Sky Talk

U.S. airline employment up again

The Transportation Department says today that "U.S. scheduled passenger airlines employed 1.3 percent more workers in April 2007 than in April 2006, the third consecutive increase in full-time equivalent employee levels for the scheduled passenger carriers from the same month of the previous year."

The network carrier group, including American Airlines, showed a 0.7 percent decrease. "All other carriers combined" had a 5 percent increase.

Adding full-time-equivalent employees were: Continental, Alaska, Delta, US Airways, Southwest and all of the low-cost carriers except ATA, 10 regional carriers including American Eagle. American had a 1.5 percent drop.

-- Scott

Southwest to...Europe?

Southwest Airlines isn't making any secret of its interest in establishing international service through codeshares. It's just not being very specific. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Southwest's CEO, Gary Kelly, told a group of Baltimore business leaders that the airline plans service from the Baltimore-Washington airport to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe by 2009. Rather than launching its own flights -- the Boeing 737 wouldn't exactly be a very comfortable plane to try and puddle-jump across The Pond -- Southwest would offer routes through codeshare partners such as ATA. But a Southwest spokesman told S-T reporter David Wethe today that it isn't set in stone that BWI will become a launching pad for international service.

-- Scott

Love this competition thing

We're hunting today for airfares from North Texas to Chicago, a favorite playground of my family for years. The Windy City has never been among the most expensive routes out of here. But, you gotta love what competition has wrought for Metroplex travellers. For the week we're travelling in July, a cursory web search found $174 nonstop coach roundtrips on United and ATA and $181 on American. Southwest Airlines, which lately has been touting Dallas-Chicago Midway as a high-frequency route (12 flights on my departure day, including five connecting routes and seven one-stops with same-plane through-service), is offering $174. We're gone. Now, if we could only figure out why AA's promotional signs at Navy Pier are all in the image of the Boeing 747, a plane American hasn't flown in decades...

Scott