Maybe next year: two houses divided against themselves cannot merge, and it's a good question if they can stand. Th
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May 2008 Archives
Nice work if you can get it. The
Okay. We don't like to toot our own horn (yes, we do, but we like to try to be subtle about it) but our friend Terry Maxon of The Dallas Morning News and of that paper's blog Airline Biz noted that we had mentioned Frontier Airlines is now charging for antlers as a checked baggage fee. He does suggest that a dead deer could be taken on board as a passenger's single carrion.
Yak yak. Left Field, aka Uncle Dave, took a holiday the other day but went into N
They fought so hard for the routes and now....US Airways is the l
How to follow: if no one has yet to adopt American's fee for a first checked bag, th
It's our bag. Or not. American Airlines rocked the airline world with word that is going to start charging for every checked bag, not just a second bag. The $15 fee is set to go into effect in a few weeks, with only the airline's premier-level frequent flyers exempted. Like every other legacy carrier, American is already charging for second checked bag ($25, with the same exemption for elite-level members).
The response from the travelling public was predictable, with nickel and dimes mentioned as the world waited watched and held its breath to see if others would match. One carrier that made it clear it wouldn't was the one carrier that never planed to and never even thought about it: Southwest. At the core of the Southwest philosophy is giving people little, charging them little - and being funny and wearing a smile as they do it. The airline has never charged an extra fee (except for oversized bags, etc.) and they don't intend to now. They even went so far as to put out a statement subtly chastising The New York Times for not making this clear. "That is not true," said the airline of the Grey Lady's suggestion that it was considering the fee.
Kudos, or even kudoses. Well, several congr
What's it for? Airline fuel surcharges are mounting. With fuel at about $150 or so barrel, fuel surcharges are approaching $100 a flight on some routes. And one group that questions them are corporate travel departments. Take, for instance, attendees at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives meeting in
Frontier went back into Fargo, North Dakota, for the second time; this time it’s on Frontier’s Lynx unit, which flies the Bombardier Q400. 
Denver-based Frontier had been in Fargo when it started up in 1994, pulling out in 1996 when it gave up in the entire state. It had also been in Fargo way back in 1975-1986, when the original Frontier flew there before Continental bought it. Either way, Fargans or Fargoans are glad to have them back at their airport, which is called Hector after the family that gave the city the land for the airport back in 1927. Yesterday was also Frontier’s last flight to Sioux City, Iowa, where its arrival in November of 2007 had boosted passenger numbers. That leaves the Sioux Gateway Airport with one carrier, Northwest Airlines. Frontier ends service at Missoula, Montana, on Friday, although that airport will have plenty of service from others.
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They wuz first. And they are the the one with mostest. That’s Southwest, which has changed its corporate blog, Nuts About Southwest. Never mind that they keep saying that they are nuts, even though when people start
talking about being nuts, you know that they’re not. The site offers a new look and some new features including a videoblog and a podcast as well as a Flickr feed. Flickr is a free photo-sharing site and on-line community, and even though many of its contributions clearly, or rather unclearly, reflect the skill of its members, it can be interesting. Except when they're out of focus. So far this is mostly pictures of Southwest airplanes plus a few shots of people in airports, but this too will sharpen.
When Harry Reid, the Democrat from Nevada who runs the party in the Senate, came out the other week and said he’d block amendments 
from the FAA reauthorization bill, he took a gamble. 'Filling the tree', as this manuevre is called, is to many objectionable: it limits debate, which is what they love to do in the world’s greatest deliberative body. On the other hand, it may well be the only way a measure gets moved from debate to actual action, which is just what may be needed when it comes to the FAA bill.
But it didn’t work. Republicans objected, and the Democrats responded with a vote on limiting debate called the cloture vote (this is the way to end filibusters). The manuever failed, with only 49 votes on the Democratic side. “We find ourselves in a stalemate,” said Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican. Hutchison, a Texas Republican, added, “We should go back to the drawing boards.”
Off with his head. That is the recommendation of the Business Travel Coalition, where chairman Kevin Mitchell is again gathering his members’ wrath and preparing to call for Bobby Sturgell’s head. 
The latest impetus in his demand for the resignation of Sturgell (right)from his temporary leadership of the FAA - along with other unspecified FAA leaders - is the revelation that the FAA had failed to perform over 100 safety checks at major US airlines. The inspections, part of ATOS, the Air Transportation Oversight System, are system checks of the way in which the airlines collect data and analyze it; they include engine-monitoring and pilot-training. The ATOS checks in question are five-year checks that became mandatory last year. Mitchell, whose group is composed of corporate travel managers, is also running a member poll on airline consolidation; he recently testified against the Northwest/Delta merger. His group is working with Teamsters on legislation that would compel tightened FAA inspections and oversight of outsourced maintenance, especially overseas airline maintenance.
No, he’s not blue. That’s just David Neeleman’s new name for his new airline in Brazil, Azul. The JetBlue founder says it “may seem vaguely familiar 
to American travellers,” and Neeleman also notes that the name wasn’t really his choice (sure, Dave). He says he chose the name from 157,000 entries to his new airline’s website, voceescolhe.cm.br (Portugese for 'your choice'), and narrowed the list down to two entries. One was Azul and the other was Samba. Samba actually received more votes, but Neeleman chose Azul anyway. Azul, says Dave, “is a metaphor for security, serenity, loyalty and quality, as well as connoting flight, as the color of the sky.” Neeleman has sent free lifetime passes to the people who entered Azul, but also sent passes to the Sambaistas. The airline itself will begin service sometime early next year, when its Embraer 195s are delivered.
The headlines about Microsoft have been busy; Yahoo was going to be party of the 'softworld, then wasn’t. Lost in much 
of the 'softnews has been the Seattle-based giant’s purchase of Farecast.com, a small potatoes deal at $115 million but still big deal. Farecast –originally called Hamlet – is a typical .com start-up in that it was the brainchild of a single individual. But there the .commonality starts to end, because few scientists such as Oren Etzioni, the University of Washington computer guy who began Farecast, are playing with airlines. What Farecast does is to use data-mining to power an on-line travel search engine that predicts whether or not airfares would rise or fall on a specific route for a specific period.
‘Filling the Tree.’ That’s what they call it in the Senate when a floor manager or member of the leadership invokes a rule (Rule XV) that essentially lets him (or her) block amendments from coming to the floor to
modify a bill under consideration. While some people object to this tactic, it may well be the only way a measure gets moved from debate to actual action and that is what may be needed when it comes to the FAA bill. The bill has languished in the Senate for months, even though the House passed its version in September; a move by Sen. Jay Rockefeller to bring it up last week was met with another kind of tree decoration, in which a bill is loaded up with amendments that not only bog it down but break its limbs. A pension amendment that would have forced major airlines into millions of dollars in extra payments was one, and it was finally defeated by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, but other amendments, including one that punished any US company that moved offshore to avoid taxes, were also piled on.
The little airport 
in far Upstate New York, just 25 or 30 miles from the Canadian border, made news last year and this year with its ambitious plans, plans that were undaunted by the failure of Big Sky, the regional carrier. The airport even persuaded New York State transportation authorities to put French-language signs along the north-south highway to Montréal. Now it’s begun a newsletter in French. This francophone effort includes something we didn’t know about and find entertaining: links to Coastal Express, a trucking company that will haul your car from Plattsburgh to Florida - and back. (And you thought we just liked pictures of trucks!) All in all, for an airport that's just coming up on its first anniversary as a commercial airport (it used to be a US Air Force base), not too shabbe, as the French don't say.
It’s the other guy. It always is. While the general consensus is that things are slowing down, lots of travel companies are saying that their business is okay. We don’t question them, but if we had to make a 
choice between one truth and another, we’ll take the negative. Take for instance the survey just completed by UBS and reported by that bank’s airline securities analyst, Kevin Crissey. This found corporate planning. About 42% of the 80 managers surveyed said that their firm is likely to spend less on air travel this year. That compares to 26% just six months ago. And 34% of those surveyed said that their cuts are not yet fully reflected in airline results. Overall, 65% expect their travel spending to be flat or down this year. And IATA found that the slowdown had already begun to show up in world-wide airline traffic statistics, and that the US increase was largely on international routes.
You mean all that was for nothing? The last year or year-and-a-half has been a tough one for American Airlines, 
not least because it’s been in bickering, er, we mean, negotiations, with its pilot union. We thought all the back and forth was important, but it turns out it was all really a mere vorspeis, an appetiser, for the main course. That’s because the Allied Pilots Association’s contract with American didn’t actually become amendable until May 1, and that the last 18 months or so of forth, back, and forth has largely been for naught.
"The early-opener provision was designed to enable the two parties to reach a new agreement by the contract's amendable date," says APA president Lloyd Hill. "Clearly, this provision has not produced the desired result, as evidenced by the lack of progress at the bargaining table." Hill noted that management triggered the early-opener provision in the contact.
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