Author Archives: Jeremy Cole

Average Aircraft Age by Airline

I’ve been doing some reporting on FlightStats, and produced an interesting report: What is the average age of the aircraft in active use by each airline?

Update: Due to bugs in data that Southwest is reporting, their average numbers are way off. I’ll get back on them.

+---------------------+---------+-------------------------+
| nickname            | avg_age | graph                   |
+---------------------+---------+-------------------------+
| Jetblue             |  3.2736 | ###                     |
| Hawaiian            |  3.9361 | ###                     |
| American Eagle      |  4.2526 | ####                    |
| ATA                 |  4.2690 | ####                    |
| Atlantic Coast      |  4.4526 | ####                    |
| Continental Express |  4.5238 | ####                    |
| Airtran             |  4.6742 | ####                    |
| Atlantic Southeast  |  5.2899 | #####                   |
| Comair              |  6.4736 | ######                  |
| Sky West            |  6.6019 | ######                  |
| Continental         |  9.2111 | #########               |
| Alaska              | 10.3416 | ##########              |
| United              | 11.2737 | ###########             |
| America West        | 12.2283 | ############            |
| USAir               | 13.3484 | #############           |
| Delta               | 13.9013 | #############           |
| American            | 18.3311 | ##################      |
| Northwest           | 20.6489 | ####################    |
| Southwest           | 23.6350 | ####################### |
+---------------------+---------+-------------------------+

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Ejected!

Interesting, kinda funny. We had the following flights: Houston -> Phoenix -> San Jose.

In Houston, the departing flight was delayed 20 minutes due to the incoming flight arriving late. They asked that everyone get on as quickly as possible, since many people had tight connections and we hoped to make up some time in the air. We all got on the plane only reasonably late. All was well.

Then, an important phone call had to be made. So important, apparently, that the guy making it refused to hang up when the flight attendant asked him to. It wasn’t so much like “no!” as “OK” and then him doing nothing instead of hanging up. He wanted to say goodbye. The flight attendant got upset. He still did nothing. There was yelling.

The pursor for the flight came by, she said “He won’t hang up.” and off he went with a departing “OK, I’ll get a gate agent.” The wait begins. We had to wait for a gate agent to board the plane and escort the guy off. He still wouldn’t go, asking “Is there a problem?”

Well, they ejected him finally, and we got to leave. An hour late.

We missed our connection. Stuck in Phoenix now, heh. At least the airline is paying for the hotel.