Looks like a sweet ride, huh?

To your left is what the first 737-700ER will look like in the colors of ANA. They’re going to start flying it on March 25 from Nagoya to Guangzhou (China).

What’s so unique about it? Well on a plane that Southwest fills with 137 seats, they will have only 48. There will 24 business class seats and 24 economy class seats. Even the economy seats will be good though with more than 6″ more legroom than normal (38″).

And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about the 737-700ER a little more. This plane is going to be a rockstar. According to Boeing it will fly up to 5,510 nm. As you can see on the map below from the beloved Great Circle Mapper, that gets you really far.

This map shows the range from LAX. You could fly to London, Tokyo, or Sao Paulo without problem. Of course, this means you’d have to buy all the auxiliary fuel tanks so it’ll cost a little more, but that kind of range could open up new thin routes that aren’t currently flown today.

LAX to Madrid, anyone?

Today was the deadline for showing interest in buying a share of my favorite whipping boy Alitalia from the Italian government. We had heard a lot of people object in the past to the onerous terms – no layoffs or real route restructuring – but there was still interest from a surprising 11 buyers.

So, Jim, let’s meet our suitors on this week’s edition of . . .

Most of our suitors are private equity firms. Notably, we see Texas Pacific Group in there. These guys have done wonders in the past of investing in airlines, bringing in stellar management to fix them up, and then getting out of there with some good money. Every company has a price that makes sense for these guys, so if they can get the price low enough, it will be worthwhile for them. The question is, how low will they have to go?

Other than private equity companies, there’s one lone airline bidder. Air One, Italy’s second largest airline, would like to get in there and take over. I would be surprised if Italy let this happen simply because it might actually make sense. Both Lufthansa and Air France/KLM, both thought to potentially have had interest, said they weren’t going to jump in.

The next step is for Italy to go through and determine which bids should be allowed to move on to the next round. This will of course be determined after the swimsuit and formalwear competitions.

Looks like the BA flight attendants have called off their strike after coming to agreement with management. This means there will be fewer disruptions this week, but there are still some problems.

BA says that if people changed their flights due to the strike, they can call back and have the original flights reinstated if they’d like. That being said, there are a couple caveats. Since this is so last minute, the airline says it won’t be able to offer full catering on all flights from Heathrow on Tuesday and Wednesday. If you are on a flight without full catering, they’ll give you a voucher in the airport to redeem for food.

There’s also no guarantee that every flight will be able to operate. Instead of giving the actual flights that will operate, they’ve annoyingly requested that everyone use the flight info link on their website on the day of the flight to see if it will operate. Lame.

You probably haven’t heard of ExpressJet, but you likely know Continental Express. For the longest time, ExpressJet was the sole operator of flights for Continental Express. Now the airline has been spun off into its own company, and it’s trying to branch out into new areas. Besides corporate jets, they’re also looking to start their own independent regional airline.

Now don’t start getting bad flashbacks of Independence Air’s miserable failure. No, this airline isn’t trying to be a low fare carrier. They’re trying to connect the dots between cities that don’t have service yet but could use it. They’ll use 44 of their regional jets in this new airline, and the details will be announced on February 1. What we do know from their 4th quarter earnings release is that there will be service to “24 cities in the West, Midwest, and Southeast United States.” There will be XM radio in every seat and complimentary snacks with meals on longer flights.

I’m not sure how many routes there are that need direct flights but don’t already have it, but I look forward to seeing the announcement on Feb 1. Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader’s email, we can get a sneak peak today.

If you head on over to the airline’s job website (click Job Opportunites from ExpressJet.com), you can see the 156 current positions they’re hiring for. In that list there are quite a few “General Managers” posted. While some of the cities are places that ExpressJet flies as Continental Express already, the rest are not.

Put two and two together and we may have a list of the new cities to which they’ll fly. The following are the 19 general manager positions they have open (the ones with stars are not currently served as Continental Express). They said there will be a total of 24 cities in the network, so there must be at least 5 that already have personnel. By the way, these all fit quite nicely into the plan for West, Midwest, and Southeast service.

West

• Albuquerque
• Bakersfield
• Boise*
• Colorado Springs
• El Paso
• Fresno*
• Monterey*
• Sacramento*
• San Diego*
• Spokane*
• Tucson

Midwest

• Austin
• Kansas City
• Oklahoma City
• San Antonio
• Tulsa

Southeast

• Jacksonville
• New Orleans
• Raleigh/Durham

Now there are some interesting possible routes here that don’t currently have service. How about New Orleans – San Diego? Or maybe Austin – Sacramento?

It will be interesting to see how this works out for them. I’m looking forward to seeing the remaining cities next week.

I haven’t really talked about the impending strike over at British Airways because I was hoping it would be averted. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

The strike will be by the TGWU union which repesents about 14,000 of BA’s flight attendants. What are they fighting over? Well, I like this commentary’s take on the situation. Though it appears to be over the matter of sick days and the elimination of one purser position on every 747 flight, it’s actually a much bigger fight over the future of the airline.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you’re traveling to the UK next week, watch out. It’s going to be an ugly one. BA announced that it’s pre-canceling flights, but you can check here for the most up to date info:

• Tuesday, Jan 30 – No flights will operate from Heathrow to the US/Canada and from Gatwick to Tampa, Bermuda, and Barbados. All flights to London will operate as scheduled from the US/Canada. No short haul European/UK flights will operate from Heathrow or Gatwick.
• Wednesday, Jan 31 – All flights between the US/Canada and London are canceled. No short haul European/UK flights will operate from Heathrow or Gatwick
• Thursday, Feb 1 – Most flights from the US/Canada to Heathrow and from Tampa, Bermuda, and Barbados to Gatwick are canceled but all flights from Heathrow will operate.
• Friday, Feb 2- Most flights will operate as normal with the possibility for a couple cancellations

The good news? It’s only a two day strike. The bad news? They’re planning more on Feb 5, 6, 7 and Feb 12, 13, 14.