It always seems to sneak up on us, but this week is the fifth annual Cranky Network Awards presented by Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The nominees are ready, the trophies are engraved, and by the end of the night on Thursday, we will have some newly-minted winners.<\/p>\n
We will also have a completely exhausted Cranky. For that reason, I won\u2019t be posting anything more this week. That doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t ways to interact, however.<\/p>\n
The Awards Are Not Live, But We Will be Announcing Winners Live<\/h3>\n
We stopped live-streaming the Cranky Network Awards last year, because this is a night for the network planning teams who work so hard day-in and day-out to figure out where to put all those airplanes. We don\u2019t want them to have to sit there worrying about what they might say.<\/p>\n
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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nWhen we say this is for those teams, we mean it. Of the expected attendees this year outside of Cranky staff and the host airport in Phoenix, about two-thirds work for an airline or aircraft manufacturer (and the vast majority of those work for an airline). Like last year<\/a>, we will have a short wrap-up video so you can see the winners and some highlights. I\u2019ll post here once that\u2019s ready.<\/p>\n In the meantime, you might really want to know who wins in real-time, and we don\u2019t want to deprive you of that, so we will be live-skeeting which is apparently what we\u2019re calling posts on Bluesky. And yes, for those of you who still use Twitter\/X and haven\u2019t seen the light, we will post there as well, but this may be the last year.<\/p>\n Follow along on BlueSky @crankyflier.com<\/a>. As far as I can tell, you do not need to have an account to see the posts. If you\u2019re still stuck on Twitter, then @crankyflier<\/a> is what you need. That account is almost never active, but we will tweet during the show.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve got a couple of good episodes to listen to, or at least, we\u2019ll have the second one soon if it\u2019s not there right away. It has been recorded, I can confirm that.<\/p>\n First up was last week when Jon Ostrower and I took the reins alone and did a deeper dive into the situation at Chicago\/O\u2019Hare that I previously wrote about<\/a>. This gets into the weeds\u2026 but not too deep. It\u2019s more about how United may very well see this current situation as a path toward a fortress hub. This is a quick listen at just shy of 23 minutes, but it\u2019s a good episode which has generated a lot of thoughts and feedback from listeners.<\/p>\n Next up this week? It\u2019s time to talk about Southwest again in light of the layoffs last week. It\u2019s easy to blame Elliott, but I think that\u2019s misguided. As terrible as Elliott\u2019s model may feel to a lot of people, it was former CEO Gary Kelly who set this airline up to make it so attractive to a corporate raider like Elliott. Come see if you agree tomorrow when this goes live.<\/p>\n Of course, you should just subscribe with your favorite podcast player so you know exactly when the new episodes are released.<\/p>\n I hope to be back with you Monday, but if I run out of time, it may be Tuesday. This is one of the busiest weeks for me all year, and now that we\u2019ve added the Cranky Confab with discussion panels, it has just gotten even busier. (And no, sorry, you can\u2019t see those either. We use Chatham House Rule<\/a> for this and the forecast breakfast.)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nListen to The Air Show<\/h3>\n
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