Mark Gale, currently one of the city's deputy aviation directors, was named interim director today while Mayor Nutter and Deputy Mayor Rina Cutler conduct a national search for a permanent replacement for Charles J. Isdell. Gale, who's worked at PHL for 20 years, already has much of the responsibility for running the airport day-to-day.

 PHL is in good hands with the interim appointment. Gale can run the place quite effectively, in our opinion. Isdell resigned as of last Friday, after questions were raised about his city residency, a topic that I expressed some opinion on in Monday's Winging It column. 

The airlines today continue to (mostly) report masses of red ink for the 2008 fourth quarter and full year. Four U.S. carriers, including US Airways, have reported earnings this morning, and there aren't many surprises there. The industry got a shock, however, when the International Air Transport Association reported a huge decline -- 22.6 percent -- in air-cargo traffic in December vs. a year ago, a clear sign of a global slowdown in trade.

Here, before adding additional detail from the airlines' conference calls with analysts and reporters, are wire-service reports on US Airways and Continental,. We should have reports soon from JetBlue, which lost money, and Frontier, which made a little.

Something noticed about airline announcements these days that is in contrast to so many other large companies: The airlines have laid off few employees recently. The primary reason for that is that the industry laid off so many in the past, as numerous airlines went through bankruptcy, mergers or both, and as systems shrank because of high fuel prices last year. Much of the pain of job losses that now is hitting so many people and communities were felt among airline workers over several years.