This week’s featured link:
Pilots’ union sues Horizon Air over deferral of 6 jet deliveries – Seattle Times
These are interesting times up in the Pacific Northwest. Horizon, unsurprisingly, has a pilot shortage. At first it just impacted the Q400 flying which had to be scaled back. But now, presumably because of training issues, there aren’t enough pilots to fly the new Embraer 175 either. So, Alaska wants to have SkyWest flying some of Horizon’s 175s until Horizon (a wholly-owned subsidiary, mind you) can gets its act together. The Horizon pilots are angry, as you’d expect. It’s lawsuit time, and this thing is just going to get uglier.
Two for the road:
Are Airlines Price Gouging Ahead Of Hurricane Irma? – One Mile at a Time
No, they aren’t. This article lacks a basic understanding of how airline pricing works. As airplanes fill up, that means prices get more expensive. Most of the time, you don’t see everything sold out several days in advance, but there’s been such a run on seats, that’s exactly what’s happening now. The few seats that are left are being sold at full fare. This would be the case regardless of whether there’s a hurricane or not. It would actually require the airlines to take steps to lower fares purposefully, as JetBlue has done, if they wanted to impact what was selling during the hurricane. This isn’t gouging; it’s just how the mechanics of airline pricing work.
Watch a Delta flight race Hurricane Irma into and out of Puerto Rico – Quartz
This article is ridiculous. It’s basically just someone copying and pasting Jason Rabinowitz’s Twitter feed. Is it fun to watch Delta squeeze an airplane into San Juan as a hurricane gets close? Sure is, but you don’t need some to regurgitate Jason. Just follow him on Twitter for this kind of avgeekiness on a regular basis.
