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.