Whenever you get crap service on American Airlines, just remember, Gerard Arpey made $6.6 million — this week. Gerard Arpey, boss man over at American Airlines, got $5.4 million last year — and, oh, another bonus worth $6.6 million this week. So reports the Associated Press today — as well…
Paula Abdul doesn’t like Southwest Airlines. Allegedly. Very allegedly. Some Southwest Airlines notes this morning, as I prep for an afternoon flight to Austin: Says here that CreditSights analyst Roger King figures now would be as good a time as any for the Dallas-based airline to get involved in a…
Southwest Airlines, as always, had the lowest consumer complaint rate (0.18 per 100,000 passengers, neat) of all the major airlines in 2006. Yet it came in at only No. 5 on the Air Quality Rating 2007 report, issued today by Brent D. Bowen of the University of Nebraska at Omaha…
Big story yesterday about a Boston couple who was booted off a flight because their 3-year-old was throwing a tantrum and refused to be buckled in to her seat. Fair enough, considering that you’ve got another 115 or so passengers waiting to take off. The story ran on KDFW-Channel 4,…
Though The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the board of Aussie airline Qantas unanimously rubber-stamped an $8.7 billion buyout led by Fort Worth-based Texas Pacific Group and Australia’s Allco Equity Partners Ltd., BusinessWeek notes that Qantas later declared “the terms of the proposal are not acceptable.” The deal…
When you see this man carrying his blade on to your AA flight, just let him through. He’s cool. Turns out, you can take a four-foot sword on an American Airlines plane flying from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to Los Angeles. Who knew? Apparently, no one till Annie Jacobsen of…
Texas Pacific Group, the Fort Worth-based private capital firm ($20 billion worth) with arms in San Francisco and London, has made a roughly $8.5 billion takeover move for Aussie Qantas Airways in tandem with the Australian merchant bank Macquaried Bank, Ltd., as reported in the Wall Street Journal. The offer…
If American Airlines had its flight attendants wear the old Braniff uniforms, we’d be more forgiving of its service. There’s an Associated Press story that moved this afternoon about airline museums and how poorly they do. In the case of, oh, Delta Airlines, people can’t even get into its museum…
For a few weeks, American Airlines has been waging a campaign to land nonstop daily service from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Beijing, China, that would begin March 25, 2007. They’re serious about this–even got the Web site to prove it. Problem is, the U.S. Department of Transportation is only…
This is not a scene from the air traffic control tower at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Not yet, anyway. Keep this in mind next time you fly: The Federal Aviation Administration is getting rid of air traffic controllers–by creating salary caps for vets, offering lower pay to rookies, mandating a…
Life was so much easier when Braniff was flying out of Love Field. Remember its “Terminal of the Future,” pictured here? Yeah, that worked out well. Turns out some folks in the Justice Department aren’t the only ones finding “Problems with the New Wright Amendment Deal” reached by the Dallas…
Over the weekend, I accompanied the missus to Chicago for her family reunion, which essentially consisted of a Saturday-night dinner at the famous Gibsons steakhouse (Sinatra sang there, way back when). Guess we got placed at the Texas table: Joining us were three distant relatives–a middle-aged husband and wife named…
Steven Pearlstein, a business columnist at The Washington Post, has an outsiders’ take on the Wright Amendment compromise, which Mayor Laura touts as her legacy and some folks at the Justice Department insist is bad for business. Pearlstein writes that the compromise reached by mayors Laura Miller and Mike Moncrief…
Have you been checking out the Wright Amendment hearings taking place at this very moment in Washington, D.C., in front of the House Committee on Transporation & Infrastructure’s aviation subcommittee? The Dallas Morning News is providing a video link to what has to be the most rambling, frustrating and ill-informed…
The future of Love Field–well, the Wright Amendment, anyway–will be discussed in D.C. on Wednesday. On Wednesday, the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure will meet to discuss “Reforming the Wright Amendment.” (Actually, it’s the Subcommitee on Aviation hosting the hearing that begins at 1 p.m. C.S.T. in the…
People love Love Field–the airport, not the movie, which sucked. During the heat of the debate over the Wright Amendment, some of us around the offices where we publish the paper version of Unfair Park were arguing about the merits of Love Field. Some of the old-timers hate the place…
And you thought we were done with Wright Amendment talk, you silly. Over the weekend, the Sioux City Journal reported that the agreement Dallas Mayor Laura Miller and Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief hashed out last week concerning the abolishing of the Wright Amendment in 2016 ain’t enough for Nebraska…
By the time the Wright Amendment is lifted, I plan on traveling exclusively by jetpack. The local papers are all back pats and wet kisses over the Wright Amendment accord announced by mayors Laura Miller and Mike Moncrief yesterday, and good for them for finally hammering out a deal that…
More good new for American Airline and parent company AMR Corp.: On the eve of an announced settlement between Dallas and Fort Worth’s mayors regarding the Wright Amendment–a press conference is announced for tomorrow, as well as a city council thumbs-up concerning the deal–Standard & Poor’s gives the airline the…
All this talk about the city coming in and seizing and probably tearing down the old Legend Airlines terminal at Love Field, lest the former owner sell out to some other still-unnamed commercial airline, is getting me wistful and teary-eyed. Seems like only yesterday (fine, six years ago) some of…
Stop-and-Think, American’s “grassroots” pro-Wright movement, has nice digs in Snider Plaza. American Airlines Chief Executive Gerard Arpey recently gave an interview to the Chicago Tribune in which the Fort Worth-based carrier’s bossman talked about everything from the state of the airline industry (“troubled,” in a word) to why it’s so…
At least, that’s how The New York Times characterizes it, should the Mavericks wind up in the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat (and, man, that is looking too far ahead for my tastes). Miami plays at the American Airlines Arena, Dallas plays at the American Airlines Center, which means…
