Frontier really is putting a lot of effort into Denver these days. Its new startup regional airline Lynx came out with its next eight cities, and every one will be served from Denver. Not surprising, of course. These new routes are interesting ones, and they’re a departure from the airline’s traditional path made possible by the introduction of the 70 seat Q400 turboprop. I’d say we can divide these routes into two parts, the Rockies and the Heartland.

In the Rockies, you’ll see flights from Denver to Colorado Springs, Aspen, Durango, and Grand Junction. My guess is that you won’t see too many local passengers on these flights. No, these are designed for people who want to connect in Denver to get some skiing done. Actually, they start in the summer, so skiing will have to wait.

The other ones are Fargo, Bozeman, Missoula, and Jackson Hole. These will probably have some more local traffic, but they’ll take strong connecting traffic as well. These are all part of the Heartland that Northwest has ruled over for so many years. Though to be fair, this is probably going to take more away from United and Delta which fly to these cities from Denver and Salt Lake, respectively.

In addition to the Lynx flying, the airline is beefing up the number of mainline flights to several destinations. Yup, keep strengthening that Denver hub . . . . It looks like these new flights will come at the expense of flights to West Palm Beach and Baton Rouge as well as Fort Myers and Jacksonville during the summer months.

Overall, I think these are pretty good moves. The airline is trying to hide from Southwest, and this will help. Until Southwest picks up some smaller aircraft, you won’t see them going to these cities. So for now, Frontier can bring down “really high” fares in most of these cities more toward the “marginally high” fare levels that will still make them money. If there are enough passengers to go around, this will probably work out well for them.

A nice side benefit of attending JetBlue’s press conference yesterday was that I had the opportunity to meet Ian Gregor, Communications Manager for the FAA’s Western-Pacific Region. We started talking shop, and soon enough I realized that there was something worth writing about here.

LAX has recently started using Continuous Descent Approaches (CDA) for some flights arriving from the East. What, that’s not exciting to you?

Ok, let me explain exactly what that means. Better yet, let’s go with an image here.

Just about everyone is used to the stepped approach that has been the standard for some time (and I’ll guess nobody has experienced the drunken pilot approach). You know the feeling. The pilot reduces thrust, you start to descend, then he increases it and you start to flatten out. This goes on for quite some time until you end up on the ground. It’s like going down stairs, whereas the CDA is like going down a ramp. When the aircraft gets ready to descend, the pilot cuts power and the plane maintains a constant rate of descent all the way until touchdown.

That means no more powering up along the way and no more ear-busting changes in pitch of the aircraft. As you can imagine, that helps reduce noise (since the engines don’t spool up) and it helps reduce fuel usage. Good news for everyone, right? Why wouldn’t they have done this before?

Well, it’s not like there’s unlimited room to pull something like this off. You need to make sure that during your continuous descent, you don’t happen to get in the way of, oh, say, airplanes coming from Ontario or one of the other many airports in Southern California.

That’s why this can only be implemented for landings from the East. If you come from the North and West, you usually have to make that turn around downtown LA to come in. There just isn’t enough room to make this work out there. The good news, however, is that half of the arrivals at the airport come from the East. Although only half of those are using CDA right now, the other half will be soon enough.

This procedure was first tested in Louisville, and there was a “34 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions below 3,000 feet, and a 30 percent reduction in aircraft noise within 15 miles of the airport. UPS aircraft flying this approach also save between 250 and 465 pounds of fuel per flight.” Sounds good to me. Maybe this will get some of those testy airport neighbors to stop whining so much.

They’re also rolling this out in other airports, so next time you come in for landing, see if you notice any difference.

As I briefly mentioned in yesterday’s post, JetBlue has decided to expand their presence in Southern California mostly starting May 21. This is welcome considering that after the initial burst of service at Long Beach and a minor move at Burbank, there really hasn’t been much action from them out this way.

Apparently JetBlue thinks this is a huge deal, because they had a lot of pomp and circumstance around the announcement. Their CEO flew in along with an army of crewmembers from Long Beach for the announcement. And LA Mayor Villaraigosa along with Councilman Bill Rosendahl (LAX falls in his district), literally rolled out the red carpet for them, as you can see at left. Fortunately, I had the chance to attend the press conference at LAX, but no, I didn’t get to hitch a ride on the flight from Long Beach.

On the surface, this looks like a big expansion, but what most media outlets aren’t reporting is that much of it is really just a reallocation of resources. Take a look at this table that summarizes the changes. The numbers are the changes in frequency. Anything in italics is a new route.

Table Edited 2/13 @ 105p to reflect changes confirmed by JetBlue PR that conflict with information received at the press conference. There will now be only one Dulles flight cut from Long Beach. Instead of cutting the second one, they will cut one of the two O’Hare flights instead. The remaining flight will become a smaller Embraer 190. It is undecided what they will do with the now-unused O’Hare slot.

Table Reverted 2/13 @ 309p because it was apparently correct in the first place. O’Hare will not be changing. Hopefully the PR story won’t change again, but watch this space.

So, you see LAX gets flights to JFK and Boston, but those are taken away from other airports. That’s probably important at JFK where there isn’t much room to expand these days, but it’s most important at Long Beach. Remember, the airport is maxed out and JetBlue can’t start any new flights unless they get rid of some other ones. Before we get into that, let’s talk about LAX.

Like I said, the airport will get flights to JFK and Boston. They can’t have many more than that, because they only have one gate in terminal 6. That’s gate 69, to be precise. Hmm, they should try a Southwest-style “love” message with that gate number.

Anyway, this is nothing but bad news for Virgin America since they’re targeting the same travelers and offering similar amenities. Virgin America may have one more flight per day, but JetBlue has better times, most significantly on the westbound. Virgin has no flight leaving JFK between 930a and 510p. JetBlue has a midday trip at 11a.

Down in Long Beach, most of the changes they’re making appear to be so they can introduce the smaller Embraer 190 into the market. Austin starts (the only one to begin May 1) probably because it’s the best way to get the plane from the east coast to the west coast, but San Jose and Seattle are interesting moves. Seattle is in direct competition with Alaska. They must think there’s enough room for two players in this market, because they’re going to be at a frequency and loyalty disadvantage. The odds aren’t stacked against them nearly as much as they are for Virgin America going against Alaska at LAX, however. They’re also doing Seattle to San Diego. Meanwhile, Burbank gets a couple Dulles flights, which is a nice addition.

I thought it was funny that at the press conference, the theme was all about the regionalization of airports in LAX, but that’s far from the case here. Sure, they added a couple flights at Burbank, but the restrictions on flying at Long Beach means they didn’t add anything, they just moved the flights around. It’s kind of hard to regionalize when the desirable regional airports don’t have any room.

Really, the big announcement is that they added LAX flying which goes against LA’s effort to move away from LAX. I thought it was pretty funny to see JetBlue CEO Dave Barger pressured to start more Ontario and even Palmdale flying. He laughed uncomfortably, but until Ontario lowers its fees, I can’t imagine they’re going to see much more traffic. And Palmdale? That’s way too far out there today.

So, good news for LA travelers in that you can now fly JetBlue out of LAX. It’s nice for LGB travelers to have more destinations, even if it is at the expense of some east coast flights. There are still plenty of options in those markets. I’m just happy to see JetBlue finally taking their eyes away from Northeast to Florida flying and giving us some love out here on the West Coast.

Click to see all my photos from JetBlue’s press conference.

I’m heading out to LAX today to see the press conference from a “Major National Low-Cost Airline” expanding service in the LA area, so I’ll have more on that tomorrow. (Hint: It’s JetBlue) But today, I’d like to extend a hearty welcome to a couple of newbies in the blogosphere, BoardingArea and the TSA.

Wait . . . the TSA? Yes, really. They’ve started a blog called the Evolution of Security with the Fox-Newsy tagline of “Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part.” This is a unique blog in that it’s set up to focus on the comments section and basically be a feedback mechanism. They’re soliciting feedback from everyone and anyone, and clearly they’ve seen a response. This post on inconsistencies between airports has received over 350 comments so far. Let’s just hope they haven’t censored too many of them, though I think it’s safe to say they have that as least some have been censored. In fact, they say “In the spirit of transparency, we plan to note how many comments we’ve rejected and tell you why. Mostly the rejected comments include profane language, political rants or abusive posts that we just can’t print, and some are completely off topic. Other than these, every post will go up as written and we will continue to operate this way.”

It may not be the most informative blog around, but clearly, good things can come out of this. In fact, they already have. Apparently, some “local TSA offices” had decided to start requiring all electronics to be removed from carry-ons against TSA rules. Well, people commented on the blog, Washington found out, and now it’s been fixed. Huzzah!

Ok, half-huzzah. I mean, how is it that they need a blog to figure out the major problems that are happening at some of their outstations? It’s a little concerning that they don’t have better oversight to ensure the regulations are being implemented correctly.

Maybe this won’t be too bad after all. I mean, they had the good sense to include my blog in their very short blogroll. I’m in some pretty lofty company there. Actually, I’m downright giddy to be listed right below security deity Bruce Schneier’s blog. Makes me look much cooler than I am.

Enough about the TSA. Let’s also welcome BoardingArea, the latest creation of FlyerTalk founder Randy Petersen. Head on over there to find “voices of the business traveler.” Randy has decided to aggregate blogs that appeal business travelers from around the web. I’m very happy to say that I’ve been included in that group. No need to read my content over there since it’s the same stuff I post here, but you should definitely head over there to discover some other excellent blogs, some of which are brand new and most of which can only be found at BoardingArea.com.

Edited 2/13 @ 131p to change wording on comment censoring (shown in italics)

It’s been a month and a half since we last checked in on Alitalia, and I feel bad. I try not to neglect my favorite airline to hate, but it looks like that’s been the case. So what’s new? Nothing.

Ok, so a lot is new, but the theme is the same. The situation gets worse and worse every day and there’s no end in site. But let’s get caught up on the details.

The Italian government did finally decide to pick the Air France/KLM deal as their favorite, so the two airlines entered into talks. Then, the Italian government collapsed. Oh boy. There’s lots of speculation that the collapse of the government means that this deal is in trouble, but we really don’t know. The players all deny that this will hurt anything.

So how bad are things for the airline? Really bad.

It looks like they need 750 million euros by the middle of the year just to survive on their own, or at least that’s what they say. They continue to lose over 1 million euros per day, but at least they’re making some real changes this summer.

The word is out that they’ll reduce flights to Milan from about 660 per day (that sounds high, but it’s what the article says) to only 75. This is part of their recovery plan, and it’s consistent with what Air France/KLM would do - focus on the Rome hub.

How are they rewarded? The operator of Milan airport is suing them for 1.25 billion euros in damages for pulling out of the airport. Are you freakin’ kidding me?!? Sadly, no. They say they made a bunch of investments in the infrastructure of the airport for Alitalia, and now Alitalia owes them if they pull out.

If I’m running Alitalia at this point, I’m just planning on grabbing some grappa and drinking myself silly until I forget about how absolutely absurd this is. Even if they do something right, they get hit with backlash. Someone please shut this airline down.

Yesterday, Alaska rolled out a “virtual assistant” named Jenn for its website, and you know what? She’s kind of hot.

The idea behind a virtual assistant is that instead of just searching through the help section when you have a question, you bring up the assistant’s window and ask her the question directly. She’s not a person at all but just a program that can respond to questions verbally and in writing, assuming the programmers have anticipated the questions you might ask.

I had a few questions of my own, so I decided to sit down with Jenn and have a chat in the latest “Across the Aisle” interview. (Yes, my fiancée knows about it.)

Cranky: Hey good lookin’ - what’s your name?
Jenn: My name is Jenn.

Cranky: Nice to meet you Jenn. I’m Brett.
Jenn: Thanks, I try!

Cranky: OK, that’s weird - how old are you?
Jenn: I am rather young, or as we say in the virtual world - new. But I like to think I have the experience of someone much older. How can I help you?


Cranky: Experience is good . . . hey, this isn’t one of those Dateline NBC exposés on child molesters, is it?
Jenn: Is your child traveling alone, or will they be accompanied by an adult?

Cranky: Not quite what I was asking, but oh well. So, what’s your job?
Jenn: I am a virtual assistant, here to help you navigate our Web site.

Cranky: Ah yes, so who do you work for?
Jenn: Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, along with a cutting edge company called NextIT, created me. I’m the first of my kind in the airline industry, here to help you quickly navigate our Web site, while answering your questions. What can I help you with?

Cranky: Interesting - tell me about this “Alaska Airlines”
Jenn: Good question. I’m not sure how to answer that. Please try rewording your question. I understand simple questions best.

Cranky: You’re pushy - what does Alaska Airlines do?
Jenn: I am not positive that I understand what you are asking. Please try rephrasing your question.

Cranky: Nevermind - where does Alaska fly?
Jenn: Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air offer a wide range of flight destinations. Browse this page to see where we fly.

Cranky: I’m more of a visual person. Do you have a route map?
Jenn: Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air serve more than 80 cities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. You can view or download the latest Alaska and Horizon route maps here.

Cranky: Mexico, nice - want to go to Cabo with me?
Jenn: Reservations can be made for up to 7 travelers and a maximum of 330 days in advance. I can answer general questions you may have while booking.

Cranky: Alright, let’s go to Cabo in April
Jenn: Please fill in the remaining fields to continue your search. Next time you shop, you can go directly to the available flights page by providing me with the cities you are traveling between, departure and return dates. For example: Seattle to Denver on May 4 and return May 10.

Cranky: Wait a second. Are you married?
Jenn: I am not married, but you never know what my inventors are working on now.

Cranky: Um, inventors? You’re not a Scientologist are you?
Jenn: We know that it is important for parents to have all the information when their child travels alone. As you go through the booking process for a child traveling alone, you will be presented with a contact information form that must be filled out for the child to travel. Additional information is provided on this page.

Cranky: Why do you keep talking about kids? That’s really a turn off.
Jenn: I know quite a bit about traveling with Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air. What can I help you with?

Cranky: I get it. You won’t talk until we finish planning that Mexico trip. Next you’ll want me to pay you, huh?
Jenn: I would love to help you, but I am not sure I understand your question. Could you please rephrase that for me?

Cranky: Fine. How much do you charge?
Jenn: We have several types of fares available. The easiest way to view our fares is to enter the city pairs and dates you would like to travel, click “continue,” and you will receive a fare display based on the requested information. Here you can view fares and rules by clicking on the fare categories.

Cranky: This is really complicated. I bet you even have conditions of contract.
Jenn: Air transportation is subject to the Contract of Carriage. For more information, see this page.

Cranky: If you weren’t so hot, I would just walk away right now.
Jenn: I would love to help you, but I am not sure I understand your question. Could you please rephrase that for me?

Cranky: Arrrrrrgh, I give up. I’ll see you in Cabo in April.

So there you have it. Maybe not the most informative chat, but it was certainly one of the most entertaining for me.

Actually, if you ask questions related to Alaska Airlines, regardless of how NOT fun that is, you do seem to get pretty good answers. Go check her out for yourself.

It’s been in the planning stages for awhile, and now Delta has finally started to firm up details for the new BusinessElite (premium cabin) seats going forward. They had already announced they’d be using the Virgin Atlantic/Air New Zealand-style diagonal 6 foot, 3 inch beds (picture)for their brand new 777-200LRs, but they hadn’t said a word about the rest of the fleet.

Now we know that the 767-400s will have a completely different type of seat (picture), but it will still be flat. This one will be 77 inches (they can’t even standardize their units of measurement, that’s 6 foot, 5 inches.) But wait, there’s more.

The 757s will have a different seat still. These will be cradle seats that might be like the current BizElite seat. Confusing? Here’s a handy chart for you to keep in your pocket so you can figure out exactly what type of seat you might have.

Notice those question marks. They already have three different seat types planned for the fleet, but they still don’t know what they’re doing on the 767-300 and the regular 777-200. I thought it was interesting that they carefully worded the press release to say “Eventually, all of Delta’s international Boeing 767 aircraft will feature a full-flat seat.” Notice it says “a” full-flat seat, and not “this” full-flat seat.

With that in mind, I sent a note to a contact at Delta’s PR firm, and she promised to get a response for me quickly. She did, but it was pretty cryptic. “At this time, Delta is still evaluating all opportunities and suppliers to retrofit the rest of its international fleet with a full-flat seat product.”

There’s that “a full-flat” wording again. You’d think that with 3 different seat types already, they would have had plenty of opportunity to evaluate every seat under the sun, but I guess not.

Why are they doing this? Well, it’s probably all about how things fit on the plane. Each cabin has a different width and length, so they’re apparently going to pick the one that fits best on each fleet.

So as a Delta passenger, you do know that once this conversion is done, you can be assured of getting “a” fully flat seat in BizElite unless you’re on a 757. Got it?

The DOT Air Travel Consumer Report is out with December numbers, and US Airways landed the best on-time performance of all mainland carriers. (I always leave those Hawaiian carriers and their good weather out of the mix.) US Airways? Really?!? That may sound incredible, but there’s actually a lot more to this story.

How well did they do? They finished the month with 74.5% of flights arriving with 15 minutes of scheduled arrival time. That doesn’t sound particularly impressive until you see that the rest of the industry fell of a cliff.

Pretty ugly stuff, huh? US Airways did a very good job of holding their own here, but they really benefited from their hub locations. For once, the Northeast wasn’t the big problem, well, except for New York/LaGuardia which was terrible as usual. Really, Chicago/O’Hare, Minneapolis/St Paul, and Denver were the hardest hit by weather that month, and they took the biggest hit in on-time performance. It’s no coincidence that American (with a hub at O’Hare), Northwest (with a hub at Minneapolis), and United (with hubs at Denver and O’Hare) fell to the bottom of the pack and dragged the average down with them.

But let’s not completely take away the achievement by US Airways here. They’ve dramatically improved their on-time percentage against the industry over the last year. This next graph charts the difference between US Airways and the industry in a way that makes it easier to see how well they’ve actually done.

You can tell that February is where things really started to nosedive. It wasn’t until July or August that they were back in the same ballpark as the rest of the industry. But November and December actually had them finish above the average, and that’s something worth celebrating. Since they finished at the top, employees will each get a $50 bonus check. That’s enough to pay the hidden usairways.com booking fee on 10 whole tickets.

Seriously though, this is a nice trend to see. If they can keep this up (they’ve said January domestic numbers at at 79.5%) and get their baggage numbers in shape, maybe they’ll finally be able to pull out of the cellar of the complaints category.

If you live in one of the 22 states (and yes, American Samoa) voting today, step away from the computer and head to your polling place. My blog will still be here when you get back.

I went first thing this morning, and since we use Inkavote, I don’t have to worry about hanging chads or corruptable electronic voting machines. I just get to enjoy camping out in front of the TV tonight and watching the returns.

Time and time again, United has proven over the last few years that they really don’t want your business unless you fly a lot, and you want to use them every time. They’ve eliminated Economy Plus access to everyone but elite members of Mileage Plus. Not even elites of Star Alliance partner programs can get it anymore, nor can someone who pays a full fare to fly. The latest knock against non-elites involves a brand-spanking new $25 fee to check a second bag on domestic flights. Oh, where should we start on this one?

I suppose the good news here is that if you do buy an expensive refundable ticket, you may not get Economy Plus, but you won’t have to pay the fee for that second bag. Let’s be honest though, how many of those full fare business travelers are checking two bags anyway? Not many.

This is aimed squarely at the leisure traveler bringing presents home to grandma for the holidays. Or maybe it’s the college kid lugging his stuff out to school for the year. In other words, it’s the people who are likely price sensitive and pay in advance. For United, it’s just another possible revenue stream without any regard for the consequences of implementing such a fee. See, it’s not the $25 that bothers me but rather the added inconvenience that this brings. You can bet United wasn’t concerned about that.

Without question, this is going to make lines worse at the airport. Remember, it only applies to non-refundable fares. So now if you check a second bag, the already underpaid and overworked ticket counter agent will have to check to see what type of ticket you’re flying on in order to determine whether to charge you the fee or not. What’s the chance the airline has invested in automation to automatically make that call? I think it’s a safe bet to say that’s not happening. Turns out, it’s pretty good. United spokesperson Robin Urbanski says that yes, “the system will be automated to determine whether the fee applies to the ticket. This automation will be integrated into the system that the customer service representatives use and the check-in kiosks.” I’m pleasantly surprised. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but this is just going to create more work for someone who won’t get a single extra dime for doing it. You think they’re motivated to do it right or quickly?

So life goes on for the elite members of Mileage Plus who can sail through their own lines, but what about the non-elites like me? Why would I ever fly this airline? If the fares are the lowest, maybe, but I haven’t seen United at the low end of fares in a long time.

If I’m not an elite, this just pushes me further toward Southwest, JetBlue, Frontier, Continental or even Virgin America, because they aren’t going to make my life miserable as a second class citizen. Sure, other airlines are likely to match this, but those will the usual suspects like American, Northwest, and Delta (and yes, maybe Continental). You know how those lemmings are.

United is definitely leading the way here in making its overall customer offering one of the worst around . . . if you aren’t an elite. They’re making it clear that they have more seats than their elites can fill, so they need you to pay up until they can find more elites. How else would they fund their next shareholder dividend?

Edited 12/18 @ 826a to reflect that United will be automating the process.