St. Louis blues: More American cuts

The people who run Lambert Field, the main airport in St. Louis, have a bond sale set for Monday. Nothing earth-shattering about this deal but its timing: it comes just as American Airlines says it will again slash its service at Lambert for the second time in less than a year. This cut, which starts to take effect in August, trims its total daily departures from 101 to 83, including all non-stop service to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and San Diego.
The totals may not seem drastic until you consider that back in 2001, when American bought St. Louis-based TWA, the carrier had about 415 daily flights at Lambert; within two years, that total had been cut to 207 daily flights, a total that has shrunk steadily ever since. Fitch Ratings airport bond analysts had already moved to downgrade the existing bonds issued by Lambert for renewal and enlargement because any replacement of the lost airline service "is uncertain in the near term."

(Photo: C. Williamson, Flickr)

Maybe this year for a flyers' rights bill

Maybe next year. That's what Kate Hanni has been saying for a long time, ever since she was stranded on an airliner stuck for about nine hours on a runway in Austin back in 2006. After that she began a push for an airline passenger bill of rights with a surprisingly well organized lobbying and grass roots group. Well, her year may have come. The House last night passed an FAA bill that contains the kind of language her Flyers Rights group has been pushing. The House, though, was always the easy part because the lower chamber has been receptive to the bill of rights, passing a version last year, although it went nowhere in the Senate. The airlines' promise of voluntary pledges of better service won the day in the upper chamber. But the Senate this year is a very different place than it was a year ago, with a Democratic majority that has a pretty much veto-proof balance of power. Not that there's a likely veto. After all, as Hanni notes, a senator named Obama supported the passenger bill of rights last year, and he's now in the White House.