I must admit it’s a little too slow for my tastes, but all of these countries are relaxing restrictions for travel that were put into place during August.

Let’s start with the US which has some very good news for travelers. The TSA announced that beginning tomorrow (Sep 26), there will be two changes in security policy. Here it is, straight from the website:

• Travelers may now carry through security checkpoints travel-size toiletries (3 ounces or less) that fit comfortably in ONE, QUART-SIZE, clear plastic, zip-top bag. At the checkpoint travelers will be asked to remove the zip-top bag of liquids and place it in a bin or on the conveyor belt. X-raying separately will allow TSA security officers to more easily examine the declared items.
• After clearing security, travelers can now bring beverages and other items purchased in the secure boarding area on-board aircraft.

That’s great - now I won’t have to check a bag anymore, but those with lots of makeup may still be out of luck. They do caution that there probably won’t be any more changes soon.

Meanwhile, up in Canada, the Aviation Daily Airports blog reports that you can now buy drinks past security and bring them onboard (no that doesn’t include duty free bottles of alcohol). This doesn’t apply on flights to the US, but I wonder if today’s announcement from the US will change that.

And lastly, our good friends over in the UK haven’t touched the liquid ban, but they have increased the size of permitted carry-on luggage. Previously, you could only bring one small bag, but ATW tells us that now you can bring a normal sized carry-on of 56 cm x 45cm x 26cm. You can still only bring one unless your second one fits in the first one. That’s helpful, huh?

US Airways sent me an update this week on the latest and greatest happenings with the merger, primarily focused on the website. For those who don’t get US Airways’ mailings but do use the website, I thought this was a very well written and helpful email.

The main point to focus on is the merger of reservations systems in the second quarter of next year. Many of the technological issues and customer service issues stem from the use of two different systems. Once these merge, there will be a significantly better experience for everyone.

I didn’t know this existed until getting this email, but if you go to this page, you can see all the website updates as they happen. Here is the letter in its entirety:

Dear Cranky,

It’s been several months since we launched the new usairways.com, and I want to give you an update on the status of enhancements to the new site and how they affect you.

As a quick review, here are some of the new features on the site, with a special emphasis on features that are important to our Preferred members:

• Auto-upgrades and upgrade e-mail notification. We upgrade you automatically and e-mail you as soon as you’ve been upgraded. No more calling in for upgrades. This is new for “East” US Airways members.
  
• A single login. Manage your Dividend Miles account online with a single
  login so you can book travel and manage your reservations without logging in twice.
  
• Flexible mixed awards. It used to be that if a “Saver” seat was only available on one segment that the entire trip had to be purchased using the higher mileage “Premium” level. Now you can mix and match high and low mileage,
  so you can use the fewest possible miles for a trip.
  
• Download reservations to Outlook. After booking, the “Download reservation to Outlook” feature will automatically apply your reservation to your Outlook calendar. That’s pretty handy.

Here are some other recent enhancements we’ve made.

We continue to upgrade usairways.com, so here’s the status of some of
our top projects:

• One reservation system. One of the great challenges of an airline merger is
  that for a period of time we have two reservations systems, Sabre (from US
  Airways) and Shares (from America West). We must continue to use both systems until approximately 2nd quarter 2007 at which time they will both converge onto the Shares platform. Having these two systems has presented challenges with booking, checking in (both online and at kiosks) and we are working hard to overcome these as we move to one system.
  
• Star Allianceâ„¢ and partner travel. Soon you’ll be able to book flights
  online on United, Lufthansa, Spanair, Air One, TAP Portugal and on our Caribbean partners. The delay in this functionality has been, you guessed it, two reservations systems.
  
• Site Speed. It’s important to get the site up and moving quickly, and we’re
  working hard to improve response times, starting with the homepage.

Finally, just some of the important items to be addressed either when we
merge reservations systems or later in 2007:

• Receive immediate upgrades. In 2007, we’ll be able to process upgrades in
  real time and notify you immediately when an upgrade clears. So if someone
  cancels a reservation for a First Class seat that you’re next in line for, you’ll get it immediately, and there will never be a need to call to confirm.
  
• Utilize our streamlined Web Check-in. Navigating two reservations systems is tricky, and there are also too many steps involved in the Web Check-In process today, so we’re going to make it quicker and more intuitive.
  
• Additional Star Alliance partners. As we improve connections to Star Alliance member airlines, we’ll add booking, upgrade, and other functionality to airlines in addition to those listed above.
  
• Use miles to upgrade to First Class online. The way to guarantee an upgrade
  outside of your window is to use miles, and we need to let you do it online.
  We’re working diligently to build this for you.
  
• Redeposit unused mileage awards. No need to call, just do it yourself.
  
• View and manage all of your reservations online. Whether booked on our site or somewhere else, you’ll be able to see them all.
  
• More options to make changes. We know that you want the ability to make most changes yourself online, particularly if you booked online. That’s one of the more complex capabilities that we’re building. Air itineraries and rules are extremely complicated and it takes a lot of programming to make that happen.
  
• There’s a lot more than this. As of today our usairways.com “roadmap” contains 164 items and we add to it every day.
  
• What are your ideas? Please tell us what you think we should add to the
  roadmap at ideas@usairways.com — we’ll review them all.

We have made great strides in improving the ease of booking and we appreciate
your patience. Airline websites present a particularly daunting challenge due to
the complex nature of our business, and we know what an important tool our site
is to you, our most important travelers.

Thanks again for your support and continued patience throughout the merger.
We hear over and over from our Preferred members that the benefits are far
outweighing the occasional difficulties. We wanted you to know that we are aware of the difficulties and we are working hard to get to one reservation system as quickly as possible. We’ll continue to communicate with you and provide updates on our progress. Thanks again for your business.

With Warm Regards,

Travis Christ

Vice President, Sales and Marketing

In this recent conversation on the Today in the Sky blog, I mentioned something about the perimeter rule at New York’s LaGuardia airport. I realize that a lot of people have probably never even heard of this thing, so I’ve decided to devote a post to it.

If an airport has a perimeter rule, it means that there is a certain distance from that airport beyond which flights are not allowed to go. Forgetting about the whole Wright Amendment thing in Dallas, there are two airports that have perimeter rules in the US: New York/LaGuardia and Washington/National. Before we get into the details, the first question many people ask is . . . why?

Washington had a brand new airport at Dulles and New York had one at Idlewild (later to be JFK). The problem was that nobody wanted to use them since both National and LaGuardia, the main airports at the time, were more convenient and preferred by customers. So, a perimeter rule was enacted to continue to allow short haul flights at the old airports but requiring longer haul and most international flights to use the new one.

Over the years, the perimeter rule became the political rule as politicians kept expanding it so their home airport would be included. That brings us to today. The perimeter rules look like this:

Maps generated by the Great Circle Mapper - copyright © Karl L. Swartz.

• United once daily to Denver
• Frontier three times daily to Denver
• Alaska twice daily to Seattle and once daily to Los Angeles
• Delta once daily to Salt Lake City
• America West (now US Airways) three times daily to Phoenix and once daily to Las Vegas

• US Airways to Aruba
• Continental to Aruba
• American to Vail during the winter
• Delta to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City

Now that JFK and Dulles have certainly come into their own, the perimeter rule has outlived its purpose. These days it’s just an unnecessary rule that artificially prevents airlines from meeting demand for long haul travel from close-in airports.

If I went up to 100 people in the US asked them about Allegiant Air, my guess is almost all of them would pose the question asked in the title of this post. I’ve mentioned some of their seemingly random route announcements before, and you’ve probably asked the same question. So, who the f*** IS Allegiant Air?

I’m actually pretty surprised this didn’t get more attention last week. On Sep 15, US officials announced they’ll require all express cargo to be screened for explosives just like checked baggage.

I’ve heard plenty of people show their concern about cargo not being screened, so why didn’t this get more attention? Well, for one reason, it’s not much of a change.

A good example of express cargo is the Continental QUICKPAK. Basically, you go up to a counter at the airport and they ship it on the next flight out to any other airport for a hefty fee. Then someone has to pick it up at the other end. So, a very small portion of total airline cargo actually goes onboard as express cargo. On top of that, most airlines already do full screening of these packages anyway.

So, this announcement doesn’t say much except that the feds are actually keeping an eye on cargo. It seems to me it’s just a matter of time before all cargo is required to be screened.

The Hawaiian airline market is an interesting place. You put three airlines in the islands and everybody’s happy, but you add a fourth and it all goes crazy.

That’s right, it’s time to break out the steel cage for another round of the Hawaiian brawl.

When go! started flying, it angered a lot of the incumbent airlines because it slashed fares to an unsustainable level and publicly said that it didn’t care if it didn’t make a profit.

If that’s not good enough, Hawaiian Air sued them saying that when they were in bankruptcy, go! used the opportunity to see private documents and then turned around and used them against the airline to start up a competing one. Oh, and it gets worse. Now they say they’ve got an email between the head of go! and a consultant saying that the business plan only works if they can push Aloha out of business.

Definitely not the best way to make friends here.

So, a bunch of airline employees from the other three big airlines in Hawai’i put together a coalition called H.E.R.O - Hawaii’s airline Employees Repelling Ornstein. You guessed it - Ornstein runs go! and it’s parent Mesa Air Group.

Now, Jonathan Ornstein has never shied away from a fight. So how does he respond? Well, with a HERO sale, of course. The airline is offering a ridiculous $19 one way HERO fare between the islands.

This is great. Since that last BWIA brawl fizzled out, I’m glad we have something else to watch now.

Airlines should do this more often.

Today in the Sky reports that Air Canada billed an unruly passenger for causing a 27 minute delay for one of their flights. Basically, the guy was in the wrong seat and got into an argument when they tried to make him move to the right one. It ended with him being escorted off the plane by police.

The airline refunded the amount of the ticket for his transatlantic flight since he wasn’t allowed to take that flight, but he was then billed $1,350 for the costs incurred by the airline to deal with him.

I absolutely think this is the right thing to do. And this is one of the more benign cases because it only involved a delay. Think of all the diversions that occur because someone gets out of hand. A diversion is extremely expensive because the airline has to pay the additional fuel required for the extra flight, landing fees at the second airport, extra crew time, late arriving aircraft that can cause delays on future flights. It gets expensive quickly, and the passenger should pay.

A more gray area is when there is a medical diversion. In an ideal world, I would think health insurance should pay for something like this, but I’m also realistic so it probably won’t happen. If a passenger takes a risk by flying and doesn’t disclose it to the airline, for instance if he’s diabetic and doesn’t bring insulin, then I’d say the passenger should pay. On the other hand, if something unexpected happens and insurance won’t pay, I don’t know who else could pony up the cash.

It’s true that I think the A380 wasn’t the right strategic move for Airbus (smaller is better), and it’s one of the uglier planes out there, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to seeing it enter service.

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait a little longer. Airbus came out today saying what many had already predicted, there will likely be more A380 delays. This is now the third delay that has been announced.

It was a cryptic message today saying only that “from what is known today, there will be further delays.” No new timeline has been set, so we’ll just have to keep waiting.

For customers, this means that new routes may be on hold for a little while. Airlines have started planning around their upcoming aircraft deliveries, and now they’re scrambling to figure out how to get more planes. Lufthansa, for example, ordered 5 more A330s yesterday to help bridge the gap. I would expect others to either do the same or cut back on growth for the short term.

Good news for JetBlue fans . . . the airline finally launched its new website overnight. Here are my thoughts on the good and bad:

The Good

• You can finally start the booking process from the home page as well as check in for your flight and check flight status. Previously you had to click through to other pages for all these things.
• When you click for departure and arrival city, it pops up a bubble with all the possible cities sitting there. It’s easy to find the one you want, but if the airline keeps growing, it’s going to get to be too much.
• The travel deals section is now organized very well

The Bad

• You are forced to use the calendar to enter your departure and return dates instead of being able to input them manually. If you’re booking for a few months from now, it’s an aggravating process.

The UglyCan someone explain to me why this guy is now on the home page promoting their deals?

The appearance of a constipated-looking redhead does absolutely nothing to help me in the booking process. And unfortunately, my eye was immediately drawn to him when I got to the page.

Yikes.

If you mention the name Spirit Airlines to most people, you probably get a blank stare in return. That’s because Spirit isn’t exactly the biggest airline around, and they’re privately held so Wall Street doesn’t pay much attention either.