For those of you who are unaware of what the Pirate Bay is, it is a search engine for torrents and basically BitTorrent is a peer to peer method for transferring  large amounts of data.

Now somewhere along the lines governments, the recording industry, movie studios etc have taken great offense to these sort of torrent sites that facilitate the locating of files stored in various places on the internet. These numerous organizations have been battling to shut down sites like the Pirate Bay for quite sometime. However at some point one has to wonder why they are not targeting the likes of Google and Yahoo?

Doing a quick search on Google for “Body of Lies torrent” and hundreds of listings appear. Does this mean Google is providing the same service as Pirate Bay?It would seem that way.

The question is: What is the Pirate Bay doing that Google isn’t?

It is now time for the rumors to fly, news reports, assumptions and anger driven statements to make their way through the web and traditional media. When looking back and listening to some of the rumors on the web one would think that Zoom may have survived if it was being managed better.

One of the rumors are now circulating that Zoom was actually purchasing their fuel at current market rates. Essentially they were not hedging their fuel purchases, hence the $50 Million fuel increase. If Zoom had been hedging their fuel purchases would they be in a different position today? Possible ….

For those of you unaware what Fuel Hedging is… Fuel hedging is the practice, often employed by airline companies, of making advance purchases of fuel at a fixed price for future delivery to protect against the shock of anticipated rises in price. (Source: Wikipedia)

Is part of the downfall the fault and possible lack of experience by brothers Hugh and John Boyle? This was probably a contributing factor to the carriers demise. I wouldn’t image running an airline is an easy task in even the best of economic conditions and certainly wouldn’t be help by managements inexperience.

Is this the last airline we will see fail, more than likely no.

Well not really, but all the news over the last year would indicate a continuing trend of charging for everything. If you look at some American airlines they now charge for water, which is ridiculous. Air Canada recently stated that they would begin charging for the headsets they give you and in efforts to reduce weight and costs they will do away with Life vests on some flights.

Kind of crazy especially when you think that:

• Most airlines hedge their fuel purchases, So technically a rise in fuel today shouldn’t mean an immediate increase in air travel costs.
• Most airlines would purchase in bulk so really what is the cost of water, nuts or headsets on a flight? Pennies one would think…

After writing about the potential failure of Zoom and the numerous media reports on the outrageous charges set out by some airlines I thought I’d write a quick spoof. Be really weird if it comes true, Could you imagine paying a Pilot service fee?