Archive for May, 2005
May 19 2005
The WSJ and others are now reporting that the America West & US Airways merger will be announced by the end of the day today. It looks like the two airlines have pulled together about $750 million from Air Canada, Air Wisconsin, two hedge funds, a rights offering, Airbus, and a partridge in a pear tree. If you’re curious what will happen to your frequent flyer miles (it’s good news, don’t worry), check out Randy Petersen’s take on the whole thing here.
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May 19 2005
Ryanair has announced four new routes to Poland and new flights into Bratislava, Slovakia. Here’s a sentence from a Ryanair exec that you don’t see every day: "British tourists can now discover Poland and decide for themselves what Gdansk, Bydgoszcz, Szczecin and Rzeszow have to offer…" Szcz.
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May 19 2005
It looks like Delta may not go bankrupt until next year. JP Morgan’s airline analyst says that the carrier will "pull out all the stops" to avoid a bankruptcy filing in 2005 or Q1 2006. However, he thinks a chapter 11 filing will be likely next year.
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May 18 2005
I haven’t written anything about the recent growth in lowcost carriers in India, so I will today because SpiceJet launches next week with fares starting at $2.30. The carrier joins Air Deccan and Kingfisher in the lowfare world in India. Kingfisher is a type of beer, and if you can imagine a Budweiser Airlines, then you get the point.
As many stories point out, the Indian railway system carries more people in a day than the airline system carries in a year, so there’s lots of room for growth over there. In fact, only 19 million people flew in India, a remarkably low number considering a billion people live year.
This is actually a huge story, because the market potential is so big, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it here. I’m also remiss in not mentioning the other huge non-US story of the past year: the incredibly growth of Middle Eastern airlines, including Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways. If you haven’t heard much about these guys yet, you will soon, as they’re making European airlines realize that their own Europe-to-Asia flights have some serious competition. Just something to keep an eye on this year…
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May 18 2005
I don’t know how I missed this yesterday, but the WSJ has a great article about how funeral home directors can earn free tickets by sending their corpses on a certain airline. Many of the carriers seem to have deals like this—JetBlue will offer a free ticket after 15 so-called "ship outs;" US Airways requires 30 corpse shipments. The article notes that many airlines attended the Association of Independent Funeral Directors at Disney World to drum up business, with JetBlue passing out blue potato chips and luggage tags. This brings up two points:
1) Is the luggage tag for the dead body?
2) If you’re a 6 year old, and you’re at Disney World, and you’re walking along, singing It’s a Small World After All, and you happen up a Funeral convention, do you think you’re scarred for life?
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May 18 2005
Three flight attendants and two passengers were injured on a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to San Jose after it encountered turbulence. The five suffered only minor injuries during an extremely bumpy ride up the California coast. As the article points out, turbulence-related injuries have decreased recently as passengers have learned to keep their seatbelts on during the flight.
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May 17 2005
(Thanks to the View from the Wing blog for the heads up on this):
A group of United flight attendants has produced a calendar of themselves in various states of undress as a way of showing their displeasure with United’s pension situation (I believe it’s called Stewardesses Stripped (of their pension)). I think I may have neglected to mention that they’re all over 55. Which, of course, isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but, given the nature of the calendar, is interesting.
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May 17 2005
Sometimes you need a dose of the obscure: In case you were wondering, Yemen’s national airline Yemeni has chosen 40 Indian cabin crew to staff its planes. That’s it.
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May 17 2005
Boeing announced that it will make four channels of live television available to users of its in-flight broadband service. Boeing says its service, which is available on 11 international airlines, will be the first to offer live television on overseas flights. Coupled with its in-flight high-speed internet service, passengers on these flights should be well-occupied. In related in-flight news, Continental will be showing "Are We There Yet" on select Eastbound flights this month.
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May 16 2005
We should have some closure on this story this week, but it’s now looking like US Airways and America West are close to securing a $250 million loan from Airbus, as part of a package to purchase 20 A350s. The two carriers are looking for a total of $400 million, $100 million of which could come from Air Canada’s parent (the plot thickens on this whole thing, as the combined carrier would be partially owned by Air Wisconsin, Air Canada and Airbus. I’m not sure why I find that odd.) Other reports have suggested that the link-up would begin as a codeshare and not become a full-fledged merger for some time.
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Merger To Be Announced Today. Probably.