Cruise Safety Bill Passes House

The cruise ship safety bill has passed the U.S. House and now awaits Senate approval, the Associated Press reports. This is a good thing.

Egregious Pilot Errors

I don’t know what I think about the pilots who flew past the Minneapolis airport . Except it’s not easy to be a pilot, and these ones are in a lot of trouble and somehow I just don’t feel like piling on.

Last week a Delta flight landed on a taxiway at Atlanta, and it now appears that the pilots were not entirely at fault. CNN reports that “approach lights and a ground-based instrument that helps pilots line up with the runway were off.”

Whether there’s any reasonable excuse in the Minneapolis case, which the pilots reportedly blamed on a heated discussion in the cockpit, remains to be seen. If not, they’ll lose their jobs. 

Maybe they should. But the fact is that pilots are human, and the little mistakes that you and I make when we miss an exit or take a wrong turn can end their careers — or their lives, and ours.

Bradley Gets Nonstop Service To Denver

Southwest Airlines will begin a daily nonstop flight between Bradley and Denver in March.

Tickets are on sale for $79 each way, totaling $179.20 for a round trip when taxes and fees are included.

Frontier Airlines had flown a daily nonstop between Bradley and Denver, but canceled it last September.

Southwest has been expanding rapidly in Denver. Along with Bradley, it is adding daily nonstops to Boise, Ontario, Detroit and Dulles.

Why did I not have this story when Southwest announced it this morning? Because I was traveling all day. On Southwest.

Oh, the irony. The bitter, bitter irony ….

Wall Street vs. Southwest Airlines

If you had one standout success among several companies in a struggling industry, would you try to get that one company to be more like the others?

You might if you were Wall Street and the company was Southwest Airlines.

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Southwest Adding Service In Florida, St. Louis

Southwest Airlines announced today that it will begin service to the new airport in Panama City, Fla., in May 2010 and that it is expanding again in St. Louis.

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Southwest Introduces ‘Green’ Jet

Southwest Airlines is flying a jet refurbished with lightweight, recycled cabin materials from Dallas to Seattle today.

The Boeing 737, which Southwest calls  its “green plane,”  is 520 pounds lighter than the airline’s standard jet. It doesn’t sound like much — the equivalent of just a few hefty passengers — but it will save 10,000 gallons of fuel a year, and cause a corresponding drop in carbon emissions, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly announced at the airline’s Media Day in Dallas.

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NTSB Urges Sleep Apnea Screening

The National Transportation Safety Board believes that airline pilots should be screened for sleep apnea, along with truck and bus drivers, train engineers and merchant sailors, the Associated Press reports.

The NTSB cited several incidents involving drivers and pilots with sleep apnea, including one last year when two go! airlines pilots fell asleep for at least 18 minutes and cruised over their destination at Hilo, Hawaii.

The Associated Press cites a study that found that at least 7 percent of Americans have at least some form of sleep apnea.

Music To Snack By

Oops! Jet Lands On Taxiway At Atlanta

A Delta Boeing 767 cleared to land at Atlanta with a medical emergency on board touched down on a taxiway Monday, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports.

The flight from Rio de Janeiro was cleared to land on runway 27R but landed instead on a parallel taxiway. There was no traffic on the taxiway, and the jet came to a stop safely.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

Google Sponsors Free Wi-Fi On Virgin America

Passengers on Virgin America flights between Nov. 10 and Jan. 15 will get free Gogo Inflight Internet access, courtesy of Google, the airline announced today.

Airlines are rolling out Wi-Fi as quickly as they can, but passengers have proved fairly resistant to the fees. Maybe this holiday special will break the ice. Or maybe it will overload the service and slow it to a crawl — especially when you consider that Virgin America has electrical outlets at every seat, so nobody will run out of battery power.

Anyway, I’d use it. I’ve never found any broadband that was too free for me.