Travel Industry Archive

Airline passengers tackle man who claimed to have a bomb — Passengers aboard a Los Angeles-bound Delta Air Lines flight tackled a man who tried to open an emergency exit before landing and made a bomb threat. The alleged unruly passenger was bound with plastic and escorted from the plane by police. No explosive device or material was found. The man, identified by Los Angeles...

More...

Things got much better in December for the airlines as load factors bounced up across the board.  American’s increase of 0.4 points was the most anemic when compared to Allegiant’s turbocharged 9.8 point increase and AirTran’s 7.1 point increase, but these are all positive.  You’ll also note that every airline cut capacity this month with Frontier down a whopping 17.5...

More...

When your shares are sitting at just over a quarter, it doesn’t make it easy to raise extra funds. Mesa, potentially in need of doing just that, is about to dilute existing shareholders significantly. This appears to be their best (only?) option at this point in time. Mesa received approval from existing shareholders to issue up to 900 million shares of common stock in the company....

More...

Killing 200 condominiums atop the Harmon Hotel & Spa was a way to save money, said an executive with the CityCenter project. The 49-story tower will almost be halved, saving $600 million in construction and other costs. According to the Las Vegas Sun, MGM Mirage chief executive Jim Murren said the move was made after finding structural problems in the tower. Clark County building...

More...

Apparently the perks of winning PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit are greater than advertised. On November 8, I was surprised to see Interactive Mobile @dvertising (iM@) win the Travel Innovation Summit since I wasn’t convinced that they would be able to get enough people to download their application.  I thought there were better contestants, like Wandrian.  But iM@ won,...

More...

CityCenter Holdings postpones hotel opening – CityCenter Holdings LLC announced that it would postpone the opening of the Harmon Hotel & Spa to 2010 and drop its plan for residential condominiums. CityCenter Holdings is a joint venture between MGM Mirage and Infinity World Development Corp., which is developing a 67-acre complex of hotels, condos, casinos and shopping. Those...

More...

Frontier has filed a request with the bankruptcy court to ask for an extra 120 days to file their plan of reorganization without having to allow for competing plans. Right now, it’s due on February 4 (already extended 120 days once before), and they’re asking for it to go to June 4. I wouldn’t expect to see this request denied, but it does show us that they still have a long...

More...

JetBlue Airways and two U.S. Transportation Security Administration officials paid $240,000 to settle a lawsuit that charged the two groups barred a man from a flight until he covered his T-shirt with an Arabic phrase. The money was paid Friday to Raed Jarrar, a 30-year-old Iraqi-born U.S. resident who lives in Washington, D.C. and is married to an American citizen. Jarrar alleged that he was...

More...

There were some pretty ugly traffic numbers in November, but December is shaping up better so far. Year-over-year load factors have been up for all airlines reporting to date, with AirTran reporting a stunning 7.1 point increase to end at 79.8 percent. As usual, I’ll have a full rundown later on, but first, let’s dig in to the always informative Continental results....

More...

I’ve heard people crowing about how great it is that Frontier made money in November. As an airline in bankruptcy, they have to release all their info on a monthly basis, so we get to pick it apart that much more often. Many think that the airline is finally turning itself around on its way out of bankruptcy, but a deeper dive into the numbers has me far from convinced that’s the...

More...