Hello there friends. It’s that time once again. Yes, that time when we here at the PlaneBusiness Worldwide Headquarters work our little pencils to a numb and our brains to a frazzle.

And poof — out comes the latest issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

This week we talk about June traffic and RASM estimates. After Continental’s miss right out of the box, all the rest of the usual suspects that report RASM estimates came in pretty darn well, including the airline sector’s top stock for the week — US Airways.

The DOT issued its May Airline Consumer Travel Report this last week and US Airways and Alaska both had great months. We pick the numbers apart more closely as we usually do. Oh and yes, cancellations were up. As for the number of flights that saw passengers on the ground for 3-plus hours — that would be five. Four were United Airlines’ flights that were diverted to Colorado Springs and one was a Delta Air Lines flight.

So, as we ask this week — when is the DOT going to send both airlines their itemized bills — per the new 3-hour tarmac rule?

We talk about the latest analyst tweaks. Remember– second quarter earnings are right around the corner.

Oh and of course we talk about Boeing and Airbus this week. Airbus just got dinged by the WTO, which ruled that yes, the company had received illegal subsidies. The case against Boeing was supposed to be ruled on by the WTO this month — but now that has been postponed to September.

Bad timing for Airbus, which is smack in the middle of the U.S. Air Force Refueling Tanker contract fight with Boeing.

Looks like the American Airlines/British Airways deal is finally, mercifully, going to get the European nod this week.

And oh, we have lots of mail this week. Including a very long letter to the editor concerning the concept of “job security” and some follow-up reader notes concerning our annual “Ode to a Hot Dog” column.

Oh and what about the Colgan Air pilot who was just busted for having one of the largest collections of child pornography ever seized?

No wonder Pinnacle wants to make the name “Colgan Air” go away.

It’s never boring around here.

Subscribers can access this week’s issue here.

For all of you who are not subscribers, shame on you.

This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. Subscribers can access this week’s issue here.

This week we take a look at the Second Quarter Stock Performance for the sector. Guess which airline posted the biggest gain for the quarter?

Actually a non-passenger airline posted the biggest gain overall. But one of the legacy carriers came in second place.

Unfortunately the second quarter was almost a complete reversal of the first quarter in terms of the number of airline and airline-related stocks that posted double digit gains — as opposed to those that posted double-digit losses.

I guess you could say this week’s post Fourth of July holiday issue is somewhat food centric. We do our annual “Ode to a Hot Dog” column this week, and we also talk about the recent USA Today piece that took another look at the problems facing airline catering companies. As I said today, it puts a whole new spin on the phrase, “Roach Coach.”

But was the article a fair representation of the problems — and the scope of the problems?

Then there was the passenger on US Airways last week who apparently thought there was nothing wrong with bringing his own maggot-infested piece of meat stuffed in his overhead bag onboard his flight.

Until the maggots started to escape.

I think the guy should be banned from flying on any US airline for life.

Congrats to the guys in Corp Comm at US Airways who showed a good sense of humor in their employee publication this week as they led a story about the incident with the headline – “Airline to charge new fee for Carrion.”

We also talk a lot this week about the announced deal between Google and ITA Software. This deal intrigues the heck out of me. We talked to Forrester Research Analyst Henry Harteveldt about what this deal could mean for the airlines, the GDS companies, and meta search outifts like Kayak.com.

Guess who is going to feel the biggest impact the fastest?

Slot swaps, unionization efforts, new names for Frontier’s latest spokesanimal and more — all in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

Our previous log-in problems at PlaneBusiness Banter have been resolved. We are in the middle of a software transition and apparently a part of the new system went live before it should have.

All is back to normal as of now.

Subscribers please note: We’ll be rolling out instructions for accessing the site utilizing our new software in the not-so-distant future. Stay tuned.

Thanks again for your patience.

Hi guys. A funny thing happened on the way to our cutover to the new log-in/access system for PlaneBusiness Banter. The software guru told us this morning that the work was more or less ready to go — but this was only supposed to mean that it was okay to schedule the actual cutover.

Yes, well, I think instead …the cutover was DONE.

About ten minutes later I began receiving notes from subscribers saying they could not access this week’s issue.

Yes, just one of those techno clusters we all enjoy so much. Don’t you just love them?

Anyway, the appropriate folks who can fix the problem are now working to either return us to the previous system, or they are going to advise me on what we need to do to make sure everyone can get in– using the new system.

Please be patient. If you are a subscriber and we have your current email address, you’ll receive an email letting you know when the doors are open once again.

Thank you. You may now resume your Fourth of July party planning activities.