Travel Industry Archive

I can’t believe I missed this one. Southwest Airlines has once again begun filing fares in ATPCO. For other airlines, this is a joyous occasion, and for Southwest, it’s just a necessary evil. So what exactly is ATPCO and why does it matter? ATPCO is the Airline Tariff Publishing Company. It’s a central clearinghouse where nearly all airlines file their fares, because it...

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Welcome to the 21st century, oneworld. In an age where alliances continue to grow tighter and tighter, BA and American are now trying to play catch up by applying for antitrust immunity. They’ve tried this before and failed miserably, but will things be different this time? I’d bet so. Look at the landscape when it comes to airline alliances. KLM and Northwest have had a joint...

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(Note: This is a guest post submitted by BNET member Jason Breslow. To submit your own post, click here.) Interesting observation from Laura Mueller over at Flightglobal.com: United Airlines is likely to cancel an outstanding order for 42 Airbus aircraft, a decision that would cost the struggling carrier as much as $91 million in deposits. The 23 A319s and the 19 A320s are technically still on...

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In the last few days, both United and American have made domestic fleet moves. United announced it would likely cancel its outstanding order for planes while American stepped up its order. Why are the two airlines announcing such different plans? For United, it’s a tough decision. The airline has decided to just completely retire 1/3 of its domestic narrowbody fleet; all the 737s it...

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Five years after my last trip on Northwest Airlines, I’ve finally booked another one. That five year gap was actually by design. I’ve never been a huge fan of Northwest, but I thought I’d give them another shot, especially since the name could disappear as soon as the Delta merger gains approval. About a week after I booked I received an email from the airline, and I...

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I love the summer Olympics. Ever since I first attended them as a child growing up in LA, I’ve looked forward to them every four years. This time around, I’m excited to be able to watch a ton of coverage online, but most people, of course, still watch it on television. For that reason, Olympic advertising is a fairly big deal because you can reach a large number of people in a...

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This is actually a pretty interesting question, I think. Exactly how important is the type of aircraft? Conventional wisdom tells me that while I dork out over every type of plane I fly, most people don’t care at all. It’s all about the product on the inside, right? Boeing says otherwise, but I have a hard time believing it. Now it’s important to take this with a grain of...

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This can’t be good. It appears that Northwest thinks so highly of its investment in Midwest Airlines that it has written it off completely. Hmm, either Midwest is in very serious trouble or Northwest has decided to just write off everything in advance of the Delta merger to clean up the balance sheet. The actual text of the filing with the SEC says: The valuation of investments in...

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Let’s move over into the marketing world for today. Southwest’s all-out marketing assault on fees is continuing. Last week at NBTA, I saw yet another example of their efforts. They introduced Southwest Super Heroes, there to fight fees. No, I couldn’t make this up. To be fair, this one isn’t actually part of the marketing plan. This was an NBTA special. Since the...

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It was a day of addition and subtraction for Delta yesterday. First, they announced wi-fi for their entire fleet. Then they announced that they’ve shifted efforts to eliminate regional carriers over to Mesa’s Freedom Air subsidiary. They have apparently told Freedom to take its 90 seaters elsewhere. These two stories may be tied only by the carrier involved, but I thought it...

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