- Kirean Daly has an interesting blog post on Chinese aerospace.
- This week, Boeing selected Charleston, South Carolina, as the location for the second 787 line. Not surprisingly, Jon Ostrower (aka Flightblogger) is all over it. (First Post, Second Post)
- TACA has been talking with Star about joining the alliance.
- ALPA has come out to defend the pilots of Northwest flight 188, who have had their ATPs revoked (they can get them reinstated). Delta also stated in a press release that they would be terminated.
- In other union news, the IAM withdrew a bid for a union election for some of Delta’s workers.
Monthly Archive for October, 2009
Last week, Virgin America announced free Wi-Fi for a few weeks after a partnership with Google, and while not nearly as generous, both American and Delta have announced some free wi-fi promotions themselves.
First, American announced that it has partnered with Lexus to offer free Wi-Fi from November 1 – November 7. Just enter the code 2010LEXUSLS when you login to get the free service. The moves by Google (with Virgin) and Lexus here are pretty interesting as it shows that the airlines and Gogo are open to advertising opportunities. But it’s a good opportunity for advertisers – free Wi-Fi is a nice way to entice people to look at advertisements.
Meanwhile, Delta has been a supporter of breast cancer research, and Gogo has now joined them.
Delta’s “Pink Plane” – photo courtesy of Chris Weyer. Used with permission.
I received an e-mail from Gogo yesterday saying that “on October 31, Gogo Inflight Internet will be free on all Gogo-equipped Delta flights and for each free session that day, Aircell will donate $1 to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, up to $10,000.” To take advantage of the free Wi-Fi, just enter the promotional code GOPINK.
Enjoy the free surfing!
I’ve written before about the flexibility Republic now has with Frontier and Midwest. For example, some Frontier A319s will begin operating for Midwest out of MKE and some Republic E190s that have operated for Midwest are off to Denver. Well, now some aircraft will be used for both Midwest and Frontier – on the same day!
Photo credit: JetPhotos user Fokker Aircraft. Used with permission.
Last week, Frontier announced an experiment: seasonal service from Oklahoma City to both Orlando and Tampa. The schedules just didn’t seem to make sense to me, as I couldn’t find any other E190 flights out of any of those cities. I just chalked it up to me missing something obvious (quite often the case 
), but an announcement from Midwest cleared everything out. Yesterday, Midwest issued a press release announcing seasonal service from Omaha to Orlando and Tampa, which was very interesting.
Let’s look at the Orlando flying, for example. The E190 will start its day flying from Omaha to Orlando for Midwest. It will then fly to Oklahoma City and back, but for Frontier. Then it’ll fly back to Omaha for Midwest. On other days, it’ll be the same, except with Tampa instead of Orlando. Of course, the flights are operated by Republic crews for those carriers.
For some reason, it just amazes me what Republic can do with the two airlines at the same time.
Generally, when one signs up for Rapid Rewards, he or she will get two bonus credits after signing up and opting in for e-mails. But, thanks to a promotion thanks to Southwest’s partnership with the Celtics, one can get eight credits after doing the same. 16 credits are needed for a roundtrip, so it’s a decent deal.
Just head on over to southwest.com/celticsrapidrewards if you’re interested.
An SEC filing from Allegiant that came out today had a slideshow with some very interesting information. The slides speak for themselves:
I found the second slide I posted particularly interesting. Allegiant has benefited by operating only MD-80s, and it seems that they’re willing to deviate from that strategy. One benefit of MD-80s is that the airline can get them dirt cheap. Is Allegiant still only looking at used aircraft? And if so, what kind?
You can see the entire presentation here.
Well, Continental joined the Star Alliance yesterday, and while other people might be interested in the new airline partners and benefits, I’m interested in what is clearly the most important aspect, Continental’s new Star Alliance livery.
First, that font (I believe a version of Helvetica) looks pretty heavy compared to this US Airways 757:
Photo credit: Chris Weyer.
It appears that the heavier font is more often used on widebodies, like this United 767:
Photo credit: Chris Weyer
The United livery shows another difference as well – you can see the United logo is color. Continental decided to have its logo in black – personally, I would have preferred it in blue to add some color to the livery.
I’m glad Continental already has a plane in the Star colors, but I’m just wondering about the differences here.
I’ve been meaning to talk about IATA’s recent release of premium traffic data for August, which came out last week, but I kept forgetting. Anyway, the decline in premium travel has been hurting airlines a lot during this recession. Sure, there are a small number of premium seats on most aircraft, but they represent a large portion of revenue on a flight due to high fares.
According to IATA, the situation is beginning to improve. The number of passengers in premium cabins was down 23.5% in May, but was down 12% in August. Revenue, however, is another key metric that’s improving – revenues in August were down about 30%, while decreases in past months were over 40%. Granted, comparisons will begin to look rosier soon, as comparisons will begin to be made off of those horrible months when revenues were down over 40%. Hopefully, we will see some kind of positive number when that happens.
Here’s a graph of the latest data from IATA – the purple bars represent volumes, and the blue line represents revenues.
Apparently, Southwest is feeling the need to boost its traffic before and after Christmas and New Year’s. Today, the airline launched its”4th Quarter Sale,” which lasts for 72 hours. The airline is charging fares based on distance, for example, a flight between 550 and 999 miles will cost $75. The sale fares are available for travel from December 2 – December 16 and January 5 – February 10.
This kind of sale might sound familiar – and it is – this move is much like Southwest’s “$30, $60, $90″ sale from the summer, except with four farecategories. It appears that, overall, this sale is a bit more expensive than “$30, $60, $90,” except on the flights less than 550 miles. Nevertheless, this appears to be a good deal.
For those who already have travel booked during this time period, now would be a good time to try to change your fare, as Southwest does not have a change fee. If you’re booked on a nonrefundable fare, you will be able to use the difference between the old fare and the new fare on a future trip.
More details here.
Last week the ATA released its monthly yield data, and the results show more of the same: we’re around the bottom, but we’re not moving much:
Of course, comparisons are hard, and that will continue. In, September 2008 airlines posted large gains in yield as airlines rose fares, and as the months progress, comparisons will be based on this year’s big declines.
Nevertheless, in terms of year-over-year change, the decreases in yields have been in the same range for a few months now. Declines of over 20% aren’t good, but at least we are now seeing some kind of stability.
For US Airways it was Pittsburgh, for American it’s St. Louis, and for Delta it’s Cincinnati. All of these cities are hubs that have been shrunk after a merger (granted, that process started for PIT before the America West merger, but they kept cutting). Delta announced a couple of days ago that its Cincinnati operation is being shrunk…again.
The city will lose about 25 flights – down from 215 to around 190, which is around an 11% cut. Savannah, Tulsa (we already knew about that one), Charleston, and Huntsville will be losing their service in January.
Delta continues to claim that they’re dedicated to the hub are they’re just trying to make the hub profitable, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more cuts. But I think we’ll truly know when CVG has lost its hub status when some LCCs decide to start service.
Found via The B.A.T.:
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