Well, today is college move-in day for me today! Anyway, here are some links for the long weekend.
- There is concern about passengers viewing inflight porn while using American’s Wi-Fi service, and now the union for American’s flight attendants is getting involved.
- Some more information about the Qantas 747 incident has come out.
- Alaska Airlines has retired the MD-80.
- Flight Global has an interesting article about some of Lufthansa’s past and potential moves.
- Alitalia has filed for bankruptcy. I’m sure Cranky will have a post about it soon!
- Air France-KLM is still interested in the Italian carrier.
See you on Tuesday!
Yesterday Zoom Airlines went bust. Well, both Zoom Airlines went bust. Zoom Airlines, Inc. was based in Canada, and Zoom Airlines Limited was based in the UK. The airline mainly oeprated no-frills transatlantic service, though I guess with United’s recent cuts it would have seemed, well, less “non-frill-y”?
It is never fun when an airline shuts down, and it’s always messy. But this shutdown seems worse than others. If this airliners.net thread is correct (hat tip to Rick for the link), one of Zoom’s 767s was repossessed mid-turn. Zoom’s website was also very slow to update. In my opinion, Zoom could have done a much better job during this situation from a customer-service standpoint. This is certainly a mess for consumers, but according to Zoom’s site, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic will offer some special fares to stuck Zoom customers.
I hate it when airlines shut down quickly - it’s such a hassle. I wish more airlines would shut down like ExpressJet’s independent operation, which gave a hard date for the closure a few months in advance. I realize it’s a different situation because that airline will still fly for Continental, but I think you get my point.
Hopefully nothing like yesterday’s incident will occur over here in the United States soon. Luckily, most of the major airlines are publicly traded. In that case, travelers would at least have a better chance of getting advance warning of trouble ahead.
I found this story on Today in the Sky the other day. Delta is going to close concourse C at its Cincinnati hub that is used for Comair flights. To cope with the change, To cope with the change, Concourse A will receive eight additional gates (up to 30 from 22), and Concourse B will get 12 more (26 to 38). The closure will take place in January, though the updates to A and B won’t be done for a couple years.
I know some have said that CVG may no longer be a hub after Northwest and Delta merge, almost like US Airways’ large cuts at Pittsburgh. While cutting a good number of flights and closing the terminal are signs of that happening, I think this news story actually shows that Delta will remain committed to a hub, albeit a slightly smaller one. If Delta was planning to cut CVG as a hub post-merger, I don’t think it would be making a two-to-three-year commitment to add more jetways to other terminals.
I wonder what will happen to this terminal, though, as it was designed for regional jets. This factor restricts any airlines that would want to enter the Cincinnati market, in my opinon.
Anyway here is the original story that Today in the Sky linked to. It has some good details.
Today’s regular posting will come up a bit later. I just wanted to mention that Court and Max, the hosts of the Airplane Geeks podcast, were nice enough to have me on again. As always the week’s news is discussed, and then each of us shared a list of the five-least successful airliners. Their lists are much better than mine.
You can catch the episode here.
If you’re interested in reading about the FAA tech glitch you can do so here.
A few days ago Southwest updated their winter schedule and released more days for booking. There are a good number of cuts, and ATW reports that it is about a 5% reduction in departures. As usual, Bill Owen of Southwest made a blog post about the changes. Finally, Sky Talk has a nice chart of the changes. Most of them are reductions but there are a couple routes getting a boost.
There are only three city pairs being cut: Phoenix-Birmingham, Nashville-Oakland, and Nashville-Seattle. None of these really shock me. All of them were only operating only once a day. During the past few months, it seems that Southwest is cutting back on some of the longer stages.
Other than that most of these schedule changes are fairly minor - just a change of one or two frequencies. Southwest is in a pretty good position right now, I think. While some other airlines are making more drastic fleet changes (i.e. United), Southwest can prune its schedules gently.
It has also been said that some of the flights that are being cut in the schedule can come back in the spring. If so, this looks like a change for Southwest to me. In the past, it didn’t seem to do seasonal shifts in schedule as much as it does
now.
There weren’t any huge news stories yesterday (at least in my opinion), so I’m going to write a post I’ve been planning for awhile.
In August 1999, my airline nerd-ness lept to a whole new level. My father brought home a US Airways magazine (then Attaché) for my mother. I ended up finding it and just kept going through the route and terminal maps, so he decided to bring the next month’s issue. And the one after that. And then another one…
One reason I loved the magazine was that at the time, I was planning to create Dan Airways. (I was nine at the time.) Back then, US Airways didn’t draw its routes on the map in the back of magazine, it just showed what cities the airline served, so it was easy for me to draw the route map of my future empire. Sadly, the company never materialized as an allowance less than $10/week did not prove to be sufficient capital.
My dad kept brinigng the magazines, but he also told friends and business associates about my hobby. This is actually how I get most of them. For example, of all the magazines I have, the most are from Continental, yet I’ve never flown them becuase a family we’re friendly with flies them often. My school friends help out, too. I would usually have six or seven magazines after the end of the first day back from a break. When I went to the movies a few nights ago, I walked out with magazines from Contiental and Swiss.
You can see a list of all my issues here, and I’ve created a page to share my recent finds.
So there’s my big airline hobby. What’s yours?
I signed up for Virgin America’s frequent flyer program, eleVAte, just so I could become a “founding member” since who knows, it could lead to a perk or two in the future. I received an e-mail the other day with a link to their newest promotion, Entourage Air. From the site:
Want to experience the Entourage lifestyle? Now’s your chance to Live It! Travel like Vince and the boys aboard “Entourage Air”* this September on Virgin America’s newest route: New York (JFK) - Vegas. Book a first class ticket on Entourage Air and you’ll be flying Entourage Class, where passengers will receive:
Free episodes of Entourage on RED
Noise Canceling Headphones
A glass of signature champagne
Godiva truffles
Kiehl’s Since 1851 Perennial Favorites Travel Set
Altoids
Entourage Air blanket and eye mask
Sadly the noise-cancelling headphone (which I believe are the expensive Bose QuietComforts) and blankets need to be returned.
One point though - the e-mail is a bit confusing:
During the month of September, book your travel between NYC (JFK) and Las Vegas on Entourage Air and enjoy free episodes of Entourage on RED fleetwide on Virgin America. First class guests on Entourage Air will experience “Entourage Class”…
So will coach passengers get the free movies too?
While this sounds like an interesting ad campaign, I’m not sure how many travelers will actually bite and pay a much higher fare. After checking some of the prices, I could buy my own pair of Bose headphones to keep and purchase a coach ticket for less than the price of a first class ticket. In my book, this is a nice perk if you were already planning to fly in first, but otherwise, I’m not so sure if it’s worth the extra cash.
Today in the Sky linked to an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a survey sent out to Northwest and Delta employees about what they want the company to be like post-merger. (I never found the questions though, please send them if you can find them.)
The unions that represent Northwest’s ground crews and flight attendants weren’t to pleased. Take a look at this excerpt from a statement on the IAM 143 website:
In their latest attempt to destroy our organization, both NWA and DAL have decided against meeting with District 143; instead, opting to deal directly with the membership in their latest divide and conquer scheme by asking for your insight.
You might be like me and wonder why we didn’t hear anything from the Delta side. Last night my friend Rick pointed out to me that other than the pilots, Delta’s employees generally aren’t unionized. If anything, this is just a continunation of past concerns from the Northwest unions about their representation in the new Delta.
Honestly, I think this is an overreaction. The airline is asking front line employees for their opinions about the merger - doesn’t seem like a big deal. Personally, I think the IAM and other unions should use more restraint in the future. I’m at the point where I take many of the union announcments with a massive grain of salt, and I wouldn’t be surprised if others have the same feeling - which isn’t good for the unions when they have more valid complaints.
Remember the Stop Oil Speculation Now movement started by the ATA? I really wasn’t a fan of it at all.
Today Sky Talk linked to a new site launched by the Reaching Higher Coalition called The Airline Oil Spin. The site basically makes a point that the airlines’ fuel hedging is simply a form of speculation, and can’t have it both ways, which I think many have been saying ever since the ATA launched its campaign.
There was an ineresting quote I found on one of the website’s pages:
“Speculators bring information to the markets. Clearly, the supply of oil is struggling to grow, and demand is continuing. In that environment, higher prices are a result.”
Scott Topping
Treasurer of Southwest Airlines
This is actually the same quote I posted awhile back. Still ironic nontheless since Gary Kelly (CEO) signed the original letter.
Anyway, I’m glad to see a group stepping up against the ATA on this one.
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