They’ve already become the official airline of the Arizona Cardinals and the Philadelphia Eagles, and now US Airways is celebrating its status as official sponsor of two other teams with special liveries. I’m guessing that pretty soon, every single plane in the US Airways fleet will be in special liveries. What is this . . . 20 of them now?

First we have my least favorite of the two. The Carolina Panthers jet just came out of the shop, and it’s pretty bland.

Next we the much better Pittsburgh Steelers bird. This one has been around for a few weeks now, I believe. While the plane does look really good, Steelers fans will be sad to note that the logo is on both the right AND left sides of the tail, unlike on the team’s helmets.

I’ll have a more in-depth story on US Airways and their attempt to fix operations in the coming days.

While other airlines are waiting for tax relief to help their short haul flights thrive, Horizon Air has decided to go on the offensive with a great marketing campaign.

Short haul flights have struggled as airport security requirements have become more and more annoying and time consuming. People just don’t want to deal with the hassle of limiting liquids, waiting in long lines, and sitting in weather delays for a higher cost than just driving yourself, especially when the drive isn’t much longer than the flight.

You’d think that Horizon would be hit pretty hard with this shift, especially on their bread and butter route from Portland to Seattle – the Horizon Air Shuttle. The drive is 174 miles from downtown to downtown, so driving should be far easier than flying, but Horizon’s new campaign plays on the “horrors” you’ll find while driving through what they call The Slog.

They have apparently channeled Ken Burns for this “documentary” (I still can’t get that music from The Civil War of my head) about the mythical drive on I-5 between Seattle and Portland. If you head to the site, you’ll see an overview video about why you should fly, but then they have short snippets on points along the way that’ll make you cringe. The beauty of this is that it talks about specific points on the drive that probably exist on every route around the country, so even if you don’t drive this particular route you’ll find the videos amusing.

There’s Ticketown – the speedtrap where all the tickets issued if lined end to end would stretch to Mars three times over. And don’t forget Filthy John’s Holler where the bathrooms are so dirty, possibly because the only mop there was lost decades ago. The worst? How about Crab Apple Flats – mile 95 where you lose one lane on the road and it results in horrible backups that test the wills of all who pass.

I can’t remember having driven this road myself, but I can certainly relate because they’re problems we all face somewhere. When they contrast this with Horizon’s half hourly flights that have now seen unrestricted fares lowered to $99 each way, those flights start to sound a lot better. In fact, I’ve got a driving trip to Vegas next weekend, and it’s made me cross my fingers for a last minute flight deal. (Not holding my breath)

As you can imagine, yesterday’s post on user fees just about burned me out for the week. I spent hours on Wednesday night getting that thing together, so hopefully it made some sense by the time I posted it.

When I came time to put a post together for this morning, I just didn’t have it in me. Instead, I’ve decided to end the week with this awesome shot of a BA 747-400 departing LAX for London/Heathrow.

This pic comes from fellow PriceGrabber employee Chris Craig. You can see more of his work here. Next time I get invited to an inaugural flight, I’ll bring him along so you can actually see some high quality photos.

Last month, I wrote about the fight over how to fund the FAA in the future. With less than a month to go before the decision is due (hopefully), I decided to dig in further.

I think the best way to do this is to use some examples. Let’s look at two different itineraries using the current tax structure. You’ll recall that currently, there is a two part tax – a 7.5% tax on the base fare and an additional $3.40 per segment flown. Here are the two examples.

The largest group pushing for a change to this structure is the Air Transport Association (ATA), a lobbying group representing most of the big airlines in the US. Their argument is that the taxes charged don’t really equate with the cost of carrying that passenger. And the above example is a good reason why. You have two very different itineraries with the same fare. Since half the tax is based on the fare, the longer trip with more flights ends up having only slightly higher taxes than the shorter despite the much greater cost to the system.

Another way to look at it is to think about two people on the same flight where one person pays double the other. The cost to the ATC system is the same to carry each passenger, but the person who pays a higher fare pays a lot more in tax.

To remedy this, the ATA came out with their user fee proposal which would theoretically tax people based on actual cost to the air traffic control system. Sounds good, right? If you’re an airline passenger, maybe (definitely if you pay high fares). If you’re in the corporate aviation world, you’re not happy with this plan because your costs are going to go up. For now, general aviation is spared, but you’ll often hear the slippery slope argument that it won’t stay that way for long.

But let’s assume that as an airline passenger and not a user of corporate or private aviation services, are user fees really the way to go? Is this particular proposal a good one? I’m not so sure.

The ATA proposal is also a two part tax, like the current system. There is a departure tax which in execution is the same as the current segment tax. For every flight taken, the passenger pays a flat fee. The second part is where the change happens. The percentage tax based on the fare paid would be replaced with a tax based on distance (beyond 250 miles). According to this testimony, the FAA states that “about one-half of the costs in the ATC system are related to takeoffs/landings (i.e., essentially fixed costs) and one-half of the costs are related to time in the air (i.e., variable costs),” so this makes sense. So far so good, but there are problems when you really think about it.

JetBlue’s announcement that they were against this proposal raise a red flag. Why wouldn’t they want a plan that would reduce costs for passengers?

They really have stated two big objections, and they make sense to me. First, they’re not happy that the first 250 miles are exempt from the tax, and second they don’t like that the distance tax is calculated based on the nonstop mileage between the origin and destination cities regardless of number of stops. They haven’t said anything beyond that, but I have to think that as a low fare carrier, they aren’t happy that high fare-paying passengers, primarily on the legacy carriers, will get the greatest benefit.

Before I go much further, I have to say that a true analysis here is hard to do. I contacted David Castelveter, VP of Communications for the ATA to get more detailed info about the proposal. What I really wanted was to find numbers – examples of what the new proposed taxes would be. He was unable to provide that information and instead referred me to this testimony on the proposal. Unfortunately, it has no per passenger numbers, and so I have to assume that they don’t want to release this information for some reason. Red flag #2. All I can do now is speculate without having concrete numbers. They say it will be less than today, but I have a sneaking suspicion that’s only true some of the time.

Logic says that people will pay more if they’re on short flights or paying low fares. Remember, today you pay based on the fare, so if you eliminate that, the higher paying fares will probably be taxed less and the lower paying fares will be taxed more as they try to even it out. It’s the higher paying, short haul business traveler who stands to gain the most, and that’s not me.

The ATA says the first 250 miles are exempted in order to promote service to small communities. Huh? If the flight is less than 250 miles between a small city and a large one, I’ll bet that the fare is sky high and most people are driving. Most people are taking those flights from small cities to connect beyond that big city, so they’re going to pay taxes anyway.

Instead what this does is exempt people flying major business routes like New York to DC and Dallas to San Antonio (which just squeaks in at 248 miles) from having to pay the distance tax. This helps make air travel more price competitive when compared to the train or car when it probably shouldn’t be.

JetBlue’s second objection that they’ve decided to literally cut corners and base the distance tax on the nonstop mileage between the origin and destination is probably more egregious. Let’s use a Chicago-Dallas flight with a stop in Philly (which you can actually buy on US Airways) as an example. For the geographically challenged, take a look at this map from the Great Circle Mapper.

As you can see, the connection more than doubles the number of miles it takes versus flying nonstop, yet under this ATA proposal, the distance tax for both the connecting flight and the nonstop one would be based on the nonstop mileage. That doesn’t make any sense.

Oh, but it makes plenty of sense if you’re a legacy airline. Airlines that operate a hub-and-spoke system are far more likely to have passengers on connecting itineraries than point to point airlines like, say, JetBlue. Connecting itineraries will end up paying less than their share of taxes if this is how mileage is calculated. The one thing I can’t figure out is why Southwest hasn’t come out against this plan. Maybe that 250 mile exemption is attractive enough to make them ignore the rest of the problems.

As you can see, this proposal has a lot of holes. It seems clear that the leisure traveler paying low fares will be the one who takes the brunt of this while the business traveler will benefit. As someone who generally doesn’t do much business travel and looks for low fares for leisure trips, I selfishly should prefer the status quo. Without actual numbers to play with, I can’t make a true determination about this proposal, but I’ve beginning to lean the other way.

Woohoo! It’s time for an Alitalia update. You know how much I love these guys for their incredible ability to do just about everything wrong, and of course, nothing has changed.

The latest news is about their “survival/transition” plan according to ATW Daily News. I was really hoping that the end was near for these guys, but you knew that wouldn’t actually happen. Now they have a super duper plan to fix the airline. Shall we take bets on how long it is before this one fails? Actually it’s probably safe to say it’s failed before it even started.

The new plan revolves around the airline’s two hubs in Rome and Milan. They’ve now decided that two hubs don’t work. So they’re slashing flights out of Milan in half and bumping up Rome flights. They’re also consolidating cargo operations at Milan. Other than that, it’s not entirely clear what they’re doing. It seems that they’ve had their managers enroll in Glenn Tilton’s “How to Speak in Circles and Say Absolutely Nothing” class. Here are some gems:

• The airline is “no longer able to sustain the negative trend of accumulated and perspective losses.”
• The survival plan is meant to achieve “conditions of sustainability and continuity for company activities in the short/medium term.”
• It will suspend flights with “strongly negative economic results and with no prospects for recovery in the short term.”

Wow, that’s good stuff. But if they’re going to suspend flights that have a negative economic result, they aren’t going to have any flights left.

Please note that at not one point in that article or this one does the the airline mention job cuts. They talk about cutting routes and cutting airplanes but not jobs. There’s no question they need cuts, and maybe they’re planning them, but they’re probably too scared to say it. Why? We all know what happens when they threaten cuts. Strike!

And that’s exactly what the pilots are up to now simply in anticipation of what’s to come. They’re staging a “work-to-rule” protest which means they’re being overly cautious above and beyond the norm. Basically, they’re doing everything strictly by the book and they’re not in any hurry to do it. This is similar to what happened to United back in the Summer of Hell in 2000. Yesterday, 18 flights were canceled after 83 were canceled the Thursday/Friday before.

Many say that the government is just trying to dress up Alitalia to make it look pretty for a suitor. I just can’t believe that any suitor would be that stupid.