A late hello from my hotel room in Houston. I just returned from a session with an MBA class at Rice University. My thanks to Dr. Shannon Anderson for the invite — and what ended up being a pretty interesting 2.5 hour session with her students.

Oh, and yes, Shannon and I did have dinner afterwards. No, class did not go until 11 PM.

And what, prey tell, did we discuss? Airlines. Strategic cost management. Gordon Bethune. American Airlines. Herb Kelleher. Doug Parker. Robert Crandall. US Airways. Delta Air Lines. Management compensation. Don Burr.

Don Burr?

Just wanted to see if you were still awake and paying attention.

Before I go and get some sleep before getting up early and winging my way back to the Worldwide Headquarters, a belated Happy 40th Birthday to the Boeing 737.

The workhorse of the industry, the 737 first flew on April 9th, 1967. Since then, almost 5500 have been delivered and more than 7000 have been ordered, making it the most successful jet aircraft ever manufactured.

And yes, I flew on one today, and I’ll fly on another one tomorrow.

Have a good night everyone.

From today’s Wall Street Journal (sub required):

“You get out of bankruptcy, and it’s easy to get fat,” says James M. Whitehurst, Delta’s chief operating officer. “We have to continue to think [about] the 100 things we didn’t do” during bankruptcy protection.”

Now, let me get this straight. He’s not out of bankruptcy protection yet, but he’s already thinking about the things the airline hasn’t done while in bankruptcy protection?

I’m a bit confused by this statement. Granted, I think if you asked 10 people who follow the airline well, you’re going to get 9, including me, who would say the airline didn’t even scratch the surface in some areas while in bankruptcy protection — particularly their regional airline operation.

But it sounds here as if Jim knows this.

So if he knew it — then why didn’t the airline use the bankruptcy process to clean up the airline’s operations more thoroughly?

The guys at US Airways must be shaking their heads.

Speaking of Tucson — for those of us who consider aircraft living breathing beings (and what’s wrong with that?) Tucson can be a difficult place to visit. First you have all the planes sitting at Marana. Then there is Pima Park. But the most disturbing thing was flying into Tucson and looking down on a number of dismembered aircraft there near the end of the runway — where a company is dismantling them for parts. There, with part of its tail off and part of a wing was a Legend Airlines DC-9 — the rest of the paint job looking as good as it did when the aircraft flew back in 2000.

I don’t care how many times you see an aircraft with a wing missing or an engine gone — I still find it a rather unsettling sight.

Enough excitement over advertising mock-ups of the new Delta livery.

Today, we have really important things to discuss, i.e., the return of Tony and the boys.

Last night “The Sopranos” began their final swan song, as the last nine episodes of the best written series on television began airing on HBO.

I’m so depressed I don’t know what to do.

What will we do without Tony? It’s hard to realize that it’s been eight years since the Soprano’s dysfunctional family first appeared on our television sets.

They’re like…well….family.

It will be hard to let them go.

Great episode last night. David Chase, creator and head writer for the show, outdid himself. The beauty in his touch is that there is always so much running just under the surface of the dialogue — we know the characters so well now — that the show really has become a metaphor for so much that happens in our own lives. He uses our knowledge of the characters to build tension — not an easy task to pull off as a writer.

Okay, enough lamenting. And adoration.

Next Sunday night, you know where I’ll be.