What's next?

Big shakeup in the airline industry continues this week as Frontier Airlines goes into bankruptcy, seeking court protection from its creditors. Last week 4 - count 'em FOUR airlines went belly up or plan to.

Honolulu based Aloha led the charge ("aloha" also means goodbye!), followed quickly by ATA (Indianapolis, Indiana), and Skybus (Columbus, Ohio).

Minnesota's Champion Air indicates it cannot compete with the price of gas at $110/barrel and will shut down at the end of May (I think it'd be fitting to shut down a week earlier on Memorial Day, but what do I know).

Meanwhile hometown airline Alaska indicates it'll take advantage of the situation and expand it's wings further into the "Aloha State" with service starting to Maui starting July 17th from Seattle and seasonal service from Anchorage starting in October 31st (Happy Halloween!).

Meanwhile Southwest led the news earlier this month with fines imposed for failure to comply with maintenance issues related to aging aircraft inspections (i.e. corrosion). Shakeup of the FAA's regional management ensued.

Then United had issues with some of its Airbus aircraft. This was followed by many carriers who operate MD80 type aircraft had schedule disruptions caused by a FAA Airworthiness Directive (AD) to adjust the spacing of wire bundle ties and taping, and repositioned wire bundle clamps. Alaska only has 9 of these aircraft remaining in its fleet, while American has more than 100. So while it was a minor issue at Alaska, Delta, Midwest, and Continental; American's whole operation was a mess - with more than 300,000 inconvenienced passengers.