Alaska Airlines Starts Flights from Bellingham, WA to Honolulu
In a surprise move Alaska Airlines has announced flights from Bellingham Washington to Honolulu. Perhaps in a move to cash in on expensive tickets from Vancouver to Hawaii or to offer an alternative to current offerings from Seattle, the Bellingham airport provides an opportunity to do both. Also, having planes with Alaska brandished on the fuselage landing in Hawaii add another own odd quirk to the decision.
Bellingham is located about an hour and a half north of Seattle and just four miles south of the Canadian border. Over the past few years Belingham International Airport (BLI) has been growing tremendously. Friday was an exciting day for the airport and Alaska Airlines. Even though Alaska and their sister carrier Horizon Air have been flying out of Bellingham to Las Vegas and Seattle for quite sometime now, Alaska has now started non-stop service to Honolulu (HNL). They will fly to Honolulu and back once per day using a Boeing 737-800 aircraft. Alaska started their first flight to Hawaii in 2007 and now has eighth west coast cities connecting to the islands of Hawaii.
New safety rules for 757s and 737s go into effect based on AA incident
When jets begin rupturing in the sky, but FAA takes notice. Even though there has been a relatively close relationship between maintenance facilities and their inspectors, the gloves are off when planes almost fall out of the sky. The new directives and bulletins came out last week.
Boeing previously issued nonbinding safety bulletins covering both widely used models. The mandatory FAA rules—slated go into effect in the next few weeks—cover more than 630 older 737 models and an additional 680 older 757s.
The 757 rule was prompted by a sudden rupture and decompression suffered by an American Airlines 757 on a flight from Miami to Boston in October. Nobody was hurt, and the AMR Corp. unit’s plane returned safely to Miami, despite a one-foot tear in its aluminum skin. But the FAA’s mandate, which the agency considers “interim action” pending further moves to resolve underlying safety issues, entails repetitive inspections ranging between 30 and 300 flights.
Snow rocks west and midwest — travelers take notice
A new record for snowfall was recorded yesterday in South Bend, Indiana, more than 25 inches. In Colorado, airlines are allowing passengers to make changes in travel plans without paying change fees.
A total of 25.4 inches of snow fell at South Bend Regional Airport from midnight Friday to 7 p.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
The previous record for snowfall in one day was 20 inches, recorded on Jan. 30, 1909. The previous record for snowfall on Jan. 8 was 15 inches in 1903. Saturday’s snowfall even exceeded the blizzard of 1978, a storm that spread over several days.
Saturday’s snow storm “was classic lake effect,” WSBT meteorologist Rick Mecklenberg said. “It never moved. Typically we see lake effect (snow) bands shift.”
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
