A couple of months ago, when delays were at their worst, the President came out and said he was going to fix things. Today, we learned exactly what he’s planning on doing and it’s a pretty sorry effort. Despite what you might expect, I’m not blaming the President for everything. I just blame him for picking the wrong Secretary of Transportation.

It’s the President’s responsibility to find a Secretary of Transportation who can actually addresses the issues going on in the country’s transportation system, and after today’s recommendations, I’m convinced Secretary Peters doesn’t really understand the problem here. That’s why she and her department have earned the coveted Cranky Jackass Award for their efforts.

If you’d like, you can read the Fact Sheet on the proposal or the President’s Speech, but I would say the best read is Secretary Peters’ press conference. The lack of organization is readily apparent in her speech. Enough pre-talk. Let’s dig in.

1) Of all the proposed changes, the one that they think is the most helpful is opening military airspace for commercial flights during the busy Thanksgiving weekend.

Hooray! More airspace! Oh wait, airspace isn’t the problem right now. A friend of mine who has intimate knowledge of the East Coast air traffic problems said it best:

“The greater use of the military deep water airspace is advantageous during the summer months when t-storms block overland routes up and down the coast. When was the last time we had East Coast thunderstorms during Thanksgiving or Christmas?”

Ah yes, good point. See, in the summer, thunderstorms close down airspace (you don’t want to fly through one of those) and that’s when things get sticky. But we rarely see that happen in the winter. In the winter, it’s not airspace problems, because snow storms don’t shut shut down airspace. Snow shuts down airports. So, these new routes aren’t going to do anything substantial.

Oh, and if that’s not enough, these are overwater routes. If they’re more than 50 miles offshore, this would fall under Extended Overwater Operations, and not every airline has the right equipment onboard to allow them to use those routes. Ugh.

Really, the saddest thing about this is the press conference. You’ll need to read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts from Secretary Peters and her VP of Support Operations Nancy Kalinowski.

QUESTION: But you still have that — you still have sort of the choke points if you are at the airport, you still have to land them — I mean, you might be able to get out of New York a little quicker, but on the other end you still have the runway capacity you have, as far as landing the planes.

MS. KALINOWSKI: We believe it’s going to be able to help us get out of New York quicker for the holiday season.

QUESTION: Do you have any idea how many airplanes you’ll be able to move — I mean, is there a number that you can quantify at all?

MS. KALINOWSKI: It’s going to depend on the weather. No.

SECRETARY PETERS: And by the way, let me introduce who Nancy is, so you know who she is. Nancy Kalinowski — and we’ll spell that for you later if you need that — she’s the vice president of support operations, basically the air traffic part of the organization. And I’m sorry, how many more planes, Nancy?

MS. KALINOWSKI: We’re not — we haven’t done those statistics, so we just feel like we know how much traffic we’re going to have for the holiday season and we’re just going to get them out of the New York area quicker, especially –

Holy crap. Talk about confusion. They say this is going to be great, but they have no idea how many planes it will help move. Uh, ok. But I really shouldn’t say “they,” because on Kalinowski says that. Right after she says it, Peters asks here the same question that Kalinowski said she couldn’t answer just two seconds earlier! This is just too much. But there’s more.

QUESTION: A quick follow up to what you just said. You said you were making, effectively, two new airways available. How many exist now?

MS. KALINOWSKI: Well, there are no airways through that airspace now.

QUESTION: Right, right, I know. But what I’m saying is, if you’re thinking of it like a consumer does, how many lanes currently exist, and you’re adding two more?

MS. KALINOWSKI: We’re essentially adding to a route which allows airplanes to move up and down through that airspace.

SECRETARY PETERS: Nancy, absent opening these two new routes, how many routes are available under the normal configuration?

MS. KALINOWSKI: Oh, we have hundreds of routes up and down the East Coat. I mean –

QUESTION: So how much of a percentage increase in capacity is this?

MS. KALINOWSKI: It’s not necessarily a capacity; it’s more of an efficiency. It’s an ability to have an alternative if we have bad weather on the East Coast. I mean, every day planes move up and down the East Coast. They move over land, some of them move slightly off the coast, or they use what we call the amber routes, which are outside of the warning area airspace.

QUESTION: So if the weather was perfectly clear during the Thanksgiving period, this actually wouldn’t really help that much. It would really help only if there was bad weather; it gives you additional routes to reroute planes?

MS. KALINOWSKI: It will especially help during the bad weather. But I think many of the airlines are going to take advantage of these routes, even if we have good weather up and down the East Coast.

ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!! I think my head just exploded. What is wrong with you people?!?!? Ok, enough. Let’s say what else they’re going to do.

2) “. . . impose a holiday moratorium on maintenance projects that are not time-sensitive. . . .”

Really? What made you think that non-essential work would be worth doing during the busy season of the year in the first place? But I really want to know what they’re talking about here specifically. I haven’t seen any specifics on what projects are being stopped that will positively impact delays.

3) “The FAA is partnering with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to reduce bottlenecks in the New York metro area . . . .”

These guys have to learn to keep their stories straight here. First, they said that JFK was a mess and they’d fix it, so they made some operational tweaks and promised to make more. But wait. Then they decided that they need to cap flights at an artificially low 80-81 flights per hour at the airport during peak times even though they were trying to expand the airport’s capacity. Now they’re talking about congestion pricing to encourage airlines to use off peak times, but what about all those capacity increases that will make those unnecessary? Back and forth and back and forth.

The priority should absolutely be to increase capacity. If you can’t do it quickly enough, then you should enact congestion pricing or use caps to restrict traffic temporarily, but it certainly doesn’t make sense to do both at the same time. What is the point of the capacity increase if you’re just going to restrict operations?

4) “The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the FAA are encouraging airlines to take their own measures to prevent delays.”

Hah! That’s awesome. It’s exactly what the airlines want to hear. Hey airlines – you guys come up with something and we’ll take credit for it.

5) “Double the amount of compensation passengers receive when they are forced off overbooked flights.”

This really won’t do much to reduce delays, but it will encourage airlines to become more conservative when it comes to overbooking. I’m not really against this idea so much, but I don’t think it’s going to help delays either.

6) “Require airlines to collect and provide DOT with better data on the sources of flight delays.”

They say they want more information about the causes of delays and the the amount of time they sit on the ground, but that information is out there. I can find the gate times on the airline website and I can find the actual wheels-up and wheels-down times at FlightAware. Causes are reported in each DOT monthly report, but I guess they want more details? More importantly . . . what are they going to do with it?

The only action I’ve seen in this area is regarding chronically delayed flights. If a flight is delayed more than 70% of the time, the government wants to consider that deceptive practices and that means big monetary penalties. I like this idea, actually. Delays happen for a variety of reasons, but if you’re delayed more than 70% of the time, it’s either the worst weather month ever (in which case this will be problematic), or the flight isn’t scheduled properly. But that information is out there free for anyone who wants it, so I don’t know what this request will do.

7) “. . .mandatory contingency plans to aid stranded passengers and penalties for chronically delayed flights.”

I get nervous when something sounds like a passenger bill of rights, but this is actually not all bad. They’re letting the airlines decide what goes into the contract, but the DOT is going to require that it be legally binding. Again, this won’t help delays at all, but it could have an impact depending upon what the airlines put in there.

8) “The FAA is also going to better inform consumers by providing real-time updates on whether flights at a particular airport are on time or delayed, and by how much. This information will be available at: www.fly.faa.gov.”

Um, they’ve been doing this for years. I like how they try to act like they’re doing something great here.

9) “To Solve Delay Problems In The Long Term, Congress Must Pass Legislation Modernizing Our Aviation System”

Ziiiiiiiiiing! There’s the whole point of this thing. Let’s bring politics in to the picture. After this headline, the Fact Sheet goes on and on saying how Congress has to act or everyone is screwed. I find it amazing that the President seems to have no qualms about expanding the powers of the presidency in other areas, but when it comes to fixing the problem here, he just punts and blames Congress.

Oh man, this is just sad. And that’s why the DOT and Secretary Peters have earned themselves the Cranky Jackass Award. Congratulations.

You thought the big news was about a Delta/United merger? Nah, that’s not news . . . yet. Airlines talk about mergers all the time, and until I see an actual proposal, I’m not going to bother worrying about it. So far we have a hedge fund that has money in both airlines and wants to see them combine. They’ll make them a ton of money, and then it will turn into a huge mess for the airlines afterwards. This is all assuming that it actually happens at some point, and I’m far from convinced.

So for now, let’s focus on real news. This is coming from the UK. No, I’m not talking about the BA ghost flights. I’m talking about the end of the one carry-on rule at UK airports!

Now, don’t get too excited just yet. My exclamation point is a bit premature. If you’re flying today, you won’t see a difference, but change is coming. According to the BBC, on January 7 of next year, the requirement that airports only allow one carry-on bag through security will be eliminated. Now sadly that doesn’t mean that you can bring the standard 1+1 (purse, briefcase, etc) that you’re allowed in the rest of the free world right away. Each airport has to work to make the change.

Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly said, “We are inviting each airport to submit plans to take advantage of new technology, operational innovations, and unexploited capacity in the system to make a real difference to passengers as soon as possible.”

Blah blah. When will it happen?

The assumption is that UK airports will have all applied to do this within a few months, but there’s no indication how long it may take to get it approved. And really, most of the world outside of the UK just wants to know when the London airports (especially Heathrow) will change, since those carry the bulk of passenger traffic. Once that happens, people will have one less reason to avoid flying through London.

UPDATE Nov 19 @ 316p: Musings of The Global Traveller came across an article saying that BAA, which runs many of the UK’s large airports, won’t have the ability to take 2 carry ons per passenger at any airport. They will, however, allow First and Business class passengers to carry on a second bag at Heathrow. That’s it. Booooooooo! No wonder people hate BAA. Keep avoiding LHR for now . . . .

It didn’t take long for loyal readers to notice that a couple of days ago I made some changes to the comments section. In fact, I had my first feedback within a few hours. I thought it would be a good idea to talk about this in a post so I can get more ideas from you all.

One thing I’ve learned after writing this blog is that I really look forward to reading the comments, good and bad. Even if you roast me for what I say, I still enjoy all the thought (most of) you put into the comments. Disagreement is great, and that’s what makes the blog such a great place for me and hopefully for you as well.

So, I tried to think of ways I could make the comment system work better for everyone. One thing was easy. I just installed a plugin that allows you to sign up to receive an email when followup comments are posted. (You’ll see it right below the comment box.) I know I hate it when I have to keep checking back on comments to see if someone replied. Now you no longer have to worry about that.

The other thing I did was install SezWho. This basically creates a rating system for each commenter. Now you’ll see ratings from 1 to 5 for each person who comments on my blog. If you like the comment, you can vote it up or down to affect the rating for that person in the future. Everyone starts with a 2.5 rating and it goes from there. The ratings also are altered if you comment on another blog that uses SezWho using the same address. So your ratings reputation can follow you around if you want it to (if not, just use a fake email address).

I think the coolest feature here is that if someone sees a comment you write and likes it, they can hover over your profile and see other comments you’ve made on my blog. This will encourage people to discover past posts they may have missed and it will make you the center of it all. All of these things help to build the community on the blog, I think, and I hope you find them valuable.

Of course, the main reason I’m writing this post is because I want your feedback. Do you like the idea of SezWho? If not, please explain why. If so, do you have better ideas about how it could be implemented? What concerns do you have, if any?

Please leave your comments below or email me privately so I can make this blog as interesting as possible for you.

It’s been awhile since I’ve checked in on Virgin America, but they’ve had some recent news that made me think it was time for a post.

I’ve heard reviews from several friends who have flown them lately and they’ve all really enjoyed their experiences. Yes, they’ve had problems with the inflight entertainment functioning correctly, but that didn’t stop people from praising the airline. You would think things were going well for the airline, but that doesn’t necessarily seem to be the case.

As noted over on PlaneBuzz, Virgin America has pulled down capacity on its JFK-SFO/LAX routes in November, December, and January. The airline is already at a schedule disadvantage versus United and American, so this isn’t a good thing for their prospects of attracting business travelers. Why are they doing this? Well, I’ve heard three possible explanations.

1) At first glance you would assume that high oil prices and low fares aren’t mixing very well, especially on long haul routes. It’s probably no coincidence that just this week they launched another fare sale. This one is offering flights for $129 each way between LAX/SFO and JFK for travel until right before Christmas. This is certainly not a peak travel time, except for Thanksgiving weekend, but $129 is extremely low with oil prices where they are today.

This is the worst possible reason for them to be canceling flights. The airline built it’s product for long haul flying. Nobody cares about inflight entertainment or food on the one hour hops on the West Coast, but it matters on the long hauls. On short hauls, people care about the number of flights first and foremost, and Virgin loses that battle every time.

Why do I think they’re focusing on short hauls? Well, they recently announced they were going to start service to San Diego in February. Flights aren’t going to JFK or Dulles. Nope. They’re just running a few flights up to SFO. But their 5 flights compare pretty poorly with United’s 11 or Southwest’s 18 to Oakland. And things are looking worse for them and their six flights in LAX-SFO as well. Southwest came in with 8 and realized that they didn’t have enough, so they’ve gone up to 12 per day. How is Virgin going to do well with only 6?

If they’re pulling back on their long hauls to focus on their short hauls, they are in big trouble. Let’s hope for their sake this isn’t the case.

2) Unconfirmed rumors are flying that they needed to make some changes to the aircraft and pulling airplanes out during the weaker winter months is the easiest way to do it. The rumor is that they may be adding more First Class to their planes since right now it’s full while coach isn’t. Though I heard this rumor previously from another source, a version of it also popped up in this week’s PlaneBusiness. It’s also expected that they are going to work on installing inflight internet and fixing the inflight entertainment system problems while this is happening.

This all makes sense from an operational perspective, because eliminating a LAX-JFK and SFO-JFK roundtrip frees up two planes. From a business perspective, however, I can’t say this seems smart at all. Instead of starting San Diego in February, maybe they should just delay that and work on the planes then. I have to think that this is an airline used to waiting. Another three months isn’t going to kill them.

If this is the truth behind the pulldown, then it just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not worth pulling planes out of service on key routes, especially when you have new planes coming in that could be used to fill in instead of starting short haul routes in February . . . unless the flights aren’t doing that well in the first place.

3) The last explanation is that they just don’t have the planes they need to run their full schedule. They thought they would have the planes, but for some reason they don’t. Could there be delays in deliveries? Probably not. It’s more likely that if this is happening, there are delays with them outfitting the aircraft with all their cool bells and whistles.

If this one is true, then that’s just unfortunate. But again, why not move the schedule around to eliminate short haul flying instead of long hauls?

Part of my frustration here is that they’re being quiet about it in the press. If they are adding First Class and internet, they better get out there and talk about it. It’s a great story, and what company doesn’t like positive press? If it’s a delay in receiving aircraft, it may not be positive press, but it makes the suppliers look worse than Virgin. They should still push it out there.

The best reason to keep quiet is if those routes really just aren’t making money. Like I said, I hope for their sake that’s not the case.

I’m still working on what was going to be today’s post, so that’ll have to be pushed back. Today’s post will be brief. I just want to say welcome back to LAX’s iconic Encounter restaurant. It reopened again yesterday after months under the knife. I guess that’s required if you’re an LA star.

If you don’t know Encounter, you may know it as the Theme Building. Or you may just know it as that cool looking structure in the picture at left. Back in February, a hunk of concrete fell off one of the arches, and it’s been closed ever since. The arches don’t actually support the building, so there was no structural danger, but I suppose they didn’t want anyone walking underneath and getting conked on the head. When I was at LAX on Saturday, they still had a bunch of scaffolding up on the structure, but apparently the hard work is done and it’s time to open again.

Right now, they are open for lunch from 11a to 4p every week. To start, dinner will only be served on Friday and Saturday from 4p to 930p. Personally, I’d recommend just going for a drink and a view. Unless the menu has changed, the food is likely still mediocre and overpriced. But the view makes it worth the trip.

Now if we can just get them to reopen the observation deck up top . . . .