Late this afternoon US Airways announced a number of upper level management changes.

As we had talked about here earlier this week — the airline did indeed name a new COO today.

Robert Isom, a former exec at both Northwest and America West was named to the newly created position of executive vice president and chief operating officer, effective immediately. In this position, Isom, 43, will head up the airline’s operations, including flight operations, inflight services, maintenance and engineering, airport customer service, reservations, cargo and the Express operation.

The airline also named Daniel Pon to the position of vice president, human resources and Kerry Hester to the position of vice president, customer service planning.

The airline also announced that Anthony Mule, Senior Vice President, Customer Service is retiring. Mule has been in the industry for more than 35 years — a good chunk of that with American Airlines, before he moved over to America West, and then US Airways.

Not sure how many of you know Anthony, but he’s a real trip. Happy retirement Anthony. Enjoy yourself.

And yes, we’re happy with Isom’s hiring. We’ve heard good things about Isom’s earlier tenure while at America West.

Ticker: (NYSE:LCC)

Subscribers can access this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter here.

I’ll going to tell you straight up. If I’m not finished editing this week’s issue before the Saints and Colts kick off — it will be posted after the game is over!

But we should be up before that becomes an issue. 😉

For those of you who don’t have the perk of non-rev tickets, (and that includes me), I have to agree with Tim Winship at Smarter Travel. Southwest Airlines usually never offers a really “good” promo. As Tim writes today, “On the scale of promotional activity, Southwest usually scores somewhere between “Rare” and “Infrequent.”

But they are offering one now — and it’s not a bad deal at all.

Southwest is offering Rapid Rewards members a free ticket for flying two paid long-distance round-trip flights between September 1 and November 15. (For purposes of this offer, ‘long distance’ is defined as flights of 1,250 or more miles each way, including stops and connections. There’s a list of eligible routes on Southwest’s website.)

Qualifying tickets must be purchased on Southwest.com. A maximum of two awards may be earned during the promotion period.

Normally, Rapid Rewards members earn a free round-trip after every eight paid round-trips.

Of course, those of us with financially-inclined minds have to wonder — if the airline is doing this does this mean that bookings are looking a bit slow as they look out over the fall period?

I don’t think there’s any need to take any bets on that one.

Technorati Tags: airlines, airline fares, Southwest Airlines

From Bloomberg:

US Airways Group Inc., grappling with the U.S. airline industry’s worst service and on-time rankings, may hire an operations chief 11 months after deciding not to fill the position.

“We’ve been telling employees all summer long that we understand a chief operations officer is something we ought to consider doing,” said Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for the Tempe, Arizona-based carrier. “It’s beyond the we think it’s a ‘nice idea’ stage.”

Hiring a chief operating officer would mark a change of strategy. Late last year, President Scott Kirby took on oversight of flight, maintenance and safety operations after the resignation of operations chief Al Crellin, 59. The airline said then that Kirby would keep the duties “long term.”

It’s about time. Although I don’t think, as this article implies, that  Crellin’s departure was the problem. I think it’s clear that there was too much responsibility spread too thinly across too few people — after the airline did not reappoint a COO, following Jeff McClelland’s death in ’06. This occurred before Crellin left the airline. (Although this decision probably hastened his departure.)

Ticker: (NYSE:LCC)

Technorati Tags: airlines, US Airways

As if enduring the frustrations of the last two years here in the swamp is not enough, apparently last week the Air Force decided to give everyone in Louisiana a little unintended thrill.  But we didn’t know about it until today.

The Army Times first broke the story, reporting that six nuclear warheads on air-launched cruise missiles were mistakenly carried on a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, prompting a major investigation.

The plane flew the cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota  to Barksdale Air Force Base outside of Shreveport, LA.,  for decommissioning last Thursday, the Air Force has confirmed.

Needless to say, the warheads should have been removed from the missiles before they were loaded on the B-52 bomber, according to military officials.

Not to mention the fact that according to treaties the U.S. agreed to years ago — flying nuclear weapons is prohibited. Instead, weapons that have to be broken down and decommissioned are transported by truck to the appropriate location. One of those locations being Amarillo, TX.

Nice going fly boys.

What I want to know is — how does something like this happen? I mean, really. How do you “mistakenly” put armed nuclear weapons on a plane and send it off into the wild blue yonder?

We have a new addition to our blog that some of you have asked me about. Down there on the right column at the bottom.

He is a Blue Dog, festively attired in a New Orleans Saints Jersey.

The Blue Dog is a creation of the artist George Rodrigue, and this particular rendition of the Blue Dog is just one that Rodrigue created after you-know-what. (Starts with a “K,” ends with an “A.”)

Sales of this print, as well as several others he did after the storm, have been donated to various good causes in the New Orleans area.

This particular print was the one Rodrigue did to commemorate the Saints return to the New Orleans Superdome last September.

Since it is once again football season, and since the Saints and Colts open up the NFL season tomorrow night — it was time we showed our colors.

(Then again, Peyton Manning is a New Orleans native, so what the hey?) Nah, we still want the Saints to win. Pretty hard to do in that damn dome up there in Indy though.

Technorati Tags: Indianapolis Colts, New Orleans Saints

I just had a reader send me this note:

“Ahwwww, now you’re bashing a pilot’s favorite newspaper and with your retired WN brother haven’t you heard this one?

How do you get an airline pilot to come out of his hotel room?

You put a free newspaper at his door!

If you don’t get a chuckle out of that your brother will.

So if UAL ALPA had run it in the Wall Street Journal then no pilot at UAL would have seen it unless they were foraging for newspapers in the seat backs after the passengers had deplaned.  How many Motel 6s, Days Inn or other flop houses that we have been reduced to staying at do you find the WSJ for free?”

Exactly.

So why did the United pilots run the ad in the first place? So other non-United pilots would see it?  That is certainly preaching to the choir, dontcha think?

And as far as United pilots are concerned, isn’t that what internal ALPA communications are for?

Thanks for the note!

Technorati Tags: airline pilots, airline unions, USA Today, Wall Street Journal

MarketWatch reported today that according to a survey in August of 770 part-time and full-time workers in the U.S. — 48% of those workers  said they were not motivated to go back to work after Labor Day.

Guess the United Airlines’ pilots would fall into that category. Check out the full page ad the pilots ran in USA Today.

My only comment would be — why didn’t they run it in the Wall Street Journal? Questionable media buy in my opinion.

Ticker: (UAUA:Nasdaq)

Technorati Tags: airline CEOs, airline pilots, United Airlines

One of the most circulated email news stories from today is the one concerning Nepal Airlines.

According to Reuters, It seems that officials at Nepal Airlines, Nepal’s state-run airline, have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier confirmed Tuesday.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due to the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft on Sunday at Nepal’s international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

“The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

More than one reader has suggested that perhaps a similar type of sacrifice of some airline execs might be more effective here in the U.S.

I can hear it now.

“Spokesperson Mamie Smith confirmed that shortly after the airline’s CEO was offered up to the sky god of on-time arrivals, Erasmus B. Dragon, the airline’s on-time record suddenly improved by more than 20%.”

Technorati Tags: airline CEOs, Nepal Airlines