Aubrey Cohen

Cancellations inch up, or surge, thanks to tarmac rule

2010-09-14T13:20:00.000-07:00

Would you accept a 0.2 percentage point increase in the risk of a canceled flight for the near guarantee of not being stuck in an airplane on the tarmac for three hours or more? How about a 21 percent increase in the risk?

Well, we got both in July.

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Politicians throw weight behind museums' shuttle bids

2010-09-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

If you thought politics wouldn't play a part in who got a retired space shuttle orbiter, well, nobody really thought that, right?

On Wednesday, the New York Daily News quoted Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., saying a number of sources had told him that New York's Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum has the inside track to land a shuttle.

"I believe we are in good shape," Schumer said. "It's not a done deal, but the arguments we have made about why the shuttle belongs in New York are resonating."

Schumer said in the story that New York has stiff competition from at least two other cities, which he refused to name. He said he is hearing that a decision will be announced in the next "few weeks."

Approximately 20 other sites around the country are competing for the shuttle orbiters Atlantis, Endeavour and Enterprise (which was used to test atmospheric flight) after the retirement of the shuttle fleet later this year. The National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C., is slated to get the shuttle Discovery and give up Enterprise, which currently is on display there.

One of the contestants is Seattle's Museum of Flight. So I queried members of Washington's delegation.

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More and more travelers are catching flights in Bellingham

2010-08-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

An Alaska Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Bellingham on Thursday disgorged mostly Canadians, as do most flights into the small Northwest Washington airport.

"It's a lot cheaper," explained Nathan Arnold, an Alaska passenger who lives in Vancouver, B.C. "I'm used to a larger airport, a little more hustle bustle, but it's good. ... It's quaint."

Bellingham International Airport's traffic has more than quintupled since 2003, to 320,358 passengers last year, thanks to new flights from Alaska and low-cost carrier Allegiant Air.

It's on track to break 400,000 this year, and that's before Alaska's planned daily service, announced earlier this month, from Bellingham to Honolulu, and Allegiant's expected announcement of its its own Bellingham-Hawaii service. (Of course, Sea-Tac still dwarfs Bellingham, with 31 million passengers in 2009.)

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Boeing makes 787 training hands-on and paperless

2010-05-12T16:50:00.000-07:00

Inside a small Boeing classroom in Renton last week, Kevin Trau brought a virtual aircraft air conditioning cart up on a virtual tarmac beside a virtual 787 Dreamliner.

"Just to connect this ground cart there are certain steps that must be followed," Trau, 787 maintenance training instructor/developer, explained.

A mechanic for, say, 787 launch customer All Nippon Airways could find the right connection point, move the virtual cart there, hook it up and turn it on. And there's only one right way.

"It's as real-world as it can be," Trau said.

Call it training for the Xbox generation.

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Was Boeing's move to S.C. really about a negotiation gap?

2009-11-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

The (Tacoma) News Tribune's John Gillie has a good postmortem on Boeing's decision to put its second 787 Dreamliner assembly line in North Charleston, S.C., rather than in Everett, Wash.

Gillie recaps the differences between what Boeing and International Association of Machinists negotiators were willing to accept and other reasons South Carolina attracted the line.

I was out with the flu when Boeing announced its decision, so I'll take this opening to offer my one cent on the issue, which is that I suspect either Boeing or union leadership wasn't serious about reaching a deal.

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Analysts: Tanker criteria fair, but politics still a factor

2009-09-25T22:08:00.000-07:00

Aerial refueling tanker criteria that Air Force and Pentagon officials presented Thursday do a good job of creating a transparent process that doesn't clearly favor Boeing or a rival Northrop Grumman-EADS team, but politics will still come into play, analysts said.

"They've made things as clear and as transparent and straightforward as possible, and they've used language that doesn't appear to favor either side," said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal group. "It doesn't change the political dynamic, but at least it shows that the Air Force is doing everything it can, given the political circumstances."

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Boeing plans to fly 787 this year, deliver late 2010

2009-08-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

Boeing expects to fly the 787 Dreamliner by the end of this year and deliver the first 787 in the fourth quarter of 2010, the company announced Thursday.

"This new schedule provides us the time needed to complete the remaining work necessary to put the 787's game-changing capability in the hands of our customers," Jim McNerney, Boeing's chairman, president and chief executive, said in a statement. "The design details and implementation plan are nearly complete, and the team is preparing airplanes for modification and testing."

Boeing delayed the first flight in June, saying it needed to reinforce areas within the side-of-body section of the aircraft. On Thursday, the company said the new schedule reflects the repair, with several weeks added as a margin to reduce flight test and certification risk.

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