Last year, my husband and I splurged on round-trip first-class tickets on Japan Airlines from San Francisco to Tokyo for $13,474 each. We reserved them in February for an October flight through American Express Travel. On the same day, I also bought business class tickets for a couple who was traveling with us at $8,429 apiece. In September, Amex notified me that we had been downgraded to business class for the return flight. JAL’s conditions state that we would receive “the difference between the normal fare amount of original class of service and for the normal fare of lower class of service.” To me that means that since the difference between our first class seats and our friends’ business seats was $5,045 each, we should be refunded about half of that — around $2,522 per person — for the second leg. But we got only $941 each. I contested this with Amex Travel, but they rejected our claim. Can you help?
The pilot seat could have caused a Boeing 787 to suddenly drop midair. It wouldn't be the first time a similarly bizarre event happened to a widebody aircraft.
15.03.2024 - 18:43 / insider.com / Airlines
On Monday, a Latam Airlines Boeing 787 carrying 263 passengers and crew suddenly dropped midair during a flight from Syndey to Auckland, New Zealand, injuring at least 50 people.
While CNN reported one of the Latam pilots told a passenger his cockpit gauges "went blank" in a supposed aircraft malfunction, new information points to an unintentional mishap in the flight deck rather than a technical failure.
According to The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed officials briefed on preliminary evidence, a flight attendant may have inadvertently hit a switch on the pilot's seat while they were serving a meal in the cockpit. This would have turned on a system that pushed the chair and the pilot forward into the flight controls.
The switch is designed with a cover and is not supposed to be used when someone is in the seat, per the Journal. Still, it could have been accidentally activated — pointing the plane's nose down and causing the sudden drop in altitude.
The cause, if true, wouldn't be the first time a pilot's seat forced a widebody plane into a nose dive.
Ten years ago, on February 9, 2014, a Royal Air Force Airbus A330 plummeted 4,400 feet in about 30 seconds. The tanker-transport aircraft involved was part of the British military's "Voyager fleet," which is based on the civilian version of the A330 but can provide midair refueling and military transport.
On the day of the event, Voyager Flight 333 was shuttling nearly 200 passengers and crew from the RAF Brize Norton base in the UK to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, according to the final report published by the UK's Military Aviation Authority. It was a military mission but operated mostly like a traditional commercial flight — meaning passengers were served by flight attendants and shown an inflight movie.
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Both pilots were military aviators with thousands of hours of experience. But, despite the captain's more than 5,500 hours of flight time, he made a crucial mistake while he was solo in the cockpit.
According to the report, the captain was killing time during cruise by taking photos using a DSLR camera in the flight deck while the first officer was taking a break in the galley.
While this is OK when there are two pilots in the cockpit, according to RAF policy at the time, it was forbidden for one pilot to perform "non-relevant" flight duties while the other pilot was away — which is where the problems began.
When the captain set down his camera to speak with the purser on the flight, he placed it next to the A330's side-stick. This controls the Airbus' fly-by-wire system that allows the pilot to command the plane's pitch and roll.
Distracted by the purser, the captain did not remove the camera before he later adjusted his seat
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