Last Thursday to Saturday, I was on a school trip to New York City, which went very well. I stayed at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, which was just awesome! I won’t bore you with the details, but I wanted to mention a couple of things.
First, there were way too many advertisements for Continental. 
Seriously, it seemed as if I saw an ad on every block. Most ads focused on the age of Continental’s fleet and the fact that they still serve meals. They even advertise on tour buses:
I was also able to meet up with a few fellow bloggers during the trip, including Flight Wisdom, Jared from Online Travel Review, and Gray of Wing and a Prayer. It was great to meet you guys! I always enjoy meeting fellow airplane geeks.
When Delta and Northwest merged, the airline became the owner of three regional carriers (Comair, Compass, and Mesaba), and has contracts with a few more. Delta started moving things around in the past – some Mesaba 340s have been moved to Atlanta, for example, but it appears that Delta has been doing some more tinkering lately. A friend of mine noticed that there were some CRJ-700s flying PVD-DTW later this year, for example:
That route has been a mix of Northwest mainline and regionals in the past, but in November, there will be two Comair CRJ-700s flying the route, but I’m not complaining as those flights provide an upgrade from 2 DC-9 and 1 CR9 flight last year.
When I checked the PVD-ATL schedule, I noticed that the first CR9 flight will be flown by Pinnacle, which is a Northwest regional carrier.
Delta’s number of fleet types grew a great deal thanks to the merger, but it has opened up some opportunities, it seems. Delta can use Northwest’s Saabs that seat less than the smallest CRJ. The Northwest network, meanwhile, now has access to many more 70-seat regional jets that can be a better fit for its routes.
Yesterday, AirTran announced that it would begin Saturday-only service between Branson, Missouri and Orlando, beginning December 19.
AirTran was the first carrier to serve Branson, the first privately- operated commercial airport here in the U.S. At one time the carrier served both Milwaukee and Atlanta, but the former has been dropped, and that makes sense. After working some DOT numbers, in June, the latest month for which data is available, Atlanta flights had a load factor of 78.5%, while the Milwaukee flying had a mere 41.4%.
Sun Country is the other carrier at the airport, and has had some good load factors on its flights to Dallas and Minneapolis – 78.5% and 70.7%, respectively.
Branson has been interesting to watch, and I hope it succeeds. Because the airport is private, it can be more flexible in offering incentives to airlines, so I wonder if they’ll be able to get any other carriers in there. The market is relatively small, but I’m sure the airport would appreciate a link to a major airline’s hub with some regional service.
Photo Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flissphil/ / CC BY 2.0
When I was at NBTA in San Diego, Capt. Sullenberger of US Airways Flight 1549 said that he would be returning to the cockpit soon, and US Airways put out a press release yesterday saying that in addition to flying, Sullenberger will become a management pilot and “will join the US Airways flight operations safety management team.” His return is great, but I’d like to focus on this part of the press release:
There will be a separate media advisory once the details of Capt. Sullenberger’s return to flight are confirmed. A pre-announcement of his return will be posted on Twitter @usairwaysnews.
Finally, the airline has entered the Twitterspehere!
It seems a bit odd to have the first official word about Twitter buried in a press release, but nevertheless it’s great to see the airline participating. Now, now every legacy carrier is now participating in some way, and the only other large U.S. carrier missing right now is AirTran, which plans to be on Twitter in the coming months. Hopefully US Airways will not just use the account as a news feed, but also as a way to connect with its customers as effectively as airlines like Alaska, EasyJet, JetBlue, and Southwest .
My school gets a Chinese newspaper, and it caught my eye recently:
I can’t read Chinese, but that’s an article about the upcoming Chinese-built Comac C919, which is supposed to have its first flight in a few years. The aircraft will seat up 190 passengers, putting this aircraft as a competitor for the 737/A320 families and their replacements from Airbus and Boeing.
This one will be interesting to watch as air travel continues to grow in the Asia-Pacific region, which IATA predicts will overtake North America as the biggest market in the coming years. It also presents a challenge for Airbus and Boeing, as the aircraft certainly has the potential negatively affect them. This aircraft also presents an awkward situation for Airbus, as the company is now producing A320s in China.
Last week British Airways announced some changes to its seat selection process. Currently, only a few groups of people could select their seats at the time of booking, like first class passengers, elites, and those on fully refundable tickets. Others would simply select a seat at the time of check-in 24 hours before their flight. Starting October 7, BA will launch new service allowing those passengers to select their seats in advance for a fee, which ranges from $15 for a domestic flight in coach to $90 for a longhaul flight in business class.
I’d have to say that the new fee is a good idea for a new revenue source, especially from economy passengers, but the fee for those in Club World just seems weird. To me, charging passengers booked in business class an extra $90 for the privilege of selecting a seat that can sell for thousands of dollars simply doesn’t make sense. Sure, there are some discounted business class fares out there, but I still don’t like it.
It will also be interesting to see how elite members of Executive Club, BA’s frequent flier program, will see the move. Silver members and above will still be able to select seats at the time of booking, but now there will be a bit more competition. When Delta tried to roll out Coach Choice Seats, an offering from Northwest, elites in the SkyMiles program weren’t pleased and the program was quickly eliminated,
But at this point it appears that BA is continuing to market itself as a carrier that provides a high-value service. The British Airways “value calculator” still notes that passengers can reserve a seat for free 24 hours before their flight, which is touted as a benefit over EasyJet and Ryanair. Those two LCCs do not assign seats, but do offer product that will allow passengers to be the first to board in hopes of finding a good seat. Those fees can vary for both carriers, but in many cases are cheaper than BA’s new service.
My friend Steve sent this website to me awhile back, and it was definitely pretty, well, interesting. It’s called “Carpets for Airports,” and, as one might expect, features carpets from around the world.
Perhaps the best part, however, is the descriptions:
Dim figures struggle to make themselves seen amidst the grand abstraction of LGA. Out of the blue-grey haze indistinct apparitions appear to be marching towards the traveller, forcing us to ask such uncomfortable questions as, “What can they want?” “Why are they bending me over?” and “Was it really necessary to Taser my wife?”
Now that I think of it, I do have a picture of PVD’s carpet that I should send in.
Reuters reported yesterday that Delta successfully sold debt, $1.35 billion of notes in fact, up from $1.25 billion. It should be noted, however, that both offerings sold at discounts, so the total cash raised was more in the area of $1.31 billion.
Yields for the offerings were 9.875% for notes due in 2014, and 13% for the notes due in 2015.
So, Delta ws able to get some more cash, but those yields seem kind of high, though I’m no bond expert.
The next question – what will they do with it? Some will be used to take care of Northwest debt, but there’s more cash than that. Is Delta building up cash for a potential JAL stake?
The ATA has released its latest yield data, and year over year change has reamanted fairly steady. We’re still seeing big declines, but at least things appeared to have stabilized a bit. On the bright side, yields in August improved from July for all areas except the Atlantic, and all areas are improved from June levels.
Click to enlarge.
Flying with Fish is another great blog here on BoardingArea, and I was very happy to write a guest post for Steven, especially considering he did the same for me earlier this year. Click here for my thoughts on why airlines should listen to bloggers and how bloggers can earn respect from airlines.
I know I’ve been writing about efforts by airlines to boost liquidity a decent amount lately, but there’s been some more news coming out.
First, American has upped the ante on its latest offerings that I wrote about yesterday as it is now issuing more stock and notes than previously announced. The offerings can now give the airline around $770 million in additional cash – before that number was in the $500 million area. Meanwhile, the airline has offered yet another offering of notes worth $450 million. The proceeds of that offering “are expected to be used to refinance the Company’s existing $432 million secured bank term loan facility.”
Yesterday, Delta announced it would be offering $500 million in notes. This might sound familiar, considering that Delta announced a $500 million offering last week. The notes, which will be used for “general corporate purposes,” are due in 2015. This article has some interesting information about how these notes fit into Delta’s latest round of financing, which is apparently worth about $2 billion in total.
These latest announcements from American and Delta just make me think about JAL, to be honest.
Last but not least, US Airways, which has issued stock already this year, is doing it again. Yesterday the airline announced the sale of over 26 million shares of stock with an over-allotment option of nearly 4 million shares. Shares of the company have taken a decent hit after the news, and are currently down over 7% in pre-market trading. But, depending on share price and usage of the over-allotment option, US Airways could get somewhere around $130 million out of the offering.
These moves by the carriers are certainly exciting, and it’s nice to see that they’ve been able to find additional sources of liquidity.
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