This week’s featured link:
Air France Turmoil Is Said to Spur KLM to Seek Change at Top – Bloomberg
Finally, the Dutch are revolting! Or at least, they’re starting to show their frustration with the complete and total mess that is Air France. KLM has to be regretting its decision to merge with Air France mightily, and now that anger is starting to seep out into the public eye. Thanks to Air France’s inability to handle anything well, KLM now wants increased responsibility at the group level. It turns out, Air France has given in, sort of. It has a new group CEO (former Air France), but it has now elevated the heads of Air France and KLM to both be deputy CEOs. There’s also a new non-executive chairman. This sounds like it’s temporary, so let’s hope that’s the case because this structure doesn’t sound sustainable. It’s time to put one of the Dutch people in charge.
Two for the road:
Today: WOW air Announces New Route From The U.S. To India Via Iceland – WOW Air
It’s not what I figured we’d see when WOW said it would start flying to Asia, but Delhi is a great idea. This is a good way to flow Indians over Iceland into the US for cheap. It can penetrate into a lot of secondary cities with one stop. Places like St Louis and Pittsburgh now have very good options that they didn’t have before. I wonder how the Middle East carriers feel about this.
Raytheon to conduct technology tests out of Ontario International Airport – The Press-Enterprise
Sometimes people think the best way to lower airport costs for airlines is to not spend any money. That does work, but there are other ways. Ontario is going to be the new home of Raytheon’s test plane. Forget that there’s a big Raytheon office right next to LAX. LAX just isn’t a good place to do this anymore since congestion is increasing. Ontario, meanwhile, has plenty of room for a hangar, and the rent will help offset fees that airlines have to pay.
