Travel Industry Archive

It looks like the Boston-Baltimore wars of 2009 have claimed their first casualty. Delta will be pulling its seven daily regional jet flights in September. I wrote about the impending battle last month when Southwest announced five daily flights on the route and JetBlue quickly responded with four of its own. With AirTran also on the route, I figured Delta would be the first to go, and as Dan...

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Delta Air Lines spent $819,000 lobbying in first part of 2009 — Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. spent $819,566 in the first three months of 2009 lobbying Congress on airline passenger issues and international alliances between carriers. The airline’s total included Northwest Airlines. In the last three months of 2008, Delta spent $610,000 to lobby the government, while...

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Remember how I said on Friday that regional carriers were having trouble placing their 50 seat jets? Apparently, that doesn’t apply to ExpressJet. The airline will be putting 10 of its Embraer ERJ-145 aircraft into service with United this summer. It’s an interesting agreement in that it’s not very short term (as they did during Spring Break for United last year), but...

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This is a very different looking group of numbers than we saw last month.  Let’s start off with the fact that there are a lot of plus signs in the load factor column.  Yep, that plunge in load factor last month reversed itself mightily.  The Easter holiday shift into April had something to do with that, of course.  Click for definitions. Airline ASMs RPMs Load Factor AirTran...

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Philadelphia’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel put on ice — A 58-story Waldorf Astoria Hotel planned for Center City is on hold. The $420 million project, which included upscale shopping, spa and condos,  was delayed when Timothy J. Mahoney III, president and chief executive officer of Mariner Commercial Properties Inc., sold his stake in the project to his partner, Brook Lenfest of...

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I saw an interesting thread over on Airliners.net that says SkyWest will be starting at-risk CRJ flying for United this summer. I don’t believe that’s been done before, and it shows just how desperate the regionals are to place their excess CRJ aircraft into service. Traditionally, regionals have entered into cost plus agreements with their overlords (the majors). The major agrees...

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In Mobile, Ala., the rich port and its residents see Cuba as a historical trade partner and not a Cold War casualty. Barges routinely drop off cotton, corn, soybeans, railroad ties and utility poles to the island country, part of the USA’s $718 million of goods shipped there. The state’s politicians, both Democrat and Republican, favor lifting the Cuban embargo and increasing...

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I was just thinking that I hadn’t checked in on Frontier in quite awhile, so when they released their traffic info yesterday, I figured I would give it a closer look. This month’s release paints a picture of a shrinking airline that didn’t exactly have the best month around. Since Frontier entered bankruptcy, the airline has slashed capacity fairly dramatically....

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Continental’s April traffic numbers and revenue estimates are out, and they look slightly better than what we saw in March. Does this mean things have hit a bottom? Maybe, but we need to remember that Easter shifted from March to April this year, and that has a big impact. Continental actually was able to fill more seats in April this year than last thanks to fewer seats being out...

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Las Vegas Sands reports unexpected profit – Las Vegas Sands Corp. the casino company headed by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, reported an unexpected first quarter profit. The company reported an adjusted profit of $8.9 million, or 1 cent a share, beating the 2.5-cent average loss projected by analysts.  [Source: Bloomberg] Vancouver’s floating hotel in time for Olympics —...

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