To celebrate the first hundred episodes, Rob, Max, David, and Dan are joined by founding co-host Courtney Miller. We discuss the week’s aviation news and reminisce a bit about the first hundred Airplane Geeks episodes. That plus This Week in Aviation and the Australia Desk report.

The news:

• DOT Proposes Additional Consumer Protections for Air Travelers
• see also: Consumer Rule II Summary of Proposals
• A30X and A320NEO Projects To Define Future Airbus Single-aisle Airliners
• Jetstar to trial rent-an-iPad service
• Boeing Led Team Bags $1.7 Bln Multiple-Award Contract From Federal Aviation Administration
• Work starts in £15m plan to get Concorde flying

Follow the @AirplaneGeeks on Twitter and on Facebook, send us email at thegeeks@airplanegeeks.com, or leave a message on our listener line: (361) GEEKS01.

Opening and closing music is provided by Brother Love from the Album Of The Year CD. You can find his great music at http://www.brotherloverocks.com/.

Our guest this week is Karlene Petitt, a long time airline pilot, currently flying with Delta. She blogs at Flight to Success and she’s also an emerging author. Karlene describes her training to fly the A330, what it’s like to pilot for a major U.S. airline, and how pilots like to be in control but sometimes are not. Karlene also brings a lot of good insight into current airline news. We had such an interesting conversation with Karlene that we had to skip a lot of the news.

Benet Wilson from AviationWeek helps out with the co-hosting. By the way, she’s got a new blog going called The TRAVEL World According to Benet. Also, Steve Visscher and Grant McHerron from the Plane Crazy Down Under podcast joined us live for the news:

• 2010 European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition
• Airline merger’s route leads to federal regulators
• United/Continental Unions Could Battle
• Safety recommendations made on engines, life vests in plane that ditched into Hudson River
• US Airways CEO: NextGen benefits don’t justify equipage investment

David returns to provide his This Week in Aviation history segment.

Follow the @AirplaneGeeks on Twitter and on Facebook, send us email at thegeeks@airplanegeeks.com, or leave a message on our listener line: (361) GEEKS01.

Thanks to Mark Hsiung for permission to use his Delta A330 photograph above.

Opening and closing music is provided by Brother Love from the Album Of The Year CD. You can find his great music at http://www.brotherloverocks.com/.

Jim Oltersdorf joins us to talk about bush flying in Alaska. Jim is a pilot and an accomplished aviation and outdoor photographer and writer. He thrives in extreme and high-risk areas, and he’s produced a high def documentary film called Alaska’s Bush Pilots, The Real Deal , A true story about the pilots, their aircraft, nature and the wilderness of Alaska. You can find Jim’s personal page at http://www.joltersdorf.com/ and his site for the film at http://www.alaskasbushpilots.com/.

We also have with us this episode Bob Poole, the founder of the Reason Foundation, a free market think tank. Bob has some interesting things to say about the NextGen ATC system that’s been in the works for over a decade. Bob was among the first to propose the commercialization of the U.S. air traffic control system, and his work has helped shape proposals for a U.S. air traffic control corporation.

We favored our guests over the news this time, but we did mention:

• United, Continental deal approaches reality
• General Aviation Industry Prepares For An Unleaded Fuel

Follow the @AirplaneGeeks on Twitter and on Facebook, send us email at thegeeks@airplanegeeks.com, or leave a message on our listener line: (361) GEEKS01.

Opening and closing music is provided by Brother Love from the Album Of The Year CD. Find more BroLo at his site: http://www.brotherloverocks.com/.

We didn’t plan on being one episode this week, but because of some time constraints, we had to smash everything into one once again.Addison Schonland, the voice behind the IAG Blog Podcasts, joins Max and Court as they talk about the latest and greatest in aviation news.

• Boeing looks to 787 supply chain to achieve program ‘profitability’

• US Senate Confirms FAA, DOT Nominees

• Cabinet official promises reform of pilot training

• US House Passes FAA Bill, 277-136

• Air France, KLM, Delta sign transatlantic JV worth $12 billion annually

• Southwest-WestJet code-sharing program delayed due to economy

• Battle Brewing In Milwaukee

Max’s pick of the week is dustincurtis.com.

Don’t forget to send us your ideas for Airplane Geeks T-Shirts!

The Airplane Geeks are now on Twitter! You can follow us @AirplaneGeeks.

Make sure to sign up for our new newsletter, “Airplane Geeks Week in Aviation.”
We’ll be bringing you these show notes, as well as some of the week’s news we didn’t have time to cover.
You can sign up at AirplaneGeeks.com.

Brother Love is responsible for this episode’s opening and closing
music, and you can visit his site at brotherloverocks.com.

If you have a question or a comment for the Airplane Geeks, you
can send it to thegeeks@airplanegeeks.com.

You can also leave us voice mail at (812) 757-4252. If you have
a question or comment you’d like mentioned on the podcast, this is the best
way to go about it.

Max and Court have so much news and listener feedback that they decided to start splitting the episodes into two parts.  Also, we’ve finished a couple of T-shirts!  You can find the link to the right of the home page or follow it to our store here.  This first part of episode 48 includes the news and listener feedback, while the next section (to be published tomorrow) will include our interview with Christopher White, Director of Public Relations for Airtran.

News:

• Flight 3407 crew failed to heed loss of speed

• DOT withdraws slot auction rule

• AIA/Blakey To Senate: Accelerate NextGen

• Airbus upbeat on A350

• Airline executives think worst may be over

• Fourth-Quarter 2008 System Airline Financial Data: Network Airlines Report Fifth Consecutive Quarterly Loss Margin

Listener Submitted Articles:

• Pilot who landed on golf course fined

• Airman spots aircraft fuel leak at 35,000 feet
  

• Concorde Descend and Landing (cockpit)

• Cooking on a layover (The picture above should speak 1,000 words)

Don’t forget to send us your ideas for Airplane Geeks T-Shirts!

The Airplane Geeks are now on Twitter! You can follow us @AirplaneGeeks.

Make sure to sign up for our new newsletter, “Airplane Geeks Week in Aviation.”
We’ll be bringing you these show notes, as well as some of the week’s news we didn’t have time to cover.
You can sign up at AirplaneGeeks.com.

Brother Love is responsible for this episode’s opening and closing
music, and you can visit his site at brotherloverocks.com.

If you have a question or a comment for the Airplane Geeks, you
can send it to thegeeks@airplanegeeks.com.

You can also leave us voice mail at (812) 757-4252. If you have
a question or comment you’d like mentioned on the podcast, this is the best
way to go about it.

Brett Snyder, from the Cranky Flier blog joins us for the third time this week as we talk about all of the bad things happening in aviation lately. We were able to find some (kinda) good news, though.

• FedEx Plane Crashes on Landing In Tokyo
• Second Skycatcher Prototype Crashes
  

• On the brighter side: some positive aviation news

• U.S. General Aviation Gets TSA Liaison

• ‘High risk’ NextGen’s planning, leadership questioned

• IATA: Premium traffic tanking, first/business revenue down 25% in January

• Ryanair pilots agree to pay freeze, productivity increase