Now playing on the little screen, "Please Stay Frank Russell," a comedic video episode of The Tacoma Diaries. Watch it at spudgoodman.com.

A scene from the video.

This had to happen – with all the publicity over whether Russell Investments will keep its corporate headquarters in downtown Tacoma or move elsewhere when its leases expire in 2013. The establishment – government and business – has put its best package of stay-in-Tacoma incentives on the table. Now a band of average citizens does its part.

From the promo: Tacoma Diaries somewhat proudly presents...

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A new farmers market is scheduled to open in the Sixth Avenue area of Tacoma this summer.

Meanwhile the farmers market held on Tuesday evenings near the Tacoma Dome won't be happening this year.

Richard Hines, board president of the Tacoma Farmers Markets, said today that the Dome District market wasn't attracting enough shoppers.

"There wasn't the response from the commuters that we thought we'd have," Hines said, referring to the potential for customers from nearby bus and Sounder stations.

But he has a good feeling about the pending Sixth Avenue market, scheduled to open in July. The market will run on Tuesday afternoons.

The Tacoma Farmers Market, the group responsible for the Broadway Farmers Market Thursdays in downtown Tacoma, has joined forces with the Proctor Farmers Market.

The partnership – the Federation of Tacoma Farmers Market – aims to "build a culture of farmers markets in the city" and create new ones.

The Sixth Avenue market is its first project.

The federation is still gathering information about what kind of farmers market the neighborhood may want.

Each market has a different feel.

For example, the Broadway market caters to people working in downtown Tacoma. It has more craft vendors and prepared foods.

The Proctor market, Hines said, was developed to focus more on local produce – the idea that people go to the Saturday market prepared to shop for fruits and vegetables for the week.

"We don't know if the vendors will be the same," Hines said. "We want to reach out and give an opportunity to existing vendors, but depending on what the neighborhood wants and supports it might be a different mix altogether."

To that end, market organizers have planned a community meeting to discuss their plans for Sixth Avenue and gather input from residents.

It's scheduled from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. April 28 at the Epsworth LeSourd United Methodist Church at 710 S. Anderson Street.

John Loesch, Sixth Avenue Business District president, said local merchants are excited about the market.

That includes, Loesch, who, as the owner of Sixth Avenue Neighborhood Market, could see the farmers market as competition.

Instead he plans to buy produce from the vendors and sell it at his store.

"The more varied business we bring to the area, the better off we are in drawing people to the area," Loesch said.

"Even having the grocery store, I think this is one of the best things to happen for the district in a lot of different ways," he added.

John Toler, another member of the business association, said the farmers market is also trying to work with the nearby restaurants to encourage the eateries to use their produce.

The market will likely be located on Pine Street, between Sixth Avenue and N. 7th Street, said Toler, who has been coordinating the creation of the market on behalf of the business district.

The area's farmers markets are set to open soon.

The Proctor market opens April 26. The Broadway market is scheduled to open May 15.

Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, which until today provided low-cost flights from Vancouver, B.C. to Hong Kong, has became the latest victim of high fuel prices.

The Hong Kong-headquartered carrier began service from Hong Kong to London and Vancouver last year and had planned to add new service to that Chinese city from Oakland later this year.

The airline said it was halting all operations and had asked a Hong Kong court to appoint a liquidator to sell off its assets.

In addition to the high costs of fuel, analysts said high landing fees in Hong Kong contributed to the airline's demise.

Oasis Hong Kong joins, ATA, Aloha, Skybus, Champion and MaxJet in shutting down recently.

The Wall Street Journal has named four other airlines as possible candidates for collapse: Alitalia, Frontier, Sun Country and ExpressJet. The later three all operate flights from Sea-Tac Airport.

Boeing today announced another delay, this one until the third quarter of next year, for delivery of its first production 787 Dreamliner.

It also advanced the first flight of the Dreamliner from late June to next fall.

Depending on how you count them, today's delay was either the third or fourth postponement of the Dreamliner's delivery schedule since Boeing's triumphant but premature rollout of the 787 last July 8 in Everett.

The latest delay puts the delivery of the first Dreamliner to All Nippon Airways 14 months behind the originally scheduled May 2008 time schedule.

The delays are another blow to Boeing's vaunted plan to share much of the design and construction of the 787 with major partners around the world.

Some of those partners have been unable to produce their major parts of the airplane on schedule.

Boeing recently announced it had bought Vought Aircraft Industries' share of a joint venture in Charleston, S.C. that joins fuselage sections built by Vought and Italy's Alenia with wing box sections built in Japan.

Vought's new Charleston operation has been a problem child among the major partners' operations on the Dreamliner.

Because of the latest delay, Boeing now expects to build only 25 Dreamliners next year, fewer than a quarter of the number it had scheduled to build.

Boeing is expected to have to pay compensation to airlines that had counted on the new composite-bodied airliners to provide new capacity in their fleets.

Here's the text of Boeing's delay announcement:

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Good news for Alaska Airlines: the SeaTac-based carrier filled four percentage points more seats with paying passengers in March than it did a year ago.

The airline reported this week that on average 80.8 percent of its seats were filled with paying customers last month, up from 76.8 percent in March 2007.

Overall, the airline reported traffic increased 10.7 percent last month on 5.2 percent higher capacity than a year ago last month.

Alaska's sister carrier, Horizon Air, reported a 3.5 percent increase in traffic in March. The percentage of seats filled on the regional airline increased to 73.8 percent compared with 70.9 percent in the same month last year.

For the first quarter of 2008, the passenger load factor at Alaska (the percentage of seats filled by paying customers) was 74.4 percent compared with 71.4 percent in the first quarter of 2007.

Though the passenger traffic figures are good news, the rapidly escalating price of fuel has outstripped most airlines' ability to raise fares to keep pace.

Alaska is scheduled to announce first quarter financial results April 24.

Alaska Airlines will begin service to Maui in Hawaii in mid-July, the airline announced this week.

Introductory prices on the route, available beginning Thursday, will be $249 one-way.

The SeaTac-based airline will fly the Seattle-Maui route with its 157-passenger Boeing 737-800 aircraft. Once-daily service is scheduled to start July 17.

Alaska began flying between the mainland and Honolulu and Kauai just last fall. The airline also plans to begin twice-weekly flights to Maui from Anchorage beginning Oct. 31.

Flights from Seattle will depart daily at 8:20 a.m. and arrive in Maui at 11:35 a.m. Return flights will leave Maui at 1:05 p.m. and arrive back at Sea-Tac at 9:45 p.m.

Some airline analysts have speculated that Alaska will attempt to capture some of the Hawaii traffic abandoned by Aloha and ATA airlines when they shut down operations recently, but the airline thus far hasn't moved into their former markets.

More wiring inspections for its MD-80 aircraft fleet have brought 850 more cancellations to American Airlines today including at least six at Sea-Tac Airport.

American has canceled three morning flights today from Sea-Tac, two to Chicago and one to Dallas-Fort Worth according to Flightstats.com.

The number could increase as the day progresses if American hasn't completed the inspections on the older McDonnell Douglas twin jets.

Three arriving flights have been canceled at Sea-Tac by the Fort Worth-based airline. Two were scheduled to arrive from Chicago and one from Dallas-Fort Worth.

The airline grounded much of its MD-80 fleet Tuesday for the third time in a month when it discovered that wiring bundles had not been properly secured and inspected in the wheel wells of some aircraft.

The airline had twice before cancelled hundreds of flights when it found it had failed to perform or document Federal Aviation Administration-required checks.

Here are the arriving and departing flights cancelled so far:

Departing

Flight 1288 6:10 a.m. Chicago
Flight 1238 8:25 a.m. Chicago
Flight 1050 9:35 a.m. Dallas-Fort Worth

Arriving

Flight 1157 8:50 a.m. Dallas-Fort Worth
Flight 305 11:45 a.m. Chicago
Flight 1311 1:55 a.m. Chicago

Please check with American if you're booked on one of these flights or are meeting someone. The cancellations can change throughout the day depending on the availability of aircraft.