One thing I find amazing is how bad AA's baggage handling is compare to DL/UA/WN. It seems they do not even try to improve it. How much money do they spend every year delivering bags that do not arrive on the correct flight, and replacing bags that are never found? AA has been terrible with baggage...
Jump to postSame thing happened with PHX - some interior designer really didn't like beige, which, fair, but it actually worked in the original T4 terminal design. The bright terrazzo renovations on the AA PHX piers are horrible, looks like CLT suffered the same fate Agree 100% - the piers in Phoenix were much...
Jump to postPolot is right on the money - Atlanta's renovated concourses are far, far nicer than anything you'll find in Charlotte. Atlanta realized that to open things up they needed to raise the ceilings. Charlotte put in brighter lights and ripped out the carpet - so now you have hordes of passengers shoving...
Jump to postHappy birthday, CLT - you don't look a day over, well... 40. As the others have said, CLT is easily the worst connecting hub experience in the country these days. Narrow concourses, low ceilings, overcrowded holdrooms, maxed-out concessions, long walking distances, concourses growing like ganglia ac...
Jump to postHAM was served via BRU, as a tag from JFK, and DUS was a tag via BRU using the ORD flight. Flights were operated with the 763. The other routings were JFK-ZRH-STR and ORD-ZRH-MUC on 762 equipment. Originally GVA was a tag from ZRH, and when STR and HAM were added, AA flew a 763 on JFK-ORY-GVA. The ...
Jump to postAA has served the following markets in Germany, going back to the 1980s. None of them are around any longer. JFK-FRA ORD-FRA MIA-FRA ORD-TXL PHL-TXL PHL-FRA/MUC (inherited from US) ORD-DUS Don't forget ORD-MUC (served in the late 1980s/early 1990s) and the very short-lived tag services to HAM and S...
Jump to postA fresh meal box is offered on flights and tray foods with hot meals being reintroduced starting next week I believe. The complimentary fresh meal box is not what should be served in F on flights 2 hours or longer. I fly MIA-LAX often and they're able to do a hot meal service on a single tray on th...
Jump to postAll the pharma and tech execs you see in C would beg to differ. Israel is a developed economy. "VFR route" and "developed economy" are not mutually exclusive terms. You can have a front cabin with a handful business travelers and a rear cabin packed full of Birthright travelers ...
Jump to postAll those JFK adds are aimed at vacationers and VFR. And I never said their service at LAX would erode, only their position there. You can have scads of flights at a super-low average fare per passenger, which seems to be the path AA is taking with a product that's wholly undifferentiated from the ...
Jump to postAll the more reason to put a competitive product in strong O&D markets, no? Captive hub passengers and price-sensitive connecting flow pax don't care - you're right. Markets with real competition and a range of better-than-AA choices, like LAX and NYC, are the ones American seems to be eager to...
Jump to postGross - have noticed many more flights on CR7s now that used to be on E75s. OKC-LAX comes to mind. A significant downgrade IMO. Almost all of the E175s are gone from LAX, sadly. A lot of those longer flights (OKC, Houston, etc) are now on CRJs, which is a big step back in terms of comfort. American...
Jump to postGross - have noticed many more flights on CR7s now that used to be on E75s. OKC-LAX comes to mind. A significant downgrade IMO. Almost all of the E175s are gone from LAX, sadly. A lot of those longer flights (OKC, Houston, etc) are now on CRJs, which is a big step back in terms of comfort. American...
Jump to postGreat link and article! While the terminal designs are obviously quite different, there are definitely echoes of Schiphol in Changi T1's ticket lobby. I still think of Terminal 2 as "new" since I can remember when it opened and all the hype surrounding SQ's move over there. I wrote a lette...
Jump to postHey Greg. The piecemeal expansion of the original four DFW terminals is not very well documented, but here's how I remember it playing out: Terminal 2W - opened fully built out with the airport in 1974 and basically didn't change for almost 25 years - American took over 2W-A in 1998, building an inf...
Jump to postGreat thread! We moved to Dallas (Carrollton) in 1984, when I was four years old, and I lived there until graduating high school in 1999 - so DFW in its "adolescent" years holds a very fond place in my heart. Some of my memories, tied to comments in this thread: - The use of individual air...
Jump to postWell, the PQC airport is almost bigger than the whole Con Dao island :D There are plans to extend the VCS runway (up to 2500m in length) to handle narrowbodies such as the A320/B737 families as well as rebuild the terminal to increase the capacity. But there is no plan to turn VCS into a internatio...
Jump to postYes, I don't want this beautiful island to be destroyed by the tourism boom on the island. The authorities have to take action to protect the beauti as well as the unique wildness of the island. Please don't turn Côn Đảo into the second Phú Quốc (PQC). However, QH's plan is necessary as the demand ...
Jump to postVery interesting! The growth in Vietnam's domestic market has been really significant in the past 5-10 years. With almost 100 million citizens and rising disposable income, plus difficult geography that makes overland transportation impractical, I wouldn't be surprised to see it evolve into somethin...
Jump to postI went to Bali in March 2019 and I have to say I was sorrily disappointed. It honestly felt like Australia's version of Cancun, and I wasn't even staying near the major "party" centers of the island. I happened to tie the trip to DPS with a visit to friends in HKG, but I would have been e...
Jump to postITO is a particularly interesting subset of the history of aviation in Hawaii. While lovely, the east side of the Big Island isn't exactly a tourism hotspot, simply because it rains constantly. Yet, the (decaying) airport infrastructure looks to have been constructed for a much higher-volume operat...
Jump to postCodes have been changed in the past... IDL --> JFK being the best example in 1964. Baltimore went from BAL to BWI in the 1970s as well. Over in Africa there've been quite a few changes - Maputo (MPM) was once Lourenco Marques (LUM), and N'Djamena (NDJ) was once Fort Lamy (FTL). Both were changed for...
Jump to postPossibly. That could have been the case for Luanda, but I know cities such as Kuito and Huambo suffered extensive damage. Mind you, my knowledge of the Angolan war is also rather limited. I didn't realize there was in-city fighting during the civil war - I should do some research! I knew the coloni...
Jump to postMy understanding of the Angolan civil war isn't super extensive - wasn't a lot of the combat in the countryside and cities like Luanda didn't see widespread street fighting or damage? I know that was the case for the Colonial War in the 1960s and early 1970s... life in Luanda went on pretty much nor...
Jump to postI found this interesting news footage video. Interesting MEA ops at BEY while under civil war in 1986. You can see the schedules of MEA planes still operating as the TWA 727 is sitting at BEY during the TWA Flight 847 hijack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh6H_eNuB90&t=140s Very cool look int...
Jump to postWasn't the midfield terminal supposed to open three years ago or something like that? I last flew through AUH in 2015 and construction was well advanced then - I know there have been some well-publicized delays, but at this point I'm unclear what's been holding this up for so long. Etihad is going t...
Jump to postHow has it been 25 years since DIA opened??? Man, I feel old. I still remember sitting at the kitchen table in eighth grade, watching national-news footage of the first planes taxiing out that morning. The company that built the notorious baggage system (BAE) was based in my hometown of Carrollton, ...
Jump to postGood news. Lyon is a beautiful city that is (rightfully) finally getting the tourist attention it deserves. Gorgeous setting, lots of history and great cuisine. LYS seems to have quite a bit of free capacity, at least on the terminal side, since the new addition opened a few years ago. I was there i...
Jump to postMy parents live in Santa Rosa - they retired there from the Dallas area about five years ago and they are THRILLED with the STS-DFW service, as they can go back to visit my siblings and their grandchildren without having to schlep to SFO or SMF. I live in Los Angeles and flying LAX-STS makes visitin...
Jump to posthttps://www.denverpost.com/2020/01/12/dia-aurora-development-runway-noise/ "Aurora has given a green light to the construction of potentially hundreds of houses half a mile from Denver International Airport’s next planned runway, highlighting growing concerns over what an explosion of new neig...
Jump to postVasu has been pretty consistent with his views, if it doesn’t work they’ll try something different. But you’re not really giving the full picture with the above example. The truth is that in the last few years AA added PRG BUD DBV TXL & BLQ to PHL. one of those didn’t perform and was cut. The o...
Jump to postHonestly I wouldn't hold my breath for "blockbuster" routes like LAX-ICN or DFW-BOM. Current AA leadership seems to prefer cautious addition of seasonal international routes, watching carefully to see what sticks, and slowly notching it toward year-round service over a period of multiple y...
Jump to postI'll echo the votes for LHR T2 and LHR T5. We knew all along that the primary focus of both buildings would "retail experiences" and "capturing wallet share" - the designers made no bones about their intentions during construction - but I'm still struck by how pathetically bad bo...
Jump to postI always enjoy visiting FCO and flew through the airport several times earlier this year. The biggest thing I noticed was how much nicer the terminal complex is looking compared to 10 years ago. I visited in 2009 and was shocked at how dirty and just generally beaten up the buildings looked, even th...
Jump to postSo with ZI gone what does that mean for service to Algeria and NA? It is such a large market I can't just see them ignoring the collapse of ZI and it's routes. I also think a few increases in frequency isn't enough for the size of market it was already underserved before ZI Air Algerie serves quite...
Jump to postReally need another east and west runway for windy days as well as more deicing pads to help out in the winter time. When the airport has gusty west winds the line for takeoff can be 30-40 planes deep during the heavy banks. This will only get worse with more growth planned. The original master pla...
Jump to postThere's more mainline than there was ten years ago. In those days, if you weren't going to one of the coasts, one of the hubs, or MSP, odds were you'd be on a regional jet, and even major points like DCA and DEN saw a mix of mainline and Eagle. As others have said, when the Fokkers were retired in 2...
Jump to postEarth tones and browns were huge in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when EWR was designed and built. Look at MCI and DFW, two of the other large airport projects done in the US during that same time period. Almost identical use of concrete, smoked glass, and brown/rust/ochre colors. Same story with ...
Jump to postLots and lots of these through the years. Here's as comprehensive of a list as I could come up with - in quite a few of these cases, the old airport stayed open for general aviation or for more limited passenger operations. In a few cases (Haneda, Hongqiao, Don Mueang, etc.) the old airport ultimate...
Jump to postThere are two sets of remote gates - the two original concrete "bunker" gates that opened with TBIT in 1984, and then the five slightly-more-modern pods that were built about 15 years later. The bunker gates are pretty low to the ground, whereas the newer pods are set higher up and have lo...
Jump to postThe anemic breakfasts are new in the last 10-15 years. I can remember flying ORD-Europe flights on American during the 1999-2005 period where Y pax received a hot omelet with potatoes (AND a warm muffin) for the pre-arrival meal. It wasn't a gourmet omelet or anything like that, but it was hot and f...
Jump to postSouthwest tried experimental over-the-wing jetbridges at DAL and ALB back in 2002-03. The model at DAL was installed at Gate 6. I arrived there on a flight from Houston in 2002 and was determined to try it out. I was sitting in the rear of the plane and remember it took them a long time to maneuver ...
Jump to postWhat a pivot from two decades ago, when DTW was generally regarded as one of the worst airports in the country.
I miss the Smith and Davey terminals from a nostalgic point of view, but they were really run-down and overcrowded by the end of their lives.
Also a bit off topic, but since we're reminiscing (and I'm too young to actually remember National...) In 1986, when I was five years old we took a family vacation to New Orleans, and my parents gave me the fold-up city map that came with our Avis rental car (remember those? they were always terribl...
Jump to postUA did this for years until the RJ Era began. Nice to see them needing more space for mainline again with upgauging. Yup, United was using gates on E for mainline flights for most of the 1990s and even into the early 2000s before the regional jet invasion really cranked up post-9/11. I can remember...
Jump to postThis wasn't an issue 10-15 years ago. Back then, only service animals were allowed in the cabin and they were few and far between. "Fur baby" culture took root in the US in the past decade and legions of people now believe their pets deserve to accompany them everywhere they go. I live in ...
Jump to postAs others have already pointed out, for a city of its size, the greater LA region has a very small Indian community. There are pockets in Artesia/Cerritos and in the San Fernando Valley but they're nowhere near the scale of the East Asian and Latino communities, and nothing like the size of the Indi...
Jump to postYup, the OAG travel supplements had terminal diagrams going way back (I believe they appeared in 1964), but only for major cities. They were in the OAG travel guides that were published as companions to the actual OAG listings. The "Airport Pocket Guides" published by AM Data Services had ...
Jump to postGoogle Maps recently updated its aerial photography for HNL and you can clearly see the new Mauka Concourse under construction at the interisland terminal. Never thought I'd see the day. Would be nice to see the sad-sack terminal buildings at OGG and LIH get a little bit of love. Other than having t...
Jump to postWas 18/36 not built to handle jets at all? 18/36 might have been able to take the BAE-146 (which United Express operated) but doubt it would have handled anything more than that. To the question about 17L-35R being offset from its twin and set deeper into the property - this was done intentionally....
Jump to postI flew through Stapleton twice, in 1991 (age 10) and again in 1993 (age 12). Both times were for family spring break trips to go skiing during elementary school - I was already an airport enthusiast by then and the new airport was under very-highly-publicized construction, so even as a kid I recogni...
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