The Cranky Flier » Civil Aviation

This Week on BNET (Feb 23 – 27)

CF — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:17:17 +0000

JetBlue Leaves Open Skies for Sabre
The Open Skies system may be simple, but it no longer provides what many low cost carriers need. That’s why it’s Sabre time.

Abandoned Airport Looks to Solar Energy
Palmdale Airport may not work as an actual airport, but a solar energy farm? Now we’re talking.

JetBlue Offers Refunds For Those Who Lose Their Jobs
JetBlue says not to worry about losing your job, because they’ll give your money back if you do . . . with several restrictions.

Aircraft Demand Continues to Drop
Drive by Marana or Mojave and you’re likely to see plenty more airplanes collecting dust than at this time last year. The trend isn’t changing either.

Delta Replaces Northwest from Los Angeles to Las Vegas
Northwest has flown Vegas to LA for years to feed people from Tokyo and other Asian cities, but that’s ending. Delta is taking it over and changing the times.

Large Aircraft Security Proposal Threatens to Strangle General Aviation
The TSA is at it again. This time, they’re trying to slap commercial aviation-style security on general aviation. Uh oh.

Sabre Allows Travel Agents to Sell United’s Economy Plus
It took them long off, but United and Sabre have finally teamed together to allow travel agents using Sabre to sell Economy Plus upgrades on United.

Alaska Gets Its Wireless Internet Test Up and Running
Alaska now has one plane test flying with onboard internet. When will one of these test airlines actually commit?

More Fun with FlightAware

CF — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:25:00 +0000

Corporate jet manufacturer Gulfstream has been running some test flights over the last month of their Gulfstream V (“G-Five”) aircraft. As you can see from FlightAware, they thought it would be fun to show off on this particular flight.

Yup, that’s called skywriting for the web. This flight took 8 hours and 27 minutes at altitudes of up to 49,000 feet. As you can tell, they wrote the aircraft name “G V” in their flight. I have to give them credit. That’s really creative.

Thanks to this thread on airliners.net for the heads up.

Super Net Worth at the Super Bowl

CF — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:49:00 +0000

A friend forwarded on a blog post with a link to this picture of all the corporate jets leaving the Super Bowl on Monday morning.

Now that is a lot of jet action. Just think of all the money that was concentrated in South Florida over the weekend.

Not personal enough for you? Well let’s dig in. Thanks to this thread in the FlightAware discussion forums, we can follow the aircraft of some celebrities while we’re at it.

Troy Aikman’s personal jet flew him in on Thursday, but he returned to Addison (Texas) Sunday at noon, before the game even started.

Kenny Chesney came to town on Saturday morning and went back to Nashville Monday afternoon.

And Magic Johnson dropped in Friday afternoon heading back home to Van Nuys (near LA) late at night on Sunday.

By the way, you can follow all these celebrities through FlightAware. Just keep watching those tail numbers. The most fun to watch in person is John Travolta’s personal 707 that he flies himself. The registration is N707JT.

He was apparently also in town for the game, arriving Friday afternoon and heading out Monday evening. He’s hanging out in Boston now, so head on over to Logan airport and you can see a beautiful 707 in old Qantas colors.