Alaska Airlines is pulling the plug on Virgin America’s mid-continent hub at Dallas’s Love Field; routes to NYC’s LaGuardia and Wasington, DC’s Reagan National are being slashed later this year.
merger
ATPCO scores big with Routehappy acquisition
Getting beyond selling on price and schedule is a major hurdle for airlines. RouteHappy spent the past 7+ years developing the technology to bring comfort and service factors into the merchandising and shopping process. And now, thanks to the massive influence of ATPCO, these bits of data will be standardized across the industry. That’s a HUGE win for travelers.
Power Up! Astronics to acquire Telefonix
Consolidation is coming in the cabin components industry with Astronics set to acquire Telefonix for $104mm in cash. The two companies product lines are largely complementary, covering in-seat power, passenger service units, seat actuators, inflight connectivity components and more.
Notes of interest from this morning’s American Airlines earnings call
The American Airlines 2014 numbers look pretty good, but the company’s view of the future is what I find interesting. Today’s earnings call held a few interesting nuggets. At least interesting to me.
Delta to lease AirTran 717s from Southwest
When Southwest bought out AirTran they were quite up front about their desire to get rid of the 717s in their newly acquired fleet. Thanks to a new agreement between Delta and their pilot union, it seems like there is a deal on the table which will allow them to do precisely that. Assuming the […]
United announces significant investments to in-flight product
United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek has stated a few times that the company had some deficiencies in their in-flight product, bits that would be addressed as part of the merger process between United and Continental. The first of many bits detailed on that topic was the announcement that Economy Plus would be expanded to the […]
JetBlue to offer awesome in-flight broadband – eventually
JetBlue has made a big splash today with their announcement of an impending in-flight internet offering. The service, leveraging the Ka spectrum of satellite connectivity form provider ViaSat, will offer significant bandwidth and a broader coverage footprint than that of ATG provider Aircell, the company behind the gogo product. Company CEO Dave Barger sums it […]
Aircell loses a customer
Most of the news regarding in-flight internet connectivity these days has been about airlines adding connectivity to their fleets. There has been one notable exception to that trend, however, and the news there continues to be unsettling. Continental Airlines announced shortly before the new year that they would be implementing both the Aircell gogo product […]