This week’s featured link:
For the First Time, Allegiant Air Learns What It’s Like to Configure a New Airplane – Skift
This is a great story from Brian Sumers about how Allegiant had to learn how to outfit an aircraft. The airline has always chosen used aircraft, but now it has new airplanes coming from Airbus for the first time. Apparently it was quite the learning experience, and Brian got into some great details about what was involved in the process, all the way down to deciding whether Allegiant would want to have a row 13 or not.
Two for the road:
SWISS, Austrian and Lufthansa abolish two-persons-in-the-cockpit rule – ATW
You probably remember when Lufthansa’s Germanwings subsidiary had a pilot commit suicide by crashing a full airplane into a mountain on purpose. The resulting review ended with a decision to follow US laws and require 2 people in the cockpit at all times. This, ideally, would have prevented one person from commandeering the airplane. It seemed perfectly rational to me, and at the time I said “It’s certainly a rule that should be in place because it can only help.” Apparently, the Europeans disagree. Now the rule is going away and Lufthansa and its subsidiaries will go back to having only one person required in the cockpit. I don’t get the rationale at all.
Hawaiian Airlines Reveals New Logo And Livery – The Design Air
Hawaiian released an updated livery and Pualani logo this week, and I think it looks fantastic. It’s an evolution, and it seems to be built to infuse local pride into the workforce (helpful now that contentious pilot negotiations are finally done). I find the silver maile lei wrapping the fuselage to be a great addition. Anything that erases some of that Euro-white fuselage is welcome. It looks particularly stunning in this shot of the first aircraft painted in the new scheme, this Long Beach-built beauty:
The new livery and logo of @HawaiianAir on its Boeing 717. Photo via Aeros808. Mahalo. #ceLEIbrate #Pualani pic.twitter.com/XYonpCz5Ib
— Hawaii Aviation (@HawaiiAviation) May 1, 2017
15 comments on “3 Links I Love: Allegiant Chooses Row 13 and an Orange Stripe, Lufthansa Group Ditches a Safety Rule, New Hawaiian Pualani”
Agree on the livery. In addition to the silver, I really like the more colorful touches near the tail. The new logo/font shown in the link are quite nice too.
The skift article is excellent. I love the part with negotiating with Easy to use their orange
I fail to understand why Allegiant would want to copy the interior of Easyjet because they already bought some aircraft second hand. If anything, Allegiant should be working to remove any branding reminiscent of another airline and aim to have their aircraft either with Allegiant branding or neutral.
There’s no possibility in the foreseeable future of Allegiant and Easyjet overlapping, and most Americans have either never heard of Easyjet or just know it as the “European LCC that’s less annoying than Ryanair”. So if their orange colour was closer to the orange Allegiant wanted, why not?
I’m not sure what’s to be gained by dropping the 2 person cockpit rule. It’s not like they were adding another pilot to these flights. Is it that much of a bother to pull a flight attendant into the cockpit for a 5 min bathroom break? I surely hope another Germanwings incident doesn’t happen but if it does the victims blood is on Lufthansa. Balsy move.
Maybe they’re going to start having the pilots wear diapers…..LOL
Astronauts do this.
Perhaps they will cater the flights with crowbars and train crew members to break open the cockpit door.
When will Pualani and the Eskimo elope and finally get married? I noticed the Eskimo is sporting a lei these days and is no longer claiming to be a Virgin.
Let AS finish the merger with VX first. There are several years of work ahead of them.
The wahine seems to like having multiple partners… she’s linked up with ANA, Korean, China, American, Delta, United, Jet Blue and others.
The 2-person-rule requires the cockpit door to be open longer and more often. That’s why LH drops it. They feel that the reduced accessibility outweighs the risk of a suicidal pilot.
I think they are right.
More often? I think the number of door openings would be the same, it just takes a moment longer for two people to swap positions than for one person to enter/exit.
Choosing interiors is a huge thing for the airlines. Boeing has a 100,000 square foot building here in Everett just for choosing interiors for the 787.
Swiss, Austrian and the Lufthansa don’t represent all “Europeans”. The logical requirement to always have two people in the cockpit remains at many other carriers.
Rarified air affects people differently!