Continental Joins Star Alliance Tomorrow – BNET
Continental is in no-man’s land as they end their SkyTeam participation and prepare for Star Alliance.

Ontario’s Air Traffic Glut Draws Anger Toward LA – BNET
Ontario’s traffic keeps dropping, and the solution might involve kicking LA World Airports to the curb.

Airlines Show Concerns About Winter Demand Levels – BNET
Sales are starting to come out fast and furious, and the pricepoints are low. This may be a long winter.

US Airways Walks Away From Las Vegas, Slashes Jobs – BNET
US Airways has put the final nail in the coffin in Las Vegas, but more importantly, a lot of people are losing their jobs. Not good.

JetBlue Has Big Plans for Boston – BNET
JetBlue is ramping up Boston big time. Giddyup!

Welcome Airfarewatchdog readers! Please come on in and take a look around. I post my usual snarkiness Monday through Friday with this post on what I’ve written over at BNET capping the week on Saturday.

For Cranky readers, head on over to the Airfarewatchdog Blog to see my first article for them, “Confessions of a fat fingered airline pricing analyst.” It’s been awhile since I last worked as an airline pricing analyst, but this was a fun look back on those days.

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Frontier Announces Small Operating Profit for January
As a bankrupt airline, Frontier has to report its results on a monthly basis. So the airline’s January financials can give us a peak into what’s to come.

Continental’s February RASM Down Dramatically
Continental released February traffic and revenue information this week and the news is far from good. Get ready for the pain.

Ontario’s Spiral of Doom Results in Less Traffic and Higher Fees
What happens when airlines pull back on flights? Costs go up. And that’s when an airport enters the spiral of doom.

US Airways Sees February Unit Revenue Declines
The US Airways February traffic report may not have shown much of a change in load factor, but revenue estimates were down significantly.

News and Notes From Delta’s 10-K
Delta release it’s annual report this week, so I thought I’d poke through it and see what I could find.

February Airline Traffic Numbers
The final February traffic numbers are out, and it’s downright ugly. Here’s the list.

Allegiant’s Strategy In Its Own Words
A peek inside Allegiant’s 10-K gives us a great explanation of the airline’s business model. If you didn’t know it before, here it is in their own words.

If you keep tabs on press releases, you’ve probably seen the bombardment from the LA World Airports (LAWA) about a “major breakthrough in development of Southern California regional airports.” The first release went out on Friday saying that the Mayors of LA and Ontario along with other dignitaries will greet a new airline arriving at Ontario Airport today, Monday, at 11a. In case you didn’t get the first memo, they sent out reminder press releases on Sunday and another one this morning.

So what is it that’s so incredible it’s going to reshape the landscape of Los Angeles aviation? Well, not much. The big Ontario announcement is that ExpressJet is going to make Ontario its largest operation when it launches in April. That’s not really news though, because it was already announced last week by the airline. It is really nice for the people that live out that way, but I’m not convinced it’s going to do much to relieve LAX. You can still fly to most of ExpressJet’s Ontario destinations on other airlines from LAX for less money. A lot more needs to happen before Ontario can seriously relieve LAX.

Oh, but wait, there’s more. They will also announce that Palmdale airport will once again get commercial service. United Express will start twice daily regional jet flights to San Francisco thanks to more than $2m in revenue guarantees. This one was disappointing to me, because I don’t think San Francisco is the right market.

Apparently Delta also competed for the flights and they would have gone through Salt Lake City. That would have given connections throughout the country. A flight up to San Francisco makes connections to Asia or the Pacific Northwest worthwhile, but other than that, it’s not ideal. I always thought that a US Airways flight to Phoenix would give the most connecting opportunities, but they didn’t even try for the flights.