American Airlines launched service between Flint and LaGuardia last August and, surprise surprise, shortly thereafter Northwest announced the same flights.  Incredible!  As you are probably thinking, Northwest didn’t want that route, they just didn’t want anyone encroaching on their lucrative New York to Detroit market (Flint is about an hour north of Detroit).   Well, if [...]

(Via Today in the Sky):
A go! flight from Honolulu to Hilo, Hawaii, overshot the airport by about 15 minutes last Wednesday leading to speculation that the pilot fell asleep during the 45 minute journey.  Mesa owns go! and has had its share of complaints by pilots of fatigue.  Falling asleep on a 45 minute flight [...]

Say what you will about whether it’s gotten better over in Iraq, but this is certainly a positive sign of some sort:  Iraq has agreed to purchase $5 billion worth of airplanes from Bombardier and Boeing in the coming years.  The smaller Bombardier planes will arrive next year, while the 40 Boeing aircraft will show [...]

Delta announced that it will launch nonstop flights from JFK to Georgetown, Guyana, beginning in July - fares are about $600 round trip for the 4x weekly service.  Much has been made of Delta’s international expansion, and I’ll give them a ton of credit for trying some of the more obscure visiting-friends-and-relatives (ie, VFR) markets [...]

(Thanks to View from the Wing):
Continental has eliminated what has been considered their best OnePass reward:  the 135,000 first class ticket to Australia on Qantas.   (Their 105,000 mile business class ticket was also a great deal.)  These tickets now cost 285,000 and 190,000 miles, respectively.  You used to have to call 330 days before [...]

The NY Times is reporting that Delta and Northwest are close to announcing a merger, an announcement of which will supposedly be shortly followed by Continental and United joining forces.
You’ll read plenty of commentary about these mergers elsewhere, so you don’t need me to analyze the minutia, but let me say this:  if you thought [...]

Joe Sharkey has an interesting column in the NY Times today about a couple traveling with an infant who was not permitted to bring extra formula and baby food through security because you’re only allowed “a reasonable quantity” of foodstuffs for your child.  As Sharkey points out, in an age of 9 hour delays, what [...]

An odd one…
A Singapore Airlines flight attendant is suing a passenger after the passenger slapped her during a flight from Singapore to Tokyo last September.  The passenger, who was traveling with her husband - the CEO of Venture Corp, became enraged after the flight attendant served the husband dinner.  The wife said, “Why are you [...]

(Via Today in the Sky)
Politicians in Buffalo have been upset when Continental stopped flying nonstop flights from Buffalo to Albany, so the tried to convince another airline to fly the route.  Under the category of “be careful what you ask for,” US Airways agreed to fly between the cities once a day.  The round trip [...]

(Thanks to View from the Wing)
US Airways  is really sticking it to the man — and, in this case, you’re the man:  The airline has eliminated 500 mile frequent flyer minimums for short flights so you now only earn actual miles flown.  If you’re flying a bunch of connections on US Airways, you’ll be wasting [...]