News and notes from around the interweb:
- Public offer for Amtrak MasterCard 30,000 point signup bonus (HT: Reddit via @IadisGr8)
- Priceline took a $941 million writedown of OpenTable. I say: Serves them right.
- American is reducing its Phoenix pilot base by 500 (1/3rd) as they spread legacy US Airways Airbus A320s ‘basket of deplorables’ across the system. No extra legroom main cabin extra and no seat power (or announced plans to retrofit for the same) three years into the merger, and invading legacy American hubs near you.
My Washington National – Dallas Flight on Sunday, legacy US Airways, Sad! - Over a million items were confiscated at Singapore’s Changi airport between January and September. That’s a nine-fold increase year-over-year. Apparently hoverboards and scooters are a problem.
- Singapore Airlines is entertaining proposals from both Boeing and Airbus for the world’s longest jet
Boeing and Airbus are holding a paper airplane contest. A very expensive one. And the winner may get the chance to build the world’s longest jet.
…By the end of the year, the airline is expected to back one of the company’s designs, according to three people familiar with the campaign.
…Airbus’ A350-2000 would be nearly 258 feet long and seat 400 passengers. Boeing’s 777-10X would be 263 feet and hold 450, in standard arrangements. That’s about 30 and 50 passengers more, respectively, than the current largest A350 and 777X jets.
- Love United’s Stroopwafels? Want to get drunk to deal with flying coach? Introducing Stroopwafel liquor! (HT: Colleen)
Your link concerns spreading A320’s without power/MCE to legacy AA hubs – but your photo is of an A321 – which also have no plans for retrofitting of power/MCE, which is even a worse story, given that those planes fly a number of transcon routes (like almost every flight PHL and CLT to LAX/SFO/LAS/SEA etc)!
The reason why this is happening PHX pilot base is over crowed because the US pilots didn’t want to play fair and the HP pilots could not transfer out and now they can. BTW, while the US planes don’t have MCE at lease the FA’s from PMUS know what PDB are and do it.
More click bait. As the link explains, this “does not mean 500 pilots are losing their jobs or that the airline is slashing flights out of Phoenix….American says 500 of the 1,455 pilots currently based in Phoenix already don’t live there.”
So this story is only of any interest whatsoever to AA pilots currently living in Phoenix. I wasted my time clicking and reading based on the logical assumption that AA was cutting it’s flights out of Phoenix by 1/3. Which it isn’t….
@Robert Hanson you are reading way too much into this, I didn’t say they were cutting PHX flights just the PHX pilot base, the point is that AA and US are now really cross-fleeting in a way they never did before and those LUS planes can wind up anywhere.
Title of the post: “American Cutting Phoenix Pilot Base By 1/3”
I’m betting 90% of us who read that, other than people who already knew the facts and thus didn’t need the post, thought that AA was cutting their Phoenix hub flights by 1/3. Or else that they were going to Tesla self flying planes. 😉
Yes, once you click on the full post, and especially if you go on to click on the other link, you find out what the real story is. Namely that outdated US planes are now being moved around the country. And if the post title had been something like ‘outdated US planes are now being moved around the country’ I wouldn’t have complained. But of course, many of us wouldn’t have clicked on a full post with that title, since it doesn’t help us to know that planes are being moved around. If we knew where they were being moved to, maybe, but just ‘being moved somewhere’ is not all that useful to know.
Honestly, I owe this blog so much from the early days, I really shouldn’t complain that it’s recently become mostly a waste of time. If you, and pretty much only you, hadn’t turned me onto BankDirect, I wouldn’t be AA Lifetime Gold. Not to mention so many more very useful things that it’s hard to remember them all, much less list them here.
But it’s sad that I now click on so many useless posts, read halfway thru, and find out it’s of no use to me at all. With OMAAT and MP, (which I now read first anyway, and so already know much of what you post that actually is useful), I can pretty much tell in advance if a post is going to be worth my time.
But not here, not any more. Still, yeah, thanks for the memories….
More ignorant foolishness.
And Gary that picture isn’t even an A320!