Friday Flyer – November 17, 2023

This week was the Dubai Airshow, and it didn’t disappoint!  Here’s the link to the main page where you can see some videos and information about it.  

Interesting Aviation News

• One of the biggest parts of the Dubai Airshow is the big airplane manufacturers making deals for new airplane orders.  This year did not lack in those.  There are lots of individual articles out there about what each airline bought, but this was a good summary of how it shook out for Boeing and Airbus.  
• FlyBondi, and LCC out of Argentina, announced this week that it was opening the opportunity for passengers to resell their tickets.  On the surface it sounds like a good idea.  Imagine having a ticket you no longer need, but it’s nonrefundable.  This provides a viable option for you.  The bigger concern for me would be that airlines are handing over the power of revenue management to ticket resellers, just like you see at concert and sports venues.  I haven’t seen this possibility addressed, so we’ll see how this progresses. (h/t: Yining, Jay G., and Manuel)
• A few weeks ago, I wrote about a storm that was brewing between the US and The Netherlands as Dutch officials limited the number of arrivals into AMS.  That had an immediate impact on Jetblue’s ability to fly their new route there that’s only been operating a short time.  The US threatened to retaliate by effectively banning KLM from operating flights to JFK, a premier route for the airline.  It seems that the Dutch have backed off of their plan and things have smoothed over, for the moment at least.
• This weekend kicks of the historically lucrative Thanksgiving travel season.  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is regularly the busiest travel day of the year in the US.  It looks like it is already stacking up to be such this year as the Houston airports have been informed to expect record passenger numbers.  We’ll be watching closely after Thanksgiving to see how this turned out. (h/t: Brent F.)
• And to wrap things up on a lighter note, this is a story about a flight having to divert due to a rowdy passenger.  That doesn’t sound like something humorous, especially given all the stories we see regularly about passengers causing disruptions.  But in this case, it was a horse.  That’s right: on a cargo flight out of New York this week, the pilots made the decision to turn around, dump fuel, and land to settle down a horse that escaped where it was held.  (h/t: Brent F.)

Interesting Aviation Fact

A few weeks ago, I used a photo from Matt’s flight on Eastern Airlines.  I mentioned that it was a revived version of the original brand.  This week, the former President of Eastern died.  Even more than the President of Eastern is that he was a well-renowned NASA pilot and astronaut, commanding the Apollo 8 mission.  A legend in aerospace that’s worth reading about. 

Cool Aviation Photo

Air India announced a new livery a few months ago and today was the first day that new livery took to the skies.  Here is one of their Airbus A350-900s decked out in the new scheme.  

As a note, the Flyer will be taking next week off for the Thanksgiving holidays.  Have a great weekend and Thanksgiving for those celebrating in the US.