3 Links I Love: No More Whining, LOT and Condor Split, Neeleman Forced to Sell

Apr 17, 2020

More Reading on This Topic: LAX – Los Angeles, Links I Love, LOT Polish

This week’s featured link

Dear Frequent Flyers: Please Stop Whining – One Mile at a Time
Some welcome levity on frequent flier program complainers from an unlikely source.

Video of the Week: A couple weeks ago, I decided to go for a Sunday drive. After wandering aimlessly, I took a spin through LAX. To say it was eerie would be an understatement. It was quite the ghost town.

Two for the road

Poland’s LOT pulls out of deal to buy German airline Condor – Reuters
Uh, now what? LOT goes back to just surviving on government money. Condor probably gets supported by the German government even though it doesn’t make much sense to do so.

UPDATE 1-Brazil’s Azul says controlling shareholder Neeleman sold preferred shares – Reuters
It must be quite nice to be able to just take a few million from one of your airline holdings to help support a personal loan.

Brett

9 responses to “3 Links I Love: No More Whining, LOT and Condor Split, Neeleman Forced to Sell”

Stojan

Apr 17, 2020 at 5:05 am

The irony of Ben from OMAAT telling others to stop whining. His blog, among others, helped fuel the sense of frequent flier entitlement. He was OK with it as long as people were clicking the credit card links. Now, the easy money dries up, and he changes his tune.

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Bill from DC

Apr 17, 2020 at 6:40 am

Hey Brett, thanks for the tour around the empty LAX horseshoe. While I’d often fantasized of seeing it like that, especially when looking for the Hertz bus or my hotel shuttle, I never actually considered that would ever be a possibility.

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1. Eastern 727 Whisperjet
  
  Apr 17, 2020 at 9:17 am
  
  I know it feels like an odd time to comment on this kind of thing, but I really liked the architectural elements of your tour of the Upper Level of World Way. I noticed particularly the older style termianl identification “pylons” at Terminals 3, 6 and 7 (I may have missed others). I am old enough to remember visiting LAX as a young teenager for the first time, and seeing all of the then-newly-completed work for the Olympic Games. The TBIT back then was viewed as “state of the art”, and I recall how the older uncle showing me the airport (he and my aunt used to work for Lockheed) lamented the fact that the Them Building was no longer such a dominant feature of the landscape at LAX.
  
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enplaned

Apr 17, 2020 at 7:59 am

In Breeze’s DOT filing from Feb, Neeleman had to show he had sufficient financial resources to cover Breeze’s startup costs plus 1/4 of first year’s expenses.

He did that by using his ownership of Azul shares. He’s going to need to find other resources if he wants Breeze to move forward – though, it would be unsurprising if he now views his Breeze timeline as a lot longer than it was.

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1. SEAN
  
  Apr 17, 2020 at 8:08 am
  
  You might even say that do to the economic impact of Covid 19, David Neeleman’s Breeze has become stagnant.
  
  Amazing to see LAX so empty knowing it’s reputation.
  
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Evil Bob Crandall

Apr 17, 2020 at 8:33 am

That is good news for Condor. They can do better than LOT

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Doug Swalen

Apr 17, 2020 at 12:20 pm

Ooof…that LAX video is baaaaaad. Though it was cool to see the state of the Delta terminal remodel in progress. And I was also shocked to see how empty Sepulveda was heading to LAX.

I had to pick up someone from SFO last week. It was emptier and deader than SJC was in the 1970s. I walked the Bay Trail on Tuesday and over the span of two hours counted like 10 landings and five take offs from SFO. Brutal…

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1. SEAN
  
  Apr 17, 2020 at 2:12 pm
  
  Thom Hartmann on his radio show today mentioned that he went for a walk the other day & where he goes is in the path of PDX. Over this two mile walk he said he didn’t se one single plane & this was for a period of 40-minutes. He also noted that this was normal in his home town of Lancing in 1957.
  
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DesertGhost

Apr 17, 2020 at 6:28 pm

Your video of LAX says everything one needs to know about this situation. It’s powerful.

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