Don’t be surprised that the title of this post sounds a little bitter. I AM bitter. This week is the Paris Air Show. In odd years, it’s at Le Bourget, the airport where Lindbergh landed after his first transatlantic journey, and in even years it’s in Farnborough in the UK. So why am I bitter? I want to go!

These shows serve very little useful purpose other than being a humongous boondoggle. Yes, you get to see cool planes flying around, but that’s hardly the point of the show. The point is for suppliers to schmooze their best customers with the hope that their efforts will result in orders down the line. The big guys all have their own “chalets” where they do their entertaining. Yes, they actually call them chalets.

Often, the air show isn’t just the place to vie for orders.  It’s the place where orders are announced. In the aircraft manufacturing game, Boeing has long accused Airbus of stashing its orders away so that it can make a big splash. Of course, Airbus says that’s not true at all - the customers determine when to announce the orders.

No matter who decides, it’s clear that Airbus has had a huge week so far. They kicked it off with a hotly contested order from US Airways.  Boeing had offered a combo of 787s and 737s to replace the airline’s Airbus fleet, and rumors were that they had this in the bag. In the end, Airbus apparently came in with such a shockingly good counter that US Airways couldn’t turn it down. So now, you’ll see 60 new A320 series aircraft replacing older 737s and eventually 22 A350s (the Airbus answer to the 787) replacing the entire current widebody fleet.

Airbus has also seen orders from Qatar Airways, Emirates, GECAS (leasing company), Jazeera Airways, ALAFCO (leasing company), and more.  Don’t think that Boeing has been sitting on the sideline, though. They’ve had some big orders as well including an order from the leasing company ILFC for 50 787s.  In all, it looks like Airbus has recorded more than 400 and Boeing closer to 150.  That’s a lot of business, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are all other sorts of aviation-related deals going on as well.

So why should an airline customer like you care about these airshows? Absolutely no reason at all. Like I said, it’s just a big boondoggle, and I wish I were there.

It’s a rare and happy day when I can throw a little baseball into my posts. And today, Delta has given me good reason.

Delta announced yesterday that they’ve named one of their 757s after Hank Aaron. And not only did they name it after him, they named it “Hank Aaron 755.” Yup, that 755 is the current career home run record that Hank Aaron has held for over 30 years. How great is that?

Baseball fans know where I’m going with this one, but for those who live in a cave, let me explain a little further. This is one of those amazing baseball records that just doesn’t get broken easily. It’s not often you can find a power hitter who can sustain his level of play for so long. But after more than 30 years, the record is about to be broken by Barry Bonds, and I’d say that most people aren’t happy about this.

Bonds used steroids for years during his career. Now, steroids don’t make you a great baseball player - he certainly is that on his own - but they can give you more power. And that’s why Bonds taking this record is tainted. It should have a big asterisk in the record books when it happens. Most of the baseball-loving world isn’t happy, with the exception of the obnoxious Giants fans who think Bonds can do no wrong.

As we helplessly watch Bonds creep up on Aaron’s record, it feels like watching a car crash in slow motion. You know it’s happening and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. So you sit there with a bad taste in your mouth and try to forget about it.

So with that background you can understand why Delta’s move today is a feel-good kind of move for baseball fans all over. It’s true that there’s nothing they can do to stop it, but they can make a small statement that sends a strong message to baseball fans. They feel our pain and they wish they could help more, but this is the best they can do. Read here for more. (Photo Credit: Agustin Anaya)

Why did Delta do this? Well, Hank Aaron spent his days with the Milwaukee Braves, the team that moved to Atlanta in 1965. (You’d think AirTran would want to celebrate him now as well.) Aaron spent his last years playing in Atlanta and he’s now a VP with the team, so he’s a hometown hero in Delta’s hometown.

Delta certainly is gaining any fans in San Francisco with this move. There’s no mention of Bonds in the press release and nobody said a word about him at the rollout ceremony yesterday, but there’s no doubt what spurred the timing of this dedication. Nice work, Delta. And forget about Bonds, Giants fans. Start thinking about how to get out of the basement of the NL West instead.

The TSA really should have its own tv show. I have to assume that if they showed 99.9% of the crazy stuff that happened at checkpoints, it could fill multiple hours of programming.

There was a huge uproar last week about the poor, innocent woman who was forced to empty her child’s sippy cup to prove the water inside wasn’t dangerous. Then she accidentally spilled the water out when she was opening it, she was forced to clean it up, and she eventually missed her flight. Oh, the horror. As you can imagine, there was plenty of outrage about the liquid ban, how horrible life is, etc.

But now we have an alternate version of the story. The TSA was so compelled to defend itself that it put up a page on the TSA site called MythBusters to shed some more light for us.

The TSA version (you can find a link to the official report on the site), says that the officer told her she’d have to empty the sippy cup, she became angry, flashed a badge, said she was secret service, and announced she was exempt from the liquid ban. Then they pulled her aside and when asked to show the contents of the sippy cup, she poured it out all over the floor. That of course resulted in hysterics. She eventually did clean up the contents, but not the debriefing caused her to miss her flight.

So who is right? Well I haven’t seen any proof of a flashed badge, but after watching the video on the TSA site, I think it’s safe to say that the initial story is a lie. I’ve embedded the video found on the TSA site below (they also uploaded it to YouTube). If you can’t see the player, you can find the video here.

At about the :53 second mark, the woman and her son are escorted into the picture by a TSA agent. Not 5 seconds later, you can see her emptying the sippy cup. If it really was an accident, I highly doubt we’d see her shaking the cup to make sure she got it all out like we see in this video. If you stick around long enough, you can see her first clean-up attempt at 5:35, but it’s pretty boring. All the action happens up front.

So is there anything to take away from this? Yes, don’t be dumb. Just like antagonizing a cop on duty is a bad idea, so is messing with a TSA officer. The people you see on the front line are not the ones creating the policy, they’re just enforcing it. I agree with everyone who thinks that the liquid ban is unnecessary if not downright ridiculous, but I’m not going to challenge a TSA agent when I fly because it’s not going to do anything other than make me miss my flight.

This woman tried the alternate approach and all it did was make her catch a later flight than she planned. Her initial attempts to garner sympathy have now resulted in backlash against her. Nice work.

I feel bad for all of you who live in Minneapolis, Detroit, or Memphis. Northwest, the king of retaliation, has successfully fought off competition so well in those cities that your options are pretty limited. (Frontier may still be fighting it out in Memphis, but I’m ready to take bets on when that experiment ends.) So it was no surprise to see them at it again today.

Flash back to May 29. American announced they’d be adding three daily flights between New York/LaGuardia and Minneapolis starting September 5. Since LaGuardia is a large station for the airline, it’s not completely out of the realm of reality. But any time you go up against Northwest, you know it’s not going to be pretty.

Right now, Northwest owns the route with 7 daily flights. Nobody else even tries it. So when American came in, you knew it was time to sit back, relax, and wait for the fight to break out.

It finally broke out this morning when Northwest announced that it would be flying three times a day on the completely absurd Dallas/Ft Worth - New York/LaGuardia route. Oh, and in case you hadn’t figured it out, service starts September 5. Now, Northwest has absolutely no chance in hell of making this route work. They don’t have a frequent flier base on either end. This is there solely to push American to pull out of “their” market.

The fun part about this is that American is no slouch in the retaliatory wars either. In fact, they’re one of the few to actually have gone to court over it. (Read here for more info on that fun-filled case.) So this could be a test of wills . . . a battle of egos . . . a fight for ridiculousness. I can’t wait to see who blinks first. For now, enjoy the competition if you live in those cities. It won’t last long.

Let’s stick with the green theme today and take a look at easyJet’s new ecoJet concept. They released plans for a plane that would be 25% quieter, reduce CO2 emissions by 50% (though 10% will come from unrelated air traffic control improvements), and emit 75% less NOx than your run of the mill 737 or A320 series aircraft. Pretty good numbers, huh? You can read all about it on their website.

Take a look at this picture from the Flight Global article.

As you can see, the plan is to use a different type of engine to power this guy. The unducted fan is basically what you’d see inside an engine today but without the casing that you see on every other jet flying. According to easyJet, this will “offer unrivalled environmental performance due to their higher propulsive efficiency.” This type of engine has been studied by manufacturers for years, but it hasn’t made it to a commercial jet yet.

Another distinct feature you can’t really see from this picture is that the wing is swept forward to reduce drag. This is definitely an airplane that would catch your eye at the airport. You’ll have to wait until 2015 to see it though . . . that’s the targeted launch.

So will it actually get built?

Probably not in its current form. This was designed internally by easyJet, so you know once Boeing and Airbus get their hands on it, it would change significantly. This is basically just an easyJet PR grab to announce that they want the big manufacturers to make more efficient planes. Though this big splash may not actively accomplish anything, the signal it sends to Boeing and Airbus is that demand for a new plane is there, and it’s demand that ultimately gets a new plane built. Of course, they could have done this in private discussions with the manufacturers, but then they wouldn’t have gotten all the buzz and goodwill they’re likely to get from a more public announcement.

I’m in a “green” kind of mood today. It’s probably because we just launched our new environmentally-friendly shopping guide, ShopGreen, here at PriceGrabber. So when I started thinking about what to write today, I immediately thought about the Fischer-Tropsch process.

Huh?

Fischer-Tropsch is actually the process of converting coal to liquid. In other words, we can take coal, of which there’s plenty in the US, and turn it into an oil substitute. As far as I can tell, we wouldn’t need to modify airplanes at all to run on this stuff.

Sounds great, right? David Neeleman, of JetBlue fame, has been pushing this process as the savior of our country for months now, and he’s starting to make headway. He and his machine are pushing a bill through Congress to give companies an incentive to build plants to make this happen.

One problem - it’s really bad for the environment. Ah, bummer. Thought we had this one solved.

To put this in context, take a look at this graph showing the impact of using liquefied coal instead of petroleum.

Not so good, huh? This graph, which originally ran in the New York Times, was pulled directly from a good TerraPass blog post on the subject. Now, Neeleman is pushing a program that would require carbon capture and storage, so the impact is only marginally worse than petroleum, but is that really what we should be shooting for here?

Why is Neeleman pushing this? Well, it does get us away from needing foreign oil. We could use our own coal supplies, but it’s pretty short sighted in the scheme of things. The cost and time needed to build these plants could be better spent on developing cleaner technologies instead of something that does nothing positive for the environment.

Sadly, it appears the political will may be there to get this passed. If Congress can talk about what they’ve done to move us towards energy independence, that will be great for them regardless of the environmental impact involved.

There were apparently some people who weren’t so happy that I characterized SkyWest’s new livery as boring, so I’m going to make it up to you guys by talking about something they’ve done right. Let’s talk about what’s been going on at its relatively new subsidiary, Atlantic Southeast (ASA)

You may remember (probably not) that SkyWest bought fellow Delta Connection partner Atlantic Southeast (PDF) back in September of 2005. ASA was a mess of an airline with pretty much nothing going right, but worst of all was its dismal baggage handling abilities. Meanwhile, SkyWest ran what was generally considered to be one of the best regional operations around. So could they fix it?

For the longest time, it didn’t appear to be possible, but now, the latest Air Travel Consumer Report shows movement. Check out this chart showing ASA’s baggage handling performance over the last two years.

These numbers are baggage complaints per 1,000 passengers. I’ve already ranted on how this stat makes no sense because it should be based on the number of bags checked, but it still can give us trends. Clearly, the spike last August was due to the new liquid rules onboard, and the large increase in the number of bags, but since the beginning of the year, things have gone very well.

Kudos to SkyWest for getting the baggage handling operation at ASA in shape. Now, how do you know if you’re flying on ASA? Well,they fly solely as Delta Connection and primarily out of Atlanta. So this is an important development for Delta fliers who go through Atlanta (that means everyone).

It continues to amaze me that every time an airline comes out with anniversary livery, it looks exactly like the ones that have come before. First, we had ATA’s 25th anniversary. Now at the time, this looked good, because it was the first of its kind. (Sorry, I couldn’t find a shot of the actual plane on their website so I settled for a model from the retail shop.)

Then Horizon came along and decided to introduce a 25th anniversary scheme that once again brought out the streamers. True, the colors were a bit different, but it was basically the same thing. (This one came from the Alaskair.com site.)

Now, SkyWest has come along and decided to roll out a 35th anniversary plane. Thanks to AirlinersGallery.com, we have an early look at the bird.

It’s the same friggin’ thing! Come on, you guys can do better than this, can’t you?

Word on the street is that Frontier has a pretty nice product onboard their planes. They give you 33″ of seat pitch (1 to 2 inches above average) and they have Live TV on board. I’ll be taking my first flight on the airline in less than a month, and I’ve been really looking forward to it.

Sadly, what I may experience is not going to be the norm on the airline for long. They’ve decided to make some changes on the inside and that usually isn’t a good sign for the passengers.

The airline will be reducing seat pitch to be more in line with the industry standard. Most seats will have 32″ but the last few rows will have 31″ pitch. To be fair, the new seats are going to be thinner than the old ones so that means actual legroom won’t go down by a full 1 to 2″ but somewhere a bit less than that. This will allow the airline to put an extra 4 seats on each plane, and let’s face it . . . they can use some more revenue here.

In addition, they’re going to be switching to leather seats. The theory is that leather is easier to clean and lasts longer. So even though it may cost more upfront, it pays for itself quickly. I’ve been able to get an exclusive sneak peek of the new interior which you can see below.*

(*Picture is in no way tied to reality. I mean, come on. It’s not even an airplane. You can’t really believe that, can you?)

Ah, but there is some real good news here. They’re planning on offering in-flight email and text messaging. And in more good news, you won’t have to worry about having elbow room while you’re typing. The airline has done a study and found that people who fly on them weigh 17 pounds less than the norm. So even if your legs are a bit cramped, at least you can take solace in the fact that the person next to you won’t be spilling over into your seat. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Superjet 100 seems like a Supergoofy name for an airplane, don’t you think? Come to think of it, the 787’s moniker - Dreamliner - isn’t exactly any better. Anyway, the Superjet 100 is Russia’s first Superserious entry into the commercial aviation market . . . ever.

Back in the good old days, the Russians thrived on copying western aircraft planes and then tweaking them to fit their needs. They’d market it under their own brand name and make every country in their sphere of influence buy the planes. Today, most airlines have abandoned the old Russian planes, but you will still find them in places like Cuba, Russia (duh), and some of the former Soviet republics. Really, the only reason they’re still around is either due to government pressure or because those airlines don’t have the money to buy newer, better planes.

But now we’ve got the Sukhoi Superjet 100 coming on to the scene, and this could be a real contender in the world of regional jets.

The plane is meant to compete with the Embraer 175/190/195 family as well as the Bombardier CRJ-700/900/1000 family. It will come in two or three sizes, depending on what you believe - 60 seats (maybe), 75 seats, and 95 seats. It will meet all Superstrict FAA (US) and JAA (EU) aviation regulations, and it will produce the same levels of noise as its competitors. The engines are a joint venture between Russian NPO Saturn and France’s Snecma (50% partner on the CFM56 - the engine that powers all 737s built in the last 20 years). Oh, and did I mention that Boeing has been a consultant on the project since the early days? FlightGlobal has all the details you could ever want here.

As you can see above, the plane inside will look sort of like an MD-80, Supersuper 80 if you use American’s naming conventions. The seating configuration will be 2 x 3 for a total of 5 across. That will give the regional jet more of a big jet feel. In fact, the cabin is actually 3″ wider than an MD80. It’s also has 3″ more headroom in the aisle. For more measurements, you can compare it to the MD80 cross section below.

Even though the insides will look similar, the outsides won’t. The Superjet will have engines under the wings so those sitting in the last rows won’t go deaf like they do on MD80s.

I don’t know much about costs yet, especially since the plane hasn’t taken flight, but I have to imagine it will be competitive at least. So will you see these plying skies around the world soon?

That’s the big question that nobody can answer yet. It’s going to take a lot for western airlines to even think about ordering a Russian plane. I mean, there is a long history of mistrust they’ll have to overcome. Recent escalating tensions between the US and Russia can only hurt the effort. But just looking at its merits, it seems like the Superjet could be the first plane out of Russia to actually have a shot at success. (Not Supersuccess, just regular success.)