Allegiant Air on 60 minutes

I don't know what it says about Southwest. But, they bought ValuJet and they bought AirTran. I'm sure terms were highly attractive financially. But, from the perception standpoint, they had huge obstacles to overcome. Allegiant seems to be growing in terms of routes but the service issues probably continue to plague them. So, I can see Southwest coming into the picture at some point down the road in some way. Hopefully, it isn't following a disaster that a lot of people are predicting.

 

The clown from the FAA sure sounds like he's in bed with these guys!

 

I have watched this and it answered a lot of same stuff I already knew
Junk airline
Never flown them never will

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Interesting ceo if valuejet and allegiant is the same guy. But he didn’t respond to request from 60 minutes which I don’t. necessarily blame him but they pointed out the business model was the same. I can’t blame you for flying them but hate to watch the interviews of family members at some point in the future which I hope is never an option.

 

Up here there's an airline called sun country, small(about 20 planes), they fly mostly to vacation destinations on a seasonal basis, yesterday a flight from cabo san lucas was cancelled because the airport here in Mn was closed due to the snow, the people on the flight(coming back) were told, this is the last scheduled flight of the year so tough luck, we wont reschedule, you're on your own to get back, imagine that?

 

No. Delta is retiring the 717 next year. It's next in line to be gone after the MD88/90s this year.

 

I can only laugh when people can claim they've flown with X airline 10 times and have never had a problem. As if that is any scientific control of the overall safety of an airline's operation.

 

Don't laugh, it is that kind of mental filter that keeps folks going to Vegas!

 

Hey man, if you're gonna play cornerback in the National Football League, you have to have a short memory.

 

People still watch 60 minutes? Is it on right before Gunsmoke?

 

Wow the FAA stuff blew my mind. Unreal.

 

I dont watch 60 min all that often, but I saw the allegiant piece, so the gist of it was allegiant seems to be cutting corners on maintenance(and other things) to save money. Then they had some customers tell their close call horror stories, and the one guy said there was an incident on his cincy to vegas flight that he paid $80 for a rd trip ticket. $80, round trip, from cincinnati to vegas?

The term " you get what you pay for" comes to mind.

 

It's not just cutting corners. It's telling pilots to lie, and not report issues.

 

No. Won’t happen next year or the year after. Delta took over the 717 leases from SWA and they have to retire about 150 MD-88 and 90’s first. And the replacements are late.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vision-717-how-delta-turned-jet-nobody-wanted-strategic-miller

 

I just happened to watch, not a frequent 60 mins viewer, but as a fan of airplanes and the travel industry, I kept it on. Didnt seem to be too sensationalized, seemed rooted in facts and events most people might not have known about. The part that startled me was the FAA change on how they dealt with these sort of infractions. Either way, the consensus online on other airliner forums is that this is a "hit" piece who probably has an ax to grind with Allegiant. And also that those MD's in question are being phased out soon, so its a moot point. I dont think I could write it off that easily but it raises serious questions about how they deal with safety and how the FAA isnt really doing the job it should. I dont think new planes solves these issues, they can fall out of disrepair pretty quickly and I'd rather be inconvenienced by a delayed/cancelled flight then get on a dangerous aircraft.

 

There are problems, but the story was a hatchet job, the very introduction of the piece started it, they said Allegiant flies "gas guzzling" old planes, no reason, none, to talk about the fuel efficiency of the planes(other than to villify them), and then they talked about them buying second hand planes from oversea airlines. No budget airlines buy new airplanes, they all fly older models, which cost cents on the dollar compared with new ones.

I wouldn't fly them, but i wouldn't fly spirit either(which does fly from my city), but not because of safety, but because I dont want to be crammed into my seat and nickled and dimed to boot.

Not to get political, but I think the days are over where you can watch a report like that and trust that it's unbiased.

 

The guy that founded ValuJet is now the CEO of a completely different entity (Allegiant). Not sure how you would tie Southwest into any of this at all... they have one of the best safety records in the sky - especially with the amount of flights they have. Also, as another poster pointed out, Southwest sold off all of the 717s that were remaining from AirTran as it goes against their business model of only flying 737s. They operate over 700 planes per day each averaging 6 flights per day, which means at a conservative estimate, they fly over 1.5 million flights per year. They've only had 2 deaths since their inception in 1971. One was a guy who died from his injuries after breaking through the cockpit door mid-flight and being restrained by other passengers in 2000 and one when one of their planes overran the runway in heavy snow at Midway and killed someone in a car in 2005. I'd say that's a pretty damn good record...

 

That’s simply not true. Average age of Spirit fleet is 5.2 years. Frontier is 5.4. Delta is over 16 years.

Pretty tough to dispute the fact that Allegiant has 3-4 times the number of problems compared to the rest of the industry,

 

Lol okay.

 

It makes sense, but with delivery schedule of the replacement aircraft, I can’t see Delta getting rid of all 717’s by the end of 2019.