Well, it’s a done deal. Midwest accepted TPG’s beefed up offer of $17 a share. I’m going to assume it’ll pass the antitrust review, so now all we can do is wait and see what happens. That means we can talk about other things today. How about Behavior Detection Officers?

I’m not sure why this is coming up now as being a “new” thing. USA Today first talked about it in December 2005 and there have been plenty of other reports since. But it appears to be this recent article that has stirred a response. First, what is a Behavior Detection Officer?

The concept is that people have quick flashes of facial expressions, microexpressions, that indicate their true intent. Someone may have a smile on their face, but there will be small flashes of something more sinister if that is the ultimate intention. Behavior Detection Officers have been trained to keep an eye out for those expressions and then interact with the passengers to determine if there’s a real threat. This is one type of security that the Israeli airline, El Al, employs, though to be fair, El Al’s training standards are much more strict.

Of course, with any new security program, there are cries of anger. There was an editorial in Newsweek absolutely destroying the idea saying it is shades of “1984″ and it’s a horrible, horrible thing. I have to disagree.

Right now, we pull over 80 years in wheelchairs and 5 year old kids because of random searches. This is a waste of our security resource. Monitoring microexpressions is a great way to limit the number of people who have to deal with extra security. At least it involves an actual method for identifying suspicious behavior, and that’s a big step forward from the completely random search. (Yes, I know random searches aren’t going away yet, but this is a step in the right direction.)

If it’s a false positive, that’s ok. People can be flagged randomly now, so why is it any worse if they’re flagged from this type of detection? To me, this is less of a violation of personal liberty because there is at least some measure of cause involved, unlike the random searches. I hope we see more of this.

Mmm, Biscoff cookies. If you’re flying United these days, these cookies are about the only thing that differentiates the airline from American or Northwest (if you aren’t in Economy Plus). Apparently, they’ve now decided that they’re giving you way too much food on each flight, so they’re cutting back.

On August 7 the airline decided to start handing out 5 oz. packages instead of the previous super-sized 9 oz. ones. I, for one, am glad to see United doing its part to fight the growing obesity problem in the US. Those 9 oz. packages were destroying our children and raising healthcare costs. It’s about time someone stood up and tried to save us.

Oh wait, that’s right. This is just another way to cut costs. *sigh*

UPDATE 8/23 @ 944a: I believe that may actually be .5 oz down from .9 oz. 5 oz would be one big cookie.

I got a little geeky yesterday with all the talk of the Midwest takeover, but I didn’t actually bother talking about the impact on customers. Sorry about that. Yesterday afternoon, it got even more interesting as AirTran came back with a bid that’s a quarter higher than the TPG one. So, we have two competing bids. What’s best for you?

The focal point here is clearly Milwaukee. That’s the home of Midwest and their largest base of operations. It is also what appeals to AirTran. If you live in Milwaukee, you’ve been fighting tooth-and-nail to keep Midwest independent so you can have your hometown airline. Now that the airline will likely be bought by someone, you might want to change your stance.

On one side, we have the TPG/Northwest bid. This is best for Northwest since it basically helps eliminate a competitor. Though they say that Northwest won’t have any management control, you can bet that’s a crock. That’s likes saying Richard Branson has no control over Virgin America.

So what’s best for Northwest here? A nice small airline that’s friendly to them and is just big enough to keep competitors out will do the trick. You probably won’t see much growth, and it’s more likely you’ll see it shrink over time. Frills will start to disappear as TPG tries to get its money out of the investment. The airline will not be the same. If you live in Milwaukee, the last thing you want is more dominance from Northwest. You want more choice. This is not the best outcome for customers.

If there is any winner in this deal other than Northwest, it’s CEO Tim Hoeksema. He clearly likes this deal because he gets to keep his job, even if it is at the expense of his employees. If the airline does try to get “more efficient” and doesn’t grow, that means layoffs are coming. Apparently that’s ok with Hoeksema as long as he keeps his job.

On the other side, we have the AirTran bid. In this offer, you’re just about guaranteed to get more flights as AirTran continues to try to establish a beachhead in the Midwest. After their bid to buy ATA and establish a Chicago hub failed, they’ve decided the next best thing is to move up the lakefront and go to Milwaukee. So, while the Midwest level of service will undoubtedly go downhill, there will at least be more flights to more places for less money. That seems like a better outcome to me.

And for current Midwest employees, that also means that their jobs would probably be more secure since AirTran will need people to run the growing operation. Well, almost all jobs would be more secure. CEO Hoeksema would lose his, and since he’s already shown he’s willing to screw his employees to save his own job, this will be a tough fight once again.

Of course, if Northwest/TPG succeeds, there’s nothing saying that AirTran won’t try to make a run at Milwaukee on its own anyway. I’d have to think that would not come out well for Midwest in the end. No matter what, it’s unlikely that Midwest will continue in its current form at this point.

I’ve been pretty confused since word came out that TPG and Northwest would be teaming up to offer to buy Midwest. I mean, all the talk had been about AirTran’s offer for the last few months, and now that’s gone. AirTran walked away as this higher bid came rolling in. So what does TPG see in Midwest? So many questions, so little time. I’ll let this handy dandy graphic explain what I know.

As you can tell, not much is clear except that Northwest has their grubby little hands all over this. They still have this whole “we own the heartland” belief, and in their minds, Milwaukee falls into that territory. Midwest has never been much of a threat to them, but AirTran? No way, that’s a tough competitor. Can’t have that.

So they get together with TPG to buy out Midwest and remove AirTran from the equation. Northwest says they’ll be a silent partner, so there won’t be a merger or any sort of management transfer, but it means they don’t have to compete with AirTran and they like that a lot. And let’s not forget that Northwest has a nice cozy codesharing and frequent flier agreement with Midwest that gives them that warm and fuzzy cooperative feeling.

Of course, for something like this to work, they couldn’t do it alone, so they partnered with private equity firm TPG, famous for their previous airline investments. Now, TPG has a bunch of smart guys, but I cannot figure out why they’d want Midwest. This is a struggling airline with limited growth prospects in its current form, so why would they bid so much money for the airline? If they thought they could make some good money, they’d do it, of course. But how can they make money here? I’m sure they have a plan, but I don’t know how it can make this investment pay for itself.

One person who is happy is the CEO of Midwest. He would have lost his job with AirTran but now he gets to keep it. It would make sense if they kept him and guaranteed him a job in exchange for his endorsement of the deal. It was his opposition among others that held up the AirTran deal for so long. Maybe this is the way to get things moving, if he’s willing to play along.

But what will happen to the rest of the employees? I’d be nervous if I were them. Job cuts wouldn’t surprise me at all as TPG tries to get money out of their investment.

Now, AirTran is done here . . . or are they? Even if this deal goes through, there’s no reason they can’t set up shop in Milwaukee on their own. They’ll just have some added competition now, but they could still do it if they wanted. My guess is that instead they’ll look for another airline that might want to merge. (Frontier, anyone?)

There’s lots of speculation here, but I honestly just don’t get it. I know why Northwest likes this. I know why Midwest’s CEO likes this. I just don’t know what TPG sees.

I was on the beach Saturday afternoon when I received a call from a friend. I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but it was along these lines . . .

Him: “Dude, I landed forty minutes ago from Hong Kong and we’re still sitting on the plane. They say customs is full so we have to wait.”
Me: “That sucks. I won’t bother mentioning that I’m on the beach right now. Oops.”
Him: “Thanks. What’s going on here? Have you heard anything?”
Me: “Nope, but I’ll see what I can find out.”

An hour later, he calls back . . .

Him: “We’re still here. It’s not looking good. They just turned the movies back on and announced they were getting catering to bring food and water to the plane.”
Me: “Holy crap. That is a nice bikini. Oh, uh, did you say something?”

It turns out, as the LA times reports, the customs processing system at LAX went down Saturday for a long time. That meant hand-processing of everyone once they could get the lists in the first place. Ugh.

As you can imagine the airport was a mess. All of these planes sitting on the ground waiting to let passengers off wouldn’t make their return flights on time, so there were people stuck in the terminals as well as on the planes. And all those late arriving passengers wouldn’t make their connections, if they had any. My friend had it easy. He was in business class and he wasn’t connecting anywhere, but in the end he still had to endure 5 1/2 hours on the plane after a 13 hour flight and another 1 hour to get through customs.

Amazingly (ha), he survived. From all the horror stories you’ve seen the media report on this year, you’d think that this would have been the worst thing to happen, EVER. While he was annoyed and tired, he was ok. Cathay did a great job of feeding people, keeping the lavs going, and entertaining everyone on his plane. And most of the other places I’ve seen people talking about this online had similar scenarios. Alaska Airlines, one of the most affected airlines since it flies to Mexico several times a day, put out a press release noting that all flights had lavs serviced and were catered with food and drink. They also delivered baby formula, diapers, pillows, and blankets to the planes. Now, I haven’t heard any reports of what United or American did, but I’m guessing if it was bad, we would have heard about it by now.

Let’s not bother with the obvious question about how this system crashed. I have no idea, so it’s not even worth speculating. Let’s instead talk about how it is that LAX has this massive meltdown and yet planes keep getting serviced and passengers are taken care of but it never happens that way at other airports. Why is that?

Well, I can think of a couple of reasons. The weather was fine, and the relatively cool ocean air kept temperatures tolerable. They didn’t have to contend with snow-clogged taxiways or ramp-closing lightning storms, so movement on the ground wasn’t an issue. Most importantly, however, it only impacted international flights and not the whole airport. So the efforts could be focused on a smaller number of planes than during a winter storm. Yes, there are a LOT of international flights at LAX, but it wasn’t the entire airport.

No matter what the reasons, I think it’s safe to say that this is how long on-plane delays should be handled. Though people were stuck on planes for hours on end, I have yet to hear the type of horror story come out like those we’ve heard about elsewhere. (If you have a horror story, let me know and I’ll change my tune.) Hopefully the airlines and airports can study the response here and apply what they learned at other airports.