China plans to tell its state-owned airlines to hold off on any new airliner purchases until the economy improves, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reports.

The order moratorium would pinch off one of the largest sources of new airliner orders for Boeing and its European rival Airbus.

Two of China's largest carriers, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines, have asked the Chinese government for financial aid to help them weather the decline in business.

The state is also planning to seek to postpone deliveries already scheduled by the two aircraft makers because of cash flow problems and falling business.

Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways, one of Boeing's better Asian customers, is talking with the airliner maker about delaying delivery of planes already on order.

The usual culprit, the world economic slowdown, is to blame for the talk of delays.

Cathay has unfilled orders for Boeing jetliners worth $9.5 billion at list prices.

The company has 10 747-8 freighters, four 747-ERF freighters and 21 777-300ER twin engine passenger jet on order.

The company is mothballing two 747-400s in the California desert because exports from Asia are slowing.

For the next few days, what with the holidays approaching, we’ll be speaking to small retail stores in the South Sound. If you’d like to nominate a retail business for this series, e-mail c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com.

BLOOM

Address: 4779 Point Fosdick Dr. N.W., Uptown Gig Harbor

On the phone: Mark Crowley, co-owner. He and wife Maria Miskoski own the store, which is new to Uptown Gig Harbor but which was established in Downtown Gig Harbor.

Give me a quick description of what your store sells.
Women’s contemporary clothing, designer clothing, and accessories such as jewelry and handbags.

When did your holiday season start?
Probably the first week in November. Uptown kicked it off, and the Rotary Club did a “Ho Ho Holidays” gathering. That kicked off the holiday season for us.

How is it going so far?
Things are great. Things have been fantastic for us. I think we’re just trying to make the best of what’s going on and have some fun while we’re doing it.

What are you hearing form your shoppers about their budgets?
Actually, we’re not hearing much of anything. I think people are making some adjustments. I think peoples’ incomes haven’t really changed. We try not to let the economy be a downer for everybody. People come in to shop, and we take care of them.

Are you having any sales?
We’re a small boutique, so we don’t generally run any sales. Every once in a while we do specials. We have a four-year anniversary coming up. We may tie that in with the holiday season.

What’s the most popular item?
Probably our most popular label is True Religion jeans. William Rast. Vince cashmere sweaters. We’ve had a lot of success with our accessories such as scarves and jewelry.

The Port of Tacoma has told its commissioner it plans to avoid the bond market for now to raise funds for long-term capital projects.

Instead the port intends to use commercial paper, unsecured, shorter term borrowings to fund its construction projects until the finance market settles down.

The port has a five-year plan to spend some $324 million for capital projects on the Tacoma Tideflats. The port is converting much of the Blair-Hylebos Peninsula to a container terminal.

The port's immediate plans call for construction of a 600-foot wharf extension, the purchase of two container cranes and environmental mitigation work on Blair-Hylebos peninula.

Fast chat: Dave Kleinman, owner of Fantasy World Hobbies

For the next few days, what with the holidays approaching, we’ll be speaking to small retail stores in the South Sound. If yo9u’d like to nominate a retail business for this series, e-mail c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com.

FANTASY WORLD HOBBIES
Address: 1909 South 72nd St. at the Tacoma Place Shopping Center
On the phone: Dave Kleinman, owner

Please give me a quick description of what you sell.
We have a complete assortment of hobby items, including slot cars, radio-controlled cars, helicopters. We have model kits, model rockets, all the accessories. We’re basically in the hobby business.

When did your holiday season start?
It really hasn’t started yet. We’re waiting for Black Friday. The economy is in the tank. We’re doing everything we can to stimulate business. We’re making the store look as good as possible, decorating. We’re still waiting, like everybody, for the holidays to begin.

How are sales so far?
It’s been slow, but there are signs of improvement. We’re getting a lot of people looking for ideas, bringing the kids in. A lot of our customers are adult males, so the wives are coming in to get ideas. We’re also trying to reach out to the 5-15 year olds, who like to do the slot cars and radio- controlled things. We sell a lot of slot cars on the Internet. We’ve seen that kick up already.

What are you hearing from your shoppers about their budgets?
I think some people are concerned, some people are limiting what they buy, and some aren’t affected.

Are you having any sales?
We have all kinds of sales. We have some surprise specials over the weekend, plus we do give free battery packs with some of the radio-controlled cars. We have a rewards program – a $10 rebate for every $200 they spend, plus they get gift certificates on their birthdays and anniversary dates.

What are your most popular sellers so far this season?
The E-Flight radio-controlled helicopters, the Traxxas radio-controlled cars and trucks, monster trucks. Slot cars have always been our biggest thing – on the Internet. The helicopters are moving up real fast. You used to spend $1,000, now it’s just over a hundred.

If you've already seen Elizabeth Taylor's house in Puerto Vallarta, toured the market in Mazatlan and admired the rows of immaculate white yachts tied up in Cabo, Alaska Airlines thinks you're not alone.

That's why the Sea-Tac-based airline is enhancing its schedule to a less trodden destination, La Paz. That's La Paz, the capital of Mexico's Baja California Sur, not the capital of Bolivia.

The airline started flying there two years ago three times a week, and now it's adding two more flights weekly. Only Tuesdays and Fridays are missing a round trip from La Paz to Los Angeles.

The city of about 200,000 residents is not as visitor-oriented as the more well-known Mexican resorts.

But it features fish and whale watching and diving in the Sea of Cortez and exploration in the surrounding desert.

Flights from smaller cities to Horizon Air's Seattle hub will be leaving earlier and returning later next year to let travelers make more connections in the Emerald City.

Horizon is making adjustments, the airline said, based on customer feedback about connections to longer flights in Seattle.

"We never stop listening to our customers." said Dan Russo, the SeaTac-based airlines' vice president of marketing and communications.

In many cases, the first morning flights from outlying communities are leaving 30 minutes earlier than now and the last returning flight of the day is leaving 30 minutes or more later from Seattle to make connections easier.

From Wenatchee, for instance, the first of four daily flights to Sea-Tac will depart at 6 a.m. beginning Jan. 5. That's an hour earlier than now.

The last returning flight of the day will leave Sea-Tac at 10:20 p.m., two hours later than now. The schedule alterations will give Wenatchee passengers 23 more Alaska and Horizon connections in the morning and 33 additional inbound connections at night.

Similar changes are being planned from Yakima and the Tri-Cities. Other schedule changes are being made in Boise, and Medford and Bend in Oregon and Flagstaff, Ariz. and Santa Rosa, Calif.

For full details, go to www.alaskaair.com

For the next few days, what with the holidays approaching, we’ll be speaking to small retail stores in the South Sound. How’s business? What’s up? What are customers saying?

If you’d like one of our reporters to speak with a business you’re curious about, let me know at c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com.

Thanks - and Happy Thanksgiving!

Today: Watermark
Address: 1115 A St., downtown Tacoma
On the phone: Karen McGrath, owner

Please give me a quick description of what you sell.
We sell distinctive gifts and decor, and a wide variety of cards.

When did your holiday season start?
Any minute now. Today is the first lunch hour I’ve see that it’s been busy. Actually, it started on Nov. 10. We had an open house.

How are sales so far?
It’s quiet. It’s slow. People are very cautious.

What are you hearing from your shoppers about their budgets?
They’re asking, ‘Is this going to be on sale after Thanksgiving?’ Everybody’s watching their budget. People are concerned.

Are you having any sales?
We typically don’t have a sale before the holidays. If you do, people always look for things to be on sale. We offer wonderful items at a reasonable price. I think they’re worth what the price is.

What are your most popular sellers so far this season?
So far, ornaments. This month and early December, lots of ornaments. Lots of office-exchange gifts. People are getting ready to decorate their homes.

Are there any particularly notable items you’ll be selling this season?
We have the “Yodeling Pickle” you press a button, and it yodels. We have all kinds of body-care items, for men and women. And Baggallini – it’s a line of contemporary, fabric bags, from Portland. And cards, ones with good quotes. We are selling more religious items, we have for some years.

Cargobusinessnews.com is out today with some unencouraging numbers from the American Trucking Association – whose seasonally adjusted “For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index” dropped 3 percent in October. That’s the fourth consecutive monthly drop, according to a Monday news release.

The index fell 0.8 percent in September and 1.9 in August, the site said in its daily newsletter.

Trucking association Chief Economist Bob Costello said that truck tonnage is down a total of 6.3 percent in the last four months, year-over-year.

“October should be the busiest month of the year, but instead this October was a fizzle,” he said. “The latest truck tonnage drop suggests that retailers are very pessimistic for the holiday sales season.”

For more information, visit www.truckline.com or www.cargobusinessnews.com.

The frequently-delayed new European military transport aircraft, the Airbus A400M, is facing yet another delivery postponment.

An Airbus executive today said the first plane won't be delivered until the second half of 2009.

Tom Williams, head of aircraft programs for Airbus, said engine problems are holding up testing and certification of the aircraft, Bloomberg News reports.

European governments have ordered 192 of the airlifters for military operations. The turboprop plane is larger than Lockheed's C-130 Hercules but smaller than Boeing's C-17 four-engine jet transport.

The aircraft has already been delayed four times since its construction began.

Meanwhile in the Puget Sound area, Boeing was doing its share to add to the delays.

The Australian newspaper reports that Boeing is now telling the Austrailian government that the first of six Wedgetail electronic surveillance aircraft won't be delivered until late 2009. The Wedgetail is a commercial 737 modified for military use.

The Wedgetail was originally supposed to begin delivery in 2006.

Primus International Inc. of Bellevue announced today it acquired Accra Manufacturing Inc. of Bothell on Nov. 14.

Accra, founded in 1978, produces a range of components and assemblies for aircraft. The company employs about 150 people.

"Accra is a significant direct and indirect supplier to Boeing and has significant content on three of the four best-selling commercial aircraft in the world," said Pete George, Primus' chief operating officer.

"We all believe Accra is well-positioned to grow organically as demonstrated by its recent contract wins to supply the Boeing 787 with components and assemblies," he said.

Primus is a so-called "Tier 2" supplier of aircraft parts and structures worldwide.

Nutplates, small metal parts that hold two aircraft parts together, are causing more trouble at Boeing.

The company previously had revealed that thousands of nutplates untreated with a corrision-resistant finish had been mistakenly installed in more than 300 737 aircraft.

Now the company acknowledges some of those parts may have been installed in its 777s, 747s and 767s.

While those parts don't pose an immediate safety hazard in the relatively new aircraft, they must be replaced during the planes' maintenance overhauls.

Substandard nutplates installed on aircraft still on the assembly line are being taken out and replaced, the company said.

Airbus' chief executive Thomas Enders raised the possibility of production cuts at a Monday aviation evening dinner in Paris, the European press reports.

Enders said that Airbus "Can't rule out anything out at the moment," when questioned about a slowdown in production.

Airbus has already canceled plans to raise production of its A320 single aisle jet to 40 planes a month from the present 36 because of order cancellations.

Airbus has seen 119 aircraft orders cancelled this year including 71 in October. Boeing reports only six cancelled airliner orders this year, four 737s, one 747 and one 787. Boeing's production of its rival to the A320, the 737, is about 31 planes a month at its Renton plant.

Even with the cancellations, Airbus is ahead of Boeing this year in the order race with a net order total of 675 after cancellations compared with Boeing's 640.

Boeing claims its order book is more solid than that of its rival because it has fewer orders from financially unsteady carriers.

A major blow to Airbus came when low-cost carrier Skybus, an all-Airbus airline, quit the business earlier this year. Skybus had orders for 65 more Airbuses.

Continental, JetBlue, Virgin America and Midwest airlines have won top honors in a new Zagat survey of frequent travelers.

That survey of 10,000 fliers named Continental the best domestic airline for its premium cabin. JetBlue won the top honors among large airlines for its economy seating.

Virgin America, the San Francisco-based upstart carrier, won the top award for its premium cabin among mid-sized airlines. Midwest took the top spot for its economy cabin.

SeaTac's Alaska Airlines won third place in the premium seating category and fourth among the airlines in the economy category.

Singapore Airlines took first place honors among international carriers for its premium and its economy cabins.

This Thanksgiving holiday may see airline traffic dropping for the first time in decades, but train travel is up.

So far up that Amtrak has added an additional train each way between Seattle and Portland during the holidays.

That makes a total of six daily trains each way between the Northwest cities and other cities such as Tacoma on the route between.

Looking at Amtrak's reservations, it appears that two of the six trains are already sold out Wednesday for the southbound trip.

All six trains still had space available for a Sunday return from Portland.

If you're booking online, don't refer to the everyday schedule. That schedule shows only five trains. Instead, enter your intended arrival and departure dates in the interactive menu, and the site will show you all trains including the two added for the holidays.

CDG Management, one of the largest telemarketing firms in the country, will close its Tacoma call center on December 21, affecting 34 workers, according to the Washington State Employment Security Department.

The company, based in Edison, New Jersey, is best known for fundraising campaigns on behalf of police, fire and veterans' associations and has frequently been criticized for keeping an unusually high percentage of the funds it raises.

The Tacoma call center raised money for the Washington State Patrol Trooper Association, according to a WARN (worker adjustment and retraining notice) filed with Employment Security.

CDG representatives could not be reached for comment Monday, either at the Tacoma center or the New Jersey headquarters.

A notice on Alaska Airlines' Web site about new fees for British Airways' tickets obtained with Alaska Mileage Plan miles makes you wonder whatever happened to the idea of free frequent flier flights.

The notice informs Mileage Plan members that British will add a fuel surcharge fee ranging from $300 to $600 per ticket beginning Dec. 1 on tickets redeemed by Mileage Plan members. Those new fees are in addition to existing fees and taxes.

British has always been on the stingy side in its agreement with Alaska, awarding only one mile of credit on Alaska's program for every four miles actually flown.

That means the roughly 5,000-mile trip from Seattle to London on British will put fewer miles in your Alaska Mileage Plan account than a trip to Dallas or Chicago.

Seems peculiar that the new fee takes the form of a fuel surcharge when fuel prices have fallen off a cliff in the last two months.

My experience trying to get a free British Airways flight with Alaska miles has always been unsuccessful anyway. I tried last year to get a free seat to London. Despite being willing to adjust my travel plans by several days and my willingness to fly through Phoenix, LA or Chicago, I couldn't find any some 10 months in advance of the flight. Maybe the fuel surcharge won't matter anyway.

A handful of gas stations in Pierce County are selling gas for $1.69, according to TacomaGasPrices.com. You have to go back to 2005 to find prices at that level. The stories in The News Tribune then were predicting $3-a-gallon gas and economic trouble for consumers who drove to work.

Well, we went way past $3.

If we do the math, filling up my 14-gallon tank would cost me $23.66 at the Costco in Gig Harbor or the nearby Arco.

In contrast, Tacoma prices hit a record of $4.34 a gallon in June. (That's an average as reported by AAA.) That 14-gallon tank would cost $60.76 to fill.

The downside? The falling gas prices are tied to the sagging economy and falling consumer demand. Investors are unsure about the economy and that's driving down the price of a barrel of oil.

Here's what today's AP story has to say:

Oil futures have followed stock markets recently, using equities as a proxy for economic outlook and investor sentiment.

“It’s probably going to be after the first of the year before we begin to decouple and various commodities and financial instruments begin to march to the beat of their own drummer,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultants Ritterbusch and Associates.

Ritterbusch said it’s premature to say oil prices have hit a bottom and it’s important for investors not to read too much into two days of price action.
Oil prices have plunged from close to $150 at their peak over the summer.

“We’ve been forecasting $50,” he said. “We’ve achieved it, but it just doesn’t have the feel of a market that’s placed a bottom.”

Gas prices continued to drop overnight, with the national average price for regular dropping about 2 cents to $1.908 a gallon, according to according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.

That is more than 80 cents gallon below what it was a month ago and more than $2 below where it was in July when prices peaked at $4.11 per gallon.

New legislation will allow Washington residents to receive unemployment benefits for up to 33 weeks, seven more than the previous 26-week maximum.

President George Bush signed legislation this week providing that additional benefit.

“There’s never a good time to be unemployed, but job conditions are especially difficult right now. I applaud Congress for moving so quickly to approve this additional income assistance for our unemployed workers,” said Gov. Chris Gregoire.

The state Employment Security Department explained the eligibility requirements and procedures in a news release:

Initial applications for the program may be submitted to the state Employment Security Department through March 28, 2009, and approved claims can be paid through Aug. 29, 2009.

Employment Security will begin notifying individuals who qualify for the program. People are asked to avoid calling or e-mailing the department so that staff can focus on processing current benefit claims as quickly as possible. Statewide, unemployment claims are 50 percent higher than last year.

People currently receiving EUC benefits do not need to file a new application. People who have stopped claiming benefits should wait until they receive written information from Employment Security before reapplying. Anyone whose EUC original benefits ran out cannot receive extended EUC benefits for weeks prior to the week beginning Nov. 23, 2008.

The first payable week for the additional extended EUC benefits will be the week ending Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008.

For new information, people are encouraged to check www.esd.wa.gov .

Boeing's 757, never marketed to handle overseas routes, is being drafted to fly to an increasing number of foreign destinations where a smaller long-range aircraft is needed.

Part of the shift to overseas routes is enabled by the addition of blended winglets from Seattle's Aviation Partners Boeing to the standard 757.

The winglets are those now-familiar 8-foot vertical additions to the wingtips that are gracing so many Boeing 737s these days.

The winglets cut aerodynamic drag, cutting fuel consumption and adding several hundred miles' range to the 757.

No airline is making better use of those range-enhanced, winglet-retrofitted 757s than Delta which this week announced new service to Africa from Atlanta. Many of those new routes, which are too thinly traveled to support a bigger plane such as the 747 or 777, fit the single-aisle 757 perfectly.

Delta, for instance, plans to use the winglet-equipped 757, which it calls the 757ER for "extended range," to serve Monrovia Liberia; Abuja, Nigeria; Luanda, Angola and Malabo, Equitorial Guinea
from Atlanta.

It will also serve Valenica, Spain and Zurich, Switzerland from New York with the 757-200ER.

Tacoma-based Columbia Banking System, parent of Columbia Bank, said today that it has raised approximately $76.9 million by issuing 76,898 shares of Series A preferred stock – at $1,000 per share – to the U.S. Department of Treasury as a voluntary participant in the Treasury's Capital Purchase
Program.

Meanwhile, Heritage Financial Corp., parent company of Heritage Bank and Central Valley Bank, announced a few minutes ago that it has raised $24 million in cash by selling the Treasury 24,000 shares of “Fixed Rate Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series A, with a related Warrant to purchase 276,074 shares of the Company's common stock.”

The issuance is the result of Treasury's approval of applications to participate in teh program, which was established under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

At Columbia, President and CEO Melanie Dressel said in a statement, "We are pleased to have been selected as one of the first regional banks to participate in the Treasury's program, further affirming our financial strength. The additional equity bolsters our already strong capital levels,
enhances our ability to lend and increases our flexibility to pursue strategic opportunities which may arise.”

The preferred stock carries a 5 percent coupon for five years and 9 percent thereafter, The Columbia statement said. In addition, the Treasury will receive a warrant to purchase 796,046 shares of Columbia common stock at an initial exercise price of $14.49 per share. The warrant will expire in 10 years.

Heritage President and CEO Brian Vance said, “I am pleased to announce we have completed this transaction and it is an indication of our strength as a community bank that we were included as one of the early recipients of these funds. We are fortunate in that we had the opportunity to consider this capital injection from a position of strength. We did not need nor require this capital.”

He said Heritage would use the funding primarily to bolster credit relationships.

Bank stocks look to be taking a beating in trading today, with Columbia down $1.26 at around 11:30 a.m., this after hitting a 52-week low of $7.87.

Heritage is also down, sliding 72 cents to $13.00 – down from a 52-week high of $21.70 last December.

Rainier Pacific hit a 52-week low of $2.55 earlier today, down $1.01, or 28.37 percent on the day, according to Bloomberg.

Frontier Bank, down 87.72 percent on the year, was up a few minutes ago by 1 cent to $2.28.

I can't resist a bit about saving money on holiday shopping. This today out of Amazon.com.

The company says it's bringing back "Amazon Customers Vote" the feature that lets customers vote on what should get the biggest discount.

This year the program will offer a "race-to-buy format" that features six rounds and 18 total products.

Customers can start voting now at www.amazon.com/customersvote for the products they want the opportunity to buy.

Here's an example of the deals:

Round 1:

PS3 - Blu-ray Sci-Fi Bundles (includes: 80GB PS3, "Firefly: The Complete Series" Blu-ray Collection, PlayStation 3 Blu-ray Disc Remote, and "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" PS3 game) $199 (normally $574)

PS3 - Blu-ray Action Bundles (includes: 80GB PS3, James Bond Blu-ray Collection, PlayStation 3 Blu-ray Disc Remote, and "Far Cry 2" PS3 game) $229 (normally $664)

PS3 - Blu-ray Family Bundles (includes: 80GB PS3, "Pirates of the Caribbean" Trilogy Blu-ray Collection, PlayStation 3 Blu-ray Disc Remote, and "LittleBigPlanet" PS3 game) $199 (normally $567)

Here's how it works: Customers can browse all six rounds of amazing deals today and vote for the ones they would like to buy, Amazon said in a news release today.

Customers who voted should check their e-mail on the day before each buying round to see if they have been randomly selected to participate in the race to buy.

If selected, customers should come back early because there will be more participants than deals, and the race will be on.

I had an interesting day Thursday – attending the Tacoma Angel Network workshop at UWT and spending lunch at City Club, where I introduced Charlie Hoffman.

Hoffman, as I’ve reported before, is the inventor of XBRL, which is a computer language that standardizes the way companies (and governments, for that matter) report financial results.

He invented it over 10 years ago while serving as an accountant here in Tacoma. In several countries – Israel, Japan, Australia, China and others – XBRL has become the standard. Within the last few years, several major U.S. corporations have adopted the standard.

Essentially, it makes financial results easier to collect, report and disseminate. Using XBRL results, investors and analysts will be able to compare results more quickly, easily and efficiently than they can today.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees stock transactions in the U.S., earlier this year asked for public comment on whether XBRL should be mandated as the reporting standard for all publicly traded U.S. companies. The comment period closed in the summer, and we’re waiting for a final decision by commissioners.

I called Kevin Callahan, SEC spokesman, earlier today, and he said commissioners may have an announcement within a month.

I’ll keep you posted.

After spending much of yesterday in the company of angel capitalists – and were I wealthy – I’d now be better prepared to use that money both to make a profit and to help entrepreneurs.

As it turns out, all I have is a bit of increased knowledge.

On Wednesday, the Tacoma Angel Network sponsored a workshop called “Doing the Deal: Term Sheet and Valuation and Portfolio Strategy.” The network, comprised mainly of investors, seeks out, counsels and sometimes funds business ideas proposed by entrepreneurs.

On Wednesday, some among the group gathered to hear a all-day presentation by Robert Okabe, of Chicago’s RPX Group, who conducted the day on behalf of the Angel Capital Education Foundation.

Angel capital, for those of you who may wonder, is typically a project’s early money. Investments require a great deal of risk. Angels, according to Okabe, “are people who invest in and believe in the dreams of entrepreneurs. They do it because they like it. They help build communities.”

Angels typically make smaller investments than venture capitalists, and take greater risks. The workshop was designed to let potential investors know the possible pitfalls, frameworks, definitions, strategies, principles and paths to profit involved.
What voting rights will you have as an investor?

What are your chances of, and what are the best ways to build, an exit strategy? What about taxes? Should you be pleased with a return of five-times your investment? How long should you wait for a profit? How much of an effect will dilution have on the pre-money valuation?

That kind of thing.

Later in the day, I spoke with Bill Payne, an angel investor from Nevada, who also conducts seminars such as this one.

“Angel investors have been funding companies for hundreds of years,” he said. Angels, said Payne, serve on boards and offer mentorship as well as money. “This is a unique asset class. Some, but a minority, do so solely because of the potential high risk and high return. the psychic rewards are every bit as rewarding.”

Still, in this weak economy, he said, “deals are closing. Good deals are being shown.”

The network will hold another conference, “Doing the Deal: Due Diligence,” on February 11. As with Thursday’s workshop, the event wil be held at the William W. Philip Hall at University of Washington Tacoma.

For more information, visit www.tacomaangelnetwork.com.

Just when you thought that gas prices couldn't go any lower, the gas war in Gig Harbor yielded an even lower posting.

Both the Gig Harbor Costco and the ARCO on Olympic Drive were selling unleaded regular today for $1.79 a gallon.

That's an astounding $2.55 a gallon less than the top summertime average price for regular in the Tacoma area.

Analysts are expecting the price to bottom out soon and begin rising again as OPEC countries cut production.

But then again what do analysts know? None predicted the crash in prices we've seen this fall after the precipitous rise last spring and summer.

New statistics from Portland's FlightStats.com show Sea-Tac Airport was among the 10 best American airports in on-time departures in the 12 months ending Sept. 30.

Sea-Tac was tied with Phoenix and Tampa for seventh place on the list of the top 10 airports with just 20 percent of its flights departing late.

The top of the list was occupied by Salt Lake City where 15 percent of flights left 15 or more minutes behind schedule, the federal government's definition of a late flight.

Other West Coast airports did well. Portland was second with 16 percent of flights departing late.

Los Angeles was 10th with 21 percent late departures. Oakland tied for third place.

On the list of worst airports based on on-time departures, the top (or bottom if you will) of the list was occupied by Chicago's O'Hare Airport with 35 percent of its departures late during those same 12 months.

Boeing added just three airliner orders to its backlog this week as airlines cut back order activity because of falling traffic and tighter credit.

The company added two orders from unidentified buyers for 737s and one from another unidentified buyer for a 747-8 business jet.

Total orders for the year stand at 640, a pace that until the last three years would have been considered stellar.

But a surge of orders in 2005, 2006 and 2007 set a new standard. Boeing sold 1,423 planes last year, 1,050 in 2006 and 1,029 in 2005. In 2004, the company booked just 277 aircraft orders.

Even though orders are slowing, the 640 orders this year are still greater than Boeing's production pace of about 500 planes a year.

The company has an order backlog of more than 3,700 planes, about seven years' production at the present pace.

Britain's Rolls Royce Group announced today it will lay off 2,000 workers worldwide next year because of a slowdown in production of aircraft at Boeing and Airbus.

Among the first workers to be laid off will be at the jet engine maker's assembly and test site in Derby, England.

Rolls Royce said delays in the assembly and testing of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and its new generation 747-8 and Airbus problems with its A380 superjumbo.

Rolls Royce employs 39,000 people worldwide.

Boeing has rescheduled all of its aircraft deliveries by at least 10 weeks because of a 58-day Machinists Union strike and other setbacks.

Russell Investments sent a memo to employees on Wednesday telling them that layoffs are coming in early 2009.

The memo did not give details including how many employees would be affected and what jobs would be eliminated, according to three Russell employees who saw the memo but would not give their names for fear of losing their jobs.

Jennifer Tice, spokewoman for Russell, confirmed the memo but would not provide a copy to The News Tribune. She said the company is looking at its businesses to see where changes could be made and that reducing the number of employees could be part of that.

"The global financial crisis continues to put the financial services industry under unprecedented pressure," she wrote in an e-mail. "Russell, like so many others in our industry, has reduced its revenue projections for 2009 based on current market conditions. As a result, we are recalibrating our cost structure to reflect this."

The company told its employees that Russell is embarking on what they call "a comprehensive productivity review." This will include a full scale cost evaluation, and one outcome is a decrease in the size of the global work force, Tice said.

"We are just at the beginning of this process and it will be a number of months before we have further specifics to communicate. As we move forward, we will do so with an eye toward maximizing the value and service we deliver to our clients worldwide, while continuing to invest in our long-term growth opportunities," Tice said.

She goes on to say: "Russell’s resolve is strong in the face of the global financial crisis and we remain confident in our future prospects. We are firmly committed to our strategy of providing superior investment management by identifying the world’s best investment managers and by bringing them together to achieve long-term investment excellence for our individual and institutional clients."

The Olympian is reporting this today. News Tribune reporter C.R. Roberts will meet with Venture officials Thursday morning for more details.

Venture Financial Group Inc., parent company to Venture Bank, reported its worst quarterly loss in company history Wednesday, losing $27.7 million in the third quarter of the year compared with a profit of $3.2 million in the third quarter of 2007.

Officials with the nearly 30-year-old company said the bulk of the loss could be attributed to an investment in preferred shares of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two companies that were taken over by the federal government this year that caused those shares to fall in value.

After taxes, the company’s investment loss in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae amounted to $26.1 million. Third-quarter earnings also were affected by boosting its loan-loss provision by $10 million, or $6.5 million after taxes, the company said.

As a result of the quarterly loss, the company has taken steps to cut costs, including the suspension of quarterly cash dividend payments to shareholders, saving Venture Financial about $650,000 a quarter, said Jim Arneson, president and chief executive of Venture Bank.

“We’re still open for business,” Arneson said Wednesday at the company’s headquarters in DuPont. “It (the quarterly loss) doesn’t change who we are or what we do. We’re the same bank we’ve always been and we will return to profitability.”

SeaTac-based Horizon Air says it is in talks with Canadian planemaker Bambardier to slow the delivery of new Bombardier Q400 aircraft.

Horizon is converting to an all-Q400 fleet, but it must sell its CRJ700 jets before it can bring those new planes into its inventory.

The market for those regional jets is slow.

The 76-seat Q400 turboprop offers better fuel economy than the jets it will replace while offering new-jet speeds on medium-haul routes.

Horizon ordered $393 million worth of Q400s in April 2007, the airline said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

A new survey by the Urban Land Institute gives Seattle the nod as the top U.S. city to invest in commercial real estate because of its diverse economy and its lack of overbuilding.

The Institute surveyed 700 real estate professionals and developers to create the ranking.

The survey, said Forbes magazine, can be extrapolated to include residential real estate because of the close links between the two.

Here's what Forbes said about Seattle and the survey:

The best cities in which to invest are those that are considered gateways to international investment, have vital downtowns where people can forgo cars and don't have a glut of condos or office space.

These traits landed Seattle the No. 1 spot on the list. No city scored above a 6.15 on a scale of one to nine (one being an abysmal place to invest and nine being excellent).

Seattle is "a diversified market, has a good base of business and is becoming a 24-hour city," says Stephen Blank, senior resident fellow, finance, at the Urban Land Institute. "It's going to be in a good position to come back."

The city is suffering from the loss of Washington Mutual and the downsizing of Starbucks, but Boeing and Microsoft are still strong. Apartment vacancies are low and there aren't too many new buildings going up, meaning the market won't be oversupplied. The same is true of retail space.

Following Seattle on the list were San Francisco, Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles.

President George Bush, expanding an East Coast program that worked well during last year's holiday season, is opening up West Coast military air space normally closed to commercial traffic during the holidays.

Much of that air space, normally reserved for military training and test flights, is near Los Angeles and Phoenix.

The president last year opened military air space along the East Coast during Thanksgiving and Christmas to give air traffic controllers more space to maneuver flights particularly during bad weather. That additional air space reportedly cut delays.

"We innovated last year to ease the travel, and now we're expanding that innovation this year," said Bush.

The Boeing Co. has no plans to speed up its airliner production in its Puget Sound factories to catch up after a 58-day strike delay.

That's the word from the company as it returns to business as usual after the strike by the International Association of Machinists.

The no-speed-up policy is the same one the company adopted in 2005 after a strike then.

After previous strikes Boeing had increased production to bring its delivery schedule back to its original alignment, but those speed-ups often proved to be expensive and difficult to carry out.

Suppliers didn't have the ability to increase production without advance notice, and overtime work was expensive for the company.

The 10-week delivery delay is good news for some customers who are struggling with their own cash and credit crises and who welcome the extra time.

For a few others, who'd made arrangements to retire fuel-hungry aircraft that were to be replaced by new Boeing planes, the delivery delay may cause problems.

The unemployment rate in Pierce County marked a worrisome increase in October, up to 6.4 percent from a revised 5.8 percent in September, according to regional labor economist Paul Turek.

The statewide rate rose to 6.3 percent from 5.8 percent.

In Pierce County, the goods-producing sector saw the largest decline, down 0.9 percent from September and 3.7 percent from October of 2007. Within the sector, construction employment fell 0.4 percent over the month.

“The downward trend continues,” said Turek. “What’s significant is the change from October ‘07 to October ‘08.”

Turek noted that “our growth has flat-lined out. In September we gained no jobs. That was last month. This month, we’re down 2,700 jobs. That’s a big shift.”

“Consequently,” he said, “we have a pretty significant departure from the unemployment rate this month.”

One bright spot, he said, concerned “a bounce-back in professional and business services, where we added 700 jobs for the month.”

But overall, he said, “I would look at (the employment numbers) as worrisome. What this seems to indicate, we’ve kind of caught the downward trend a little bit more. We knew we were not going upward very quickly. This decline seems to suggest that we don’t have as big of an advantage as we had. It’s getting harder for us to insulate ourselves from national and international conditions.”

All Nippon Airways is reportedly considering opening a new route from Japan to Sea-Tac Airport, industry sources say.

The Japanese carrier, launch customer for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, is considering several cities including Denver, Seattle and Salt Lake City for service with Boeing's new plane.

The Dreamliner, now more than 18 months behind schedule, is smaller than existing jetliners with the range to fly from Japan to the middle of the U.S., potentially opening up new markets not large enough to support a larger long-range aircraft such as the Boeing 747 or 777.

Japan Airlines formerly flew to Sea-Tac from Tokyo but dropped that route several years ago.

Both Northwest (now Delta) and United airlines fly the route to Tokyo now from Sea-Tac.

Tacoma's Multicare Health System will open a new Gig Harbor ambulatory surgery center in January for procedures that don't require a hospital stay.

Those procedures include orthopedic, urological, gynecological and ear, nose and throat surgeries.

"This a big step forward for the Gig Harbor community," said MultiCare Gig Harbor Medical Park Administrator Mary Grubbs.

Multicare is opening its surgery center as its rival, Franciscan Health System, prepares to open the 48-bed St. Anthony Hospital in March in Gig Harbor.

MultiCare has had medical facilities in the Gig Harbor area since 1990. It opened its $51 million Gig Harbor Medical Park in 2007.

Washington callers have escaped learning a new area code, at least until 2012.

The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission said today that telephone companies say they have enough unused phone numbers in the 360 area code to last a few more years.

The Federal Communications Commission earlier estimated that a new area code would have to be added in 2010 in the territory currently using the 360 area code.

But the UTC worked with phone companies to identify and set aside unused phone numbers in the 360 area. This means that the existing stock of 360 phone numbers will last until at least 2012, the commission said. Once a new area code is added, customers will have to include the area code when dialing numbers in the current 360 territory. That's called 10-digit dialing.

“Introducing new area codes is disruptive and costly to residents and businesses in the state and 10-digit dialing is inconvenient,” UTC Chairman Mark Sidran said in a news release. “We commend the companies for working with us to conserve the existing supply of 360 phone numbers, delaying a new area code as long as possible.”

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Comcast Internet customers, expect your connection speeds to double by the end of December.

That's the news today from the cable provider which says new technology will allow it to offer customers with regular Internet service up to 12 megabits per second download speeds and upload speed of 2 Mbps.

That same technology will allow Comcast to offer new enhanced services for customers who bandwidth appetite is much greater.

Customers who now Performance Plus service will see their perfomance increased to 16 Mbps on downloads.

The company is also offering two new much faster residential tiers of service:

* Extreme 50, offering up to 50 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 10 Mbps of upstream speed at $139.95 per month.

* Ultra, offering up to 22 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 5 Mbps of upstream speed at $62.95 per month.

Existing business class customers will receive complimentary speed increases: Speeds on the Starter tier will be doubled to up to 12 Mbps download, 2 Mbps upload.

A new Premium tier also will be introduced, offering speeds up to 22 Mbps download, 5 Mbps upload for $99.95/month.

Customers can sign up for the Deluxe 50 Mbps download, 10 Mbps upload tier for $189.95/month, the company said.

Alaska Airlines began service from Sea-Tac Airport to Kona on Hawaii today. Kona is the fourth Hawaiian destination for the SeaTac-based carrier.

The daily flight to Kona departs Sea-Tac at 8:40 a.m. and arrives in Kona on Hawaii's "Big Island" at 1 p.m.

Alaska flies a 157-passenger Boeng 737-800 on the route.

The return flight leaves Kona at 2 p.m. and arrives in Seattle at 9:40 p.m.

Alaska, which began Hawaii flights last year, serves the islands of Oahu, Maui and Kauai in addition to the island of Hawaii.

SeaTac's Alaska Air Group and Delta Air Lines today announced an expanded marketing alliance that will make it easy for customers of either airline to use each other airline's flights.

Alaska, parent company of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, and Delta, now the world's largest airline with its merger with Northwest Airlines, said the tighter relationship will benefit both carriers.

Alaska has had marketing agreements with both Northwest and Delta in the past. The new agreement will cement that past alliance and expand it.

Under the new pact, for instance, members of either airline's airline clubs, Alaska Board Rooms and Delta Crown Room Clubs, will have access to the other airline's clubs in cities around the country.

Both airlines' most frequent fliers who've reached platinum or gold status will have priority boarding, priority check-in and seat assignment privileges on both carriers.

The two carriers will continue offering "codeshare" flights on each other's network.

A "codeshare flight" is one that is flown by one of the airlines' but which is sold as a flight on the other's network.

For instance, Alaska's three daily flights from Seattle to Dallas are shown on Delta's reservation system as Delta flights. Customers who buy tickets on those flights check in at Alaska and fly on an Alaska plane.

Likewise, Alaska customers headed from Seattle to Atlanta can buy an Alaska ticket, but fly on a Delta plane.

The alliance will enhance the connections to two new Delta international flights, said Delta chief executive Richard Anderson.

Those flights are a new flight from Seattle to Beijing beginning March 1 and a new Delta flight from Los Angeles to Sao Paulo, Brazil beginning next spring.

Fliers on Alaska and Horizon will continue to be able to earn frequent flier miles on Delta's frequent flier progam, and Delta customers can continue to have miles flown on Delta credited to the Alaska mileage plan.

Alaska chairman Bill Ayer, said his airline will continue to offer frequent flier and codeshare arrangments with 10 other airlines including American, Continental, British, Air France, Cathay Pacific and LAN.

The inner section of the wing of the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner has passed a critical stress test at Boeing's Everett plant.

The company applied force to the so-called "wing box" of the new jetliner to determine how much force it could handle before it broke.

The wing box, the inner 50 feet of the wing, successfully withstood 150 percent of the highest stress the airliner is expected to encounter in flight, the company said.

The wing of the 787 is revolutionary because it is made almost entirely of composite materials. Until now, most airliner wings were built of aluminum.

The wing box is about 50 feet long and about 18 feet wide at its widest point.

The test was critical to getting the first 787 into the air. The plane is now scheduled to make its first flight early next year, some 18 months hehind schedule.

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna has sued a Redmond-based Web service provider alleging the service failed to deliver increased Internet traffic it promised its clients.

The suit names Visible.net and Captures.com as defendants. The suit contends the defendants failed to significantly improve Web sites' search engine ranking and to attract more traffic to their sites.

When customers, who paid startup fees of $3,749.99 to $9,749.99 and monthly fees of $39.99 to $99.99, tried to cancel, some of those cancellation requests were not honored, the suit claimed.

The attorney general's office said it had received nearly 90 complaints about the defendants beginning in 2005.

The Boeing Co. admitted publicly today what had been an open secret in the aerospace industry for months: its new 747-8 won't be delivered on time.

The 747-8 joins the oft-delayed 787 Dreamliner among new Boeing jetliners not meeting their promised commercial delivery dates.

The 747-8, an enlarged and updated version of the venerable jumbo jet, won't be delivered to its first commercial customer until the third quarter of 2010, the company said today.

The first revised 747 originally had been set for delivery in late 2009.

Boeing blamed the delays on four factors: design changes, contractor delays, a shortage of engineers to work on the plane and the recently-concluded Machinists Union strike.

Sources in the aerospace industry said the program had been starved of needed engineering brainpower when many of its engineers were reassigned to the 787 project to get that revolutionary new plane up and running.

The 787 Dreamliner is now some 18 months behind schedule for its first flight because of supplier problems and manufacturing glitches.

"Our entire team has worked hard to mitigate growing schedule risk on this program but have been unable to overcome the collective impact of work statement increases to the original design, a tight supply of engineering resources and the recent Machinists' strike," said Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Scott Carson.

In addition to the 787 and 747 schedule delays, Boeing is now delaying the delivery of its popular 737. The company recently discovered that small metal fixtures installed in some 350 the aircraft at Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita lacked necessary corrosion-proofing.

Those fixtures, called "nutplates," are being replaced on yet undelivered 737s. Planes equipped with those deficient parts that are already in service are not in danger of failure, the company said, but the nutplates must be replaced sometime during the planes' maintenance schedules.

Boeing has sold more freighter versions of th 747-8 than passenger versions. The only major customer for the passenger version is Germany's Lufthansa, which has ordered 20.

Your living room table is stacked with a half-dozen remote control units. You don’t know what they do. So many buttons. If you press MENU, can you get a grilled tuna sandwich delivered? Probably not. If only there were a 12-year-old you could call.

Better yet, you could attend next Monday’s “Cable 101” class sponsored by Tacoma Power’s Click! Network.

It’s free and will be held Monday at 3 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. at the Tacoma Public Utilities auditorium, 3628 S. 35th St. in Tacoma.

Expect to learn about digital receivers, the upcoming digital transition, high definition programming and how that remote control thingamajig works and what all those little buttons actually do.

For reservations or more information, call 253-502-8900.

Boeing and its 20,300 engineers and technical workers have reached a tentative agreement on a new four-year contract, apparently dodging the possibility of a second prolonged strike this year for the aerospace company.

The deal must be ratified by a majority of union members in a ballot that will be mailed within a week. Those mailed ballots will be counted Dec. 1, said union spokesman Bill Dugovich.

The new deal will have the union negotiating committee's approval recommendation.

The agreement came about 11 a.m today. The two sides had extended their deadline for reaching an accord for three days while they worked out the details of the pact. A mediator helped facilitate those talks.

Neither Boeing nor the union immediately revealed the specifics of the deal. The union said it wants to lay those details out to its representative councils early this evening.

Like the Machinists Union pact ratified earlier this month after a 58-day strike, the new deal is for four years instead of the usual three.

Chief among the issues the union brought to the bargaining table was protection against further outsourcing of jobs to other contractors either here in the United States or overseas.

Informal negotiations had been going for months, and more serious "main table" talks began Oct. 29 at a Seattle-area hotel.

Among Boeing's objectives in entering the talks was to shift more of its rising medical plan costs to employees, to shift new employees to a defined contribution 401K-like pension plan and the retain its flexibility in deciding whether Boeing employees or outside contractors would do design work.

The company also sought to create a separate contract for about 100 engineers in Utah who traditionally had been covered by the Puget Sound area contract. The union had resisted that effort apparently successfully.

The deal concerns two separate contracts, one for the engineers and one for the technical workers. Those contracts were due to expire on Dec. 1, but the union said it would continue working beyond that date if it thought more talks would move the agreement forward.

The proposed contract would reportedly move the expiration date to mid-October.

Union engineers make an average of about $88,531 a year now while technical workers on average are paid about $66,811 annually, according to the union. The union had sought substantial raises for its members, arguing that their pay had fallen below industry standards.

More details will be available after the union releases specifics tonight on either Boeing's negotiations Web site or SPEEA's site.

The negotiations were a test for new leadership on both sides of the negotiation table, Boeing's new labor relations vice president Doug Kight and SPEEA's new executive director Ray Goforth.

I used the dreaded e-word, "earmark," to describe the $6 million federal authorization in a recent Amtrak aid bill to help build the Point Defiance bypass in Tacoma.

The state Department of Transportation's rail office corrects me, saying the $6 million wasn't the result of pork barrel politics but the result of a competition among rail projects in which the Point Defiance project won among dozens of proposals on its merits.

The Point Defiance bypass is a rail route from Freighthouse Square near the Tacoma Dome to Nisqually via the former BNSF Prairie Line through South Tacoma.

The route will trim 14 minutes from the Seattle-Portland Amtrak passenger train schedule because it will bypass the slow going along the Tacoma waterfront and the delays caused by the single-track Nelson Bennett Tunnel under Point Defiance.

Sound Transit will use the bypass route to reach Lakewood with its Sounder commuter trains. The transit agency will provide the bulk of the funding for the new route.

Presidential candidate John McCain made "earmark" a dirty word in the campaign by claiming those projects inserted into bills were pork and lacked the merit needed to win the money otherwise. Perhaps the most famous of those projects was the bridge nicknamed the "Bridge to Nowhere" that linked Ketchikan in Alaska to the island where its airport sits.

As Boeing and its engineering and technical workers union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, move fitfully toward some sort of definitive contract proposal, the union turned up the heat on the company last night.

The union's Northwest Council voted unanimously to give negotiators the authority to submit a ballot to the union's 21,000 members for strike authorization. The timing of that ballot is up to the negotiators.

The union's move came as the two sides are slogging through the contract proposal line by line at a Seattle-area hotel.

A Boeing spokesperson called the strike vote authorization a procedural matter.

The company and the union are alternately hopeful and pessimistic about the chances of resolution.

Wages, pensions and healthcare remain to be resolved.

The talks have already moved past Boeing's initial deadline of Tuesday of reaching a deal.

The two sides are working with a federal mediator to hammer out the details of the pact, which now appears to be a four-year deal like the one agreed to by Boeing and its union machinists after a 58-day strike.

Northwest Airlines' six-month-old flight from Seattle to London's Heathrow Airport has become a casualty of the merger between Northwest and Delta Air Lines.

Delta is redeploying the aircraft used on the flight to what it hopes is a more lucrative route. Service ends on the route Jan. 8. Passengers booked on that route after then will be shifted to other flights.

Delta is taking little time in reshuffling its fleet and route structure to serve different cities overseas including more flights to Toyko and new flights to Africa from Atlanta.

The demise of the Delta London flight leaves British Airways as the sole incumbent on the non-stop route.

There’s a new Winger’s Grill and Bar in town – it’s a franchise eatery marketed by the same folks, based in Salt Lake City, who operate T.G.I. Friday’s – located at 5221 Tacoma Mall Blvd.

The store opened Oct. 29, employs 80 and seats 220. The first-time Winger’s franchisee, Robby Fuller, is quoted in a press release out today as saying he’s thrilled and how there’s “a great buzz in the community surrounding our opening and we are confident the new restaurant will be a hit.”

We at Biz Buzz wish him well, and if any of you have been there (for some wings, burgers, fajitas, a steak or maybe a slice of “asphalt pie”) feel free to leave a comment.

After reading the release (Wingers wings are World Famous, the company operates in 11 states and Germany, the Tacoma location is the chain’s newest) I started wondering – about wings.

A lot of places serve wings – hot wings, sauced wings, wings slathered in ranch dressing. Six wings at the Tacoma location go for $6.99, and you can get 16 for $16.49. Say 100 people order an average of 12 wings each, every day, that’s 8,400 wings a week. Just in Tacoma. Multiply that times Oregon, Idaho, Frankfurt and the rest.

That’s a lot of wings. So my question is: What happens to the rest of all the the chickens? America (and now Germany) eats a lot of wings. But where are the franchises called ‘Drumsticks” or “Backs”?

I called the P.R. person who sent out the release (Kate Pappas with Love Communications in Salt Lake City), and she didn’t know. “That’s a good question,” she said, referring me to the marketing director at the brand owner, Slaymaker. I left a message there, and I’m waiting for a call back.

In the meantime, if you know what happens to all of the rest of the chicken (or any speculation on an answer) please leave a comment. Thanks. Bon appetite.

Forget those heady days of two years ago when it looked as if the Port of Tacoma's traffic would continue to climb steeply into the future.

A new forecast presented to the Port of Tacoma commission today shows that critical measure of the port's traffic, container numbers, will drop again for the second year in a row this year and further fall in 2009.

That forecast from the port's director of commercial strategies, Tong Zhu, shows a barely perceptible growth in 2010 followed by a shallow upward trend through 2013.

The predicted container volume in five years, 1,854,000 container units, will still fall short of the record 2.06 million the port handled in 2006.

The port's container volume grew 56.6 percent from 2001 through 2006. From 2006 through 2011, port projections show, container volume will drop 13.8 percent.

Blame two factors, one familiar and the other new, for the decline.

The general world economic decline is reducing trading and business activity worldwide.

And a shift in market share from the West Coast to the East Coast and to Canadian ports for Asian imports is affecting import volumes coastwide, said the port's executive director, Tim Farrell.

Tacoma has been less affected by those factors than other West Coast ports this year, port figures show. Container numbers through September are down 2.3 percent in Tacoma compared with an 11.2 percent decline in Seattle, a 10.5 percent drop in Long Beach, a 4.8 percent fall in Los Angeles and a 4 percent drop in Oakland. Container numbers in Vancouver are up 3 percent.

In 2002, 82.8 percent of the nation's Asian imports were handled through the West Coast. In the first half of 2008, that share was 72.4 percent, government figures show.

Farrell said the port is working with the railroads, which handle much of the imported containers and haul them to more distant markets, to improve the cost equation for Asian shipping lines.

Other cargoes handled through Tacoma also show little or no growth in the cargo forecast.

Breakbulk cargo rises slightly to 130,000 short tons in 2013 from 120,000 now, while autos decline slightly to 167,000 from 170,000 now over the next five years. Grain shipments hold steady at 6,000 tons.

Avue Technologies Corp.'s Web site that can help people get jobs with the Obama administration was features in a story today in the Wall Street Journal.

We wrote about the Web site last week.

Today's WSJ story talks about finding a job with the federal government. About halfway through, you come to this section:

"... figure out what kind of government work you’d like to do, advises Charlie Cragin, who served in several politically appointed positions between 1990 and 2001, including chairman of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. While specifying what type of job you want isn’t required, it greatly boosts your odds of success. Mr. Cragin says many applicants err by offering to do any job, falsely assuming that government recruiters will be able to identify fitting opportunities on their behalf.
To home in on an ideal job now, Mr. Cragin recommends searching the 2008 online edition of the Plum Book, which as of Monday also can be viewed for free at transitionjobs.us, a Web site published by Avue Technologies Corp., a software company based in Tacoma, Wash. Both that site and gpoaccess.gov list titles for all politically appointed positions; the agencies and departments they’re located within; some salary information; the incumbents who are currently in those positions, and other details.

At the end of the story we hear from the company:

Don’t expect to negotiate salary, says Linda Rix, co-chief executive officer of Avue Technologies. Politically appointed positions pay fixed yearly incomes. The government typically does not offer sign-on bonuses, though a performance-based bonus system is used, she says.
Finally, bear in mind that some knock-out factors can automatically derail your candidacy, she adds. These include a poor credit rating, failure to pay income taxes in a timely manner and child-support delinquency.

Airfares and hotel rooms are going for a premium for the Jan. 20 inauguration of the nation's first black president, Barack Obama, so prepare to suffer considerable damage to your credit limit if you want to attend.

Rick Seaney, travel guru at Farecompare.com , says his air fare research shows a huge "inauguration surcharge" for those headed to the nation's capital that week.

Non-stop airfares to Washington from Sea-Tac, for instance, are going for $2,491 roundtrip if you take the red-eye flight to the nation's capital the Sunday before the inauguration. And that's for a coach seat.

That compares with a $659 roundtrip available for a trip a week earlier. The worst day surcharge, according to Seaney is 278 percent from Seattle.

The chart below shows the difference between inauguration week and the week before from major airports across the country.

My own research shows you can still find relatively bargain fares, if you're willing to accept inconvenience.

You could fly, for instance to Harrisburg, PA, 122 miles from Washington, D.C. instead of the nearer airports in the capital or Baltimore. That trip is available for $276.

Or you could fly overnight and stop at one of several hubs and secure an airfare about 75 percent less than the cheapest non-stop.

SeaTac's Alaska Airlines will add two daily flights from Portland to Long Beach, Calif., beginning Feb. 8, the airline announced today.

The flights will complement other Portland connections to Southern California.

In addition, the airline will add a second Anchorage-Chicago flight next summer operating June 7 through Aug. 22.

That flight is designed to provide summertime vacation service to Alaska's largest city from the nation's second busiest airport, Chicago's O'Hare.

A new $13 billion Amtrak authorization bill signed by President Bush could jumpstart plans to restore two Amtrak routes from the Puget Sound area that were abandoned years ago.

The bill requires Amtrak to study reestablishment of the Pioneer between Seattle and Salt Lake City and the North Coast Hiawatha between Seattle and Chicago through southern Montana.

The Pioneer ran until 1997 when it was discontinued because of funding issues. The train served towns along the south bank of the Columbia River in Oregon, Baker and Pendleton, Ore., and Boise and Nampa in Idaho.

The North Coast Hiawatha was discontinued in 1979. It followed a combination of routes once used by the Milwaukee Road, Northern Pacific and Great Northern. A new North Coast Hiawatha could restore train service to Yakima via Stampede Pass and to Missoula, Butte and Billings in Montana.

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General Growth Properties Inc., the Chicago-based owner of more than 200 malls in the United States including Westlake Center in downtown Seattle and Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, may seek bankruptcy protection.

Burdened with debt that it is having difficulty refinancing, General Growth said this week it may seek to reorganize.

That reorganization may include sale all or some of its mall properties. In addition to Alderwood and Westlake, General Growth owns several other malls in the Northwest including Bellis Fair in Bellingham, Northtown Mall in Spokane, Pioneer Place in downtown Portland, South Shore Mall in Aberdeen, Clackamas Town Center in Clackamas, Ore., and Three Rivers Mall in Kelso.

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Gas prices have dipped below $2 a gallon in at least two Pierce County gas stations as both crude oil and retail gasoline prices continue to fall precipitously nationwide.

Those low prices are the latest evidence of a steep demand dropoff driven by a sickened economy and conserving consumers.

“This kind of drop is unprecedented in the history of the oil business,” said Tim Hamilton, director of an independent service station group, Automotive United Trades Organization and a well-known critic of the oil industry.

The average price of regular gasoline in Pierce County, which peaked at $4.34 a gallon in mid-July, fell to $2.22 Wednesday according to TacomaGasPrices.com, a Web site that tracks retail gasoline prices.

Average gas prices in Pierce County haven’t been that low since February 2005, according to price-tracking services.

The price refiners are charging dealers changes downward almost daily, Hamilton said.

“Prices to dealers are falling as much 20 to 25 cents a day,” said the oil industry critic.

The two sub-$2 gas prices appeared in two Gig Harbor stations, one at the Gig Harbor Costco and the other an Arco station.

In some states in the country’s midsection, gas prices dropped to $1.50 a gallon, according to AAA.
Behind the price reductions were crude oil prices that have fallen 60 percent since mid-summer when crude prices topped $147 a barrel.

Retail gasoline prices dipped for a 17th week since July 4, falling below $2 a gallon in a number of states and approaching $1.50 at some service stations. The price of crude fell again too, hitting a 20-month low.

Light, sweet crude for December delivery fell $3.08 to settle at $59.33 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest closing price since March 2007. Prices had dipped a dollar below that earlier in the day.

The sharp reduction in gas prices is putting more money back in the pockets of consumers who’ve suffered because of sharp stock and investment declines, rising unemployment and weak retail activity.

Industry analysts predict that gas prices are likely to stay down until demand, which is down 4 percent from its peak, revives again.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted today that gas pump prices will average $2.37 a gallon in 2009. Just a month ago, that same agency predicted that gas would average $3.56 a gallon next year.

=> Read more!

Insurance fraud costs every Washington household $200-$300 annually. More than one-third of all automobile-crash injury claims involves fraud. Commit insurance fraud, a Class C felony, and you could be looking at five years in the slam and a $10,000 fine.

Such is the kind of thing you can learn at the newly refined fraud section at the state insurance commissioner’s Web site, www.insurance.wa.gov.

If you’d like to see a few examples of insurance fraud (the “religion” that sells bogus auto insurance policies, for example), or if you’d like to check the legitimacy of your insurer, or even check to see whether the used car you’re thinking of buying has ever been involved in a collision, then visit the site. If you prefer, you can also file a complaint, find more information or report insurance fraud at the site.

Navigate to the “fraud” section at the left of the homepage.

There you’ll discover that the commissioners Special Investigations Unit, formed in January, 2007, has in its first 18 months uncovered $1.8 million in insurance fraud. And if you’re looking for a job, navigate to the Job Opportunities section. The SIU is looking for a new director. The job pays upwards of $97,000 per year.

I’d still rather walk among the crowds, using feet rather than fingers. Not everybody agrees.

After an October report by the National Retail Federation said “November and December sales will rise only 2.2 percent to $470 billion, an increase that would fall well below the 10-year average of 4.4 percent holiday sales growth and would mark the most sluggish season since 2002,” word comes this morning from the group’s daily newsletter saying most of any holiday increase will come online.

“Online retail sales are expected to grow 12 percent, to $44 billion, according to Forrester Research,” the link says.

Among the reasons cited for the swing to the keyboard, the article mentions rising financial anxiety, tight credit availability and the omnipresent availability of stores. Also, the article mentions the ability, online, to compare prices.

But is there a site where you can sit on Santa’s lap? A site where you can hear carolers, smell peppermint sticks and taste hot chocolate? Okay, it’s easy to shop online, but it’s not really Christmas shopping. I do understand the concept of online community (right now we’re both here, after all), but I still prefer the one where I can walk around.

To hear Boeing tell it, many of the sticky issues are on the verge of resolution in talks with its engineers and technical workers' union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace.

But the tune SPEEA is singing is entirely different.
Talks are running into problems, they told us.

This half-full, half-empty situation is natural. Boeing isn't eager to see another long strike like the one just concluded with its machinists union, and the union wants the company to think a strike is still imminent.

Boeing in a statement said the issue of what it calls "employment stability" is almost resolved. That same issue in the union eyes translates to "outsourcing," and it's probably the most difficult problem on the bargain table.

Both sides seem willing to extend their talks further if it will help them pound out a proposal that the union can recommend.

The original deadline, self-imposed by Boeing was Tuesday, but it looks as if the talks could continue under mediation until the week's end.

Any "best and final" offer will be voted on by mail by the 21,000 union members. The contract expires Dec. 1, but the union could keep on working even after a strike vote if it thought more talks could squeeze out more from the company.

Meanwhile, a high profile aerospace analyst, the Teal Group's Richard Aboulafia, is warning that union militancy could make the Puget Sound area the next former aerospace hub like Southern California and Long Island. Boeing could move its assembly operations to the South as it phases in new aircraft to find more compliant, non-union workers, he says.

Here's the link to his opinion piece.

The Tukish-German vacation airline SunExpress said today it intends to buy three new Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

The company earlier this year ordered two of the 737-800s.

The new 737s will raise the size of SunExpress' fleet to 20 aircraft. The airline is modernizing its fleet to cut fuel and maintenance costs.

One pleasant side effect of the lengthy delay delivery for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner: the company's 767 is bagging more orders.

Chile's LAN today announced orders for four new 767-300ER aircraft. The list price of those aircraft was $636 million.

LAN is buying those new twinjets to compensate for the late delivery of its 787 Dreamliners, a similarly sized, but more fuel efficient aircraft.

The 787 is now 15 months behind schedule because of supplier and design problems.

The 787 problems are giving new life to the 767 program which was virtually comatose before the Dreamliner issues.

This year, airlines have ordered 32 of the '80s-vintage 767s to augment capacity until their 787s arrive. The backlog on the 767 assembly line in Everett is now 76 aircraft, about six years' production at present rates.

Boeing has also proposed using the 767 airframe as a basis for a new Air Force tanker. A new competition on that project will begin once the Obama administration is in office.

Earlier this month Uzbekistan Airlines ordered 767s to give it new capacity while it awaits its 787s.

All Nippon Airways has also ordered 767s in lieu of 787 deliveries.

Boeing is likely giving those airlines go deals on the new planes to compensate them for the late deliveries. Expect most of those aircraft to come back to Boeing once the 787s are available.

Southwest Airlines launched a 3-day "Winter Sale" today forcing other airlines to follow suit on routes where they compete.

The fares are available through Thursday.

Here are some examples of roundtrip fares tax included:

Seattle to:

Sacramento: $169
Spokane: $99
Boise: $119
Chicago: $236.50
Oakland: $145

The fares are available for flights from Dec. 2 to Feb. 11. They must be purchased 21 days before travel.

“This is basically to see if they can fill up some of those soft areas and spur some interest in seats from people that probably already thought they couldn’t travel for the holiday period or into early next year,” said Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare.com, an airline fare research firm.

The swine have come home to roost. Or the chickens, turkeys, cows and lambs.

Three years after she began working on the idea and a year after the organized effort began, Cheryl Ouellette – otherwise known as the Pig Lady – has succeeded in securing a USDA-approved mobile slaughterhouse for use by South Sound farmers, butchers and chefs.

I wrote about her efforts, and those of other local parties, earlier this year. Last night, the Pierce Conservation District approved the expenditure of up to $250,000 for the design and construction of a “mobile meat processing unit.”

“I’m very excited,” Ouellette told me this afternoon. “Okay, now the hard work begins.”

The plan is that the conservation district will lease the unit to the Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative, which will operate it in Pierce, King, Kitsap, Mason, Thurston and Lewis Counties. Ouellette, who is president of the cooperative, said she’ll be out recruiting new members and selling shares in the organization.

There’s a $100 fee to join, and a share goes for $500. Associate memberships are $50. Ouellette said she expects to be contacting South Sound producers and high-volume consumers.

The design of the unit has been approved, and the conservation district will be negotiating a contract with the manufacturer, whose name has not been released.

Ouelette said she hopes to have the unit ready for an unveiling at the Puyallup Spring Fair, scheduled for April 16-19.

If airport officials' plans unfold as they hope, Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters and Federal Aviation Administrator Robert Sturgell will dedicate three new runways at three airports including Sea-Tac on Nov. 20.

The three runways at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. at O'Hare Airport in Chicago and at Sea-Tac have been in the planning and construction phase for years, but they've all reached completion on the same day.

At Sea-Tac, the new third runway is a $1.1 billion project for which planning began 15 years ago. The 8,500-foot-long, 150-foot-wide runway will supplement the airport's two other north-south strips.

The new runway was built on a huge mountain of fill west of the existing runways. The new runway will allow near-simultaneous landings during bad weather.

The two existing runways are too close to allow simultaneous landings when visibility drops.

The dedications will start in Virginia outside the nation's capital where the two federal dignitaries will open Dulles Airport's fourth runway, a 9,400-foot strip that parallels two existing north-south runways.

The flying functionaries will then visit Chicago and dedicate a 7,500-foot north runway at O'Hare Airport.

That runway is part of an overhaul at O'Hare designed to improve the capacity of the world's second-largest airport.

Finally, the officials will move to Seattle to dedicate the third runway. That ceremony is tentatively set for 3 p.m.

Sea-Tac spokesman Perry Cooper said the ceremony will take place in the airport's arrival hall. The first official commercial airport user will likely be a commercial flight diverted from the usual line of planes waiting to take off on the airport's easternmost runway. That plane will be instructed to take off from the new runway instead.

Dateline: WASILLA, Alaska. (You know the home of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.)

What: Warehouse retailer Costco has pulled its plans to build a store in Wasilla, The Associated Press reports.

Surprise: The unexpected move comes after reports that the Issaquah-based chain had officially filed an application to begin construction in the city. City planner Jim Holycross said Monday that Costco withdrew its application without warning.
“It’s a shock to me and probably to all of the people that want Costco,” he said.

No word from Costco: Representatives of the retail giant could not immediately be reached for comment.
Holycross said Costco likely spent as much as $50,000 to put together its application.

He said he expects reasons for the drop in plans to be submitted in writing sometime this week.

Others also pull out: The site where Costco had planned to build is part of the Creekside Town Square development.
Another developer that has decided against building there is Coming Attractions Theatres, a Pacific Northwest company.
CEO John Schweiger said it would have cost millions in site work to get a building pad and parking lot.
“It became financially impossible,” he said.

Horizon Lines, a major tenant at the Port of Tacoma, has announced a nationwide reorganization aimed at trimming its non-union workforce by 10 percent.

That force reduction will save the Charlotte, N.C.-based Horizon an estimated $7 million to $10 million annually.

An Horizon spokesman said its too early to tell how many in the company's Puget Sound area labor force will accept the company's voluntary severance program. The company employs about 700 non-union workers nationwide. If the voluntary program doesn't yield the 70-job reduction the company has targeted, Horizon expects to lay off employees.

None of the union workers on its sailing vessels will be affected in the job reductions.

Horizon, formerly the domestic shipping arm of SeaLand Services, offers twice weekly sailings from Tacoma to Alaska. There it serves the ports of Anchorage, Kodiak and Dutch Harbor directly and other ports via connecting services.

The company also offers weekly containership service from Tacoma to Guam via Oakland, Calif.

In its third quarter financial results news conference, the company said its Alaska business remains fairly healthy but other service has been more deeply affected by the nation's ongoing financial crisis.

Horizon offers so-called "Jones Act" shipping service beween American ports. The Jones Act requires such waterborne commerce to be conducted by American ships crewed by American crews.

The company provides service between the mainland U.S. and Alaska, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Micronesia and Guam.

"We continue to face a very difficult macro-economic environment that is having a significant adverse impact on the markets we serve," said Chuck Raymond, Horizon's chief executive officer. "We expect those challenges to continue through at least 2009 and are taking the appropriate, necessary steps to adjust our business without impacting our ability to continue providing excellent service to all our customers and execute our business strategy."

To a long list of South Sound authors, add the name Ben Jennings.

He’s a fee-only financial planner in Lakewood and a contributor to “Investing in an Uncertain Economy for Dummies,” which was published just last month.

A CPA, CFP (Certified Financial Planner) and PFS (Personal Financial Specialist), Jennings wrote chapters 38, “Assess Your Ability to Absorb Losses,” and 67, “Make Sure You’re Accumulating Enough.”

Altogether, the book ($21.99) covers subjects including, among others: investments, risk, allocations, retirement and diversification of a portfolio. It’s simply written and the advice seems sound. You may not find detailed information on how to position derivatives and swaps in light of tomorrow’s Libor – but that’s probably a good thing.

I spoke with Jennings earlier today, and what with the economy being what it is, I asked him for one piece advice that I could pass along, free and exclusive, to Biz Buzz readers. He welcomed the opportunity.

He said, “After people get their October statements: Don’t panic. If they’re so bothered they can’t sleep, they should think about adopting a more stable portfolio, and moving slowly from stocks over to bonds. If they’re 70 percent in stocks, they might go 60. But don‘t pull the money out and sit in cash.”

DHL Express, the European package express carrier that bought Seattle's Airborne Express in 2003, said today it is exiting the domestic express business.

The company will lay off some 9,500 employees in the U.S. but maintain offices in the U.S. for international shipments, DHL announced today in Germamy.

The company said it is still negotiating with Atlanta's United Parcel Service to handle its business within the U.S.

A spokeswoman for DHL said the company didn't have a breakdown of layoffs by state or city. The halt in domestic shipments will happen Jan. 30.

Most dramatically affected will be DHL's air hub in Wilmington, Ohio. where many of its employees are concentrated.

The declining economy and competition from UPS and FedEx led to the decision to stop service between U.S. cities.

As U.S. automakers appeal to the White House for financial aid following steep sales drops, Washington auto dealers report grim conditions on the sales floors.

"Bad, bad, bad, bad and really bad," said Washington Auto Dealers Executive Vice President Vicki Fabre, describing the state of the auto business in the Evergreen State.

"Some dealers who've been around have told me its the worst it's been in 25 years, if not in history," she said.

Dealerships are being forced to close or consolidate, and surviving car stores are cutting back on personnel.

Through the end of the third quarter, Washington car sales are down nearly 14 percent, and the association predicts that sales will decline more than four percent further next year before finally rebounding in 2010.

Fabre said the sales decline is hurting not only the dealers themselves but the communities where they do businss. Sales tax collections from car sales are down steeply, she said, causing government to tighten its belt to compensate. Likewise local charities and civic causes are suffering because car dealers have tighened up their giving.

Sales figures through the third quarter show that domestic carmakers in particular are suffering in Washington.

Just 31 percent of Washington car sales were domestic cars this year compared with 40.7 percent nationwide.

The most popular make in Washington is toyota with a 20.8 percent market share. Honda was second with 13.6 percent of the market.

They were followed by Chevrolet with an 8.8 percent share and Ford with 8.7 percent.

Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, the domestic Big Three, reported sales down 23 percent in Washington this year so far while Japanese makes were off 8.4 percent and European car makers off 7.5 percent.
Korea brands' sales were down 13.2 percent.

The bright side of the miserable situation, said Fabre, is that for those looking for a new car, the deals are astounding.

Manufacturers are offering low interest and cash incentives, she said. And financing is still available despite the gloomy stories about credit cutoffs.

Should you need to do some banking tomorrow – Veterans Day – you may have a chance, depending on your bank.

Of the local major banks, most Wells Fargo and US Bank branches will be open for business.

Key Bank, Bank of America, Columbia Bank and Frontier Bank branches will be closed.

As will the Post Office.

But you'll still have a chance to tinker with your investments, as U.S. stock markets will be working. Well, maybe not working, but they will be open for business.

Boeing's diminishing backlog of 767 model airliner offers got a boost this week with an order for four 767-300ER airliners from Uzbekistan Airways.

The twin-aisle aircraft, built in Boeing's Everett factory, are worth $597 million at list prices.

With the 767 order, Uzbekistan Airways has on order a total of six Boeing jetliners, the four 767s and two 787-8s.

Uzbekistan Airways operates six Boeing 757-200s and five 767-300ERs.

A reduction in the number of flights nationwide plus reasonably good weather gave U.S. airlines their best on-time showing in 20 months during October, according to Portland's FlightStats.com.

Overall, U.S. flights arrived on time (within 15 minutes of schedule) 81.09 percent of the time last month, said FlightStats.

That compares with an overall 2007 record of 73.47 percent on-time arrivals.

The October on-time list was topped by San Francisco's Virgin America Airlines whose flights were on time 92.67 percent of the time. Virgin America flies to San Francisco and Los Angeles from Sea-Tac.

At the bottom of the list was Great Lakes Aviation with an on-time arrival record of 68.19 percent last month.

Puget Sound-based Alaska Airlines was mid-pack among the 39 U.S. carriers ranking 20th with an on-time record of 83.86 percent in October. That record is considerable better than Alaska's overall 2007 record of 72.27 percent on time.

Alaska's SeaTac-based regional sister airline, Horizon Air, was seventh on the on-time list with an 89.21 percent record last month.

Overall, Sea-Tac Airport was 20th among the world's 50 largest airports in on-time arrivals during October. At Sea-Tac 83.74 percent of flights arrived on time last month.

In a late-afternoon press release, Bellingham-based Horizon Financial Corp. – parent of Horizon Bank – announced an initiative of "strategic staff reductions."

The reductions are being made "(b)ecause of the challenges in the Pacific Northwest housing markets."

And because of those challenges, said CEO Rich Jacobson, Horizon expects "further pressure on our net interest margin, asset quality and profitability."

The reductions, which include unspecified "strategic reductions in other noninterest expense areas," target 27 full-time positions at all levels from line personnel to senior management. They are expected to result "in over $3 million in expense savings on an annualized basis."

Horizon is a $1.45 billion state-chartered bank with offices in Whatcom, Skagit and Snohomish counties, as well as in Puyallup and Lakewood in Pierce County.

Horizon stock closed down nearly 4 cents in Friday trading, to $5.07, and has seen a drop of 70.93 percent so far this year, according to Bloomberg.

A Lakewood business that already offers car washes, oil changes and espresso has added a service for canines to its repertoire.

Classy Chassis at 7432 Custer Road W., has added a self-service dog wash to its offerings.

The dog wash offers canine "parents" an elevated stainless steel tub equipped with warm water sprayers, dog shampoos and rinses and a powerful air dryer to improve Fido's appearance.

The dog wash includes a dog treat vending machine to reward you dog for his good behavior while undergoing his makeover.

Expect airline fares, which rose steadily this year because of higher fuel prices and a tighter supply of airline seats, to head downward next year, an industry analyst predicts.

Airline fares may drop as much as 12 percent next year because of the troubled economy and steeply falling fuel prices, predicts Vaughn Cordie, chief analyst with AirlineForecasts.

Cordie said he expects to see airline traffic dropping sharply in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 as consumers and businesses cutback travel expenditures.

Airlines will use fare sales to attract more traffic, he predicted.

A defective part that helps hold the Boeing 737 together is causing a new headache for Boeing.

An aerospace industry Web site, fleetbuzzeditorial.com, reports that the company has discovered small parts called nutplates weren't properly treated to resist corrosion.

Nutplates are small metal strips with holes at either end that help tie the 737 structure together.

Those defective nutplates were installed in 737 fuselages by Boeing supplier Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, Kan.

A Boeing spokeswoman, Vicki Ray, said the defective parts pose no immediate flight safety risk.

"Boeing has determined this is not an immediate safety of flight issue and is working closely with the FAA and the supplier to rectify the situation," Ray said.

The site said that thousands of the defective parts were used on fuselages awaiting final assembly at Boeing's Renton plant.

Those parts will have to be replaced before the fuselages can be assembled into a finished airplane.

This new bit of bad news comes after Boeing suffered an eight-week production shutdown because of a strike by its union machinists. Machinists returned to work earlier this week after approving a new contract.

Peter Haley/The News Tribune

The crowd of children was not interested in the speeches.

Good Samaritan officials and Puyallup politicians on Friday paraded up to explain the importance of the new MultiCare/Good Samaritan Play Park in the South Hill Mall. They spoke about the hospital’s work with the community. The kids stood politely, waiting until the ribbon was cut. But once the oversized scissors sliced their way home, there was a mad rush to the new playground inside the mall.

The play park, next to the Good Samaritan kiosk, thus becomes a place where parents can take a break and where children can play on the plastic creatures and bounce off the padded walls.

The facility opened with a party that included cheerleaders, clowns and a storybook princess who resembled Cinderella.

“We’re really excited about it,” said Joseph D. Corsell, assistant vice president of Cafaro Co., the South Hill Mall owner. “We’ve had a long-standing partnership with Good Samaritan and we like to work together in serving the community.”

The Good Samaritan Children’s Therapy Unit has an ark theme – there’s a gigantic ladybug, two huskies (but no cougars) and other animals – and space enough for scores of children.

“We thought it was important to have a theme that resonates with our clients,” Good Samaritan spokeswoman Susan Messier said.

The park was originally planned to open alongside a new health kiosk, but the plan wasn’t finished in time. Officials hope an expanded kiosk will open by the beginning of 2009, and will have more capabilities, such as sports physicals, on top of the vaccinations and flu shots that are already available.

The City of Tacoma's municipally-owned short line railroad, Tacoma Rail, has a new superintentent.

Dale King, director of rail services for Weyerhaeuser Co., will succeed former Tacoma Rail Superintendent Paula Henry, who left the Tacoma Rail job in March.
Alan Hardy, the railroad's assistant superintendent, had served as the 100-employee railroad's interim leader.

King will start his service with the railroad in December.

King’s experience at Weyerhaeuser includes managing 200,000 annual rail shipments in North America and supervising the operations of five short-line railroads that employ more than 140 people, said a news release from Tacoma Public Utilities, the city's utilities arm of which Tacoma Rail is a part.

King worked for the Federal Way-based forest products company since 1985. He previously worked for the Burlington Northern Railroad.

“Dale’s business management expertise will complement the operations expertise that already exists in the Tacoma Rail management team,” said Tacoma Public Utilities Director Bill Gaines.

The salary range for the rail superintendent's job is $126,235 to $195,749 a year.

As superintendent, King will oversee a railroad with tracks stretching from the Tacoma Tideflats southward to Morton and Chehalis.

The railroad's structure includes three divisions. The Tidelands Division handles switching operations to Tacoma Tideflats industries and to the Port of Tacoma. The Mountain Division provides rail services on 132 miles of tracks that extend southward from Tacoma to a Port of Tacoma industrial park at Frederickson and to Morton, Centralia and Chehalis. The Capital Division provides rail services on three short segments of branch line track owned by BNSF near Olympia.

In recent years, Tacoma Rail has been in the front ranks of a civic effort to attract tourist passenger rail service from Tacoma to Mount Rainier on the former Milwaukee Road and Weyerhaeuser track between Freighthouse Square and Elbe.

That stretch of track, now owned by Tacoma Rail, has hosted three unsuccessful passenger operations, a steam train that halted operations two years ago, a dinner train operation that moved to Tacoma from Renton and a luxury tour train that used the tracks to the mountain as part of a national parks rail tour of the West.

Last summer, Tacoma Rail in conjunction with the Metropolitan Park District operated a "Train to Trek" that provided occasional rail service from Tacoma to the Northwest Trek wild animal park near Eatonville. That operation was fairly successful.

Tacoma Rail's yearly revenue is more than $18 million.

Gaines praised interim superintendent Hardy for his work calling him "one of the best operations people in the rail industry."

Tacoma Public Utilities conducted a national search to fill the Tacoma Rail superintendent position.

The developer of the billion-dollar Point Ruston project, on the site of the former Asarco copper smelter, has started marketing view homes at “Stack Hill,” site of the smelter’s old emissions stack.

The Ruston Town Council approved the final plat for Stack Hill on Oct. 20, freeing developer Mike Cohen to start writing purchase and sale agreements.

Stack Hill reclaims the property where the 562-foot Asarco smelter stack once stood. The structure was demolished in 1993 and the land has since been remediated under EPA supervision. The EPA released Stack Hill for construction in 2007.

Cohen’s plans for Stack Hill include 36 single-family homes. Twelve of the home sites already have been reserved, Cohen says. All 36 homes will be both Built Green and Energy Star certified through the Master Builders Association of Pierce County.

The first model home opened in September and has drawn an average of 20 to 30 visitors per day during open house weekends, Cohen said. A permanent sales office will
be located in a second model home, which is expected to be complete and fully furnished in November.

To learn more about homes at Stack Hill, visit www.PointRuston.com or contact Julie McBride at (360) 456-6307, ext. 16 or Julie@mcconstruction.com.

MSNBC came up with a list of the country’s top 10 healthiest grocery store chains today, and the list contained some surprises.

Whole Foods was at the top, as might be expected. Judges called the Texas-based chain “the Rolls Royce of healthy eating.”

Number #2 was less predictable: Safeway.

Safeway?

“Look closer and you’ll see a huge transformation going on,” the judges said. “They now have their own organic brands and a section of locally grown produce.”

Judges also praised Safeway’s online “Food Flex” program, which sorts through customers’ purchases and suggests healthier alternatives.

Trader Joe’s was highly praised but came in only #4, getting dinged for what judges considered a limited selection in most stores.

The complete list:

1. Whole Foods
2. Safeway
3. Harris Teeter
4. Trader Joe’s
5. Hannaford (165-plus stores in the Northeast)
6. Albertsons
7. Food Lion
8. Publix Super Markets
9. Pathmark
10. SuperTarget

MSNBC says it reviewed the country’s 35 largest food retailers in the survey.

Which were the least healthy?

MSNBC didn’t say.

Blame falling stock markets and a decline in consumer spending. That’s what Bellevue hospitality consultant Wolfgang Rood says in his review of September’s hotel occupancy rates.

Occupancy was down 3.4 percent statewide in September, Rood says. In Pierce County, the rate was down 2.2 percent. Only two areas – downtown Seattle, at 1.1 percent, and the Tri-Cities, at 0.9 percent – showed increases in the rates from September of 2007. Everett and Snohomish County saw the largest decline, down 17.9 percent.

Statewide, 78.8 percent of rooms were occupied during the month. In Pierce County, visitors occupied 72.9 percent of available rooms.

For the average cost of a room, the state marked a 4.6 increase to $142.99 in September. In Tacoma, the average cost was up 8.3 percent to $88.54. No other region reported a higher increase, while Bellingham and Southwest Washington both reported decreases.

Downtown Seattle saw the state's largest average cost, up 4.5 percent to $193.41. The average cost of a room was lowest in the Everett area, at $66.23.

With its capacity falling faster than its business, SeaTac's Alaska Airlines filled a higher percentage of its seats and arrived on time more frequently this October than a year ago.

Those figures released by the airline today show that 73.6 percent of the airline's seats were occupied by paying passengers in October compared with 71.6 percent in October of 2007.

The airline's on-time performance increased markedly. Flights were on-time 84.4 percent this October compared with 70.1 percent during the same month in 2007.

At Alaska's sister airline, Horizon Air, the percentage of seats filled dropped to 71.1 percent in October compared with 72 percent in the comparable month last year, the airline said.

On-time arrivals totaled 89.4 percent of flights compared with 80.1 percent in October 2007.

Revenue passenger miles (one passenger flown one mile) dropped at both airlines. At Alaska, that figure fell 1 percent but available seat miles fell faster, 3.7 percent.

At Horizon, revenue passenger miles fell 22 percent while available seat miles dropped 21 percent.

A Chinese newspaper says China could be producing a rival for the popular Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 by 2015.

China Daily, quoting a senior Chinese aircraft designer, said the plane will have a capacity of 150-200 seats.

The Chinese are just now fielding a smaller plane, the 70-seat ARJ21.

Airbus is setting up a production line for its A320 family of single-aisle jets, and Boeing is outsourcing major parts of all its commercial jets to Chinese manufacturers.

The newspaper said Chinese manufacturers will source parts for the new plane from manufacturers around the world.

China is likely to be the world's largest commercial aviation market over the next decade as it enlarges its aviation infrastructure to serve its huge population.

Previous Asian efforts to design and produce commercial aircraft have failed in part because of a lack of a worldwide service network and because of airlines' unfamiliarity with Asian manufacturers.

Air China Cargo has ordered three 747 converted freighter aircraft from Boeing, the company and the airline announced today.

The three 747s, already owned by Air China, will be converted to cargo aircraft at Taikoo Aircraft Engineering Co. in Xiamen, China under Boeing supervision.

"We look forward to our Boeing 747-400BCFs being of the same high quality as the factory-built airplanes we operate," said Air China Cargo President Yao Jun.

The conversion process will strengthen the airliners' floors, add a large cargo door and add a cargo handling system. Other plane electronic systems will be updated.

Air China Cargo currently operates eight freighters including three purpose-built 747-400 freighters. Two more 747-400 Freighters are leased, and three 747-200 Freighters are owned by the airline.

After several days to discussing side issues at the bargaining table, the Boeing Co. today says it is submitting its initial proposed contract to its engineering and technical workers union.

That union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, presented its initial contract proposal to the company in late September.

SPEEA represent more than 20,000 engineers and technical workers in the Puget Sound area. Its contract with Boeing expires Dec. 1.

Boeing Chairman Jim McNerney in a message to Boeing workers this week said he was hopeful that the bargaining with SPEEA will lead to a new contract. Boeing's machinists recently returned to work after an eight-week strike.

The company says it wants to conclude its negotiations with SPEEA by Nov. 11, next Tuesday. SPEEA members will then vote by mail.

A simple majority will be enough to ratify the contract.

If a majority fails to vote for Boeing's final offer, the union can call a strike at any time after the contract expiration.

A failure to ratify won't necessarily mean a strike Dec. 2. Typically SPEEA will use the strike vote to seek further meetings with the company before going to the picket lines.

Some sources think the engineers and tech workers, if unhappy with Boeing's proposal, will wait until after Boeing's two-week holiday break before striking if necessary.

Southwest Airlines, Sea-Tac Airport's fifth most popular carrier, announced schedule changes today that will add 58 new flights nationwide beginning next spring.

At Sea-Tac, the carrier added no new destinations, but tweaked its flight schedule based on demand.

The Dallas-based carrier beginning March 8 will:

* Add a third daily flight from Sea-Tac to Chicago's Midway Airport.
* Increase its schedule to Las Vegas by one flight daily to four.
* Reduce its flights connecting the Puget Sound area to Sacramento by one. That leaves four daily flights to the California capital.
* Drop one daily flight to San Jose,leaving three.
* Reduce its daily flights to Boise to two, one less than now.

The biggest change in Southwest's schedule nationwide is its entrance into Minneapolis-St.Paul, one of the few large metropolitan areas it does not serve. The airline will fly eight times daily to its Chicago Midway hub from the twin cities.

The promotional fare on those flights is $69 one way compared with the least expensive present fare by Northwest, United or American of $426 according to Rick Seaney at Farecompare.com.

Want a job with the Obama administration?

‘Yes, you can,” says the Tacoma-based company Avue Technologies, a human resources service center for the federal government.

Avue has launched a new web site (www.transitionjobs.us), intended to provide job application assistance for some 7,000 jobs that will need to be filled by the new administration.

"Staffing a new administration is a monumental task, especially for a nation in crisis,” Linda Rix, Avue’s co-CEO, said in a press release.

"We believe that the appointment process can be transformed in a manner that will dramatically increase the information available to those seeking employment,” Rix said, “as well as to streamline the process and provide for a much faster and efficient employment cycle."

The Avue site is free and contains no advertising. It will list all new politically appointed job openings (known as "Plum Book" positions) as soon as they are announced, Avue says.

In the meantime, the site lists Plum Book positions filled by the Bush administration, letting job seekers peruse the types of jobs that will likely be available when Obama takes over.

The site will also track the "fill rate" of new jobs, making it easy to monitor the administration’s progress.

Avue, which calls itself “the thought leader in federal workforce management,” is a privately held company founded in 1983. In addition to its Tacoma headquarters, Avue has an operations office in Washington, D.C.

Avue also has a site for federal jobs that are not politically appointed. That site is:www.avuecentral.com.

A new terminal designed to handle bulk liquids destined for Pacific Northwest consumers and manufacturers will be built at the Port of Grays Harbor.

Westway Terminals, will build a $17 million terminal with four tanks at the port in the first phase of the development, said the port.

The new facility will employ 10 to 12 workers.

"Gray's Harbor's close proximity to the Pacific Ocean, only an hour and a half from the open sea, is an excellent advantage for our Pacific Northwest hub," said Scott MacKenzie, Westway vice president of business development.

Bulk liquids are expected to arrive via ship and barge and then be transferred to the terminal storage. From there, they will be distributed throughout the region via rail and truck.

The first liquid commodity the terminal is expected to handle is methanol.

The Port of Seattle, which less than a decade ago had only a nominal cruise ship business, surpassed its northwest rival, Vancouver, B.C. in cruise ship passengers last summer, the Port of Seattle said today.

Seattle's piers handled 210 cruise ship calls and 886,039 passengers during the cruise season just completed compared with Vancouver's 854,453 passengers, the port said. The 2008 cruise season was the biggest in the port's history.

The cruise business in Seattle generates $274 million in annual business revenue, $8 million in annual state and local taxes, and 2,380 jobs, according to the port.

"The growth we've seen in just ten years is remarkable," said Port CEO Tay Yoshitani. "I'm gratified that the passengers who visit Seattle gave us such high marks in customer service - the port is honored to welcome so many people to this beautiful place."

The 2009 season will see the opening of a new facility on Pier 91, near the Magnolia Bridge. That facility will replace a terminal on the waterfront near Safeco Field which is being converted to cargo use. The port also has another cruise terminal along Elliott Bay near Pike Place Market.

Current projections for 2009 estimate 211 cruise ship visits and 801,080 passengers. Seattle will serve 11 homeport vessels including the Pacific Princess, a new homeport ship for Seattle.

The cruise season begins in Seattle in late April and extends through mid-October. Most of the cruises from Seattle travel to Alaska though a few repositioning cruises travel to California and other destinations.

My predecessor, the late News Tribune Business Columnist Art Popham, once wrote that a visit to Barker Road is like a voyage around the world within four walls.

You'd better hurry and book your trip.

After just over eight years anchoring the corner of North 30th and Carr streets, the two sisters and brother who own the place have decided the time has come to retire.

The siblings who have run Barker Road Collection, the only pure retailer in Tacoma's Old Town district, for the last eight years have decided to retire. The business is for sale, but if no takers come along, the doors will close for good in mid-December. (Photo by Dan Voelpel)

This afternoon, disappointed customers stopped in for a little shopping and a few hugs.

"It's a bittersweet decision," said co-owner Linda McElroy.

=> Read more!

The State Gambling Commission will be making some important decisions at its meetings next week – Thursday and Friday, the 13th (beginning at 10:30 a.m.) and 14th (beginning at 9 a.m.), at the Southcenter Double Tree, 16500 Southcenter Parkway.

Thursday’s session will contain discussion of some procedural and administrative matters, and the more interesting discussion will come Friday, when commissioners take the final vote on whether to increase the number of players who can play at a table and to raise betting limits.

The Recreational Gaming Association has asked that wager limits be raised from $40 to $500 in non-house-banked card games, and to increase the number of players who play at house-banked games.

Other matters up for final consideration include surveillance staffing and electronic poker games, which are a sort of card-less, chip-less video game played by several players around a table.

The meetings are open to the public.

For more information, visit www.wsgc.wa.gov.

Here’s an interesting twist on a well-tried phishing scam. I just received an e-mail from TIC Federal Credit Union (it’s in Georgia, and South Sound customers may have signed on while stationed at Fort Benning).

It begins: “Some members and non-members of TIC Federal Credit Union have received fraudulent emails. This email was NOT issued by TIC Federal Credit Union, and should be deleted.”

Are you scared enough by that? Somebody's using a fraudulent e-mail to steal your money. But read on. There’s a solution.

The message ends: “For security reasons we have deactivated your debit card. Please call our toll-free hotline at (877) xxx-xxxx to activate your debit card.”

Call the number, and guess what. You’re asked punch in your card number and other pertinent information. The folks behind the scam then steal your money, at best, or your identity and your money, at worst.

TIC Federal Credit Union confirms it’s a scam.

Here’s the lesson: They’re tricky, these thieves. Don’t be fooled. Don’t give out any personal information over the phone or over the Internet. If you’ve got questions, call the actual bank, credit union or other financial institution.

We've seen lots of toy list so far this year.
Now we have one from Amazon.com.

The online retailer's holiday gift guide includes more than 300 toys, video games, sporting goods, electronics and DVDs.

The site uses Amazon Windowshop, a shopping platform that allows customers to experience products in a "new and unique way," the company said in a news release.

Each "product window" contains a combination of images, videos, audio and written content.

Customers are not just looking at Amazon.com’s top holiday picks, but experiencing the products at the same time, the company says.

"This holiday is the easiest yet for shoppers to find the perfect gifts for kids of all ages," says Sarah Wood, director of the Toy & Games store for Amazon.com. "Amazon.com created a destination that’s fun, interactive and easy to use, letting customers discover products they may not have otherwise found in a traditional search."

Here's a glimpse at some items on the list:

Animal Crossing: City Folk for Nintendo Wii, $49.99
Bakugan Battle Arena, $23.99
Children’s Ultimate Ears Loud Enough Volume Limiting Earphones, $34.99

=> Read more!

"Great incentives. Low taxes. A receptive economic development department."

Site Selection Magazine used that string of phrases to describe the state with the best business climate.

Washington?

No. North Carolina – the No. 1 state for the fourth year in a row.
Washington didn't make the Top 25. And since Site Selection ranks only the Top 25, Washington could fall anywhere from No. 26 to last, Mark Arend, editor in chief, told me.

"There's no way to know beyond 25th place," Arend said. "The point of the article is really to showcase where corporate investors would likely want to invest – or more importantly, where they HAVE invested in recent years – not where they have not invested in recent years."

I get it. The magazine bases its rankings in part on where corporations expand. For whatever reason, they don't pick Washington as much as these states that made the list:

=> Read more!

The State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council is out with its preliminary forecast for November.

Were this a weather report, the prediction would call for rain.

Based on a modified version offered by Global Insight, the council’s prediction calls for a 0.8 percent decline in national GDP during the third quarter. Real sales were weaker for the period, down by 0.8 percent. Real consumer spending nationwide fell by 3.1 percent – the first such decline since 1992 and the largest since 1980.

On the sunnier side, foreign trade added a 1.1 percent gain to GDP, and government spending rose by 5.8 percent, due in great part to an 18.1 percent jump in defense spending.

The national recession – and yes, the council proclaims we are in a recession – “is expected to last four quarters with a peak-to-trough decline in real GDP of 1.2 percent.”

Inflation in Seattle, which trailed the national numbers in 2002, 2003 and 2004, averaged 4.5 percent over the first eight months of the year, compared to a 5.1 percent rise nationwide.

“Recently available employment, wage, and housing data all indicate the state’s economy is weaker than assumed in September,” the council’s prediction says.

Housing starts and single-family building permits were down for the quarter, and the "forecast assumes that the housing sector will not show any significant improvement until the second half of 2009.”

The council says “aerospace employment is expected to continue to rise through the end of 2008, reaching 86,000 in December which is 900 lower than assumed in September.”

The Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors will review the forecast on Friday in Olympia.

Bernardo Tuma, the entrepreneur who launched one of the earliest coffee roasteries in downtown Tacoma, resurfaced today with his cafe and coffee shop in his newest location on the ground floor of Wells Fargo Plaza.

Previously, Tuma's Aroma Coffee operated at South Ninth Street and Court A from 1993 to 2002. He tried to simultaneously operate in a second location in the Columbia Bank Center for nearly a year in 2001. When that didn't work, he closed both locations and opened Aroma Cafe & Coffee at South 10th Street in 2002. He closed that storefront in August.

Tuma intended to quit the retail coffee business and instead open a roastery in the Tideflats where he could wholesale various roasts to regional retailers.

Coincidentally, the Wells Fargo space came open at the same time.

"I've been eyeing this opportunity, in this space, for quite a long time," Tuma said.

=> Read more!

The Port of Tacoma will hold three public meetings this month to discuss its 2009 budget, cargo forecast, finance plan and tax levy.

The first budget meeting at noon on Thursday will include an update on the third quarter of the 2008 budget and a preliminary look at the 2009 capital plans, revenue projections, tax levy and finance plans, the port said in a news release.

This general business presentation will not call for public comment, but community members are encouraged to attend to hear how the Port’s budget is formed.

=> Read more!

Starbucks is offering to give anyone who votes and then drops into a store to say they had done so a free 12-ounce cup of drip coffee.

No proof needed. Just your word that you participated in democracy.

Here's what the company says:

"This is an extension of Starbucks commitment to community through Starbucks Shared Planet. It lets us immediately support customers who care about the same things we do and who want to make a difference. This idea has also come up a number of times on MyStarbucksIdea.com our on-line forum for sharing customer and partner (employee) ideas."

UPDATE: It turns out this may violate federal election law. Our political blog, Political Buzz has the scoop.

Oh, the frustration of trying to get that new toy open on Christmas morning.

Amazon.com feels your pain. The company said today that it launching an initiative to make it easier to get products out of their packages and make those packages more environmentally friendly.

It's called: Frustration-Free Packaging.

Amazon said in a news release that it is focusing first on two kinds of items: those enclosed in hard plastic cases known as "clamshells" and those secured with plastic-coated wire ties, commonly used in toy packaging.

The program begins with 19 bestselling products from manufacturers including Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and electronics manufacturer Transcend.

In the company's words: The product is exactly the same - Amazon has just streamlined the packaging. The project will expand across Amazon’s international sites beginning in 2009.

"I think we’ve all experienced the frustration that sometimes occurs when you try to get a new toy or electronics product out of its package," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "It will take many years, but our vision is to offer our entire catalog of products in Frustration-Free Packaging. We’d like to thank Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and Transcend for working with us in this effort - we truly appreciate it."

=> Read more!

Circuit City announced today that it's closing 155 stores around the country including the store at 34920 Enchanted Parkway S. in Federal Way.

The Richmond, Va.-based company said in a news release that it would shut 20 percent of its stores as part of a plan to return to profitability.

The stores are scheduled to close by Dec. 31.

Circuit City has had only one profitable quarter in the past year, posting a wider second-quarter loss in September with a 13.3 percent decline in sales at stores open at least a year, according to The Associated Press. Its results have weakened amid a deteriorating retail environment and heightened competition from rival Best Buy Co. and others.

The company is reviewing its operations while exploring strategic alternatives.