Yo.

So how is everyone today?

It’s a beautiful day here in our neighborhood, but alas, our ISP has been having problems with its mail servers all weekend.

So this means no mail for any planebusiness.com associated web address since Friday night. Oh, we can get to all the messages that are backed up — they are all accessible via the web mail option. But it’s been one of those IT mornings that I so love around the Worldwide Headquarters this morning, although there’s not much we can do on our end. Now it’s just a sit and wait process.

Meanwhile, in the airline industry, a couple of newsy notes.

One, another airline analyst bit the dust today.

David Strine, who was voted Institutional Investor’s best airline industry analyst last year — is leaving Bear Stearns. Shame. He is one of the best in the business. But, if I were in his shoes, I’d try to make the most of my award last year, and go on the buy side, too.

Which is exactly what he is going to do, apparently.

I really enjoyed reading David’s research — I’ll miss his take on the industry. He was one of the best.

This past weekend was the much-anticipated reservations cutover at US Airways. As you know, the airline has been running with the two separate res systems from both airlines — but this last weekend they made the switch to one SHARES system for both operations.

And, just as we had surmised going into this — it has not been a pleasant undertaking.

Not surprisingly, the worst problems appear to be occurring with the old US Airways’ hubs — particularly Charlotte. Although problems also are now being reported in Pittsburgh and Boston. This figures, as the airline is migrating from the US Airways’ SABRE system into the resident America West SHARES system. Or rather, the original AWA SHARES system on steroids.

Makes our little pididdly IT issues look like chicken feed.

The last major reservations cut-over for an airline was AirTran last year when they shifted to a new version of the Open Skies reservations platform – and that was not a walk in the park either.

Makes me think about my dad telling me how they used to manually move little pieces of paper and wooden blocks around on a big board on a wall in New York. That is how they scheduled reservations for Eastern Airlines.

Granted, this was in 1946.