like Aurore, Chantal, and Stellan as he could find to do the job. I’m actually a little surprised to see they’ve hired 10 people to do this - that seems to be way more than enough for such a small airline.

So how does this make sense for the airline? Well, it’s a differentiator. It provides a great resource for people - almost like having a travel agent at your beck and call, and that’s a nice benefit. Depending upon how Open Skies handles it, the airline should benefit monetarily as well. If they book you a room, they should be able to get a commission of some sort. If it can pay for itself, then it’s a no-brainer.

It’s hard to write so many posts in advance of a long trip, so I asked my coworker and Cranky Photographer, Christopher Craig, to pick out a photo from his collection that I could post while I’m gone. Now keep in mind, I wrote this post on April 26, and I’m just going to guess that there’s been more merger activity since then. So, has this merger happened yet?

I’d like to blame this ridiculous idea on my brain not getting enough oxygen at the high Peruvian altitudes, but I guess I already told you I wrote this before I left. Oh well. My plane is landing as this post goes live (assuming we’re on time), so I guess I’ll find out what really happened soon enough. I’ll be back posting on my regular schedule again tomorrow.

A friend of mine who frequently flies out of London/Heathrow wrote to me recently and wondered why my coverage had been so light on the new Terminal 5. I guess I was just waiting to see when things calmed down. I mean, everyone has been talking about how horrible the problems have been since it opened, and I didn’t think I had much to add. Just about every facility has teething problems, even huge ones like we’ve seen in this case.

So, he gave me some good fodder for a post. Instead of focusing on the opening problems, let’s look at the experience as it’s supposed to be. The verdict? My friend is not so happy.

1. Limited-to-no premium check-in - My friend always flies business class for his frequent work trips, and he noticed that while there was a “tiny first class check in area,” there was “no dedicated first/gold card security lane” and “no business class check in at all.”
   
   Hmm, that didn’t seem right to me, but sure enough, that was BA’s plan all along. I spoke with John Lampl, spokesman for BA here in the US, about these issues, and he confirmed that “one of the concepts is . . . no dedicated queues for premium travelers, because what we expect them to do is check in online . . . get to the airport in time for their flight, go through the bag drop [if necessary] and security and go up to the lounge.”
   
   How strange. John says this comes from a great deal of research, but I know there are premium travelers who prefer the personal touch and want a human being to take care of things for them. Unfortunately now, if you want help from a real person, you have to wait in line with everyone else. The goal is, of course, to have no lines at all, but that’s not always realistic.




2. Security validation - Apparently BA has set up a fancy pants system that makes you scan your boarding pass when you go through security. According to John, if you have a valid boarding pass and you’re there more than 35 minutes prior to your flight’s departure time, then you shouldn’t have any trouble. That didn’t work out so well for my friend. He says:
   
   “I checked in online and printed [my] boarding pass but had to go to [the] check in desk to have my [ticket] ‘validated’ or activated in the system. This was after stopping by the first check in area and having been told to proceed to security.”
   
   Hmm, this doesn’t sound very good either. I’m sure there are opening day glitches, but it’s not far-fetched for a boarding pass to get corrupted or a system to malfunction. Sending someone back to the general check-in area every time there’s a problem is not only aggravating, but it’s poor customer service.




3. Lounge locations - As a gold card holder on BA, he’s entitled access to certain lounges. Apparently, it’s not very convenient in his eyes. He says:
   
   “There is a door into the lounge area right by security but it is for pax booked in first only (a gold card won’t cut it…) so to access the lounge you have to walk in a loop, go downstairs, then back upstairs.”
   
   That seems rather strange to me, but John says there is some hope here. “We had elevator problems in the first few days. He may have been forced to go downstairs and then upstairs.” So hopefully this one isn’t a problem.




4. Security bins - “Everything has to go in a security bin - even your bags. Someone tried to get way too clever and design an automatic bin return. Needless to say that does not work to well. And my carry-on got stuck in the stupid bin.”
   
   Yeah, that’s definitely frustrating. Sometimes, the most simple things are the best way to go. Designing an automatic return system may sound good in theory, but it could end up being more trouble than it’s worth. Hopefully this one is just part of those “opening day jitters.”




5. Lounge quality - Apparently, once my friend found the lounge, it was fine, but that’s about it.
   
   “Lounge is nice - food is nothing special at all. Virgin still kicks their ass on this front - in fact I think BA will lose a lot of business to Virgin b/c the setup here for a premium pax is stupid. . . . Regular lounges have same and more food than first. I don’t think it qualifies as a coffee house if you have automatic machines that make marginal cappuccinos. Champagne bars with only 2 champagnes would not last long. Oh - why can they do decent fresh oj on plane but [the] lounge has concentrate?”
   
   Something tells me this could be an issue of overpromising with the brand. What do I mean? If they’re going to call it a “champagne bar,” which they do, then it probably should have more than 2 types of champagne. If it’s just a lounge, then 2 champagnes are fine.
   
   The orange juice issue is the one that is most likely to get action. When I told that to John, he said, “I totally agree with him. We will take that comment and that will be sent to the people catering the lounges.”




6. Arrivals lounge - Once my friend returned, he sent me a follow up note about the arrivals experience. Though many of those gripes were probably just “teething problem,” I think his notes on the arrivals lounge were interesting.
   
   “Classic BA. Indifferent staff, no warm greetings and same crap food. You really think they could make something better on the ground than in an airplane. I especially like the “self service” luggage check. You present your bags, the counter clerk open the little gate and says “Yep. Take them back there”. Staffing levels clearly low. No one at the spa area or shower check in.”
   
   Sounds adequate but nothing more, in his eyes.

So that was about it. My friend summed it up after his trip by saying “Compared to [Virgin Atlantic], I would say BA completely lost the plot and missed a huge opportunity to create a great space for premium pax. Watch their load factors drop.” That’s certainly an unfortunate opinion and not one that will please BA. I know they were trying to do something amazing here.

So, for him it was clearly a disappointing experience, but one man does not represent everyone. Who else has an opinion of the Terminal 5 experience? Anyone else have a different view on things?

BA moved in to the brand-spanking new Terminal 5 at Heathrow today, and it didn’t take long for the baggage system to fail. Looks like they stopped accepting checked bags and won’t start again until Friday morning.

I guess they didn’t want to shock travelers by having a baggage system that actually worked right away. That would have been too big of a change from the previous setup, so they must be easing people into it. Hopefully that’ll happen soon, but if you can avoid checking bags for the next few days, do it.

There has been a ton of interesting news to write about in the last few days, and I’d been having trouble figuring out with what to lead . . . until yesterday. Turns out that I was voted one of the the world’s 50 most powerful blogs by The Observer in the UK.

Holy crap! That’s kind of scary. But, I’m guessing that means I’ll have a bunch of new visitors from that side of the Pond (welcome, everyone), so I’m going to post Sunday night instead of my usual Monday morning. And, while I’m being accommodating, let’s focus on something that probably causes you newbies pain and suffering more often than not: Heathrow.

Usually, any discussion of Heathrow involves a lot of cursing, rising blood pressure, and possibly some crying. With any luck, we’ll see less of that in the near future, but it’s likely to get worse in the short term. Why?

Well, we’re getting closer to the big terminal move. On March 27, BA will land its first flights at the brand-spanking new Terminal 5 and that begins a long period of transition for the airport as just about everyone save Virgin Atlantic moves locations.

I’ve tried to put together a handy guide on all the terminal moves so you can actually figure out where you’re supposed to go for your next flight. First, we’ll start with oneworld airlines, since they have the most changes happening the earliest.

Now let’s take a look at SkyTeam. In short, when Delta, Northwest, and Continental start flying to Heathrow in March, they’ll be in BA’s old Terminal 4. The rest of the carriers won’t move until early 2009, when a major terminal renovation will have been completed. Anyone who has flown BA out of that terminal lately knows that it is in desperate need of some help.

I’d like to list the Star Alliance changes here as well, but I haven’t been able to find them. In fact, while oneworld and SkyTeam have been on top of the changes, Star Alliance has been silent. I sent the alliance a request and their response left me wondering if they actually meant to insult my intelligence or if they just don’t speak English very well.

We would like to inform you, however, that the Star Alliance is a network of 19 individual airlines. Operational matters are handled by the airlines themselves. Therefore, for more information, you will need to contact the individual Star Alliance member airlines directly.

Really? You guys aren’t an airline yourself? No sh**. Well, I also asked United directly and spokesperson Robin Urbanski told me that the airline will be moving to Terminal 1, but it’s unclear when that might be and that will happen on June 1. Clearly, this alliance is a little less organized, probably because the changes aren’t coming as quickly as with the others.

We know that the airlines in Terminal 1 will stay there for now. Terminal 2 will be demolished starting this year, so those guys have to move somewhere. On March 27, BA moves nearly all of its domestic and European flights out of Terminal 1, so I have to assume that everyone from Terminal 2 will move in before their terminal disappears. Will the Terminal 3 airlines move at the same time or will they stay longer? My guess is that they won’t move immediately because there’s no urgency. Here’s how they stack up right now along with my best guesses as to where they’ll go. The only thing I know for sure is that US Airways will go to Terminal 1 when it starts service to the airport on March 30.

Update 3/25 @ 822a - Star has put out a press release with much more guidance. All Star carriers will be expected to move to Heathrow East in 2012 when the terminal is completed, but I haven’t included those changes in here.

Of course, not all airlines are in alliances. Virgin Atlantic, for example, will stay in Terminal 3, so you won’t see any changes there. All other unaligned airlines (except for former oneworld member Aer Lingus which will be in Terminal 3) will end up in Terminal 4. Again, I’m not entirely sure when that might happen, but one thing is clear . . . there will be a lot of confusion at Heathrow until things settle down, and that could take years.

If you have to go to the airport in the near future, leave plenty of time and bring lots of patience. If you have the misfortune of connecting through Heathrow, especially while these changes are in progress, may God have mercy on your souls.

Click for more on Heathrow and more on BA. And click if you’d like to subscribe via RSS or daily email.

I think I had more questions than answers in my post yesterday. Fortunately, shortly after I finished, I received an offer to speak with Woody Harford, Senior Vice President of Commercial for British Airways in North America. Woody was more than happy to answer as many of my questions as he could. Then soon after, I received an email with more information from Robin Hayes, Executive Vice President in the Americas. Pretty good service, huh?

Here’s the interview with Woody. I’ve also put notes from Robin and Mark Ahasic, an aviation operations expert, in italics to show what I learned after we spoke.

Cranky: Will this have the Club World seat, the new OpenSkies seat, or something different?

Woody: It will be a flat bed business class seat that will deliver all the benefits of our new Club World seat. I can’t guarantee it will be that particular product, but it will deliver all the benefits.

Cranky: Do you have an exact start date?

Woody: Not yet.

Cranky: I assume it’s dependent upon when you take delivery of the A318s.

Woody: You got it.

Cranky: Do you know anything about pricing yet? I assume it won’t be cheap.

Woody: We’re not looking . . . this is part of an overall premium product portfolio from BA to serve travelers. It will be priced appropriately but no specifics yet. The bottom line is that there’s nothing we sell that I think is “cheap,” but it will always be priced with value in mind. Over the coming year, there will be an opportunity for a range of products in premium pricing to compete and fill aircraft.

Cranky: Will you be able to make the westbound trip nonstop?

Woody: No, it will be a one-stop service to refuel. It’s not been determined where it will be yet. [I read your earlier post.] You have a very interesting point in terms of Ireland [and the ability to pre-clear immigration there].

I discussed this with Mark Ahasic, and he said that “pre-cleared flights from Ireland are still required to arrive at an international airport with FIS for Customs inspection of bags.” So, even if BA can clear people in Ireland, they’ll still need to go through customs. I suppose BA could set up a dedicated line that would speed them through if they wanted, but it wouldn’t be exactly like walking off a domestic flight.

Cranky: How long will you have to be on the ground to refuel?

Woody: We’re looking at a 40-minute refuel time. Throw a couple of US immigration and customs inspectors and you never know.

Cranky: With the refueling stop, will it still be compelling?

Woody: Yes. You’ll be on the airplane on your way home instead of stuck in a traffic jam on the M25. The block time will be in the same neighborhood as it will take for someone fly out of Heathrow.

Robin actually had some exact block times for me. “Total journey time from New York to London City is 7 hrs and 10 mins and it will be nine and a half hours the other way round. If you compare this with a 747 on our JFK-LHR service then the times are 6 hrs 55 mins and 7 hrs 40 mins respectively.” So the A318s slightly slower cruise speed means it’ll be a 15 minute longer flight on the way east. That’s no big deal. But westbound, we’re looking at 1:50 minutes longer. Is it worth it?

Well it depends upon where you’re starting in London. If you’re in the Canary Wharf/Docklands area, it’ll take less than 30 minutes to get to the airport and you only need to be there 15 minutes prior to departure. So you could leave your office an hour before your flight and still have time to spare.

If you fly out of Heathrow, you probably need to be there no less than an hour before departure, and that’s probably cutting it very close (this is in Business Class, however). Then it takes a little under an hour in no traffic from Canary Wharf to Heathrow, so let’s say it’s an hour and a half in normal traffic. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) You’re then at a wash in terms of time spent. If they can somehow work out pre-clearance in Ireland, then you’re net positive.

Robin also mentioned that they will treat London/City and Heathrow as coterminals. In other words, you could fly one way to London/City and the return from Heathrow if you’d like, and it will be treated like a roundtrip flight for pricing purposes. So if you really don’t want to stop for fuel on the way home, you can still take advantage of the service on the way to London.

Cranky: Where would you like to fly in New York?

Woody: As you well know, there’s an overall New York area slot review process. We can’t say . . . it’s one airport or the other [JFK or Newark]. We own and operate our own terminal at JFK. We have great latitude with what we can do at that facility. We also have a fantastic facility at Newark that we’ll be growing and improving. We’ll be happy to fly out of either airport - we’d prefer to fly it out of JFK.

Cranky: What about Teterboro?

Woody: We don’t have any facilities at Teterboro and I don’t know what facilities they have in terms of customs and immigration.

Cranky: Will you consider it?

Woody: Doubtful. The other benefit of flying with British Airways in this scenario is that if one of these planes has tech problems, we have 11 other services to London out of New York every day.

Again, Mark Ahasic set me straight on this one. The Port Authority has decreed that no aircraft over 100,000 lbs can operate there, and the A318 tips the scales near 150,000 lbs at max weight. Even if there wasn’t a weight restriction, the Port actually prohibits airlines from operating there. Oh well, it was a nice idea.

Cranky: How will you achieve 15 minute check in a JFK or EWR?

Woody: The way we’ll construct it will be to get people through in 15 minutes. At the end of the day, we have a host of new things coming into JFK and Newark in terms of online check-in and kiosk check-in. We will enable people to really move quickly through the processing part of the journey. The bottom line benefit of this whole thing is time management.

Robin mentioned that the 15 minute check-in time was for people carrying hand luggage only. I’d imagine that on a flight like this, there won’t be too many people checking a bag, but you can assume you’ll have to get there earlier if you do. Maybe 30 to 40 minutes, I’d guess?

And that was that. Oh yeah, one more question from a friend of mine.

What the heck does an A318 look like?

Think of an A319 or A320 that ran head-on into a wall and got smushed. In the process, it’s tail grew a little. Ah, forget it. Let me just show you a picture.

It’s really just a shorter A320 narrowbody aircraft.

I’m still really high on this service, even with a westbound stop, and I think it will do well. There aren’t that many seats to fill here, and there should be enough demand.

It’s not often that I see a route announcement come out from an airline that makes me do a double-take. I mean, there are always crazy things in this industry, but I expect that by now. Today’s announcement that British Airways will start transatlantic service from tiny London/City Airport definitely made me drop everything. That post I was planning for today? It’ll have to wait. This one is just too cool.

As they’re wont to do these days, BA was short on detail but they felt it was worth it to put out a broad release about their plans. It’s at least a year away, but once British Airways takes delivery of their specially configured A318 aircraft with 32 flat bed business class seats onboard, they’ll begin flying nonstop between London/City Airport and New York twice daily. This is just about all we know. So many questions . . .

Will physics actually allow them to do this? London/City is one tiny airport. It was basically carved out of the Docklands on the Thames about 20 years ago, and there’s not much room. The runway is just shy of 5,000 ft. That’s about 800 ft SHORTER than the longest runway at John Wayne/Orange County. It’s about 1,500 ft shorter than the longest runway at Chicago/Midway. It’s less than HALF the length of the runways at London/Heathrow. Still can’t grasp it? Take a look at this shot via Google Maps. That’s City up top, with its runway on the right side and Heathrow’s south runway below.

Seeing that makes me amazed that they can get this plane off the ground. The runway is so short that aircraft have to receive special approvals to fly there. The A318 received its approval less than 2 years ago, and it’s by far the biggest plane that can land there. So, they’ll only have 32 seats onboard, and that has to help it, but I’m still not convinced it’ll be able to make it on the flight to New York without a stop.

If it needs to stop, is it still worth it? Yep, probably. Most definitely if you’re going to Canary Wharf, the large business district. You’ll be just a couple miles away from there, and you only need to check in 15 minutes prior to departure. So, you’ll still probably save time over driving to Heathrow. More importantly, you’ll save time over flying out of Stansted as well. That was always Eos’ selling point - get to Canary Wharf faster from Stansted than Heathrow. This blows that away, and has to make Eos nervous.

But let’s say they do have to stop. Can they stop in Ireland and gain pre-clearance? Flights from Ireland to the US have a special arrangement. There are US immigration officers over there who pre-clear you into the US before your flight. If this flight has to stop, maybe they can get everyone off and pre-clear them while the plane is refueling so that they can be ready to go once they hit the ground in New York.

Um, where exactly will they hit the ground in New York? They have left out any mention of which airport they’ll use on this side of the Pond. Could they be considering something really cool? Teterboro is the private jet mecca just across the Hudson River. Would they be able to fly in there? That would make for an extremely convenient operation on both ends with short check-in times each way (though they say they’ll have 15 minute check in at any New York airport this uses). I suppose it’s possible that they’re just waiting to figure out if they can fly to JFK or if they don’t have enough slots, but I’d like to think that for such an unconventional service as this one, they’ll be all over the possible alternatives.

What do I think about this? I think this is an absolutely fantastic move. It’s something that I never thought could be done, but it’s likely to do very well. This is not going to be for the price sensitive, but when it comes to convenience, this will be comparable to a private jet (depending upon where they go in New York). With only 32 seats onboard each of the flights, they don’t need that many people to make this work. Combine that with some solid earnings today, and it’s a good day to be British Airways.

If you’re traveling through London/Heathrow today, you might want to call your airline and see if things are running on time. They haven’t exactly had the best of luck there these last couple of days.

See, yesterday a British Airways 777 landed on the grass before it got to the concrete, skidded, and ended up stopping right at the threshold to one of Heathrow’s two runways, as you can see below.

Everyone got off ok, and that’s pretty amazing. I spent the day yesterday going back and forth with a bunch of airline dork friends discussing what could have possibly caused this to happen. The weather was good and there weren’t any visibility issues, so that’s unlikely to have been the problem. There were reports that the engines failed, so what would have caused it? Did it run out of fuel? Maybe, though unlikely. It didn’t catch on fire, so that’s always possible.

I know, I should really keep out of this whole speculation game. Remember that potential “undular bore” that the Air Canada plane may have hit? Well, there are now reports that it could have been wake turbulence from a 747 passing in front of it. Not nearly as interesting, but certainly plausible. So, it makes me want to reserve judgment on this accident even though it’s so interesting.

The Daily Mail, however, has no problem speculating that it may have been a bird strike that shut down both engines simultaneously just a minute before landing. They have a bunch of incredible pictures and more details on the site. The odds of that seem so unbelievably small. It made me wonder which was more unlikely: that scenario or Randy Johnson hitting a bird over home plate with his fastball a few years back.

Well, it doesn’t matter. They’ll figure it out soon enough, I’m sure. It’s interesting to note that this is the first major accident I can think of involving a 777. That’s a very long and impressive safety record.

But back to my original point. That plane is still sitting at the threshold to the runway, so it may cause delays. Right now, I believe the runway is open to departing flights. (”And please don’t look to your right, ladies and gentlemen.”) Yesterday, when the runway was closed, most short haul flights were canceled or diverted so that long hauls could run. I imagine that the runway may need to close on and off for investigation and removal, so short haul flights may be affected again.