This Week’s Featured Link
JetBlue and American Airlines Partnership Makes it Easier Than Ever for Customers to Return to Travel with Largest Schedule, More Benefits and a Seamless Travel Experience – AA Newsroom
This seemed like a big announcement, but the more I read, the less substance I realized there was. In fact, the only thing in here that seemed like news was JetBlue’s decision to partially — and eventually entirely — relocate at LaGuardia into Terminal B with American. Oh sure, it did put on sale JFK – Kansas City, Milwaukee, Puerto Vallarta, and San Antonio and LaGuardia – Jacksonville, Nashville, New Orleans, Sarasota, and Savannah, but we knew those were coming. This felt more like a political release, touting all the benefits coming to New York. Are you listening, government?
Video of the Week
Two for the Road
Tailwind Air Announces First Ever Route Between Boston Harbor and Manhattan – Tailwind
All those Southern Air Express seaplane flights I’ve talked about on Mondays? It’s actually a codeshare on Tailwind, which has been a project in progress for awhile. Pretty interesting way to fly between Boston and New York, but as someone who doesn’t live or work in the area, I can’t answer the question of whether it will gain traction… thoughts?
‘I f–ked up’: How a pilot crashed a full passenger jet into the bay (and didn’t lose his job) – SF Gate
And now I’ve learned about The Asoh Defense… and I’ve definitely used it.
10 comments on “3 Links I Love: Fluffy American and JetBlue, Tailwind on the Water, The Asoh Defense”
Regarding the seaplane flights… I imagine that the main time saving benefit will be on the NYC landside part, at least more so than on the BOS landside side.
For a big city (especially a big city with only one commercial airport), Boston’s Logan airport is quite close to downtown. Even around 8a local time today (a Friday), Google Maps is showing (with traffic) a travel time by car of ~15 minutes from Boston Logan to the Financial District. Yes, Logan isn’t necessarily the easiest airport to get in/out of, but it isn’t that bad. I also wonder how reliable those seaplanes will be in bad weather and reduced visibility, especially as they are landing in the main channel of Boston harbor, less than a mile from the threshold to one of the main Logan runways (4L), and less than 1/2 mile from the threshold to a secondary Logan runway (14).
Yeah, certainly on the Boston side, Logan is quite easy to get to. The seaplanes land adjacent to Logan Airport and then you take a water taxi across the harbor (7 minutes, they say). But it’s only a 10-15 minute taxi, bus (Silver Line) or bus-subway (Blue Line) ride into town (and of course bus, auto taxi, or subway is time to anywhere downtown, not just to the water taxi dock), so I expect that for most destinations the seaplane actually marginally adds time, at least on arrival, compared to Logan (or Amtrak into Back Bay or South Station, which of course has its own quite large advantages). Main advantage of seaplane over Logan on the Boston end would be much-reduced check in/security overhead. Probably a different story in New York, where LaGuardia is much less convenient to most of Manhattan.
> Seaplanes take off and land visually in daytime only (VFR rules) by FAA statute.
> This means no nighttime or poor weather water takeoffs or landings.
I suspect that may become a problem in the NY and BOS area.
*starting at* $395 one way for New York to Boston?? Wild.
It’s tough to know the full story, even after reading news articles about it, but on the surface it looks like that AA manager in the DFW hub did a great job in a tough situation. If people want to behave like toddlers, they shouldn’t be surprised to if they get treated like toddlers. I assume that the videos that other pax posted on Twitter of the exchange are already being discussed in meetings and trainings for customer service agents and managers as a good example of how to handle situations like that.
And yes, the “I’d suggest Spirit” comment is awesome snark and absolute gold. I’m really hoping that someone (such as independent comedy groups on YouTube, or even SNL) does a few skits of airline pax behaving badly and use that phrase as the punchline, both to mock poorly behaving airline pax and Spirit.
With all the AA/B6 growth in BOS and NYC, what will AA do with poor PHL? Pre-covid, PHL had more O&D traffic than connecting anyway, so there’s still a good sized market. But I’m guessing the trans-atlantic traffic from PHL relied heavily on connections. That traffic can easily be routed over BOS and JFK now. What will AA do with PHL?
As someone who works in an airport with Spirit and used to ground handle them, I think it’s important to note that the derision toward Spirit is less about NK itself and a lot more about the pax that NK attracts, which makes the comment even better.
I guess the Tailwind convenience factor is geared more towards NYC than BOS. I have lived in both cities, those winds in the fall and early spring really churn up Boston harbor with 5 to 10 foot waves and white caps. I’m curious to know how they’re going to re accommodate passengers when they can’t complete the missions in bad weather.
Don’t know the whole story-but I fly Spirit often (as well as AA). The crew on Spirit seems to be mostly pleasant and cheerful-while the crew on AA (more often then not, in my experience), seem to be exhausted and pining for the ol’ days. I didn’t think that comment was appropriate.
I’ve been using the Asoh defense for years now without knowing that’s what it’s called!
So have most other married men!