This week’s featured link
Mokulele Airlines and Makani Kai Air announce merger – Honolulu Star Advertiser
It’s not a merger involving Hawaiian but rather two Hawaiian airlines. Commuters Mokulele and Makani Kai will combine and fly under the Mokulele name. Makani Kai primarily focuses on Moloka’i… when it operates, but it has twin engine aircraft that allowed it to fly to Princeville on Kaua’i. I would assume this means Mokulele will finally make its way to the Garden Isle since its fleet of single-engine Grand Caravans can’t make the trip. Makani Kai, by the way, also flies the Grand Caravan.
Two for the road
ATPCO’s call to action for Voluntary Changes and Refunds – ATPCO News
This may get far into the weeds, but it’s good news for everyone. In short, if an airline wanted to, say, waive change fees for everyone who booked last month, it couldn’t just go back and alter fare rules. It required manual intervention to process the change. Now, ATPCO, the central clearinghouse for fares, has created a solution that will automate the process. This just means it’s easier to handle, so airlines can be more flexible in the policies they put out.
A forgotten scheme to expand the TWA Flight Center – Blue Concourse
I had more than one person send me a link to this look back at what TWA wanted to do at JFK about 30 years ago. It’s fun to look at, but it is also not realistic to think TWA could have actually afforded the project.
13 comments on “3 Links I Love: A Hawaiian Merger, Easier Changes, The TWA Terminal That Never Was”
That TWA flight center story was totally fascinating!
I had stumbled across photos of those mocks for the Flight Center redesign online a few years ago, but they were very difficult to find and had little information with them, just the zoomed out model photos. Very cool to see details on how the structure would’ve flowed and how it worked to preserve so much of the heritage of the original structure. I wonder where the security checkpoints would’ve been located though as that would’ve been the big stress change on any pre 9/11 design
Grand Caravans don’t have the range? La Costeña flies them farther in Nicaragua. Range is close to 2000 km IIRC
GringoLoco – It’s not the range that’s the issue. It’s the lengthy overwater trip on a single engine. They have to be able to climb to an altitude where they could glide to land from the center point of the crossing, and that just doesn’t work considering the overwater distance.
It’s really interesting to see in practice. Here’s a look at a flight from Honolulu to Kahului: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/FDY710/history/20200322/2039Z/PHNL/PHOG/tracklog
You can see they climb to 7,000 ft right away for the crossing. Then once near Moloka’i, they can descend back down for the rest of the flight.
Same thing goes for Kahului to Kona, but they have to climb higher, up to 9,000 feet, due to the longer distance.
Ah ha — makes sense now. Like an inter-island single-engine version of ETOPS.
Wish I was there!
Thanks, Cranky, I was trying to figure that out myself. That would be an interesting topic to dive into a bit deeper, either in terms of an “Ask Cranky” post or by means of a podcast interview with one of the chief pilots for airlines that do that kind of thing.
I like what would have been done with the TWA location in JFK. They must have kept it a secret back in 1990 since I was still working for them and had not heard of it until now.
David,
What did you do for TWA.
In the go-go days of the oil boom you could almost always see an Antonov 225 parked at IAH for quick transport of critical oil field equipment anywhere in the world (a shut-in well could lose $millions/day).
Tory – If that’s the case, I’m guessing it was an Antonov 124. There were plenty of those, but they only built on Antonov 225.
Ah, you might be right. Didn’t know about the different models and I don’t remember how many engines it had – just that it was always parked on the tarmac.
Looks like a 124 is stationed here but the 225 comes from time to time. Good pics here:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/bizfeed/article/Cargo-airline-operator-to-make-Houston-home-base-13445658.php#photo-11824353
Thanks for the look at the never built TWA expansion at JFK. It also turned me on to the airporthistory.org site. While limited in scope, what it does have is some brilliant content including the aforementioned link.