Things in the Sky

Despite having a very good June in terms of traffic, AirTran will be making staff adjustments, as initially reported last week. 180 pilots and 300 flight attendants will be going away, though the airline will allow some employees to leave voluntarily in exchange for some benefits to be continued for a few months, which I guess is better than a regular lay-off.

Spirit is retiring five A319s, tinkering with the schedule, and reducing staff. Only two destinations, Islip and Providenciales, are going away, though, while Punta Cana and Grand Cayman will only see seasonal service. A big chunk of Spirit’s Caribbean and South American traffic comes from leisure passengers. It has been predicted that leisure traffic will decrease due to the current economic state of affairs. But maybe I’m overreacting a bit. It’s never easy to get a good idea of what’s going on there because Spirit is a private company and doesn’t release too much information to the public when compared to other airlines.

And finally, Expressjet pushed out a press release yesterday announcing that its own branded operation is closing down on September 2. Charter services will continue, though. Oh well. They had a decent business plan, but flying 50-seaters with fuel prices like these isn’t that profitable (something many were concerned about when this concept was first launched). In the end, all of Expressjet’s scheduled passenger services will be for Continental. The more things change the more they stay the same, huh?