Premium Air Traffic Surpasses Previous Year for First Time Since 2008 – BNET
Yes, it’s true. More premium passengers flew in December than in last December. Granted, they were paying 20% less . . .

Airline Labor Unrest – Is This Catchy? – IAG Podcast
I sit down with Addison Schonland to talk strikes.

American and United Switch to Small Planes for Big Routes – BNET
American is shifting its 70 seaters to compete with United’s 70 seaters. Go figure.

End of the Affair: Are American and Alaska Set to Compete? – BNET
It’s only one little route addition, but I tend to think it could mean big things.

High Speed Rail May Hurt Airports, But How Much? – BNET
High speed rail is coming to California, and the aviation world is gearing up to fight it. Boo, I say.

With Lufthansa, the pilots aren’t happy so they walked out yesterday. That left the airline canceling about half their daily flights and plenty of passengers stuck going nowhere. Last night, the pilots agreed to suspend their strike until March 8 so they could rejoin talks. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Lufthansa will magically start operating at full speed today. It takes a little while to get everything back into place for a normal operation, so check with the airline if you’re flying.

As for British Airways, well, we’ve talked about this one before. Remember that the BA flight attendants were going to strike over Christmas but then the courts told them to screw off because of some voting irregularities. Well, they’re back and now with a new vote showing 83 percent support, the strike could come with only a week’s notice. At least they’re promising it won’t disrupt Easter flying. Not sure why Christmas was ok but Easter isn’t, but I’m not complaining.

The French air traffic controllers? They’ve been on strike this week and have hurt a lot of the air traffic running through the country. For example, Air France has announced that today it will operate all its long haul flights but only 75 percent of European flights will operate from Paris/de Gaulle with only 50 percent from Orly.

Why do we keep seeing all these strikes? Well it’s more of the same. It’s usually an issue of job retention, outsourcing, and of course, pay. The problem is that the industry today is not what it was 30 years ago when pay was high and so were fares. Some airlines have been able to adapt but none have done so without serious pain for most involved (except of course, those insanely-misguided CEOs who think that taking a big bonus in the face of all this pain is a good idea).

What we’re seeing now, however, is two different types of unions based on how they react. The labor unions that realize that this is unfortunately a necessary change will be in better shape because they can participate in the discussion and work to find ways to help reduce costs with the least amount of pain to their members. Those unions that simply want to strike if they don’t get everything they want, no matter how delusional, will end up watching from the outside as the industry changes without their participation.

As a result, customers end up suffering, of course. If your flight is canceled because of a strike, then I would just cancel and rebook at a later date if you can. If you need to be there, well, you can look at other airlines but they will be bursting at the seams trying to accommodate everyone. Just remember that a strike doesn’t mean the airline shuts down. Most airlines are able to get together enough of a skeleton crew to operate at least some flights, as Lufthansa showed by operating half theirs. But running only half your flights is still a recipe for lots of stuck travelers.

Oh, and Alitalia? Well it’s hardly worth mentioning, but they struck on February 16. Ho, hum. Nothing to see here.

[Original Photo via Steinsky on Wikipedia]

When Lufthansa took control of bmi thanks to a previous agreement that made them pay a ton of money for the airline, the first plan was to sell it off. After it became apparent that they weren’t going to get the price they wanted (or even close to what they paid), they announced on November 2 that they would just try to get bmi into better shape on their own. It took them less than a month to bring out their plans.

This map was recently released showing what’s in store:

Oh wait, nevermind. That map’s about 70 years old, and as I recall, it didn’t work out so well for the Germans then. Of course, this version of Lufthansa didn’t exist back then, and their plans are actually far less, um, aggressive. As a reminder, there is bmi, which operates mainline aircraft out of London/Heathrow, and bmi regional which flies regional jets from other UK airports.

• bmi will go down from 39 to 30 airplanes. The fleet will now be made up of mostly A320 family aircraft with three Embraer 145s, a single A330, and a single 757. It wouldn’t surprise me to see those go away when the leases expire.




• bmi regional will see its number of regional jets rise from 15 to 17 thanks to bmi’s decision to send two back to bmi regional. bmi regional is looking to get rid of 3 of those airplanes, but nothing has happened yet.




• Flights from Heathrow to Brussels, Tel Aviv, Kiev, and Aleppo will end in January, but those cities will continue to be served by other Star alliance carriers via connections. The Brussels flights will instead operate under a codeshare with Brussels Airlines, another Lufthansa-owned airline.




• Flights from Heathrow to Amsterdam will go away in March.




• Seasonal runs from Heathrow to Venice and Palma won’t be coming back.

This is a pretty big cut in terms of aircraft flying, and that means that there will be plenty of unused Heathrow slots. Where will those go? Will they sell them off? Or will another Lufthansa-owned carrier pick up the slack? It will be very interesting to see what they do with those.

bmi’s strategy doesn’t look much different to me. They will continue to focus on Europe and the Middle East as they’ve been doing, but they’ll just have fewer airplanes doing it. There doesn’t appear to be any interest in London-US flying, so instead they’ll just look at how they can make bmi best fit into the Lufthansa puzzle.

One of my oldest friends is in the Army and he’s currently living in Europe. His parents came out to visit him, but his mother was staying longer to visit family. So, his elderly father was flying back alone to Los Angeles via Munich on Lufthansa. Now, his father is really getting up there in years, and he somehow left his keys to the house at my friend’s place. Uh oh.

My friend was naturally concerned that his cell-phone-less father would be confused and possibly lost once he realized he couldn’t get in to this house, but he was already on the long flight back to LA. My friend simply wanted to get a message to his father telling him to call him or his brother so they could explain and help him. It seems like a small request, but it can often be difficult to get messages to people on airplanes.

I volunteered to email a contact at Lufthansa to see if they were able to deliver messages upon arrival. He said that they certainly could and that he would get back to me. Sure enough, Lufthansa staff in LA met the aircraft and had my friend’s father make the phone call. They then escorted him to the shuttle he was taking back to his home.

I know that the first comment will likely be that this only happened because I asked a connection and that a regular traveler wouldn’t be able to get this done. There’s no doubt in my mind that helped, but I’m not so sure that this wouldn’t have happened without me. My contact forwarded me the email correspondence he had with the LA folks, and he wasn’t asking for special treatment. They seemed to be more than happy to help out and definitely went above and beyond. I imagine they would have done the same had the request come from a reservations agent.

I don’t often write about Lufthansa, and they certainly wouldn’t have expected me to write about this, so I would like to think that it was just some good old-fashioned customer service. Just thought it would be nice to bask in the glow of a nice story.

I’ll be back tomorrow with my report on United’s 737 retirement.

It was all the way back in December 2007 when Lufthansa announced it would buy a 19% stake in JetBlue. At the time, there was no cooperation announced, but most people felt it was inevitable. Eventually, it became obvious that it would happen. On a JetBlue flight earlier this year, I even saw this ad (at left) on my seatback TV. But it took until now for the codeshare to actually be announced.

Neither United nor US Airways have much of an operation at JFK, so this provides Lufthansa with a strong partner and a solid product to feed its flights. It just makes sense.

When Lufthansa purchased its stake, I said “Enjoy your bitch-slap, United. Oh sure, that young little hussy JetBlue can’t replace you . . . yet, but Lufthansa is clearly not as faithful to you as you might have hoped. Maybe you shouldn’t have let yourself get so out of shape over the years.” As I said a the end of the article, I didn’t actually think JetBlue would replace United as Lufthansa’s main partner, and I still feel the same way. If it were true, Lufthansa wouldn’t have bothered will all the time and effort to get the Atlantic Plus Plus alliance going with Continental, Air Canada, United, etc.

But this is the next natural step for Lufthansa, since they own a piece of the airline. The codeshare will begin connecting only 12 JetBlue destinations through Boston and New York/JFK into the Lufthansa network. Those cities are Austin, Buffalo, Ft Lauderdale, Ft Myers, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Raleigh/Durham, Rochester, San Juan, Syracuse, Tampa, and West Palm Beach. You’ll notice that none of these are particularly strong destinations for United, so it makes a lot of sense. Besides, those Germans love Florida.

You’ll be able to book a ticket between those cities and much of the Lufthansa network. This is a big step for JetBlue. The airline’s first attempt at a codeshare was not exactly a full-blown arrangement. You can buy a ticket on the Aer Lingus website to travel from Ireland to the US connecting on a JetBlue flight, but that’s it.

This Lufthansa deal will allow for booking on either airline’s code via airline websites or via travel agents. It’s a full codeshare agreement, and it’s probably the first of many more to come for the Blue Crew.

Republic Gets Court Approval to Buy Frontier, But It’s Not a Done Deal
Republic moved one step closer to buying Frontier, but it’s not done yet.

Alaska Details Interesting Gains and Losses
Alaska put out its forward-looking guidance, and there were some interesting tidbits to review.

American Kicks Off Earnings Season
American was the first to walk the plank with Q2 earnings, and no, they weren’t good. We expected that, of course, but it’s still painful to watch.

Continental CEO Larry Kellner Walks Away
Continental CEO Larry Kellner is hanging up his wings for a more earth-bound job.

US-EU Open Skies Phase II Talks Begin
All eyes are on round two of the talks – this, the EU hopes, will result in cabotage rights within the US.

United, Continental Antitrust Application Slammed by DOJ
The DOT was in favor of the broad antitrust immunity application, but the DOJ isn’t so happy.

Frontier Makes Money in May, What’s Next?
Frontier is making money, and that’s great, but it’s what happens next that really determines how this airline will be doing going forward. Lots of changes could be underway.

Boeing Set to Buy Vought?
Boeing seems to be having seconds thoughts about outsourcing most of the 787 part production, and it now appears to be bringing one of its suppliers back in-house.

[Edited image 1/5 @ 516p to reflect additional airline ownership stakes]
[Edited image again on 1/6 @ 627p to reflect even more ownership stakes]