I’d say this one falls in the “Why didn’t this happen before?” category. Last week, Delta announced that they’ve implemented the ability to book airline, hotel, and car rental from a single shopping cart. This is the first time I’ve seen it from a US airline, and it makes a lot of sense.

When I travel, I generally make airline reservations first. I’m not sure why, maybe I just think that there will always be enough hotel options at different rates while airline tickets could fluctuate so much that it could make or break the trip. So if I’m booking airline tickets first, that means the airline sites may have the first opportunity to sell me on hotels and car rentals.

Airlines have offered the ability to book hotels and car rentals for some time, but it’s not done well. The way it is now, when you book your ticket, you then have to do a completely separate search for hotels and pay separately. I’m not going to bother, because I can just go to other sites that I use frequently.

But now, as soon as you have your ticket reserved, Delta will show you hotels and car rentals before you buy the ticket. When you pick one, it puts it in the shopping cart with your ticket and you check out by entering your credit card only once. Online travel agents learned this was lucrative long ago. Any time you go to Orbitz, Expedia, or the like, you’ll notice they push you pretty hard to buy a vacation package. So why has it taken so long for the airlines to get onboard?

Who knows. But once again Delta is doing something smart online. I’m impressed to see them leading the pack with things like this, Siteseer, and the Change site (even if that implementation wasn’t done very well. Keep up the good work.

I wasn’t planning on posting again this week, but after seeing this, I thought it would be nice to end the week on a lighter note.

Check out the long list of titles you can select for yourself when registering for the British Airways Executive Club frequent flyer program. Some of the highlights include High Chief, Vice Admiral, Baron, Cardinal, and my personal favorite, Her Majesty.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’d hope they wouldn’t make the Queen go online to sign up for the program. Actually, I’m pretty sure the Queen wouldn’t earn miles when she decides to take her own BA plane for her travels. Oh, and they have “His Holiness” as well. Think the Pope has been on a BA flight lately?

This reminds me of what my brother does when he flies Southwest (the whole “title” thing, not taking a plane at will). Try making a reservation at southwest.com and you’ll see they give you a variety of suffixes you can use. Every time he flies, he uses CEO. More than once he’s had customer service agents comment on it, especially when he was in his early 20s with his long floppy hair wearing shorts and a t-shirt. As you can imagine, the agent think it’s hysterical.

Anyone else tried to use some of the more unique titles here? I’d be curious to see if they’d give you a hard time for it.

Ah, the UK. A great place to visit but a nightmare for airlines. The government just can’t keep its hands off the industry. In the last year, we’ve seen an expensive new green tax, a strict one-bag carry on limit, and now the possibility of no checked bags at all.

What?

Yep, I saw this article talking about the UK’s latest scheme to eliminate luggage from airports entirely, and sadly I was hardly surprised.

The plan would involve requiring people to ship their luggage before they travel. This would create a utopian airport with no checked bags and tons of happy people.

Yeah, right.

Where to start . . . how about the cost to the customer? There are some people that already offer this service. Luggage Express, for example, is planning to offer their “cost effective” solution. That’ll run you $70 per bag with a minimum of $85 per pickup. (Um, shouldn’t it just be $140 minimum, then?) The original article mentions First Luggage in the UK with rates starting at GBP49 (yes, that’s just about US$100). With economies of scale achieved from requiring everyone to ship their bags, they say it can be reduced to GBP20 (double that to make it US$40).

Now I’m sure there’s a market for $40 (at best) per bag service, but I’m not it. And I imagine there are a ton of others who aren’t either. So if you make me ship my bag ahead, I’m not going to be happy.

Then there are the logistics to this thing. Save the environment? Not with a huge fleet of delivery trucks clogging up the roads. And how early will they need to pick your bag up in order to have it at your destination? You may not be able to rely on last minute packing anymore.

Supporters say that airplanes not having to take on luggage would reduce the weight of the plane and therefore reduce the cost to fly for you. That could, according to the article, reduce the ticket price by GBP30 (US$60). I think we all know that’s not going to happen. Those savings won’t be passed on to consumers, so it’s not worth crossing your fingers.

Ultimately, the airlines need to decide how baggage should be handled, not the government. Many airlines have started to charge for baggage, and that’s fine with me. For a nominal $5 or $10 fee, I don’t mind. But if you’re going to require that I spend $40 just to bring a bag, it will be one more thing to push me away from flying, especially on a shorter flight where driving or taking a train is an option.

There’s yet another development in the ongoing daytime drama, “Days of our LAX.” This time, there’s trouble afoot for United. All those little 30 seat turboprops buzzing around California will no longer be able to nest in cozy Terminal 8. They’re being banished back to the old remote terminal.

I’ll get to the details as well as the history of this fight in a second, but first, thanks again to my high-tech graphics abilities, I’ve created an overlay on the Google Maps satellite of LAX to show you what’s going on here.

Pretty, isn’t it? (You don’t have to be so mean about it – drawing straight lines is hard.)

Anyway, as we all know by now, LAX has 9 terminals around the main horseshoe. Three on the north side, five on the south side, and the big Bradley International Terminal at the west end. Back in the day, airlines could use any planes they wanted to belly up to those gates, but that changed.

In the 1990s, space became tight. So the airport came to agreement with Delta and American (the biggest turboprop operators at the time) to put their props at remote gates so they could free up space in the main terminals. After Delta basically shed their entire commuter operation, United picked it up and until 2005, they also were at the remote gates.

As you can see on the map, American uses remote gates that are way on the left hand side. That’s actually right where their hangar is. Meanwhile, United used the little gates all the way in the bottom right corner. The gates are not exactly “chalets” or even remotely close. They’re cramped. And United’s terminal is far worse than American’s.

So in 2005, United, which had cut back its schedule so much in LA, decided to bring all the flights back into Terminal 8. That’s great news for passengers, but LAX was hardly happy about this. There is still a gate shortage and United was basically thought to be squatting on gates to prevent competition. The airport tried to kick them back but to no avail. That’s why you don’t see any planes around the remote terminal in this picture.

So yesterday, moving at the glacial pace we all know and love, it was finally ruled that United has to get those props out of there once again. No deadline was set, but it will be happening.

So what does this mean? (I ask that a lot.) If you fly on those little guys, it means back to the bus for you. You’ll no longer be able to walk to your plane. They’ll stick you in the cattle car and drive you over to the, um, flying cattle car. So you’ll need longer connecting times.

But what’s more interesting is to speculate about what it means for United’s terminals. They clearly don’t have enough flights to fill the terminals, and I can’t imagine they’ll be able to squat on the gates forever. (I may eat those words.) So what might they do with them? Personally, I’d love to see them bring Star Alliance partner US Airways over from Terminal 1. Then you could really improve connectivity and get US Airways out of that tight squeeze they have now. Of course, if you do that, you then cede US Airways’ old gates to Southwest and they’ll be able to expand quickly.

It’s never boring, that’s for sure. Uh, at least, it’s not boring for me.

It’s amazing what you can find by poking around Southwest’s website in the middle of the night. My friend Robert Stack, the Thanksgiving Traveler (aka King of Bumping), was playing around on the site and found that Southwest has started showing no availability for some flights beginning October 4, 2007. Now, there’s no way those flights are full already. This can only mean that Southwest is planning on pulling the flights out of the schedule entirely.

Ah, the long-speculated pullback in growth begins. So what did he find? Lots of long hauls are going away.

Twice daily flights from LAX to Baltimore and Philly are gone as are once daily flights to those airports from Oakland. Once daily flights from Orange County to Chicago/Midway and Phoenix to Cleveland are gone as well.

Other routes are just being cut back. Phoenix to Providence and Raleigh/Durham go from twice daily to once daily. Some shorter haul routes are affected as well. Houston to Austin and St Louis, Ft Lauderdale to Orlando, Islip to Baltimore and Chicago/Midway, Reno to Oakland and San Jose, and Phoenix to LAX all lose one daily flight.

You too can get in on the action. Just head on over to Southwest.com and plug in any two cities for a weekday flight after October 4. If you see it with no availability, it’s ready to be pulled. If you find any more, leave your comments below.