DIRECTOR OF AVIATION

Broward County, Fla., seeks dynamic and progressive executive to help lead its airports operations as the director of aviation. Broward County is located at the center of the southeast Florida “Gold Coast,” between Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. The county has a population of approximately 1.8 million citizens in 30+ cities, with 170,000 residing in Fort Lauderdale, the largest municipality and the seat of county government.

Broward County is managed under a charter form of government, with a nine-member board of county commissioners. Submit resumes online at www.watersconsulting.com/recruitment. Position open until filled; however, the first review of applicants will take place late Feb. 2007. For information, contact Andrea Sims at (877) 356-2924, or visit www.watersconsulting.com to view the detailed recruitment brochure.

WebPage: http://www.watersconsulting.com/

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Last time I looked, shares of AMR were up about 10% in after-hours trading.

Amazing what one headline can do, isn’t it?

Intrepid PBB subscriber Joe Colella tells us,

“Ms. Bartiromo just finished the inview w/Neeleman. He – understandably – looked exausted during the interview.

Not much was said that we didn’t know or assume already.

Neeleman did indicate that the operations people did in fact attempt to get some of the jets that were holding for the longest periods of time back to be unloaded. However, the combination of ice, B6 gates filled to capacity and JFK airport gridlock made the situation difficult.”

Another reader just sent us a note and said David looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

I can imagine.

But it’s not only JetBlue folks. And it wasn’t just yesterday. We’re getting scattered ugly reports from a number of locations on the East Coast. And from a number of different airlines.

Tune those channel clickers to CNBC. A subscriber just alerted me to the fact that the Money Honey herself, Maria Bartiromo, will be interviewing JetBlue CEO David Neeleman in the next hour or so.

Whhhhheee.

Hey guys. Speaking of the JetBlue experience — I’m going to go ahead and tell you now, and not later, that this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter will be posted Friday. We had three airlines report earnings Wednesday, and we’re also having to work around some formatting issues that I mentioned in an earlier post.

Damn weather.

So there. Now you can go back to whatever you were doing before I interrupted your train of thought.

Only about six weeks after the American Airlines’ debacle in Austin that left many passengers sitting on jets for hours — and hours — yesterday, JetBlue passengers in New York got a taste of what it was like.

Instead of proactively canceling flights Wednesday morning as the weather worsened over much of the Northeast, JetBlue boarded full flights at New York’s JFK Airport. The only problem? Most of the flights never went anywhere.

Some passengers were on planes as long as nine hours, before they were brought back to the terminal Wednesday night.

But before they were finally allowed off the planes, many passengers also began making calls to local New York television stations — complaining of stuffy interiors, screaming children, no food to speak of, no water, and no information as to what was going to happen to them. Some sent videos of the situation inside the aircraft.

Not good.

I’m not sure what happened with JetBlue’s JFK operation Wednesday, but it was not a positive. On any level. In addition, the airline’s follow-up comments did not seem to be on a par with what we’ve seen from the airline’s PR department in the past.

I have a suspicion that “all hands” are out there today from headquarters, slinging bags and helping to reschedule passengers.

In doing my usual news snooping today, I have to admit — I saw the headline about Frontier moving into Memphis and I thought it was a joke. I had to pull up the story to make sure it wasn’t.

Today Frontier announced that it is going to start new service to Memphis in May. Flights will serve Denver, Orlando and Las Vegas.

Yikes.

As one reader wrote to us today, “Just how medieval is Northwest going to go on Frontier’s ass in responding to Frontier’s announcement of service from Memphis to Denver, Las Vegas and Orlando?”

No question, this is the most direct assault on Northwest out of Memphis by any competitor.

Personally — I’m still waiting for Southwest to announce its move into Minneapolis.

But in the meantime, do we have any comments from the peanut gallery out there on Frontier’s latest move?

Let me hear ’em. As always you can either email me or comment here.

Thanks to Jonathan, our web editor, who spied this last night over at Airliners.net.

While this is not the real plane, it’s a pretty nice computer rendering of what the new Alaska Airlines’ retro livery jet is going to look like.

What a gorgeous airplane!

Monday Texas was hit with nasty storms. Monday night we had tornadoes here in New Orleans. Yesterday, Illinois, Ohio, and other states north of a line running east/west across the country’s eastern portion were hit with snow. Today much of the northeast is having to deal with ice and/or snow.

One report we saw last night had Washington National Airport running out of deicing fluid.

Great timing.

With a potential ice storm approaching the DC area, we here at PlaneBusiness were forced to take some preventative action ourselves last night. Our web editor lives in the DC area, and concerned that he might be without power later today, or tomorrow, he had to, in effect, set up blank templates for us to use for this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter. Just in case.

Meanwhile, I’ve stopped counting the number of flight cancellations this latest slap from Mother Nature has caused. But if this pattern of weather continues for the rest of the month, I don’t know how we won’t see the negative after-effects reflected in some airlines’ first quarter earnings results.

Speaking of those deadly tornadoes that ripped through this part of the world Monday night — we are okay. The damage was south of us — as at least one, and possibly two F2 tornadoes touched down on a southwest/northeast path.

Unfortunately over 200 homes were destroyed or seriously damaged, and one woman was killed. Why more people weren’t killed is a mystery. For those familiar with the New Orleans area, parts of the West Bank, Uptown, and Gentilly were the main areas affected.

Unfortunately many folks who suffered damage were, like the woman who was killed, still working to repair damage from Hurricane Katrina. In fact the woman who was killed was living in a FEMA trailer next to her house. She was waiting on news about a potential payment from the “Road Home” program to finish the repair work on her home.

The tornado destroyed her half-finished home, and tossed the trailer she was living in with her daughter down the street like a small toy.

For a winter that started out fairly tame, this one has certainly turned nasty the last couple of weeks.