AirTran Airways announced Friday it will defer delivery of 18 Boeing Co. 737 jets. The carrier originally had scheduled delivery of those 737-700 jets for between 2009 and 2011. It has pushed back delivery to sometime between 2013 and 2014. The airline currently operates 54 Boeing 737-700 series aircraft as well as 87 Boeing 717-200 aircraft.
Checks arrive; will economy bounce?
The first round of economic stimulus checks gave a boost to personal incomes in April but a huge question remains: Will people spend the checks quickly enough to keep the economy afloat? The Commerce Department reported Friday that consumer spending barely budged in April, rising a tiny 0.2 percent, and income growth was just as weak, increasing a similar 0.2 percent. The growth in incomes, restrained by four straight months of job losses, would have been just 0.1 percent if not for the first wave of economic stimulus payments the government started sending out April 28.
Alliance boosts its help to homeowners
A mortgage industry alliance, under pressure to show progress in its efforts to aid troubled borrowers, says lenders gave a record amount of assistance to homeowners last month. Statistics released Friday by Hope Now, a group backed by the Bush administration to help stem the mortgage crisis, show that nearly 183,000 borrowers received some form of loan workout in April. That was the highest monthly number since the effort started last summer.
Horizon Air founder Kuolt dies at 79
Milton Kuolt, a driven Washington state entrepreneur who founded Horizon Air, died Friday. He was 79. Kuolt’s family says he died at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle from complications related to emphysema. Kuolt, who was born in India to missionary parents, graduated in 1951 from the then-Central Washington College of Education in Ellensburg. He worked his way up from janitor to manager at the Boeing Co., founded the Thousand Trails campground company and started Horizon Air, a regional carrier that was later bought by Alaska Airlines.
Amazon’s Kindle gets more titles
Amazon.com said Friday that publisher Simon &Schuster Inc. will make 5,000 more books available for the Amazon Kindle wireless reader, bumping to 125,000 the number of titles users can download and read. The announcement came ahead of an address by Amazon.com Inc. Chief executive Jeff Bezos at the BookExpo America convention in Los Angeles. Bezos has said Kindle e-books now account for 6 percent of sales among the 125,000 titles available on the site.
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