American Puts Real Money Behind a Not Real Airplane
American announced today that it has signed a deal to purchase 20 Boom Overture supersonic aircraft with an option for an additional 40.
The Overture is an airplane awaiting an actual engine which will in theory propel it to Mach 1.7, reducing the time needed to get from Los Angeles to Honolulu from 5.5 hours to 3. (Yes, this is an actual example given by American that it thinks people might actually care about.) Even though it has not been built yet, Boom optimistically expects entry into service by 2029.
American says it paid a “non-refundable deposit” on the first 20 aircraft, which we assume it has already planned to write off on this year’s books as a loss.
Staffing Issues Make New York Flight Delays Even Worse
Shortly after telling Delta that air traffic control delays were not enough of a reason to grant a slot waiver in New York, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) yesterday said delays could reach 2 hours due to a staffing shortage.
The delays were announced yesterday for Newark and JFK with LaGuardia being hit hardest with a temporary ground stop. Anuvu data shows about 8% less than 1% of flights were canceled at each of the three NYC aiaports. The airports all saw on-time rates in the 70-76% range, or as we’d call it… a pretty good Monday in New York.
The dire warnings were lifted when additional staffing was found. So if you’re a pilot wondering why you were talking to a custodian on the radio yesterday, now you know.
Heathrow Continues to Fail to Be a Functioning Airport
London/Heathrow announced it is still unable to get a handle on its operational woes, so it has extended a cap on operations through the end of the summer season on October 29. The cap, which is set at 100,000 passengers per day, was originally expected to end on September 11.
The airport says “the cap has resulted in fewer last-minute cancellations, better punctuality and shorter waits for bags.” While this may sound like some sort of crowning achievement, that is exactly what has to happen when there are fewer airplanes and passengers. No gold star for you, Heathrow.
Heathrow did leave a glimmer of hope by saying that the cap “will be kept under regular review and could be lifted earlier should there be a sustained picture of better resilience and a material increase in resourcing levels.” It blamed the airline ground handlers as a particular bottleneck, along with Prince Charles and the staff who serve tea to everyone at the airport each afternoon.
- Delta will resume flying to Tokyo from both Honolulu and Los Angeles this Fall.
- Emirates and Aegean are now codeshare partners and best friends.
- Frontier is ready to grow.
- IAG has excercised its option to turn a 100 million euro loan to Air Europa into a 20% equity stake.
- Samoa Airways has finally gotten rid of the one 737 it had — but never flew — by paying $4.6 million.
- Tailwind will begin flights from its East River floatplane based in Manhattan to College Park (MD) which is almost Washington, DC… but not quite.
Why did the librarian get thrown off the plane?
Because the flight was overbooked