I must admit that I’m a big fan of Countdown with Keith Olbermann. So, I’ve decided to take a page from his playbook for my final post of 2006. Without any further delay, I present this year’s Worst Airline in the World.

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The bronze goes to Varig, an airline which teetered on the edge of extinction for most of the year. Not many airlines had a worse year than Varig. The airline had been listing aimlessly in bankruptcy and the creditors swarmed waiting to repossess their planes. The courts held them off as the airline restructured, but customers suffered through frequently changing schedules and canceled flights.

By June, the situation became desperate. The government set a minimum bid to takeover Varig at $860 million, but a bid of less than $500 million was eventually accepted since nobody bid higher. Even that bid was bogus and they couldn’t come up with the cash. Things were so bad that the government had to plan for alternate transportation for their World Cup team and fans to ensure they could make it back home from Germany in July.

At the end of July, in order to save some semblance of the airline, the judge in the case allowed the airline to be carved up like a turkey into two airlines. The first, New Varig, was bought for a low $24 million plus a commitment to invest $500 million+ in the business. Old Varig lives on saddled with all the debt and one pitiful route.

So where is Varig today? Brazil’s formerly dominant airline with a grand history and about half the country’s market share is now a footnote at best with no more than 10% of the market. They had 15 planes at the bottom of their spiral, but they’ve announced plans to expand to 31 recently. Customers have suffered greatly through all this with shifting routes and last minute cancellations. Employees have suffered even more with fewer than half keeping their jobs.

To put a big cherry on top of this sundae of doom, Star Alliance announced they would be booting Varig out of the alliance effective January 31, 2007 because they don’t meet the requirements any longer. Way to go Varig.

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Remember how I said “not many” airlines had a worse year than Varig? Well, here’s one of them.

Our runner up is Air Madrid, which probably holds the record for pissing off the most people during the year through its frequent delays, cancellations and eventual shutdown (as mentioned yesterday).

You could have seen this coming from the beginning. Air Madrid came on strong since its founding two years ago and expanded quickly. Reading customer reviews for the airline is like watching a train wreck every time. For a sample of your own, look here.

The airline overbooked often and delayed flights for hours on end without warning. Countless holidays were ruined by their fluid schedule changes. The airline shut down in the middle of December in advance of the Spanish government declaring them unsafe and shutting them down themselves. This left over 300,000 customers stranded just before Christmas, a fitting end to a legacy of customer disservice.

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Just as the frequent watchers of Countdown have come to expect to see Bill O’Reilly take the prize more often than not, frequent readers of this blog will have already guessed that the winner for Worst Airline in the World is the inept, the incompetent . . . Alitalia.

I’ve been pretty hard on Alitalia this year, but my words can’t begin to explain the incompetence surrounding this airline.

You know you’re off to a bad start when you have an easier time counting the number of days the airline is NOT on strike in any given year. And striking isn’t even the worst of it. In yet another worker protest, two aircraft were sabotaged. (Fortunately the problems were caught before they flew.) You’d think that alone would be enough to scrap the airline and start over, but nay, you’d be wrong. Instead they celebrated their failures by repainting their planes in a new livery.

The Italian government has allowed Alitalia to continue with its inept ways and has made the situation far worse by meddling. They’ve repeatedly said over the years that Alitalia is important to the national interest of the country, regardless of the fact that it bleeds money like there’s no tomorrow.

In a year when even US airlines are making money, Alitalia expects to lose over $400 million. The promises of making money after last year’s government recapitalization proved oh so wrong after the first half of the year saw them lose an additional $100 million over the previous year’s results.

In a desperate attempt to save the airline yet again, the Italian government has just announced that they plan to sell anywhere from 30 to 49% of the airline to a private company. That would be welcome except for the fact that there are so many onerous restrictions that it’s bound to attract only the most insane investors if any at all. What are the restrictions? Well, effectively no job cuts or major route changes can occur, both of which are badly needed to right the sinking ship.

So Alitalia will continue to teeter as the government pulls the strings and management remains uncommitted to really saving this airline. For this outstanding performance, Alitalia is the Worst Airline in the World for 2006.

As in most years, there were a whole slew of airlines that went under in 2006. There were large ones and small ones, old ones and new ones. Some of them were well known while others were gone before you even knew they existed. While many if not all of these deserved to go under, they at least deserve a proper burial. So, let’s remember the airlines that went away and the employees who lost their jobs in 2006.

BWIA has the most history of any airline that went out of business this year. Flying in the Caribbean for more than 60 years, many thought that the airline would never go away. This year it was announced that the airline would fold on December 31 only to be replaced by the new Caribbean Airlines. BWIA flew within the Americas and to Europe and had approximately 1,700 employees.

Air Gabon, a small regional player initially, took on its current name in 1977 after Gabon backed out of the Air Afrique consortium. The airline flew primarily within Africa and to Europe with a variety of aircraft over the years. The government shut down Air Gabon in 2006 in order to replace it with a new privately held airline.

Independence Air proved to be one of the most spectacular airline collapses in history. It took only 18 months to go from a very profitable regional airline to completely insolvent as an independent airline. Management thought that going independent would work despite warnings from just about everyone to the contrary. At its height, the airline had 5,000 employees.

Air Wales was founded to fly regional routes out of Wales, primarily from Cardiff. There were 120 employees at the airline which operated throughout the British Isles and to Paris and Brussels. After several attempts to save the airline, hope was finally lost and the airline shut down for good.

Australian was effectively restructured out of existence by its parent company, Qantas. Australian was born as Qantas’ long haul low cost carrier flying within the Australia/Pacific region. In 2006, Qantas decided to shut down the Australian brand and instead expand its short haul low cost carrier Jetstar into the long haul market.

QuikAir was a small commuter airline flying in the great white north of Canada. The airline flew up to six BAe Jetstream turboprops from its home base in Calgary. The airline found its niche flying between Calgary and Edmonton’s City Centre airport, but once Edmonton forced them to move to the international airport, the airline started its downhill slide.

CanJet didn’t technically go out of business, but they ceased scheduled operations in 2006 only to focus on the charter side. The airline focused on low fare flights in Atlantic Canada, especially from its Halifax base. After a short stint into the West, the airline began to retrench and decided to completely stop scheduled operations in September.

Who could forget Hooters Air? The airline brought horny men from small cities around the country to golf in places like Myrtle Beach and Las Vegas. The airline went in and out of markets all the time, desperately trying to find its niche. The airline is survived by its parent, Pace Airlines, which continues to operate charter services.

Song is the most colorful of the airlines to disappear this year. Song was the airline-within-an-airline concept Delta created that was bound to fail from the beginning. With hand-picked crews, the airline was known for great service and excellent amenities, including live television. Song was folded into Delta but many of the amenities pioneered in Song live on with the parent today.

Styrian Spirit was based in Graz, Austria and also flew as Slovenian Spirit from nearby Maribor, Slovenia. The airline flew regional jets throughout Europe, but Styrian Spirit ran out of money and was forced to shut down in late-March of 2006.

Air Madrid was like a match. It sparked quickly, grew fast, and then went out in the blink of an eye. The airline flew around the world from Spain, bringing its brand of non-existent customer service and massive delays to people worldwide. The airline mercifully shut down before the government was to shut them down for unsafe practices. Over 1,000 people lost their jobs.

Centavia didn’t last very long. The airline was a low cost carrier based in Serbia. It was to fly to surrounding countries, but it was denied rights in all of them. Consequently, the airline had no routes and two planes. That wasn’t the right combination for success (duh), and the airline disappeared in 2006.

FaroeJet was based in the Faroe Islands and flew a single aircraft between the Faroes and Copenhagen, Denmark. I’d imagine there weren’t many people who saw a need for two airlines based in the Faroes, and sure enough, FaroeJet failed while the older Atlantic Airways continues to fly.

OzJet was the creation of auto racing owner Paul Stoddart. The airline flew all business class flights between Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, not the best plan for a flight of barely more than one hour in duration. After barely more than 2 months of bleeding money, the airline was shut down and people promptly forgot the airline even existed.

Air Turquoise was founded as an attempt to fly turboprops around smaller airports in France and to London. The airline first flew out of Reims but moved to Vatry soon after launch. It never caught on, and Air Turquoise stopped flying in July.

I’ve been doing some housekeeping by transferring my images to a different location for all previous posts, and that has caused my RSS feed to go a little crazy. See, each time I save the post with the new image location, the feed seems to treat it like a brand new post. So, if you’re reading this with an RSS feed, you’re going to see some old posts resurface here.

The site itself won’t change.

I may post something new later on today, but I plan to spend most of my time this weekend finishing this project. Be patient, and by next week it will all be fixed.

UPDATE 12/29 @ 404p: Okay, I appear to be done with my updates now. You should see it return to normal.

It’s a sad, sad day when a drunk guy gets cut off. It’s even more sad when the genius tries to show his displeasure by smacking a fellow passenger.

Amazingly, this is exactly what happened on a flight today, according to CNN. A guy was traveling on US Airways from Washington/National Airport to Fort Myers (Florida). When the flight attendants cut him off and refused to serve him more alcohol, he apparently flipped out.

Now, I’m not sure what would possess someone to slap a nearby passenger for no reason. Maybe our hero thought his fellow passenger was hiding liquor, and he felt compelled to beat it out of him. Either way, he’s probably not so bright.

It just sounds even more sorry when we find out that the man the person slapped was . . . an armed air marshal working the flight. Ouch. Needless to say, the man was “detained” which hopefully means he was handcuffed and thrown into the lav. And in case you were wondering, he will be charged with interfering with a flight crew.

Remember those nudie pics I blogged about before? Well, it looks like they won’t be making their way to your nearest airport anytime soon.

Now it appears that the TSA has paid the company which manufactures the “backscatter” x-ray machines $722,000 to display only “cartoon-like black-and-white outlines” of each person.

That certainly appeases the privacy folk (I hope), but now it puts into question the usefulness of the machine. With a blurred cartoon-like outline, will you really be able to see up close everything you’d need to see? I’m not so sure.

I’m personally willing to sacrifice my personal privacy for something like this as long as sufficient steps are taken to prevent the images from making their way outside of the security screening process and into the wrong hands. Apparently the TSA doesn’t think it’s worth the fight at this point, so hopefully this doesn’t compromise the accuracy of the technology.

It has probably not been publicized nearly well enough yet, but soon you’re going to need your passport to go anywhere outside the US by plane.

On January 23, anyone traveling by air between the US and any foreign country will be required to have a passport to proceed through immigration. This includes Canada and Mexico.

Right now, it’s not necessary to have a passport for our neighboring countries - a birth certificate and picture ID will do - but that’s about the change.

It’s important to note that this year’s change only applies to people traveling by air. The following year the same rules will go into effect for people traveling by ship or car as well so you should apply for your passport now to beat the rush.

It’s been a good news/bad news kind of week for Virgin America. (UPDATE - it’s all bad news now. The application has been rejected. See bottom of this post for more.)

On Friday, the airline officially passed the FAA’s airline certification review, so it’s now considered fit to fly. You’d think that’d be time to celebrate, right? Well, no.

On the very same day, Virgin America admitted that it expects the DOT to reject its application.

See, the FAA governs actual operation of the airline, but the DOT is more concerned with broader issues. In this case, it’s foreign ownership that’s likely to kill the application, and the order could come this week.

Unfortunately for Virgin America, they’re stuck in the middle of a cat and mouse game between the US and UK governments. Both countries say they want an open skies agreement, but there are sticking points. One of those sticking points is foreign ownership, and that’s why Virgin America is about to get crushed.

Right now, foreign entities can own no more than 25% of the voting shares of an airline. Virgin America has been structured to meet those rules, but the DOT can still claim that Richard Branson would have more influence than the 25% would imply and therefore deny the application. Is it true? Who knows. But does it even matter?

I personally would suggest that foreign ownership would help make our country’s airlines more competitive. If foreign owners can do a better job running an airline in the US, then let them do it. Those airlines can still be required to participate in the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF - commercial planes needed in times of war) and there would need to be requirements for employment within the US. (You can’t ship in a bunch of third-world flight attendants to work for less.) But if you can get through that, then by all means let foreign owners in.

Unfortunately, it’s an intensely political subject and not many people agree. In fact, a proposal to increase foreign ownership amounts to 49% was just shelved due to strong opposition. So, Virgin America is likely to be caught in the crossfire here and unfortunately that means hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars down the drain.

UPDATE 12/27 @ 1107a: Looks like I wrote a couple hours too soon. The DOT officially denied Virgin America’s application this morning. They argue that more than 25% of the airline is controlled by foreign interests, so they are not allowed to fly.

First, the DOT tried to decipher the ownership structure. If you don’t believe me when I say “decipher,” check this out. On the right is one of FIVE pages of comical diagrams included in the DOT Show Cause Order that explains the ownership breakdown.

This throws up all kinds of red flags, including the fact that a lot of this ownership structure goes through the Cayman Islands. This sort of complexity was probably just asking to be shot down.

In addition to the actual ownership, the order discussed actual control of the airline as being foreign. Part of this is related to the current structure of the licensing of the Virgin name. Apparently there were conditions set forth in that agreement that give the Virgin Group more control than they should have over the airline, even if they are technically not controlling the operation on a day to day basis.

Assuming all of this is true, it is no surprise the application was turned down. I may not agree with the foreign ownership rules in the US, but you do need to obey them while they’re still in place. A lot of money has been sunk into this airline so far, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see all the appeals take place, but I would be shocked if they were able to make enough changes to satisfy the DOT as well as Richard Branson. This could be the end for them.

UPDATE #2 - 12/27 @ 435p: Virgin America has said that it will submit a response on January 10 as requested by the DOT. I can’t wait to see what they have to say.

I made it back last night from the second annual Christmas trip to see my girlfriend’s family in Indianapolis and all went well. Tickets were over $500 roundtrip when we started looking a few months ago, so it took a little creativity to get the price down. We took US Airways on the outbound and after using an ~$80 credit, it was $221.60 out of pocket purchased on October 21. Since my girlfriend had to be at work this morning, we came back Christmas afternoon using a Southwest Rapid Rewards ticket which cost a whopping $2.50. Not a bad deal at all.

There were two main reasons for choosing US Airways for the outbound. One, it allowed us both to qualify for Silver Elite status next year. Two, it meant we could fly out of Long Beach Airport instead of the bound-to-be-crazy LAX on the busy Friday travel day.

Since it was Long Beach, we didn’t feel the need to get to the airport until 45 minutes prior to our 650a flight. When we got there, there were about 10 people in line, but they got everyone through with amazing efficiency - less than 5 minutes. The only thing that was a little nerve-wracking was looking behind the counter and seeing luggage stacked up in piles.

We headed to security and found a 15 minute line in a surprising rain with temperatures in the low 40s. Ugh. Our flight was going out at the same time as an Alaska flight to Seattle so everyone was waiting for those two flights. Once through, we went straight onboard with 15 minutes to spare.

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December 22, 2006
US Airways #200 Lv Long Beach (LGB) 650a Arr Phoenix (PHX) 923a
LGB: Gate 21, Runway 30, Dept 11m Late
PHX: Gate A1, Runway 8, Arr 4m Late
Aircraft: N307AW, Boeing 737-300, America West colors, 8/8 in First, 126/126 in Coach
Flight Time: 51m
Seat: 4A, Coach

This flight was recently upgauged to a 737-300 from a CRJ-900 and it was completely packed that morning. We took a few minute delay so they could load all the bags that were stacked up, and then we taxied out to the runway and sat for 5 to 10 minutes due to a traffic backup in Phoenix. We took off into the rain, climbed above the clouds quickly and then made our way to Phoenix. There was a low overcast in Phoenix which may have explained the earlier delay, but landing was easy and we had a short taxi to the gate. Then we headed over to the gate for our flight to Indy.

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December 22, 2006
US Airways #460 Lv Phoenix (PHX) 1037a Arr Indianapolis (IND) 400p
PHX: Gate A22, Runway 7L, Dept 42m Late
IND: Gate D6, Runway 23L, Arr 46m Late
Aircraft: N637AW, Airbus A320, New white colors, 12/12 in First, 138/138 in Coach
Flight Time: 2h53m
Seat: 11A, Coach

This was the same connection we took back in August to Indy, and once again, we were unhappy to find our flight delayed. This time it was posted as 20 minutes, but I knew it wouldn’t be that quick. It turned out that our plane was coming in from Chicago/O’Hare and it sounded like the crew was late getting in the night before, so they were delayed coming out in the morning. The plane pulled up at the gate about 15 minutes before scheduled departure, and it took them a very long hour to turn it.

Part of the problem with the slow turn could have been that the plane was oversold and they were struggling to find volunteers. They made numerous announcements offering to put people up for THREE nights in Phoenix and give them all meals - flying them out Christmas day. As you can imagine, there weren’t many takers, so I’m sure there were some really unhappy people left at the gate.

Once onboard, I noticed that this aircraft had tray table advertising on it. My first experience a couple years ago was very negative since the picture was of a guy in his underwear seemingly staring at me while selling his wares for Dillard’s department store, but this time it was much more subdued. As you can see on the left, the ad for Verizon was pretty low key and unobtrusive since I could just put up the tray table and be done with it.

By the time we pushed back, it had started raining in Phoenix but there were no delays. We took off to the east and, once above the clouds, had a perfectly smooth flight to Indy. The service was average at best on this flight. They only did one drink service and one buy-on-board pass for the almost three hour flight. We both slept through that service and didn’t have another chance to get anything to drink. They showed the movie “Elf” but I didn’t watch it because when I wasn’t sleeping I was eagerly reading David McCullough’s addicting book “1776″ or I was reading the barf bag to find out how I could advertise on US Airways. I’m not kidding, see the picture.

As we approached Indy, we could see that the rain storm had cleared out and there were only a few low scattered clouds. We passed over the airport with a great view of the cool looking new terminal under construction, looped around downtown and then landed. As usual, we had a loooooong taxi all the way back to the terminal where it took probably 45 minutes to get bags. At least they showed up this time.

We had a nice time eating our way through the weekend in Indy. There was great food everywhere we turned, and it was a lot of fun hanging out with my girlfriend’s family. After having Christmas “dinner” around noon, we headed to the airport in a driving rain for our flight home.

We got to the airport almost 2 hours early and there was no need for it. The ticket counter was basically empty so it took no time to check in. Most of the stores were closed, so we just went through security. It was about a 10 minute line because not that many security lanes were open, but we weren’t in a hurry. Once through, I passed time in the bar watching the Lakers get crushed. Our plane came in from Tampa about 30 minutes before our departure and then we boarded at the back of the A group. (I refuse to stand in line when I know I’ll get a good seat even at the back of A.)

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December 25, 2006
Southwest #1535 Lv Indianapolis (IND) 330p Arr Kansas City (MCI) 400p
IND: Gate C9, Runway 5R, Dept On Time
MCI: Gate 32, Runway 1R, Arr 4m Early
Aircraft: N679AA, Boeing 737-300, Canyon Blue colors, 137/137 in Coach
Flight Time: 1h5m
Seat: 14A, Coach

My girlfriend and I took an empty row behind the exit, but we quickly found that the flight was full so there would be no room to stretch out on this flight. This was my first ride on a Southwest 737-300 in 2 1/2 years. This particular aircraft was built 20 years ago for Air Cal, used by American after they purchased Air Cal, and then eventually sold to Southwest.

We pushed back on time and had the “pleasure” of taking off to the east. That meant yet another looooooooong taxi before we were airborne. As I mentioned, it was raining really hard, so after taking off we were in the soup pretty quickly. It was a smooth ride through the weather and we popped out of the clouds into a brilliant blue sky within a few minutes. There was light turbulence most of the way to Kansas City. When we got there, the sky was blue and it was breezy, but landing was uneventful.

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December 25, 2006
Southwest #1535 Lv Kansas City (MCI) 430p Arr Los Angeles (LAX) 610p
MCI: Gate 32, Runway 1L, Dept On Time
LAX: Gate 3, Runway 24L, Arr 25m Early
Aircraft: N679AA, Boeing 737-300, Canyon Blue colors, 137/137 in Coach
Flight Time: 3h06m
Seat: 14A, Coach

This was a through flight, so we hung back on the plane with probably another 30 to 40 through passengers as they turned the plane quickly. The flight was packed full yet again, but this time we learned it was because many customers had been reaccommodated from US Airways flight 372 which was going Indy to Phoenix but diverted to Kansas City due to smoke and then canceled. Even with the heavy load, we managed to turn in 30 minutes and headed on our way to LAX.

This flight was fantastic. We chased the sun all the way west and there were only high clouds just above us that lit up with bright oranges, reds, and yellows. The Rockies were obviously covered in feet of snow, and the view was incredible. I’ve attached a pic here from my cell phone (yes, it was in airplane mode) that most certainly doesn’t do it justice.

Service onboard was also excellent. The crew was very friendly and did multiple passes with drinks, snack boxes, and peanuts. (Man, do I miss peanuts onboard every other airline.)

We could see the lights of Palm Springs in the distance as we started our descent into LAX. You could see for miles all around and there was only a light wind off the ocean as we glided in without a bump. Fortunately, our gate was open even though we were half an hour early (thank you light Christmas scheduling). Our bag was the last one off, so it took 30 minutes. We then hopped in a cab (remember, we flew out of Long Beach originally) and headed home.

There seem to be a lot of stories today that I’d like to talk about, but as I wrap up work and get ready to head out of town, I thought I’d better just summarize . . .

• London Fog - The mythic London fog apparently isn’t just a rumor as it battles Denver for weather story of the week. London and other parts of the UK are completely socked in, and flights are severely delayed or canceled. Naturally, this is causing complete and total chaos. Heathrow is by far the hardest hit of the airports - right now it is seeing freezing fog with no vertical visibility and only 400 ft forward visibility on the runway. Ouch.
• Cash for Emissions - The EU announced plans to include airlines in an emissions trading plan. In 2011, all flights within the EU will be restricted while in 2012, all flights to or from the EU will be included as well. Basically, airlines will be given an allotment of emissions “credits” based on their actual emissions in the 2004-2006 time period. If they want to go over that amount, they’ll have to buy credits from someone else who is willing to sell them. If they’re under, they can sell their credits to someone else. It effectively caps total emissions at today’s rates.
• Beeches in Boston - Delta announced a deal with Big Sky Airlines to fly 8 19-seat Beechcraft 1900 aircraft from Boston beginning next spring. No routes have been announced yet, but with those small planes, it’s bound to be smaller regional routes. Big Sky must be breathing a sigh of relief since they’re owned by Mesaba’s parent company, and Mesaba is in dire straits. This should help them bolster their own business going forward.
• Cross one off for US Airways - US Airways announced they had come to an agreement with the flight dispatchers’ union which has both old US Airways and America West dispatchers transitioning to the old US Airways contract which presumably was higher paying. This is a nice development, but until the pilot and flight attendant deals are done, nobody can breath easily.
• Muslims Welcome in Tel Aviv - In a welcome piece of good news, the Israel Airports Authority has decided to open a mosque in the Tel Aviv airport. This is only one of the efforts made by the authority to reach out to Muslims. They have also created a special team to be in charge of customer service for Arabic-speaking passengers, and they have launched a website in Arabic as well. It’s a small olive branch, but it’s certainly the right thing to do.

That’s all for me this week. I’m off to Indiana tomorrow and I don’t expect to be writing again until Tuesday or Wednesday. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate. I’ll talk to you again next week.