Good morning everyone. This week’s post-holiday week edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!
This week we have a long follow-up interview with Laura Glading, President of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants. We first interviewed Laura last year, before the merger between American Airlines and US Airways had been completed. This year we talk to her about the events of last year, including her DOJ deposition, negotiations, Tom Horton and trips to Sephora.
Meanwhile, we also sat down last week and discussed the state of things between the pilot groups at American Airlines with Allied Pilots Association VP Neil Roghair. We’ll tell you how he sees both the seniority negotiations and the contract negotiations playing out at American.
Speaking of American I am off this morning to attend the ground breaking ceremony for the new Robert W. Baker Integrated Operations Center at American. That’s right. The new facility will be named after one of our most favorite people we ever had the pleasure to work with in the industry, the late Bob Baker. Classy thing to do on the part of American. We like it. We understand that it was Doug Parker himself who made the decision.
We are not surprised.
We also talk about why airline stocks got smacked around last week (a typical overreaction on the part of Wall Street to what were actually in-line RASM estimates from Delta for June) and we talk a bit about the situation down in Mexico as two LCCs fight it out for domestic dominance.
Airbus rolled out its new A320neo this week. Yes, Farnborough is right around the corner remember. Meanwhile Boeing lost six 737 fuselages last week after a train derailed in Montana. Three of the unfinished birds ended up in the river, while another one was apparently mangled closer to the tracks. As of today Boeing is still trying to figure out how to retrieve them.
Will Malaysia Airlines go private in an attempt to survive? Will JetBlue be the next airline to move to widebodies now that b has confirmed it will add them late in 2015?
All this and more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.