Odds and Ends: 787 fulfilling dream; Weather worsens for CSeries; Painting out logos; plane vs car

787 Opens New Routes: The Boeing 787 is still getting some negative headlines about dispatch reliability, but the plane is proving Boeing’s underlying message about opening new, “thin” routes. The Tacoma News-Tribune has this story detailing how the 787 is fulfilling the dream (so-to-speak).

CSeries First Flight: The weather forecast in Montreal deteriorated further overnight. Now rain is predicted through Saturday, making first flight unlikely until at least Sunday.

Guess Whose Airplane? You’d never know from the titles and logo painted out, would you?

NBC News Photo

CNN has this story on the matter. This is the first accident in 12 years, according to Wikipedia when a crew member was killed in a fire that destroyed a Boeing 737 on the ground. The last accident involving passengers was in 1998, according to Wiki.

Speaking of Accidents: Here’s an unusual one: A Delta Air Lines commuter plane struck a car parked on the tarmac while the plane was being towed.

ClickonDetroit photo.

Let’s see the owner of the car explain this one to his insurance company.

29 Comments on “Odds and Ends: 787 fulfilling dream; Weather worsens for CSeries; Painting out logos; plane vs car

  1. “Guess Whose Airplane?” Perhaps one way to put it is “You can obscure, but you cannot hide.”

    • “Known as the ‘crisis communication rule,’ the practice of obscuring logos was a recommendation from Star Alliance — of which Thai Airways is a member — to protect the airline’s image, an airline official initially said. — However, Star Alliance denied the claims.”

      Actually you can still see the Star Alliance logo on the picture above;-)

      Paint action: http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/368810/suvarnabhumi-accident-flights-delayed (slowly responding page)

      • So after Thai blacked out their logos on the A-330 incident, will they black out their logos on the A-380 after that incident? More people were hurt on the A-380 than on the A-330.

          • Turbulence, which has injured PAX since they started flying, is not an accident and a highly visibly damaged airplane. You’re really stretching things, KC.

          • I agree, but you asked “What A380 incident in which passengers were hurt are you talking about, KC?” I just answered.

            Pax (and crew) have been getting hurt because of turbulence since the days of the Ford Tri-Motor. This is yet another incident. Unfortunately the news media (CNN in this case) like to make something out of nothing. They think two incidents at the same airline, or same airplane type, in a relatively short period of time is a trend. The news media has to many “experts” that give opinions about aviation incidents, or any other “news worthy event”, like military action or planning.

        • The A330 was “hurt” and its titles erased.
          But in the A380 case the plane wasn’t “hurt” . Only passengers.

          Think on from there 😉

      • KC: “So after Thai blacked out their logos on the A-330 incident, will they black out their logos on the A-380 after that incident?”
        ???? Are you really comparing an in flight turbulence with a ground incident in question? Why should the A380’s logo be blacked out?

  2. This isn’t the first time that we have heard of logos being painted over but it seems that public perception or opinion seems to be indicating that the practice is no longer the wisest course of action.

    Intersting article about the 787 but fo all of the “success” stories of 787 routes, there seems to be a few sitautions where the route fails. It will be interesting to see if all of these routes are still there in a year or so, especially as two of them have not even started yet. I must admit I can see San Francisco-Chengdu panning out but I have my doubts about Austin-London. Strangely ironic that they finish the article by mentioning a new hub to hub connection.

    • @Aero Ninja, “few sitautions where the route fails.” … “Strangely ironic that they finish the article by mentioning a new hub to hub connection”

      Wondering which “route fails?” Austin-London hasn’t started yet and it already “fails?” Why?

      And, Denver is more a United domestic hub than international and a minor hub to the some majors. Why is this “ironic?” Is this a sign of schadenfreude against the B787, and pro “hub”?

      • Let’s try it the opposite way, the route hasn’t started yet but that is already considered an indicator of success for the aircraft type in question. Please also note I wrote I had my doubts about how successful the route would be, not that it had failed.

        As for Denver, I find it ironic that they finish a story about long, thin (point to point) routes by mentioning a hub to hub route. To me, a hub is a hub.

        Lastly, I am not pro hub but I don’t see the point to point concept working out the way Boeing advertises it for some time to come. Living in a non-hub city, it would be great to have more than two non-stop transatlantic routes, the one being only seasonal at that. But I just don’t see that many of these secondary cities being able to provide the numbers to make such routes profitable. Not yet, at least.
        This does not take away from the sales success of the 787 but I don’t see that success being overwhelmingly based on the point to point model.

  3. Normand Handel, “Note that conversion is only made for the current day. For the rest of the week the metric system is displayed. So don’t be fooled thinking of an abrupt cooling for the rest of the week; it is just that we switch back, without warning, from standard to metric.”

    By “standard”, I assume you mean the Britsh Imperial system which is still only used in a handful of countries. The greater majority of the world, both by population and by number of countries, uses the System Internationale, or metric, system.

    • From the American point of view it is the standard system and that’s why I used the expression. But you are right, for the rest of the world the metric system is THE standard. It’s too bad that President Reagan did not follow Prime Minister Trudeau in going from Imperial to Système international d’unitĂŠs (SI). The United States came very close at the time, but in the end it was decided that the operation would be too costly and impractical. But as the rest of the world is gaining strength in terms of economic power the USA might no longer be able to afford not to convert.

      • About fifteen years ago NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter because of a conversion problem. Lockheed, which was a contractor on this project, had used Imperial units in its software and the consequence was that the orbiter came in at a too low altitude and disintegrated into the martian atmosphere. NASA had initially specified SI units, but for some reason Lockheed used Imperial units. It was a costly mistake: about half a billion dollars for the overall mission!

      • The vast majority of engineers and technical people I work with in the US are quite ambidextrous when it comes to using both Customary and SI units, although familiarity with relevant stats in both unit sets may not be equal. It is my belief that in general, a major part of selecting the right tool for the job involves familiarity and comfort.

      • Yes i do remember a state in the midwest? did convert to metric put all the speed signs in kilometer’s per hour so everybody was doing 90 mph and getting speeding tickets for going 90mph instead of 90kph=55mph the driver’s have never heard of kph as when the driver saw a 90 sign with no kph on it they went 90 mph =145kph it was soon changed back 55mph the Germans have the best freeways in the world NO SPEED LIMETS.

  4. DY 787 enabled outreach was so fantastic that the a.net thread reporting on the
    industriousness of Norwegians 787 was deleted rather fast.
    ( DY was again forced to lease some A340 on short notice )

  5. “The Boeing 787 is still getting some negative headlines about dispatch reliability, but the plane is proving Boeing’s underlying message about opening new, “thin” routes.”

    Here is a good summary of things/routes already there and to come (all airlines):
    http://airlineroute.net/2013/07/01/787current/

    In spite of the teething issues, the momentum is unstoppable.

    All 787s tracked by Flight Aware at the moment in the sky:
    http://flighttracker.newairplane.com/

    • Interesting site, that airlineroute.net. Looks like for most of the airlines, the 787 is being used for one of three types of routes: point to point within the country (mightly long range aircraft to be used for such a route), major city to major city, and then a small amount are for these point to point types of routes.

      In fact, I counted only 13 point to point routes (I gave up after Qatar) with most airlines only having one such route. The exception seems to be Norwegian with three different routes to Fort Lauderdale, two different ones to Oakland and one flight to Orlando, all to start between November and May of next year.

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