Delta Grows its Airbus Fleet
Delta Air Lines placed an order for 25 additional A321neo aircraft with an option for 25 this week, bringing its total number of firm orders for the airplane to 125.
The airline expects to take delivery of its first A321neo in the first half of 2022 – Airbus can have it ready later this year, but Delta padded the arrival time by more than half a year to guarantee it wouldn’t tarnish its on-time record.
The single-aisle jet will be powered by Pratt & Whitney PW1100G turbofan engines that are 12% more fuel efficient than the current A321 aircraft and come with P&W’s guarantee that the engines probably won’t fall apart and drop on people’s houses while in-flight.
The aircraft will be outfitted with the latest in in-seat technology including power ports at every seat that will work with your seatmates’ devices but never yours, wifi that will get that one email sent by the time the plane lands, spacious overhead bins that will be full by the time you board, and in-flight entertainment loaded with sitcoms you’ve already seen, movies you don’t like, and a headphone jack that only works in one ear.
REAL ID Not Yet Getting Real
The government’s deadline to require REAL ID to fly is approaching quickly with October 1 about five months away, but with just 43% of American in compliance with the new guidelines, the airline industry is asking for an extension. This would be yet another extension, after the last October 1, 2020 deadline was pushed back a year due to the pandemic.
The Department of Homeland Security told ABC News the agency is “assessing the necessity to move the enforcement date.” The U.S. Travel Association says the combination of Americans that don’t know about the upcoming changes and those who haven’t been able to get a new ID due to pandemic shutdowns at DMVs around the country has created a significant impediment to get Americans compliant with the REAL ID requirements.
Meanwhile, the opposite of REAL ID, the national high school FAKE ID program continues to thrive, with teenagers across the country acquiring the fake documents at a much higher rate than 43%.
We’re Number Two! Atlanta Dethroned as World’s Busiest Airport
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was the second busiest airport in the world in 2020, falling just short of Guangzhou, China (CAN) which took the crown for the pandemic-plagued year.
Seven of the top ten airports by passenger traffic were in China for the year with the outliers being Atlanta joined by Dallas/Ft Worth (4th) and Denver (7th) in the top ten. Atlanta had held the title of world’s busiest airport since 1998 but suffered a 61.2% drop in traffic in 2020 to end the year with 42.9 million passengers. Guangzhou suffered a 40.4% drop from 2019 down to 43.7 million to just clip Atlanta for the title.
While you might think the pandemic was responsible for this fall from grace, don’t forget Delta’s two cancelpaloozas late last year when it ran out of enough pilots to operate its scheduled flights. That didn’t help.
Atlanta did win a consolation prize as the airport did surpass Chicago/O’Hare to take the prize for most aircraft movements in the year with just over 548,000.
Mango Loses its Flavor
South African LCC Mango Airlines will cease operating indefinitely, effective May 1 as the airline has run out of cash to fly its airplanes and pay its staff. But other than that, everything is going fine. When the airline shuts down next week, it has also asked the government to place it into bankruptcy protection through July.
The South African Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) has been in discussion with the airline and its parent SAA about repositioning the airline to keep it flying. The government wants to send $188 million of the $733 million it has set aside for SAA’s rescue to Mango, but SAA did not include Mango in its original business rescue plan, making the common grocery mistake of heading straight for the deserts section and forgetting all about produce.
Mango expected to receive government funding by January of this year after it was approved last fall, but it is still waiting on the cash. It operated during the first half of the year under the impression the check was in the mail, but so far nothing has materialized. Mango officials reached out to fellow fruity LCC Peach Airlines in Japan about a possible cash infusion or merger, but Peach officials were just confused and told Mango it couldn’t even keep its reservation system up and a merger with a spoiled fruit wasn’t something to consider.
Cathay Pacific Closing Bases
Cathay Pacific is closing its Canadian pilot base, and is putting its bases in Australia and New Zealand on the chopping block. The airline also plans to review its staffing situations in both Europe and the United States later this summer.
Furloughed pilots in Canada have been receiving two-thirds of their salary since the beginning of the pandemic, with American and European pilots receiving one-half. All overseas passenger fleet pilots have been on furlough by the airline since last May, with a handful of cargo pilots still working.
Unfortunately for the airline and its pilots, transferring overseas pilots to Hong Kong is an unlikely solution. There is a large pool of unemployed pilots in Hong Kong due to the shutdown of Cathay Dragon last year, causing the Hong Kong government to likely block any long-term work visas for foreign pilots.
Cathay Pacific is looking at all options to cut costs after it lost $2.8 billion in 2020.
- Air Montenegro received a $3.6 million infusion from the Montenegrin government.
- Asiana is in negotiations to convert some its passenger aircraft into freighters. As always, we encourage the airline to wait until all passengers are off their aircraft to begin the conversion.
- Delta is adding a third daily flight to Athens (ATH) this summer, with a nonstop from Atlanta beginning July 2. This flight will compliment the airline’s two daily nonstops from New York/JFK.
- Emirates is returning A380 service to the United States, with one daily flight on the aircraft to New York/JFK beginning June 1. The A380 will also return on Emirates’s daily flight to both Los Angeles and Washington/Dulles.
- Eurowings Discover is taking over Edelweiss’s fleet of A330 aircraft.
- Gol saw Bank of America divest itself of shares of the airline, cutting its stake from 12.6% down to 3.7%.
- IrAero will go ahead and add its first A319 this summer.
- Qantas is returning seat back entertainment to most of its planes after going dark last spring to save money.
I’m doing a one-person theatrical performance on vocabulary and grammar this weekend. Really, it’s just a play on words.