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.