Cathay is definitely affected by this, as they are based in Hong Kong. But so are other airlines that have a strong presence there, and in Asia in general. Both United and Northwest have a strong presence in Asia, and are both hit hard by this SARS thing. UA’s load factors on their Pacific routes used to be 80%+. Their load factor since SARS has dropped by about 25% on their Asian routes. They rely on those routes, being almost automatic in terms of revenue, and now they can’t even do that. As if they weren’t hurting bad enough without all that.

The L1011’s engines were in fact, mouted further out than the DC-10’s were. The reason for that was the relative position of the No. 2 engine’s exhaust. On the L1011, it was essentially at the same level as the No’s 1 and 3 engine, so they spread them out. On the DC-10, it was further up, so the 1 and 3 were closer together. As far as one of the wing engines going out on the Lockheed and producing more yaw? Yeah, so. What if the same thing were to happen on a twin engined plane? It would produce even greater yaw since they wouldn’t have the benefit of that extra thrust coming from the middle of the fuselage. Either way, it’s noting a little rudder deflection can’t handle.

Jetblue flies to OAK from LGB not LAX. Southwest flies from LAX to OAK, but not SFO. If you want a seamless connection, you won’t take either of those carriers, as they don’t do anything interline. My advice, fly one of the biggies and connect straight through. If you fly UA, you’ll connect in ORD, IAD or LAX, or you can fly straight into SFO and take the BART across the bay to Oakland.

I thought at the very beginning that the media was blowing the whole SARS thing way out of proportion. Relative to the number of people living in China, about a billion or so, a tiny fraction of that have died of a disease, whose symptoms are no more than a common cold gone bad. Who’s overreacting just a bit? Like the airline industry wasn’t in a downword spiral to begin with, after the asian economic crisis 6 years ago, a worldwide recession, 9/11, and then the gulf crisis and fuel hikes. A health care was just the icing on the cake. Why is it that nobody in the U.S. has died of SARS? You’re telling me that nobody living here was in Asia, Toronto for that matter, at the time this thing ‘broke out?’

It’s the Starfish character from the cartoon, Spongebob. Notsure of his name. Glad you and your friend both loved that pic, MikeC. I flew on TWA’s Tristar once, for sure, back in 1983 from JFK to LAX on the way back from ATH. It was TW841. I also flew there in 1976, but as I was 2 years old, I do not recall the aircraft on the 4 segments. Hopefully, one of them was 707-320. Anyway, I fell in love with the Tristar as a child, and I’ve always been very fond of it. Unfortunately, UA didn’t keep them around long enough after they got them from Pan Am for me to fly one in UA colours.

Is that the same Maersk that is partially owned by BA? Is so, don’t they also have ties with SAS, as I know they codeshare with them.

In the past I’ve felt this forum to, at times, be very pro UK-charter minded, and that’s it. I haven’t gotten that impression for a while, however, which is good. I really never felt airlinerworld to be “pro-charter,” per se. Maybe it’s because my subscription ended about a year ago and I didn’t renew. Since then, I’ve only picked up a copy here and there. But yes, it is very expensive for those of us in N. America as Mapleleaf indicated. I’ve always felt to be worth it.

United really doesn’t have that strong a presence in Canada to begin with, which is why the rely a lot on Air Canada. The only cities they serve themselves, from various hubs, are the biggies: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and only recently Montreal. AC could put their codes on UA’s flights to and from those cities to their hub cities, IAD, ORD, DEN, LAX, and SFO. As far as ATL goes, they’d have to rely on Delta for that and nobody is based in San Diego, but perhaps there wasn’t a strong demand for a nonstop, they can just connect.