Obama to DC
President-elect Obama is making his first trip to DC today on an American Airlines MD-80. For historical comparison President-elect Bush used the American Airlines 737-800 Retrojet to get around after the 2000 election.
SPEEA and Boeing
Representatives from Boeing and SPEEA are sequestered at a SeaTac airport exchanging proposals and counter-proposals on contract language. Boeing calls the first offer “very respectable and oustanding.” SPEEA had a different take, calling the offer “incomplete
and disappointing.” The best and final offer is expected this week.
At least the hotel has warm chocolate chip cookies at the front desk.
KLM gets first E-Jet
Royal Dutch Airlines KLM Cityhopper had its first Embraer E-190 delivered this weekend. PH-EZA bounced through Recife then to Tenerife on its way to Amsterdam.
Vought Earnings
Texas-based Vought Aircraft Industries announces its 3rd quarter earnings today. It should shed some light on the impact of the IAM strike and on-going 787 delays on the supply chain. Vought is responsible for fabricating the aft fuselage section (47 and 48) for the 787.
At its North Charleston facility, in response to the Boeing IAM strike
and Boeing 787 delays, Vought has implemented a temporary shutdown of
the bond fabrication operation and expects to extend the temporary
shutdown to the production assembly areas. The length of the temporary
shutdown will be determined by the length of additional delays in the
787 production schedule from Boeing.
There are some indications that the shutdown is likely to happen during the holiday season and layoffs are likely as a result. Back at Boeing all Machinists are expected to be back at work today jetliner production slowly ramps back up again.
Third A380 for Emirates
MSN016 A6-EDC was spotted flying around the Hamburg area this weekend as it gets ready for its delivery later before the end of the year. Hat tip to Sean Taylor for the find.
One year with Flight!
It’s been a year since I officially went from rogue blogger to semi-respectable mainstream blogger. Rogue isn’t the right word, maybe maverick? I’ve logged 80,000 miles and 1,514,599 page loads over 4 continents and 6 countries. A colleague pointed out that that comes to 19 page loads per mile, which may or may not be a metric for productivity, I can’t tell.
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.