Good evening everyone. This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we are talking about a lot of things. First out of the chute — Imperial Capital analyst Bob McAdoo’s dead-on research report last week on United Airlines. While Bob downgraded shares of United, the real story was his in-depth report on the airline, and what he feels are the achilles heels. One — Dulles. Two — the airline’s continued (and at this point rather seemingly obstinate) reliance on 50-seat regional jets.

Yes, the two do go together. Close Dulles and you can take a lot of that feed and move it over to Newark. But only if you upgauge — a process, I might add, that both Delta Air Lines, and US Airways (now American) have been doing for years.

Why hasn’t United already moved to upgauge operations? You answer that and you get the prize for the week.

In other news, we talk about Delta Air Lines’ CEO Richard Anderson and his comments in Washington re: the Ex-Im Bank. Only problem? We really don’t think Richard wants the bank to go away completely. He just doesn’t want them to finance wide-bodied aircraft for foreign airlines that are state-owned. But some right-wing Conservatives in Washington do want to do away with the bank completely.

Stay tuned.

The co-founder of Southwest Airlines, Rollin King, passed away last week in Dallas. He was 83. We had hoped, as had others, that Rollin would one day pen his take on the early days of Southwest. He never did. This only makes us that much more motivated to press ex-Chairman and CEO Herb Kelleher to do so.

This week our contributing editor Frank Arciuolo talks to us about the concept of the GDS, and what it is and what it isn’t. And what it had best morph into — otherwise the airlines are going to come up with a far better alternative.

The week was a fairly uneventful one on the Street, with about half the stocks we track posting a gain and about half posting a loss. WestJet led the gainers, while United took “Goat of the Week” honors.

All this, and much, more more, including the latest titillating gossip from both Boeing and Airbus, in this week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter.