As promised, here’s how those same airlines from yesterday fare when it comes to international baggage check-in times (except Southwest, which doesn’t fly internationally). The situation here is much cleaner than domestic.

As you can see, most airlines say you must check bags 60 minutes prior to departure regardless of airport. United gets the gold star for actually have a flat 45 minute rule instead. And then there’s Delta.

Delta easily gets the award for most painful rules here. They actually have five different times here, and two of the airports (Bogotá and Nassau) have different rules depending upon whether you use the contract of carriage or the website. Ugh. Why does Delta require two (or three) hours in Bogotá when American only requires 1 hour? No idea. This should really be cleaned up.

• If you don’t know these airport codes, you can look them up here.




• Anything that is bold in the table means that the airline has differing rules for that airport on its website when compared to its contract of carriage. I would recommend obeying the more strict of the two, but if you find yourself stuck, you can try to fight for compensation from customer relations after the fact. (You’ll never get anything resolved at the airport.)




• International travel includes all flights going from the US to another country or vice versa. Flights between the US and Canada do not count as international.




• American and Northwest are the two airlines for which I could not find the contract of carriage. American has their conditions of carriage, but Northwest has nothing for international other than guidelines on the website.




• Neither United nor US Airways actually specify this information in their contract of carriage. It looks like United just forgot to include international information in their combined Domestic/International tariff.

Whew. I’m glad I’m done with this exercise.

Is there anything more ridiculous than the various baggage check-in time cutoffs that airlines impose? It’s not the idea that bothers me; it’s the hodge-podge execution that drives me crazy. Delta added to the fun by changing JFK’s cutoff from 30 to 45 minutes before departure, all in the name of improving customer service. Please, give me a break. Yes, it improves customer service in that they’ll hopefully lose fewer bags, but it hurts customer service by requiring people to show up earlier.

Life could be much easier. “Bags must be checked in 30 minutes or more for domestic flights and 60 minutes or more for international.” That’s easy to understand and to communicate, right? But of course, a policy that starts out that way turns into a nightmare as carve-outs occur.

I understand that some airports could benefit from more time. In that case, I’d suggest standardizing around the more strict cutoff systemwide. I’d much rather know that it’s a 45 minute cutoff at every airport. Instead, airlines decide to make little exceptions all over the place. The worst offender is easily American Airlines. They have an unbelievable 4 different cutoff times for domestic flights depending upon from which airport you depart. How are you supposed to keep that straight? If your standard is 30 minutes, does Minneapolis/St Paul really need to be 35 minutes? Come on.

And if that’s not confusing enough, some airlines have different rules on their website than they do in their contract of carriage. The contract of carriage is the document with the final say, so stick to your guns if you met the guidelines in that document but not on the website.

Who is the best at making this easy? Well, JetBlue has a flat 30 minutes domestic and 60 international. And they fly to some of the most painful airports around, so the temptation to make JFK earlier than Portland (Maine) has to be there. While they get thumbs up for making the policy simple, they get thumbs down for making it extremely hard to find this info on their website. I’ve linked to it (as well as the others) below. Here are the baggage cutoffs for domestic travel on select carriers.

*Edited 2/4/08 to add RNO/SMF for United website policy

• If you don’t know these airport codes, you can look them up here.




• Anything that is bold in the table means that the airline has differing rules for that airport on its website when compared to its contract of carriage. I would recommend obeying the more strict of the two, but if you find yourself stuck, you can try to fight for compensation from customer relations after the fact. (You’ll never get anything resolved at the airport.)




• US states and territories as well as Canada count as domestic here




• American is the only airline for which I couldn’t find the full contract of carriage. The conditions of carriage are close enough for this purpose.




• US Airways does not actually specify this information in their contract of carriage, and that is strange. What it does mention is that “If a customer with a seat assignment on US Airways does not obtain a boarding pass at least 30 minutes (60 minutes international) before the scheduled departure time, the customer’s seat assignment (including those seat assignments on continuing or returning flights) may be subject to cancellation. This policy does not apply to US Airways Shuttle flights.
  Passengers departing ATL/DEN/DFW/HNL/IAD/LAS/OGG/PHL/PIT/SEA must present themselves at the US Airways ticket counter no later than 45 minutes prior to departure. Passengers failing to comply will be re-accommodated on the next available US Airways flight.” That’s not the same thing.

You thought this was fun, just wait until tomorrow when I show the international policies for these airlines.

While the 787 rollout garnered worldwide coverage back in July, there was a more recent rollout that has basically gone unnoticed in the US. Yes, it’s the Supercool Sukhoi Superjet. The plane officially rolled out on September 26, and I must say it’s one good looking plane.

First flight will be within a couple months, and there are 73 firm orders. I know western airlines are hesitate about buying a plane from a Russian manufacturer considering past entries in the market, but I have to think that this will be the first time that a Russian airliner gets at least a second look from the West. In fact, an Italian airline ItAli has already ordered some for delivery.

Congratulations to Sukhoi for getting this one together. Now let’s see if it lives up to performance guarantees.

It was a bittersweet day last Wednesday, Sep 26, when America West and US Airways officially merged on to one operating certificate. Yes, they still have workgroups to merge, but in the eyes of the FAA, they are one airline. That means America West is truly no more, and that’s a sad day for me.

I started working at America West as a summer intern during college ten years ago. I continued to intern with the airline throughout my college years, and I moved back to Phoenix to work in Pricing/Revenue Management in 1999. I spent the next three years there, only leaving in September 2002 to attend business school. At right, you can see me at my desk on one of my last days with the airline.

I have so many memories, good and bad, of my time there . . . the rollout of the first A319, the summer of 2000 meltdown (and going to help out at the Passenger Assistance Counters), the Eagle outage, the opening of the new Washington/National airport (at left), watching that first flight come in to Phoenix after September 11. I could go on and on.

I am probably most proud of my involvement in the 2002 transformation of the airline into a low fare carrier. I basically lived in the office that last week leading up to the change. Getting there at 6a and leaving at 2a for a short nap was not my idea of fun, but Red Bull, coffee, ukulele music, and a plastic candy cane got us through it. Don’t ask.

I used to travel a lot while I was there. In all, I took 209 flights on America West and America West Express going over 165,000 miles. True, almost a quarter of those flights were to the LA area, including my first nonrev experience going for a day trip to Orange County on July 4, 1997. But I also spent many flights shuttling back and forth between Phoenix and DC. Back then, that meant stopping in the Columbus hub. Really, there was nothing more painful than flying Phoenix to Columbus in the middle seat of the last row of a 737-200, but at least I could almost always stretch out in first class on that last leg to DC.

It wasn’t all just shuttling back and forth. I went to Anchorage (at right), Chicago, Atlanta, Kansas City, Boston, Dallas, New York, Portland, New Orleans, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico City, and yes, even Yuma. (Again, don’t ask.) That doesn’t count all the flights I took on other airlines while I worked there.

My last flight as an employee happened on September 14, 2002 when I flew back from San Jose to Phoenix to pick up my car and drive it up to school. I was sad to leave that airline, and I will never forget my time there.

I know that the management team and the headquarters building are the same, but it’s not the same airline. That’s inevitable when you merge with someone else that more than doubles your size. Though I have a ton of pictures, I just picked out a handful that I thought I’d share below. I apologize that the quality isn’t very good, but these are print photos that I scanned in.

From the parking garage roof at Phoenix Terminal 4. This was one of the first times I saw a lineup of planes all in the new Flintstones colors. There was no rush to paint the planes for several years, and in fact, the Phoenix airport had the old colors on just about everything for a looooong time after the image update occurred.

From the parking garage roof at Phoenix Terminal 2. A 757 in the old colors landing on PHX’s north runway. My first nonrev trip involved a return from Orange County on a 757 with 14 people onboard (only two were paying customers). That thing took off like a rocket. It wasn’t actually this ship. It was ship 916, the first Arizona flag airplane that was returned to lessors long ago.

From the Phoenix maintenance hangar. A320 ship 627 had a little mishap while being pushed back from the gate. You can see the smashed in horizontal stabilizer. They flew the Airbus Beluga in with the replacement part, and we went out to the airport to see that monster land.

From Phoenix Terminal 4. Short on parts? Just borrow a radome from your neighbor, Southwest. I also remember seeing a United nose on an A320. I believe this was taken when I went on one of my many trips to LA to see UCLA football games with my dad. Most of those trips were easy, though we did have to turnaround in flight one time when there was an engine problem. That was on ship 622, my personal nemesis. I don’t think that plane ever took off on time when I flew it.

Like I said, I could go on and on with stories, but I’ll save that for when I’ve got a beer in front of me. For now, I’ll just say “So long, America West.”