Remember Delta’s SiteSeer? It’s been pretty quiet since they first launched the travel video site that I posted about here. Now they’ve come up with a pretty clever promotion to help build traffic to the site.

Apparently, they previously had requested video tryouts for the competition, and now they’ve chosen their finalists. There’s the elderly couple, two female cops who happen to be cousins, a pair of friends, and two sets of siblings (one annoying, the other not – you should be able to guess which is which from the picture below).

According to our host, Dezirae (whom you may remember from the Los Angeles video), each team is being sent to Budapest where they have to create a video on their experience. Beginning August 6, we all get to vote for our favorite. The team with the fewest votes gets booted, and the four remaining teams move on to the next round. As you can probably figure out, this will last four rounds until a winner is crowned.

Not interested in voting? Ah, but they’re bribing you with miles. You get 250 miles every time you vote and a 1,000 mile bonus if you vote in all of them. That means 2,000 miles just for voting.

I like this promo because it does a lot of things right. First, it gets them more videos to put up on the SiteSeer site. Second, it’s addicting. Each of these teams was clearly assembled because the people have big personalities. In addition to the contest, Delta has set up a blog for each team (happily, with RSS feeds!) and a discussion forum. You can get very involved very easily. Third, it exposes Delta’s videos to a wide group of people. The mileage bonus alone will convince some people to come and vote. Maybe this will be their first exposure to travel videos, and maybe they’ll even like it and, gasp, come back for more.

Flash back to last year. In the days following the midair collision of the Gol 737 with an Embraer jet, there was a great deal of backlash within Brazil. The country was quick was to jump on the American pilots of the Embraer jet and blamed them completely for what happened. It was so bad that they detained them in the country and refused to let them leave.

It’s amazing what a year can do. Now, after striking air traffic controllers protesting unsafe conditions have caused delays to ripple throughout the country, everyone is screaming about how dangerous the system is. In fact, they’re blaming the system for every problem under the sun, even when it’s likely not at fault. The president of the country, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, even was quoted recently as spouting this gem:

It’s no secret to any Brazilian that we have an aviation crisis. Personally, when the airplane door closes, I deliver myself to God. Even with my luck in the hands of God, I confess I’m afraid. I confess this publicly because I am not embarrassed to say we are afraid.

Are you kidding me? You’re the friggin’ president of the country. Fix it!! He says he will, but anyone want to take bets?

I’d actually say there’s a decent shot at seeing at least some movement now, believe it or not. In a strange twist, it might happen because of something the system likely didn’t do. The TAM accident at Sao Paulo/Congonhas was instantly blamed on the dangerous airport conditions. Initial findings, however, make it appear to be pilot error. We don’t know yet, of course, but the fact that one of the throttles appears to not have been idled for landing make it look like pilot error was at least a major contributing factor. There is nothing pointing to the Brazilian system as having anything to do with the accident as of now.

That didn’t stop Brazilians from marching in protest. One member of the group held up a sign saying “Corrupt and incompetent officials killed my daughter.” Last year, you have people saying incorrectly that it’s all the fault of the American pilots. Brazilians could do no wrong. Now, the Brazilian system is being blamed for everything. Once again, that’s not the truth.

For once, the twisting of truth can actually be helpful here. Though blame for this accident probably doesn’t lie with the system, without reform there’s a decent chance it will be responsible for the next one. Hopefully this will actually spur some of that sorely needed reform.

Instead of pointing you to the work of others today, I thought I’d get a real live guest poster to come to you. It’s all about service over here at The Cranky Flier. Today we have my friend and aviation-writer extraordinaire, Benét Wilson who will point you to some stories and blog posts they’ve been working on over at Aviation Daily. I’ve always told Benét that the only way I’d let her do a guest post was if pigs flew. Sure enough . . .

I’m Benét Wilson, airports/security editor for Aviation Daily, the empress of airports and the editrix of Aviation Week’s “Towers and Tarmacs” blog, a thoughtful, informative and fun look at your first stop as you access the global transportation system. And did I mention it’s on the free part of our web site? Cranky has foolishly allowed me to do the guest post on his blog today, since he’s away tending to other matters. I have to remember that Cranky has a real life outside of this blog.

Cranky and I had a chat about what I would write about, and I decided to do a week in review for airlines and airports. The week started with a black eye for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on its screening practices. First, a local Phoenix television station aired the now-infamous video footage of employees walking through checkpoints into the secure area of the airport. You can see my post on that here. And I’m not going to even get into the controversy over the “dry runs” (does anyone else squirm when they hear that term?) uncovered by NBC, which you can read about here.

Next, Virgin America’s ticket sale launch after jumping its final DOT hurdle for approval was hurt after its system was unable to handle the deluge of those wanting to buy tickets, including Cranky and my other airline geek friends who make a hobby of chasing first flights. Cranky did a great job with his review, and we covered this in a post on our “Things With Wings” blog. Don’t mind me – I’m just bitter that I couldn’t join the fun.

Remember when Seattle-Tacoma International Airport got worldwide coverage after it decided to take down its Christmas trees in order not to offend other religions? Well, the airport’s Holiday Decorations Advisory Committee recommended that airport decorations “should reflect the Pacific Northwest environment and its diverse community.” In English, that means no Christmas trees (thanks for the graphic, Cranky). No matter what the decision, the airport wasn’t going to win, and you can read my post on that here.

My colleague Lori Ranson, who writes about low-cost carriers (among other things) at Aviation Daily, did an interesting story on JetBlue’s plans to slow down its growth by cutting back on the new cities it will add and deferring aircraft deliveries. As always, I am obsessed with the airport angle, so I did a post here on how this move was not good news for the smaller- and medium-sized airports that are trying to get JetBlue and other low-cost carrier service to their communities.

Has anyone flown into or out of JFK Airport this summer? You have my deepest sympathies. Aviation Daily has been covering the deteriorating situation at that airport all summer on the delays and shut downs caused by weather, ATC, infrastructure issues and even birds. Yes, birds. My colleague Adrian Schofield did a post July 25 on how a birdstrike gummed up the works and led to multiple delays at JFK on a day that was looking to be delay-free.

And speaking of airport delays, even writing about the fuster cluck that London Heathrow has become is like clubbing a baby seal at this point. But I have anyway, in a post here because I am a glutton for punishment.

I could go on, but Cranky has only given me around 500 words, and you all have places to go, things to do and blogs to read. If you liked this post, come over and visit at the Towers and Tarmacs and Things With Wings blogs.

The rest of this week is pretty busy for me. My fiancée (yes, we’re now happily engaged) and I just closed on a house yesterday, and to top it all off, her parents are in town this weekend. So, I’m going to point to the work of others for the rest of the week.

Today, check out the excellent photography of Troy Paiva.

Pretty cool, huh? He uses some great light-painting techniques to come up with stunning shots. You can see a bunch more of his photos by clicking here.

Nothing like a little fun with fare basis codes to show my true dorkiness. A few years back, I worked in airline pricing for America West. There was something about arriving at work at 6a that made us a little loopy. We amused ourselves with things like funny airport code combos (try a flight from Fresno to Fukuoka to see what I mean) and fare basis codes that spelled things out.

Fare basis codes can be up to 8 letters and numbers in length. They are the unique identifier that is used to tie fare rules with fare amounts, and the first letter is almost always the fare class (eg F, Y, B, M, etc). Following that fare class, you get a jumble of letters and numbers identifying things like advance purchase, refundability, minimum stay, etc.

The full fares tended to have pretty simple codes since there are no restrictions to note. Southwest’s full fare, for example, is YL. America West’s full coach was Y6. But my favorite was United’s. It was YUA in coach, but in First Class, they used the FUA fare. Believe me, there were plenty of times that I chanted that to myself after seeing some of the pricing moves they made.

Sometimes, as the fare rules get more complicated, fare bases become unintentionally comical. For example, check out the US Airways fares from LAX to SYD these days.

You may have noticed #28. Yup, it’s the BLOWME fare! Fantastic. Of course, this fare is booked in B class, it’s a Low season fare, and it’s One Way. See, with that lethal combo, you already have “BLOW” up there. Not sure what the ME means, but it’s on several fares so there’s clearly a reason for it.

The reality is that US Airways probably doesn’t pay much attention to these fares. They only fly to Australia through a codeshare, so there aren’t going to be too many people buying these fares. That’s why this fare probably skated by without anyone catching it. Great stuff.