This week’s featured link:
Dash 8: The Piedmont Story – YouTube
As you know from reading the blog, Piedmont just retired its last Dash 8 from service. It had flown that airplane for more than 30 years, so you can imagine that it was an important aircraft to the airline. Turns out, it was so important that Piedmont put together a half-hour documentary looking at the airplane, and it is just delightful. At the very least, put this on in the background while you work. You’ll enjoy it.
Two for the road:
American Air Sinks Most in Two Years on Surprise Fare Weakness – Bloomberg
Fares are weak, fuel is climbing… look for more capacity moves if things don’t change quickly.
‘S*** happens’: New questions surface about response to Asiana plane crash at San Francisco International Airport – ABC7 News
I hadn’t thought about this accident in a long time, but there’s new video shedding light on the response from the SF fire department after running over one of the passengers.
9 comments on “3 Links I Love: Ode to the Dash, Fare Weakness, Asiana Crash Response”
The documentary on the Dash-8 was nice. I noticed that Delta mentioned capacity cuts during its earnings call. I wouldn’t be surprised to see American mention them, too. American’s lower stock price will allow the airline to buy back more of its shares using the same amount of cash. It wouldn’t surprise me to see at least one major airline eventually go private and / or get acquired by Warren Buffet (a la Burlington Northern).
what was the weird email about Aura this morning? Looked like some notes from an interview
Yep, those were my notes from a conversation with the founder of Aura yesterday. Those obviously weren’t supposed to be published, but I will have a real post on it eventually.
Loved the Dash-8 video. Well worth 30 minutes of my lunch break. I am always surprised to see how much people get emotionally invested in their every day work (and “tools”). Just remember that next time you want to be snarky or rude to your FA or other airline employee – they are people with pride and ownership just like you…
I’m confused, I thought they were all heroes …
Taking a less sarcastic take, just spoke to a firefighter buddy. Asked him what he knew about airport fire depts. He said he didn’t know much, but one of his now colleagues left airport dept. because it was too boring and felt his skills were degrading. Maybe time to revisit airport-dedicated fire stations. Doesn’t excuse lying by the fire chief, though.
That Dash 8 video was awesome. I want more.
Love love love the Dash 8 video. Such a great way to memorialize an awesome plane and to put voices to those employees who worked with it. I sent a link to the video to my company’s corporate communications director as a great example of the art of his job.
I would pay good money to see a video of Mr. Henson doing the stunt mentioned. Not many owners or leaders of airlines these days who not only know how to fly their company’s planes, but who also have the raw chutzpah to do stunts that make the airplane manufacturer’s own test pilots as white as sheets… Reminds me of the famous 707 barrel roll, for lack of a more appropriate comparison.
The video from ABC7 frustrated me.
The thing I didn’t know is how much time passed from the plane crash until Ye Meng Yuan was ran over. I had always assumed that she was ran over earlier in the response while the fire department was still involved in life saving efforts.
She was ran over 22 minutes after the crash, and it appears that the scene is generally safe and fire fighters are continuing to secure the scene. There was plenty of time for fire fighters to attend to her.