Flightglobal.com's mascot Stefan, see this blog earlier this week, is soaking up the atmosphere here at the ALTA Airline Leaders Forum in Cancun.
That's when he not reading the Airline Business Daily we are producing here at the event of course! The lead story from Day Two's paper was a scoop for Washington-based senior editor Brendan Sobie with TACA and Copa both announcing moves towards the Star Alliance.
Travelling from the
So I was pleasantly surprised to see 
I am part of the
We are producing a daily paper at the conference, as we did for the IATA AGM this year in
An interesting feature of the Latin market is that it is the only region of the world where traffic is still growing. Just how long that is the case will be a topic of debate in the next couple of days.
For the eagle-eyed among you, see if you can spot in the photograph Stefan, the "action man" pilot puppet given to me for the trip by my colleagues at Flightglobal.com.
I will leave it to our community editor Stuart Clarke to explain the significance of Stefan. This is a test to see if he is reading this blog.
Over to you Stu!
Are you a low-cost carrier looking to drum up some publicity?
Have you ever thought about hosting a rock concert on board one of your flights?
That is exactly what Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris did yesterday, when it teamed up with Coca-Cola to sponsor a concert by Zoe y Molotov. If you are not from the Spanish speaking world, you probably never heard of them, but Volaris claims in a press statement that they are "one of the most important rock bands of our times".
Above and to the right are two photos of Zoe y Molotov singers jamming on board one of Volaris' A319s at 30,000 feet. Volaris called the flight, which took off from its base at
Another one bites the dust? You could have seen it coming, but Sun Country, a smallish carrier based up in the Twin Cities, went into bankruptcy protection on Monday night, just a few business days after it issued a warning of a 60-day shutdown to its pilots. The crisis comes as the airline's managers, led by Stan Gadek, have declared that they will no longer be able to draw on the airline's parent company, Petters Group, for continued operating funds. Petters himself has left the company after a federal probe involving raid on the firm led to his arrest on Friday night. But Gadek, a former AirTran executive, says that the airline will continue operating all flights as usual. Sun Country was in bankruptcy once before but came out in 2002 under new management.
Just a quick note to tell you that way out over in our sister blog Left Field, there's a post outlining a bitter dispute that pits the Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters, the FAA, and some thinkers against the airline industry, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and some other thinkers. The FAA is set to auction off a set of landing slots at the Newark Liberty airport near New York City, and the port, which owns the airport, as well as the Air Transport Association and a New York senator, are trying to block it. Even though the September 3 auction has been postponed, the issue and the precedent it will set are far from settled.
Today Lufthansa announced that its chief financial officer Stephan Gemkow has joined the 11-man board of US low-fare carrier JetBlue Airways.
Gemkow takes the second of Lufthansa's two seats on JetBlue's board - the other has already been filled by Swiss CEO Christoph Franz.
The fact that these highly placed executives in the Lufthansa Group are going to help shape JetBlue's strategic direction is remarkable and are significant moves demonstrating the importance that the German carrier places on its new US partner.
Well the answer is no - at least not yet.
The reason I ask is that United Airlines thought they had. At least someone at United did. And that someone said so on their voluminous website. This is what they said:
Star
United is a founding member of Star AllianceTM, the airline network that offers more than 18,000 daily flights to approximately 975 destinations in over 162 countries. To find out more about the first global airline alliance and its worldwide reach, visit Star
"In addition, Air
Uh?
Our data analyst Antonio Panariello came across this note while researching the alliances for the Airline Business annual examination of the state of the various tie-ups and partnerships between carriers.
Struggling Argentine flag carrier Aerolíneas Argentinas has been re-nationalised, with majority owner Grupo Marsans of Spain having agreed to sell the airline and its subsidiary Austral back to the government for an undisclosed sum.
In a celebratory statement on its website the Argentine government, led by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, says the re-nationalisation is aimed at quickly making Aerolíneas Argentinas a successful operation.
And that will be no easy feat at a debt-laden carrier with a history of uneasy labour relations and strikes, which is reputed to be losing about $1 million a day!
Argentina's President says in the statement: "The key thing is to have a flag carrier and to have a high quality and efficient service so as not to lose all that we have gained as a tourist destination."
So things have changed quite rapidly since I accosted Aerolíneas Argentinas director of corporate affairs, Jorge Molina, at the IATA AGM in Istanbul and practiced my rusty Spanish on him.
At the time he told me and I reported that the government planned to increase its stake to 20%, with most of the carrier's shares going to local businessman Juan Carlos Lopez Mena.
News stories are often moving targets, but at least I got to practice my Spanish with this one!
A pro-marijuana group in the US has come up with a novel way of combating increased instances of air rage: let passengers mellow out before taking a flight by using the airport smoking lounges to have a quick toke on the old waccy baccy.
Reggae legend Peter Tosh famously argued that marijuana could cure anything from asthma to glaucoma, but SAFER (Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation) believes it can also "alleviate anxiety for people who are afraid to fly" and that "passengers could use pot in the smoking lounges at the airport as a safer alternative to alcohol".
SAFER is recommending that this option is made available to passengers at Denver International Airport, which the Denver Post says is "a hotspot for arrests of drunken, unruly airplane passengers".
Maybe they have a point - would it really be any worse than getting on a flight with a bunch of blokes on a stag weekend who've been getting beered up in the airport bars since before breakfast?
It could also be a good ancillary revenue driver - imagine how many on-board snacks a plane load of stoned passengers with the munchies would buy!
US President George W Bush's recent visit to London did not just raise the hackles of anti-war protestors - whose demonstrations in Parliament Square resulted in a 60 year-old female protestor being arrested for alleged indecent exposure, of all things . It also incurred the wrath of British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh.
Walsh did not indecently expose himself to express his displeasure, but he is reported to have written in BA's in-house newsletter that "the decision to allow President Bush and his fleet of aircraft to fly into Heathrow rather than a military base was one that all of Heathrow's users could have done without", and that he was "angry that this was allowed".
The report goes on to say that the unpopular US President's arrival and departure at Heathrow resulted in BA having to cancel 53 short-haul flights and delay another 260 flights for more than 30 minutes - which the carrier could have done without following the chaos that surrounded the opening of Terminal 5.
The Presidential visit affected 38,000 BA passengers, which will no doubt translate into another 38,000 people who are less than pleased with President Bush (who is pictured above in a White House photo by Eric Draper alongside UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown).
Ah well, they can console themselves with the fact that a new US President will be elected this November!
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