Delta Airlines has received two doses of bad news in the last couple of days.  First, Japan Airlines decided to stick with an alliance with American rather than switch to one with Delta on Monday, and then just yesterday, the Department of Transportation made a ruling on the Delta proposed slot-swap deal with US Airways.  [...]

Delta Airlines has announced new non-stop service to Grand Cayman of the Cayman Islands will commence on June 12.  The airline will offer once-weekly Saturday flights between the two cities on Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

This new service to the Cayman Islands compliments Delta Airlines current Cayman service out of their hub in Atlanta.

Reports from Japan are that the leadership of Japan Airlines has decided to stick with their One World Alliance instead of jumping ship and joining SkyTeam.  This is an enormous coup for American Airlines, a founding airline partner of One World.  However, it is a disappointment for SkyTeam member and world’s largest airline Delta Airlines.

Both [...]

Delta Airlines and it’s global airline alliance SkyTeam have offered an aid package of $1 billion to struggling Japan Airlines, JAL.  Immediately, though, current OneWorld partner with JAL, American Airlines, said that together with other OneWorld partners British Airways and Iberia, they would top that offer of aid hoping to convince JAL to stick with [...]

Although airline mergers are always percolating in the industry rumor mill, there has been a noticeable uptick in recent weeks as analysts talk about possible tie-ups. With the acquisition last year of Northwest Airlines by Delta Airlines looking like it should be a success, creating the world’s largest airline, and capacity still over-pacing demand, the [...]

United Airlines has let an agreement for regional flying with Mesa to expire resulting in yet another blow to the beleagured regional airline.  United Airlines will no longer utilize 26 CRJ-200 50-passenger regional jets operated by Mesa Airlines for their connection service by April 2010. 

Bad news continues to work against Mesa Airlines.  It seems their string of [...]

Delta Airlines has suspended a group of Pilots for two incidents in two days that occurred near the end of their respective flights. 

The first incident was with a Delta Airlines Boeing 767 arriving in Atlanta from Rio de Janeiro in the pre-dawn hours.  The pilots were cleared for a normal landing on the usual 27R [...]

Delta Airlines has announced schedule changes for next summer that will increase cooperation with Air France/KLM, Alaska Airlines and capitalize on additional synergies with former Northwest Airlines that it acquired last fall. 

This summer schedule and changes is the first fully combined schedule since merging with Northwest Airlines.  The new routes will be trans-Pacific, trans-Atlantic & Africa.  [...]

Mokulele, owned by Republic Airways and go!, owned by Mesa Airlines joined forces today to cooperate but operate both Hawaiian inter-island carriers as one entity, but under both brand names.  Some details of the deal are still uncertain, but the terms include Mesa owning 75% of the combined carrier and Republic owning 25%. 

This comes after go! [...]

Below is  a recap of U.S. airlines September operational performance.  There was a delay since Southwest did not release their figures until this morning.

AirTran – Capacity up 7.2%; Traffic up 11.0%; Load Factor 77.0%
Alaska – Capcity down 1.4%; Traffic up 1.4%; Load Factor 77.9%
Allegiant – Capacity up 50.2%; Traffic up 46.1%; Load Factor 85.2%
American – [...]

Japan Airlines has decided to put current discussions about investment and cooperation with Delta Airlines and American Airlines on hold.  JAL is struggling to implement an aggressive but much needed restructuring to stave off continuing record breaking losses. 

This is good news for American Airlines and the Oneworld airline alliance as it keeps JAL in their [...]

Olympic Airlines went away earlier this year and is being reborn as a new carrier with a slightly shorter name – Olympic Air.  Many changes are taking place as the new carrier is being readied for October 1 launch of service. 

Olympic Air, bought by an investment holding company, will no longer offer long-haul routes at [...]

A new code-sharing agreement was announed late last week between Olympic Air of Greece and Delta Airlines, the world’s largest airline.  The two airlines will code-share on the New York JFK to Athens route allowing the two airlines to partner on scheduling, capacity, pricing and operations.  The Greek carrier also says it is soon to [...]

The stakes just got raised in the Japan Airlines partner negotiations.  Until now, it was Delta Airlines, the world’s largest, combined with fellow SkyTeam partners Air France/KLM that seemed to hold many of the cards in their quest to get JAL to jump ship from OneWorld and join SkyTeam.  But now, American, for a while [...]

Since the announcement earlier today that Air France/KLM were working with Delta on a possible investment in Japan Airlines, it was expected that British Airways would join their OneWorld partner American Airlines to try to sweeten their offer to attempt to keep JAL in OneWorld. 

It is possible, if the Delta & Air France/KLM offer of [...]

Joining the talks with Japan Airlines about possible cash infusion, stake buying and code-sharing, Air France/KLM have upped the ante.  The European airline group is looking to also infuse much needed cash into Japan Airlines in return for a stake of the company as well as an agreement to coordinate through code-share and SkyTeam alliance [...]

Now that the U.S. SkyTeam partner has changed with the Delta Airlines acquisition of Northwest Airlines last year, we thought it would be good to take a look at the current make-up of the SkyTeam airline alliance.  No longer a Northwest/KLM venture, SkyTeam has been changing as the face of the global airline industry has [...]