Head on over to Skybus.com and you’ll see the brand new website launched this morning. (It’s been timing out on me a lot – not a good start.) They’re now taking reservations, and true to their word, they’re going to be flying by the middle of May. Initial promo fares start at $10 one way. First, let’s look where they’re flying.

All of these cities will be served from Columbus initially, though I really hope they get some non-Columbus routes going for their own sake. Oh, but be careful. In true Ryanair fashion, they’re serving nearby airports so this is a little misleading. Here’s the actual lineup. As mentioned, all cities are served only from Columbus to start:

Burbank (Los Angeles) – once daily on 5/22, twice daily on 6/12
Portsmouth, NH (Boston) – twice daily on 5/22
Kansas City – once daily on 5/22
Richmond – once daily on 5/23
Bellingham (Vancouver/Seattle) – once daily on 5/29
Greensboro – once daily on 5/29
Ft Lauderdale – once daily on 5/29
Oakland (San Francisco) – once daily on 6/12

So now that the schedules are out, we can also talk about the product. Everything that they’re doing is very consistent with the ultra low cost model, but it’s going to be a shock to a lot of travelers.

• Check In – They recommend doing it at home, but there are also kiosks at the airport. I’m guessing those are your only two options.

• Baggage – You can bring one carry on and one personal item onboard for free, but all checked bags cost money. It’s $5 per bag for the first two and then $50 per bag after that.

• Drinks/Snacks – You can NOT bring your own drinks and snacks onboard. How else are they going to make money off of you? You’ll have to pay onboard for any drinks or snacks you’d like to consume on the plane. They aren’t picky about how you pay though. All money is good whether cash or credit. Heck, they’re so desperate they’ll even take Diner’s Club.

• Inflight Entertainment – None. According to their Rules of Flying, you’ll have to bring your own.

• Legroom – If you don’t have any entertainment to bring onboard, you can just count the threads in the seatback in front of you. It’s going to be that tight. Let me put it this way. Those seats everyone whines about being too tight on United, US Airways, American, etc are usually at a 31″ pitch (proxy for legroom). Skybus will have 156 seats on their A319 aircraft. EasyJet in Europe has the same layout and it offers a mere 29″ pitch. Tall people might want to rethink flying these guys.

• Phone Reservations – None. Seriously. They don’t even have a phone number. It’s all email if you can’t find what you need on the website. I find that quite annoying personally. I would hope that at some point they at least get an online chat function up and running.

• Staffing – Not much. They’re going lean here. That’s why you won’t be able to check-in with an agent, and you won’t see gate agents at the gate until it’s time to board.

• On Time – They say you have to arrive at least 30 minutes prior to departure or you won’t get on. I wouldn’t mess with these guys on this.

• Refunds – None. Seeing a pattern here? There’s a $40 change fee but nothing is refundable. That’s not a bad deal, though if you bought a $10 ticket you’re better off throwing it away.

• Pre-Boarding – If you want to pre-board, that’ll cost you $10.

As you can see, this is definitely a different way to fly. I really hope that anyone who buys a ticket does their homework beforehand, because otherwise they’ll be in for a rude awakening when they get to the airport.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a great idea, but the key is on-time performance and route selection. I think markets like Oakland and Burbank are great, but Greensboro and Richmond? Hmm, not so sure, especially with 156 seats to fill on every flight. They’re going to need to get away from Columbus quickly and start moving into more markets that will support this type of service, but if they do it right, this could be big.

It’s always fascinating yet sad to watch a airline self-destruct. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), the flag carrier of Pakistan, is well on its way.

After a handful of incidents, the European Union added PIA to the dreaded black list (PDF). This is a list of airlines that are banned at least in part from flying to any EU country. Now it’s not easy to get on this list. There are apparently only three ways to get on this list:

a) Be based in Africa
b) Be based in the Kyrgyz Republic
c) Be in the “Axis of Evil”

Almost all of the airlines are either African or from Kyrgyzstan. The national airlines of North Korea and Afghanistan made the list as well. But now, there are a couple other outliers who have made the list apparently based on their merits alone. Air Bangladesh has one 747 banned from the EU while PIA has had all planes banned with the exception of its new 777s. Ouch.

Needless to say, this isn’t good. The chairman of the company resigned shortly after this news broke. Since the 777s are still allowed to fly to the EU, they’ve been maintaining their schedule fairly well. . . sort of.

This blog mentions how their two 777-300s clipped each other last week putting them out of service for at least a few days.

We could be watching the slow death of the airline if this keeps up. New entrant airblue must be waiting in the wings (despite its cheap knock off name) ready to pounce.

Is there an echo in here? Once again, an airline is under fire for poor performance. I swear, I don’t understand why columnists bother to write these stories over and over. They could just take the first one, slap a new airline name on it, and publish it again. So who is it now? US Airways.

We knew the merger problems would catch up to them at some point, and it looks like that time is now. They’ve been running a subpar operation for some time. That combined with merger integration issues makes for one big pain in the butt for travelers. What are the specific issues this time?

According to Dawn Gilbertson over at the Arizona Republic, the top issues are “unreliable flights; few answers or slow response to questions and complaints; Web-site glitches; and reduced frequent-flier benefits, from bonus mileage to fewer first-class seats.” Of course, management knows there are problems. Travis Christ, VP of Sales & Marketing admits, “So far, [customers are] putting up with this. It’s not too late.” That may be true, but once the media starts to pile on, you better get moving quickly.

Of course, the article has the obligatory list of things that US Airways is doing to fix the problems, but you know what? I don’t care. I mean, I do care as an airline dork and former employee (5 years removed), but as a silver member in the frequent flier program, I couldn’t care less. I don’t want to know what they have to fix to get things moving right. I just want them to be fixed. Come tell me about it when all is well.

Now, since the merger I guess I’ve been lucky. I haven’t had any big operational issues. My flights on the day of the reservation system merger were on time and there weren’t long lines, probably because I was in Phoenix and not in Charlotte. Almost all of my flights have been on time, or at least close enough, and I’ve only had bags lost once. Actually, my biggest problem is trying to use the website with the Firefox browser (which is unsupported, grrr). But of course, the numbers tell that the problems are much bigger than my own.

Ok, enough of this. Let’s assume they jump on this and fix the operational mess as we know they can. That’s great, but it’s still not going to make me happy. There are much bigger fundamental issues as far as I’m concerned.

The airline is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one side, they have the old US Airways loyalists. These are people who want the full service treatment that comes with an old legacy carrier. On the other side, they have the old America West base which just wants things to be consistent and stay essentially the same as they were before US Airways showed up. Neither of them are going to be pleased.

For the old US Airways loyalists, they’re facing the realities of their airline trying to be a low cost carrier. Yes, there are fewer first class seats, and yes, there are fewer frequent flier perks. That’s part of the transformation process, and it’s going to drive some people away. For the old America West people like me, we’ve seen a lot more elite members show up from the other side and that makes it tougher to use our own benefits.

When it comes to being elite, I don’t care about the priority security lines (the regular ones don’t tend to be THAT long), or the priority check-in lines (I do it at home). I care primarily about first class upgrades. Well, since I became silver over a year ago, I’ve flown on 15 flights (excluding partners), and I’ve only been upgraded twice. Once was from Vegas to LA and the other from Phoenix to LA. Yippee. Only 10 of those flights even had first class sections since I was on regional jets for the rest.

So now I have to sit back and think about this. Why should I continue to be loyal to US Airways? Being in LA, I have plenty of options. I do a lot of traveling to Phoenix to see my family, and I have the usual trips to Vegas, the Bay Area, and Indianapolis. That leaves me with United or Southwest as being viable possibilities.

First I need to decide what exactly I’m getting from US Airways. Well, I get to fly out of Long Beach, which I do enjoy. But other than that, I get 31″ seat pitch (a proxy for legroom) and no amenities that really matter to me. Yeah I like a movie, but it’s not going to sway my decision.

If I switch my allegiance to United, at least I could sit in Economy Plus every time. That would at least get me a few more inches of legroom. And I could listen to air traffic control on Channel 9. That’s better than a movie any day! I could even continue to fly US Airways and earn United elite qualifying miles. The only difference is that I wouldn’t be able to upgrade on US Airways. If I’m not getting upgrades anyway, then this doesn’t seem like a hard decision to make between the two.

Or I could go with Southwest. These guys can get me to the Bay Area, Vegas, and Phoenix just about every 5 minutes. I get a inch or two more legroom than I get on US Airways, and I’ll always get a window if I get my A boarding pass. I can make changes to my itinerary without a change fee, and if I need to cancel a trip, the money just goes back into a credit that I can use in the future. Again, there’s no penalty, and I appreciate the flexibility.

So what does this mean? Well, I can’t say I speak for every silver member, but there have to be others like me. I’m loyal to US Airways for the free upgrades and convenient flight schedules. Since United and Southwest can offer similar schedules, it comes down to the upgrade. If they become harder to come by thanks to promotions that swell the ranks of elites combined with fewer first class seats, my reasons to stay loyal become less clear.

Sure, the top tier of elites will stick around. Those are the guys who get the upgrades. But the silver members may get more frustrated and begin to desert. US Airways is at a crossroads right now where the actual value they deliver to customers is being diminished. That concerns me more than the operational problems which I know they can fix.

Sometimes, I just find the need to dork out. When a friend passed along the link to flightmemory.com, I knew it was time to get cozy with my computer. This is the result (click to see details):

The site lets you input every flight you take and plots it on a map for you. In addition, it puts together a bunch of impressive-sounding random stats.

I started keeping track of my flights when I moved from LA to Phoenix back in July 1994, so since then I’ve flown 500 flights. I know that pales in comparison to super frequent business travelers and flight crew, but it’s still enough to have flown to the moon twice and still have some left over.

My longest flight so far? Atlanta to Johannesburg back in 2003

Shortest flight? Well, that’d be the time we took off from Phoenix, had an engine problem, and came right back

I think it’s pretty easy to see which 5 places I’ve lived in since 1994. Anyone want to take a guess?

I believe Spirit’s transformation is now complete. Yesterday they launched what I believe is the first $0.01 sale they’ve run (it ends tonight). I know they ran a $0.05 sale, but this could be the first time they’ve tried to prove that a penny isn’t irrelevant. (Actually, it still is because you have to pay taxes, but I digress.)

So what do I mean by transformation? Well, they used to be a low cost carrier that didn’t stand out from the pack. In the last year, they’ve basically stripped everything out of the fare that they can to become an “ultra” low cost carrier. Pay for checking bags, pay for drinks, pay for just about anything beyond your seat. That’s how they can offer these $0.01 sale fares that Ryanair perfected long ago. While we’re at it, can you tell which one of these pictures is from the Spirit homepage and which is from the Ryanair homepage?

Ok, so maybe the dollar sign vs. pound sign thing is a dead giveaway, but other than that, they’re pretty similar. I hope they don’t get too comfortable down there in the basement because competition is coming. Skybus is still working on certification and should be joining them shortly.