I’m not going to write much about the Delta – Northwest merger because you’ll find plenty about it elsewhere, but there are 2 points I’d like to make:
- This is not a done deal. There will be significant pilot opposition to this, and that should not be discounted.
- In theory – theory – I [...]

(Thanks to longtime reader IAHPHX for the heads up on this):
AirTran’s stock collapsed by about 1/3 on Friday after Frontier announced its bankruptcy and caused unfounded speculation that AirTran would face a cash crunch.  As IAHPHX points out, AirTran actually has one of the strongest financial positions of any carrier, and the airline put out [...]

You’ll read about this everywhere else, so I just wanted to make sure you saw that Delta and Northwest could announce a merger as soon as Tuesday.  Blah blah blah pilots seniority, blah blah blah consolidation, blah blah blah crazy idea, blah blah blah two wrongs don’t make a multi-billion dollar right.

Silverjet Deathwatch Update: Silverjet is now in talks with Lufthansa to purchase the struggling business class airline. Lufthansa would theoretically be interested in Silverjet as a way to compete with BA’s Openskies, which will fly from cities in Europe to the US. I’m not sure why Lufthansa would be interested in purchasing [...]

A report in the Daily Mail says that British Airways will burn the roughly 5,000 pieces of luggage it has not been able to return to its owners.  While BA denies this, the company sorting through the baggage says that incineration is definitely an option.  BA says they will compensate anyone who does not receive [...]

A South Florida entrepreneur is trying to launch an airline under the Eastern Air Lines name, but is facing a court fight from another guy who is also trying to do the same (who knew that the long-shuttered carrier’s name was so in demand).  The interesting thing about Eastern is that it really doesn’t seem [...]

I already wrote one (very, very) long post this week, so I won’t again, but just know that with Frontier’s announced bankruptcy yesterday, I officially nominate this as the worst 10 days in the history of aviation (excluding accidents, of course).  In case you’ve been elsewhere, here’s what’s happened:
– Aloha shutdown
– Skybus shutdown
– Champion shutdown
– [...]

SilverJet, the struggling all-business class airline, is apparently up for sale.  The company’s shares shot up 43% on word that the carrier is in talks to be acquired.   I cannot agree more with the analyst who summed up the situation thusly:  “If any prospective bidder does proper due diligence we see a strong probability that [...]

Skybus founder John Weikle had threatened…er…let the world know that he was raising $3 million to launch a Skybus clone out of Charleston, West Virginia. Without getting into the reasons why that would be flushing $3 million down the ol’ toilet, you’ll be relieved to know that we will not see any stories about [...]

Two dead passenger stories to share:
Several Canadians are accusing Air Canada of bumping a family member’s coffin (which held the aforementioned family member at the time) from a Montreal flight to make room to get additional luggage onto the plane.  Air Canada denies the charge (though doesn’t explain what happened).  The coffin was not given [...]