Winging It

We had a strong response to last week's report on theft from checked bags at PHL by US Airways passengers. Here's the link to today's column.

The federal government issued its monthly on-time performance report yesterday. Find the story here.

Philadelphia cab drivers have started a 48-hour strike that has created long lines at 30th St. Station. New York cabbies also are reported to be involved in a job action. Read what we know about the taxi strike.

Boeing is delaying the first flight of its next-generation long-range jet, the 787. Here's today's AP story.

Read what the FAA did today about its airspace redesign plan, which has generated strong local opposition. Find our story online tonight and in print tomorrow, using this link.

We've been meaning to alert those who may not see the Sunday Travel section to a good piece over the weekend by Al Borcover, the longtime travel editor at the Chicago Tribune. He lets the airlines say what they're doing to make flying better in this summer of delays, and has some response from others. Find the story here.

The agency has a Website devoted to the subject, where you can find a huge quantity of information, both technical and in plain English, on the problem FAA is trying to solve, and why it chose the alternative it did. Use this link to find it.

US Airways' board has figured out that it needed someone in charge of actually running the airline's operations on a daily basis, and found an industry veteran for the job. Read our story here. And read a little more about what the new man thinks in an Arizona Republic story.

News about PHL was plentiful last week. We did a roundup in this week's Road Warrior column that provides hope for the future. Link to the column here.

Sept. 11, 2001 is etched in our memories forever. On the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, two events in our region of interest to air travelers will mark the occasion in different ways. A roundup of all events in the region can be found here. Read on to learn more about the two special events.

The PHL administration and the City of Philadelphia will hold a ceremony at 1 p.m. in the Terminal B-C ticketing area. Remarks by city officials will be followed by a moment of silence and singing of the national anthem. The public and those who work at the airport are invited.

The other event is not open to the public but deserves recognition by anyone who flies on airlines because of who it honors. The Canadian Consultate of Philadelphia is hosting a breakfast in Center City honoring Claude Elliot, the mayor of Gander, Newfoundland. That's the city on Canada's northeastern shore, a longtime trans-Atlantic stopover point in the days before jets, where dozens of flights were forced to land in the first hours after the attacks. The notice of the event here tomorrow says why Mr. Elliot was invited better than we can, so here it is verbatim:

"The Canadian Consulate in Philadelphia and local community and business leaders will pay tribute to Mayor Elliott and the people of Gander for the hospitality they extended to passengers from some 40 nations, including several from the Delaware Valley. Mayor Elliott will share his recollections of his city’s emergency response to 9-11. For nearly a week the people of Gander, at their own expense, opened their homes, schools and churches to house 6,595 unexpected guests, cooked meals, rounded up bedding, provided ground transportation and free telephone service to passengers coping with both disruption of their travel and the emotions of 9-11. The tremendous outpouring came despite potential risk to the residents' personal safety, since both U.S. and Canadian authorities initially suspected additional terrorists might be aboard the incoming flights."

What more can we say but thank you.

We have just added what we believe will be a valuable feature to the Road Warrior blog. You will find PHL information, updated minute-by-minute, from www.flightstats.com just below the ad in the right-hand column. Check it out and let us know what you think.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey, who's about to leave her job to work for the aerospace industry, says limits on flights by airlines should be considered as a way to reduce flight delays. Read more about what she said in Washington yesterday here.

US Airways says it's run out of furloughed pilots to call back to work, requiring it to hire new ones. This is part of a trend of major carriers adding pilots and flight attendants, or calling them back to work from furlough. Read more here.

The competition in the PHL-Boston air-travel market is about as strong as it gets these days. Besides US Airways to Logan, Delta's Comair commuter unit will start flights in November. Southwest keeps the pressure on fares with flights to nearby Providence and Manchester while avoiding Logan congestion. AirTran now has given up, saying it was losing money. Read a litte more about the Atlanta-based carrier's decision here.

Your federal government churns out data to the public weekly about airline and airport traffic and airline service. The reports by the Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics and consumer affairs division are an important source for us as we monitor the business. A traffic report for the first half of 2007 was released today. While it doesn't cover July and August, it provides a good, early glimpse of what has contributed to air-traffic delays this summer: The trend is up for most measures of how many people are flying, the airports they're using and the number of flights scheduled. If you're seriously interested in statistics, and watching trends over time, use this link to find a BTS press release with links to tables that tell the story.

We received information about a meeting tonight of a group concerned about noise of PHL air traffic. We've not received notices like this before but we will post them here if we do. Here are the details we have:

Haddonfield/SJ Aircraft Noise Coalition Meeting, 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 13

Haddonfield Borough Hall Auditorium, 242 Kings Highway East

Questions, contact Mike Bonnette at mbbonnette@comcast.net

Southwest Airlines has some mighty savvy folks working in its public relations department. The airline has turned the tables on the TV talk-show jokes about a recent incident in which it asked a young woman to cover up her legs while on board a flight because a gate agent thought her mini-skirt was too revealing. The embarrassed passenger, Kyla Ebbert, covered her legs with a blanket, but later showed she wasn't all that shy by talking to reporters and appearing on TV to show off the offending garment.

Today, Southwest used the incident to make the most of a routine announcement of a round of fare discounting -- something the airline does weekly. CEO Gary Kelly issued an apology to Ebbert as she taped the show. A bit later, Southwest put these words in Kelly's mouth in a news release announcing the fare sale:

"Some have said we've gone from loving hot pants to having hot flashes but nothing could be further from the truth. The publicity caught us with our pants down, quite frankly. The story has such great legs, but we have an even better sense of humor, so we're going to jump out there and lower our fares to match the mini-skirts we've all been hearing so much about."

What a good way to start the weekend!

Here are links to Southwest's press release and to the overplayed, overdone CNN story on YouTube that prompted Southwest's response.

Today's Road Warrior column is all about making the most of packed airline cabins. Find it here.

Airline service? No news on that today, but the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported this morning that the airline's second quarter was the best in seven years -- for making money. The quarter was the fifth in a row that the industry has made money, the longest streak since 2000. Read the details in a BTS news release.

We heard from two unhappy frequent fliers today about a change in US Airways' Dividend Miles program, requiring more miles to ugrade to first class. If you haven't been notified by e-mail about the changes, read about it on the Dividend Miles portion of the Website.

Back in April, we reported on a startup airline, Silverjet, that has all-business class service between Newark and London. We featured it because it's the only one of this new breed of carrier, offering premium seating and service at a lower fare than the major carriers in business class, that flies to London from Newark. Most PHL-based travelers are unlikely to schlep to Kennedy to catch one of the other new ones. Now Silverjet says it's been successful enough that it's adding a second roundtrip daily between Newark and its base at London Luton Airport, starting Sunday, and a new route, London to Dubai, in November. Silverjet says the daily roundtrips to one of the Middle East's fastest-growing areas are the first service by one of the all-business class airlines beyond trans-Atlantic routes. Read the April story about Silverjet . The airline's Website is www.flysilverjet.com.

Wind shear, one of the most dangerous weather phenomenons airlines face, is a suspected cause of the crash of a One Two Go Airlines jet in Phuket, Thailand. Airline observers also are concerned about safety standards at the crop of new low-cost airlines that have proliferated in Asia in recent years. Read more about the accident here.

Amtrak says its rolling food-and-beverage carts have been a big hit and they will be added to more Acela trains that stop in Philadelphia. The carts have been used on some European trains for years, with the attendant rolling it up to your seat for service. Read more details in an Amtrak news release. M/p>

Southwest plans an annoucement tomorrow about its boarding and seating policies. Are assigned seats coming ? Our best guess is no. Seems like too big a leap, although we've been wrong a time or two before. Look for the airline to be adopting a more orderly process for boarding each flight, based on a "position" number based on when you checked in. This is the experiment we told you about on Aug. 8, with a link to a story in the San Antonio Express-News . Bloomberg News also reports today that Southwest may drop its policy of allowing passengers traveling with small children to board first, so perhaps that's what the announcement tomorrow is all about. Check here for details when we get them.

Just as we anticipated yesterday, Southwest is not changing its open-seating policy, but is tweaking the process to make boarding more orderly. Read the news release the airline posted on its Website here.

Thursday update: MarketWatch did a complete story on Southwest's decision. Find it with this link.

The U.S. House passed a bill yesterday to reauthorize the FAA for four years that was loaded with provisions that affect air travelers. Here's the basic FAA story by the AP in Washington. We'll be reporting more about several topics in the measure in coming days and weeks.

We take a look in today's Road Warrior column at how House-passed legislation may help passengers and airline employees. Read the details here.

Breaking news... US Airways won tentative approval from federal regulators today to start service between Philadelphia and China, starting in 2009, . The flights would be the only nonstop service to Asia from the region. The U.S. Department of Transportation announced that US Airways, the dominant carrier at Philadelphia International Airport, would be one of six airlines that could start new routes to Chinese cities in 2008 or 2009, after a period of public comment. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said in a statement that final decisions on the route awards would be made “in the near future” after the comment period.

US Airways said it would use widebodied Airbus A340, a long-range airplane that it doesn’t have in its fleet now, for daily flights between Philadelphia and Beijing, China’s capital. The exact date the service is expected to start wasn’t announced. US Airways will start each daily flight at its largest hub, in Charlotte, N.C., the airline said. US Airways chief executive Doug Parker thanked Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina officials for their endorsement of the airline’s application to the Transportation Department.

Delta Air Lines won the right to start flights between Atlanta and Shanghai immediately. United Airlines got permission to serve San Francisco to Guangzhou in 2008. Joining US Airways in 2009 will be American Airlines, flying Chicago-Beijing; Continental Airlines, flying Newark-Shanghai; and Northwest Airlines, flying Detroit-Shanghai.

Amtrak has restored service between Philadelphia and Wilmington that was suspended this morning. Delays are still possible because of restricted speeds on the line. The service was disrupted because of an overturned truck on I-95 that caught fire and spilled debris on the tracks below. Check with Amtrak.com for updates as the day goes on.

Philadelphia business leaders and tourism promoters are eagerly anticipating nonstop flights by US Airways to China in 2009. Read our full story about the feds decision yesterday here.

News related to airline service and delays keeps coming from Washington. The Transportation Department's inspector general weighed in with a report calling for airlines to limit how long passengers can be stranded on planes at airports. Find a news story about the IG's report here.

More interesting and provocative is testimony delivered today to the House Subcommittee on Aviation by Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, based in Radnor, Pa., a forward thinker on issues related to airlines and their customers. Mitchell says we need to find new ideas and solutions to the air-traffic congestion and delay problem, lest the whole system grind to a halt in a few years Read more about his thoughts at this link.

The president weighed in for the first time yesterday on the airline flight-delay problem. Read what the administration said in this story . At other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, airline executives were telling Congress what they think about the issue.