297. They just set the cabin temperature to 160*/70*C for 15 minutes every 2 hours, followed by piping in outside air direct to the cabin for the Finnish cooldown. :D

(Written on 08/31/2018)(Permalink)

Everybody! Great News! https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/01/10/finnair-lounge-sauna/

(Written on 08/31/2018)(Permalink)

Go look at some NTSB crash reports - Pilot Error is far and away the leading cause of accidents. In one study I found looking at a total of 40 major aviation incidents between 1996 and 2003. 61% were attributable to Pilot Error or Company Management, while only 16% were attributable to Maintenance Issues or Equipment Failure... **Pilots** have redundancies, too - yet, they still crash at an alarming rate.

(Written on 06/16/2018)(Permalink)

I used to work at DEN, and saw the original planned out "Final Form" build sheets (a number of people have them as posters in their offices there!). The growth that DEN can accommodate is *massive*. The space is already designed to house: * Terminal + 4x 6 level Parking Structures on either side (the 4th on the west side has been built. * Concourses A, B, C, D, E - all built out with two "subcores" per side (like Concourse B is built today) for a total of ~210 mainline gates and ~140 "regional" size gates. * 6 N/S runways - 3 Arrivals on the West Side, 3 Departures on the East Side. * 6 E/W runways - 3 Arrivals on the North Side, 3 Departures on the South Side (2 north of Pena Blvd, and 3 over by the South Cargo Facility)

(Written on 03/03/2018)(Permalink)

Paul - a lot has changed since 1978. In '78 O'Hare had 6 runways, and they all criss-crossed, meaning that really...operationally...O'Hare had, like...2 runways. 3 on a good day. Since 2015, O'Hare has 7 parallel runways, and only 2 left that are criss-crossing. Removing one of the remaining crossing runways will open up the ability to build still more non-crossing runways.

(Written on 03/02/2018)(Permalink)

***In the entire history of Commercial Aviation***, there have been 4 incidents where a pilot (not hijacker, that's different) deliberately crashed an airliner in a Pilot Murder-Suicide. Just for reference, that's 6,152,832,207 (six BILLION) flights worldwide since 1970, and only 4 incidents, compared with 856 crashes caused by Pilot Error, Weather, etc. YOU ARE 214 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE KILLED BY A PILOT ERROR OR WIND SHEAR OR MECHANICAL FAILURE THAN YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE MURDERED BY YOUR PILOT. Even then, your odds of arriving safely at your destination are 99.9999893057376%. There's literally 214 times more reasons to avoid SWISS than this.

(Written on 05/05/2017)(Permalink)

What's fundamentally wrong with airline operations is...the passengers. An airline that treats their customers well is not rewarded with customer loyalty. Airline travel has become commoditized, and the casual consumer (who flies 1-5 times per year) is concerned only with price. We may have flown Delta for 5 years, but if AAL cuts the price of the ticket $10, we jump ship en-masse. You see it all the time going the other way - UAL raises the ticket price of, say, DEN-SFO by $10. Then AA matches the $10 increase. DL, F9, and SWA stick to their guns. 5 days later, UAL and AA step in line and lower the fare to match because nobody's buying their tickets at the "hope to break even on the flight" price.

(Written on 04/28/2017)(Permalink)

I would disagree, in that the airlines have HUGE amounts of historical data about how each flight performs - they have the data to know exactly how many tickets they sell for each flight, and they know exactly how many no-shows they get for each flight, and can take a calculated risk, given that data. i.e. with a 100 passenger plane, 5% of the time 100 passengers show up, 45% of the time 99 passengers show up, 45% of the time 97 passengers show up, 5% of the time 96 passengers show up. If you sell 101 tickets for this flight, 50% of the time, you'll fly with a full plane, 45% of the time, you'll have 1 or 2 open seats, but only 5% of the time (between 15 and 20x per *year*), you'll have to ask for a volunteer to fly at a later time, and have to absorb the expense that brings with it. If you're going to go down the fraud line - I think non-refundable, non-changeable fares are essentially fraud. Pay a few hundred dollars for a tickets and..."What's that? You were in a car crash

(Written on 04/28/2017)(Permalink)

The full fare passenger who catches a later or earlier flight won't fit on a flight that's already full, and is lower priority than a passenger with a ticket for that later (or earlier) flight. They're not taking two seats, in that case - they're leaving an empty seat behind on a potentially full flight, and taking an empty seat on a potentially empty flight. If the 'alternate' flight is full, they don't bump someone already on-board to fly. They take the "same" seat, just on a different aircraft than their original flight.

(Written on 04/28/2017)(Permalink)