Pontifications: The light bulb goes on

  July 27, 2020, © Leeham News: Airlines across the world are pledging aircraft, slots, airport facilities and real estate to raise money. Some US airlines recently pledged frequent flyer programs to raise billions of dollars in debt… Read More

Pontifications: Turbulence is not just something in the air

July 20, 2020, © Leeham News: The timing is coincidental. If you think the airline industry is in a wind shear now, don’t be fooled. The industry has been in perpetual turbulence for 50 years. At least that’s… Read More

Pontifications: The nuts and bolts of air disasters

March 9, 2020, © Leeham News: Commercial aviation accidents are high profile news events. These happen rarely. Many times, a lot of people are killed. (It should be noted that often survivors may outnumber those killed as safety… Read More

Coronavirus dominates sideline talk at aviation conference

By Scott Hamilton March 2, 2020, © Leeham News, Austin (TX): The global impact of COVID-19, the coronavirus, was the dominant talk on the sidelines of an aviation conference here. Industry professionals predict the reduction in airline service… Read More

Pontifications: The 747 revolutionized air travel

Feb. 11, 2019, © Leeham News: Few airplanes truly can be called revolutionary. Most are evolutionary. The Boeing 747 was one of those that falls into the former category. Just as the Boeing 707 revolutionized air travel, so… Read More

Pontifications: Qatar Air adds US service, US airlines ramp up whining

May 11, 2015: Qatar Airways is going to add service to three more US cities and the US airlines don’t like it. That’s too bad. We’ve heard this story before. First, it was the proposed deregulation of the… Read More

Pontifications: USA to the World: “We want to fly everywhere. Period.”

Two of the Big 3 Middle Eastern carriers launched a PR counter offensive in Washington DC today. Below are my thoughts. I haven’t weighed in on the current battle between the Big 3 US airlines and the Big… Read More

World’s dud airliners

While we’re in the slow-news Holidays, we thought we’d have some irreverent fun. There have been many attempts at building airliners. There are the obvious successes but there have been many, many failures. Starting with the end of… Read More

Odds and Ends: Looking ahead in 2014; Boeing letter to Machinists; TWA retro choice; Screw it, let’s do it on Virgin [plane]

Looking ahead in 2014: We wrote this outlook for 2014 for CNN International Travel.  More seats, more fees, quieter year. IAM 751 members vote Friday on the ‘777X contract.‘ Here is a letter dated December 27 from Boeing… Read More

Odds and Ends: Recovering WWII flying boat; Constellation restorations; Eastern Air DC-7B; Where will 787-10 be assembled?

As the holidays approach, we’re going to lighten up a bit and provide some links to feature stories. There continues to be news, of course, and a couple of items are in this post. But enjoy the break…. Read More