Texas plane cleaner accused of stealing lost items



American Airlines fires plane cleaner charged with stealing items left behind by passengers 

 Jamie Stengle, Associated Press Writer, On Thursday August 19, 2010, 3:34 pm EDT


DALLAS (AP) -- American Airlines has fired a worker charged with theft after police searching his home found thousands of dollars worth of items that passengers left on planes at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the airline said Thursday.

 Henry Ibarra, 59, who cleaned planes, had worked for Fort Worth-based American for 41 years, the airline said.

Airport police in July traced a cell phone that a passenger had accidentally left on a plane to Ibarra's Fort Worth home. While at the home with a search warrant, officers also saw what they believed were other passengers' lost belongings, including electronics, cameras, iPods and sunglasses.


Officers with a second search warrant also found items belonging to American Airlines in the garage.


Ibarra, who was arrested on a theft charge July 15 and later released, did not immediately return calls Thursday from The Associated Press.

Authorities have so far estimated the value of half of the 171 recovered items at $7,500, airport spokesman David Magana said Thursday. Officials are working to find the owners.

"The investigation is still unfolding," Magana said.

When officers originally searched the house for the missing cell phone, Ibarra said he'd forgotten to return it after picking it up and putting it in his pocket. Investigators found the phone in Ibarra's son's bedroom with its information erased and Ibarra's son's named entered into it.

The phone's serial number matched that of the one reported lost.


American, a subsidiary of AMR Corp., worked closely with police on the matter, spokesman Tim Smith said.

"While the majority of our 24,000 North Texas employees are honest and hardworking, we have no tolerance for any dishonest behavior and will take appropriate action as necessary," Smith said.

American Airlines to charge for front-row seats



American Airlines to start charging $19-$39 for seats in the first few rows of coach cabin 
Samantha Bomkamp, AP Airlines Writer, On Wednesday August 18, 2010, 3:56 pm EDT


NEW YORK (AP) -- American Airlines has found another fee.


The Fort Worth, Texas, airline said Wednesday it's now charging between $19 and $39 for "Express Seats" -- those spots in the first few rows of coach that include bulkhead seats.
American said the price of the seats includes getting on the plane in the first "general boarding" group of passengers. The seats that will cost extra are in the first two or three rows of the coach cabin, depending on the size of the plane.


Anne Banas, executive editor of SmarterTravel.com, thinks passengers will see more packaged fees like this in the future -- where benefits like free standby or boarding perks are included.

The carrier, which is operated by parent AMR Corp., is following in the footsteps of several other airlines who already charge for special seats. UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, Continental Airlines, US Airways, JetBlue, Frontier, Spirit and AirTran all have some seats that cost extra.

The American seats don't give passengers much extra for their money, said Steven Hall of CompareAirlineFees.com. Most of the other airlines' premium seats offer more legroom. But it is a benefit for passengers to be among the first to board the plane, he added.

The seats on American can only be bought at airport kiosks between 24 hours to 50 minutes before the flight for travel within the U.S.

American, the country's second-largest airline behind Delta Air Lines, still provides its elite frequent fliers those seats for no extra charge. American also charges fees for checked bags, priority boarding, booking on the phone or in person, "sleep sets," unaccompanied minors and pets.


On Tuesday, AirTran raised its fee for the first checked bag by $5 to $20 for travel starting in September. The cost is now on par with bigger airlines.

U.S. airlines collected about $1.9 billion from fees in the first quarter, the most recent period for which data is available from the Transportation Department. American's share of that was $261.1 million.


AP Airlines Writer David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

Flight attendants: Bartenders or bad cops?



Hard-working airline crews juggling conflicting responsibilities
updated 8/17/2010 9:48:58 AM ET

Morris MacMatzen / Reuters

Given the agitation among both paying customers and the uniformed personnel, should the airlines formally and forcefully reaffirm the authority of flight attendants?By Bill Briggs 

Steven Slater’s intercom-cussing, double-fisted slide into resignation — has launched a fresh examination of the two-faced persona all flight attendants are asked to master: grinning snack server one moment, frowning rules enforcer the next.

From bartender to bad cop in a snap.

In an era of “current threat levels,” and within a tense flying environment that gives new meaning to “cabin pressure," is it smart to ask airline crews to juggle such outwardly conflicting responsibilities?


Flight attendants have recently demanded and won heftier federal fines for unruly customers, and have been officially designated “first responders” — someone certified to provide pre-hospital care in a medical emergency — by the Department of Homeland Security.

Yet they are earning less and sleeping less, harder-worked and higher-stressed — all while tending to a seemingly rising number of passengers who board toting an edgy “sense of entitlement,” according to associations representing both U.S. airlines and flight attendants.
While the trade groups carefully veer around the central question — does fluffing pillows and dishing pretzels erode a cabin crews’ vital onboard authority — one former flight attendant believes that’s precisely the psychology taking root in the minds of some fliers.

“Yes, in a way, the service that people see day in and day out does make people forget and it does undermine the ... responsibility that the crew members have for the safety and well being of the passengers,” said Carolyn Paddock, a Delta Air Lines flight attendant for 17 years.

.“At times, it is difficult to balance being helpful and a good host, and then having to police people,” added Paddock, who left Delta about three years ago, launching InFlightInsider.com, a website offering tips on traveling smart and stylishly.

But as flight attendants shove massive snack carts through the aisles, they offer passengers just a tiny glimpse of jobs that have gained deep complexity since Sept. 11 — jobs that pay an average of $35,000 a year, according to Corey Caldwell, spokeswoman for Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, a labor union representing more than 50,000 flight attendants at 22 airlines. "However," Caldwell noted, "most newly hired flight attendants and those who have only been at their carrier for just a few short years often make less than $20,000 a year."

“What [travelers] never see, and what they’re not supposed to see,” Paddock said, “are the inner workings of what it takes to make a flight safe, secure, and work well.”

So what happens behind the curtain? “In the interest of your safety, I cannot reveal what goes on,” Paddock said. “But trust me when I tell you that there is more that meets the eye ... What I can say is the crew is making assessments. Who are the passengers most likely to help in an emergency? Who is acting or looks suspicious? Who looks unwell? Are they unwell enough to fly? Who is sitting next to that little unaccompanied minor and is she OK sitting next to that passenger? ... At times, being underestimated works to the crew's advantage.”

That “underestimation” — or, put bluntly, lack of respect — also reflects what flight crews see on the clock and off, at their hotels, at the mall, on the freeway, or in their neighborhood grocery store: a self-involved, me-first mentality, said David Castelveter, vice president of communications at the Air Transport Association of America. (The ATA is the nation’s oldest and largest airline trade group.)

“More than ever before, there’s a sense of entitlement in society and that’s what creates the challenges for these flight crew members,” Castelveter said. “At the end of day, we’re in the customer service business and the old adage ‘the customer is always right’ is still the norm. But we have to find that balance between the customer being right and [a flier who] does something that creates a potential hazard or inconvenience for another passenger.”

Msnbc.com contacted three domestic airlines to discuss the state of flight attendant authority. Southwest spokesperson Paul Flanigan said he would not discuss whether the Slater incident indicated that U.S. airlines, in general, needed to re-examine or address the command or clout held by flight attendants inside the cabin. "We, to date, have declined all media inquiries regarding the JetBlue incident," he said, and referred questions to ATA. United and JetBlue, meanwhile, did not respond to interview requests on the topic.

“It’s absolutely a rising factor,” said Beth Blair, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant until 2004 and now a travel writer whose job has put her in the sky as often as three times a month. “There are the people who are always looking for anything free. For example, passengers assume they deserve a complimentary upgrade just because a seat is available or they should be granted a free drink because their flight was slightly delayed.”

When such accommodations are not met, some passengers “simply stew in their seats while others react with an outburst which may or may not make the news,” Blair added.

The worst offenders? “Frequent fliers,” Blair said. They are “most likely to break safety rules such as cell phone use or not paying attention to safety briefings.”

Amid these ill-mannered trends — and following Slater’s famous meltdown last week (which may or may not have been sparked by bad passenger behavior) — has the time come for airlines to take pre-emptive action? Must they formally remind passengers of who is in charge in the cabin, and that it’s a federal crime, now punishable by a $25,000 fine, to disobey or interfere with flight attendants?

That question comes with two critical caveats. First, due to post-9/11 union concessions that helped keep airlines in business, flight attendants are paid about 30 percent less than they were before the attacks and they are working about 40 percent more. Fatigue and stress among flight crews are both high, industry experts acknowledge. Couple that with the anxieties many passengers are carrying: strenuous security checks, fewer flight options, jam-packed planes and general worries about terrorism.

“I’m not sure I would say [they must take] official steps,” said Caldwell of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. “On a whole, the traveling public understands the role of flight attendants. [But] it certainly doesn’t hurt to remind them again — that flight attendants are certified safety professionals who are required to enforce federal aviation regulations.”

"Remember, their primary responsibility is to ensure the safety of the traveling public," ATA's Castelveter said. "If any passenger is interfering with the duties of the flight crew member, it's a federal crime."

Caldwell concedes, however, that she can envision a day when the service slice of the flight crews’ job is substantially reduced and attendants ride purely to keep the peace and enforce the safety rules.

“That’s definitely a possibility,” Caldwell said. “If you look at the current business model that airline management has sort of set up, yeah that could be a possibility.”

Although, she added, flight attendants always will remain the face of the airlines and, as such, “there will always be just that little customer service angle. It’s the flight attendants who are in the steel tube at 40,000 feet with the passengers.”

Perhaps some airlines ultimately will find the need to designate certain flight crew members as “hospitality” attendants and others as “safety monitors” — both squads with clearly separate duties, perhaps even wearing different attire. That’s unlikely to occur until the economy rebounds, said flight-attendant-turned-writer Blair.

“I think an onboard safety team is a great idea because it does give the crew members a specific role,” Blair said. “I’m not sure, though, if the airlines will see it as practical or financially feasible.”

Still, fliers already recognize that the “service” elements offered by flight crews are dwindling as pillows and blankets become scarce, and as beverages and snacks are cut or switched to pay-only, pre-boxed meals.

“Other flight attendants, pilots and I used to joke that one day vending machines would replace the galley,” Blair said. “It seems like we may be heading in that direction.”

© 2010 msnbc.com Reprints

Airlines start lining up for Africa take-off



By Jeremy Lemer


Published: August 17 2010 18:14
Last updated: August 17 2010 18:14

The football World Cup is over, the vuvuzelas have been consigned to the dustbin and fans have turned their attention from Africa to Brazil, host of the 2014 contest. But for one group at least, the continent remains in sharp focus: international airlines.


According to the International Air Transport Association, airlines increased the amount of flying capacity to and from Africa by 8.6 per cent over the year to the end of June compared to 2009, more than any other region except for the Middle East.

While US and European airlines have been cautiously adding capacity to Africa for years, the drive has picked up in intensity in recent months, leading industry executives to talk of a new “scramble for Africa” as airlines position themselves for the future.


Executives point to high growth levels that suggest an increasing need, and ability to pay, for travel by air. Africa’s real gross domestic product was $1,600bn in 2008, having grown 4.9 per cent per year since 2000 – more than twice as fast as in the 1980s and 1990s.


Much of that can be put down to Africa’s large mineral reserves – which have become a focus of fast-growing Asian economies. Traffic between Asia-Pacific and Africa is forecast to grow at 9 per cent per year over the next decade according to some estimates.


US and European airlines are also boosting their connections to resource-rich regions. In June, Delta Air Lines started a service between Atlanta and Accra and aims to add services to Liberia, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Kenya in the near future.


Lufthansa, Europe’s biggest airline group and a key provider to Africa, has ramped up its connections, adding two new services in west and central Africa and expanding several more since 2008. The group now has 222 flights a week to 33 destinations in Africa.


A recent report by McKinsey Global Institute, entitled Lions On The Move, suggests that the economic foundations of Africa’s recent success are broader and therefore will have more “staying power”.


Natural resources accounted directly for only a quarter of Africa’s GDP growth over the decade while “the rest came from other sectors, including wholesale and retail, trade and transportation, telecoms and manufacturing”.


Indeed, Airbus, the European aircraft maker, predicts the recent aviation ramp-up will be sustained. Over the next 20 years the amount of filled capacity on flights between Africa and other parts of the world will grow at 5.6 per cent each year, albeit from a low base.


“There is a lot of money in Africa right now,” says Glen Hauenstein, head of network planning at Delta Air Lines, the world’s largest airline by revenues. “GDP is small in absolute terms but it is rapidly expanding as political stability spreads.”


In this newly competitive environment, US airlines are playing catch-up. While European carriers have offered direct services for decades, non-stop flights from North America to Africa have traditionally been limited, and slumped after the industry recession following the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Mr Hauenstein says Delta began experimenting with flights to Africa in 2006 with a connection between its hub in Atlanta, Georgia, and the tourist destination of Johannesburg in South Africa, via Dakar, Senegal.


The success of that route has led Delta to try others, with an emphasis on west and sub-Saharan Africa where avoiding European connections can save US travellers time.


Part of the problem was aircraft technology, says Greg Hart, vice-president of network strategy at Continental.


Until the Boeing 777 was developed in the mid-1990s, many destinations in Africa were too far from the US for direct connections, and even then the 777 was too big to make some routes profitable. With the arrival of Boeing’s much delayed 787, due around the turn of the year, Mr Hart says that many airlines will for the first time have the right aircraft for the job. Continental plans to connect the energy capitals of Houston and Lagos with a service starting in November 2011. Still, considerable obstacles must be overcome.


According to a 2009 World Bank report on Africa’s aviation infrastructure, while the continent is fairly well served by airports, lack of taxi-ways and terminal facilities and “inadequate” air traffic control systems are limiting capacity growth.


Safety is another concern. Last year, Africa had the worst record of any region, according to Iata statistics. While most problems relate to aircraft operated by local airlines, several reports have blamed Africa’s weak regulatory oversight, which raises wider issues.

In response, airlines have worked closely with government authorities and spent time and money to upgrade local infrastructure for their new services. Continental will help to upgrade the electrical facilities in Lagos airport to receive the Boeing 787.

In spite of those hurdles the airlines remain confident that the efforts will pay off. “The 787 is going to be the pride of our fleet and we are going to put it into Africa. That speaks volumes of our level of interest,” says Continental’s Mr Hart.


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools.

If you're bumped from a flight, you may be stuck

By Evan Eile, USA TODAY

A power outage at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on July 15 delayed flights and closed security checkpoints for hundreds of travelers. Such a delay can cause a domino effect, bumping passengers.


MORE SEATS FILLED


Flights on domestic routes are more full than ever. Share of seats filled:
2005 77%
2006 79%

2007 80%
2008 80%

2009 81%
Source: Air Transport Association
 Dan Reed, USA TODAY


Lots of luck catching another flight if you've been bumped or miss a connection.


Commercial airlines in the USA have never been so full. Seven of them — Delta, American, United, Continental, US Airways, AirTran and Alaska — reported filling at least 87% of their seats in July. Even Southwest, always the industry's laggard in load factor, beat the industry's average over the previous six Julys of 84.6% by filling 84.9% of its seats.


That leaves precious few spots available if you've been bumped off a full flight or miss a connecting flight. And because airlines are scheduling fewer flights than five years ago, travelers could face long waits for a direct flight to their destinations or have to settle for circuitous reroutings to get there.


Some travelers, such as Robert Beilstein, consider themselves lucky if a missed flight doesn't cost more than a day's time. Beilstein, a supply-chain software consultant from North Syracuse, N.Y., twice recently missed connections to San Antonio at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He made it to San Antonio both times, after being rerouted via Denver.


"I did lose a day's worth of consulting revenue," he says. "But at least I did manage to get there in one day and didn't lose two days of revenue." He says he's even more "lucky" he hasn't been bumped from a flight lately.

For those who've been bumped off flights against their wishes, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has proposed increasing the maximum compensation from $800 to $1,300. The proposal is included in a package of "fliers' rights" rules that LaHood wants to impose this fall. The Air Transport Association, the trade group that represents the nation's biggest airlines, says it won't object to raising the compensation. Missing a connecting flight as Beilstein did is far more common than being bumped as a result of an airline selling more tickets for a flight than the plane has seats.


However, most delays leading to missed connections are caused by weather. And unlike overbooking, the weather is outside airlines' control. Most passengers who miss a connecting flight aren't owed anything, although airlines sometimes provide vouchers for meals and hotel rooms. LaHood isn't proposing to change that.


Most airlines automatically reschedule passengers with computer software that often predicts missed connections before a plane has landed. The airlines say this lets them speed people who've missed flights to destinations as quickly as possible.
Some travelers aren't convinced.


"Airlines do not care at all anymore if passengers are inconvenienced," says Jill Naas, a project manager from Seattle who flies at least monthly. She has been able to get other flights after missing connections, she says. But, she says, she's "had to fight like hell" and "emphasize" her elite-level frequent-flier status with airlines to do it.

A growing problem

Bumping, known as "denied boarding" in the industry, isn't a big problem, statistically speaking. In 2009, 69,416 passengers were involuntarily bumped, out of 584 million passengers boarded in the USA. An additional 695,510 were coaxed into giving up their seats by offers of discounts on future travel. The rate of involuntary bumping in 2009 was minuscule: 1.19 per 10,000 passengers boarded.


However, it's a growing problem. In the first half of this year, the rate rose to 1.37 per 10,000 boardings, the highest first-half rate of people involuntarily denied boarding in 16 years. The rise in involuntary bumpings is a byproduct of U.S. airlines' record-high passenger loads. That's the result of the airlines cutting capacity, or the number of seats available, by 12% since 2005 by reducing the number of flights or moving to smaller planes.


"The people who volunteer (to be bumped) ... tend not to be all that upset about it," says Ira Gershkoff, a former airline scheduler who develops software for SlipStream Aviation Software that helps airlines better match capacity to fluctuating travel demand. "They brag to their friends about the compensation they got. But those who are involuntarily bumped are upset. They ... had to be somewhere."


Ed Perkins, a contributing editor at SmarterTravel.com, says airlines for the most part handle the job of bumping passengers off a flight fairly well, though he thinks that passengers who are forced off flights against their will often aren't compensated sufficiently for the inconvenience.


"(Airlines) are able to take care of roughly nine out of 10 cases of bumping by offering people some kind of goody," says Perkins, who was Consumer Reports' travel editor for four decades. "But times do come when nobody wants to get off the airplane."


In addition to providing a seat on a later flight, carriers must pay involuntarily bumped passengers — in cash or by check — an amount equal to the price of their ticket, or $400, whichever is lowest. If the passenger arrives more than two hours late, the compensation cap rises to $800.


But the average domestic ticket in the USA in the first quarter of the year was $328. Few involuntarily bumped travelers ever get paid the full $800, or even $400. Typically, only those who buy first- or business-class tickets or full-price coach fares qualify for the maximum payout. The budget traveler flying on a $139 ticket gets only $139.


LaHood wants to raise the caps to $800 and $1,300. But Perkins says the formula, not the actual amount of compensation, is what's wrong.

"I see no reason why the dollar compensation should have anything to do with how much you paid for your ticket, because that doesn't have anything to do with the amount of inconvenience," he says. "The compensation should be a fixed amount. And for a lot of travelers, the money may not be near as important as fixing their trip. There ought to be more focus on that."


He says airlines should be required to put involuntarily bumped travelers on the next available seat to their destination, even if it means paying another airline to carry them.


Most airlines say they won't hesitate to put bumped fliers on competitors' planes if that's the best solution.


Monte Ford, chief information officer at American Airlines, says, "We have become more progressive in our thinking about how and when we put somebody on some other airline's aircraft. In a disruptive situation, we'll put somebody on someone else's airplane in a minute."
But critics such as Perkins say that's often done only as a last resort — often after a bumped passenger's frustration boils over into an ugly confrontation.

Missing connections

Airlines don't have to report the number of passengers who miss connecting flights. But Gershkoff, who is researching the issue, thinks about 7% of all passengers miss their connections.
On the surface, absorbing those fliers shouldn't be a problem.


Despite fuller flights, airlines still can't fill about 20% of their seats over the course of a year. But missed connections don't happen at a steady pace. They come in bunches, often when bad weather throws flights off schedule at one or more big airport hubs.


Delays, which often lead to missed connections, also tend to have a ripple effect. An hour's delay on one plane in Dallas in the morning becomes a 90-minute disruption in New York by noon, a three-hour nightmare in Chicago by 5 p.m., and a five-hour-late arrival on the West Coast by the end of the day. Along the way, 500 passengers scheduled to fly on that one plane have their travel schedules thrown into chaos. Chances are if one plane is affected, 30 others are, too.


"A 30-minute fog event at one airport can throw the rest of the day off," says Michael Baiada, president of ATH Group, a consulting group that does time-flow management consulting work for airlines. "The flights using that plane throughout the day just go later and later and later."
More than 1.9 million passengers board flights on U.S. airlines on the average day. If just 10% miss connecting flights or can't begin their trips on time because travel is disrupted elsewhere, about 125,000 people could be forced to compete for the few remaining unsold seats that day. (Schedulers estimate that about a third ofpassengers who miss flights are leaving from their home airport and go home to wait a day before flying or simply give up their travel plans.)


And there are fewer flights to get on than five years ago.


For example, travelers who missed United Airlines' first flight from Chicago O'Hare to Raleigh-Durham in August 2005 had six more United flights that day to choose from, a USA TODAY analysis of flight schedule data provided by OAG Aviation Solutions shows. Today, there are only four flights total each day.

Five years ago, Continental flew four times a day from Cleveland to South Bend, Ind., the data show. Today, it has three flights. American has cut the number of daily flights from Dallas/Fort Worth to Huntsville, Ala., to three from six. In 2005, Northwest flew eight times a day from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Minneapolis-St. Paul. Delta, which bought Northwest in 2008, flies the route five times a day now.


As a result, it can take travelers a day or more to reach destinations. It can cost hours of scrambling on the phone, extra expense and stress. It's also why travelers say it's important how airlines and airline workers treat them when things go wrong.

Mitchell Fong, a financial services industry executive from Mill Valley, Calif., who flies 200,000 miles a year, recalls a day last winter when his flight into Chicago arrived too late to make his connection to Milwaukee. United's computer system automatically rebooked him on the next available flight — the next morning. Fong would have missed his meeting in Milwaukee. Luckily, he hitched a ride that night with an associate who happened to be driving there.

"United was not sympathetic, did not offer any compensation and did not offer extras or perks to ease my situation," Fong says.

U.S. airlines' aren't obligated to provide anything beyond rebooking to travelers who miss connections for reasons beyond airlines' control, such as weather.Being an elite member of a carrier's frequent-flier program may be the single best way to avoid being bumped, and of getting one of the few available seats on the next flight. But it's no guarantee.
Airlines consider the price paid by each disrupted passenger for their ticket; whether any have health issues that require special attention or are unaccompanied minors; whether passengers are part of a group; and most important, which passengers will be the most inconvenienced, or delayed the longest, if they don't get the next available seat.
It also helps to check in early. Check-in times can be the tie-breaker.
Rahsaan Johnson, a spokesman for United, says the difficulty in getting a seat nowadays is overstated. And, he says, getting one shouldn't be thought of as a contest between passengers.


"Every day of the week, there are airline employees and retirees who are at the bottom of the stand-by list, who do get onboard planes and enjoy a flight," he says. "It's a fallacy that with 85% load factors, you can't get a seat. Statistically, it is more difficult. But it is done all the time."

American, JetBlue Negotiate Code-Share



By Ted Reed 08/16/10 - 04:21 PM EDT

American Airlines/JetBlue story updated with comments from JetBlue.


DALLAS (TheStreet) -- American Airlines(AMR) and JetBlue(JBLU) are negotiating a code-share agreement that could be in place as early as the first quarter of 2011. "We are negotiating, working towards perhaps a code-share in the future," Art Torno, American's vice president for New York told TheStreet. He emphasized that no agreement has been reached so far.

A code-share, which enables airlines to sell tickets on one another's flights, would be a natural step in the increasing cooperation between American and JetBlue, which in March announced plans to work together in New York where both operate hubs at Kennedy International Airport. The two carriers recently announced plans to enable customers to earn frequent flier miles on either airline on connecting flights.

The next step, said JetBlue spokesman Bryan Baldwin, is for the carriers to post interline itineraries on their websites.

"We've said all along that we are open to discussions with American to grow this relationship, but at this time we have no plans to enter into a traditional two-way code-share relationship with American," Baldwin said.
The initial deal involved an interline agreement enabling sales on one another's flights, but the proceeds are remitted directly to the operating carrier. In a code-share, revenue is pro-rated between the airlines and each airline can put its own code on the other's flight. Interline agreements are far more common: American has about 135 interline partners. Both arrangements enable baggage exchange between carriers.

Torno said he has worked closely with JetBlue CEO Dave Barger since the initial deal was announced, but the two carriers want to take things slowly. "We're taking baby steps to make sure that what we are doing makes sense," he said. "Whatever we implement, we want to make sure it works."

As the biggest aviation market in the world, New York is hotly contested. Delta(DAL) said last week it will spend $1.2 billion to upgrade its facilities at JFK .

Meanwhile, a merger between United(UAUA) and Continental(CAL) means the combined carrier will push more traffic through the latter's Newark hub.

Torno said American has a competitive advantage with its $1.3 billion JFK terminal and plans over time to move its alliance partners British Airways and Iberia into the terminal as well. Additionally, if a trans-Pacific joint venture with JAL is approved, that carrier would also be expected to move to the American terminal.
American's parent AMR closed down 0.72% to $6.85 on Monday, while JetBlue shares closed down 0.33% to $5.96.

-- Written by Ted Reed in Charlotte, N.C.