LOL Boeing

Lately, I’ve been reading LOLFed — the fun way to stay on top of the financial crisis. Today, on the heels of the leaking of Airbus’s dossier on the Boeing 787 and yet another round of 787 delays (deliveries pushed to 2010), LOLFed “reports” on some advice for Boeing chief James McNerny: “McNerney, upon calling [...]

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Chortling all the way to the tank

The Government Accountability Office is expected to rule by Thursday on Boeing’s protest over the Air Force’s decision to go with the Northrop Grumman/EADS tanker. Boeing is desperate for the $40 billion contract, but the Air Force insists that the Northrop Grumman proposal is superior.
But Congressman Norm Dicks had the best line of the day: [...]

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Southwest safety: getting the facts

The FAA has filed an action for a $10.2 million fine against Southwest Airlines on account of operating aircraft without conducting a particular routine inspection on them. Here’s the story: For some unstated reason, Southwest failed to conduct “mandatory inspections for fuselage fatigue cracking” on forty-six Boeing 737 Classic-series aircraft from June 2006 to March [...]

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The media’s “dependency” problem

This AP story on Aviation.com has a troublesome lede. Check it out: “China plans to set up its own company to make passenger jumbo jets, making it less dependent on Boeing and Airbus, official Xinhua News Agency said Thursday.” (Emphasis added.) I’ve blogged previously about China’s aerospace ambitions. Here, the reporter errs in his word [...]

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China’s jumbo-sized dreams

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The Chinese were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of jumbo jets danced in their heads.
China, not stopping with its forthcoming small-to-medium-size civilian jetliner, is moving forward with its jumbo jet program. Its two [...]

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The “homegrown” fallacy

My exchange with Daniel Hall earlier this week made it onto The Economist’s Free Exchange, which was in turn picked up by Megan McArdle’s Asymmetrical Information.
The Economist writer brings in the intervention dimension:
[S]o politicised an industry as air travel need not fear dislocations in any case; governments would react incredibly quickly to pull back on [...]

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It’s a broken wingtip, not a broken wing

When I saw the Daily Mail item about the passengers who refused to fly on a plane whose wing tip had been broken off, I thought it was not really worth my blogging attention. Then I got emails about it, and replied that it really wasn’t a big deal. But with the blogosphere’s attention to [...]

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Irwin Stelzer’s misguided airline economics

Irwin Stelzer, a very intelligent commentator on economic issues, indulges too much air rage in his latest column. After running through a laundry list of typical air travel complaints, he reveals that his understanding of air traffic control funding, for example, is shaky:
Now consider the world’s airlines’ roles in all of this. They have by [...]

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An unprecedented luxury airliner

So the A380 flew for the first time in commercial service, yippee. I just can’t get all the excited about the overdone Airbus-Boeing rivalry hype and the endless back-and-forth in the mainstream media about how every setback/leap forward means that Airbus/Boeing’s business plan is great/terrible. But I can get excited about this:
Safety concerns have been [...]

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When it comes to planes, old is not unsafe

In a post about Northwest Airlines’s new Airbus A330s, Ben Mutzabaugh reminds us that Northwest’s workhorse aircraft, the DC-9, is still in use with no planned replacement. NWA has 134 DC-9s, which seat 90-130 depending on configuration, and it has 130 of its other domestic workhorse type, the A319/A320 family, which seat between 125 and [...]

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