Oops, Our Bad: The data we presented for NYC airport performance on August 15 from Anuvu was actually far better than we printed. (It was entirely our fault, sorry about that.) The airports actually all saw fewer than 1% of flights canceled with on-time arrivals all above 70%.
American Adding Seats to Regional Jets
American Airlines will be adding 4 seats to its 76-seat CRJ-900 fleet operated by wholly-owned regional airline PSA. The addition of seats will help American in two ways: 1) It will allow the airline to fly more regional passengers during a time when it struggles to find pilots to fly the airplanes and 2) It will ensure that regional passengers are equally uncomfortable as mainline passengers by having their legroom reduced to fit the new seats.
While most US airlines are limited to having their regionals operate no more than 76 seats per aircraft according to their pilots’ scope clause, American does have an exemption for some regional aircraft that used to operate for US Airways in a 79 or 80-seat configuration. The clause allows for those airplanes or their replacements to have that higher density configuration, and all of those PSA aircraft qualify as replacements.
Thirty eight of the airplanes will have 80 seats sold while the other 35 will only be able to sell 79, having one of the new seats blocked. This will match the configuration that Mesa already has on some of its airplanes flying for American in Dallas/Fort Worth and Phoenix.
Spirit Wants You to Know It’s Having a Great Summer
In a summer where airlines have nearly all struggled to run their operations as planned, Spirit has proven to be an outlier and wants you to know it.
In a release today, Spirit laid out its victories.
- Canceled 0.8% of flights
- Ran 25 days in July without a single cancellation
- Had 77.5% of flights arrive within 15 minutes of schedule, in 4th place in the US
- Punched only 14 babies the entire summer, a new record low for the airline
Spirit quickly apologized for running such a solid operation and said it will do better to provide more fodder for late night talk show hosts right away.
More Details on the Emirates Cabin Upgrade
Previously announced plans to install a premium economy cabin on much of the Emirates fleet has provided the airline with an opportunity to roll out a complete cabin refresh. More details of what is to come have now been provided.
Sixty-seven of the airline’s A380s will get premium economy with the airline’s new First Class and an updated business class. Those will be followed by 53 B777s which may or may not finally get rid of middle seats and angled beds in business class.
It is believed the retrofit project will be completed before Emirates retires the airplanes and buys new ones.
- British Airways will restore wages to pre-COVID levels.
- Edelweiss is expanding by taking over a fifth hair-dryer-powered A340-300 from SWISS.
- Gulf Air will fly to Ras Al Kaimah.
- Jetstar in Singapore has gone live with its partnership with IndiGo in India.
- JSX is going long-haul from Dallas/Love to Orange County.
- KLM has a new agreement with its pilots.
- Seaborne Airlines is losing its exclusivity on the St Thomas – St Croix seaplane route.
What does Canada produce that no other country in the world produces?
Canadians.