Monthly Archives: November 2014

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

The Turkey Week edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!

This week we get you up to speed on all the latest machinations in the airline industry, although it has been a pretty slow week. Something to do with that holiday on Thursday.

On the labor front, while originally the airline had said it was going to proffer arbitration last Friday, as of this writing the pilots and American Airlines are apparently still talking — no arbitration yet. Sounds like negotiations will continue next week.

Over at Southwest Airlines, the pilots asked the NMB for help with their negotiations last week. If I am not mistaken, this is the first time the pilot group has asked for help from the NMB.

In our column this week we talk about profit sharing. Why employees like it, why they understand it, and why we think that American’s stance against profit sharing is a mistake.

On the corporate travel front, we have the results from the latest Morgan Stanley Corporate Travel Survey. I’ll give you a hint. Delta Air Lines did very well.

On the stock front, shares of Virgin America once again led the group last week. All in all it was a rather so-so week for the sector.

On the exec front, Wal-Mart announced this week that former American CEO Tom Horton is a new member of its BOD; while John Tague, former President of United Airlines, is the new CEO at Hertz.

Frontier announced an order for bigger aircraft last week, Norwegian is back on the offensive, and the TWU, which represents the baggage handlers at Southwest Airlines, are making noise.

All this and much, much, more in this week’s Turkey Week edition of PlaneBusiness Banter.

Holly

November 11, 2014

Hello earthlings! It has been one hell of a day here at the PlaneBusiness Worldwide Headquarters. American Airlines’ flight attendants voted down their TA this weekend, management at American issued its JCBA proposal to the pilots at the airline earlier today (with a twist), we have three in-depth earnings reports this week on SkyWest, Republic Holdings and Allegiant Travel, a comprehensive book review of Ted and Dan Reed’s new book on the American Airlines/US Airways merger, and we get you up to speed with what we were doing at Duke last week with the Travelport Ignite event, and what we were doing the week before when we visited with the folks at Delta Air Lines.

All this and much, much, more, including the details on the Virgin America IPO.

It is one intense issue. That’s all I can say.

PlaneBusiness Banter subscribers can access the issue here.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

Hello everyone. The latest edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we bring you up to speed with in-depth earnings reviews of 3Q14 earnings reported by JetBlue, Spirit, and Hawaiian Airlines. We also have earnings summaries posted for SkyWest and Republic Holdings, both of which reported 3Q14 earnings last week.

Meanwhile yours truly was the guest of Delta Air Lines last week. I attended the Chairman’s Club Dinner Thursday night (which was spectacular) and spent all Friday meeting with execs at the airline. I’ll talk more about my time with the Widget folks in next week’s issue. My favorite part of the visit? Had too many to count. Sitting down and talking airlines with CEO Richard Anderson for almost an hour and a half was at the top of the list. But one of my other favorites was getting to sit in on the morning operations call with everyone calling in from stations hither and yon and everyone else in the room. No hiding. No “Oh you can’t say that because she’s here.” Nope. I heard it all. My thanks to Dave Holtz, VP Ops Control at Delta. You are the man.

But then there was the visit with the guys at Tech Ops, and well….it was just a fabulous visit. Like I said, I’ll be talking about it more in next week’s issue.

Tonight (Monday), I am at Duke University, where I am participating in the first Travelport Ignite discussion conference for thought leaders in the travel industry. The conference kicked off tonight with a fabulous interview of Bob Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines by the Dean of the Fuqua School of Business, William Boulding. The event continues tomorrow at the Fuqua School of Business.

It was a great week last week for airline stocks. We tell you who the big winners were.

And of course it was also Halloween. We have a few photographs of the antics from Dallas last week — both from Southwest, and this year of course, American Airlines. Yep, there is definitely something different in the air.

All this and more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.