This Week’s Featured Link
Alaska Air CEO Tilden hands off a transformed airline – The Seattle Times
Brad Tilden is wrapping up his term as CEO of Alaska shortly, and Dominic Gates from the Seattle Times takes a look back at this career. It will likely be defined first and foremost by the Virgin America merger since that was the most visible change during his time. But there was a whole lot more that changed in more subtle ways, mostly for better.
Two for the Road
In Pandemic, American Airlines Flying Fell Below A Contract Minimum. Now Pilots Could Undo Code Shares – Forbes
Seems like a good opportunity for pilots to try to extract their pound of flesh. There’s no world where it’s good for anyone if the pilots refuse to allow international codeshares, so they will try to squeeze everything they can out of management first.
Norse Atlantic Airways must not repeat Norwegian’s mistakes, says GlobalData – GlobalData
I agree… but it has already repeated the mistake by trying to fly this silly stuff. This is the airline that the founders of Norwegian want to start to basically take over the transatlantic flying that Norwegian abandoned. The plan seems to be, “let’s take the least profitable part of the Norwegian business and make a go of it.) This is doomed.
6 comments on “3 Links I Love: Alaska CEO’s Farewell, American Pilots, Norse Atlantic, and the Best Jacket Ever”
Norse Atlantic… sometimes you just have to let people make their own mistakes before they learn. These are not widows, orphans, disabled or other vulnerable people
I heard you on KJZZ this morning, good stuff. My nephew is a producer at that station and a fellow plane geek!
Thanks, that was one of two that I did on KJZZ! I’ll have them posted tomorrow.
As a consumer, I’m excited for Norse Atlantic. We flew Norwegian several times and benefited when the legacies matched. We prefer the meals and miles of legacies, but price is king so I’m ecstatic about Norse Atlantic and any airline that keeps transatlantic fares low.
As an industry observer, I’m of course sceptical but maybe they’re just really gunning for a Cranky stretch award ?
It’s interesting that there’s no mention of Alaska’s upcoming partnership with American in the piece on Tilden’s retirement. That pivot was one of the major changes at Alaska during his term. I also saw elsewhere where Tilden mentioned that Alaska is now cash-flow positive. If that’s sustainable, it’s good news. There was also a mention of Alaska’s need to grow. One quick way to do that would be a merger with Hawaiian (which makes a lot of sense to me). But would Alaska want to replace Hawaiian’s A321neos?
To American’s scope issues: It seems to me that this is going to be a problem for other airlines as well. I’ve read where the “perfect” airline’s unions aren’t happy with its increased reliance on foreign partners. It may end up that American’s new partnership arrangement with jetBlue will involve many more slot swaps and far fewer code shares than originally envisioned. An improving economy and a return of air travel will solve a lot of these short-term problems. But given the lack of new 50 seat regional jets, the general trend toward upgauging, and new aircraft like the Airbus A220 and reworked Embraer E-JetE2, there may be a lot more mainline flying in most airlines’ future. Stay tuned.
I should have written the “perfect” airline’s pilots.