Skybus founder John Weikle’s plans to start an ultra-low-cost-no-frills airline based in Charleston, W.Va. — see here and here — are being dropped due to insufficient financing, persistently high fuel prices (the Energy Information Administration projects that $100+/barrel is here to stay in 2008), and the slowing economy. All investors are getting their money back.
Good [...]
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I usually let negative comments slide off my back unless they point out an error, which I then correct. But some really get to me. When I wrote recently on the impending idiocy of starting a budget airline based in Charleston, W.Va., an idiot commented:
Also, the airlines will still be flying with oil at $100 [...]
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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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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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Yes, this sounds like a good idea: start a low-fare carrier in an era of $100+ oil. Compound that brilliance by making it point-to-point only, but based at an airport with less than 285,000 enplanements in 2006 and a metro area of 300,000 people. Throw in the fact that even scheduled charter services masquerading as [...]
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Mike Boyd of the Boyd Group has released his 2008 airline industry predictions. Key among them: $100 oil will drive regional jets (RJs) to the desert graveyards sooner than expected; desperate “low-cost carriers” will need to cut capacity somehow; and “comprehensive network carriers” will need to improve their management of every minute. Boyd’s weekly commentaries, [...]
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Airports in the United States are almost always owned and operated by municipal or county authorities. (In a few cases, like Indianapolis and Chicago Midway, private companies have managed airports for the authorities.) These airports lease gates to airports in long-term leases, and then that airline has exclusive use of those gates. Most big-city airports [...]
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The title above has nothing to do with inflight meals, unfortunately, and everything to do the airlines wanting to have their cake and eat it too in the congested airspace brouhaha (see yesterday’s post). There are several options the FAA is currently weighing to resolve the delay problem:
Charging more for slots at congested times of [...]
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The latest example of this is at Dallas’s Love Field, which was stifled for many years under the ridiculous Wright Amendment, a provision pushed through by a powerful House Speaker to promote the closer-to-his-hometown Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Even with only a few restrictions lifted and several still in place, fares have dropped and passenger [...]
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After her four- and seven-year-old sons were exposed to an R-rated movie with “a lot of nudity” on recent flight, a parent took her concerns to Congress, where two North Carolina legislators have introduced a bill to require airlines to offer “family friendly” seating sections without any visible TV screens. This parent apparently received an [...]
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