Here’s the really silly part:

Lewis will attend the hearing, taking a train to D.C., a bank spokesman said. He declined to elaborate for security reasons. John Stumpf, the CEO of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., will fly commercial, a spokeswoman said. The CEOs of Detroit’s Big Three automakers were ridiculed for taking private jets to their recent appearances on Capitol Hill, where they asked the government for money.

As reporters, we’re taught to include a number of elements in any story.

But I must have been asleep in Journalism 101 when the professor told us that the mode of transport used by CEOs traveling to Washington to testify in front of Congress is one of those highly key elements.

In this instance, how Mr. Lewis is getting to Washington really isn’t critical to the overall story.

But thanks to the posturing and grandstanding of a few politicians in Congress, travel plans and modes of transport have become a key element to any story reporting on any business receiving loans or other financial assistance from the government.

Is it any wonder why Wichita’s own Big 3 are struggling to sell business jets?

US Airways says it is going to start charging coach passengers $7 if they want a pillow and a blanket.

Of course the Tempe, Ariz.-based airline is packaging this nifty little move as part of its “pay-for-what-you-choose-and-use model.”

First, airlines nixed snacks. Next, they started charging for checked baggage. Now this?

At this rate, pretty soon it’ll cost you 50 cents, maybe $1, to use the toilet on the airplane.

This is all being done in the name of squeezing the most revenue at a time when the recession is slowing air travel and airlines are taking it in the shorts for hedging on their future fuel costs.

Thing is, we’ve been through recessions before. So have the airlines. But how smart is it for them to be charging for the most basic of amenities as a short term revenue fix?

Seems that such moves are short-sighted, and will lead more folks to choose other modes of travel in the future.

In the meantime, I had a question related to Boeing. So who did I call? The Spirit PR person. Doh!

What got me thinking about PR is the apparent lack of PR help the big three auto executives got on their recent trip to Washington. True public relations experts step in with guidance before there’s a PR nightmare on their hands.

Perhaps someone should have thought ahead of time that maybe flying in on private jets to ask for financial assistance wasn’t the smartest move. Or perhaps if someone had prepared the execs with an intelligent justification for why they need the planes, the ensuing PR disaster could have been averted.

I was having this discussion with my husband last night, and he said, “What’s their justification? They have to run their companies into the ground? They can’t spend another minute in the air because they’ve got more money to lose?”

He’s probably right. In some cases, no amount of PR helps. Especially when reporters don’t call the right company in the first place.

Air Capital Insider made its debut yesterday. That’s where you’ll find everything you need to know about the aviation biz inside and outside Wichita, thanks to aviation reporter Molly McMillin. In addition to industry news, Molly will provide lots of tids and bits about aviation that don’t always find their way in the paper.

Molly has been on the aviation beat for nearly a decade. “That makes me sound very old,” she said. But she’s not just a reporter, she’s an aviation enthusiast. Her dad got his private pilots license when she was growing up, and she’s now learning to fly in his 1956 Piper Tri-Pacer. In fact, she made her first solo flight on Nov. 1.

So check out Air Capital Insider and let us know what you think

You can’t add percentages.

I bring this up because I’ve read numerous times — like here and here and here — about the 15 percent raise in Boeing’s contract offer to the Machinists union. Only one problem: That’s wrong. The raise is closer to 16 percent.

Here’s how the math works. If a Machinist is making $50,000 a year, he’ll get a 5 percent raise in the first year of the contract to increase his annual pay to $52,500. The Machinist will get 3 percent raises in the second and third years to increase his pay to $54,075 and then $55,697.25. A 4 percent raise in the fourth year will boost it to $57,925.14. That’s a raise of 15.85 percent (57,925.14/50,000=1.1585028).

If it were a 15 percent raise, that same Machinist would be making $57,500. Not a big difference, but I think I’d rather have the extra $425.14 (before taxes, of course) at the end of the year.

Just sayin’.

The union made gains on outsourcing, health care and pension. Missing from the latest offer is a company incentive pay plan.

The chart compares general wages, wages for recent and new hires, pensions, bonuses, incentive pay plans, medical plans and outsourcing  language.

It’s been a good day-plus on the New York Stock Exchange for shares of Boeing. After gaining $6.55 to close at $48.91 Tuesday, Boeing is trading higher again today.

It’s still well below Boeing’s 52-week high of $98.71 but should be good news for a company that hasn’t had a lot lately.

She is working hard to expand the Old Town restaurant to include a separate room for special events. The highlight of the room is an Art Deco-style mural painted by local artist Steve Murillo, called “The Quest.”     Rine’s goal, after the bills are paid, is eventually to use income from the room to buy a Beech Staggerwing like the one depicted in the mural.  “I want that Staggerwing,” Rine said.  In fact, she is calling the entire room the Quest Space. “This has been a quest for me to be able to afford an airplane.” The Staggerwing is one of eight airplanes depicted in the mural.

The room should be open in a couple of weeks.

Still, anxiety levels in this stoic Midwestern city have shot higher as the financial crisis rages around it and economic indicators show a sharp deterioration in U. S. and global growth.

For global growth has been the lifeblood of Wichita, which has leveraged a weak greenback to sell a stream of grains, business jets, navigation equipment and conveyor belts to a hungry and prosperous world. Exports, the silent strength of the U. S. economy in recent years, are also now at risk as this made-in-America crisis circles round to bite the domestic economy in the back.

You can read the article here.