Read the rest of the story from Bloomberg News.

Air Transport World reports, “Oberstar said in a statement that DOJ “had little choice” but to approve the UA/CO combination owing to the “very narrow set of criteria” current US law allows it to use to make judgments on airline mergers. He said there is a “need to give broader authority over such mergers to the Department of Transportation, allowing DOT to consider such factors as the impact a merger will have on service to communities and customers, as well as the effect the merger could have on the industry as a whole.”

Read the rest here.

Read the rest of the story here.

1. Flightview map. A live, visual display of Springfield’s incoming and outgoing flights. Similar to our web version, but more spiffy.
2. Animated radar loop of weather in the lower 48.
3. Map showing major airport delays in the lower 48.

Enjoy.

Now just in case you’ve forgotten, or don’t know, Allegiant flies directly from Springfield to five destinations: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Orlando and Tampa/St. Petersburg. You can often find round-trip fares for less than $200.

See the top 100 list here.

• July 2010 total passengers: 84,152
• July 2009 total passengers: 84,079

We were up a tad this July, but our monthly growth is essentially flat. For the year we’re down three percent, compared to the same seven month period last year. Our best guess is that we’ll finish the year flat, or down a couple of percentage points. Air freight numbers are another story…

The bulk of air freight is flown by Federal Express and United Parcel Service. We view the air freight numbers as a sort of economic barometer. The more freight that moves, the better we figure the local and national economies are doing.

• July 2010 total freight in pounds: 2,336,878
• July 2009 total freight in pounds: 1,097,426

As you can see, freight was up twelve percent. It’s been going up steadily since the first of the year. To give you an idea of just how bad the freight numbers were… In March 2009 freight was down 49 percent!

As always, you can dive into the numbers by clicking here.

Airline news has, indeed, been rosy of late. But most of the business press gets only half the story. Here’s what’s not being widely reported:

Airline labor is extremely unhappy. Pay cuts. Benefits cuts. Staff cuts. All the cutting has undoubtedly helped the bottom line, but it’s been at the expense of employees. Some predict that labor will get its revenge through strikes.

At best, the economic recovery is uncertain. This means uncertainty for the airlines (yes, that a “duh” point, but no one seems to get it).

The airlines continue to heap abuse on their customers. The brewing backlash could clobber the airlines where it hurts most: the bottom line. As aviation consultant Michael Boyd recently wrote:

It’s not that airlines don’t have the right to charge for what they deliver. They do, regardless of phony tantrums thrown by Senator Schumer who’s jealous that he can’t tax a lot of the new fees - yet. But it’s how airlines do it that could send the Pope to a Valium bottle. There are the incredibly dumb rules [inflicted] on both passengers and line employees (assuming they have any). Any little change to an itinerary - even just a two hour flight change - can mean hundreds of dollars in penalties. ‘Cept these charges aren’t called penalties. They’re dubbed as “service fees” - which is like describing jail time as a short term vacation. Any variation, and the consumer can get nailed. A particularly opportunistic one is the fee for getting on an earlier flight - when the customer is at the airport already and the earlier flight is nearly empty. The whole process is beginning to be perceived as if the ticket is just the down payment - if you don’t want to be uncomfortable, you’ll have to pay more…Unless things change, and soon….One word, Benjamin: Re-regulation. Bank on it, consumers are starting to revolt, and may rush into the open cloak of Washington charlatans like Schumer. Then everybody loses…

Just what we need to make matters…er..uh…, more interesting, Congress is trying to involve itself!

Read the rest of the story here.