An American Airlines flight that was delayed a mere hour and half ended up never leaving the ground because passengers started booing the late flight crew and started acting hostile towards them. The crew, citing a ‘hostile work environment’, refused to work the flight. American ended up canceling the flight, and in the ultimate bit of irony, when the flight left the next morning and arrived at LGA, the bags were sent to JFK. Given it was a Florida based flight, delays are almost inevitable this time of year and the passengers were being unreasonable.
Good news for those of you who like a smoother ride. Although subtle, the jet streams have been slowly shifting towards the poles gradually over the past 20 years.
Here are two great approximations of turbulence near the jet stream. While the jet stream can cause a turbulent flight, it can also be smooth. This is why turbulence is so hard to predict.
While this PDF document is heavy reading, it is a fascinating read if you have the time. The document has an interesting excerpt that states that most turbulence is proportionately over reported and smooth flights are under reported.
In-situ data provides a better representation of turbulence statistics in the atmosphere (Dutton (1980), Sharman et al. (2006)). Figure 1 shows that over 99% of in-situ reports are reports of null turbulence. If this distribution is representative, at any time at most 0.01% of the atmosphere at upper levels should contain MOG turbulence. In contrast, about half of PIREPs report null turbulence, 27% report light, 17% report moderate and 1% report severe; thus, pilots substantially underreport the null events. In-situ data overcomes this uncertainty by reporting data every minute during flight.
While many people like to ‘harsh’ on Southwest Airlines for their particular practices (opening seating, serving secondary cities), it’s also quite clear that out of all the major airlines, they are the only airline to ‘get it’. While other airlines ratchet up fees, Southwest counters with a brilliant advertising campaign as explained, and seen in the video below. No other airline can come close to claiming 35 years of profitability in a row, but Southwest can. They must be doing something right. While I’m still a Northwest fan, I’d take Southwest in a second, and I found that on a recent trip, my first on Southwest, was completely satisfactory in a clean plane with on time performance. I’d say that 35 years of profitability is no accident, and a testament to a clear vision and respecting customers and employees alike.
Five people died in a landing accident in Honduras, when an airplane attempted to land during bad weather. Watch this video to see how treacherous that landing is in good weather.
United Flight 1427 hit severe turbulence out of DEN and turned around to land.
CBS4Denver has the details. Please buckle up at all times, especially in the mountain areas.
And here is the Pilot Report of Turbulence from that flight, it must have been quite a ride. According to the report, the aircraft’s altitude varied by 1800 feet in the course of a minute.
DEN UA /OV ALS030060/TM 0625/FL370/TP A320/TB SEVERE TURB/ SEVERE MTN WAVE/RM ± 1800 FPM
Thank you to Chris Sloan from the Airchive for sending this in.
Delta and Northwest are set to merge, if approved by regulators; they will keep the Delta name, thus ending the legacy of the Northwest name (1926-2008). You can read their spin on the merger here: DeltaNorthwest, and even see their combined effort at a site designed to present the merger in a positive light.
Turbulence Forecast has always been a proponent of Northwest Airlines for many reasons. First and foremost of interest to site visitors is their turbulence avoidance strategy, as seen in previous blog posts here: one, two, three, four.
Despite those blog posts, Delta never stood out to me one way or another in terms of avoidance. Since their respective route structures essentially do not overlap much at all, I never really had a chance to evaluate Delta very much in those aforementioned posts, but I will be watching next time the opportunity presents itself.
Delta did, and still may participate in a program related to turbulence, although the current status of that program is unknown and information is hard to come across. If anyone knows (Delta representatives especially encouraged to contact us), please post a comment or contact the site.
While I’m very familiar with Northwest’s web site for ticketing and other management features, a quick glance at Delta’s offering makes me hope that they retain Northwest’s ticketing system and self management features, as well as the features of the Elite program that Northwest offers.
Sadly, due to the raising cost of fuel, the merger was probably inevitable and it certainly makes sense just given their route structure, very little overlap. I hope that new Delta will maintain the best features of the old Northwest (large planes on many routes, and the points mentioned above) and turn the merger into a positive. Only time will tell.
It is Turbulence Forecast’s opinion that the merger will be permitted to go through. The retirement of the DC-9 fleet will probably accelerate due to fuel costs. The Northwest Airlines DC-9 fleet has an average age of 35 years, which is amazing if you think about it; they don’t build them like that anymore.
