News and notes from around the interweb:
- American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 25% bonus on transfers to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles through June 21. The best deal here is likely first class redemptions on Hawaiian itself which are still expensive (40,000 miles each way) but on many routes a better product than competitors.
- Boeing’s current talk of a new ‘middle of the market’ plane to compete against the Airbus narrowbody ‘new engine option’ offering since the 737 MAX order book isn’t doing it.
- Four Seasons plans to launch a loyalty program, the reference is to a ‘guest recognition’ program which is only half a loyalty program (which is equal parts recognition and reward). Many luxury hoteliers believe their guests value treatment over free stays but that doesn’t mean free stays as a reward for stay choices, especially on others’ dime, don’t matter.
During the Great Recession Ritz-Carlton adopted an own-branded version of Marriott Rewards, departing from the traditional position that luxury chains don’t need formal public frequent stay programs.
Four Seasons Maui, credit: Four Seasons - US Bank no longer doing a hard pull for credit line increases
- The UAE plans to colonize Mars
- How runways are named.
Every airport runway has 2 numbers on it — here’s why pic.twitter.com/rNrHQlyYse
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) June 8, 2017
KLAX has four parallel runways, so “L C R” doesn’t work there. Instead, for the common approach (from the east), the south-side runways are 25L and 25R (relatively correct), while the north-side runways are 24L and 24R (off by 10 degrees). And KSJC used to have a small bizjet runway to the left (coming from the south) of 30L (the main runway) and 30R (a bit smaller) called just 29. Looks like that got torn up sometime since the dot-com boom, which was the last time I flew in there.
(PP-ASEL-IA with 270+ hours in the left seat, instrument rated, high-performance, retract)
I’m surprised they actually change the numbering over time to match shifts in magnetic north. The numbering isn’t there as a reference to set your compass by, but rather as a check to make sure you’re on the right runway. No airport is likely to have runways almost-parallel enough that being a few degrees out could cause confusion, or if they do they should be using the L/C/R designation.
As for naming more than three parallel runways, everything’s bigger in Texas – including the number of parallel runways. At DFW, five of its seven runways are parallel, and have designations of 17L/35R, 17C/35C, 17R/35L, 18L/36R, 18R/36L.
In FRA runway 18 operates in only one direction and is only marked on one end.
“The numbering isn’t there as a reference to set your compass by, but rather as a check to make sure you’re on the right runway.” But it *is* close enough that we are trained to do *exactly* that, especially to make sure our downwind and base leg are appropriate.