This week’s featured link:
British Airways Celebrates 60 Years of Jet Flights Across the Atlantic (+Photos) – Airways
I was invited to join this event in London by BA, but I wasn’t able to go. (There was a lot of cool stuff this week, and I wouldn’t do any of it.) Here’s a little bit of coverage from Airways.
Two for the road:
Bringing IoT to flight: Sensors, alerts, payments and more from APEX EXPO 2018 – Wandering Aramean
I wasn’t at the Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) Expo in Boston this year, but Seth pulled out a few of the cool things. I like the overhead bin sensors.
Airbus’s Emirates Deal to Save A380 Jumbo Has Stalled – Bloomberg
Well that can’t be good news for Airbus, though I imagine they’ll all come to a deal at some point and Airbus will just give a big discount.
There doesn’t seem a need for the A380, and if it wasn’t for EK I bet it would have been gone already or never started.
There clearly is a need, and it clearly is a beautiful plane – but, also clearly, it needs a NEO to make it more economical. There are plenty of routes on which US carriers could make the 380 work for them – but the fact is at the moment, the 777/787/A350/A330neo repertoire give such good flexibility and economy, there is no need to look at the 380 (well, that, and a modicum of jingoistic jealousy).
I love flying on them – they are quieter than any jet I have ever been on, and extremely resilient to turbulence. And before the Seattle-disciples chime in, I also love the 773ER and the 787 (yet to travel on the A350/330 and probably won’t until UA have their 350’s delivered (if that ever happens).
When I saw the headline about overhead bin sensors, I thought it would either be something like the lights you see in parking garages, identifying available spaces, or something ULCCs could use to catch customers using the bin when they hadn’t paid for it.
Both, one suspects, more likely to appeal to many airline managements.
BA celebrating their centenary next year is a bogus guerilla marketing stunt to get in before the forthcoming KLM and Qantas centenaries as the longest serving airlines respectively. The rewrite of history is based on a tenuous link to some outfit called Aircraft Transport and Travel which ironically were operator of the first KLM flight. The press should call them out on the BS, but those free business class flights and other junkets will no doubt eliminate any diving into the facts.