Tag Archives: DOT

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

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Good evening earthlings! This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week I talk a lot about US Airways. For good reason. I attended the airline’s “Unplugged” Media Day last week. The airline used the occasion to announce it is upgrading its regional airline fleet with first class cabins. But that was not the only news to come out of Tempe. We’ll give you the low down.

That doesn’t mean we’re done talking about Southwest Airlines and its recent fuselage problem. Nor have the late night talk show hosts.

Last week Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly and American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey both sat down with Terry Maxon from the Dallas Morning News at the SABEW Conference in Dallas. Gary talked about the Southwest incident and Gerard talked about the recent bogus offer to buy the airline from that outfit in Florida. Yes, as we assumed, the SEC is looking into it.

Speaking of Dallas, the DOT reported its February Air Travel Consumer Report last week. As expected, it was not a good month for airlines based in Dallas. (February ….ice…snow…Superbowl on ice.)

Expedia and American Airlines kissed and made up this week. But this news leaves a lot of very ragged and messy things to clean up on the corporate travel terrain. We like TheBeat’s Jay Campbell’s take on the news. We’ll share his take with you.

While pilots for United and Continental Airlines keep working on a new contract, all is not apparently warm and fuzzy on the United Airlines pilot side of the house. Reports say that there was a recall vote originally scheduled for Monday’s UAL ALPA MEC meeting. The intended victim? The pilot’s current MEC Chairwoman, Captain Wendy Morse.

Meanwhile the flight attendants at American Airlines offered up a deal for the airline. An immediate 6% raise for its members — and the rest of the contract details would be tabled for 18 months. The airline said no.

Speaking of American — April 20 is just around the corner. That’s the day you can expect to see protests from airline employees over the airline’s latest PUP bonus distributions.

We talk also take a look this week at just how much additional revenue and/or capacity cuts the airlines would need to make — in order to cover the current price of fuel for the remainder of the year. That’s a sobering chart. Thanks to Dahlman Rose analyst Helane Becker for the analysis.

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

Subscribers can access the issue here.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

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Hello to all on this rather sunny Sunday here at the Worldwide Headquarters.

PlaneBusiness Banter is posted a bit early this week, as yours truly is headed West to the Valley of the Sun later today. It’s time for the 28th Annual ISTAT Conference and this year it is being held in Scottsdale, AZ. What is ISTAT you ask? It is the trade association for those who make their living leasing, buying, and selling airplanes. You know, those metal things we voluntarily put ourselves into from time to time.

I heard last week that there were already 1600+ attendees registered for the event this year. Amazing. I remember when I was on a panel discussion at the event in 1998 and they thought it was good when they had about 400 folks show up in Boca Raton.

It’s always one of our favorite industry events to attend. I’m looking forward to it.

Yes, there was an earthquake that hit Japan last week. We talk this week a bit about how that has affected not only the Japanese airline industry, but how major international airlines who fly to Japan have been affected as well.

We’re also talking about the latest DOT Air Travel Consumer numbers. January was a very good month for the airlines — and their passengers. Except for one glaring category. Guess which one that was. And yes, it’s directly related to the DOT’s Three-Hour Rule.

Airline stocks had a very good week last week, as investors shrugged off concerns over higher fuel prices — but yet another fare increase that American Airlines tried to put into place failed as the week ended.

Spirit Airlines is up to no good again — as the airline rolled out a “Charlie Sheen” inspired ad. Meanwhile Allegiant Air is proposing a “variable rate” fare which would be finalized on the day of departure — based on that day’s fuel cost.

We talk a lot about airplanes and Wi-Fi this week. Will Boeing announce a new twin-aisle narrow body at the Paris Air Show this year? Is Wi-Fi making some Honeywell instruments go haywire in Boeing 737s? Did Aircell just blow up Row 44’s chance at long-term survival?

Never a dull moment around here.

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

Virgin America, Republic Holdings and Shuttle America DOT Reports Are Finally Public

Eureka. It’s about time.

“The Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics today upheld its June 2008 decision to release to the public traffic, financial and origin and destination survey data filed by Virgin America.

            BTS denied an appeal by Virgin America of the June 26, 2008 decision by BTS’ Office of Airline Information on the airline’s request to keep the data confidential.

            All filings on the docket DOT-OST-2008-0107 can be found on Regulations.gov: http://www.regulations.gov/search/index.jsp

            BTS also denied appeals from Republic Airlines and Shuttle America.  The two airlines appealed a previous denial of their confidentiality requests.  Documents for these cases can be found on Regulations.gov:

Shuttle America: DOT-OST-2005-23354

Republic Airlines: DOT-OST-2005-23355″

Readers will recall that Virgin America has refused to make its DOT financial and O&D information available ever since it began operation. The reason? We can only assume that it didn’t want us all to know how much money it was losing. And on what routes.

So the airline played the legal “wait it out” game by first refusing to do so, saying that it would be forced to “reveal confidential information” if it did so. That set in place a legal process that took time. In June the DOT ruled against the airline, but again, an appeal was filed.

So now, finally, we will all get to see the numbers that we should have had access to all along. On February 3. At 10:00 AM EST to be exact.

Oh, and yes, Republic and Shuttle America have been playing the same game. Their gig is up as well. Their numbers will also be available as of Feb. 3.

This whole thing is ridiculous. There should be changes made immediately to the process that prevents airlines from “opting” out of the reporting process. If they don’t report — their right to fly is yanked. Period.