The Ohio State Band was just on at halftime playing the theme from “Titantic” — complete with the band creating the outline of a sinking ship and marching under a blue tarp that ran the length of the field.
Now there is a band director with real vision.
Figures. This is what I get for even suggesting the SEC dog in this fight was going to come up short.
Okay, so APA President Ralph Hunter suggested, “We Know Why You Fly and We Just Don’t Care,” but I like our shortened version better.
The fallout continues over the debacle that was American Airlines‘ operations on Dec. 29.
While those of us in the industry certainly knew a lot about the airline’s operational meltdown — a result of a non-ending series of storms that moved south to north on that day — and a series of mistakes made one on top of another, it never helps to have your mistakes plastered across the pages of the Wall Street Journal. (Sub required) Then everyone finds out about it.
Granted, all airlines suffer from operational issues. Northwest passengers endured their own marathon on a plane a couple of years ago. I was part of the legendary September meltdown a few years ago at O’Hare that saw me sit on a diverted United plane in Indianapolis for 6 hours.
But I have to admit, I think Scott McCartney hit some nerves with this article.
While the article details many mistakes on the part of the airline, the most damning part of McCartney’s story is that even after passengers had been stuck on the ground in a plane for hours and hours in Austin — when they finally did get off the plane, there was little special effort on the part of the airline to take care of them. There is simply no excuse for that.
Much less were there any apologies offered by the airline. As McCartney wrote,
“American’s [PR flack] Mr. Hotard says the airline is truly sorry for the mess. He says one reason the airline may not have contacted customers to apologize is that its Fort Worth headquarters, where customer-service specialists work, was closed for four days over New Year’s.”
No excuse.
Would we hear JetBlue say something like that? Or Southwest?
I highly doubt it.
Is it just me or is this long delay before we finally play the National Championship game now gotten way out of whack? I think so.
I think the game tonight should have been played last Friday night.
This is ridiculous.
In case the brain trust at Delta had the idea that the folks at US Airways were going to pack up their tent to begin 2007 and go elsewhere — it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. Just the opposite.
Monday, US Airways added Morgan Stanley to its stable of financial backers for the proposed $7.2 billion debt deal. Morgan Stanley joins Citibank in agreeing to provide financing for the deal, although, according to the Financial Times, Morgan Stanley will not, apparently, be acting in an advisory capacity on the deal. In addition, the airline received permission to bring on a third financial entity to the mix, if necessary.
This is the equivalent of dragging out the heavy artillery folks. Never hurts to have more financial firepower than you need, and it would seem US Airways has now beefed up its financial resources sufficiently to increase its offer for Delta, if the need arises. It also shows the clout and support this deal has on the Street.
Meanwhile, over Christmas, it was announced that Delta’s creditor committee had hired former Continental Chairman and CEO Gordon Bethune to advise them on the deal. Reuters reported today that Bethune met with the committee today and that he is also scheduled to meet with them on Wednesday.
Interesting. Delta and Gordon. You may recall that it was Continental management who accused management at Delta of suffering from “box of rocks” thinking in a previous round of merger mania a few years ago.
This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. Subscribers can access it here.
Beats me. It’s a drop-dead gorgeous day here today. No more nasty weather. Now you guys in Atlanta can have fun with the stuff.
All I have to say is if something goes awry next Thursday — that’s it. I’m calling Mayflower.
We’re back at the post — I’ll talk to you all later when we post this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter. Until then — try to behave.
Crap. I’m getting tired of this stuff. In December we had our phone lines cut by the power company as we were trying to publish. Tonight, we’ve got weather. Nasty, nasty, weather. Like tornado warnings, wind, lightning, rain. Whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything.
So we’ve had a quick executive meeting here at the Worldwide Headquarters in the last 10 minutes and decided to play it safe. I have to admit — even though we have UPSs on all our machines — I had a processor fried to a crisp in Dallas from a nasty thunderstorm once. Came right in the cable modem line. So I have a healthy respect for such things.
Unfortunately there’s not much we can do offline, as all our copy is on the server and in the process of being edited.
We’ll find something to do. Like maybe sleep.
See you guys tomorrow. The worst of these squall lines should be gone by the morning.
Ciao.
Hi guys. It’s Thursday. You know what that means. Yep, it’s writing day for us at PBB. While not everyone is fully back and functioning this week (it’ll be next week before I think everyone finally shrugs off all this holiday hangover), we will have an “end of year, first of year” issue out this week.
Talk to you later.
Wall Street was back up and running at full bull this morning — after the equity markets took Tuesday off in honor of former President Ford’s passing.
This morning airline stocks are some of the most active out there as investors sieve through upgrades, downgrades, and lower oil prices.
For what it’s worth, the flurry of activity comes after both American Airlines and Continental have already issued earnings warnings for the fourth quarter. The latest warning came from Continental on Tuesday, as the airline said that it now expects to post a “modest” loss for the fourth quarter.
Clearly the not-so-good news reported by both American and Continental in the last week had little bearing on airline investors, however, as shares of AMR, parent of American, were up 9% in trading as of this writing, and CAL’s shares were up 6%.
Then again, are these investors — or merely those opportunists who don’t want to miss out on a potential merger “bounce?”
Last week, as we noted here, American was dragged, pretty much unwillingly, into the world of hedge funds and their desire to turn a quick buck, after it was reported that FL Group had taken a 6% share in the airline. As I wrote to one reader who asked what this meant for the airline, it means that FL is interested only in making a nice return on its money. Translation? They would be likely to push American to merge with another carrier — only for the resulting anticipated “bounce” such news would create for AMR shares.
Not one day later, it was announced that FL was seeking a “sit-down” with AMR officials.
This one could get interesting.
As for soaring airline shares, while most all domestic airline shares are in the plus column today, two are leading the way. Our two Chinese carriers, China Eastern Airlines, and China Southern are scorching the competition today. Shares of China Eastern are up 22% as we post this, while shares of China Southern are up 12%.