Downgraded: The word “guarantee”
A week ago, I argued that it was worth looking at Mexico for some good travel bargains, especially 6 or more months out, when H1N1 flu scares will hopefully be behind us. In the interim, Mexican tourism is suffering tremendously. For example, hotel occupancy in Cancun has dropped from 77% to 23% in a matter of two weeks. Cost-cutting has ensued, and one chain, AM Resorts, has rolled out a somewhat misguided “flu-free guarantee” for 10 of its 11 Mexico hotels, beginning Friday: “The company will give three free vacations over the next three years to any customer unfortunate enough to pick up the H1N1 flu virus at one of its Mexico resorts.” It’s hard to vacation — even for free — when you’re dead.

Downgraded: Colgan Air
The National Transportation Safety Board has released transcripts of cockpit conversations before the doomed Colgan Air-operated Continental Flight 3407. The Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 went down in icy conditions. More disturbing: the cockpit recordings showed that one of the pilots felt under-trained for the experience. The quote, minutes before things got a lot worse: “I’ve never seen icing conditions. I’ve never de-iced. I’ve never seen any — I’ve never experienced any of that. I don’t want to have to experience that and make those kinds of call[s]. You know I’d have freaked out. I’d have, like, seen this much ice and thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’re going to crash.’” Pilots who haven’t had de-icing training? Flying to Buffalo?? In February???

Downgraded: Your luggage… because it’s been sucked into a jet engine
Passengers on board Japan Air Lines flight 61 got a treat as their plane began its taxi to the runway. Engine number 1 of the Boeing 747 sucked in a misplaced luggage container. Passengers and ground personnel were unharmed, but it made for good imagery.

Downgraded: Embassy Suites’ notion of the suite
Embassy Suites is considering shrinking the size of its rooms, but keeping the current price. Then, they’ll charge a premium for the current suite configuration. Somehow, they’ll try to spin this as an improvement, I’m sure.

Upgraded: Opaque booking of hotels
Travelocity is rolling out opaque booking for select hotels. Interspersed with named hotels, you’ll find “secret” hotels whose identity is only revealed after purchase. This sort of sale is typically associated with Priceline and Hotwire, but it’s hardly new. GTA Hotels has done this for ages. EasyClickTravel used to offer “off the record” hotels, but they have discontinued the practice. A company like Travelocity might be able to get this to work alongside its named offerings, because of its size, but the competition from the established opaque booking specialists seems to be pretty strong. We’ll see if it lasts.

The incredible ditching of a US Airways Airbus A320 has been all over the news, and the pictures are truly dramatic. I feel relieved, and amazed, in that no one died on board that flight. I admit I also feel lucky, in that I wasn’t on that plane — New York to Charlotte is a route I’ve flown more than once, and usually on US Airways. Yet, seeing the plane in the cold water of the Hudson River, with passengers standing on the wings or floating in rafts, I feel a strange sense of comfort. A plane went down, and everyone survived. That’s really incredible.

While it’s way too early to definitively describe what happened, the early reports are pointing to a bird strike in both engines. Lucky passengers, unlucky birds.

I’ve gotten some questions about a bird could take down such a big plane. I’m no expert on aircraft engines, but from what I can gather, the impact of a bird on the engine’s turbine fan blades can knock the blades off-track, damaging smaller parts inside the engine. The cascade of destruction can lead to a shutdown.

The force of a bird in flight, when hitting an aircraft engine, is astonishing:

A 12-pound Canada goose striking an aircraft going 150 mph at lift-off generates the force of a 1,000-pound weight dropped from a height of 10 feet, according to Bird Strike Committee USA.
[...]
Large aircraft are certified to be able to keep flying after impacting a 4-pound bird, however 36 species of birds in North America weigh more than this, according to the committee. Even smaller birds, such as starlings, can cause engine failure.

The first minute of the following video details how a bird strike can look in real-time. It’s a Thomsonfly Boeing 757 taking off from Manchester, hitting a pair of herons on the ascent. Thankfully, everyone was okay in this instance as well.

Reader Kim sends in a link to a scan of Sun Country Airlines’ safety card, as found in their seatback pocket. I have to think that they’re trying to liven the cards up, to keep our attention. Why else would they have Willy Wonka making an emergency exit? A “Where’s Waldo” for those bored inflight?

Reminders of the original (and best) Willy Wonka, and another scan from the Sun Country card, after the jump…
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American Airlines grounded its entire fleet of MD-80 jets to check wiring on the planes. As I write this, 325 flights are canceled.

Delta, also with a sizable MD-80 and -90 fleet, canceled several hundred flights for the same reason.

Earlier in the week, United took a number of its 747s out of service, also to perform maintenance checks, “to ensure compliance with federal maintenance standards.” All of a sudden? “The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the temporary groundings after discovering that test equipment used at a South Korea maintenance station was faulty.”

What’s going on?

After Southwest’s brief grounding of more than 40 737-300 jets because of possible damage to the aircraft’s metallic “skin,” the FAA is cracking down on maintenance. The agency “recently launched spot checks of compliance with safety requirements for all U.S. airlines.”

Well, good. After apparently not doing enough spot checking, the agency is playing catch-up. It’s encouraging, I suppose, that the inspections are being done now. But what does that mean for recent flights, like those, say, a week before these recent groundings? Wasn’t maintenance taken seriously before? Were you taking a risk?

There probably wasn’t much risk to passengers, frankly. I always comfort myself with the notion that the pilots are as much at risk as passengers. If they’re willing to get on board, then so am I.

But, as a matter of principle, I prefer that my airlines don’t cut corners and don’t skimp on maintenance. I also prefer that my government’s regulatory bodies do their job and actually keep companies under scrutiny in a clear, defined, and above all consistent manner. That clearly didn’t happen. And that is what needs to be addressed. The sky isn’t falling, but things could sure be better.

The airlines affected are canceling flights wholesale today, though they promise to be back on schedule soon. That’s the immediate bad news for travelers today. The fact that regulation has been haphazard is frankly of greater concern.

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After 9/11, there was a debate over whether pilots should be trained in small firearms and permitted (or required) to carry a pistol in the cockpit. From the get-go, I objected. I felt that the risks of firearms exceeded their benefit, especially if the Federal Air Marshals program already had armed law enforcement officers on board.

The risk of an accidental discharge, or worse, a pilot with less-than-honorable purposes, makes guns in the cockpit a substantial risk. And now it’s happened: A US Airways pilot discharged his weapon during approach to Charlotte.

What on earth was the pilot doing with his pistol during the approach? Shouldn’t he have been working on landing the plane? And why wasn’t his weapon holstered, with the safety on? What were they doing up there, talking about their favorite (and still, to this day, most disturbing) scenes in Christopher Walken movies?

The whole thing makes me feel less safe. Both because I don’t like the idea of hot lead flying through the fuselage, and because I like my pilots to be flying, not playing with guns.

The pro-gun argument has always been that armed pilots serve as the last line of defense in the case of a hijacking or other incident. Or that armed pilots are themselves a deterrent to hijackers.

But it’s impossible to prove whether or not the arming of pilots actually improves safety by scaring potential bad guys from trying anything on board a plane. You can’t prove or disprove that proposition, unless you’ve got an al Qaeda focus group that you’re running.

A more concrete case that would support the pro-arming side would be incidents of threats who were subdued by an armed pilot. I haven’t heard of a single incident wherein a pilot was called upon to unholster his or her weapon in flight. If readers have a link to such a case, please send it my way.

As it is, the passengers on this plane were lucky that nothing worse happened. Arming pilots remains a bad idea.

(Thanks to David, Kim, and Richard for sending this one in!)

UPDATE:
Here’s a photo of the gunshot hole, via the Associated Press:

Recognizing that a crash landing is no one’s idea of “traveling better,” but simultaneously admitting that when the going gets rough, surviving a landing might just be the best you can hope for, I give you this incredible photo of an Air New Zealand commuter flight, operated by Eagle Air, making an emergency landing at Blenheim Airport.

The plane’s landing gear failed to emerge from its bay. Pilots jockeyed the plane, a 19-passenger Beech 1900D with 15 passengers and 2 pilots on board, right down the center of the runway. Other than a damaged plane, whose fuselage was scraped down the runway, and which clearly needs new rudders on its propellers, no one was hurt. Amazing, especially when you see those hunks of spinning metal flying through the air. Great piloting.

Boeing is testing a new form of autopilot that might make hijackings even harder by putting the plane’s controls in the hands of people on the ground.

[The system] will be activated by the pilot flicking a simple switch or by pressure sensors fitted to the cockpit door that will respond to any excessive force as terrorists try to break into the flight deck. Once triggered, no one on board will be able to deactivate the system. Currently, all autopilots are manually switched on and off at the discretion of pilots. The so-called ‘uninterruptible autopilot system’ – patented secretly by Boeing in the US last week – will connect ground controllers and security services with the aircraft using radio waves and global satellite positioning systems. After it has been activated, the aircraft will be capable of remote digital control from the ground, enabling operators to fly it like a sophisticated model plane, manoeuvring it vertically and laterally. A threatened airliner could be flown to a secure military base or a commercial airport, where it would touch down using existing landing aids known as ‘autoland function’.

Of course, you hope that the system is configured so that it doesn’t kick in every time the beverage cart bumps into the cockpit door.

And speaking of autopilot, I’m on vacation for a few days, and the odds are slim that I’ll have regular, easy internet access. So I’ve queued up a few posts for the coming days and handed the keys to the kingdom to my good friend Tyler Colman, a.k.a. Dr. Vino. We might get some guest posts out of him, but no promises, and no pressure!

The war on runway safety
Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi Airport hasn’t worked out as everyone hoped, with cost overruns, insufficient bathrooms, and shoddy workmanship. But now, by virtue of its failure to renew its safety certificate, it’s officially unsafe. Runways have been plagued with cracks and debris. (You’ll be pleased to know that the airport is still operating as normal. Nice. Wouldn’t want to let safety get in the way of the schedule!)

The war on skycaps
Skycaps at Boston’s Logan Airport have filed a class action lawsuit against American Airlines. The suit alleges that the airline’s policy of charging $2 per bag for curbside check-in is cutting into the skycaps’ tips. Indeed, many people assume the fee goes to the skycap, but it actually goes to the airline. The fees exist at plenty of other airports and with plenty of other airlines. Will more skycaps organize and sue?

The war on horse meat
I really don’t know what to make of this. “American Airlines and Delta Air Lines said early Thursday afternoon that they had suspended transport of horse meat to overseas markets — mainly France, Belgium and Japan — where it is consumed.” Horse butchers are angry. It’s a long story.

The war on fusion cuisine
Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture will soon travel the world, inspecting Japanese restaurants and certifying their authenticity. I realize that this is as much cultural nationalism as it is a marketing device, but it’s moronic. California rolls aren’t authentic to Japan, but they’re a standard of sushi restaurants in America. Deal with it. It’s a globalized world, and the notion of a “pure” cultural product is a sham. And it’s been a sham for some time. We’ve been globalizing for hundreds of years. (The spice trade, anyone?) But if the Japanese taxpayer wants to pay for this culinary boondoggle, have at it. (Thanks Dr. Vino!)

The war on broken in-flight entertainment
I get as irritated as the next guy when the audio-video system is broken on a long flight, but attacking the staff is probably not the way to go. Customers on board several Qantas aircraft that have been experiencing technical trouble with their video system “are becoming openly abusive and threatening” to flight attendants in flight. Not cool. Better bring a book.

The war for Delta
US Airways really, really, really, really, really wants to buy Delta. They’re now offering to raise their offer by another $1 billion if the creditors agree to postpone a meeting to discuss Delta’s in-house restructuring. Wake me up when this is over.

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