As ceremonies go, despite being led by a man with a very French name and accent, Airbus president and CEO Fabrice Brégier’s July 2 announcement that his company will build a final assembly factory in Alabama could not have been more American. The red, white and blue was everywhere; balloons and confetti rained down reminiscent of a US political rally, and even the company name was given the Stars and Stripes treatment, to emphasize the “US” in Airbus.

I know I have a “thing” for the cargo airliners as my last Time Capsule showed an Alaska International Hercules. The more I dug into the history of the Super Guppy, the more I like it. Not only for its size and shape and the ability to fly with a body like that, but for its birth and lineage. The first Guppy was called the Pregnant Guppy. It was built by Aero Spacelines in the 1960s and was built directly from the fuselage of the Boeing Turbo Stratrocruiser, the military version of the Boeing 377.

The good news is that IATA is forecasting another profitable year for airlines; a global net profit of $19.7 billion in 2014 that will mark an almost $7 billion improvement over the profit anticipated for 2013.

Lufthansa Group’s intent to end the codeshare and frequent flyer arrangements that Lufthansa, Austrian and Swiss have with Turkish Airlines has interesting implications for the future of the global alliances, particularly with regards to the major Gulf carriers. Lufthansa, a Star Alliance founding member, sponsored Turkish Airlines’ induction into Star in 2008. Since then, Turkish has expanded rapidly and as a result, Istanbul has become a major global hub rivaling the traditional European hubs such as Frankfurt.

It was too long coming and it burdens European carriers with carbon taxes while their rivals get a reprieve, but the European Commission’s decision to suspend the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) for a year is without question a welcome move.

I was recently at an airline-industry trade show, and picked up a relatively small (roughly 7X4 inches; 19X11 centimeters) printed booklet at one of the stands. While it had a color cover, and a few other color photos, along with a nice foldout map of the carrier's worldwide route system at the back, most of the document consisted of tabular material printed in black & white, with single-color accents.

Now in its second decade, the most compelling evidence of the US Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) performance is demonstrated by what has nothappened since 9/11. The number of terrorist attacks successfully brought against a US carrier since TSA’s creation in 2002 remains at zero. There can be no eroding of that security gold standard; global economies, the health of the airline industry, and most important, the lives of the general public and airline crews, depend on it.