907ANC

That's the funny thing with the rumors people post here. Why worry about speculation when even things shared in official channels don't come to pass.

rickair7777

I think SFO has much better odds than NY, but just because they promise something doesn't make it so.

MinRest

OTZ must have been consulted and he decided SFO can stay for now....

PNWFlyer

I quit wasting time listening to these calls. I don’t recall anything useful ever coming from them. Like the “news” it only has entertainment value.

JLAMS16

Yup, just the messenger.

LonesomeSky

As we head towards The Fourth of July, I want to highlight what a great place we're in both in the airline industry and as a country. On Sunday the 23rd, the TSA screened a record number of passengers: 2.99 million. The stock market is on a rip (if you haven't logged into your 401k lately, take a look, you'll smile). The violent crime rate is at a fifty-year low. The United States is producing more oil than ever. We're leading the race to develop AI. Our two biggest adversaries, Russia and China, are in decline while our international alliances are stronger than ever. I haven't felt this optimistic since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The United States is on a path of progress and prosperity.

And, don't forget, we have that market rate pay adjustment coming in September and another shot at a JCBA next year with the Hawaian merger.

Let's not mess this up.

rickair7777

I don't want a partisan debate about economy, immigration, etc. Let's just leave that alone.

But I will vouch for the situation with RU and PRC.

The whole of government has actually been working pretty hard to counter the PRC's expansionist ambitions for over a decade. It took time but finally started to pay off in the last few years. Trump pivoted hard against PRC, and Biden formally continued that policy (although it didn't get much press). Shortly after there were some major positive military and political developments with our allies in the Pacific, again a lot of which didn't make the general media. India, historicallly very neutral, actually joined a tentative alliance with US, JP, and AU in 2021, pivoting against PRC.

PRC is struggling economically, and their population is actually declining and that's likely permanent, a symptom of middle class affluence and some government mis-management (unless they implement mandatory breeding at gunpoint). If we can deter them for a few more years hopefully they won't be in a position to make a lot of trouble in future decades.

PRC also learned a very important lesson from RU... unprovoked invasion of other countries will earn them a lot of global blowback. Also our Euro allies, if they expect us to back them on their side of the world are going to have to support us in the Pacific, in some form or another.

RU, not much needs to be said, ccorruption and mismanagement have castrated the former red army. If they can't do basic grunt stuff, odds are their air and naval capabilities are in even worse shape, and we seem to observe that with UA doing things like sinking the RU Black Sea Fleet flagship with jury-rigged shore-based missiles. It's also a plus that the euros are taking RU a bit more seriously; SE and FI joining NATO is a very big deal. Vlad should have stuck to low-intensity warfare and undermining ex-eastern bloc governments from within.

As a former military guy who worked on the Pacific problems, I sleep a lot better today than ten years ago.

Excargodog

The good news is that China sort of did themselves in. Between the one-child policy and selective gender preferences for male children they have built themselves a demographic trap that is unsolvable for at least three or four generations. They do, however, have a truly awesome defense industrial base - particularly in the maritime arena. And we seriously over BRAC'd our own military. But the biggest problem for our military remains it's labyrinthian procurement system that has finally devolved to : on time, on budget, or acceptable quality - pick ONE.

Hopefully Boeing will eventually get the stranded NASA astronauts back to Earth. Hopefully safely.

rickair7777

I think they should just let SpaceX bring them back. That's not as easy as it sounds since for some reason NASA allowed boeing and spaceX to use different spacesuit designs, so they'd have to customize and build suits for the two boeing astronauts and fly them up on the rescue ship... hopefully nobodies junk would get pinched

Let the boeing ship return unmanned, it will either count as a succesful test flight with data acquired and lessons learned, or will have saved two lives.

My nagging conceren on this is that NASA bureaucrats might be so heavily invested in their competitive commercial crew program that they bureaucratically can't afford to have one of their two horses fail, so they might press on without clear understanding of the issues... crunch some data, normalize some deviance, and send them on their way. Who knows, maybe boeing leadership will realize that they simply cannot afford to roast two astronauts and will pull the plug.

GUFN

I have been wondering (but don't wand to find out) whether or not they can even get an ICBM off the launch pad.