Helpfull for airline pricing teams, actually just one person needed now, FareAutoCalc is an Android app that helps you set prices to rech profit on all your routes.  In its simplest form you enter the costs per flight, number of seats, how many fare classes (different price levels) you would like and at what load in percent you want to break even. Then it calculates the prices for each fareclass and the number of seats in same. You can manually enter the price rise scale for how much in percent you want the fare to rise between each fare clas. Or the app can do this for you using an even ..read more

The preliminary accident investigation report has come up with a picture taken after closing the plug door that afterwards departed from a Alaska 737 MAx 9 in the air. It shows it being held down by a a cable tie. THere is speculation that this would be enough to stop the door from sliding up and being able to eject for a number of flights sine there woud be litle presure on it as oon as the plane takes off and outside air pressure locks it onto its stopping pads. It could also be that the cable tie held the bag of roller stopper bolts that was to be installed by a later shift but that the las ..read more

 Another retired armed forces top brass have been added to Boeing mgmt. This time a retired admiral. Yes I'm sure his nuclear bacground have made him very pedantic but do Boeing really need nuclear pedantry for its civilian airdraft production. Sounds expensive, not very productive and not something that would have a lasting effect. And not is there any actual nuclear apect to their civilian aircraft production program either. Another thing is that to reach the grade of admiral he has had to always toe the "company" line. That is not something you as a user of its products want in Boeings ..read more

When its a set screw A set screw is fully threaded while a bolt is only partially threaded. (And yes a set screw has a head. If no head its called a grub screw.) This means a bolt fits better and thighter in its holes than a set screw does. A set screw only have the sideways or bending strength of a bolt 1 size down.  A bolt can only be thigthened to a certain point because it runs out of threads. Who knows if Spirit used set screws securing the plugs on a couple of planes because they ran out of the correctly sized bolts and expected Boeing to redo them anyway. Impossible to see/inspect ..read more

 What on the overwing exits stop them physically from being opened by a passenger with poor survival instincts during flight and did Boeing design engineers remove this safety mechanism from instructions for when installing a plug instead of a door. What other safety features did they omit on the grounds of cost saving in the design for using a door plug instead of a real emergency exit.  Normal cabin doors can't be opened during flight by design since they swing forward into the wind. There are few comments around on how this door (when installed) pivots. Is it up like the overwing ..read more

  What on the overwing exits stop them physically from being opened by a passenger with poor survival instincts during flight and did Boeing design engineers remove this safety mechanism from instructions for when installing a plug instead of a door. What other safety features did they omit on the grounds of cost saving in the design for using a door plug instead of a real emergency exit.  Normal cabin doors can't be opened during flight by design since they swing forward into the wind. There are few comments around on how this door (when installed) pivots. Is it up like th ..read more

Further investigation points to that Spirit the maker of the 737 airframes do ship it with this blank in place but only temporarily fastened. Boeing then take the blank out to load the interior and then reinstall it.  The blank is like a door with a larger window and no manual opening mechnism and is being held in place by a frame rail with lugs but instead of movable pins and a handle like a normal door it is held in place with bolts and castelated nuts that should have split pins in them. As long as they are in place the doorblank can not be moved upwards (some say downwards and some la ..read more

On Max 9 an extra emergency exit door is replaced with a blank if you don't want it instead of not cutting the hole for it in the first place. And it was mechanically fastened instead of welded in place. And since the inner panel is just a normal panel making it impossible to do frequent checks on the blank, of course it eventually fell out taking the inner panel with it. And in this case after only 147 flights. That is less than 1 year in use.  On the other hand larger (in the hundreds) and original Max orders like the one from Ryanair get its own no mentioning of Max version number ..read more

SAS went out to 200 potential investors and all but a small handfull turned them down. They where eventually grouped into 2 constellations and the one chosen consisted of one airline with no money and pretty much no profit plus a couple of financiers offering loans on bad terms.  One day it could come out that the only ones ponying up actual cash for refinancing SAS is the danish state, that was investing no matter who else was in the buying group. That percentage of the upfront cash should leave the danes feeling very shortchanged when it comes to what they get in percentage of ownership ..read more

In Norway we have several examples on this. Norwegian was/is hq'd at Fornebyu that haven't been an airport for over 20 years. Flyr was hq'd in the overexpensive Oslo city center. And Norse hq'd in Arendal, a town without an airport and even further from Oslo airport than Oslo itself. The train connections from hq to airport might be frequent and only take halve to an hour but its not the same as a 10 minute walk to oversee where your real operations happens. The place where your customers experience your service and most of your critical costs are spent. But also the costs most easily squeezab ..read more