The Main Squawk: Delta settles for the Bronze at the Paris 2024 Olympics
Delta has always been proud of itself for being the airline of choice for Team USA. Over the past year and a half, it prepared for this summer’s Olympics by increasing capacity, retrofitting part of its aging 756 fleet with luxurious cabins for athletes, and by hiding a few GHG pills and genetically-modified steroids in seat-back pockets for those in need. (They even sprinkled a little Viagra in seatback pockets throughout the fleet, but the rumor is that those are for the pilots. Athletes wouldn’t need that kind of help, unless you’re Lance Armstrong, in which case that’s understandable.)
Unfortunately, Delta overestimated the Olympic-sized passenger volume between the U.S. and Paris. While the Company had a strong second quarter, it’s starting the second-half of the year with a $100 million loss. It appears the traveling public did an about-face and is avoiding Paris for the majority of the summer flying season.
How could this be? The Olympics have long brought an economic boom to host cities, and Paris is no exception. But even on a good day, Paris rarely has surplus accommodations for visitors. This creates a basic supply and demand problem. If demand goes up but supply remains fixed, prices skyrocket. And that’s exactly what happened.
The lesson? Airfare isn’t the only thing that customer look at when considering travel abroad.
American slid a proposal across the table to its flight attendants. Contractual improvements include pay rates higher than the cabin crew’s counterparts at Delta, boarding pay, and an annual 2% wage increase over the lifetime of the contract.
Negotiations between the Company and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) have intensified recently as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has taken more of stance in the matter. The Secretary’s intervention prompted a rare weekend meeting and amplified the contract to over $1 billion in value.
The offer was immediately turned down by the union. Among the benefits missing from the proposal were an increase in per diem and retro pay.
United loses another tire on departure from LAX. This comes on the heels of a separate incident where a tire fell off a Boeing 777 that departed SFO earlier this year.
The rumor at United TechOps is that the technician who installed the tire on the Boeing 777 in SFO was transferred to LAX following the incident. He will now be transferred to DEN where a subsequent incident is anticipated.
Alaska added eighteen routes and three new destinations to its upcoming winter operation. Its newest destination is Vail, C.O., while Monterrey and La Paz see returning service after long hiatus. The new flying ranges from Kelowna, B.C. (Canada) to Los Angeles, Kansas City, M.O. to Puerto Vallarta, and Orlando to Boise, which is sure to prompt pilots to alter their bidding strategy, only to find out that Vail will be served by one of its Regional counterparts in the ERJ-175.
Breeze is adding service to Portsmouth, N.H. and Montrose, C.O.
Korean Air is nearing a Boeing 777X purchase.
Southwest welcomed the former-CEO of US Airways, Rakesh Gangwal, to its Board of Directors.
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