PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1This week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted! Last week was a wild one in the airline industry between fears associated with the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States, weather, continued ATC issues in Chicago, end of quarter stock performance, and fireworks down in Dallas, where the Dallas City Council told Delta Air Lines it had two weeks to vacate Love Field.

Say what? 

We’ll get you updated on who has apparently done what to whom to get us to this point and what will probably come next.  (Hint….lawsuit.)

There were other legal wranglings last week including a suit that now will go back to a lower court involving some unhappy Spirit flyers; and American’s request to the DOT to transfer slots it awarded to Delta for its Haneda routes — to American. We’ll tell you why American thinks it should be allowed to  move the service to LAX, and fly a daily flight to Japan.

We update you on the latest concerning the flight attendant TA voting at American, and we also give you our take on why pilot negotiations seem to be falling behind the original 30-day timetable at American. Hint: We don’t disagree with what we hear are the reasons.

Southwest Airlines took the top stock performance honors for the third quarter. We tell you which airlines did well, and which ones did not — as we go down the results for the third quarter.

Speaking of, 3Q14 earnings are right around the corner. We give you the dates you’ll not want to miss. Essentially most of the big players (with the exception of Delta, which reports on Oct. 16) will report the following week. Oct. 22-23 are going to be very busy days.

El Al seems to have a problem on some of its flights — orthodox Jewish men who refuse to sit next to …gasp….women! Meanwhile, United Airlines announced it has hired its third CIO since the merger of United and Continental. Will the third hire be the charm?

The biggest news from last week — the continued decline in the price of oil and jet fuel.

The importance of this cannot be underestimated in terms of the industry and lower costs.

We’ll tell you more about why we think this is not a short term thing.

All this and more — in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.