Category Archives: Uncategorized

Last Holdout to ASAP Program Participation Rejoins the Fold: APA and American Bury Their Differences

More good news today on the airline union front.

It was announced this afternoon that the pilots at American have come to terms with the company on a new Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) participation agreement.

As readers know, this issue has been a burr in my side. The ASAP program, which encourages pilots to self-report safety problems without fear of retaliation, knowledge of which can benefit pilots from all airlines, had become a “leverage” tool used by a number of airline pilot unions over the last couple of years.

As a result, pilots at American, Delta, and US Airways had stopped participating in their respective programs, citing a fear of lack of confidentiality — or potential efforts to “get back” at those employees who participated in the program.

But after pilots at Delta Air Lines rejoined the program earlier this year, following the lead of the pilots at Northwest Airlines, the FAA took a hard line stand — telling airlines and their pilot unions that were still not participating that they needed to rejoin the program, sooner rather than later.

With this news, all the major airline pilot groups are now once again participating in what is, no question, an excellent safety program that is run in conjunction with the FAA.

The pilots at US Airways had already agreed to participate in their company’s program again about two weeks ago.

When Technology Craps Out

image1474493313.jpgHow many of you have ever found yourself in a position where some form of technology failed you? A piece of software….a computer…. A gadget of some sort?

If you’ve ever been in that situation you’ll understand when I ask the question,”Why is it that they always decide to quit, break, or stop working just when you need to use it the most?”

It’s Sunday and as usual I should be wrapping up this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter. One problem. My laptop’s display unit died last night. No see. No write. No nothing.

The good part? The friendly folks at the Apple Genius Bar were able to determine the problem this morning. Even better, Apple is picking up the tab to fix it.

The bad part? I was told to come home and clone my hard drive and bring the computer back in … TOMORROW. And the new display unit won’t be in stock until TUESDAY.

So here I sit with external drives daisy chained and two laptops chugging away ( had to use target disk mode to boot up the MacBook Pro because… Well…..there is no display!)

Meanwhile I sit and twiddle my thumbs and contemplate what kind of happy pills Apple must give those guys who work the Genius Bars. I don’t see how they do it. And how I’m going to try and get an issue written.

And….how am I going to get all this done and be back to the Swamp to take my Dad for eye surgery at 6 a.m on Tuesday?

As the guy at the Apple Store said…”There are always Margaritas.”


[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

“Scary Mary” Says Slumping Economy Could Lead To More Air Crashes

I was quietly eating my lunch today at The Breakfast Club in Old Scottsdale. The place makes great waffles and their teas and coffees are great as well. So here I was, minding my own business, people watching all the folks who were obviously catching a bite before heading off to watch a spring training game–when I glance over at the flat sceen on the wall. The television was on Fox News and I noticed that they were playing the video of the FedEx crash in Narita over and over. Then I saw the crawl….and I quote, “Will Worsening Economy Lead to More Air Crashes?”

As you can imagine… At this point my blood pressure began to rise.

But then it got worse as who should appear on the screen telling America that yes, cost cutting on maintenance because of the economy could very well mean more airline crashes than Scary Mary herself — Mary Schiavo.

While I couldn’t actually hear the audio, I could certainly read the crawls drawn from her comments.

It was almost enough to make me not want the hot crispy waffle that was then put in front of me.

I’m sure FedEx appreciated the assumptions that I am sure some viewers took from her comments as well.

I don’t think any of the major news organizations will use her anymore. But obviously Fox thinks she’s credible.

So the next time an airplane crashes anywhere in the world– remember that there’s a good chance it crashed because of cost cutting involving the maintenance of that aircraft. That’s Mary’s story and she’s stickin’ to it.

Thank you so much to Fox News for bringing Mary’s enlightening perspective to everyone’s attention.


[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

It’s Official: Southwest Moving into Boston

It appears our flurry-ette of emails this afternoon was spot on.

An article posted just a few minutes ago on the Boston Globe’s online site says that Southwest Airlines’ CEO Gary Kelly told them in an “exclusive” interview that the airline plans to begin flying out of Logan International Airport by the fall with between eight and 12 daily departures.

Now go talk amongst yourselves about this.

I have my own thoughts. What are yours?

Virgin America, Republic Holdings and Shuttle America DOT Reports Are Finally Public

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Eureka. It’s about time.

“The Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics today upheld its June 2008 decision to release to the public traffic, financial and origin and destination survey data filed by Virgin America.

            BTS denied an appeal by Virgin America of the June 26, 2008 decision by BTS’ Office of Airline Information on the airline’s request to keep the data confidential.   

            All filings on the docket DOT-OST-2008-0107 can be found on Regulations.gov: http://www.regulations.gov/search/index.jsp

            BTS also denied appeals from Republic Airlines and Shuttle America.  The two airlines appealed a previous denial of their confidentiality requests.  Documents for these cases can be found on Regulations.gov:

Shuttle America: DOT-OST-2005-23354

Republic Airlines: DOT-OST-2005-23355″

Readers will recall that Virgin America has refused to make its DOT financial and O&D information available ever since it began operation. The reason? We can only assume that it didn’t want us all to know how much money it was losing. And on what routes.

So the airline played the legal “wait it out” game by first refusing to do so, saying that it would be forced to “reveal confidential information” if it did so. That set in place a legal process that took time. In June the DOT ruled against the airline, but again, an appeal was filed.

So now, finally, we will all get to see the numbers that we should have had access to all along. On February 3. At 10:00 AM EST to be exact.

Oh, and yes, Republic and Shuttle America have been playing the same game. Their gig is up as well. Their numbers will also be available as of Feb. 3.

This whole thing is ridiculous. There should be changes made immediately to the process that prevents airlines from “opting” out of the reporting process. If they don’t report — their right to fly is yanked. Period.

Oil Price Spike, Earnings Sends Shares of Many Airlines Down

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Rough day on Wall Street for many airline stocks today — with two big factors pushing down shares. One — March futures options opened today for crude oil. And off they went.

Oil closed up almost $3 to 43.55/barrel today.

But it wasn’t because of a surprise EIA energy supply report. That report, which is normally issued on Wednesday, won’t be issued until tomorrow — because of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Monday holiday observance.

Another factor pushing down shares were the earnings reports for American Airlines and United Airlines.

Shares of American are being hammered, with shares now trading down about 25% for the day. Shares are hovering around 7.85.

Shares of United, which actually posted what I thought were the more negative numbers for the quarter, are down a little over 7% as of this posting, with shares running around 10.78.

But other stocks are taking the day’s news hard as well. As of this posting, shares of JetBlue are down 12%, trading at $6.25, while shares of Delta are down 12%, trading at 9.73.

Shares of Continental are not having a good day either, as shares here are down 13% as of this posting, trading at 16.98.


US Airways’ December Traffic Numbers: Very Good

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Oops. Members of the US Airways’ fan club sent me notes last night asking me why it was I hadn’t talked about their traffic numbers in yesterday’s post.

Okay, okay. Nothing intentional. I simply forgot. Quiet down!

Actually US Airways posted pretty darn good traffic numbers for December.

US Airways said Wednesday that its mainline RPMs were down 1.1% for the month, against a capacity shrinkage of 6.4%. Ding, ding, ding. You know what that means.

Yep. It means that load factor went up. And by a healthy 4.4 points to 80.3% — which set a new record for the airline.