Hey everyone. I made it back from Peru yesterday morning, and let’s just say it’s going to be a VERY busy end to the week. I hope you enjoyed the guest posts while I was gone, and hopefully we’ll get both Henry and Benet to return at some point in the near future. I think I’m going to spend the rest of this week catching up on snippets of what happened while I was gone. You’ll see more in depth discussion about my trip which included new airlines, airports, and airplanes, starting on Monday. For now, let’s see what I missed while I was away.

Continental Tells United to F*&# Off - This was a welcome surprise, I must say. Continental decided that it won’t be merging with United or anyone else for that matter. That left United to go lick its wounds and see if US Airways would come out and play. Meanwhile, Continental, not exactly thrilled at the prospect of playing second fiddle to DL/NW in SkyTeam has started looking elsewhere as well, including a possible oneworld membership.

Eos Won’t See Another Dawn - Just before I left, Eos quietly disappeared from the skies. This one is a little bittersweet for me, because I actually worked with the founder back in 2003 as he was just getting this idea off the ground. I always believed in the idea, but it was going to be tough to succeed even with fuel prices at lower levels. With fuel where it is, the only funding available appears to have been from foreign sources and that wouldn’t have worked with existing foreign ownership rules.

Virgin America Pumps Up the Frequency - You know I’ve been strongly against Virgin America’s strategy of entering highly competitive markets with low frequencies. Well it looks like the airline has finally realized that’s a bad idea. Business travelers will see a more frequent flight schedule on transcontinental routes as well as Seattle to SFO. While I still think these are bound to lose a ton of money with fuel where it is, it’s still the right strategy (except for that SFO-SEA route), if there is such a thing for them at this point.

JetBlue Goes Ex-LAX - While Virgin America builds up, JetBlue walks away. The airline now says it will “delay” its new LAX service. The airline says fuel is too expensive, but you know that also means revenue isn’t where they wanted it to be. It must have been really bad to cancel this service within a few weeks of it starting. This is of course good for Virgin America, but it also shows how hard this market is. Congrats to JetBlue for not being afraid to walk away.

Alaska Throws Down with Virgin America - Alaska, meanwhile, is not going to throw Virgin America a bone at all. Right after Virgin said it would beef up flights between SFO and Seattle, Alaska said it would do the same. Oh, and how about some double miles on the route? This looks like a losing battle for Virgin America, but Alaska’s going to bleed in the process.

Southwest Turns the Knife Further - Fresh off the latest round of Denver increases, Southwest is at it again. On August 4, the airline will start nonstops to Ft Lauderdale, New Orleans, and Sacramento. You’ll also find another daily nonstop to Phoenix. The good news for Frontier? Um, well, they don’t fly to New Orleans, so, uh, that’s good, right? Also, in unrelated Southwest news. If you haven’t seen Southwest’s new blog setup, check it out. The airline continues to be leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else.

That’s all for today. You can expect an international edition of what I missed tomorrow. Then I’ll have more on Peru next week.

First we had eos and MAXjet, then Silverjet was announced, and now we have the oh so simply named:

L’Avion (which means “The Airplane” in French), is going to begin daily all business-class flights between Paris/Orly and Newark with 100 seat 757s (that’s about half the normal capacity). I’d love to tell you more about it, but, well, there isn’t anything else to tell right now.

The amazing thing about these guys is that according to the press release, they plan on starting flights on December 27. That’s a mere 16 days away, so you’d think that you could buy your ticket right now, right? Wrong again. It seems that they’ll begin business on December 27, but thanks to what probably was not the best translation around, that probably means they’ll begin selling tickets, not actually begin flying. Go to the website and you’ll see a pretty picture and absolutely nothing else.

In fact, they can’t even update the website entirely with the current name. (Look at the page title in your browser.) The airline used to be called Elysair, but after a very scientific process, they’ve discovered that people related better to “L’Avion” so they changed it. Okeydokey.

Somehow, my hopes are not that high that we’ll see these guys flying in the near future.

JetBlue mentioned before that they were interested in exploring airline partnerships and it looks like they’ve started dipping their toes in the water here.

Our first contestant is AeroSvit. That’s right, the shy and reserved Ukranian airline that flies to New York. If you buy an AeroSvit ticket and then connect to JetBlue, AeroSvit will give you a $100 back. All you have to do is submit both receipts to AeroSvit.

To be fair, they could be doing this without JetBlue’s permission at all, but contestant number two is most definitely working directly with JetBlue. Eos, the refined and proper dame flying all premium service between JFK and London will now give you 100 TrueBlue points when you buy a ticket on Eos. That’s enough for a free flight on JetBlue.

Granted, this isn’t much of a partnership in the scheme of things, but it’s probably just the beginning.

I’ve let up on posting so often about new route announcements, because usually they just aren’t that interesting. But every so often an airline announces a new city and it seems to be worth mentioning.

• Remember AirTran’s promotion to let customers vote on their next city? Well, the results are in, and it looks like Phoenix is the big winner. AirTran says that service from Atlanta starts on Feb 15 with one daily flight. A second flight will begin on Feb 22 and a third flight on Mar 6. As the Arizona Republic notes, both US Airways and Delta fly the route five times a day currently.
• Frontier is also adding a new city to its route map with daily service from Denver to Hartford starting Mar 2. It’s an eastbound redeye with an early morning westbound return, so this appears to be utilization flying for the airline.
• Technically this is a new route, but in reality it’s an entirely new airline. As if MAXjet and Eos don’t provide enough premium-only service between New York and London, now Silverjet is going to join the mix on Jan 25. While MAXjet and Eos fly from New York/JFK to London/Stansted, this UK-based operation will go between Newark and London/Luton. They say they’ll have 100 flat beds on a 767-200, but considering MAXjet has 102 seats that don’t go flat on the same aircraft, I’m not sure how they’re going to pull it off. No pictures are available. You can see their website here.