This morning a JetBlue Airbus A321LR landed at London Heathrow for the first time, ahead of the airline launching regularly scheduled flights to the airport next month.
Continue reading: JetBlue Operates First Flight To London Heathrow… Without Passengers
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
The LHR-JFK flight now departs LHR at 2:05 pm and arrives at JFK at 5:28 pm. The departure time from LHR was previously 6:10 pm and the arrival time at JFK was previously 9:35 pm.
As a non airline pilot, I was wondering for the first flights like these, is there a requirement for there to be an experience captain that has landed at LHR before? Or are the simulations so good that a real landing by a pilot who has never flown in to LHR, or any new, busy airport, that no practical landing experience is required?
The airline and all pilots need to have ETOPS training to fly direct over the Atlantic. My guess is this is one of the proving flights the FAA requires as I can’t tell that JetBlue has it in their operation specification or list of things they can do manual yet.
The current travel ban against the UK and Europe, at least for fully vaccinated people from those countries, is silly at this point considering their vaccination rates. For those of us (American's) who continually bitch on this site about not being able to enter Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, we need to remember the silly entry restrictions we continue to have on Brits and Europeans, particularly those who are fully vaccinated. The Biden administration needs to have a reality check on this policy soon.
Many of JetBlue's pilots were previously legacy airline pilots who likely flew as 1st Officers and/or International Relief Pilots (IRO) prior to 9/11 furloughs, flew worldwide Part 121 charter airlines on larger equipment, as well as corporate pilots who flew business/corporate jets into so-called complex airports around the world. That said, LHR is not particularly complicated. No more so than LAX, ORD, or ATL, and certainly no language barrier. The biggest challenge if you want to call it that, is the ETOPS contingency planning component.
YEA, Jet Blue. I’m ready to take that 6 hr ride from New York to London (as opposed to the 10 hr option of other airlines). Jet Blue has been a great option, allowing comfortable and affordable travel from major US cities.
Can I ride over on a ‘Test Run’. ♀️
Yes Transatlantic flights are very confusing when they need to divert.
It can be very confusing because
Greenland is mostly ice.
Iceland is mostly green.
Columbus probably had something to do with naming things wrong but we still celebrate him anyway because he gave Europeans syphilis and (some) Americans a day off.
It is worse than that. This ban applies to the 5 million or so Brits and Europeans that live and work in the US, with non-immigrant visas. Those people all pay tax to the IRS and contribute to the US economy. A number will now be fully vaccinated. And yet they can't be given the same rights of re-entry as US passport and green card holders. They are now facing another month of not being able to leave the US because they can't re-enter (unless they spend 2 weeks in a third country).
It is really quite staggering especially when Americans are allowed to spend their summer in Europe this year.
It doesn’t make sense that people in the UK, Canada and the US who are vaccinated can’t legally enter each other’s countries but thousands are illegally entering the US crossing the Mexican/US border and who knows what diseases they are bringing in to the US.