ATA airline goes out of business suddenly

[Broomstick]

Well, there were few very highly publicized accidents in that time frame involving turboprops and icing (one crashed not to far from where I now live, actually). The problems had more to do with the size of the planes, the icing conditions, and the fact that the designers, while they more than accounted for weather conditions in their country of origin, did not really make an airframe adequate for the northern US in winter. These planes are still used in the US, but from October to May you will only find them used in the southern half of North America. Nonetheless, they gave turboprops a bad name for awhile, a reputation jet manufacturers and airlines made no effort to dispel.

Of course, in my case you're talking about someone who flies 65 year old prop driven planes composed largely of wood and fabric. Not to mention the amateur built aircraft I've flown. Needless to say, I operate form a totally different paradigm than the general public when it comes to acceptable aircraft.

[Wicked Pilot]

Maybe the people who got stranded should count themselves lucky and consider using bigger airlines, or at least the most profitable ones.

No one has ever died on an ATA flight, and by the looks of it no one ever will. Southwest and JetBlue also have zero fatalities to their names.

[Broomstick]

Maybe the people who got stranded should count themselves lucky and consider using bigger airlines, or at least the most profitable ones.

No one has ever died on an ATA flight, and by the looks of it no one ever will. Southwest and JetBlue also have zero fatalities to their names.

Actually, Southwest did have a fatality in an accident at Chicago Midway airport in December of 2005. A B-737 landed downwind on a runway with 8 inches of snow, a runway of somewhat short length for that airplane in the best of conditions. Unfortunately, said airplane ran out of pavement, crashed through the perimeter fence, and came to rest on top of two cars in an intersection of two streets during rush hour. A young boy in the back seat of of one of cars was crushed to death.

One of the more memorable moments of the accident was when the boy's father hauled his bloodied self out of the smashed car, climbed up on the roof, and pounded on the window of the cockpit, screaming at the pilots to get get their airplane off his kids. A rather horrifying scene in many ways.

We had a discussion about it in this thread but I notice you did not contibute, Wicked. Perhaps you were away on business at the time?

While technically it was not someone ON a Southwest flight, it clearly was a fatality associated with a Southwest flight. In any case - that accident had nothing to do with maintenance. It was clearly a bad combination of airport infrastructure shortcomings and poor weather. Which is another topic entirely though no less important for safety.

[Wicked Pilot]

I was deployed at the time so no I would not have contributed. As far as pax and mx goes Southwest still has remarkable safety record, though comparing such records among airlines is somewhat futile given that the differences are statistically insignificant.

[J]

And another airline goes bankrupt.

New York Times

Frontier Airlines Files for Bankruptcy Protection

By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Published: April 12, 2008

Frontier Airlines on Friday became the latest budget carrier to file for bankruptcy protection, but the airline promised to continue normal operations.

Frontier, based in Denver, said it had filed for protection after its main credit card processor tried to hold back substantial proceeds from its tickets sales. But the airline said it would continue to operate its full schedule of flights and honor ticket reservations.

“To be clear, we filed for very different reasons than those of other recent carriers, and our customers and employees can be confident that we intend to keep on flying and providing outstanding service and products,” Sean Menke, Frontier president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. He said the airline promised to continue “normal operations throughout our reorganization process.”

On Wednesday, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, a long-haul budget carrier that tried to offer premium service and spacious seats at low prices, suddenly went into liquidation and canceled all flights. At that time, it was the fourth budget carrier worldwide to halt operations over a period of a week and a half. The series of bankruptcies could undermine travelers’ confidence in budget airlines.

The high price of jet fuel has taken a heavy toll on the airline industry and particularly on low-margin discount carriers. The other three to shut down since March 31, all in the United States, are Aloha Airgroup, ATA Airlines and Skybus Airlines.

“We felt that Frontier would be able to withstand the challenges confronting the U.S. airline industry, which include unprecedented and significant increases in the cost of jet fuel and the impact of the credit crisis in the financial markets, without seeking bankruptcy protection,” Mr. Menke said in the statement.

Frontier said that it is in its 14th year of operation, and that it offers routes linking its Denver hub to 70 destinations.

In the case of Oasis, the bankruptcy filing stranded thousands of passengers in Hong Kong, London and Vancouver. Many of the would-be passengers stuck in Hong Kong were children trying to return to British boarding schools after spring break.

Unlike the others, they're still running and hoping to reorganize.

[Admiral Valdemar]

One in Hong Kong too and I believe Alitalia is still on the edge of a knife with their finances.

[ShadowRider77]

One in Hong Kong too and I believe Alitalia is still on the edge of a knife with their finances.

Actually, Alitalia is not 'on the edge' - it is practically over already. In this case, though, the reasons are not related to the market, but rather to faulty administration. Alitalia had, and retains, very good pilots and maintenance, but it has been strangled by massive hiring of people whose only title was that they were 'recommended' by some political party (a right-wing one specifically, in this case), and paralyzed by a plethora of unions, some of them actually small in size, but concentrated on specific sectors of the company, like maintenance, and consequently able to effectively shutting off all activity whenever they decided to.

The above led, obviously, on overspending on one side, and bad service on the other (Alitalia was dubbed as "The world's most expensive low-cost airline", but it is not fair: I've flown Alitalia and I've flown many low-cost companies, and the latter treated me much better...)

For years now, Alitalia has survived only thanks to huge transfusions of public money, until EU called a stop to this, stating that Italy had to let Alitalia fly or fall on its own wings (quite literally in this case...).

Alitalia's future looks anyway bleak. Until now the only serious buyer (because the company's finances are so ruined that there is no way it could recope. Actually, it is very likely to fail within a few months, except if someone buys it and injects huge amounts of money in its finances...) is Air France/KLM (there was another proposal, by an Italian airline, but they had not the money to save the company, their plan was indeed based on another injection of public money...), and they were very interested (due to the aforementioned good quality of the pilots and maintenance sectors...), but the negotiations went to shit due to the aforementioned unions (there were no less than 8 at the table, and they were just those who managed to sneak in...) placing impossible conditions and threatening paralisys if they were not fully met. The situation was complicated by the electoral campaing, since Mr. Berlusconi, whom many predict will be premier again from Monday, has repeatedly stated that "Alitalia must stay in Italian hands", and claiming that he knew of "Italian entrepeneurs ready to acquire and save the company!" (said entrepeneurs until now failed to materialize). Anyway, Air France's CEO tried for a week to find a compromise, then finally decided he had his balls stuffed full and left the table (and I actually admire his perseverance. No, really. On hearing what the unions were demanding, with threats and all, I would have invited everyone to go and fuck themselves after less than one hour...), so now Alitalia has a huge deficit, is running with constant monthly losses, and has no buyer.

There would be other things to say (Alitalia's history of the past few decades looks more like a soap opera than a business model...), but the above is the current picture. My prediction is that, should Berlusconi win the elections Sunday, he will just throw more public money in Alitalia to keep it floating, and will ignore the EU as long as he can (the worst they can do for this is a fine, and mr. Berlusconi is not particularily concerned in spending public money...). So, we will have the apparent paradox of a left-wing, thus supposedly assistentialist, government that was actually following the market and letting the company fend for itself, and of a righ-wing, self-proclaiming 'market-driven' government that will pour public money in a failing company to keep it artificially alive...