American Airlines is going to close the flight operations center that US Airways maintained in the Pittsburgh area in favor of the larger, more robust center in Fort Worth.  It’s a sensible move on the part of American Airlines but I fully expect Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania based politicians to, once again, decry mergers and their effects.

It is a loss for the Pittsburgh area.  The center employs about 600 people and while those people will in most cases be offered jobs in Forth Worth, that doesn’t do the Pittsburgh area any good.

There will be other impacts to other areas as well.  I fully expect Phoenix to get hit pretty good, for instance.  The reality is that American Airlines (Old) had a great deal of capacity and infrastructure in place.  There is little good reason to adopt a system from US Airways in the integration because in almost every case the AA system will be more robust.  This will lead to more displacement on the US Airways side.

The area where I think AA takes a hit is in servicing the aircraft.  Operations will see US Airways people come in and re-acquaint AA employees with how to run an ontime operation.  I suspect we’ll see the care and feeding of the A320 fleet be tasked over to US Airways stations in many cases as well.  There will be an integration and it won’t be just AA taking over US routes.  But it won’t be delightful for some operations centers such as Pittsburgh.

Filed under: Mergers and Bankruptcy by ajax
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Southwest Airlines has announced its intentions to start flying international routes for the first time in its history.  Starting on July 1st, Atlanta, Baltimore and Orlando will have daily (or near daily) flights to Jamaica, Aruba and The Bahamas.  For those of you paying attention, I think this could actually be construed as Southwest Airlines announcing its intention to keep Airtran destinations with a bit of Southwest flair.

This makes sense because it fits within infrastructure that Southwest has today at those destinations.  Southwest can “learn” how to be an international carrier and ensure its new reservations system which is debuting in international form with these additions.

Consider this:  Southwest has been trying to have some form of international flight via partners or itself since 2008.  It’s 2014 now.  Wow, that took a long time.

These are the first announcements, I expect many more international announcements this year and next.  I think Southwest will seek to cover the Airtran destinations it wants to keep first and then will start exploring flights to new destinations both across the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea as well as to Mexico and Canada.

What this most defnitely is not is a move to a need for a different aircraft.  Southwest’s current fleet plans can handle these flights just fine.  It’s possible that additional foreign destinations may drive more 737-800/-8Max purchases but we expected that anyway.

Filed under: Airline Service by ajax
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There is a news report that the 787 has experienced another battery incident in Japan.

And when we digest the sensational reporting, we find that . . . not so much.

A single battery cell “vented” as designed when a 787 was undergoing scheduled maintenance.  The 787 was owned by JAL and US authorities have not decided to investigate.

Which brings me to another, related issue:  The 787 battery fix.

This is a fix that by all appearances has done exactly what it was designed to do which is to inhibit the problem from occurring but also protect the airliner if it does occur.  That single cell venting mentioned up above?  That’s a design working as it is supposed to.  A cell may destruct but now it can’t induce a runaway event in the battery itself.

I think quite a few people owe Boeing an apology for their rather strong criticisms of the battery fix design and what it would mean.  One of those people would be Elon Musk who famous tried to tell the chief engineer at Boeing how to fix the problem.  It’s notable that the Tesla S car is now the focus of . . . wait for it . . . batteries catching fire after accidents.

New technologies bring about new problems.  Sometimes those problems aren’t fully uncovered until something goes into service and that doesn’t mean aircraft (or cars) shouldn’t go into service.  We also shouldn’t be quite so quick to condemn an aircraft for a problem related to that new technology.  When the battery grounding was going on, there were several Talking Head experts opining that this aircraft is a failure and should possibly be permanently grounded.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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American Eagle Airlines is going to be changing its name.

Why?  Because American Airlines wants that name for all of its connector services and American Eagle will be operating connection services with several other airlines for American Airlines.

Put another way, it’s American Airlines’ name to do what it wants with it.  Given what a strong brand it is, I would want to use it for all my connection services too.

What will it be?  You can bet it will be something fairly meaningless and without inspiration.  Because American Eagle will have to become a stand alone airline and operate among all the other regional airlines.

American Eagle is going to have some hard times ahead of it.  It will have to compete for AA’s business as well as business from other airlines and that is a cutthroat business.  Its pilots are going to have to swallow hard on contract changes that will see them go from being an arm of American Airlines when it comes to pay and benefits to becoming “one of the other guys”.

That will be hard for everyone under the American Eagle name today.

But American Airlines is not losing a name.  It will keep the American Eagle name but it will simply apply it to all flights being performed by regional airlines under its umbrella.

And that’s probably as it should be.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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It’s been a busy holiday season for me and a good one. I hope it has been for you and yours as well.

The Flag Stays! It’s decided, by a pretty narrow margin, that the Blazing Flag tail design that American Airlines released about a year ago will stay. The vote was roughly 49% for the old “AA” tail vs 51% for the new design. Most of us pundits felt that given that choice, the flag would stay.

Doug Parker believes, or says he believes, that livery doesn’t influence a passenger much at the end of the day. He’s the CEO of the largest airline in the world, he may know more than I do.

I think that livery and branding make a huge difference in an airlines fortunes. But I also come from the school of thought that says that a business should stake out a stand on things. I like companies that aren’t all things to all people in their branding but, rather, a company that sets a vision with its branding.

I greatly prefer a company such as Apple who brand and styles itself to be polarizing as opposed to a company such as United Airlines whose branding and styles leave me wondering what they stand for at this point.

American’s is polarizing and that may be good enough.  The one thing AA’s livery is not is boring.  I still think the flag is wrong and I think the flag could be redesigned.  And it may well be redesigned one day but for now, I concede the decision and wish American success.

No offense US Airways people but your livery is actually worse.  You’re getting an upgrade, in my opinion.

It has been tradition for me to make predictions for the new year but I don’t want to do that this year.  I think we’ll keep doing what we do best:  advocating for better companies in the industry and criticizing the worst of the mistakes.

Happy New Year

Filed under: Airline Fleets by ajax
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