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