Air India faces hurdles ahead of Star Alliance join
Even though Air India’s chairman says that the carrier will be ready to join the Star Alliance between June and October 2010, an alliance executive says that there are still questions as to the carrier’s readiness.
“Making fleet updates, a merger and preparing the carrier for the alliance all at the same time is a difficult task. We will see if AI is able to make it,” the Star source said.
Indeed, the integration of the old Air India and Indian Airlines, which began in July 2007, still is going on. “But a lot of work has been done,” said [Air India Chairman and MD Arvind] Jadhav, who took up his position at AI last spring.
Northern Nevada’s fortune tied CityCenter success, or failure
Even though the CityCenter is in Clark County, all of Nevada depends on the CityCenter.
They are rooting for the project from the offices of state government in Carson City to corporate board rooms in Reno.
“If Vegas does well, we all do well,” said Chuck Alvey, president and CEO of the Economic Development Agency of Western Nevada. “It doesn’t do us any good to have Las Vegas struggling. So when Las Vegas does well with something like that, it can help us.”
State sales and gaming taxes could be affected by revenues from CityCenter, leading state officials said. Although the state’s financial experts have not estimated the specific amount of taxes CityCenter will bring in, they see potential for the project to make impacts on various levels.
Observers see CityCenter siphoning business from other MGM Mirage hotels
The CityCenter may bring in business to Las Vegas, but analysts say that other properties may suffer.
In a report looking at projections for 2010, CB Richard Ellis casino consultant Jacob Oberman, for instance, predicts that Strip gaming and nongaming revenues will increase 3 percent to 7 percent next year, but 70 percent to 90 percent of CityCenter’s initial revenues will come at the expense of other Strip properties.
He predicts that existing hotel-casinos on the Strip will see revenue declines between 3 percent and 6 percent next year as customers visit CityCenter instead.
(Photo: Drewski2112/Flickr Creative Commons)
