Hi there everyone!

Since I essentially finished up last week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter in the wee hours, fell into bed, and was never heard from again, I figured everyone out there in non-subscriber land was due at least some kind of blog post. (Oh and thanks for all the “get better” emails. I, as you can tell, have been working hard on doing just that! Sleep and drugs. Hey, they work! I’m better!)

So instead of talking about all the great things we talked about in last week’s issue of PBB, let’s talk about the airline hot news flash from Tuesday.

As we had predicted, it was announced today that pilots at JetBlue voted heavily in favor of representation with the Air Line Pilots Association. (ALPA) The vote was announced earlier this afternoon.  The final “yes” vote was, according to tweeted comments we saw from ALPA, a “little over 71%” in favor. A press conference is scheduled for this afternoon. May be happening as I type.

There are somewhere between 2500-2700 pilots that are affected.

This is not the worst thing in the world to happen to JetBlue, although the stock took the expected hit when the news hit the wires, and management had been acting, and making comments to the effect that it would be a highly negative turn of events if their “direct” relationship with their employees was tampered with.

It’s not a highly negative turn of events. Things going forward will simply be….different.