Ryanair’s new foils: Sarko and Carla

Ryanair, long known for its saucy and subversive ads, is in hot water over an ad featuring French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his lady love, Carla Bruni. With rumors of their engagement swirling around Paris, the ad shows Bruni musing at Ryanair’s low fares: “With Ryanair, my whole family will be able to come to [...]

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DOJ OKs TPG & YX

I was trying to see how many acronyms I could get in one title. Not too many, I guess.

But, speaking of antitrust, the Justice Department has given the all-clear on TPG Capital’s purchase of Midwest Airlines (YX) with dominant regional neighbor Northwest holding a “passive stake.” Holly Hegeman says AirTran wins. Cranky offers up a [...]

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Airline mergers: a guide to the antitrust landscape

Any prospective airline merger will have no small obstacle in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, which assesses the potential competitive effects of tie-ups. If it finds fault with a coupling, its threat to sue is usually enough to deep-six the merger plan.
DOJ reviews every proposed merger according to its Horizontal Merger Guidelines:

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Merger myths busted

Over at Things with Wings, Hubert Horan has a list of merger myths being floated by those with a narrow financial interest in consolidation.

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Investing in China’s jumbo jet, and more

China is organizing the domestic investors in its jumbo jet program. [ATW Daily News]
The Israeli government is taking on a greater share of El Al’s security expenses, and in return, the flag carrier is giving up some of its long-haul route monopolies, opening the routes to domestic competitors. [ATW Daily News]
A Southwest 737 slides off [...]

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“Thanks to the McCaskill-Bond amendment, mergers that produce value and create synergies have one less hurdle to leap.”

My article on recent labor-related congressional action that can make airline mergers easier is up now on Forbes.com.

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The pilot shortage will cost airlines

I’m working on a long post about the dynamics of the pilot shortage (and tracking down some hard data), but here’s a look at how the looming shortage of pilots is putting less experienced crews in the cockpit and (eventually) forcing airlines to up pilot pay. As for that whole “high salaries await pilots” thing, [...]

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Politicians get involved in aviation . . . until they don’t

The Washington state senate is weighing a state passenger’s bill of rights. Why? “Inspiration for this bill came from my own experience of sitting on a runway for four hours,” says the sponsor. Argh. [ATW Daily News]
New Kentucky governor Steve Beshear wants to get his hands on any potential Delta-Northwest merger. [Today in the Sky]
China [...]

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More merger skepticism

There’s a good article today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about value of airline mergers. The AJC focuses on lessons for its hometown airline, Delta. It confirms what I wrote on January 17, exposing the flaws in the US Airways-America West merger obscured by Wall Street’s enthusiasm. Some key points:

“Mergers often look good on paper – [...]

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WaPo’s editorial shows research, logic gaps

In an otherwise unremarkable editorial today, the Washington Post lets slip some factual and logical errors about airports.
The Post assails the Federal Transit Administration’s decision to put the kibosh on the long-planned extension of DC’s Metrorail system to Dulles International Airport. The only transit connections to DC’s major international airport are a bus line from [...]

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