Travel Industry Archive

As people continue to watch in vein for any indicator that the economy is turning around, business are starting to make serious efforts to coax consumers to open up their wallets and start spending again. JetBlue appears to be following Hyundai’s lead by offering the JetBlue Promise Program. Those who book now will receive a refund if they lose a job between the time a flight is booked...

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A friend sent me a note this morning with a story that Palmdale Airport is looking to turn itself into a massive solar energy farm. I guess if you have nothing better to do with an airport that gets 300+ days of a sun a year, this is a pretty good use! LA World Airports abandoned its efforts to bring service to Palmdale after realizing that it was a futile effort. The City of Palmdale...

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From India, where they’re still celebrating last night’s big Oscar wins for “Slumdog Millionaire,” come two pieces of news that illustrate the state of the global market for jet airliners. (Spoiler alert: The news isn’t nearly as uplifting as the movie.) First, government-owned Air India has announced that it’s seeking about a billion dollars in financing...

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Cuba travel bill in Congress — Members of the U.S. House of Representatives filed a bill that would allow Americans to travel legally to Cuba for the first time in 46 years, but pro-embargo opponents want to stop it. Called the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, the bill has had similar predecessors killed at the committee level, but supporters are hoping new allies and a new president...

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The changing needs of low cost carriers have become apparent once again as JetBlue has decided to ditch the bare bones Open Skies reservation system for Sabre instead. It used to be that low cost carriers wanted everything to be simple in order to save money. For that reason, the Open Skies system thrived. It allowed airlines to take bookings but it didn’t really handle complicated...

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The Boeing Co. issued pink slips to 452 of its Puget Sound production workers today, signaling, perhaps, that it is indeed moving toward rumored production cuts as airlines try to delay jet deliveries. Boeing gave 60-day layoff warnings to 1,100 workers in all today, the first of some 10,000 jobs it expects to eliminate this year, either by layoffs or through attrition. Previously, the...

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Las Vegas 2008 tourism down — The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority released its 2008 tourism report which says that visitor volume fell 4.4 percent to 37.5 million, occupancy rates fell to 86 percent and the average daily room rate dropped almost 10 percent to $119.19 a night. The authority blamed 2008’s lackluster performance on the foreclosure crisis, unemployment,...

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I know I’m late on this story, and I apologize for not writing sooner about Frontier’s good December results. On the surface, they looked great, but there are some things to consider here. Once again fuel prices saved the day. In December, Frontier paid half what it paid for October fuel. That, plus a surge in revenue, led them to a nearly $19 million profit for the month. Cash...

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I’ve been critical of LAX overspending on terminal projects to make them architecturally significant before, and this week the airport has effectively confirmed that they’re happy with this misguided strategy. California Home and Design magazine has stated that the LAX Bradley expansion project is one of the “ten most promising future projects of California...

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I’m sure nobody is surprised to hear that in December, premium air traffic numbers continued their downward slide. Year over year, premium traffic was off 13.3 percent, worse than an 11.5 percent November decline. The drop in the last few months of 2008 has been stunning. I’ll let the graph speak for itself. [Graph from IATA] Some of this can be attributed to capacity decreases,...

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