To say that this was a bad week for LAWA (the organization that runs LAX) would be an understatement. I mean, if this were a football game, there would have been a flag for unnecessary roughness. Judge Goodwin absolutely dropped the hammer on them. By the time I got to the end of the 210 page ruling (read at your own risk), I was surprised he hadn’t insulted the airport director’s mother.

But let’s back up for a second. What the heck am I talking about? There have been a few lawsuits flying around between LAX and the airlines lately, so let me try to clarify which one this is. This lawsuit, I believe, has nothing to do with the $10 surcharge that United added to their LAX fares a few weeks back. That one is in protest of the across-the-board rent raise that LAWA instituted on all LAX tenants.

From what I can tell, this lawsuit is about the Maintenance & Operations (M&O) fees which were dramatically increased by LAWA as well as the rent. (If I’m off base here, someone please help me.) These fees, however, only went up for airlines in terminals not tied to a long term lease. That means the airlines in Terminals 1 (T1) and 3 (T3) as well as those in the Bradley International Terminal (TBIT), on a separate lawsuit, had to pay up. Here’s a map:

Not only did LAWA increase the fees, but they made them retroactive all the way back to January 2006, so there was a lot of money in the balance here. The airlines balked and took LAWA to court, the People’s Court. Ok, it was actually the DOT, but close enough. In the end, the judge ruled against LAWA on everything. Now, this isn’t final. The judge’s ruling goes to the Secretary of Transportation who can accept it or override it in the next month. With a ruling this strongly worded, I would be surprised if she didn’t accept it though. Even then, either party can still take this to federal court, so we’re far from done here.

But, this is what we have now . . . so, wait, what exactly DO we have now?

Basically, LAWA’s plan to charge higher M&O fees to those airlines not under long term leases isn’t kosher. Since all the airlines have facilities that are effectively the same (don’t tell that to the airlines in ghetto Terminal 3), they can’t charge dramatically different amounts or use different methods for determining those amounts.

LAWA was also trying to start charging the airlines not under long term leases for the areas they don’t directly use (like the bathrooms or restaurant spaces), but that doesn’t fly either. And, they wanted to start charging based on what the market would bear instead of based on actual costs. That’s another no-no.

So if this ruling stands, the airport has to pay back all the increased fees collected since January 2006 and they have to pay interest on the money for as long as they’ve had it. Ouch.

But that was just the beginning. The judge then went on to discredit pretty much everything LAWA has ever done. He chastised them for using LAWA employees to determine the new rates instead of using an external auditor. He even questioned LAWA (and the Mayor’s) policy of airport “regionalization.” He said it could be against DOT policy, and it should be investigated.

Not enough? The judge said that LAWA was clearly using enough bad math to call every one of their assumptions into question. For example, the increase in fees related to security would mean that T1 and T3 are responsible for 70% of the total increase in security costs at the airport. Uh huh.

Sounds like they’re just trying to get the airlines in T1/T3/TBIT to cover some of the costs they can’t pass on to the other airlines in long term leases. And the judge won’t have any of that.

If the Secretary of Transportation agrees, this will impact LAX flyers. Lower costs for the airlines may make more new service
possible, but it also means that LAX will continue to be a dump. Without additional money, they can’t fix up the airport, and we all know it needs it. LAWA is going to have to find a legal way to collect additional funds, and apparently this isn’t it.

It has been far too long since we’ve checked in on the airline I love to hate, Alitalia. So what’s new?

Well, They just reported stellar first quarter earnings. By stellar, I mean absolutely horrible, but not quite as bad as last year. They lost just a tad over 147m euros, far better than last year’s 156m euro loss. Yeehaw!

Meanwhile, in the crawl to privatize the airline, things are leisurely moving along. Sadly, Fabio Scaccia has been disqualified from bidding, but the final three contestants have been set. Italian airline Air One, Russian airline Aeroflot, and private equity group Texas Pacific Group are leading their own teams to win a date with, er, I mean the right to buy Alitalia. Final bids are due at the end of June. I’d go Price is Right style and bid $1 personally. But that might still be too much.

Oh man. I really didn’t think this one could get much worse, but American CEO Gerard Arpey just found a way. Yesterday was the big annual shareholder’s meeting for the airline, and the front line employees were out in force. The main protest was over the executive compensation plan that has netted senior management (not Arpey, but others) many many millions.

How has it made them so much money? Well, it wasn’t tied to profitability but rather to stock price. I’m all for pay for performance, and yes, stock price is a component of it, but when the airline isn’t showing a profit and the lower level employees aren’t sharing in the success, it makes it a very hard sell.

So, all the employees who didn’t take part in the plan (with the exception of Arpey, of course) are seething, and management needs to do something. So yesterday at the annual meeting, with employees protesting, petitions being passed, and security measures stepped up (officially because of the Virginia Tech shootings, uh huh), how did Arpey address the issue?

Not well.

According to this article, Arpey just brushed it aside.

Gerard Arpey, who heads the Fort Worth-based airline, said he understood some of the employee concerns over executive and management compensation. But he said he hoped they could “agree to disagree” on the issue and focus on keeping the airline profitable.

“This is an issue on which we may have a hard time finding common ground,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t keep working hard to find common ground on the other issues affecting our business, because there is no debating that all of our futures are linked to the success of American Airlines.”

Holy crap, is he crazy?!? This is clearly a big issue for the employees, and it has been for months. I think Delta understood this when they tied bonus plans for all employees to the same metrics, but Arpey doesn’t seem to think it’s worth addressing any further. The employees aren’t angry that senior management gets a share of the wealth. They’re just angry that they don’t get a piece of it as well. With such an emotional issue as this one, you’d think Arpey would be more interested in finding a way to fix the compensation structure, but no, he’s happy with it just the way it is. Oh boy.

It’s funny. When JetBlue announced that the Board had decided to remove David Neeleman as CEO last week, I didn’t even think twice about blogging it. Now that I’ve gotten a few emails from people asking about my thoughts, I thought I’d explain why I hadn’t written about it in the first place.

I think it’s a good thing for the airline, but I don’t see it as anything completely earth-shaking, especially for the customer.

See, Neeleman is a great visionary, but he also gets bogged down in the weeds. The Board, which deserves a ton of credit for making a move this big (I wish other boards would do the same *cough* United *cough*), decided it was time to find a way to prevent him from getting stuck in the day-to-day stuff while still being able to benefit from his vision. So, by removing the CEO role from him and isolating him as Chairman, they’re trying to force that change.

Meanwhile, Dave Barger, who has been Neeleman’s partner in this thing since the beginning will now take over the top role. Some people have wondered if this is the end of JetBlue culture. No way. Barger has been there since the beginning, and this isn’t a shocking transition. Things will go on for the most part as they have been going lately anyway, but now Neeleman won’t be able to stick his nose in too deep.

At least, that’s the theory. I imagine that Neeleman will have a hard time sticking to the high level stuff just because his title has changed. You can’t change a person that quickly, especially a guy like Neeleman. So if he truly can find a way to stay away from where he doesn’t belong, it will be a big improvement for the airline. They will be able to dedicate their focus to real problems, big problems and that is how it should be.

If, however, Neeleman can’t stay away, there’s a decent chance that the Board will have to remove him entirely from the airline. Considering they had the guts to make this move, I’d like to think they’ll be willing to make that move as well if necessary.

So for now, I just don’t see this having a huge impact. JetBlue has been in the throes of change for some time. They’ve basically completely turned over their management team in the last couple years, and this is just another move that needs to be made to help complete the transition to a more mature airline. Behind the scenes, it should afford the airline more focus on pressing problems, but for the customer, I don’t think there’s going to be much impact.

Last week, both Singapore and Aloha came out with some cool looking new planes. First up, let’s take a look at Singapore’s first A380 to come out of the paint shop. I definitely don’t think they got its best side. That cro-magnon looking forehead is definitely exaggerated even further with all that white space. (Taken from Singapore website. Photo credit: Airbus - C. Brinkmann)

Next up we have Aloha’s Wyland-painted 737. Yup, they say it was hand-painted by Wyland, but I don’t know if you can actually hand paint and airplane without affecting drag. Anyway, you might recognize the name - he’s famous for painting huge marine life murals primarily in the US but also all over the world. I found this one on the HNL RareBirds blog, a great place for airplane porn in the Hawaiian Islands.

I was really excited about this trip for many reasons. First, my brother was graduating from medical school. Second, I was able to fly ExpressJet, a new airline for me (well, new if you don’t count flying on Continental Express). Third, it was the first time I’d ever flown in or out of Ontario. On top of all that, the trip was free. When I met with ExpressJet management a couple months ago, they offered me the chance to fly them if I’d be willing to give them a detailed review of my thoughts on the trip. I assume they knew I’d write a blog post as well, but that would only be a good thing if the experience lived up to expectations. Naturally, I jumped at the chance.

So, how’d it turn out? Overall, the experience was excellent, but Ontario is just too far for me to be worth it. For that reason alone, I’m unlikely to fly them again unless they start serving other nearby airports. I wish they’d pick up some commuter slots at Long Beach. Then I’d fly them any time.

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May 11, 2007
ExpressJet #25 Lv Ontario (ONT) 1030a Arr Tucson (TUS) 1148a
ONT: Gate 209, Runway 26R, Dept 8m Late
TUS: Gate 28, Runway 11L, Arr 9m Late
Aircraft: N13550, Embraer ERJ-145, ExpressJet colors, 100% full
Flight Time: 1h2m
Seat: 6C, Coach

As I said, Ontario is far. It’s 50 miles whether starting from my place or my girlfriend’s. Since leaving from her place would avoid traveling through downtown LA on a weekday morning, we decided to start from there. We left her place at about 8a and we were at the airport just over an hour later. And that was with no traffic at all. We parked in long term parking and took the shuttle in.

Since we had checked in online, we went straight to the security line. It was short, but it took awhile due to the very, um, inexperienced nature of the customers. People didn’t have their ID’s out, they didn’t take their shoes off, blah blah blah. Fortunately, we had plenty of time. The airport itself is very nice. We were in terminal 2. There is also a terminal 4 and that’s it. Terminal 1 is the old terminal that isn’t in use other than for tv and movies, I think. They have room for terminal 3 if they want to expand between 2 and 4.

We went to the gate and I walked up to the agent to ask if we could change seats (they don’t let you change seats online, booo). At the time, she was giving directions to Ontario to a customer on the phone! She said she gets all kinds of calls at the gate. When she hung up, I asked if we could change our seats and she said no (quite nicely), the plane was full. After I left, she wandered the boarding area tagging bags that would need to be gate checked, and then they started boarding.

Sure enough, the plane was full. They actually boarded 51 people to fill the 50 seats. Without boarding pass scanners, they boarded two people with the same seat assignment. After a lot of discussion and pleas for volunteers or employees to come forward, they found an employee who was hiding in the back, trying to avoid giving up her seat. Fortunately, they found her and we were on our way a few minutes late.

XM radio was on from the moment we boarded, and the flight attendant walked through handing out headphones. I thought it was rather odd that the boarding announcement (which was recorded) didn’t interrupt the radio. We took off quickly and went west for what seemed like a long time. Then we headed north before finally turning back around. Gotta love LAX traffic, I guess.

Service began quickly and the flight attendant handed out Sun Chips along with drinks. They have really nice heavy plastic cups (at right). The flight attendant was very friendly and helpful throughout the flight. In the end, she came by with a single biscotti and a mint for everyone. It was certainly some of the best service I’ve had on a short haul in a long time.

Now let’s talk about the seat. ExpressJet’s CEO Jim Ream kept bragging to us about the seats a couple months ago, so I made sure to pay close attention (at left). He talked about how they used memory foam and they were amazingly comfortable. Even with all that hype, I have to say I agree. The cushioning was fantastic. The seat bottom was very comfortable and the headrest was the perfect mix of cushy yet firm. These were far better than the seats on American last week. The only complaint? Those armrests are VERY skinny. It’s enough of a problem fighting your seatmate at normal width, but thanks to the size of the small cabin, I guess they couldn’t do anything about that. That’s unfortunate, because it is a problem.

We landed in Tucson and our gate checked bag was brought up very quickly.

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May 12, 2007
ExpressJet #54 Lv Tucson (TUS) 235p Arr Ontario (ONT) 403p
TUS: Gate 28, Runway 11L, Dept 4m Early
ONT: Gate 209, Runway 26R, Arr 22m Early
Aircraft: N16559, Embraer ERJ-145, ExpressJet colors, 42% full
Flight Time: 59m
Seat: 3C, Coach

I knew there was no way this Saturday afternoon flight would be full, but we still arrived an hour before departure. We hadn’t been able to check in online because we had no printer access, so we went to the ticket counter and used a kiosk. There was a very nice grandmotherly figure working the counter, but despite her offer to help, we were fine on our own.

The security line was a mess here. There were three lines that led to two x-ray machines, but only one gate for passenger screening. As you can imagine, this caused confusion. Fortunately, it only took 10 minutes to get through.

As predicted, this flight was less than full with only 21 people onboard. We got to the gate to find the gate agent hanging out behind the podium talking to some rampers. That was the first and only complaint I had about an employee on the entire trip. And even that wasn’t really a problem, because nobody was up there trying to get help. Meanwhile, I was busy staring out the window at this beautiful view of our plane with the Catalinas in the background.

They boarded the flight 20 minutes before departure and decided to tag bags as we boarded. That made for a short backup at the jet bridge, but with only 21 people onboard, that wasn’t a big problem. That plane had been there for more than 30 minutes before we started boarding so I was surprised to see some trash from the previous flight still sitting in my seatback pocket.

It was also surprising that with a light load like this, there was no need to move people around for weight and balance. There were definitely a lot more people up front so I’m wondering if they were able to counter it with baggage loading in the back? Still, it was nice to not be asked to move to the back.

We taxied Southwest-style (fast) and were airborne quickly. It was a hot day in Tucson, and the thermals were bouncing us around to the surprisingly high altitude of 20,000 ft. Then it finally smoothed out and the service began. This time we were offered a choice of SunChips, granola mix, or peanuts. Since it was an afternoon flight, I decided to splurge and have another ExpressJet creation - the $1 beer. Tasty.

The rest of the flight was spent listening to XM radio and watching the great view out the window. We were in the bulkhead, and I wouldn’t recommend that seat again. The legroom is decent, but the tray table is so low and so close to your body that it makes it very awkward (resting on my leg at left). We landed very early and once again it only took a couple minutes for the bag to appear at the bottom of the jetway.

Overall, it was a great experience, with almost no issues. I hope that the chaotic handling of the 51st passenger on board the first flight was just an isolated incident. But other than that, it was excellent. As far as I’m concerned, I’d definitely fly them again . . . if they start flying out of a closer airport.

I mentioned last week that Delta was launching their new community site at delta.com/change. Though they didn’t get it up in time for the New York Times article, they did get it live this Monday. What are my thoughts?

Not so great. And that’s a bummer because I really hoped they could have done it right.

There are so many issues with the site that I don’t even know where to start. So, let’s just start at the easiest part. First of all, here’s a screenshot.

Now, what’s wrong with it?

1) They are very heavy on the use of Flash on the site. Flash may look pretty, but it’s a no-no for community sites. Google and other search engines love the constantly refreshed user-generated content that you get on sites like these, but if it’s all in Flash, the search engines can’t see it. Oops.

2) The site is heavily moderated and that’s bad. When sites are moderated too much, people shy away from them. Case in point, I submitted a suggestion on Monday when the site launched. I said “I have an idea for Delta” and recommended that they use RFID tags to track luggage. Though expensive, it could be a great differentiator for them because it could allow customers to get real time updates on the location of their bags on a website. There was nothing bad in my suggestion and nothing mean-spirited at all, yet it still has not made it up on the site.

Either they found something strangely objectionable in my post (not good) or they are just really slow at approving new suggestions (very bad). It’s much more likely to be the latter, because they’ve had the same 36 suggestions up on the site for the last few days and nothing has changed. Nobody is going to come back to the site if suggestions don’t make it on there in a timely manner. You get bored waiting.

3) The suggestions are neither searchable nor categorized. The design is maddening. They only tell you what the suggestions are when you mouseover them, so you can’t even get a comprehensive list of what’s out there. The list is sorted by the star rating as voted on by visitors, but it can’t be re-sorted. It’s very unhelpful. Fortunately, they’re so bad at approving suggestions that there aren’t too many to scroll through now. As I mentioned before, there are only 36 suggestions up there right now and 13 of those were from Delta corporate.

4) It’s hard to share. If you want to send a suggestion to a friend, you can’t just copy a link and send it. You have to use their “send to friend” module. It’s definitely never a good idea to make sharing harder than it should be.

So, not the best effort. Basically, it sounds to me like someone at the airline’s agency heard the word “user generated content” and thought they could just throw something together to make it look like they were going to do something good. This is a very poor effort.

You may have seen this press release a couple of weeks ago from US Airways. After announcing some pretty impressive first quarter earnings, they decided to talk about some of their “customer service initiatives” going forward. The only problem is that a lot of these points didn’t actually say very much. I decided to wait to write this post until I got more info from them, but it doesn’t look like there’s much more to get.

See, it appears to me that the airline was feeling the heat from the bad press they’ve received recently about poor performance and decided to rush out a list of all the initiatives they’re working on. Now, I don’t doubt they understand there are problems, but I’d rather they tell me when the problems are fixed instead of telling me what they’re going to do in the future.  No sense in raising my hopes when there’s nothing actually happening yet.

But, they did announce something, and while it was a long press release, there really wasn’t that much meat. Here is what I’ve been able to glean from the release:

• They’ve realized that they’re understaffed and they’re hiring people to work the gates, the ticket counter, and on the ramp throughout the system to get up to acceptable levels (obviously more will be focused on the hubs). This should mean shorter lines and airport staff who aren’t overworked (which hopefully means they’ll be in a better mood).

• They’re creating Passenger Operation Control centers in Charlotte, Philly, Boston, and Washington/National. I was at America West when we first created these in Phoenix, and they really are great. Basically, there is a group of people that are focused on searching for late flights coming into the hub. When they find one, they take all the people who are going to miss their connections and rebook them. If they’re stuck overnight, they give them hotel and meal vouchers as well. When you get off the plane, someone is waiting with everything you need so you don’t have to wait in line.

• They’re replacing 600 of the old US Airways kiosks with the same type used by the old America West. Find anyone who tried to fly out of Charlotte the first Sunday in March and you’ll know what this is about. The old US Airways kiosks just aren’t working right with the new system, so this will be welcome.

• Remember that $25 fee for standby on an earlier flight that I was told applied back in Charlotte? Yeah, well I thought it wasn’t true, but apparently it is. Now it’s waived for elite members. I consider this a very small step toward adding value to the elite program. I’d really like to see a waived or at least discounted change fee, but I’ll hold my breath on that one.

As you can see, these are just steps they’re taking to fix their problems, but it doesn’t mean the problems are fixed.

When we start getting to specific improvements on the planes themselves, the PR-speak gets pretty thick and the promises are more vague. Yes, there are some concrete moves here. For example, in First Class they’re bringing back glass and silverware for the meal service. That’s long overdue. But other than that, it’s full of promises for improved service, better food, and better drinks without getting into detail.

My favorite change was this: “Modify in-flight service procedures to enhance our customer’s overall experience.” What does that mean?!? Nothing to talk about yet. It could very well be important, but who really knows?

Come talk to me when the changes have been made and then maybe I’ll get excited.

Singapore Airlines is generally regarded as the king of the premium cabins. I posted on their last upgrade back in October, but now it looks like we have a newcomer to the race.

Jet Airways of India

If you’ve gone to India, you probably know Jet as the full service, high quality airline known for domestic flights. They’ve recently gone international, and now they’ve decided to go nuts on their First Class product. Behold, the birds-eye view of the mini-suite:

Now, that is one impressive looking seat. If you’d like to see more pictures, head over to an article in thisislondon.co.uk where I found this picture. You can also read the press release from Jet here.

You’ll have 26 sq ft of space all to yourself, more than in some New York studio apartments. As you can see, it is a private suite with double doors.  That’s not unlike what Emirates has on some of their planes, but it’s something Singapore has not done. Like Singapore, it has a 23″ LCD screen with a lie-flat bed, but this bed is 3″ longer than Singapore’s at 83″ long. And yes, there is an in-seat massager. The usuals are there as well . . . laptop power, great food, video on demand (with Hollywood and Bollywood films).

The plan is only to install this on the airline’s 777-300 aircraft. You can find one flying between London and Mumbai 5 days a week right now, and as more are delivered, the service will expand. I would assume we’ll see this here in the US as well once they open their new Brussels hub to connect North America with India.

The airline has made it quite clear that they want to be one of the top 5 airlines in the world.  If their reputation for service as a domestic carrier in India is any indication, they might be the right airline to pull this off.

First it was the Nevada plane last week, and now it’s the Arizona plane. I just received this photo of the plane taken by Kevin Trinkle:

Thoughts? It’s pretty boring. The tail is fine, but when you compare it to the spectacular old Arizona colors, this is nothing special. Bummer.