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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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, [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
The Chinese were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of jumbo jets danced in their heads.
China, not stopping with its forthcoming small-to-medium-size civilian jetliner, is moving forward with its jumbo jet program. Its two state-run and owned aerospace companies, AVIC I and AVIC II, will be restructured. AVIC I (an acronym for China Aviation [...]
Read Full Post »
The Airline Hub blog links to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story wistful for transatlantic flights to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Now, if you click on the “prestige” tag below, you’ll see that I have had some scathing opinions about airports that go out of their way to secure transoceanic airline service that’s not supported by [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Evan's Debates, tagged aerospace, asia, competition, environment, europe, nationalism, open skies, prestige, regulation, usa, world on December 12, 2007 | No Comments »
My exchange with Daniel Hall earlier this week made it onto The Economist’s Free Exchange, which was in turn picked up by Megan McArdle’s Asymmetrical Information.
The Economist writer brings in the intervention dimension:
[S]o politicised an industry as air travel need not fear dislocations in any case; governments would react incredibly quickly to pull back on [...]
Read Full Post »
In 2004, US Airways downgraded its operations at Pittsburgh International Airport from hub to focus city status, taking with it half its flights and leaving swathes of terminal unused. Scott McCartney relates the story of what happened next: fares fell through the floor and low-cost carriers rushed in to take advantage of the situation. For [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Evan's Reviews, tagged prestige, space, usa on September 9, 2007 | No Comments »
For the past week I’ve been reading Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest, an engaging revisionist history of the manned space program by Gerard J. DeGroot. DeGroot’s main argument is that while the development of space technology like satellites, planetary probes, and space telescopes has been useful and [...]
Read Full Post »
Make no mistake: Salt Lake City has bought Paris service. Per my post a few days ago, state and local authorities have ponied up $1.9 million in incentives and subsidies, and Delta has rewarded their “investment” with nonstop service to Charles de Gaulle. “There is something different about a state and a city that has [...]
Read Full Post »
