Good evening everyone! How was your Memorial Day weekend? Mine was spectacular! I hope you had a great start to summer as well.

This week we have somewhat of a hodge podge in PlaneBusiness Banter.

First, we have a great analysis this week by Brett Snyder, aka Cranky Flier. This week Brett, who moonlights as a contributing editor for PlaneBusiness, looks at American Airlines and how it has been performing out of its home turf — DFW — over the last several years. In a nutshell — not well. But he dives into the data and tells us just how poorly. In addition, he stumbled upon a little nugget of information about Spirit and one particular American route that we think subscribers will find particularly interesting.

Bottomline? There’s a lot of opportunity here if American can get its act together. (And given the track record of the new management team at American, we’re betting this is going to be the case.)

We also talk a bit more this week about the situation in Dulles, and give you an extensive review of how the combined market looks out of DCA and IAD for both American/US Airways and United Airlines. Oh, there are lots of interesting things to look at here.

Meanwhile, out in the Northwest, Delta Air Lines and Alaska Air Lines opened up yet another round of artillery fire last week with a series of announcements (within hours of each other) concerning new service out of Seattle.

I’m not so sure how this story is going to end. But in the meantime, it’s certainly interesting to watch.

Delta and Travelport announced their new deal last week — the one that will see Delta taking control of its PSS development and management from Travelport. But Travelport will continue to host the system. I’ll tell you why I think this is a good deal for both sides.

Ryanair announced its fiscal year and fourth quarter earnings last week. While results were down, on a year-over-year basis, analysts are apparently convinced that the airline will be successful in its easyJetrification process. Ahem.

All this, and much, much, more, including a great week for airline stocks, in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.