Greetings earthlings. Gotten a text message from Brett Favre lately?

Okay, I’ll behave.

Which is more than I can say for Mr. Favre.

The latest edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we take a look at, what else? The Southwest/AirTran deal. Lots of chatter going on about just why it was that AirTran decided to sell. We talk about that, and I answer a lot of email questions about my comments from last week concerning the deal as well.

American Airlines was all over the newswires this past week. We talk about all the airline’s news, the latest missive from the Allied Pilots Association, and we wonder just where the airline is going to get all the metal to fly all this new flying it is talking about.

Oh, and yes, the airline also recalled 800 employees. Wonder how many of those former TWA flight attendants will come back and fly? I’d be interested to know.

Meanwhile, over at United Airlines (under new management), the pilots on both sides there said this last week that they have decided to keep direct negotiations going for at least another two months — rather than ask the National Mediation Board to step in. Good. If they asked the NMB to step in it would be months before anything got done.

Five years from now — how will the industry look? What will be different? I do my best Karnac imitation this week. Complete with turban.

Then there is the strange tale of British Airways’ Captain Peter Burkill. Burkill was Captain of British Airways flight 38, the Boeing 777 aircraft that lost power in both Rolls-Royce engines during final approach to Heathrow. He and his co-pilot were hailed as heroes after they managed to land the plane safely just short of the runway.

But things turned awry for Burkill pretty quickly. When all was said and done, he quit the airline, was unable to find another job as a pilot, and found himself on welfare.

We talk about his journey this week, and the strange twist to it that just occurred.

We have all kinds of other goodies, including a rather nifty way to look at regional airline profitability that was published in a research note last week by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Glenn Engel, and the usual hot YouTube videos that made their appearance this week. We’ve got foul-mouthed furry puppets, more cartoon union negotiation stories and dancing flight attendants.

It’s just a never ending party.

All this and more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter. Subscribers can access this week’s issue here.