This week’s featured link:
Critics Take Aim at Mexico City’s Wild New Airport – CityLab
If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that Mexico City needs more room at its airport. The place is bursting at the seams, and demand for new capacity is high. There’s a new mega-airport being built that will solve this problem… but one of the main candidates running for president wants to scrap it mid-construction and do something different. What a mess.
Two for the road:
French Minister Warns Air France’s Future Is Now in Jeopardy – Bloomberg
Oh, Air France. The CEO trusted his employees to vote for a package that would help the airline move forward. If they didn’t, he said he’d resign. They didn’t, and he did. That’s not the kind of leader that airline needs. But then again, can anyone fix that place? While government officials can talk about the airline being in jeopardy, they’d never let it die. Labor at Air France, meanwhile, continues to cripple the airline with obnoxious strikes.
The Forgotten Flights To Mauritius – KLM Blog
In the other half of the company, KLM continues to do what it does well. That means it has time to write blog posts with fun facts from history. Did you know KLM first flew to Mauritius in 1949 so it could get to Southeast Asia? This service even required a submarine. Confused? Just read this great story.
13 comments on “3 Links I Love: The Mexico City Airport Problem, Air France in Jeopardy, KLM and Mauritius”
On the KLM article… Really wish I could have flown one of those Connies back in the day. Absolutely love the look of them, with no two frames the same and a porpoise-like shape, definitely one of the most beautiful airliners ever made IMHO.
Same. The Connie has beautiful lines and I really wish I could have flown on one. If you haven’t been, check out the TWA/Connie Museum in the old downtown airport in Kansas City. I happened upon it while in KC for work one time and really enjoyed it.
https://www.airlinehistory.org/constellation/
Very cool, will have to remember that the next time I visit family in KC. My favorite aviation museum is the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH, followed by the IAD Smithsonian Museum and the Yankee Air Museum in Ypsilanti, MI.
The National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City is also well worth a visit. I only had the chance to spend a few hours there, but definitely want to go back and spend a day.
The more I travel and move around, the more I come to enjoy spending time in small/mid-sized cities, and preferably living near/in them. Places like Kansas City, Fort Worth, Cincinnati, Austin, Ann Arbor, Portland, Grand Rapids, etc, have plenty of culture and cool neighborhoods and events, without nearly as much of the craziness, crime, and traffic that you often see in the really big cities.
The proposed Mexico City airport is a fiasco and a triumph only in political connections and corruption, with poor site planning and a fevered dream of architecture that looks impressive, but would likely blitz the surrounding areas as well as unleashing serious environmental issues. The reality is that many major cities are served by multiple airports, and there’s nothing wrong with the idea of there being a secondary airport that also serves Mexico City, just as Newark, JFK, and LaGuardia serve NYC, or BWI/Reagan/Dulles serve the DC area.
Its typical that the government will waste all the money put into the current project the will be ready to use, that leaves an unfinished project abandoned….keep the current project until finished and not build anymore, use the other airport for a LCC complex, ive been to MEX a few times and the airport is a mess….governments love to waste money….
I don’t understand this logic. Democratically elected governments have the right to cancel projects and initiatives of the previous administration before them. No government should be bound indefinitely to a plan lest, like in this situation, the previous government attempted to funnel money to take biggest and wealthiest supporters.
Confused, why would a government cancel a project with millions already spent when the 1st phase is about ready to open….finish the one part that is near completion and cancel the rest, the money for the 2nd phase could be used elsewhere….Mexico has enough financial problems that im sure wasting all the money already spent would make the people mad….
I don’t know anything about this project, but… look up “sunk cost fallacy” for why money already spent isn’t always a good argument for continuing what you have been doing.
When its almost operational….
Air France should be shut down and start a new company from scratch, striking only causes money loss, the very thing employees want….put all employees on a fair pay scale, drop unprofitable routes and keep a simplified fleet….management needs to also be on s fair pay scale, no bonuses unless all employees can be given a bonus….this comment could go on and on but this is my opinion for a start
I read the article and am still confused why an actual submarine was necessary
I can’t find anything specific on this, but there are one or two mentions on the web of a Dutch navy research submarine being conveniently available to help out when KLM was starting transatlantic service. What I get out of it is that the sub would gather weather information in the region of the point of no return and relay it to the KLM aircraft so the crew could know if headwinds would be a problem and decide whether or not to proceed. I don’t know if this is the real answer, but it sounds logical. I don’t see any indication of why this couldn’t be done with a ship, but maybe it was just a matter of what was available.
What? No mention of the United Airlines tomato-juice saga??