Airlines

Somewhere between the moment you book a ticket and the moment your aircraft pushes back from the gate, someone you will never meet has already spent the better part of an hour working on your specific flight. They have pulled the weather forecasts for your departure and arrival airports, selected an optimal route through the...

A great perk of working for an airline is that employees may get companion passes. Companion (or buddy) passes are free or discounted airline tickets for use by an employee’s family members or friends. Unfortunately, some employees convert this company perk into cash by selling their companion passes illegally. Airlines do not allow their employees...

The international aircraft industry is dominated by many large airlines. When you are plane-spotting and looking for different airline liveries, which ones are you most likely to spot? Here are the largest airlines in the world. The aeronautics industry is one of the most powerful industries in the world. Even with recent disruptions to travel,...

Low-cost budget airlines can be tricky to maintain. You somehow need to maintain a balance between profitability and profit. From 1981 to 1987, People Express tried to walk that tightrope before teetering into bankruptcy. Of course, it’s what happened in between either end of that high wire economic balancing act that makes their story live...

If you had taken a domestic or international flight to or from America 50 years ago, TWA would’ve been one of the “Big Four” carriers from whom you had to choose. If you look for them today, there’s nothing. What happened? Well, for starters, it isn’t quite true that there’s nothing remaining of TWA. For...

Once upon a time there was an airline that was among America’s most affordable and iconic, that began as an air mail service and grew to service international flights, and then, poof! It was gone. This’s Pan Am Airlines’ story. In a way, Pan Am’s antiquity makes its story that much more compelling. In life,...

Trump University. Trump’s Atlantic City Taj Mahal. Trump Steaks. The New Jersey Generals USFL team, and eventually the whole USFL. A lot of Trump enterprises have come and gone – yet the story of one Trump airline “trumps” them all. Yes, Donald Trump owned his own airline at one point, Trump Airlines or, more properly,...

In March of 2020, Flybe ceased to fly or be. It was the latest casualty of a British economy that was undergoing massive changes pre-Brexit as well as a global health crisis and will only continue to do so now that Brexit has occurred. The most well-known among these casualties was Thomas Cook, the travel...