A spate of airline shutdowns caused by soaring fuel prices has mired the air travel industry in its worst stretch since 9/11, but not all airlines are looking to cut back.
Virgin America, the low-cost airline recently started by British entrepreneur and Virgin Group Ltd. founder Richard Branson, last week launched service between Los Angeles International Airport and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In response, Alaska Airlines, owned by Seattle-based Alaska Air Group Inc., plans to add additional flights between the two cities later this month.
Virgin now offers three daily nonstop flights between Southern California and the Pacific Northwest, and plans to offer a fourth beginning next month.
The airline kicked off the service last week with a party featuring live music from bands such as the Donnas. Virgin America Chief Executive David Cush said the airline hopes to appeal to hip young travelers.
The low-cost airline launched last August and expects to serve 10 cities by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Alaska plans to increase its daily Los Angeles-to-Seattle flights to 15 from 12 beginning April 27.
Steve Jarvis, vice president of marketing, sales and customer experience for Alaska, said the move is a direct response to the launch of Virgin’s Seattle service.
“We’ve got new competition,” he said. “It isn’t a coincidence that we’ve tightened up the schedule and made it more convenient for business travelers in conjunction with new competition.”
The move may spell trouble for Virgin, said Jack Keady, a transportation analyst based in Playa del Rey.
“If (Alaska is) adding capacity, that’s going to make it a tough battle for Virgin America,” he said.
But a number of airlines have even more immediate problems. Within the last few weeks, three carriers that serve LAX have shut down, citing high fuel costs.
Skybus Airlines, ATA Airlines and Aloha Airlines all grounded flights and canceled service in recent weeks and some experts believe the turbulent stretch may last for some time.
“If oil prices don’t go down, we could see at least some (additional) grounding of airlines,” Keady said. “It certainly is a dark cloud hanging over the industry.”
Clean Deliveries
Package delivery company United Parcel Service Inc. has announced plans to deploy 14 new compressed natural gas vehicles in Los Angeles and an additional 86 across California.
The vehicles are expected to reduce emissions by 20 percent over the cleanest diesel trucks available on the market.
The new vehicles bring the company’s total “green” fleet to more than 1,600 trucks the largest private fleet of alternative fuel vehicles in the transportation industry, according to the company.
“Continuing to add CNG delivery trucks to our fleet is a sustainable choice because natural gas is a cost-effective, clean-burning and readily available fuel,” said Robert Hall, the company’s director of vehicle engineering, in a statement.
Compressed natural gas, which is stored in pressurized containers, is used as an alternative to diesel and gasoline to power automobiles. The fuel source is gaining in popularity as an environmentally friendly substitute for more-polluting fuel sources.
The local ports recently approved programs that will require all trucks entering the harbor to run on clean-burning diesel or alternative fuel such as CNG.
Cargo Forecast
Following annual patterns, cargo volume at the local ports is expected to pick up in the coming months, but the numbers will likely still lag behind the monthly totals last year, according to port analysts.
Global Insight Inc., a Waltham, Mass.-based economic analysis firm, and the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, released a cargo forecast predicting depressed volume into the summer.
“Monthly port volumes are building slowly following the slow season, but import container traffic is forecast to be quite weak through August due to the underlying weakness in demand in the U.S. economy,” said Paul Bingham, an economist with Global Insight, in a statement.
The number of cargo containers passing through the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports during the next five months is expected to be about 2 percent lower than the same period in 2007.
On the bright side, experts are not predicting any major disturbances during that period despite ongoing labor negotiations and major pollution-reduction programs.
Staff reporter Richard Clough can be reached at
[email protected]
or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 251.
