Milwaukee Wisconsin’s General Mitchell International Airport, which is my hometown airport, has seen a nonstop series of new and expanding service announcements in the past few weeks. These include new service announcements made by American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines all of which already serve Milwaukee. A total of three new airlines have also announced new service to Milwaukee, those being JetBlue Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and Sun Country Airlines. These welcome announcements come while the airline industry is still in a recovery period from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. This will certainly bring an increase in passenger numbers and in aircraft movements, both of which have seen a significant decrease in the past year...

Jet Blue began their operations in early February, 2000. Now, twenty-one years later, the airline has grown to be the seventh largest operator in North America, according to Wikipedia. The airline has painted many of their jets in special colors; here is a short list of their non-traditional color schemes. Even their “regular” colors are mixed, with different tail patterns, mainly in hues of blue. Check out some of their names carried on their jets too!

Right now, Jet Blue has a fleet of Embraer 190s, Airbus A-320s and A-321s. Their latter two aircraft models include newer A-320neo and A-321neo versions, with better fuel efficient engines and other modernizations. Above is a photo of their Embraer-190s with the “blue print” color scheme.

The first flight of a prototype Airbus A-380 occurred on April 27, 2005. Just about 250 of these double decked jetliners will be built; Airbus has announced that it will end production of the airliner by the final days of 2021. A dedicated freight version, and a stretched variant were developed, but never offered to customers.

Due to the world-wide decline of air travel in 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the 500+ seat A-380 fell out of favor with operators who couldn’t fill seats and operate the four engine jets efficiently. The vast majority of operational A-380s were grounded and stored in 2019 and 2020… some were permanently retired, others were put into long-term storage...