Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing,” Winston Churchill is said to have remarked before adding mischievously, “Once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” Sometime in the not-too-distant future...

Mixed in with the unusual, the unfortunate and the unprecedented events in commercial aviation last year were two highly expected developments that did not materialize: A significant slowdown in deliveries of large transport aircraft accompanied by a decrease in production rates.

The US Dept. of Transportation's recent tentative decisions involving the oneworld antitrust immunity application and the unrelated slot transfer agreement between US Airways and Delta Air Lines, if finalized, suggest that a significant gap exists between how DOT and the Federal Aviation Administration evaluate domestic and international airline competition matters.

Nothing better demonstrates al-Qaeda's total grasp of the reality of aviation security in a post-modern culture than the fact that the world's deadliest and most sophisticated terrorist organization did not even bother to have Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab purchase a roundtrip ticket or check a bag or two of old socks and underwear to allay any possible suspicions that he was on a one-way trip to paradise when he boarded his KLM flight in Lagos last month.

United Airlines waited more than a decade to do it, but we think the carrier made the right choice in deciding to down-gauge its future international fleet with its recent order for up to 150 787s and A350s. According to the company, the 787s will replace its 767s while the A350s take over for its 747-400s, and eventually its 777s assuming purchase rights are exercised. The average seat count will drop by about 19% compared to the aircraft being replaced, resulting in a 10% systemwide seat reduction in the international fleet.

Grupo Mexicana Chief Executive Manuel Borja uses a captivating comparison to describe the turnaround of the Mexican carrier. "What we have been doing is educating Rita," he says philosophically. Rita was a tomboy, slightly "messed up" and suffering from a major lack of direction and guidance. "The government had Mexicana up for sale for almost 12 years," he explains to ATW in his office in Mexico City.

Aficionados of the old Seinfeld TV show may recall an episode in which Jerry accuses his dry cleaner of wearing a jacket that Jerry left to be cleaned and pressed. Responding indignantly to this (truthful) accusation, the proprietor sputters that no dry cleaner would dare do such a thing because, "It's in the dry cleaner's code of ethics."

In October, Iberia disclosed plans to create a new short- and medium-haul carrier feeding its growing long-haul network of mainly Latin American services through its Madrid hub. The announcement was unexpected given that IB has a solid short/medium-haul network into MAD spanning all 38 domestic airports, 47 destinations in Europe and eight in North Africa that it serves with a fleet of 81 Airbus family aircraft.