In the immortal words of Dennis Hopper (rest in peace, you crazy bastard) . . . pop quiz, hotshot. Let’s say that you’ve been presented three deals impacting the most dominant airline at a highly-congested airport. You can approve one. Which would it be? Here’s what the airport will look … Read the post
Month: August 2010
On Friday afternoon, Southwest announced it came to an agreement with Continental to lease 36 slots at Newark. Holy crap. Has hell frozen over? Nah. Just two hours later, Continental and United announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has found no antitrust issues with the merger. Ahhhh, I … Read the post
Some feel blue as United, Continental wedding mixes old, new – Chicago Tribune
The Trib looks at the United/Continental branding efforts, and I chime in with why I’m not a fan of what I’ve seen so far.
American’s Express Seats: How Not to Introduce New … Read the post
If you haven’t heard of Hipmunk, it’s no surprise. The site only launched in the last couple of weeks, but it’s off to a good start. If you book flights, it’s a site you’re going to want to bookmark. Hipmunk has the potential to make booking flights easy, but it’s … Read the post
And now, it’s time to talk JetBlue. When I read a recent article where David Neeleman talked about JetBlue, I thought he sounded bitter, so I had to ask. It’s clear that he’s still bugged by what happened at JetBlue, and as a shareholder, he wants to see things change. … Read the post
Welcome back for part two of my talk with David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue and now current founder and CEO of Azul in Brazil. Yesterday in part one, we talked about starting up an airline in fast-growing Brazil, and some of the challenges involved. Today the focus is on … Read the post
I had the pleasure of speaking with David Neeleman last week on a variety of subjects. David is best known for founding JetBlue, an airline which effectively fired him after the operational melt down on that cold wintry Valentine’s Day weekend back in 2007. After that, he went down … Read the post
Today is an historic day. For the first time in years, Alitalia is no longer the worst airline ever. Mexicana’s slow and painful demise has caused so many problems for so many people that the airline has won its place as the new worst airline ever. I know, you’ll need … Read the post
Weak July Traffic Shows Allegiant Lost Altitude – BNET Headwinds
Allegiant saw weaker traffic numbers in July. It’s not what you expect from an airline that continues to find ways to fill more and more seats.
LAN-TAM Merger: U.S. Carriers Sweat The Fate of Alliance … Read the post
Yesterday in part one of my discussion with Qatar Airways Senior VP of the America Tony Hughes, we were just getting warmed up. Today in part two, we get right into the meaty issues of codesharing and competition.
Cranky: Middle Eastern carriers tend to … Read the post
I had the chance to speak with Qatar 
Airways’ Tony Hughes recently and had a fascinating conversation. Tony is the Senior VP for the Americas, so he runs the show here in the western hemisphere.
I started with most basic question – how do you … Read the post
I haven’t written about Cranky Concierge much here lately, but things have been going quite well. We’ve just finished a banner week where we followed near 50 people heading to a conference, we’ve added more discounts for clients, we’ve made some website changes, and, what I’m most excited about, we’ve … Read the post