Archive for the 'US Airways' Category
March 06 2007
US Airways switched its reservations system over to the America West SHARES system (unimportant detail) over the weekend and suffered some serious complications at Boston, Charlotte and Philadelphia (kiosk checkin didn’t work). Switching a reservations system is a major undertaking (having just gone through this on a much smaller scale), so you can cut them some slack. But on the down side, less than 20% of US Airways’ flights were on-time systemwide on Sunday. If you’re flying US Airways today, check in at home.
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February 21 2007
Not a good week for airline CEOs…
US Airways CEO Doug Parker pleaded guilty to a DUI charge and will spend a day in jail (as well as paying a fine) as part of his sentence. No one was hurt when he was arrested last month — his third DUI offense (the others were nearly 20 years ago).
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February 12 2007
This is a shocker: US Airways’ CEO Douglas Parker was arrested for drunk driving on January 31st, it was reported on Friday. To make things worse for him, he had 3 prior alcohol-related legal incidents in his 20s (granted, that may or may not be relevant to the recent arrest, but the Phoenix papers are making a biggish deal out of it). Given the large number of positive stories about Parker recently, this is a tough fall from grace for him.
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January 31 2007
US Airways’ CEO said yesterday that they have made their final offer for Delta and that if Delta’s board doesn’t want to approve it, the offer will expire February 1. He also dismissed speculation that US Airways would up the bid by $1 billion. So, with Delta off the table, is Northwest next? If Delta and Northwest made sense, and Delta and US Airways made sense, wouldn’t US Airways and Northwest make sense (as much as any of these ridiculous rumors make sense)? When we will start hearing those rumors?
(UPDATE: IT’S FINISHED.) US Airways frequent flyers who were dreaming of using their miles to fly to Kiev or Dakar should shelve those dreams and book their free flights to Elmira or Franklin-Oil City or wherever US Airways flies.
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January 30 2007
The State of New Mexico has accused US Airways of being a liquor bootlegger because it has been selling liquor on flights to and from New Mexico without a New Mexico liquor license. I know, it doesn’t really make sense. Maybe if you read the linked article it will (but I doubt it).
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January 10 2007
After saying that it wasn’t going to increase its offer for Delta, US Airways has increased its offer by about $1 billion and 11 million shares — certainly not a small amount of money. According to US Airways, this is above what Delta has claimed to be its valuation given its standalone plan. As I’m not a financial analyst, I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not. We’ll see where US Airways’ stock opens today to see what people think (yes, I know, this was lame. I just can’t pretend to know where Delta should be valued. I still think, though, that jamming together Delta and US Airways before America West is fully merged with US Airways is a mistake. But what do I know.)
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December 20 2006
You can read much more about this elsewhere, but in case you didn’t see it (if you’re reading this site, though, you probably have seen it. I’ll shut up now) Delta rejected US Airways’ buyout offer. The most interesting reason given by Delta is that the merger would create monopoly power on 2,000 city pairs. I would think this would be a good thing for an airline, as they could increase fares, but they’re saying that the merger would never pass Department of Justice scrutiny. Look for US Airways to increase their offer, only to be rebuffed again. My guess? Delta will ultimately stay independent.
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November 22 2006
Another proud day for America: 6 imams were kicked off a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix because passengers accused them of "suspicous activity" on the plane. The aforementioned suspicious activity was the 6 men praying. There are so many things wrong with this that I can’t even discuss it.
OK, there’s more. A spokesperson for the airport said that "said some witnesses reported the men were making
anti-American statements involving the Iraq war, asked to
change seats once inside the cabin, that one requested an
extender to make his seat belt larger even though he did not
appear to need it and that in general ‘there was some peculiar
behavior.’" Yes, they were kicked off for praying and criticizing the Iraq war. And because one of them felt a bit bloated.
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November 15 2006
OK, I’ve thought about this a bit, and I think this is probably a great purchase. Or a terrible one. For full disclosure, I own a bit of US Airways stock. But it’s not like anyone listens to me, so it doesn’t matter what I think. But here’s what I think. US Airways basically thinks that Delta is a great company that is clouded in a sea of bad management, bad decisions and high costs. If you fire the management (done), stop making terrible pricing decisions (done), and eliminate the costs (done, as Delta is non-union), that you will end up with a more giant version of the so-far-successful merger between US Airways and America West. Bravo.
Or they can end up trying to integrate the extraordinary mess that is Delta, which will in turn drag down the nice job they’ve done combining the 1st two airlines. That would be ugly and horrible.
But (and I’ve said this before), the executive team at US Airways is probably the best of all the network carriers (Continental, perhaps, excluded). They’ve made a long string of great decisions, and they run their airline by the numbers, not by irrational competition. Who ever thought you’d be able to use your America West miles to fly to Senegal. Crazy.
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October 03 2006
Most frequent flyer promotions offer you miles that don’t count toward Elite status (which is what most frequent flyers actually care about). US Airways has changed that: Through the end of the year, any miles earned on their hotel and car partners (as well as FTD flowers) count toward Elite status. Go send your wife some flowers so you can fly up front next year…
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