Yesterday was just one of those days when it’s great to be an airline dork. There’s nothing I like more than heading to the airport for an event that doesn’t involve the stress of actually going anywhere, and yesterday MAXjet’s launch of service from LAX to London/Stansted gave me that opportunity. Yes, I know. I have issues.

When I arrived, the plan was to start with a press conference/schmooze fest in the Bradley Terminal’s special events room. The room is located on the south side of the fifth floor, conveniently placed as far away as humanly possible from the rest of civilization. It didn’t help that not a soul who worked in the airport had any clue where the place was, but I was still able to find it.

When I walked in, they were handing out gift bags with a bunch of goodies including . . . a stuffed dog? Yes, apparently they’re now revealing how the airline was named. Believe it or not, it was named after Max, one of the founders’ dogs. (I’m not kidding.) So now he’s the airline’s mascot.

After digging through the bag, the press conference still hadn’t started, so I took a look around. I see why this room is located where it is, because it had a great view of MAXjet’s 767 at the close-in gate 106. I have no doubt that gate was chosen for a reason today. I do have to say that the airline’s bluish/purplish livery looks very sharp. The colors are quite distinctive, and as you can see with my poor picture taking skills at left, that’s true even when next to some of the most well known liveries in the world.

Soon, it was time for the press conference, which turned out to be more of an informal Q&A with a couple of remarks up front by Bill Stockbridge, CEO of MAXjet, and his killer moustache. He gave the speech you’d expect about how MAXjet is all about value and the longer the flight, the more value they provide. You know the deal. But the questions from the peanut gallery let to a couple of interesting tidbits.

Stockbridge said the airline puts its fifth 767 into service on September 25. At first, it will just be a system spare aircraft, but in the fourth quarter of this year or first quarter of next, they will add a sun destination in Florida. I’ve heard rumors in various places about Miami, but Orlando could be in the running as well, I’d think.

As for the onboard product, once he got past the awkward explanation about the food onboard (”It’s good food, not great food”), he mentioned that they were upgrading the inflight entertainment onboard with better noise canceling headsets, etc.

A random fact that surprised me is that apparently 25% of MAXjet’s traffic connects beyond London/Stansted. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise considering all the European LCCs with large operations there, but I still didn’t expect it to be that high. Stockbridge then went on to say that he expects open skies to benefit them greatly because they’ll be able to fly beyond London now. The example he gave was having a flight go LAX - London - Dubai and being able to carry local passengers between London and Dubai. I’m not sure whether or not that route is actually on his radar, but it would seem to be a very strong choice for an all business class airline.

Outside of the press conference, I had the chance to ask how the LAX flight was doing so far. He said they were pleased with advance bookings and that it was building better than any other route had so far. On today’s inaugural, there were 90 people booked in the 102 seats and most of those were paid.

Once we were done upstairs, the fun began. They took some of us down to the gate which was pleasantly uncrowded, a big change from the norm at the Bradley Terminal. It’s not that the plane wasn’t full, it’s just that 90 people in a gate area that usually sees 400 seat 747s is a nice change of pace.

It was a bit hectic at the gate with champagne and cake being served and the ribbon being set up for cutting. This gave me a chance to sneak onboard the plane and check out the seats. I wasn’t able to take the trip myself this time, but I was very excited to be able to at least see the cabin. When you walk onboard, there’s a nice roomy feel even though it has the old style overhead bins which generally make the cabin feel more closed-in. The seats are nice leather and, as you can see, there were pillows and blankets placed on each one.

Though they were busy preparing for departure, I was able to sit down and test out the seat. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at the degree of recline and the overall comfort of the seat. These may be old generation business class, but with the extra legroom they’ve added, you’re able to recline up to 170 degrees. It was really comfortable for the minute I sat there, and I’ve heard others say that it’s comfortable when you’re there for several hours as well. It took me a minute to figure out how to work the seat since it’s all manual. That’s a bit awkward, but as I was told, having electronic seats costs more, they break more often, and they don’t add enough value to make it worthwhile. I’d have to agree; I’m not willing to pay more just to have electronic seat control.

They were clearly trying to prep the cabin so I didn’t want to take too much time. I headed back into the terminal and Nancy Castles, LAX PR person, offered to take some of us to see the new business class lounge for unaligned airlines (ones not in Star, Skyteam, or oneworld) which just opened in the last couple of weeks. It was a decently sized space and it seemed fine. Nothing special like the Virgin Clubhouse, but I hardly would have expected that anyway.

Back down at the gate, it was time to button up and Nancy offered to take me down on the ramp for the water cannon salute. Without hesitation, I jumped at the chance. We drove out to the end of the alleyway and waited while planes taxied all around us. Fantastic. When the plane finally headed our way, I was able to snap a couple shots head-on while the aircraft passed through the water arches. As you can see once again, my photo skills are lacking, but it was an amazing vantage point.

Finally, it was time to head home. As I said, it was a great day to be an airline dork. Click here to see a full gallery of the day’s events including a shot of the Saudi King’s Kingdom Holdings’ (thanks for the update) 747 taxiing by.

Enjoy the long weekend and I’ll be back with you on Tuesday.

The other day, USA Today ran a scathing article by Joe Brancatelli regarding US Airways’ transatlantic operation. In a nutshell, it said that the airline’s international operation is falling apart. Flights are horrifically late (demonstrated with FlightStats on-time results), the cabin interiors are in terrible shape, crews are short-staffed, and mechanical issues are everywhere. Who did he blame? “Management incompetence.”

Sounds like a nightmarish scenario to me, but I was of course curious to hear what the airline has to say about this. Yesterday, I got my hands on a correspondence sent to some (but not all) employees from Doug Parker about this situation. I’ve posted the full text of that here. What did it say?

Basically, it seems to say that Joe is right. It’s been a bad, bad summer. But it does give some more background about what’s going on. For those who don’t want to read the letter, here’s a summary.

Yes there are bad flight delays, but part of this is due to the congested northeast corridor. Examples of oft-delayed flights from other airlines were posted as well. That’s great, but Philly is in better shape than New York airports, so the delays shouldn’t have been as bad. This couldn’t have been the only reason, and of course, it wasn’t.

It looks like the aggressive growth in flights this summer just overwhelmed the airline. Remember, the Philly airport had threatened to take some of the international gates and give them to other, domestic airlines. US Airways, knowing it wanted to grow into international markets over time, sped up expansion this summer to show that they needed those gates. Well, they apparently overscheduled themselves. That combined with bad weather made for long delays in getting the right plane to the gate. Next year, they’ve promised not to overschedule.

They also admitted to an increase in schedule maintenance without the corresponding increase in alloted time for maintenance. They’ve promised to cut the number of flights next year to allow for more downtime.

And as for those ratty interiors . . . they are in bad shape (at least, the 767s are) due to years of neglect by the old US Airways (pre-America West). They committed to fix those, but the fixes aren’t complete yet. They will be by next year.

I like that they’re admitting there’s a problem and they’ve pinpointed how to fix it, but it’s starting to sound like a broken record. And some of these problems are really inexcusable. If there was an increase in “routine maintenance,” they should have seen it coming. It seems to me that they thought they could get through the summer working their planes too hard just to make a point to the city of Philly that they needed those gates. Now they’ve angered a LOT of people.

I’d like to see a customer apology and potentially a voucher for a discount on future travel. It probably won’t make it up to the people who had travel plans interrupted this summer, but it’s at least a start. Frankly, the apologies have lost a lot of meaning now that we’re two years into this merger. This airline needs to be running a solid operation.

Remember how I said there was no reason AirTran couldn’t try to build up Milwaukee on its own even after failing to take over Midwest?

Here it comes.

This morning, the airline announced that they will begin deploying troops, er, bumping up Milwaukee flights just in time for the winter season on December 20. All those snowbirds will now have the option of flying AirTran to Phoenix once a day. Yes, US Airways and Midwest already fly this route, but maybe AirTran will bring down fares enough to help the Brewers actually get more than a few hundred people at their spring training games this year.

Oh, but that’s not all. That same day they bring back daily seasonal flights to Tampa and Ft Myers. I know they had Tampa daily last year, but I think Ft Myers may not have been as frequent if it flew at all.

And I (mis)quote . . . “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like an airline scorned.”

Southwest finally (re)started flights to San Francisco yesterday with Vegas, Chicago/Midway, and San Diego flights hitting the runway. But that was overshadowed by Southwest’s long-anticipated announcement that they would enter the LAX-SFO market on November 4, pretty much the only major intra-California route they don’t serve today.

The big dog in this market continues to be United with 16 flights a day each way in the market, but American has 6 in the market and Alaska has a mere 2 as well. With those big guys ruling the roost, fares remained relatively high in the market and local passengers fled to Southwest to fly to Oakland or San Jose instead. In fact, Southwest drew so much traffic to Oakland that they fly LAX-OAK 20 times a day. (These new flights put them over 100 daily flights between the LA Basin and the SF Bay Area.)

Low cost carriers have always had an interest in taking on the big guys, but there has only been activity in this market recently. Frontier took a shot at it but failed quickly and they pulled out earlier this summer. Now, Virgin America thinks they can be the first to make it work since the days of PSA and AirCal with their 6 daily flights. Southwest has opted to one-up that attempt with 8 runs a day.

According to a Southwest blog post today, they think their low fares are going to be the catalyst for the market to work. Had they said that a couple months ago, I might have believed it, but now Virgin America has fares down at the bottom end of the spectrum already. It’s going to be a bloodbath as these guys fight it out. Could we see the return of $19 fares? One can only hope.

But low fares aren’t everything. In a market like this, schedule is of number one importance to the customers who are going to make or break this service - the business travelers. Let’s take a look at the schedules:

As you can see, Virgin America has some mighty big holes in their schedule. You can forget about mid-morning travel, and with the last flight at 625p, you can’t even do an early dinner. Meanwhile, Southwest has a flight near 8p and they never go more than 2 hours without having a flight. That’s a much better schedule and should be more attractive to the business traveler.

You can argue that Virgin America will have better service, live tv, and all that stuff if you’d like. But on a sub-1 hour flight, nobody cares. Just get me there when I need to be there. So far, Southwest appears to have the edge in this race.

Not sure why, but some of my readers don’t seem to like my happy, kudos-filled posts like the Delta one from last week. I guess you’re looking for more CRANKY. With that in mind, I’ll be happy to oblige this morning.

I may like what Delta has been doing online lately, but I really can’t stand their billboard campaign. For months, there’s been this one billboard on Century Blvd, just east of LAX, that has taunted me. I finally snapped a shot of it last week:

Yes, I know. It looks innocent enough. But it isn’t. It’s a great example of Delta overpromising and underdelivering - exactly what an airline should NOT be doing. Let me explain.

As you can see in that picture, Delta is telling customers that flights will go by quickly because you have your own personal entertainment onboard. Yes, there is mice-type telling you that it’s not available on all flights, but nobody can see that. Even if they can see it, they aren’t reading it. All you see is a Delta plane with a cool piece of hardware in the back of it. What’s the chance you’ll get this super-duper system when you fly Delta out of LA? Not good. Take a look below to see the breakdown.

As of the September schedule, Delta will operate 680 flights per week out of LAX - that’s just above 97 per day on average. Of those 680, a whopping 79 have live tv and games as shown in that billboard. That’s just about 11 flights per day or 12% of the total. Another 3% have personal screens that just show movies in loops and 30% have overhead screens you watch with everyone else. But, if you fly from LA, you are most likely to be on the 55% of flights that have no entertainment at all. Yup, 55% of Delta flights are on regional jets.

So how do you get lucky? Well, you only get live tv and games if you fly to a Delta hub. All 39 weekly flights to JFK have it as do 13 to Atlanta, 12 to Cincinnati, 12 to Salt Lake, and 3 to Guatemala City. (Ok, that last one’s not a hub, but whatever.) And there are an additional 23 weekly flights to Atlanta that have personal screens but not live tv.

What you’ll want to do is look for aircraft type “752″ for live tv or “764″ and “777″ for personal screens with looping movies. I’m actually not even 100% sure on the 764, but that’s what I believe to be the case. Any other flight and you’re out of luck.

Not sure how many people have seen the latest series on the Today Show called “Today’s Travel Turbulence in the Skies,” but it’s been interesting. They’re inviting a series of airline CEOs to come on and talk about what’s going on. Unfortunately, they aren’t really playing fair.

First up (that I saw) was an interview with Doug Steenland, CEO of Northwest. The first part was with Meredith Viera and the second part involved answering viewer questions with Natalie Morales.

This was no easy interview. Meredith asked questions like “What went wrong and why couldn’t you predict it?” and “Why should I trust that won’t just happen again?” Steenland did ok with the answers, but he just does not come off well on tv. Too stiff.

The second part was even less successful for him. He faced some pretty tough questions like “Why can’t this management admit that they made errors and stop blaming the short staffing, poor employee morale, flight cancellations, and operational problems on the employees, especially pilots?” Ouch.

So yesterday morning, when Matt Lauer interviewed Continental CEO Larry Kellner, I was expecting sparks to fly.

Would he mention the flight that kept passengers stranded in Baltimore for hours and hours that made Joe Sharkey’s column in the New York Times? Or would he ask about the transatlantic flight with overflowing sewage?

Nope, none of that. Just pure praise and nothing of substance. What a joke. Now, I think Steenland deserved the hard questions, but there’s no reason Kellner should have gotten off so easy. I mean, Matt even said “This is a tough interview for me to do,” rattled off a bunch of great things about Continental, and then followed up with “This is going to be so boring this morning.” As if that wasn’t enough, he then gave Kellner carte blanche to brag. . . . “Without doing a commercial for your airline, why have you been able to buck the trend in the industry and kind of separate yourself from the bulk of other airlines.”

Not cool.

Delta’s really been pushing into the whole web 2.0 world more than any other airline lately. Today, they took another step by quietly launching their corporate blog Under the Wing. As far as I know, this is the only US airline with a blog besides Southwest. (Yes, JetBlue has Neeleman’s flight log, but that’s really clunky and only updated about once a month lately.)

Honestly, I have no idea if this blog will be good or not. It just has a welcome post from the EVP of Marketing & Sales so far, but it looks promising (and I’m not just saying that because I made the blogroll). According to the post,

. . . we decided to add a blog to the site, where you can hear directly from Delta leaders on some of your most passionate and inspiring ideas, as well as some of the changes we’ve got coming.

You’ll also be hearing from Delta employees on some of the fun, quirky, and entertaining subtleties that make the spirit of this company and its people so unique.

Could be good. But it’s all in the execution. Give me an in-depth post from the head of the JFK operation about what you’re doing to fix the nightmare over there. And don’t give me corporate speak. That’s what press releases are for. Help me understand what’s going on in a more personal tone. Tell me more about the buildup of flights at LAX and how that’s working out. Take a camera on a delivery flight of a new aircraft. Maybe get us some more pics of the new flat beds you’re putting in BizElite on the 777s. Let’s get some really good, in depth conversation here. I say “conversation” because if the post is good, the comments will flow.

Of course, this requires Delta to make a conscious decision from a PR point of view to let people talk freely. Without that, it won’t work. That doesn’t mean people should be spilling secrets or anything, but it does require letting your guard down and that can be tough. Southwest has a done a great job of putting some very interesting posts out there along those lines. For example, anything from Captain Ray Stark I read instantly because it’s real and it doesn’t always focus on instances when Southwest’s shines. Including the bad along with the good gives him instant credibility. And he’s an entertaining writer.

I’m not saying Southwest’s blog is perfect. They also stray away from talking about the airline fairly often. No offense to USS Blog Boy, but I don’t go to a Southwest Airlines blog to hear about military experiences. I want to hear about the airline.

I imagine a legacy airline like Delta will have a tougher time getting senior management to go along with this whole “open communication” idea than an airline like Southwest, but I really hope they can.

Update 8/28 @ 856p - The folks over at Midwest pointed out that they do in fact have a blog. It’s not a corporate blog as you might expect, but Travels with Tish is about putting together “Girlfriend Getaways.” Sorry for leaving you guys out.

The long-anticipated news finally dropped yesterday that Delta’s board of directors had picked Richard Anderson to be CEO. Rumors had been swirling for months, and it appears that the board has decided to assert itself here over the wishes of current management.

Who is this guy? Well, he played MacGuyver in the 80’s and 90’s. Oops, wrong Richard Anderson. This Anderson ran the show at Northwest for a couple years earlier this decade (he started a few months before 9/11) before he took off for greener pastures outside the industry. When he was at Northwest, it appears he was well-liked by the rank and file, but I’m not sure what his big accomplishments were. He clearly wasn’t able to keep them from sliding into bankruptcy within a year or so after he left. When he was brought on as a board member at Delta earlier this year, the speculation about his rise to CEO began.

So this really isn’t a surprise, but it is definitely the board’s choice. Outgoing CEO Jerry Grinstein (so long Jerry, you’ll be missed) had tried to assemble a succession plan with his lieutenants - Ed Bastian and Jim Whitehurst. But the board didn’t go for it, and that could be tough for the front line to swallow. Remember, the deflected US Airways takeover along with the exit from bankruptcy that involved bonuses and raises for everyone really got people behind the current management team. Delta has never taken kindly to outsiders at the very top, so this could be an interesting adjustment for the airline.

The head of the pilots union has already brought out a letter to the troops saying that he is “encouraged by my initial conversations,” but “be mindful of the old Russian proverb “Doveryay, no proveryay” - Trust but verify.” We’ll see how this develops, but right now this has to be a bit of a jolt to those working at the airline.

By the way, Bastian won’t be going anywhere. He’ll be President of the airline. Whitehurst, meanwhile, has a more interesting path ahead. Some say he’s out, others say he’s not. One thing we do know is that Delta alum Fred Reid has been kicked out of his job at Virgin America and they need a CEO. . . . Interesting.

I saw this article online yesterday and just had to laugh. When I read the headline - “United to upgrade domestic in-flight video systems” - I got excited for a second. Are they going to install personal screens?!?

No, of course not. I should have known better. This is just a case of United trying to spin what is basically a cost savings measure.

Right now, United (and most other legacy airlines) are stuck in the 80’s. They still have to pop video tapes in to show movies onboard their domestic aircraft. This “upgrade” they’re working on is actually nothing more than getting rid of tapes and replacing them with servers that will digitally store the movies Tivo-style. Why? The article says it “aims to lure more domestic travelers.”

Yeah, right.

What does this mean for you? Well, there may be marginally better quality since it’s digital now. No more scratchy, damaged tapes to worry about. But nothing else changes. You won’t see anything on demand and there won’t be live tv. It’s still a single movie playing on the same screen that you can’t see way up in the aisles. It just means they’ll play them from a hard drive instead of off a tape.

For United, this is a case of spending money up front to reduce costs down the line. It’s not cheap to order a bunch of tapes and send them out to each aircraft a couple times a month. I guess it finally reached the point where the cost of replacing the system became less than the cost of continuing to operate it. So, they’ll get their cost savings and customers won’t get anything new. Nice attempt at some spin, United, but I’m calling you out.

One thing we can take from this is that United is probably not going to be installing personal video anytime soon on domestic aircraft. If they’re spending money on this system, they aren’t going to just pull it out to install an on-demand system soon after. Despite my excitement about the possibility, I’m also realistic. Personal screens are nice, but the cost to install and maintain is very high. It’s going to be hard for United to find a way to make enough money back from customers on domestic flights to offset the cost.

If there’s anything good in this release it’s that they plan on giving their planes deep cleanings more often. Now that has a direct impact on everyone who flies, especially those who ride on the grimy old 737s.

It had been a good five years for China Airlines. It almost seems silly to say it, because five years without an accident should be a given for most airlines of that size. But for China Airlines it was a true accomplishment. Unfortunately, that record was broken this weekend when one of their planes exploded after landing.

Seeing the pictures (photo credit: REUTERS/Ryukyu Shimpo), you’d think things were worse than they actually were. An engine caught fire after landing and everyone evacuated immediately. After the last person made it off, it looks like the fire must have reached the fuel tank because that’s when it blew up. Nobody was injured.

Even though everything worked out ok here (unless you’re the insurer of the aircraft), this still brings back memories of the airline’s horrible problems in the past. To put things in perspective, the airline has had 10 fatal events in about 900,000 flights killing 800 people. That compares to AirTran/Valujet’s 1 fatal event in just over 1 million flights (you remember the Everglades crash in 1996). Remember, back in the day, Valujet had a pretty rough reputation, but China Airlines makes their record look stellar.

The airline had promised to turn things around, but with a safety record like that, who wouldn’t be skeptical? The clean five year record had started to give hope that things were getting better. This latest incident certainly brings some doubt back in to my mind. Hopefully outside investigators will be able to come in and find what really caused this problem. It could be a fluke and not something that’s related to their problems of the past. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope that’s the case.

UPDATE 8/20 @ 1129a: Check out this amazing video taken from the terminal building. You can see that as soon as the last passenger jumps down the slide, the explosion in the center of the aircraft occurs. Then you see the pilots jump out the front. It’s amazing everyone was ok.