Boeing Blowout
Sarah Kopit here, signing in from Brooklyn, New York. It's been a busy weekend on the travel beat. As I'm sure most readers of this newsletter are aware, on Friday a large fuselage section of an Alaska Air Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft suddenly blew out mid-flight over suburban Portland, Oregon. The plane landed safely but the missing part was MIA. On Saturday, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy asked Portland residents to contact authorities if they happened to find it. A school teacher did just that after finding the panel in his backyard, making this the easiest part of the puzzle to solve.
FAA Temporarily Grounds Certain Boeing 737 Maxes
Travel and Hospitality's Biggest Innovators
A Look at China’s Reopening A Year In
See You in New York City Tomorrow?
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FAA Temporarily Grounds Certain Boeing 737 Maxes
The image was stunning: A section of a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight. We’re still learning the details of what went wrong. For now, the Max 9s are out of service while regulators conduct their investigation.
Edward Russell and Meghna Maharishi from Skift’s aviation team covered the latest this weekend.
Alaska flight AS1282 was flying from Portland, Ore., to Ontario, Calif., when a section of the plane’s fuselage blew off shortly after takeoff and caused a sudden decompression on board.
“The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 Max 9 planes before they can return to flight,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said Saturday.
United Airlines joined Alaska in grounding 737-9 aircraft. It operates 79 of them.
United said it canceled 180 flights on Sunday due to the grounding. Alaska canceled 163.
The FAA’s order also affects any 737-9s flying to the U.S. Aeromexico, Copa Airlines, and Icelandair fly the plane on U.S. routes.
This is the latest blow to the 737 Max, which was grounded for nearly two years after two fatal crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia. It was re-certified for passenger flights in November 2020.
There have been no notable incidents with Maxes in the three years since, and Boeing has sold hundreds of the planes to airlines around the world.
Travel and Hospitality's Biggest Innovators
AI is going to rip some industries apart and it will change the travel experience, no doubt. But Skift Columnist Colin Nagy argues that the core hospitality business will remain unchanged: care, detail, and rarity are among the details that make a luxury experience and they all can continue to exist and be elevated.
With that in mind, Colin shared his take on those that are doing it best – the biggest innovators in travel and hospitality. Here’s a sampling:
Most Inspired Openings: Trunk Hotel Tokyo: The recent addition in Yoyogi Park feels like a refuge in the urban jungle. It’s a sleek, minimal yet plush boutique situated in one of the most interesting parts of Tokyo. The rooftop pool, overlooking the foliage with a chic oyster bar is the icing on the cake.
Best Hospitality Experience: It was undoubtedly Sensei Porcupine Creek. Formerly Larry Ellison’s private ranch, no expense was spared in terms of the art, landscaping, or recruiting a handpicked team. I define the experience as irrational generosity, increasingly rare in modern hospitality.
Best Night’s Sleep: The sleep experience at the New York property was second to none: Blackout curtains, a button that takes the temperature down to the scientifically level proven best for sleep and a wonderful bed with dual Swiss style duvets.
A Bold New Airport: We saw a sneak preview of it in the Mission Impossible movie, but after a long wait, Abu Dhabi’s new Midfield Terminal A has opened. The Middle East has no shortage of excellent hubs like Doha’s Hamad, but this has raised the bar for the region. The terminal feels grand, ambitious with inspired architecture and makes good use of one of the region's best resources: light.
The State of Corporate Travel 2024
This free research report analyzes the future of corporate travel and expense, and how generative AI is reshaping the experience.
Analyzing China’s Travel Reopening, Exactly A Year In
It’s one of the biggest questions in global tourism: What the hell is happening to tourism from China? It’s a question a lot of us tried to answer throughout 2023 after China reopened – on January 8 – after three years of lockdown.
Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali turned to Gary Bowerman, the founder of Check-in Asia, to lay out where things stand. Here are some of his key insights:
“I think right now at the beginning of 2024, if you talk to people in the Chinese travel industry, there is a much greater sense of optimism that 2024 will be a stronger year.”
“China right now has a lot that it wants to sell to the world in travel and tourism. It wants to sell its high-speed rail technology, it wants to sell its new passenger jets. And so as we start to see China unroll this tourism policy, it will be ever more closely linked to travel and trade.”
“I think what’s changed now is that China actually has enshrined in its latest five-year policy of the government that it wants to boost inbound tourism.”
“If you look at the actual projection curve for the Chinese population over the next sort of 50, 60 years, it is going to contract quite significantly. But it also has a huge population of young people….the new trends that are happening domestically in terms of consumers and also travelers, that’s being driven by the post-nineties and also the post-2000 generation.”
“I think you have to be prepared for the fact that younger Chinese travelers are very discerning. They have high expectations because hotel standards, airline standards, high-speed rail train standards in China are high now. They’re not coming to Europe and to the U.S. being surprised by the level of standards.”
For more on the outlook for Chinese tourism one year after the reopening, see "China’s Great Reopening: Take 2, by Skift Asia Editor Peden Doma Bhutia.
More From Skift
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Brazil Delays Visa Requirement for American Tourists Until April
Skift Travel 200: Top Movers
Source: The Skift Travel 200 (ST200) combines the financial performance of nearly 200 travel companies worth more than a trillion dollars into a single number. Go to the Skift Travel 200. Stock data as of market close.