Originally Posted by
krautland
for two weeks, until something else takes over the news of the day.
Indeed. Ask any of your pals the name of the airline who's pilot that flew into the Alps a couple of years back. Nobody knows that I have asked.
Then ask them what that airline is called now! Same. Passengers have very short memories esp if names gets changed. DC10 became MD 11.
Ask them about the plane (737) lost with all lives at Amsterdam ten years ago on final approach. Which airline and why? Nobody even knows it happened and that is only down the road.
I think the 737 Max will be rebranded and I hope it has a long and safe future so that by the time it ends its life in about 25 years from now, say 2050, it will have been flying for nearly a century using the same airframe and lot of similar hardware that was on the 707.
I too feel sorry for those guys in Iceland. It is a cut throat business esp. in certain sectors of the business. I was lucky to have flown for the 35-40 happy years from the 707 to the 747-400 with a legacy airline (as they seem to be called) and some of it before LCC was a twinkle in someone's eye!
That said the LCCs did shake up the dinosaurs with benefits for all of us and for that I think we are all very grateful. BA / IAG this year made more money than its nearest LCC rival after a major shake up. So dinosaurs can indeed give birth to gazelles. They have crossed the aviation equivalent of the species barrier which the LCCs have always maintained cannot happen.
Cheers
Y