Greetings to one and all.

Let it be known that yes, the second quarter earnings season for the airline industry is now officially upon us. Before the week is over, nine major airlines will have reported earnings.

Yes, count them. NINE.

Kicking off this quarter’s festivities was Delta Air Lines. And boy, did the airline make a scene. While the airline posted its biggest quarterly profit since 2000, analysts and traders were none to happy with the airline’s guidance comments, and its fourth quarter capacity forecast.

While we don’t do our formal transcript review and earnings summary for Delta in this week’s issue, I do talk in detail about what the airline reported and give PlaneBusiness Banter subscribers a cross-section of comments from a number of analysts who cover the stock.

This is also a big week for those who love airplanes and the men who like to buy them.

Yes, it is time for Farnborough. I talk about the big deals that were announced Monday — and update you on just how well capitalized Steve Hazy’s new leasing venture is. Answer: Very.

Don’t look now but Congress is sniffing around airline fees. Not only does Congress want to make sure that passengers know exactly what they are going to have to pay for when they book that flight, Congress is also now making noise about how it wants to start taxing those fees that passengers are clearly aware of.

Remember — fees are not taxable, whereas fares are hit with a 7.5% tax.

Things are so dire in Washington that 7.5% looks like a potential luscious low-hanging fruit.

We had another airline analyst pick up her bags and move to new environs over the last two weeks. Helane Becker, formerly with Jesup and Lamont, is now with Dahlman Rose and this week she issued a slew of new coverage on the sector.

Finally, a big thank you to our subscribers who have experienced some weird goings-on with the site the past two weeks. Page numbers have been screwy, log-in credentials have changed, and I just realized tonight, for example, that our headline page on the planebusiness.com site somehow got changed to one from June 28. Nice. I’m sure some of you were wondering what planet we were on.

No planet. Just our own small equivalent of IT cutover hell.

As always, all of this, and more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter subscribers can access this week’s issue here. (Note, that is a new link folks. Please bookmark it as such.)