<p>busdriver - I’d like to ask a little more about the regional airlines you avoid for your kids. We are looking at flights from Newark to Atlanta and have found that United has changed all the flights to Embraers operated by either ExpressJet or Shuttle America. There used to be at least a few choices with 737s. Are these the regionals you refer to and should we be concerned about these flights? It seems odd to me that they don’t fly any of the larger planes between two major airports.</p>
<p>Grit, I think United still uses Airbuses on that route, a few times a day. Maybe the day you were looking at, those flights are sold out. Delta uses Airbuses and 737’s mostly on that route too.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to alarm you about the regionals, and I don’t have specific ones that I avoid. If I was a commuter pilot, I’d know a lot more. I just try to fly my kids on a large airplanes first, regional jet second choice, propeller driven-last choice. And in winter weather, I really try to avoid the props. But even in winter weather, an airport like Newark will do a competent job clearing the runway. If they need to fly the Embraers, the regionals in the US do have a good safety record with them.</p>
<p>I’m just paranoid when it comes to my kids, and the recent safety record of the majors is amazing. But they fly a lot, and where they go to college pretty much forces me to fly them on RJ’s.</p>
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<p>I understand what you’re saying. I just also remember PSA 182. And a lot of hours in my dad’s Skyhawk and my mom’s Ercoupe. Obviously no time in the Ercoupe was IFR, but darn was the outward visibility great!</p>
<p>^^Nice, Mom and Dad had their own airplanes? Lucky you. I have very little time in small VFR airplanes, cost too much. I did get to a fly an F-16 once, from the front seat, which had amazing visibility. The windshield was like a huge glass bubble around you, you could see everything. Very futuristic.</p>
<p>Busdriver, I grew up in Wichita. I think a disproportionately large number of people in Wichita in the '70s had airplanes.</p>
<p>Go, Shockers!</p>
<p>P.S. OP, I apologize for having taken this thread in an entirely different direction.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>Well, I had my flight–control tower still extant, and the Dash-10 had a big enough rubber band–but I thought I’d revive this thread with this:</p>
<p>“Flights delayed across country amid budget-cut furloughs of air controllers”</p>
<p><a href=“The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos”>The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos;
<p>The airlines charge that it’s manipulation by the government, and a reallocation of existing funds would fix the problem.</p>
<p>“The airlines charge that it’s manipulation by the government, and a reallocation of existing funds would fix the problem.”</p>
<p>Oh, it definitely is. There are many less important things they could cut besides the meager amount of money they are saving by furloughing controllers. At some of the major airports, during peak times, the controllers on duty are already overloaded, before the furloughs. They are trying to make the pain very visible, to show how impossible it is to actually have to make cuts, instead of doing it by cutting back on conventions, travel and things that aren’t critical to safety. </p>
<p>I am adding additional fuel to every flight I fly into major airports. People have no idea how little extra fuel most airlines carry with them.</p>
<p>I am sure that some of this is about “optics,” because it’s politics. Politics is always about “optics.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, the very point if sequestration–back when it was so bad that no legislator in his or her right mind would allow such a catastrophe to occur–was that it was across-the-board. Sequestration was the stick that would ensure that Congress agreed on sensible, targeted spending cuts as part of a sensible debt-reduction plan.</p>
<p>Cutting current operational spending under the guise of doing something about long-term structural budget deficits is ridiculously inadequate and unpardonably stupid. I am not happy to think that it will take cuts to programs that Americans like and rely on, and inconvenient disruptions of popular or essential government services, to make that point, but that’s what I think.</p>
<p>RE: fuel reserves. Busdriver, I am sure I don’t want to know! But I do know about how much jet fuel weighs.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>“Cutting current operational spending under the guise of doing something about long-term structural budget deficits is ridiculously inadequate and unpardonably stupid. I am not happy to think that it will take cuts to programs that Americans like and rely on, and inconvenient disruptions of popular or essential government services, to make that point, but that’s what I think”</p>
<p>It certainly is stupid, but I don’t think that our political leaders, nor many people at all get that point. If you don’t believe that deficits and overspending are a problem, then you don’t think that anything whatsoever should be done to prevent that.</p>
<p>And yes, jet fuel does weigh quite a bit and it is costly to carry extra (supposedly you burn about 10% of the extra just by carrying it). Then again, if you actually ended up needing it, it is extremely costly not having it, ie limiting your options and forcing you to divert instead of proceeding to your original destination instead.</p>