Scanning through back issues of ATW recently, we came across an article from April 1999 describing a promising new technology being trialed by British Airways at London Heathrow that soon might be introduced on a wider scale. The technology was radio frequency identification bag tracking and according to one BA executive, it had the potential to make lost or misplaced bags "a thing of the past."

Former Continental Airlines Chairman and CEO Gordon Bethune used to say that when it came to managing a business, what you chose to measure and what you rewarded were what you got. An airline that prized punctuality and incentivized its employees to close the cabin doors on schedule would become an ontime airline. But, he pointed out, this cut both ways. An airline that measured and rewarded penny-pinching over customer service would become the equivalent of a pizzeria that made a pie so cheaply that "no one would eat it."

Recently, Southwest Airlines has been running television commercials tweaking those rival (legacy) airlines that are charging customers for services that formerly were included in the ticket price. Although the advertisement exaggerates this trend for humorous effect--to the best of our knowledge no airline has installed pay toilets--nevertheless it is instructive for a few reasons.

Europe's political leaders are getting a rough but necessary lesson in the workings of the free market this autumn, courtesy of events in Ireland and at Airbus. If they are smart, they will step back from the mess they have helped to create and allow Schumpeter's "creative destruction" to take its course.

If this kind of thinking is not reversed, airplanes in Europe may be required one day to carry a warning label on their fuselages: "Warning: Air travel is hazardous to your health."

The recent departure of Norman Mineta, who resigned as US Secretary of Trans- portation in July after a six-year tenure, provides a much-needed opportunity for the Bush Administration to take a fresh look at how it is managing issues affecting international aviation relations. Cabinet officials serve at the will of the President and Secretary Mineta left of his own volition, so we will not use this space to criticize him for actions undertaken by DOT with the approval or at least the knowledge of the White House.

We are not the first to suggest that at this stage in its evolution, the commercial air transport manufacturing industry appears to have become a zero sum affair, a game of seesaw in which one side has to sink down in order for the other to rise up. Thus as Airbus confronts a wave of bad news including extensive new A380 delivery delays and potentially harmful operating restrictions when the aircraft enters service, uncertainty regarding the A350, and slack sales across its product line (see NewsBriefs, p. 9, and Farnborough Preview, p.

Although after all that has transpired over the past six years it may be difficult to recall, there have been times in the not-too-distant past when the primary news interest in airlines was not on which ones would or would not survive. Throughout much of the deregulated period, far more attention was paid to answering the question of whether airline safety had deteriorated compared to the previous era. It hadn't, although it was also clear that deregulation put some stress on the system that was not there before.