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WestJet hiking bag fees on transatlantic flights. WestJet has hiked its bag fees for travellers purchasing basic fares to and from transatlantic destinations. Basic fare customers booking travel on or after March 31 to London, Dublin, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Glasgow, or Manchester will pay $60 for a first checked bag, up from $30. A second checked bag will cost $90, up from $50. (Source: AC Daily, February 21, 2020) |
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Record flight. A massive weather system that is bringing havoc to northern Europe had a silver lining for passengers and crew aboard a British Airways 747-400 heading from JFK to Heathrow overnight Saturday February 8, 2020. The flight’s routing matched the path of a 265-MPH jet stream and the crew was able to get the old Jumbo up to 825 MPH groundspeed and make the crossing in a record time of four hours and 56 minutes. The plane got to the gate 80 minutes ahead of schedule on Sunday morning February 9, 2020. The weekend flight beat the previous airliner record of five hours and 13 minutes held by a Norwegian Air Boeing 787 in 2017. That flight had a boost from a 200-MPH jet stream. The 30-year-old B-747 is also about 10 MPH faster at cruise than the Dreamliner. While air travelers enjoy the ride, what awaits them on the ground in Europe is less pleasant. The winds on the surface are as high as 100 MPH and are causing widespread disruption and damage across Europe. (Source: avweb.com/aviation-news - February 9, 2020) |
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Dreamliner dreams dashed. Those dreaming of a Dreamliner for a $26 raffle ticket were brought back to earth on Friday February 7, 2020 when the Mexican government announced it will hang on to the presidential Boeing 787-8 for at least two more years. But it’s going ahead with the raffle to sell six million tickets at 500 pesos each and instead award 100 cash prizes of about $1 million each. The raffle will gross $159 million and after the cash prizes are awarded the remaining money will be distributed to the 5,000 ticket vendors and used to make the last payment on the $235 million airplane, and whatever is left over will buy “stuff for the poor”. Winning a Dreamliner would immediately saddle that winner with storage and maintenance costs far beyond what an average person could afford and the original rules of the raffle prevented the winner from selling it off for less than its value. (Source: avweb.com/aviation-news - February 9, 2020) |
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