The Tribune reports this morning that some groundskeeping duties at O'Hare will soon get turned over to a herd of goats:

The city's Department of Aviation is expected to announce Wednesday that it has awarded a contract to Central Commissary Holdings LLC — operator of Lincoln Park restaurant Butcher & The Burger — to bring about 25 goats onto airport property, helping the airport launch its pilot vegetation-management program.

Joseph Arnold, partner at Butcher & The Burger, said the goats now live on a farm in Barrington Hills and will make "the perfect lawn mowers" for the city's largest airport.

In about a month, Arnold said, the goats will be delivered to O'Hare and begin their task of munching away at overgrown greenery. According to the city's request for bids last fall, the animals will be expected to clear about 23 square meters of vegetation per day.

Apparently the goats can go up and down embankments a lot easier than the lawnmowers they currently use.

Time to drop by Butcher & the Burger.

Krugman summarizes why we still have massive unemployment even though all the Serious People say we should be in a recovery:

Part of the answer surely lies in the widespread desire to see economics as a morality play, to make it a tale of excess and its consequences. We lived beyond our means, the story goes, and now we’re paying the inevitable price. Economists can explain ad nauseam that this is wrong, that the reason we have mass unemployment isn’t that we spent too much in the past but that we’re spending too little now, and that this problem can and should be solved. No matter; many people have a visceral sense that we sinned and must seek redemption through suffering — and neither economic argument nor the observation that the people now suffering aren’t at all the same people who sinned during the bubble years makes much of a dent.

The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.

Meanwhile, we in the U.S. are making sure the planes run on time even while Head Start and food stamps are crunched. It makes me proud to be a 'Murcan.

Two seemingly-unrelated stories this morning outline how Republican-led spending cuts have reached diminishing returns. First, from New Republic, it turns out that when you cut the FAA's budget by 6% suddenly, you get airline delays:

As you probably have heard, the FAA has responded to the automatic cuts by furloughing air traffic controllers—that is, ordering them to take extra days off, without pay. With fewer controllers watching over the skies, fewer airplanes can travel at one time. The FAA says staffing shortages from the furloughs led to the delay of about 1,200 flights on Monday and another 1,000 on Tuesday. The first day of delays appear to have affected the Northeast and Southern California. Since then, delays have spread to other cities, including Tampa and Las Vegas. Overall, the interruptions actually seem less severe than some experts had predicted. But the waits are expected to get worse over the summer, once travel increases.

In an ideal world, this would shake Republican faith in sequestration as an acceptable budget policy. They’d start discussions about replacing it with some other deficit reduction plan—ideally, one that didn’t rely so exclusively on immediate and arbitrary spending cuts. This, of course, is not the way Republicans are reacting. Instead, they and their allies keep insisting that the delays are the result of Obama Administration deception and opportunism. Under the headline, “The Manufactured Sequester Crisis,” National Review’s Veronique de Rugy writes that her recent flight from Washington to New York was on time—and wonders whether, like last month’s predictions of longer security lines, the delays will turn out to be illusory. Over at the Wall Street Journal opinion page, the editors aren’t questioning whether the delays are real. Instead, they write, President Barack Obama could spare air travelers the delay by ordering the FAA to shuffle funds differently and make necessary cuts. On Capitol Hill, Republicans are making the very same argument: If air traffic is slowing down, they say, it’s because the Obama Administration wants it that way, in order to make a political point.

It's Obama's fault for spending too much money, Obama's fault for not spending enough, Obama's fault for following the law, Obama's fault for not following the law...isn't everyone tired of GOP blamestorming yet?

Then this load of crap from the Washington Post:

This year, the government will spend at least $890,000 on service fees for bank accounts that are empty. At last count, Uncle Sam has 13,712 such accounts with a balance of zero.

Right now, about 7 percent of the 202,000 government grant accounts are devoid of money. These sit on the books, costing about $5.42 per month. The service fees are the same, whether an account is full or empty.

Oh my god! Five dollars a month!

But still, one might ask, why haven't the affected agencies closed these empty accounts? Maybe because they can't afford the staff time to do it. So, yes, let's immediately suspend every other program and direct thousands of staff hours (and therefore hundreds of thousands of dollars) at this horrible problem of empty grant accounts.

Then, buried in the two pages of indignant squawking about government waste, writer David A. Fahrenthold mentions in passing that all those account fees go back to the government. That's right, the grant accounts are government accounts. So this $890,000 in "wasted" money is actually an inter-department transfer—an accounting item.

Want to cut government waste? How about starting with the $2 trillion we spent on our wars since 2001. Want to have an effective government? That's not a question Republicans, or the Washington Post, really want to answer.

The Chicago Tribune reported this morning that, 8 years into the O'Hare Modernization Project, some nearby residents are horrified to learn they might get more noise:

Residents of Edgebrook, Sauganash, Forest Glen, North Park and other Northwest Side Chicago communities are up in arms over the impending increases in noise pollution, which were forecast in Chicago Department of Aviation environmental impact documents in 2005, the same year the Federal Aviation Administration approved the city's O'Hare runway expansion plan.

In addition to the impact on city residents, some suburban neighborhoods that have been spared from low-altitude jet noise are in store for louder environs.

A major shift in airplane noise patterns, known as noise contours, will take place beginning Oct. 17 when the next new runway — 10 Center/28 Center, located south of the passenger terminals — opens as part of the O'Hare Modernization Program. The addition of the runway will trigger a shift to a mostly eastbound and westbound flow of planes approaching and departing O'Hare, accompanied by reduced use of three diagonally aligned crosswind runways, the FAA said.

Uh, yeah. Airplanes will fly over houses 3 km from O'Hare, just as they have for, oh, 70 years. However, airplanes today are much quieter than even 10 years ago, so the noise footprints have gotten a lot smaller since the environmental study came out in 2005.

Still, airport noise complaints baffle me. No one living under the runway 28 departure path at O'Hare suffers more noise pollution now than in 2003, when the O'Hare Modernization Program kicked off. Why are they just complaining now?

Yesterday American's scheduling and ticketing systems went offline around 11:00 CDT. By noon CDT, the Dallas Morning News had this:

“American’s reservation and booking tool, Sabre, is offline,” American spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said at midday. “We’re working to resolve the issue as quickly as we can. We apologize to our customers for any inconvenience.” (American subsequently absolved Sabre of any blame. ”We apologize to Sabre & customers for confusion.”)

She confirmed that the problem is causing some delays of American flights.

Shortly after, American grounded all of its flights for about three hours before getting its networks talking to each other around 3pm CDT.

I found out about this crash while stepping off the BART at SFO. My dad texted, "Are you affected by the AA ground halt?" Talk about a WTF? moment.

I was affected, but I'm happy to report that (a) I got to SFO shortly before American resolved the problem, and (b) American's gate agents had their crap together and got everyone out as quickly as possible. I was only 30 minutes late arriving at O'Hare.

American hasn't explained what happened yet; the Dallas Morning News has a theory...

ICYMI:

• James Fallows looks at United Airlines diverting a flight because a passenger complained.
• I found a blog about urban sustainability I probably won't have time to read, even though it's interesting.
• The Cubs have been in first place all season. (They're 2-1.)
• This is the coldest April opening in 20 years, with Saturday's predicted 19°C temperature the warmest Chicago will have been in 18 weeks.
• Singer-songwriter Antje Duvekot has a new video.

Back to the mines.

First, TPM on why the FAA closed contract towers and how this is in fact the fault of the very people complaining about them:

Sequestration is hitting the Department of Transportation like almost every other cabinet-level department. But unlike other departments, most of its employees work for one agency — the Federal Aviation Administration — and most of that agency’s employees are air traffic controllers.

Because of that, sequestration is forcing FAA to furlough employees, institute a hiring freeze and shutter 149 contractor-operated air-traffic control towers around the country.

It’s that last effect that makes members of Congress, particularly Republicans, so nervous. And since, percentage-wise, contractors are facing larger cuts than other other FAA activities and operations, they’re claiming that the cuts are designed to create a political headache for members of Congress — not to comply with sequestration’s spending cut requirements or safety provisions elsewhere in federal law.

The Chicago area had two important closures, at Waukegan and Gary, the two closest lakefront towers. There are now no air traffic control towers observing Lake Michigan south of Racine, Wisconsin. Republicans are whinging about ATC tower closures because it's a visible effect of the sequester, and people might ask embarrassing questions.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Samoa Air has started charging passengers by weight:

IT’S an issue that has often been proposed in the darker corners of the world’s aviation forums. And now Samoa Air has decided to become the world's first airline to charge passengers according to their weight. No matter if you're a skinny 6'8 (203cm), a muscular 6'0 or a chubby 5'3: if you weigh a lot, you pay a lot. Flyers declare their weight (including luggage) when booking their tickets and pay an amount per kilo. The per-kilo price depends on the length of the flight. Scales at check-in should ensure that passengers have not misrepresented their size.

Since airplanes use fuel based on weight and distance, this makes a lot of sense—particularly when you understand that most Samoans have BMIs over 30.

Yeah, I kind of saw this coming, but it still pisses me off:

The U.S. trustee overseeing American Airlines' bankruptcy has asked the carrier to justify its offer of $19.9 million in severance pay to Chief Executive Tom Horton, part of compensation linked to its merger with US Airways Group.

American spokesman Andy Backover said in a statement the carrier did not believe the objection filed by the U.S. Trustee's office had merit. The matter is scheduled to be considered by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court on March 27.

The company said the proposed employee arrangements were found to be reasonable by pay consultants retained by its unsecured creditors committee.

Let's review. Horton's contributions to American Airlines included:

• Pissing off the pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics so much that their unions approached US Airways independently to start merger talks;
• Changed the classic livery of the airline for no reason any thinking person could discern;
• ...

Well, that's all I can see, and I've spent about 300 hours on their airplanes since he took the job. Seems like he's worth $20 million to me!

And those "pay consultants?" Three guesses who signed the checks. Any "pay consultant" who finds that the executive paying him is himself paid too much doesn't deserve the title.

Given events like these, it boggles the mind that people think corporate executives are thieves.

I'm just a day from losing my mind (or "loosing," to all you Facebookers out there), a day from my workload returning to normal levels, and a day from deploying Weather Now to a test instance in Azure. Then, maybe, I'll have time to take all these in:

• Andrew Mason got fired from his billion-dollar CEO job at Groupon.
• Because of human-caused climate change, the National Aeronautic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will start mapping more of the ice-free arctic soon.
• WBEZ wonders if our recent snow is helping our drought; Illinois state climatologist Jim Angel weighs in as well.
• Air New Zealand has a new safety video.
• Antje Duvekot has a new song out.

Watch this space for a sneak preview of Weather Now 4.0, possibly tomorrow. The GetWeather utility has run with only minor hitches for a week, and with two more (quick) bug fixes it's ready for production. That just leaves about 6 hours of work to move the ASP.NET application up to Azure...and then, you get to beta test it. If all goes well I'll cut over to Azure on the 9th or 10th, and finally—finally!—retire my last two servers.

Redondo Beach, Calif., resident Andrew Toth has build a mock-up of a 1970s-era jumbo:

The new cabin - about 60 feet long, stretching from the airplane's nose to the front of the wing - is an almost exact replication of a 1970s and '80s vintage 747.

In addition to first class, Toth installed 26 powder blue seats in what was called Clipper Class - a premium economy class section with extra legroom.

Much of his plane is a former Japan Airlines 747 he rescued from storage space for retired airplanes in the Mojave desert.

Perhaps most impressive, the first-class galley, or kitchen, came in one 800-pound piece from Mojave, trucked on a tractor-trailer and moved by four men from the parking area into his space. Contractor Doug Bernhardt was in charge of making it all fit together.

"We get a picture, and we look at it and he says, `This is what I want it to look like,"' Bernhardt said. "That's the magic in it. That's where you have to have an imagination."

While most of the interior is real, Toth uses some re-creations. But things must be perfect. His upper deck tables were constructed incorrectly, and while only serious Pan Am lovers can tell the difference, Toth had them remade. "Unless it looks exactly like it did when I was a kid, I'm not going to be happy."

Wow. Just, wow.

Flying out of O'Hare yesterday we passed this unhappy specimen:

The 787 Dreamliner has been there over a month now, having gotten stuck in Chicago when the difficulties started. (I've actually been through O'Hare five times since it got stranded, but yesterday was the first time my airplane took off from 22L, giving me a close enough look to snap a photo.)

Some links:

• James Fallows annotated SOTU is an annual must-read.
• Crain's sniffs out a letter from the Illinois Congressional Delegation to AMR and USAirways along the lines of, "nice merger you've got there, shame if something were to happen to it."
• I'm way behind on Paul Krugman's blog.
• Wired examines the Battle of Hoth in strategic terms.

Lots to do in the next 19 hours...including a conference call with a data center at 10:30 tonight.

The Cranky Flier gives American and USAirways advice following their Valentines Day announcement of corporate nuptials:

Get Rid of the Old American
Sure, technically everyone who works at American today is part of the old American, but that’s not what I mean. There are key people – and processes – that epitomize the old American and those need to be swept out quickly. If these folks don’t see the writing on the wall, then the new management team needs to act. Number one on that list is, of course, Tom Horton, but they can’t officially sweep him out because he had to stay on as part of the deal as Non-Executive Chairman. But really, he needs to become Non-Existent Chairman. From the looks of this deal, he won’t be around much and it won’t be for very long.

But it’s not just Horton. There are others at the top who will remain nameless that need to go. At the same time, there are some really great VPs that the new management team needs to woo to keep them onboard. The culture of the new American will start at the top, so the people up there need to be in place sooner rather than later and they need to really focus on solidifying the new combined culture.

Protect the Brand Assets
As things churn forward, American needs to be sure to protect its brand assets. None is bigger than AAdvantage, one of the best frequent flier programs out there. The temptation is always there to devalue it, but American as a brand has been devalued for years, and people are going to be tempted to flee during the prospect of another tough merger. So if you’re American, you need to focus on the things that really have strong value, and AAdvantage is one of them. Use the program to bring people back to the airline.

I'll be watching this closely, of course. Over the next five days I have three American flight segments; you can bet I'll be talking to the FAs and pilots.

Also worth a look: Crain's analyzes how the deal affects Chicago.

It's official:

The boards of American Airlines parent AMR Corp. and US Airways Group late Wednesday separately voted to approve a merger that would create the world's largest airline, The Wall Street Journal reports.

"The merger will be formally announced early Thursday morning. Under the all-stock deal's terms, American's creditors would own 72% of the combined airline, and US Airways shareholders the balance," the Journal writes.

"Under the all-stock deal's terms, American's creditors would own 72% of the combined airline, and US Airways shareholders the balance. US Airways Chief Executive Doug Parker will run the combined company as chief executive. AMR CEO Tom Horton will serve as nonexecutive board chairman, likely until the spring or summer of 2014, the time of the new company's first annual meeting after American emerges from bankruptcy protection . . . The airline will likely have a market capitalization exceeding $10 billion, and the value could approach $11 billion."

Yay! My frequent flier miles are saved! Oh, and so are jobs, and revenue in Chicago.

As I mentioned this morning, news agencies have picked up the little signs that tell them a 1000-airplane airline will happen this week:

The boards of the two airlines are expected to meet in the next few days to vote on the proposed merger, sources have told Los Angeles Times and other news outlets. A meeting to vote on the merger was scheduled for Monday, according to some reports, but was postponed to give those involved more time to work out final details.

According to sources, a decision has now been reached to name US Airways Group Inc. Chief Executive Doug Parker as CEO of the new carrier, while Tom Horton, CEO of American Airlines' parent, AMR Corp., would serve as nonexecutive chairman of the board until next year.

Analysts have estimated that the two companies could generate as much as $1 billion in savings and added revenue by combining forces.

In perhaps a modest bit of irony, I'm writing this aboard an American Airlines airplane over New Mexico Colorado. I do love technology...

The Economist's Gulliver blog thinks so:

THE merger of US Airways and AMR, the parent company of American Airlines, looks set to be concluded this week. The new company, which will be called American Airlines, would be one of the world’s largest airlines by capacity and become the third full-service carrier in America. We wrote about this a month ago, when AMR's board met to examine US Airways’ proposal. (Tom Horton, AMR’s boss, had promised a decision in “a matter of weeks”.)

The airlines are seen as a perfect fit by analysts. There is little overlap between their routes and hubs, which makes it likely that the new alliance will be approved by anti-trust regulators. The benefits for fliers, however, may not be so great...

Oh yes they will. I've said for years that getting American's management out of American would make it a much better airline. And I've said for years, right here on this blog, that US Airways is the right choice. Hell, even American's pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics agree. As an elite American flier, I expect to keep—yes, even to increase—the benefits I have of sticking with the carrier after the merger.

I've got five American flight segments between now and next Tuesday. I hope that I can congratulate the FAs on one of them for seeing this thing through.

Did you know that Los Angeles is on the way from Chicago to Vancouver? I didn't either. I forgot that, when you have hubs in Chicago and Los Angeles, and no flights at all into the actual destination airport, layovers happen.

Good view from the Admirals Club though:

As much as I like flying, I'm not wild about the seven flight segments in 10 days—none of them less than 3 hours. (Next week, apparently, Dallas is on the way from Chicago to San Francisco. Same hub-and-spoke problem.) I also don't like having to scrunch my laptop between the seat to my front and my lap just to get some work done. Waah, waah, waah.

Next report from the Land Above.

I'll be a lot less busy in March, they tell me. Meanwhile, here are some things I want to read:

• The Atlantic Cities blog has an analysis of class in Chicago by census tract.
• Seth Godin doesn't like airports, because they're organizationally horrible. Best bit: "There are plenty of potential bad surprises, but no good ones."
• Liz Keogh advocates Behavior-Driven Development as a new way of looking at Test-Driven Development.

I will get to them...soon...

The Cranky Flier wants to know:

Now the latest “news” of the day is that American CEO Tom Horton may end up being the Chairman of the combined entities. There is some good and some bad to this kind of thing. The good is pretty simple to explain. If Horton is willing to settle for a Tilton-esque agreement where he can just sit in a fancy office and collect a huge paycheck for a couple of years, then that finally removes the last real barrier to a merger – the fight being put up by management.

On the other hand, if he insists on a more active role, then it’s a bad idea. There are very few supporters of Horton outside management ranks. Wall Street has been quite clear that Horton’s plans to date are unacceptable. In particular, the plan to grow the hubs by 20 percent is suicidal. As one analyst, Dan McKenzie, puts it, the growth plan “would be toxic for industry pricing and ruinous for shareholders….” The views throughout the financial community appear to echo that sentiment. If Horton has any kind of influence in the merged entity, then the money folks will not be happy. And that hurts the chances of the deal going through.

I'm really hoping for an announcement soon.

Work, work, work, and more than an hour each way to the airport, and it turns out I haven't flown in three years. Time to renew my medical certificate and get back in the air.

I miss this, this, and this.

Oh, and this.

...and it's pretty hideous:

Reactions have been a mixed bag of negative and scathing. Here's Patrick Smith:

Simply put, I cannot believe how awful a makeover this is. It’s so disappointing that it pains me even to write about it, and how anybody signed off on this I’ll never understand.

The body and tail manage to be boring and garish at the same time, with a cheap, downmarket lilt to the whole thing. The typeface is the strongest aspect of the whole mess, and that’s not saying much.

Those are (almost) forgivable aspects. Doing away with the AA symbol, however, was a tragic and unspeakably bad call.

And in its place… What exactly is that new, Amtrak-y logo? It looks like an eagle’s beak poking through a shower curtain. No other word will do: it’s horrible. If it’s not the worst corporate trademark I have ever seen, I don’t know what is.

Cranky Flier said only:

Personally, I hate that the eagle has been marginalized to the point that it’s unrecognizable. And the tail, well, yeah, the tail. I think I heard it put best in this excellent quote:

"Colgan had sex with CSA and Cubana on a Greyhound bus in the same weekend and got pregnant. We know Colgan is the mother but we can’t tell who the father is. Nor do we care because the baby is still ugly either way."

Maybe it will grow on me. Or maybe it won’t last very long anyway…

Why did they do this right now? They're weeks away from either merging or dying. Did US Airways want them to do this? No, according to CEO Tom Horton:

First, Horton said the two issues — merger and rebranding — were separate. Second, he said American needed to go ahead with the new look because in two weeks it is introducing a new flagship aircraft, the Boeing 777-300ER, that needs painting.

Horton also said US Airways had no input into the rebranding and didn’t get an advance look at it.

“We are competitors today, so we didn’t think it appropriate to discuss it with them,” Horton said. “I will tell you that on my drive home last night [Wednesday], I called my good friend Doug Parker and informed him of what we were doing as a courtesy. So I did do that, and we had a very nice chat.”

Well, there you have it. I'm sure Parker was thrilled. US Airways already said they want to keep the American Airlines brand, but I think they rather had in mind the brand from 1968, not this new stuff. Further, I think it's this kind of management thinking that got American into the position it's in today.

The fun part about UAT is that 38 known issues can become 100 known issues in just a few hours. So, once again, I have a lot of stuff to read and no time to read it:

• WTF is this about a college football player's dead girlfriend hoax? It strains credulity to argue he wasn't in on it, don't you think?
• Cranky Flier examines the Great Chicago Aviation Fuel Scandal in which United and American save millions buying fuel from a small office in Sycamore, Ill., and not from Chicago. The Chicago Tribune has more.
• Law professor Dawn Clark Netsch, for whose 1994 Illinois Gubernatorial campaign I volunteered, has ALS.
• Since the Chicago ordinance allowing cops to issue tickets for small marijuana possession went into effect last July, arrests are down but without a concomitant rise in tickets.
• Paul Krugman explains why greenhouse gases aren't the same as entitlements in economic analysis.
• Ask The Pilot talks about the Boeing 787 troubles.
• Illinois State Climatologist Jim Angel shows how normal isn't average.

Yay, Instapaper!

Now off to lunch, followed by more debugging.

Like James Fallows, I'm a member of the Airplane Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), which has a rigid, give-no-ground policy against aviation user fees. Fallows draws a parallel to the NRA, and notes the key difference:

The merits of the user fee debate are not my point right now. (Summary of the AOPA side: non-airline aviation activity already "pays its way" through the quite hefty tax imposed on each gallon of airplane fuel, plus providing all kinds of ancillary benefits to the country. I agree about the benefits and that the American aviation scene is the envy of the world.) Rather it is to introduce a comparison between AOPA and the real NRA. This comes from my friend Garrett Gruener, a successful Bay Area entrepreneur and venture capitalist who is also a longtime pilot. In the 1990s he even took an around-the-world trip, with his wife and daughter, in their turboprop airplane. He writes:

The difference is the overwhelming focus on safety. I feel that AOPA is the FAA's partner in trying to reduce the number of fatalities in aviation, while the NRA never gets beyond "guns don't kill...".

What Gruener says about the AOPA rings true to my experience. The only thing the AOPA talks about more than user fees is safety, and the individual and system-wide changes that can reduce the accident level.

So far, more than 24 hours after the killings in Newtown, Conn., the NRA hasn't said a peep about it.

Cranky Flier analyzes the surprise Delta-Virgin merger in terms of JFK–LHR:

Of course, British Airways and American have the strongest position in London by far. Delta would have been hard-pressed to grow a position itself considering the slot restrictions at the airport along with the already ample capacity on these routes. With this deal, Delta becomes more relevant in London, but more importantly, it becomes more relevant in places like New York, from where London is one of the most important business destinations. This simple chart showing daily flights each way from all New York airports should make it very clear.

Routes	AA/BA	Delta	Delta + Virgin
New York-Heathrow	15	2	8

I told you it was a simple one. Today, Delta is an afterthought. If its schedule fits a loyal traveler’s needs, then people will take it. But more often than not, that probably won’t happen. Combined with Virgin Atlantic, however, there is a very respectable schedule that now also covers the other side of the Hudson in Newark. Delta becomes relevant.

Whatever happens, I just hope there are at least three airlines left standing. That's enough for real competition on popular routes, and none is more popular for trans-Atlantic travel than New York to London.

The Cranky Flier has some inside dish on the possible airline merger that I mentioned Friday:

US Airways is still trying to convince American that its plan is better. Maybe American management will get a big enough payout to go along. Or maybe AA’s management will see the writing on the wall depending upon how this offer unfolds and just decide it can’t win. Or maybe it can actually come up with something that will keep American independent, but I’d say that the chances of that are slim.

As we head toward the holidays, everything starts to slow down. We might not hear anything about a merger until the new year, but I wouldn’t expect that we’d be waiting much longer than that. The time to decide which way this airline is going is here. Now we just have to sit and wait to see what happens. I’m still expecting that a merger will happen, but I’m really curious to see how it all unfolds.

This comes on the heels of American's pilots reaching agreement with management on a labor contract, which helps fix the value of the combined airline.

Finally! Reuters reported about 90 minutes ago that US Airways has made an offere to buy bankrupt American Airlines, which would create an $8.5 bn airline:

Under the all-stock proposal US Airways made in mid-November at a meeting with AMR's unsecured creditors committee, the bankrupt airline's creditors would own 70 percent of the merged company and US Airways shareholders 30 percent, the person said.

US Airways and AMR are negotiating toward a potential merger agreement that could come as soon as January, the person added, asking not to be named because the matter is not public.

When the public-quiet period began back at the end of August, I thought it would take close to a year for the airlines to reach a deal. To me, an elite frequent flier on American, the merger is the best possible outcome, because it's the one in which I'm most likely to keep my banked miles and elite status. To American's pilots, mechanics, and flight attendants, it's the best possible outcome because they get to keep their jobs (mostly). And with American's unions supporting the deal, it will likely go smoothly.

January, huh? That would be fantastic.

Via AVWeb: Boeing has put up a 787 Dreamliner simulator that allows you to (virtually) sit in the cockpit. You can check out any of the instruments, look out the windows, and listen to the cockpit crew.

Someday you might even fly in a real one.

Last month, United Airlines and the Star Alliance held a multi-day outing for some frequent fliers that included a couple legs on a 787:

They were bankers, lawyers, programmers, film distributors, entrepreneurs and all-around aviation buffs or, as they lovingly call themselves, geeks. Most were men. All of them had signed up for a MegaDo, a retreat organized by and for travel fanatics who scour Web sites like Milepoint, particularly frequent fliers for whom it is a hobby to accrue miles and learn every last detail about their preferred airline.

The first MegaDo was in 2009. This one, Star Alliance MegaDo 4, had a European leg that wasn’t on a Dreamliner and a domestic leg, and sold out in two minutes. Tickets for the United States portion were $999 to $1,999 and included meals and behind-the-scenes talks and tours with airline and hotel executives. All the proceeds go to charity. Those who did manage to score a Star Alliance MegaDo 4 ticket would ultimately fly on a Dreamliner, party in an airplane hangar, learn how to de-ice a plane, visit United’s headquarters, barely sleep and consume copious amounts of alcohol.

The average traveler has probably never heard of MegaDos, but they have become so significant within the travel industry that, as one of the founders, Tommy Danielsen, put it: “United gives us this plane a week and a half after they introduce it.”

But even occasional fliers will find themselves on Dreamliners in the coming years as more airlines integrate them into their fleets. United, the first domestic carrier to receive the Dreamliner, has two so far and at least another 48 on the way. International carriers including Japan Airlines and Air India have been flying the planes for months.

Unfortunately, American Airlines won't receive any 787s for at least another 18 months or so, and I'm unlikely to fly on United before then. So I'll be patient and wait. Unless USAirways hurries up and buys American already...

A French appeals court has ruled that neither Continental nor mechanic John Taylor bears criminal responsibility for the 2000 Air France Concorde crash outside Paris:

According to the original ruling, mechanic John Taylor fitted the wrong metal strip on a Continental DC-10. The piece ultimately fell off on the runway in Paris, puncturing the Concorde's tire. The burst tire sent bits of rubber flying, puncturing the fuel tanks, which started the fire that brought down the plane.

On Thursday, Judge Michele Luga overturned the 2010 manslaughter conviction of Continental and the mechanic, saying their mistakes didn't make them criminally responsible for the deaths.

Even if Taylor knew that the metal strip could become detached, "he could never have imagined a scenario where this simple titanium blade could cause such a disaster," Luga said in court.

The French court that convicted Continental and the mechanic in 2010 for the crash imposed about €2 m in damages and fines on the carrier. The appeals court upheld Continental's civil responsibility and ordered it to pay Air France €1 m in damages and interests.

I'm not sure I understand how the trial court came to convict Taylor in the first place. One small piece of debris on a runway should not cause a transport-class airplane to burst into flames. I don't know enough about French law to speculate about the trial judge, however. I do know that in the French system the trial judge has a much more active role than in the Anglo-American system, and can even act as prosecutor.

Anyway, this has to be a relief for Taylor, and for United Continental. It also marks the end of the Concorde's story.

The long-time aviation blogger thinks the movie was a disservice:

I’ll be told, perhaps, that I need to relax, and that the movie ought be judged beyond its technical shortcomings. Normally I would agree, and for the average lay viewer it will hardly matter at all. I’m happy to allow a little artistic license. We should expect it, and some light fudging of the facts can be necessary, to a degree, for a film like this to work. Honestly, I’m not that much of a fussbudget. The trouble with Flight is that the filmmakers seem to have hardly tried.

I’m not sure who gets the bigger screw job here: viewers, who are being lied to, but who may or may not care; airline pilots, whose profession is unrealistically portrayed; or nervous flyers, whose fears this movie will only compound.

The entire piece gets into specifics.

Air New Zealand has a hobbit of making awesome safety videos; here's the latest:

That was the Space Shuttle Carrier's call sign last month. Just watch:

I'm in London this weekend, having used a bunch of frequent-flyer miles to get here. And because they were frequent-flyer miles, I decided to fly British Airways first class.

Usually, when I fly to London, I take American Airlines flight 90, a 767 (my favorite plane in American's fleet) that leaves Chicago around 9am and arrives at Heathrow around 10:30pm. That schedule completely eliminates jet lag for me. On arriving in London, I have dinner at a takeaway curry place or something around midnight, stay up until 3 or so reading, and from that point on manage to stay approximately on Chicago time for as long as I'm in London.

This time, because I wanted to fly in BA's updated first class cabin, I had to take an overnight flight. (From Atlanta, in fact—but that's a different story.) I thought, hey, great, I can sleep, and then wake up just before we land (at 10:30am), still pretty close to a Chicago schedule.

Nope. Not even close. At 6am London time (midnight Chicago time) I was in that wired state where I couldn't concentrate enough to read and I couldn't close my eyes to sleep. I managed about 90 minutes of sleep, disrupted, I have no doubt, by the Glenlivet 18 and 20-year-old port that the flight attendant kept bringing me.

In consequence, it's just past 7:30pm here, and all I want to do is sleep. But that would be really, really dumb, because I would wake up at some random time in the middle of the night, which would put my body on New Delhi time or something. I could go to a pub, but for some reason I don't think having a pint is a good idea at this particular moment. I can't really focus long enough to read yet, because of the fatigue and sleep deprivation, and as you can see I'm having trouble writing coherently.

Tomorrow I'll probably have gotten the diurnal cycle sorted out. Tonight, I'm kicking myself for making a series of choices that essentially cost me an enjoyable day in London.

Oh, and half the damn Tube is out this weekend. Moan, moan, moan.

Yes, one more entry of nothing but links, as my creativity is completely directed at the three five work projects currently on my agenda. But tomorrow afternoon I start a mini-vacation that will include a good, solid 22 hours of being in planes and trains, which I actually find relaxing. (I am not kidding.)

For now, here's what I'm saving to my Kindle reader:

• The President is having an election-night (victory!) rally at McCormick Place; I will try to attend.
• Newsweek will cease print publication with its December 31st issue, leaving Time the only remaining news weekly in the U.S. This isn't as grave as it sounds; I read the Economist on my tablet now, but it's still great to pick one up overseas and see the differences. Do enough of Newsweek's readers read online now? Is Newsweek still relevant anyway?
• The Cranky Flier reposted his Concorde trip report from 2002, making me jealous. I hope we get supersonic travel back someday. Leaving London at 10:30am and arriving at JFK at 9:15am sounds like a great way to spend a morning. I remember, at Hofstra, most mornings you could watch the Concorde flying overhead on its approach to JFK.
• Target Stores is to break ground at the old Cabrini-Green site today. Here's the place just 18 months ago.
• The rest of my Kindle reading includes such page-turners as Programming ASP.NET MVC 4, Cloud Architecture Patterns, and—no kidding—The Godfather. I suppose I should download The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as there may be a quiz on Saturday. (Long story.)

Finally, as much as I love crisp, cool autumn weather, I do not like the sun rising after 7. I've learned to turn on a bunch of lights as soon as I get up to fool my diurnal, reptilian brain that it's daytime. And now I must get more caffeine.

A quorum:

• With tonight's debate at my alma mater, Hofstra, everyone needs to hear this again.
• The BBC reports that creativity is linked to mental illness. Or, put differently, people who lack creativity have no other way of explaining it.
• Five Thirty Eight has an interactive graphic showing how state-level politics has shifted since WWII.
• Discover interviews physicist Geoffrey West about urban planning.
• The New Republic thinks Ben Affleck's Argo is brilliant.
• The Economist's Gulliver blog examines Qatar Airlines' accession to oneworld.

All for now.

Well, that was a fun demo. Fortunately we have four more Agile iterations before we're done.

So, now that I have precisely thirteen minutes to catch up on my email and the news of the day, I will note this lede that could only come from a left-leaning British newspaper:

BAA is to drop its name in favour of plain Heathrow after concluding that the initials, derived from the old British Airports Authority, no longer fit a foreign-owned company with no authority that has been forced to sell off half its airports.

So, Stansted will be run from Heathrow. That should really drive people there.

Yes, more links:

• Qatar Airways has joined the oneworld alliance. The Economist's Gulliver blog has the story; Cranky Flier had analysis yesterday.
• Fun and games for the election with an endorsement of Mitt Romney that is either subtle satire or true hathos, and bad lip reading of the debate.
• Russia goes back and forth about daylight saving time, to the confusion of all.

Later today I'll also have a new post on the 10th Magnitude blog.

Two aviation articles this morning. The first, via the Economist's Gulliver blog, examines how checked baggage tags have cut lost luggage down to nearly zero:

In July alone, 53 million passengers boarded domestic flights. Only about one-third of 1 percent reported a mishandled bag. Given the phenomenal scale of American aviation (measured in seats and miles, the U.S. market is three times larger than any other) and our reliance on luggage-juggling hub airports, that’s an excellent result. Even caged birds are treated pretty well by modern air travel (though remarkably, they do get airsick): In July, U.S. airlines lost just one pet.

This success is largely due to the humdrum baggage tag. That random sticky strip you rip off your suitcase when you get home? It’s actually a masterpiece of design and engineering. Absent its many innovations, you’d still be able to jet from Anchorage to Abu Dhabi. But your suitcase would be much less likely to meet you there. (Disclosure: I am a pilot for an airline that’s not mentioned in this article.)

I also had the latest from the Cranky Flier in my RSS feed this morning, about how American Airlines' management is getting PR horribly wrong:

While people might not want to fly American for its lack of reliability, it’s much more of a crisis if people don’t think the airline is safe to fly regardless of whether flights are on time or not. While I personally don’t have huge concerns about flying the airline, I’m not the general public. If I worked at American in PR, this would have me at DEFCON 1, yet the airline has treated this as if it’s just a minor issue.

The most visible of the safety issues has been the seats coming loose on 757s. This is a major issue in that it could easily be believed by the general public to be sabotage or the sign of an airline failing to do proper maintenance. Neither is remotely acceptable. It sounds like American has found a possible reason for the issue and in yet another stupid move is blaming passengers. While this issue has now apparently been fixed, real damage has been done. And now the media is piling on, making things worse.

He goes on to say that the pilots and mechanics have had a little more intelligence behind their PR efforts. I hope, I really hope, that American's executives don't kill the airline before USAirways has a chance to close the merger.

Deny thy boardroom and refuse thy chiefs,
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn on-time,
And let the Cactus purchase you!

Sorry. For those joining our program in progress, "Cactus" is the callsign of US Airways, who are now in merger talks with the airline I fly all the time, American. Today American's pilots are trying to make that merger happen more quickly, but they have come to bury American, not to praise it.

American's pilots, who spurned management's "last best" offer before the company went into bankruptcy protection, have gotten surly that management has gone ahead with its rule changes anyway. Pilots picketed outside O'Hare yesterday, while coincidentally finding an unusual number of "maintenance problems" over the past few weeks that caused flights to be delayed or cancelled. This has dropped American's on-time rate to 54% and prompted a nervous but defiant Air Line Pilots Association to deny in a statement yesterday that this is a work action:

One area of increased operational unreliability we have observed is in mechanical delays, which isn’t surprising. Although American Airlines operates the oldest fleet of any major U.S. carrier, management has decided to furlough a large number of mechanics and close one of its largest maintenance facilities. Management also decided some time ago to reduce its inventory of spare parts.

In addition, management halted the recalls of furloughed pilots late last year, which has resulted in an insufficient number of pilots to maintain the schedule properly.

It’s also important to remember that management chose to reject the APA-American Airlines Collective Bargaining Agreement, which served as an operating manual for our pilots. Management’s action has generated significant uncertainty for our pilots with respect to employment protections and operating rules, which are now under management’s unilateral control.

APA members are experienced professionals who conduct themselves as professionals under whatever circumstances they encounter. Any negative impact on our airline’s operational integrity is of management’s own making.

I'm going to watch this closely, particularly while finalizing plans to visit the UK next month. I'm outbound from Atlanta on British Airways, and getting to Atlanta isn't a problem at all if American cancels tons of flights; but returning from the UK might be. Now, where did I put my Tums?

Update, 10:49am: The president of American's frequent-flyer program has just sent an email announcing some changes to the company's schedule through October: "We are proactively reducing the rest of our September and October schedule by approximately one to two percent. These schedule adjustments will enable us to provide our customers with more reliable service while minimizing impact to travel plans. Additionally, we are increasing staffing of maintenance, reservations and airport personnel to offer you more flexible travel options." Let's see how that affects my trip.

Via the Economist's Gulliver blog, Airbus Industrie has some ideas about the future:

More flights, fewer emissions and quicker passenger journey times. Welcome to Smarter Skies, the latest installment in The Future by Airbus. For the first time, our vision of sustainable aviation in 2050 looks beyond aircraft design to how the aircraft is operated both on the ground and in the air in order to meet the expected growth in air travel in a sustainable way.

Already today, if the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system and technology on board aircraft were optimised (assuming around 30 million flights per year), Airbus research suggests that every flight in the world could on average be around 13 minutes shorter. This would save approximately 9 million tonnes of excess fuel annually, which equates to over 28 million tonnes of avoidable CO2 emissions and passenger savings of over 500 million hours of excess flight time on board an aircraft. Add to this new aircraft design, alternative energy sources and new ways of flying and you could see even more significant improvements.

Specifically, they envision:

• Eco-climb – save energy by launching aircraft using an assisted-take-off mechanism. Since planes use so much power to leave the ground, the idea is to source that power from devices on the ground, rather than have them weighing down the plane. Then you could shorten the runways and lighten the aircraft, which would reach cruising altitude faster than at present.
• Express skyways – planes travelling in formation, like a flock of birds, will use less energy. In Airbus's example, three aircraft heading east from Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco would meet over Utah and fly onwards together. Planes could also reduce the distances they have to fly if they take genuinely direct routes between A and B, rather than zig-zagging round different countries' airspace.
• Free-glide approaches and landings – with better air-traffic management planes would be able to glide smoothly into airports, as opposed to descending in stages and wasting energy.
• Ground operations – "autonomous receiving vehicles" that would get planes from runway to gate faster are among the ideas for improving operations at the airport.
• Power - biofuels and other alternative sources of energy would reduce CO2 emissions and improve the security of energy supply.

Cool stuff. And the "taxi-bot" is already here.

American Airlines and US Airways announced this morning that they've signed a non-disclosure agreement, a concrete step towards merging the corporations:

The non-disclosure agreement also means the companies won't be providing more announcements regarding the status of discussions until there's a merger deal or they call off talks, the airlines said.

The airline companies said they would work in "close collaboration" and "good faith" to evaluate a merger, including working with the creditors committee of AMR, which is in bankruptcy protection.

The companies note there's no guarantee a merger will result from discussions.

No guarantee, sure; but with American's unions openly supporting the merger, and with the reality that failing to merge with US Airways would mean the end of American within 10 years or so, this is very encouraging. And as an American elite frequent flyer, I really hope they tie the knot.

United Airlines will start flying the airplane on its Chicago to Houston route this fall:

The first 787 Chicago flights to Houston will begin Nov. 4 and end Dec. 3. That service will operate six days a week during that time, with the Chicago flight departing at 11:15 a.m. After that, daily service will restart Jan. 4 and run to March 29.

Though the initial routes are temporary, United is likely to regularly fly 787s out of O'Hare eventually, especially as it takes delivery of more planes. United will take delivery of five planes this year from its total order of 50.

United is also flying the planes from Houston to San Francisco, so if I wanted to see how the other half lives (I almost always fly American), I suppose I could book my Thanksgiving travel on United. I'll see how much tickets cost Saturday morning, when they go on sale. Even though I'd feel like I'm cheating on my airline, I'd love to get on one of the new planes before American starts flying them in 2014.

Three projects and a head cold have robbed me of time and energy this week. I've only got a few minutes this afternoon to list some of the more interesting things I've read in the past day:

• Andrew Sullivan had two back-to-back posts this morning looking at Obama's strategy at the Democratic Convention and admiring him as a Tory leader for America.
• Ta-Nahesi Coates dug into Obama's role as a post-racial figure and how he stumbled over Trayvon Martin.
• Jared Bernstein wrote last week on whether Americans really do want smaller government, as did former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm.
• The Economist summarized how airlines screwed themselves by trying to screw travel agents. (Being the Economist, they put it more politely.)

OK, back to the mines...

Via Gulliver, airlines earned $22.6 bn from ancillary fees in 2011 (pdf), up 66% from 2009:

Once largely limited to low fare airlines, ancillary revenue is now a priority for many airlines worldwide, and the Review announced today shows how far the industry’s approach to ancillary revenue has developed in recent years.

Jay Sorensen, President of IdeaWorksCompany, says: “Our first report into ancillary revenue was issued in 2007, when only 23 airlines worldwide disclosed ancillary revenue activity in financial filings, and the result was a modest €1.72 billion ($2.45 billion). Four years later, 50 airlines today disclose ancillary revenue activity of €18.23 billion ($22.6 billion). It’s clear that airlines recognize the importance of ancillary revenue and are developing increasingly innovative ways to generate this.”

"Increasingly innovative." Nice. Anyone remember this ditty from Fascinating Aida, which now applies as much to United as it did to Ryanair?

Despite the obviousness of USAirways acquiring it as American Airlines' only hope for survival, apparently some AMR executives are having a Walter Mitty moment:

A source familiar with the situation said AMR sees itself as an acquirer in potential mergers and at least five airlines -- US Airways Group Inc., JetBlue Airways Corp, Alaska Air Group, Republic Airways' Frontier Airlines, and Virgin America -- will be considered.

American has faced mounting pressure from vocal members of its creditors committee, led by its largest labor unions, who have argued that a merger with US Airways would give the combined carrier a strong network to compete with rivals beefed up by their own mergers. US Airways has expressed interest in a merger and has been courting AMR's creditors.

The problem, one will see immediately, is that AMR doesn't have the resources to take over another airline. And the ones they listed are regional, medium-sized, or discount airlines, not at all likely to help American get out of bankruptcy. Virgin just has to be a joke, of course. Not that there haven't been mergers between Americans and Virgins in the past—I just don't think Richard Branson will put out for Tom Horton in the near future.

Possibly this is just posturing by AMR executives. I hope so. Because if not, USAirways won't buy American, and American will die, and I'll have to fly United. And that would really suck.

Last week the California senate voted 21-16 vote to approve $8 bn in funding for a high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Naturally there will be some privateering and incompetence, because this is America:

Until the end of last year, SNCF, the developer of one of the world's most successful high-speed rail systems, proposed that the state use competitive bidding to partner with it or another foreign operator rather than rely on construction engineers to design a sophisticated network for 200-mph trains.

The approach, the French company said, would help the California High-Speed Rail Authority identify a profitable route, hold down building costs, develop realistic ridership forecasts and attract private investors — a requirement of a $9-billion bond measure approved by voters in 2008.

But SNCF couldn't get its ideas — including considering a more direct north-south route along the Central Valley's Interstate 5 corridor — out of the station.

Instead, the rail authority continued to concentrate planning in the hands of Parsons Brinckerhoff, a giant New York City-based engineering and construction management firm. Although they have occasionally consulted with high-speed railways, officials decided that hiring an experienced operator and seeking private investors would have to wait until after the $68-billion system was partially built.

But whenever it gets going, the data seem pretty clear: it will hurt the airlines even while getting more Californians traveling:

Earlier this year a pair of Dutch researchers analyzed the passenger market between London and Paris in recent years and found that high-speed rail has been far and away the dominant travel choice in the corridor. Using these findings, they extrapolated that if California's train can make the full trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco in about 3 hours, it will capture roughly a third of business travelers and about 40 percent of the leisure market.

A more recent study, set for publication in the September issue of the journal Transport Policy, suggests that high-speed rail will not only cut into the air market but actually create its own travel demand. The researchers found that more total travelers — air and rail together — existed in various corridors after high-speed rail service began in the country. That means either people saw the service and decided to take trips they otherwise wouldn't have or they shifted from driving to train-riding. The former would be great for California's economy; the latter, a relief to its congested highways.

The change was particularly pronounced in the Barcelona-Madrid corridor. Here the researchers estimate an additional 394,000 travelers in the post-bullet train era — an 8 percent rise from earlier times. That's a good sign for California. The Barcelona-Madrid trip is relatively equidistant to Los Angeles-San Francisco: 314 miles to 348 miles as the crow flies, respectively. The travel time by rail is also comparable, in the neighborhood of 3 hours in each case.

The study also found that opening the Chunnel has shifted travel patterns between the UK and the Continent, getting more people traveling even as fewer people fly.

So who's really behind the opposition to HSR? Can't guess.

I'm not sure what to make of this:

Inside, the capsule's sole passenger would ride in a near-standing position, wearing a G-suit to help force blood to the head during acceleration. The passenger's head would sit in a transparent hemispheric dome topped with an aerospike for better supersonic performance. It gets better.

Dimensions of the capsule's cabin area are roughly two feet (diameter) by 7.5 feet (length). There will be no room in the capsule for movement once the vehicle goes weightless. After launching to 100 miles, parachutes will be used to slow the final descent.

That sounds...well, "fun" doesn't come immediately to mind.

The last time I flew home from San Francisco, we landed in Rockford after missing the approach at O'Hare because of wind shear.

Yesterday, we didn't divert to a different airport, but neither did we take the most direct path:

We almost flew into Canada, according to the captain. As it is we were only about 20 minutes late.