A serving, Asian, British Airways captain and a one-time BA captain have written to the The Independent following its front-page story at the weekend alleging racism on the flight-deck. full text below also.
Rumours have been around for a few weeks that Emirates would crack the $1 billion profit mark this year - not so difficult given the dollar's decline, but in fact the figure announced this morning is $1.45 billion net.
Even the demise of both its head-to-head competitors failed to shift the ailing shares of UK-US all-premium carrier Silverjet - but this morning it announced a MoU with an unidentified UAE investor and at time of writing the stock is 19% up on the day.
If confirmed, the deal will provide about $8 million in equity, and a debt portion taking the value to $25 million. Silverjet says the investor's "intent" is to provide another $75 million and expand routes into the Middle East, Far East and Africa.
Of course the stock is down 92% on a year ago!
The collapse of Eos, which followed Maxjet's earlier demise, has left Silverjet as the sole survivor of the trio that have battled to secure a viable business model in the elusive all-premium US-UK market. And the two big questions now are: who will end up owning Silverjet and can they make it work?
The reason I've had a couple of weeks of blogging silence here is partly that I was on vacation but also because I then attended the third Aviation & Environment Summit in Geneva. I blogged from there on our Aviation and the Environment blog, which you may care to take a look at.
Coincidentally it would seem, British Airways found itself front page news - not in a good way - on both Saturday and Sunday this last weekend. Quite odd stories in both cases.
On Saturday the ever-so-serious Independent reported the allegations of 777 captain Doug Maughan claiming that casual racism is rife at the airline, mainly among "middle-aged pilots". It called on the company's management to investigate.
Then the next day the much less serious Sunday Mirror reported the alleged lousy treatment by BA of Capt Peter Burkill - the captain of the 777 that crash-landed short of the runway at Heathrow in January and who was widely lauded as a hero.
Interesting days for students of airline labour relations. BALPA is taking the opportunity to kick Willie Walsh while he's down. The timing of this video of their march at Heathrow a few weeks back is probably coincidental, but the issuance of this open letter to financial institutions is most certainly not.
I joined colleague David Field of Airline Business magazine again for another podcast hosted by Addison Schonland of IAG. We talked about Aloha, Alitalia, T5, and US groundings among other things. Take a listen - and try some of the other pods that Addison has done.
Like everyone else who has anything to do with aviation I get asked: so what's your hot safety tip?
People generally seem to want to know should you sit towards the rear, over the wing, near the exits - and so on. I tell them I have one tip above all else: stay strapped in.
ATA Airlines has gone into Chapter 11 overnight - the US charter specialist is citing the unexpected loss of a large military contract and general trading conditions including the "tremendous spike" in the price of fuel. Its 29 aircraft are on the ground; 2,300 staff are out of work; and 10,000 passengers a day are seeking alternatives.
This is not funny anymore. United Airlines has today grounded its Boeing 777 fleet.
British Airways and BALPA are apparently headed for the UK High Court over the issue of the airline's mainland Europe subsidiary OpenSkies. But meanwhile a picture of what is claimed to be the first of the OpenSkies wingletted Boeing 757s has turned up on Pprune courtesy of a Ppruner calling himself BAengineering.
The difficulty when you have an ongoing problem is that everything else you do is at risk of looking a bit daft. Which is why the BA web-ad below, courtesy of my colleague David Kaminski-Morrow, and the mailing they sent me as a customer this morning just don't quite work, in the circumstances.
The USAF has apparently filed its arguments rebutting Boeing's protest of the KC-X tanker selection - and they're pretty robust. Reuters has the scoop here on the document that the service has sent to the Government Accountability Office. Thanks to Scott Hamilton for highlighting it.
As the ghastly saga of the Heathrow Terminal 5 launch played out, Sky News last night secured an exclusive interview with British Airways CEO Willie Walsh. A big set-piece with interviewer Jeff Randall, press releases issued, interview in-full on the web, you get the idea...
Oh, and apparently a quick phone call to Eurostar to sell a web-ad...
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