The News Tribune Business Team will keep you updated on what's happening in the South Sound and beyond. Check here for news about economic development, aerospace, shopping and much more.
Talk to us
Got something to say? Here's the place to say it. We welcome your comments on what's going on in business in the South Sound that we should be discussing, reporting or analyzing here on our blog or in the pages of The News Tribune.
Contributors
Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
- All
- Aerospace (1477)
- Banking (179)
- Commercial Real Estate (145)
- Consumer Alert (28)
- Downtown Tacoma (225)
- Economic Development (273)
- Employment/Workplace (283)
- Food (32)
- General (1920)
- Labor (178)
- Port and trade (275)
- Residential Real Estate (77)
- Restaurants (145)
- Retail (63)
- Shopping (320)
- Technology (133)
- Tourism (742)
- Your view (7)
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| << < | Current | > >> | ||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
- October 2009 (59)
- September 2009 (83)
- August 2009 (109)
- July 2009 (98)
- June 2009 (107)
- May 2009 (108)
- April 2009 (124)
- March 2009 (100)
- February 2009 (95)
- January 2009 (112)
- December 2008 (100)
- November 2008 (101)
- More...
XML Feeds- CustomScoop
- BORNHAWK
- Dirtdawg
- artman77
- Guest Users: 453
Nearly 80 percent of flights at Sea-Tac Airport arrived within 15 minutes of their schedule in August, new statistics from the federal Department of Transportation show.
That 78.5 percent on-time arrival percentage was above the national average of 77.8 percent on-time arrivals.
The major airport with the best performance statistics was Salt Lake City with an 88.2 percent on-time arrival record.
New York's airports finished at the bottom on the DOT list. JFK was last with a 58.6 percent on-time record, followed by Newark with a 65.1 percent on-time performance. LaGuardia was third from the bottom at 65.6 percent on-time arrivals.
At Sea-Tac, commuter carrier Skywest led the group with a 91 percent on-time record. American was at the bottom with a 68 percent on-time performance.
The airport's dominant carrier, Alaska, had an 80.4 percent on-time record at Sea-Tac, above the 78.6 overall figure.
Amidst national reports of sagging airline traffic, Sea-Tac Airport managed to report yet another month of higher traffic in August.
The airport said its traffic was 3.345 million passengers in August, up from 3.252 million in August of 2007. That's a 2.83 percent increase.
For the year, Sea-Tac's passenger numbers are up 5.85 percent to 22.28 million through August.
Leading the increases for both August and the year to date are international passenger arrivals, up nearly eight percent for the month and 15 percent for the year.
Sea-Tac this year has added new flights to Germany and China among others.
The Boeing Co. has won three new orders for its C-17 military transport aircraft, the company announced this week.
Those orders come from a consortium of 10 European NATO countries that will share the planes for heavy equipment and troop transport.
The new orders will help Boeing keep its Long Beach, Calif., plant going while it waits for more orders from the U.S. Air Force.
Boeing has cobbled together several smaller orders recently including one from the Mideast nation of Qatar to avoid shutting down its assembly line.
Travelers who've had to cope with Northwest Airlines' dominance in the Seattle-Minneapolis market have another reason to hope for lower fares today.
Southwest Airlines, after years of shunning Northwest's fortress hub in the Twin Cities, has announced it will begin serving the airport next spring.
The route isn't non-stop for Seattle travelers. The Texas-based low-cost carrier will begin its Twin Cities service in March with flights to Chicago's Midway Airport.
That should provide a one-stop connection for Northwesterners flying to the Twin Cities and perhaps put competitive pressure on prices.
Alaska Airlines this fall is also beginning service to Minneapolis, in its case non-stop. That new service also should provide new competition and for Northwest, which is busy now merging with Delta.
In other developments today, Southwest announced its September passenger traffic was down 5.9 percent over the same month last year.
The airline has reduced its capacity by 4.4 percent, but traffic fell even further.
Russell Investments is out with numbers for September. Whoops. It’s nearly 2002 all over again.
The Tacoma-based company notes that the broad-market Russell 3000 Index showed a 9.4 percent decline for the month - which is “the deepest monthly loss since September of 2002 when the index showed a 10.5 percent drop.”
Within the index, Russell said in a release today, 2,300 stocks marked a negative return for the month. The total capitalization for stocks in the index “dropped from about $14 trillion at the beginning of September to about $12.6 trillion at months’ end.”
“It was a rough month for investors, but the indexes show some segments of the market fared much worse than others,” said Chris Tessin, Russell portfolio manager. “If you’re only looking at the Dow, you wouldn’t see that small caps outperformed large caps and value outperformed growth at every level of the market.”
The Russell Microcap Value Index was down 4.5 percent, the company said, and the Russell 2000 Value Index fell 4.7 percent. The large cap 1000 Growth Index was down 11.6 percent.
Within the Russell 3000, consumer staples were down 1.2 percent while energy stocks fell 21.3 percent.
