Friday Flyer – November 3, 2023

Interesting Aviation News

  • Qatar Airways joined other airlines in reporting earnings and did so in spectacular fashion with an announcement of a $1B profit.  Most are quick to note that QR is not a publicly traded company so they don’t have an obligation to report this nor do they have the same scrutiny over their books.  Also included in this announcement is that nearly all of their A350s are back in the air after being grounded over a paint dispute with Airbus (h/t: Andrew B.)
  • This week, airlines traveling across the Atlantic from east to west experienced especially fast tailwinds, which led to very high speeds and early arrivals.  These speeds were once reserved for planes doing supersonic travel, but with the aid of the right wind, it can happen even for standard jets. (h/t: Brent)
  • Back in September, the Dutch government moved ahead with a cap on number of flights into AMS airport.  That resulted in Jetblue having to cancel their recently launched AMS flight, among others.  The US seems set to retaliate with some restrictions of their own given the belief this violates an agreement between the US and EU. 
  • Air Canada’s earnings call this week showed how great the summer was for them.  Here’s a summary of their earnings from The Airline Observer.

Interesting Aviation Fact

I’ve enjoyed getting the weekly newsletter from Visual Approach Analytics, who focus on data in the airline industry.  In this week’s newsletter, two charts were shared that represent the busiest routes in the world by number of seats.  The first is just a bar chart representation, but the second is cool to see on a map where these routes are located.

Cool Aviation Photo

This week’s photo comes from Matt Kolodny who recently had the chance to fly on Eastern Airlines scheduled service from MIA to SDQ.  This is unique for a few reasons:

  1. Eastern was previously a prominent player in the airline industry (1926-1991), but went out of business.  
  2. This version of Eastern is simply using their logo.
  3. This scheduled service is once a month, so be careful booking a roundtrip.  
  4. The rest of their service is based on chartered flights.

Below is a picture of the Boeing 767-300 he took on his flight.  (h/t: Matt K.)