Man, this has been a busy week. I know I spent half of it lounging around Peru, but long vacations always make it harder to catch up on work when you return. Combine that with the fact that I’ve got a new job at PriceGrabber (Director of Community), and I’m just struggling to make it to the weekend. So, let’s get to what I missed in the international world and I promise I’ll have some more extensive stuff ready for next week.

Nationwide Goes Down - It’s not just US airlines that are dropping like flies. Looks like Nationwide Airlines out of South Africa is the latest casualty. To be fair, these guys didn’t really have their stuff together in the first place. I mean, they were grounded last year when a friggin’ engine fell off one of their planes. When something like that happens, it’s not easy to recover. They didn’t.

Virgin Atlantic Thinks You’re Pretty Enough - At least half the time someone brings up Virgin Atlantic, it’s quickly followed by a mention of the inflight massage and manicure. Of course, that was only available in Upper Class, but now it’s not available anywhere. Virgin has decided to kick the beauticians off the plane. So, you’ll have to get a massage or manicure beforehand. I know, rough life.

Neeleman Has Only One Name Idea - You’ve started a successful low cost carrier named JetBlue, and now you’ve moved on to found a Brazilian airline. What should you call it? Well, the plan was to have a naming competition, but that ended with the name Samba, and apparently he didn’t like that. So he went with choice #2 - Azul. Yep, that means Blue in Portuguese. Geez, so creative.

Alitalia Grabs Illegal Loan - Ah, my favorite subject. Italians are now 300m euros poorer since the government decided to loan Alitalia the money to keep the airline afloat. Of course, it’s already been challenged by the EU, and Italy has to somehow justify how this is legal. Good times.

It seems like just yesterday Richard Branson was touting how his (Virgin Atlantic’s) planes were better because they all had four engines, unlike those British Airways 777s. He even painted it on his planes. You might recognize the picture on the left as a former integral part of the livery on the 4 engine A340-600.

Well, apparently he’s changed his mind.

Earlier this week, Branson entered into the environmentally (and pocketbook) friendly agreement with Boeing to order 15 787-9s with options for 8 more and purchase rights for 20 more. The 787 is going to theoretically be a rock star when it comes to fuel consumption, so Branson just couldn’t keep justifying the A340 “4 engine” thing any longer. I say theoretically because we haven’t actually seen the thing fly yet.

But being the shrewd businessman that he is, he’s not just calling this an aircraft order. Nay. It’s an environmental partnership.

Huh?

Well, I suppose you could say that just ordering the highly fuel-efficient aircraft is environmentally friendly, but he’s doing another couple of things as well. First, next year there will be a demonstration of biofuels in one of the Virgin 747s. I’m not sure how this is a partnership with Boeing because it’s the GE engines that really need to run on the fuels, but whatever.

Second, he’s still pushing ways to cut fuel burn on the ground. Boeing will now join Branson in his quest to get aircraft towed to “starting gates” near the end of the runway. That way they don’t need to turn on the engines until they’re ready to go. Again, I’m not sure what this has to do with Boeing since last time I checked, Boeing didn’t run any airports. Maybe they’re going to help modify the aircraft to make this easier?

No matter what, Branson is a very shrewd businessman. He knows that calling something environmentally friendly is going to get big press coverage these days. In reality, this is one of the glorious times where doing what’s right for the environment is also doing what’s right for the bank account. When that happens, it’s good news all around.