Bye bye desert. Hello wind, rain, and ugly lightning.

Yes, yours truly is back in the swamp and well, it’s a nasty rainy swamp today as a front moves through.

Speaking of ugly and nasty, I’d say that pretty much sums up the situation we now find between the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs as we head towards the fifth game of their playoff series tonight. Whether you think the “punishment” handed out by NBA Commissioner David Stern to the Suns’ Amare Stoudemare and Boris Diaw  was right or wrong following Robert Horry’s love pat to Steve Nash Monday night — one thing is for sure. Stern can now say he single-handedly altered the outcome of this playoff series. No matter who wins. No matter what happens.

And personally I think that stinks.

I’m also not surprised that Stern has now apparently decided not to attend tonight’s game in Phoenix as he was supposed to do.

Can’t imagine why.

On the airline front, there was some news from the Southwest Airlines’ Annual Meeting this morning. I was supposed to have been  in Dallas this morning for the meeting, but alas, things here at home with the PlaneParents had me come home a bit early last night.

But the scoop is this. Southwest is now going to make its inventory available on Galileo GDS systems. Galileo and the airline announced a new 10-year distribution agreement this morning. The agreement will provide Galileo’s Apollo agencies with access to Southwest’s publicly available fares, but would exclude Web specials, special promotions and Ding alerts, which are sent directly to customer desktops.

The airline will apparently participate in the “basic level” Apollo  system — with the intent to move at some point to the “full connect” program.

The second bit of news concerned the announcement last week that Southwest is going to equip all of their aircraft with RNP (Required Navigation Performance) capability. Today the airline announced that it has partnered with Seattle-based Naverus to do so.

Following FAA approval to conduct RNP operations, Southwest and Naverus will work with the FAA, Air Traffic Controllers, and airport communities to develop and implement tailored approach and departure procedures at each of the airports Southwest serves.

That RNP is pretty cool stuff — and is the cornerstone of the new FAA NextGen ATC planning.

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