Sky Talk

This week's Best of Sky Talk

No Kyla Ebbert or Sen. Craig's airport restroom in this week's Sky Talk offerings. But your blog authors found plenty of other stuff to write about. Here's this week's best:

KLM's D/FW-Amsterdam flight. Remember, you read about it first, from S-T reporters David Wethe and Trebor Banstetter, here on Sky Talk.

http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/09/its-klm-royal-d.html

http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/09/more-on-klm-roy.html

http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/09/your-plane-to-a.html

AA pilots abuzz about company's productivity proposal http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/09/americans-pilot.html

Time Magazine: V-22 Osprey's "saga" a "long, strange story" http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/09/time-magazine-o.html

MIT's new airline data site. http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/09/incredibly-cool.html

AA shareholder wants AMR to spin off AAdvantage. http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/09/shareholder-pus.html

Delta flight attendants consider union. http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/2007/09/delta-flight-at.html

-- Scott

A new take on buying the cheapest online travel

Trying to get the best deal on a rental car in the U.K? Don't assume you're getting the best deal just by picking the cheapest price off of the U.S. travel sites you check.

The New York Times, in its Practical Traveler column today, notes that "some of the best travel deals on the Web these days don’t end in .com but can be found on a travel company’s foreign offshoot, which usually ends with the country’s domain name, like .fr (France), and .de (Germany). Though the travel companies don’t advertise it, they often charge different prices based on the country of origin.

"In an effort to expand their global reach, online travel agencies based in the United States like Expedia and Travelocity, as well as individual airlines and car rental agencies, are creating Web sites geared to foreign counties," the Times notes. "Travelocity, for example, just started www.travelocity.com.mx for travelers in Mexico. It also has www.travelocity.co.uk for Britain; www.travelocity.de for Germany; and www.travelocity.ca for Canada. Expedia has 13 foreign sites, including ones for Denmark, Italy, and France.

"The savings can be considerable," the Times concludes. As an example, it searched Expedia.com for a day trip from Melbourne to Sydney in August, and found the cheapest fare at $350 on Qantas. Checking Expedia's Australian site, expedia.com.au, the Times found the same flight for $187.

-- Scott

Irate passenger turns up dead

The Associated Press reports: "a woman late to her plane became irate, was put in handcuffs and was later found dead in a holding cell, police said. Authorities were investigating Saturday if the woman choked herself while trying to get free from the handcuffs." The woman was trying to board a US Airways flight at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

The Arizona Republic reports police said the woman was heading for Tucson and missed her plane. US Airways rebooked her on another flight, but the woman became angry at that point and began running around the terminal. Airport police tried to calm her, then arrested her and placed her in handcuffs, the Republic reports. While in detention, she continued screaming. At some point, she stopped screaming. The authorities checked on her and found her "unconscious and not breathing," the Republic reports.

-- Scott

Airplane food -- not such a joke anymore

Business Week reports that airlines aren't treating their food as a laughing matter. The magazine looks at several airlines, including American, and what they provide in the "front of plane" and main cabin.

(Photos: One of these is "front cabin" food, the other, coach. You make the call.)

-- Scott

Pilots ready to roll out negotiations site

Officials with the Allied Pilots Association, which represents American Airlines' pilots, are readying the latest weapon in their PR arsenal - a contract negotiations site that's similar in spirit to management's AANegotiations.com site.

Even the names are almost identical. The union site will be at www.APANegotiations.com, and will feature news, data and other information on the contract talks. Expect it to counter some of the info that's on the management site.

Right now there isn't much there, but we're told that the site is going to go live on Monday.

- Trebor

Delta flight attendants look at organizing

Bloomberg News reports:

Delta Air Lines flight attendants are renewing a push to join a union, five years after the last such vote failed at the third-largest U.S. carrier.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA is “close to filing for an election, but we will not divulge a time frame,” union spokeswoman Corey Caldwell said in a telephone interview Friday. The national attendants union is planning a rally on Oct. 1 in Atlanta, where Delta is based.

A successful organizing vote by attendants would create just the second union at Delta, where pilots are the only labor group. American Airlines and United Airlines, the two largest U.S. carriers, both have union majorities in their workforces.

The union drive began after attendants’ pay was cut to help Delta reduce costs and emerge from bankruptcy in April, Caldwell said. The prospect of airline mergers has also spurred the push, because workers fear their jobs might be at risk in a merger, she said. Delta attendants rejected the AFA in 2002.

“While Delta respects employees’ rights to organize, we believe the direct relationship with management is the strongest voice our people have,” airline spokeswoman Betsy Talton said.

-- Scott

Incredibly cool airline site of the day

MIT recently launched the Airline Data Project Center, which is a compilation of an enormous amount of airline-related data from a variety of sources. It's extremely well presented and lays out the data in a way that even non-eggheads like me (journalism major) can understand.

For example, this page shows airline load factors since 1995. This one shows passenger yields (which are basically average fares per seat-mile). And here is the average pilot wage at airlines from 1995.

- Trebor

AA officially opens old Delta hangar at D/FW

(Star-Telegram photo)

American Airlines officially opened its newest maintenance facility this morning - the old Delta hangar at D/FW. That building was abandoned by Delta when the airline closed its D/FW hub in 2005. It sat vacant until April, when American took it over.

The facility had become the home of thousands of birds, which nested in the rafters above the giant hangar. Cleaning up the mess was a major job for American. Today there's no sign of the previous residents (neither Delta nor the birds).

About 140 employees, mostly mechanics, will work at the facility, doing maintenance on American jets. The company also hopes to bring some third-party work to the hangar, which can hold more than 8 planes at one time.

- Trebor

British Air orders Dreamliners, A380s, no 747s

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that British Airways decided to order 24 Boeing 787 Dreamliners and a dozen Airbus A380 superjumbos, but no Boeing 747s, in a "faceoff" between the two jumbos that "was being closely watched throughout the aviation world."

-- Scott

Your plane to Amsterdam

The folks at KLM were kind enough to give us some photos of their Airbus A330 planes, nicknamed the "bluebird," that will be flying between D/FW and Amsterdam. We thought we'd share them with you.

  

- Trebor