Benet Wilson writes that Chicago Rockford International Airport, an airport on Chicago’s far western fringe with limited commercial service, is going to partner with a charter airline (actually, a brand — Southern Skyways) to offer scheduled services to Denver and Detroit, the former to replace service United is withdrawing this summer. Rockford will control routes, [...]
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BREAKING NEWS: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court decision upholding New York state’s airline passenger’s bill of rights, ruling “that New York’s new state law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier.” (Here’s my take from when the law was signed last summer, [...]
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Posted in Daily Departures on March 24, 2008 | No Comments »
The world’s most buffoonish democratic leader, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, may soon return to power. And his latest buffoonish promise is to reject the acquisition of Alitalia by Air France-KLM. [ATW Daily News]
China takes draconian measures to curb flight delays before their Olympic games. [ATW Daily News]
DOT rules that only a state or city that owns [...]
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Last week, Sean O’Neill addressed the tricky nature of measuring changes in airfares. Air fare indexes pick up or decreases in base fares over time, but they don’t pick up “nickel and diming” (the addition of lots of charges for luggage, food, over-the-phone booking) or declines in service (cranky flight attendants, less legroom).
I’m on record [...]
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Today someone arrived at my blog via the translated-into-Spanish version. El política de aviación blog habla Espanol. Also, apparently my Spanish surname is Chispas.
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I subscribe to the Daily Airline Filings feed (can’t link to the post; the site is password protected but the feed is not), and an interesting item came through today. Virgin America has filed for confidentiality for its Form 41 filings of operations, traffic, and financial data with the Department of Transportation. Why?
Public release . [...]
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BREAKING NEWS: Delta and Northwest’s pilot groups were unable to come to agreement about a merged seniority list. Delta MEC chairman Lee Moak announced the breakdown of negotiations today in a letter to Delta pilots. Without a merged seniority list, a merger might still go through (companies can force master seniority list mergers, as I’ve [...]
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I’ve been watching the Southwest Airlines inspections controversy unfold over the past week without much comment (except for one post), trying to make sense of what’s happening. There are some big red flags in the way the FAA has handled this case.
Here’s what’s happened so far:
On March 15, 2007, Southwest notified the FAA that it [...]
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Posted in Daily Departures, tagged congress on March 16, 2008 | Comments Off
April 3: “Critical Lapses in FAA Safety Oversight of Airlines: Abuses of Regulatory ‘Partnership Programs’“
April 9: “Aviation Delays and Consumer Issues“
April 23: “Reauthorization of the National Transportation Safety Board“
May 6: “Aviation and the Environment: Emissions“
I plan to report the April 3 and May 6 hearings.
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I was thinking recently about names of airports. The standard formula in the United States is to name an airport after its locality, and if there are multiple airports, to name it after a local personality or feature. A small proportion of our airports are named after truly national figures, unlike in Latin America or [...]
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