The Daily Parker

Rumors abound that American Airlines has two suitors, one we knew about and one we didn't. Since filing for bankruptcy in November, industry analysts have wondered with whom they would merge, twice-spurned USAirways the most obvious choice.

The new rumors, however, have Delta puttin' the moves on, which, if consummated, would make Delmerican (Amelta?) the world's largest airline and put the oneworld alliance in existential peril:

Since I'm generally bullish on the airline alliances (and competition between them), I'd tend to think the US Airways/oneworld route would be better for competition, and thus better for travellers. But the real question is what American government regulators and anti-trust authorities think about the whole idea. A Delta-American merger would produce a company that would control a huge chunk of domestic market—29.6%, double the share of its next biggest competitor, Southwest Airlines.

Another issue is whether Delta's supposed interest in acquiring American is serious or simply an effort to cause problems for US Airways and oneworld. It's hard to imagine that Delta's executives aren't aware of the regulatory problems a merger with American might face. Whatever happens, this struggle will be interesting to watch.

Blogger Matt Yglesias argues that an American/USAirways merger would be more patriotic, and "would give the United States three really big global carriers—United, Delta, and US/American—with the merged entity ideally joining the OneWorld alliance so we'd have strong representation in each of the three major global airline alliances." And it would keep Chicago one of aviation's world capitals, since a merger with Delta would encourage shutting either O'Hare or Delta's nearby hub in Detroit.

With this many rumors circulating, I expect we'll hear something definitive relatively soon.

...at least for a few days. From last night in Chicago:

And:

Here's the view at 11:30. Contrast with an hour earlier:

And here's 2pm:

4pm:

The first significant snowfall of Winter 2012 has started:

The National Weather Service says:

A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM CST /10 AM EST/ THIS MORNING TO 9 AM CST /10 AM EST/ FRIDAY.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL BEGIN BETWEEN 9 AM AND NOON AND CONTINUE INTO FRIDAY MORNING.

* ACCUMULATIONS...SNOWFALL TOTALS OF 100 TO 200 MM ARE LIKELY WITH LOCALLY HEAVIER TOTALS POSSIBLE.

* HAZARDS...IN ADDITION TO THE FALLING SNOW...WINDS WILL INCREASE TO 25 TO 40 KM/H WITH GUSTS UP TO 55 KM/H BY AFTERNOON RESULTING IN BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW...ESPECIALLY IN OUTLYING AND OPEN AREAS. WIND CHILLS ARE ALSO FORECAST TO DROP TO -17°C TO -24°C BY FRIDAY MORNING.

* IMPACTS...ACCUMULATING SNOW AND REDUCED VISIBILITIES WILL LIKELY MAKE TRAVEL DIFFICULT FOR THE AFTERNOON COMMUTE TODAY...WITH TRAVEL CONDITIONS BECOMING TREACHEROUS AND EVEN DANGEROUS IN OPEN AREAS TONIGHT INTO EARLY FRIDAY MORNING.

As bad as that sounds, the NWS also predicts it'll be gone by Monday.

Hey, it's Chicago in January, and yesterday it hit 12°C. One or two days of snowfall is no big deal.

More photos as the snow accumulates...

Apparently the flight was unprofitable:

"The historical financial performance of the route and its future outlook given the global economic climate and high oil prices has resulted in a decision by American to cancel its New Delhi-Chicago O'Hare service," the airline said in a memo to American managers.

The last flight to leave for India from Chicago will be on Feb. 28, while the last return flight from India to Chicago will be on March 1.

The flight from New Delhi to Chicago had been problematic during winter and early spring. The flight would often arrive at O'Hare earlier than 5 a.m., the time that O'Hare's customs agents start work, stranding passengers on the plane for an additional half hour to an hour.

Oddly, AA292 is scheduled to arrive in Chicago at 5am, so the possibility of it arriving before Customs opened must have occurred to someone. This unfortunate schedule probably comes from Delhi's odd penchant for launching international flights at midnight. AA292 takes off at 00:55 IST, about an hour before Cathay's flight to Hong Kong and two hours before a British Airways flight to London. The takeoff time certainly isn't dictated by the O'Hare arrival slot, as O'Hare, to my knowledge, doesn't require reservations between 11pm and 6am.

The forecast for Chicago today calls for 13°C temperatures and sunny skies. This is the normal high temperature April 10th, not January 10th—that would be -1°C—and would be only a bit shy of the record (16°C).

Don't worry, January will arrive this weekend. The same forecast calls for -9°C Friday night.

The Red Rooster, Chicago:

Canon 7D, 37mm, ISO-400, f/5.6 at 1/60, here.

Via Sullivan, writer Mike Konczal reviews economist Donald Schoup's book about parking pricing with a clear enunciation of good and bad parking schemes:

We now have two ways to distinguish changes in the provisioning of government services. On one axis, there’s who controls the provisoning and the residual – is it in public hands or private hands? On the second axis there’s how much competition and market reforms are driving the reform versus how much there’s monopolies and single firms dictating the allocation and the real reform comes through private ownership itself. Graphing these for the parking debate:

[P]eople react strongly against privatization without market competition, and there’s three good reasons why they should. There’s the matter of who ultimately controls the residual, so if there are rents captured they go to private agents as opposed to the public. If monopolists provide too little of a good at too high a price, that surplus goes to private agents, instead of recycling to taxpayers. This has huge implications for whether the initial price tag is set right, for whether the government will get too little because of crony practices or because they are liquidity-constrained, and what mechanisms are in place for reevaluating the deal at points in the future. Chances are these will all be problems, as they were in Chicago.

And now the city has to pay Morgan Stanley for street fairs...it only gets better.

Welcome to the semi-annual update of the Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.)

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.

In 2011, I:

• took 8,198 photos, including 4,352 in Chicago, 881 in Japan, 588 in Portugal, and 337 in the U.K. (and only 71 of Parker). This is almost as many as I took in 2009 and 2010 combined (9,140), and more than I took in the first 8 years I owned a camera (1983-1991, 7,671).
• flew 115,845 km but drove less than 4,500 km
• visited 5 countries (the UK, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Japan) and 8 states (California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) in 35 trips. Sadly, this meant Parker boarded for more than 100 days
• spent more than 186 hours walking Parker, which partially made up for all those days being boarded
• wrote 539 blog entries, with the most consistency in the blog's 6-year history (averaging 1.48 per day with a standard deviation of only 0.11)
• got 2.3 million hits (object views) on the Daily Parker, and 1.7 million on Weather Now, including 47,956 and 181,285 page views, respectively. According to Google Analytics, the blog had 28,613 unique visitors, and Weather Now had 26,539.
• read only 34 books, but as these included the first four of the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, it should count as 46
• started and ended the year in the same place (Duke of Perth, Chicago)
• went to only 8 movies, 3 plays, 3 concerts, and 3 baseball games, which is terribly sad

Oh, and I also got a master's degree. (Almost forgot.)