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.)