August « 2010 « Fly the Branded Skies

Photos: Chelsea

These are photos of the end of an era. Continental is the last major U.S. carrier to serve meals in coach on domestic flights. Starting this fall, there will be none left. Continental will replace free meals with buy-on-board options, reflecting “today’s market and consumer preferences.”

Now, I’m not sure consumers would rather buy a $5 can of Pringles than get a free meal, but still, this decision seems a long time coming. (You can see what you’ll be missing at airlinemeals.net.)

Continental is also the last major U.S. carrier to operate its own flight kitchens. Chelsea Food Services is wholly owned by Continental. At the airline’s Newark hub, Chelsea prepares about 28,000 meals a day for 200 flights—half the total number of flights at Newark every day. Read more

August 22nd, 2010 \ Posted in Photography \ No Comments »

Maintenance

Some of the best parts of Airliners International 2010, apart from everything else, were the tours. One of them was a tour of Continental Airlines’ maintenance facility at Newark.

I don’t know anything about airplanes, really, and most of the tour sailed way over my head. But I did take some pictures, since I don’t think I’ll have a similar opportunity any time soon. So if you see these pictures and you know anything about them, post something in the comments!