Supersonic jet to be tested
The time it takes to fly from New York to London may be cut by more than half if Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and a Denver start-up are successful in their effort to create a new supersonic passenger plane.
The manufacturing team for Branson’s Virgin Galactic company is working with Boom Supersonic to test a prototype next year of a passenger plane that can fly at Mach 2.2, more than twice the speed of a typical commercial jet.
Supersonic flights came to a halt after the July 25, 2000, crash of an Air France Concorde outside Paris that killed 113 people, and the downturn in the aviation industry after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Blake Scholl, chief executive of Boom, said safety concerns were not the reason the Concorde jets were taken offline. Instead, he said the planes were too expensive to operate.
“Today, we are sitting on 50 years of progress on aerodynamics, fuel economy, design,” he said.
Instead of spending seven hours and paying up to $5,500 for a flight from New York to London on a Boeing 747, travelers can spend about $2,500 for a three-hour flight to cross the Atlantic on a supersonic jet, according to Boom.
“Supersonic travel for both cargo and humans will result in many exciting benefits,” Branson said in a video statement.
Under the partnership, Branson is expected to fly the Boom jets in his Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia airlines.
The idea has the support of the travel industry.
A survey of more than 2,000 travel boards and tourism industry groups taken last month found that 63% of senior travel executives expect supersonic flying to become a mainstream form of commercial transportation.
When f lying, leave ‘Lucille’ at home
Negan, the homicidal villain who wields a bat wrapped with barbed wire, was introduced only a few weeks ago in the AMC series “The Walking Dead” and already he has become a headache for airport security officers.
The Transportation Security Administration said officers at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport opened a carry-on bag last week only to find a replica of Negan’s bloodstained bat.
The ultra-violent zombie series is filmed in Georgia, but the TSA didn’t say if an actor from the show was carrying the bat.
Although the barbed wire on the bat was made of rubber, no weapons are allowed in carry-on bags — including replica weapons and television show souvenirs, the TSA said.
It may not be the last time that TSA officers have to deal with the bat that Negan calls “Lucille” in the show. A Wisconsin toy company that sells Walking Dead bobblehead dolls recently began selling a plastic replica of Lucille for $39.99.
What does it take to get banned for life?
Delta Air Lines’ lifetime ban of a profane supporter of President-elect Donald Trump highlights a littleknown but growing club of travelers who have earned the ultimate airline punishment.
As the Trump fan discovered, airline tolerance only goes so far.
The unnamed man whose loud pronouncements were captured on video didn’t get kicked off the flight but did get kicked off the airline.
In a memo to employees, Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastain said the Trump supporter “displayed behavior that was loud, rude and disrespectful to his fellow customers.”
A review of several recent onboard disruptions shows that being inconsiderate isn’t enough to trigger a lifetime ban from an airline. It takes defiant disdain for crew members or a threat to fellow passengers.
United Airlines imposed a lifetime ban on cybersecurity expert Chris Roberts last year after the founder of One World Lab in Denver sent a tweet while he was a passenger on a United flight suggesting that he could hack into the airline’s onboard system to trigger the oxygen masks to drop.
Last year, RyanAir banned a British man for harassing women on his flight from England to the Canary Islands and then passing out in the plane’s bathroom.
In 2011, a Georgia man was banned from Delta Air Lines after he was booted from a Dallas-to-Atlanta f light for telling another passenger that he was carrying poison gas in a canister and igniting a lighter near the passenger’s legs.
In 2012, Air Canada banned a man who became loud and abusive with airline employees and threatened a staffer after missing a flight from Cancun, Mexico, to Montreal.
In the latest incident, on a Nov. 22 flight from Atlanta to Allentown, Pa., the unnamed passenger stood in the aisle of the crowded plane and yelled profanities while voicing his support for Trump, asking: “We got some Hillary ... on here?”
Bastain said a review of a video of the incident showed the man should have been ejected from the plane, although he was not. Delta not only banned the passenger from all future flights but also refunded the cost of the flight for his fellow passengers.
“The heightened tension in our society means that now more than ever we must require civility in our planes and in our facilities,” the CEO wrote to employees.