As I continue to develop my blog, I plan on creating a separate “ticker-style” page dedicated to airline, airport & travel industry news perhaps not deserving of a unique posting, but otherwise important to follow. In the meantime, here is another summary of such articles that caught my attention during the past few days:

• Economic growth near Oklahoma City brings new nonstop United Airlines service to the city from San Francisco beginning August 29, 2011. Operated by SkyWest airlines with a two-cabin Canadair CRJ-700 aircraft, OKC will see one daily nonstop with a morning departure Westbound, and an evening return to Oklahoma.
• Work stoppages planned by Qantas engineers at the carrier on Friday were called off on Thursday Australia time, for which the carrier reinstated more than 31 flights it had pre-canceled. It’s a temporary reprieve, though, as the engineers are planning work stoppages next Monday and Tuesday, but were concerned over the growing number of technical issues Qantas aircraft have been experiencing in the past 48-hours & the impact an hour-long strike would have to passengers Friday. Additional action by the pilot’s union is threatened for similar job security issues at the core of the engineer dispute.
• Korean Air is getting considerable flak for denying a passenger with stage 4 cancer from flying on a lengthy international flight, even though she had approval to fly from her doctors. No matter which side you tend to take in this story, there should be some kind of waiver or acknowledgment of risk to sign yourself to if you were in the same position. I don’t think an airline check-in agent should have any say in the case.
• Perhaps we uber frequent flyers no longer have to suffer through the same TV episode of “The Office” on flights where we don’t have anything else pre-loaded on our computers or iPhones. American Airlines is testing the delivery of movies & TV shows via Wi-Fi to our devices from an onboard library. I simply say fantastic! Price it right, American… price it right.
• Not unexpected, United Airlines officially terminated its agreement with global distribution system (GDS) Amadeus and their planned migration to the Altea product for reservations processing & airport departure control functions. The reason for breaking off the engagement is due to the merger with Continental Airlines & lack of ease in merging the two systems onto the new platform. A hefty, in my opinion, payment of $75 million was made to Amadeus to break the deal, and both sides seemed overly accepting of each other in their official statements, leading me to believe a future relationship isn’t out of the question.