It’s time once again for the third annual edition of “Airlines We Lost.” This was a pretty active year, as you can probably imagine. Sadly, my wish last year for Alitalia to be on this year’s list has not come true. That airline soliders on while others have not been so lucky to have a government behind them to prop them up. As I said, last year, let us hope that all the former employees of these airlines find new jobs with ease. I’m probably taking Friday off, so I’ll be back again Monday. Happy New Year!


AlpiEagles – January 3, 2008


We were barely into 2008 when AlpiEagles became the first airline of the year to shut down. To be honest, I don’t know much about these guys, but if I couldn’t include Alitalia, I had to at least find one Italian airline. A Google search found some references that make me think it wasn’t much of a surprise that these guys went under. In fact, I’m somewhat amazed they lasted as long as they did.



Boston-Maine (Pan Am) – February 29, 2008

It’s not often that I’m happy to see an airline go out of business, but this is most certainly one of them. When the Pan Am name and colors were slapped on this two-bit outfit flying old 727s into backwater airports, it was an embarrassment. To make things even worse, this airline was effectively a union-buster that was given the Pan Am name and routes when the previous version of Pan Am was shut down by the parent company. Earlier this year, the DOT put out a scathing report that the airline was financially unfit, lacked proper management oversight, and didn’t follow rules.


Big Sky – March 8, 2008

Big Sky was a sad loss, at least for those who relied on the airline to get around the upper Midwest for years. Big Sky was acquired by Mesaba’s parent, but when Mesaba was sold to Northwest, the parent company wanted out of the airline business. The 19-seaters weren’t making much money, so it was time to call it quits. I remember when I was at America West and we signed a codeshare with Big Sky. There were very few airports they served that I’d even heard of before, but they were the lifeline for the people who lived in those places.



Adam Air – March 18, 2008

If anyone is actually surprised by this one, you must not pay much attention to aviation accidents. Adam Air came out of Indonesia and did a good job of convincing people not to fly it. There were a number of accidents and incidents over its relatively short life span, and ultimately the Indonesian government mercifully shut them down. We should all be able to sleep easier at night knowing that this airline is gone from the scene.



Aloha Airlines – March 31, 2008

For me, this is the saddest failure of the year. If this were the Academy Awards when they show the people who died in the last year, Aloha would undoubtedly get the loudest applause. The oldest airline to fail last year, Aloha succumbed to a brutal competitive environment thanks to the entry of go! into the Interisland Hawaiian market. Lawsuits have dragged on, but it appears they have recently been settled with the understanding that go!, the very airline that killed Aloha, will rebrand as Aloha. This was so unpalatable that even the judge put a temporary stop to it.



ATA – April 3, 2008

Though ATA was an airline that many people hated, I actually never had a bad experience flying them. In fact, I always had good experiences. They reached their zenith in the early 2000s as they grew their Chicago and Indianapolis hubs under now-United drone John Tague but collapsed mightily soon after. Southwest picked up the remains, and the airline limped along for awhile, but ultimately, the owners bought a couple other airlines and shut down the original. A sad end for an airline with a long history.



Skybus – April 4, 2008

Ah yes, remember Skybus? It seems like it was only around for a few minutes, so you may have forgotten them by now. The idea was to offer ultra low fare flights originally only from its Columbus hub. Columbus? Yeah. That might go a long way to explain why it didn’t work. But this airline called it quits before it actually had to. In fact, there was money left in the bank, but the management decided it just wasn’t going to work in the end. By this time next year, we’ll probably have forgotten completely that they ever existed.



Skyway – April 5, 2008

Poor little Skyway, better known as Midwest Connect, died because of Midwest’s insistence on not actually flying any airplanes itself. Skyway was Midwest’s wholly-owned regional subsidiary, but Midwest decided it would rather have SkyWest operate the routes instead. So while Skyway lives on as a ground operations company, it no longer has any planes. Then again, Midwest doesn’t have many of its own planes left either.



Oasis HongKong – April 9, 2008

Like Skybus, Oasis HongKong had a meteoric rise only to come crashing down hard. The airline was running long haul, low fare flights between Hong Kong and both London and Vancouver. Apparently, it’s fares were too low, because one day it just disappeared. Many have argued that the long haul, low fare model doesn’t work, though Air Asia X is currently going to do its best to prove that hypothesis wrong. (Nonexistent labor costs help, by the way.)



Eos Airlines – April 26, 2008

There’s a special place for Eos in my eyes, because I interned with the airline during business school, long before it got started. In fact, it was just me and David Spurlock in a Palo Alto office working on getting funding for the airline back in 2003. The experience was great, but high fuel prices, a very small niche market, and, according to others, weak management, did the airline in. With fuel at today’s prices, it undoubtedly could have held on longer, but it’s not clear that it would have survived.



Nationwide Airlines – April 29, 2008

I’m sure there were a few thousand airlines in Africa that failed this year, but none had a higher profile than Nationwide. This airline, based in South Africa, grew to have a fairly sizable operation that even served London. In 2007, Nationwide was shut down for regulatory non-compliance, but it briefly came back. Of course, a temporary shut down like that is just as bad as being shut down for good, so it did just that and decided to call it quits.



Far Eastern Air Transport – May 12, 2008

I don’t know really know a ton about Far Eastern Air Transport except that their tails had FAT spelled out in big block letters. That’s good comedy. I was surprised to find that this airline was actually around for fifty years, primarily as a very strong domestic carrier in Taiwan. Increased competition (in the air and on the rails) put this airline into financial trouble, and it finally called it quits after struggling to the right the ship for awhile.



Silverjet – May 30, 2008

Like Eos, Silverjet tried to do the all-premium airline model and failed miserably. I’m told Silverjet had a very nice facility at London’s Luton airport, but that wasn’t enough to make it successful. Locating the airline at Luton probably didn’t help much either. Toward the end, there was all kinds of drama. It was said that a Middle Eastern firm would pump money into the airline and refocus it, but that never came through and the airline ran out of luck . . . and money.



Champion – May 31, 2008

Though Champion flew charters with its 727 fleet toward the end, its 2 letter code “MG” alludes to its roots as MGM Grand Air. MGM was a luxurious airline flying between LA and New York, but Champion did a lot of sports charters and some leisure work as well. In the end, the aging fleet wasn’t competitive in the charter market and the airline simply opted to shut down and go quietly into the night. Fortunately, it didn’t go away until after delaying the Spurs to a playoff game against the Lakers. Thanks, guys.



Air Midwest – June 30, 2008

Little Air Midwest was another casualty in the 19 seat aircraft market that really took a hit this year. This airline had been owned by Mesa for several years, and ultimately Mesa opted to completely shut down its 19 seat operation. I had the chance to fly Air Midwest on one of its little Beech 1900s from Yuma to Phoenix, and I certainly had no complaints. Then again, the weather was good that day. Were it not, I might have had a different opinion of the little airline.



ExpressJet (branded service) – September 1, 2008

Let’s get one thing clear. ExpressJet still exists and is still flying around as Continental Express and as a charter airline. The piece that died was the “branded” ExpressJet operation that was set up to fly point-to-point between smaller cities; sort of a Southwest Express in my mind. If Aloha’s failure tugged at the heartstrings, this one bothers the brain. This model still looks interesting to me, especially with lower fuel prices and a different aircraft type. I just think ExpressJet was ahead of its time on this one.



Zoom – August 28, 2008

This quirky airline had a very strange setup. The original airline was Canadian and began flying Transatlantic from Canada. Then they wanted to fly back across the Atlantic to the US from the UK so they set up a UK subsidiary to do the work. Flights went from London to places like San Diego, where no other nonstop service existed. The idea may have made sense in someone’s head, but it didn’t work at all. They collapsed under their own weight.



XL – September 12, 2008

You knew XL was set on being a low cost carrier when it decided that letters were too expensive and shortened its name from Excel. The British low cost charter operation focused on shuttling pasty white Brits to sunspots, but apparently it wasn’t concerned about getting them back when it stranded fifty thousand travelers after its shutdown. Another 200,000 had future bookings so this was likely a more expensive winter than many had planned.


AeroCalifornia – October 4, 2008

Wait, didn’t these guys already shut down? You know it, but somehow the Mexican airline didn’t make my 2006 list. AeroCalifornia operated aircraft so old they were actually flight tested by Charles Lindbergh (um, maybe not), but they were considered airworthy enough to fly to the US until 2006 when it first shut down. The airline made a brief comeback with only domestic Mexican operations, but that again ended abruptly when they ran out of money.



Sterling – October 29, 2008

Sterling quickly rose to be a massive low fare airline in Scandinavia and Europe in general, especially after acquiring Maersk. I flew Maersk once and loved the product, but Sterling had plenty of ownership shifts and never fully found its groove. It didn’t help that its most recent owners were Icelandic, not exactly a good place to be from a financial perspective these days. Cimber Air says it’s going to resurrect the airline, but, well, we’ll see about that.



European – November 30, 2008

Oh man, am I finally done? European wouldn’t get a mention here except for two things. First, it was one of the last operators (if not the last) of the 737-200 in Europe. And second, it operated for Palmair, an airline I really enjoyed learning about this year. Palmair was surprised by the failure of European, but it has found an aircraft from Jet2 to pick up the slack for now. Meanwhile, European will probably disappear quietly without any fanfare at all.

[Airlines We Lost in 2007]
[Airlines We Lost in 2006]

I couldn’t let this year finish up without squeezing in one more post on Alitalia. It’s just too much fun. The airline has finished up the year just as it started, by being completely and totally awful in every way.

The sale of the airline is now completed and CAI will be relaunching the carrier in the next few weeks. We still have no idea which partner airline CAI will choose for Alitalia. I’m not sure what the holdup has been this time, but I’m not really going to bother trying to figure it out. They say it’ll be a “few weeks” but at the same time they say they’re close. Right.

But more importantly, the employees are unhappy (surprise, surprise) and they decided to take action at the worst possible time. You always have sympathy when people are at risk of losing their jobs, but I lose all sympathy completely when they decide to throw a wildcat strike only a couple days before Christmas, stranding travelers who just want to be with their families.

Apparently about 100 flights were scrapped on December 22 and another 40 or so on December 23 as the extremely selfish employees decided to walk off the job and take out their frustrations on innocent passengers. Shame on you all.

On the management side, Alitalia continues to try to shrink. The airline strangely decided to take ads out in a bunch of papers including the Financial Times saying that it was soliciting bids for 46 aircraft. That hardly sounds like the right way to handle this. Heck, it doesn’t sound effective at all.

But if you’re interested, they’re trying to pawn off a couple 767s, 22 MD-80s (I hear Allegiant knocking), 14 Embraer regional jets, and 8 ATR 72 turboprops. You could probably talk them into parting with one of those ERJs for a couple sheep and a bottle of wine.

Let’s raise our glasses on New Year’s Eve with the hope that Alitalia will continue to provide me with excellent blog fodder for years to come. Somehow I have no doubts.

For the last few years, Qantas and United have been the only two airlines to get passengers nonstop from the mainland US to Australia (Hawaiian will get you from Honolulu as well). While Qantas may have a good onboard product, its fares are high. United, on the other hand, has both high fares and a poor product. As we look forward to next year, we’re finally going to see some competition on these routes, and it will be interesting to see how this changes the route dynamic.

Beginning on February 27, V Australia will begin flights from LAX to Sydney. Brisbane flights will follow soon after. The airline is owned by Australian-based carrier Virgin Blue, and it will form the last link in the Virgin Group’s ability to get you around the world. (Virgin Atlantic can get you from LA to London to Sydney.)

V Australia will fly 777-300s in three classes. Fortunately, the third class in this case means Premium Economy, and I have to think that on such a long route, this will do well for them. All seats have audio/video on demand, and, uh, mood lighting. (This IS a Virgin airline after all.) In Business Class, there is a flat bed, but it’s not the excellent Virgin Atlantic seat they’re using.

They’ve come in with some pretty low fares, but there’s a problem. As of right now, they can’t get you anywhere beyond LA. In Australia they’re in good shape since they’re owned by Virgin Blue and can feed the network nicely, but in the US they have nothing. It is assumed that they’ll have an agreement with Virgin America since they’re both Virgin companies and they’re in the same terminal at LAX, but nothing has been finalized. Even if that happens, it will only get you to San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, New York, and Boston. Everyone else in the US will still have to fly United or Qantas (with its American codeshare) . . . or not.

Delta, in its quest to replicate Pan Am’s global domination (that didn’t end well), is going to start flights from LA to Sydney this summer. Delta will have its usual two class product on the route, but since it’s operating 777-200LRs on it, business class will have the flat bed Virgin Atlantic-style seats up front and audio/video on demand throughout the plane.

Here is what all the airlines will be flying between the US and Australia during the northern summer in 2009. Remember, this is low season for Qantas, so during the rest of the year it often has even more flights.

The Delta and V Australia flights really seem to be designed for connections. The flights from LA are redeyes, as is every other flight on the route these days (an afternoon Qantas flight doesn’t seem to be running this summer), so that’s easy to connect into at night or out of in the morning. But the flights back from Sydney provide more time flexibility.

The Delta flight leaves early from Sydney and lands very early as well. That’s awful for people coming from elsewhere in Australia but great for people connecting to the east coast who want to get in at a decent hour, and it’s going to make it attractive for those people.  The V Australia flight, on the other hand, leaves Sydney after 8p, long after any other airline and arrives at 5p.  This is great for collecting connecting passengers from around Australia, but it makes for a limited number of connections upon arriving in LAX at 5p.  Clearly, both these airlines are playing to their bases, as they should be.

It’s likely that these airlines won’t make a huge dent in Qantas’s offerings since Qantas has so many seats in the market and such entrenched loyalty, but United stands to be the big loser here. Its inferior product in coach will be put under severe pressure as these other airlines bring down fares and offer much better products.

Will this be successful for everyone? I’d be surprised. My guess is that Delta will have a hard time of making this work, but they are hell bent on flying everywhere these days. I’m not sure that there’s room for this many airlines on the route in the long term, but for now it should help bring fares down significantly and improve the travel experience for many.

Secretary of Transportation Nominee Ray LaHood on Aviation
Obama has picked former Congressman Ray LaHood (R-IL) as his Secretary of Transportation. Will this be good for the airline industry?

When Twitter Gets Interesting
It’s rare that I find Twitter interesting, but one passenger’s use of it after his plane crashed this weekend caught my eye.

Airlines Should Monitor Google Trends
Google Trends offers an opportunity for airlines to see what people are searching. There was a great example this week on how airlines could serve customers better.

US Wants Fewer Operations at LaGuardia
American offered to kill off some flights awhile ago, but the feds wouldn’t retire the slots. Now that’s exactly what they want? Uh, ok.

Southwest Looks to Connect to WestJet in Nevada and Florida
Southwest has leaked its likely first connecting points to WestJet, and at least a couple of them are far from ideal.

Delta Postpones Raleigh/Durham to Paris Flight
Delta postponed their Paris flight from Raleigh almost as quickly as it started. What’s behind this move?

I must admit that I’m phoning it in today. I’m tired and just want to nap. So, here’s a video that a friend sent to me of Louis CK doing a hilarious appearance on Conan O’Brien to help you kill some time this morning.

I know that this might not be a good time considering how angry many of you are that weather ruined your travel plans, but for all the bitching and moan we all do when a flight is delayed or a flight attendant is rude, it’s nice to step back and look at from this perspective sometimes. As Louis CK says, “Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going ‘Oh my god! Wow!’ . . . . You’re sitting in a chair . . . in the sky.”

Airline talk starts about 2 minutes in.