This Week’s Featured Link
United Air Exits Stake in Parent of Former ExpressJet Airlines – Bloomberg
This was such a strange little legacy… United owning nearly half of an independent regional flying out of Reno. Of course it wasn’t always that way — this used to be the wholly-owned Continental Express — but now it’s over and aha! is on its own.
Image of the Week
Dean Morley/CC BY-ND 2.0
Two for the Road
Low-cost Japan-based airline will launch Tokyo-San Jose flights – SiliconValley.com
ANA has long served this route with a business-focused cabin, but now ZipAir is going to come in with the low cost option? Best of luck.
AirAsia X Is Back! Rejuvenated airline spreads its wings to London, Istanbul and Dubai – AirAsia X News
Apparently AirAsia X was tired of not losing money every day, so it has started to fly airplanes again. That’ll fix that problem.
10 comments on “3 Links I Love: United Gets a Divorce, Goodbye Turkish Airlines, Zipping to Tokyo, AirAsia X”
Ah, the Türkiye rebranding.
It’s what happens when a country’s government gets tired of foreigners searching for “[country name] holiday” and finding poultry recipes instead of tourism information. :-)
/In all honesty, though, I can’t really blame Türkiye for the move, and it’s one of the countries I’d most like to visit, regardless of what they call themselves.
Yes, for generations, the “Flag Carrier” of every country has been vulnerable to political interference. Consider the vagaries of Pan American World Airways, BOAC, KLM, and, my personal favorite, Queensland And Northern Territories Air Services. The butchering of Qantas between internal Australian politics, deregulation, and privatization has been completely felonious. Yet Qantas soldiers on, with its amazing over-water safety record. Turkish spent many years “westernizing” its product. This return to nationalism will be a setback to its ambitions.
The number of people willing to just absolutely set money on fire never ceases to amaze me.
Apparently Asian LCCs (or LCC divisions of HCC airlines) are tired of the Bjorns of Norse getting to have all the recent fun and want to join in the money-losing game. This is not going to go well.
SJC old, cold, and full of mold: Losing your shirt with crypto.
SJC new, hot, and spicy: Losing your pants on trans-Pacific flying.
Regarding zip air….
“ The airline offers automated services to enable passengers to check in a day before their flights and provides tech-bolstered services on the company’s airplanes.”
Really, passengers can check in a day before their flight? That’s just so unique and innovative, I don’t know how anyone will be able to compete with that …
At least Zipair is backed/owned by Japan Airlines with their aircraft, so they should have some experience in running an airline and lower aircraft costs.
On the other hand, what was JAL thinking when they decided Zipair would be a good idea…?
At least I now know who owned 787 with the big Putin Z on the tail that I saw while landing at LAX a few weeks ago. I thought we might have been invaded while I was in the air.
Didn’t ANA fly to SJC in the past?
How much did UA get for half of Aha!?
It wasn’t disclosed…