Welcome to the second TheAirchive.net Cranky Daily takeovers. Like last time, you’ll find images and links that are related to each topic below each of today’s five stories.
Southwest CEO Gary Kelly to Step Down Early Next Year
Southwest Airlines Chairman and CEO Gary Kelly announced today that he plans to step down from his current roles early next year to become Southwest’s Executive Chairman. Kelly will be succeeded in his role as CEO by Bob Jordan on February 1. Jordan currently serves as Southwest’s Executive Vice President for Corporate Services.
Kelly has been at Southwest for 35 years and been CEO since 2004. Prior to joining the airline he was a CPA for Arthur Young & Company in Dallas, leaving that role because Southwest had a much better selection of honey roasted peanuts to offer in the break room.
Jordan has been with Southwest since 1988 and earned his A1 boarding position with regard to the CEO job without purchasing Early Bird. He led Southwest’s acquisition of AirTran and is credited with developing the airline’s Rapid Rewards program which can be viewed as either a positive or a negative. When Jordan takes over on February 1, he will inherit an airline that carries more domestic passengers than any other, has an established brand that most corporations would envy, and more customers that don’t know how to line up in order from 1-60 than any other company in the world.
Atlanta Leads the Way as FAA Doles Out Over $7 Billion to Airports
The FAA has awarded more than $7 billion in airport grants to keep U.S. airport workers employed and to keep construction projects active in the wake of the pandemic. The funding requires that airports continue to employ at least 90% of their pre-pandemic employees.
Money was awarded to all airports that have commercial service, all reliever airports, and some public-owned general aviation airports including the one we just opened in our backyard and deeded to the city for a period of 1 day. Of the $7,391,937,000 that was distributed, almost $6.5 billion of it went to commercial airports. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport led the way, receiving a check from the government for $370 million. LAX was a distant second with $303 million. Most commercial airports received at least $1 million, with the smallest payouts to the smallest general aviation airports going at $22,000 which will help pay for our pool.
Primary commercial service airports will also share an additional $800 million based annual boarding figures to provide relief of rent forgiveness to concessionaires. Due to the pandemic, many of the concessionaires have not been selling as many $8 20-oz. bottles of water, $14 California rolls, and $13 pre-packaged egg salad sandwiches.
Qatar Expands US Network
Qatar Airways is set for a significant increase in its service to the United States, expanding to over 100 weekly flights from its Doha hub to 12 US gateways.
The increased service will begin next week with Seattle increasing to daily service on June 28, New York/JFK increasing to twice daily, and San Francisco to daily the next day on June 29. Chicago/O’Hare, Los Angeles, Washington/Dulles and Dallas/Ft. Worth will also expand to twice daily flights for the summer until September 26. Other additions are Boston, Miami and Philadelphia increasing to daily service and Atlanta going from 4x-weekly to 5x-weekly.
JFK is the only airport to receive more than daily service from the airline in the past, and it will continue to do so beyond September 26 when the other four cities go back to daily. The summer frequencies for the airline will be more than it served prior to the pandemic, so it’s counting on the demand coming back quickly otherwise it may be forced to take another gabillion-dollar payment from the Qatari government to continue operating.
United to Require Vaccinations on High-Risk Routes
United Airlines will require crew members to be fully vaccinated to work long-haul routes to countries it deems high-risk, for as long as the virus rates in those countries continue at their current pace. To begin, the airline will require crew members to be vaccinated in order to travel to India, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Argentina.
United is not requiring that most current on-board crew be vaccinated but is incentivizing them to do so with paid days off and priority to not work flights to or from Newark. New hires to the airline will be required to be vaccinated and based at Newark.
Beginning in August, UA will take away “pay-protection” from flight attendants scheduled to work a trip to one of the listed countries who are not vaccinated. United also said it will consider adding China and Taiwan to the list depending on the result of negotiations over crew restrictions while there.
Turkish Adds Dallas & Denver
Turkish Airlines is adding two U.S. cities to its route map — Dallas/Ft. Worth and Denver — it announced today in a detailed, comprehensive press release. The airline hasn’t yet announced service dates, schedules, aircraft types or frequencies yet for the new destinations, but other than that, it’s a very exciting announcement.
The two new cities give Turkish 12 destinations in the United States. Denver makes sense for Turkish as it’s a hub for United, its Star Alliance buddy, allowing for onward connections. When Turkish begins to fly to Denver, it will be the longest nonstop route served from the airport. This is the second transatlantic flight being added to Denver as Air France will begin flying 3x-weekly from Paris later this summer.
As for Dallas/Ft. Worth, this will be about connections beyond Istanbul, with DFW being a fortress hub for rival AA and oneworld. Both Emirates and Qatar already operate to the airport from the Middle East, plus AA has a JV with BA for flights across the Atlantic.
- Aeromexico received an extension on its deadline to file a restructuring plan in U.S. bankruptcy court to September 8.
- Air Transat ended its acquisition talks with Canadian media mogul Pierre Karl Péladeau.
- American has finally done it. Its Biscoff packages offered in-flight only contain one cookie and not two. Now we riot.
- Caribbean Air is reducing its fleet and route network to stave off a $26 million loss in Q1 2021.
- EW Discover received approval to operate to the United States.
- Frontier is putting its Covid Recovery Fee to good use, adding five new destinations out of Las Vegas, beginning this August: NW Arkansas (XNA), Bloomington, IL (BMI), Memphis, Madison, and Tucson.
- Finnair and Juneyao Air have entered into a joint business partnership beginning on July 1 where the two carriers will cooperate on the Helsinki-Shanghai route.
- Garuda Indonesia is ending its service to Melbourne and Perth.
- Hopscotch, an airline that never was, withdrew its application to the DOT to operate scheduled passenger service.
- Lao Airlines will begin domestic operations on June 25. We assume those domestic operations will be in Laos.
- LATAM Colombia is increasing its presence at Bogota to serve 15 domestic destinations this summer.
- Pivot Airlines is shifting to begin Dash 8-100 ops.
- Rex is again asking the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate Qantas and Virgin Australia for increasing capacity on routes it competes with Rex on. The airline is also asking the government to investigate the koalas in the country who are eating all the eucalyptus that some Rex employees had their eye on.
- Ryanair must be annoyed with someone in Finland, because the airline announced an expansion from Helsinki, growing to 29 weekly flights to eight destinations.
- T’way Air is r’estarting i’nternational flights this f’all.
Today we have a very special moment of levity from Airchive founder Chris Sloan’s son Caleb.
What do forks, knives, and spoons dress up with? Silverware!
Today’s takeover sponsored by:
