You may remember that I said last week that I probably wouldn’t book a flight on Aloha for travel more than a couple weeks out. It looks like the airline won’t even make it that long.

Aloha has announced that, not surprisingly, there just aren’t any investors to help keep the passenger business afloat. Today, March 31, will be the last day of operation for all passenger flights. The interisland schedule will operate as normal today, and flights FROM the mainland will go as planned as well. Flights TO the mainland won’t operate, and neither will flights within the mainland. The cargo and airport services divisions will continue to operate since there has been interest from outside parties in acquiring those.

It doesn’t matter if you think we have too much capacity in this country or not. When an airline with such a long and storied history as Aloha goes out of business, it’s just a sad day.

I will always remember Aloha under better circumstances. This photo, though of a more recent “retrojet” scheme, reminds me of how the planes looked during my very early childhood visits to Hawai’i. (Much of my childhood saw this, less fun design.)

Aloha (then called TPA - Trans-Pacific Airlines) started flying on July 26, 1946 with a war surplus C-47 (DC-3). At that time, it was hard for locals of Asian descent to succeed due to discrimination. Despite the odds being stacked against him, founder Ruddy Tongg was able to create a successful business that earned the nickname, The People’s Airline. Today will mark the end of nearly 62 years of passenger operation.

In a 1949 Time Magazine article, Mr Tongg was said to be “convinced there is room for two airlines in the air-minded Territory.” He was clearly correct. Sadly, there just wasn’t room for three.

When Mesa Airlines brought go! to the market, not many people I knew thought that three airlines could survive. Since go!’s inception, Mesa has lost a great deal of money with low load factors and even lower fares. Of course, since Mesa had deeper pockets than either Hawaiian or Aloha at the time, it could put its planes in there for the long haul and just wait for one of the local carriers to disappear. Since that time, Mesa’s financial strength has been eroded tremendously, but the airline was still able to outlast Aloha.

So, now one of Hawaii’s great airlines is gone, and so are scheduled passenger operations on the 737-200 aircraft in the US. If you had a ticket on Aloha, you’re out of luck. Contact your credit card company for a refund or you’ll have to file a claim with the bankruptcy court and hope you get anything back. (Don’t count on it.) If you need to travel between the islands, let me recommend a few airlines that can help.

Hawaiian - Flying between all the major airports in Hawai’i
Island Air - Flying primarily to smaller airports in Hawai’i
Pacific Wings - Also flying to smaller airports in Hawai’i on a less frequent basis

And yes, there’s go! as well, I suppose. No matter who you fly, the fares are likely to go up soon. Those ridiculously low fares that go! put in the market aren’t sustainable and never were. In fact, I’d be surprised if the airline can even make money at previous market fare levels with the CRJ. So, you may see fares go to levels even higher than before, assuming Hawaiian is willing.

As I mentioned above, Aloha will actually live on in a couple ways. The cargo business is still going to keep running as there have been interested parties in buying it. Also, the airport services operation will continue as well. That’s music to the ears of all major US airlines that contract with them to keep their planes running right now.

But, but most people know the airline for its passenger business, and that will end today after nearly 62 years of flying. Aloha ‘Oe, Aloha Airlines.

Edited 3/31 @ 9a to make it clear that the schedule will only operate today. After today, no passenger flights will operate.

When I heard about InsideTrip.com’s launch, I got excited. See, when I was running PriceGrabber’s now-deceased travel site, we tried to incorporate more than just price and schedule into the shopping experience. We added on-time information, seat pitch, powerports, etc. For some reason, other sites have never felt the need to show this sort of information, even if it can give the passenger a reason to pay more for one airline vs another. Now InsideTrip.com has done just that, and I must say, they’ve done a great job collecting and displaying this information.

I think the best way to explain what they have done is to just walk through a search. I figured I’d go for the route that has the most potential. Horrible delays, many competitors, unique product differences? Oh yeah, it has to be LA to New York. So let’s look for a trip from LAX to NYC on some random days in April (9-16).

As you can see (sorry I can’t have a wider picture here), my first results weren’t exactly ideal. A connection to LaGuardia one way and back from Philly’s train station (!?!) the other way? I think not. So, I cleaned it up using filters that any site would have to only show nonstop flights and only to Newark or JFK.

So now, my cheapest flight is $233 on United. Many people would just jump on that one if the flight times were fine and be on their way. But now, all of a sudden, I can see that for $40 more, JetBlue’s option received a 92 instead of an 86. Is it worth it? Well, it depends on what matters to you. Let’s look at the details. First, you’ll see the United flights and then below that the JetBlue flights. I’ve tiled across the three different tabs to make it easy to see everything.

Check out the details and you’ll see that there’s no difference in speed (duh, it’s a nonstop flight on both). When it comes to comfort, JetBlue gives me more legroom and if I’m checking bags, JetBlue does a better job of making sure that they arrive with me.

So is it worth it to pay more? I’d probably pay it, but that’s a personal decision, of course. For me, the most important thing is something that isn’t even addressed here but would be a nice addition. Long Beach is a far easier airport to navigate than LAX is. Sure, it looks like they both have similar security line situations, but anyone who has used both airports knows that you can park closer and cheaper, get to your gate quicker, and have an overall easier time at the airport if you fly out of Long Beach.

It just goes to show that there’s plenty more information that could be useful, and this first round of information that’s still in beta is really just the tip of the iceberg, albeit a very large tip.

There are, of course, some other issues, but I’ve been assured by InsideTrip.com CEO Dave Pelter that they’re working on them. They don’t handle information on codeshare flights accurately all the time. A LAX-LHR search showed that they were using information on Delta aircraft for a flight actually operated by Air France, but that’s something that’s easily fixed. If you happen to see any inaccuracies, Dave asks that you send any issues to info@insidetrip.com so they can fix them.

Fortunately, you can take things out of the trip quality calculation that may not interest you. I would certainly recommend removing aircraft age out of there, because that’s completely irrelevant. Try flying on a 20 year old US Airways 737 and a 40 year Northwest DC-9 and you’ll probably be begging for the DC-9 every time once you see the inside.

Probably the biggest issue I see is that you can’t pick and choose which attributes are most important to you by direction. If I’m flying to Europe, seat comfort will be most important so I can try to get a good night’s sleep, but if I’m flying back, then I care about food and inflight entertainment a lot more. Right now, you can only choose what’s important for the whole itinerary and they don’t have any plans to change that in the near future.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the back end is powered by Orbitz, so these fares will include the booking fee. Once you find what you want, you might still want to head over to the airline website to save a few bucks. Or you might decide that it’s worth the extra money to keep an informative site like this going. Hopefully they’ll start offering more options than Orbitz at some point, but until then, it’s still absolutely worth using this site.

BA moved in to the brand-spanking new Terminal 5 at Heathrow today, and it didn’t take long for the baggage system to fail. Looks like they stopped accepting checked bags and won’t start again until Friday morning.

I guess they didn’t want to shock travelers by having a baggage system that actually worked right away. That would have been too big of a change from the previous setup, so they must be easing people into it. Hopefully that’ll happen soon, but if you can avoid checking bags for the next few days, do it.

Recent media reports might make it seem like the sky is falling; as if every airplane you encounter may be unsafe. Just over the last few days, we’ve seen a rash of very public maintenance issues:

• Southwest rechecks 737s after maintenance record problems found
• United checks 747s for improperly calibrated altimeters
• American reinspects MD 80 aircraft wiring
• Delta follows American and reinspects MD-88 and MD-90 aircraft
• FAA orders 737s to be inspected for fuel leaks

It’s a pretty long and scary list, huh? Well, let me just say this.

You still shouldn’t worry about flying on any of these airlines. Many of these things have to do with record keeping issues. It’s usually just double checking something that’s already been addressed, and I haven’t heard of any major problems discovered in any of these inspections so far.

Now that the FAA has been scared into action after they messed up the whole Southwest debacle, they need to look like they’re doing good things. (And to be honest, they are, I think.) The carriers are going to comply as quickly as possible with this stepped up oversight. This can only be good, because it’ll clear out the cobwebs. I’m not expecting to see any major safety issues come out of this.

So, now that we have that out of the way, let’s discuss this from the perspective of someone flying this week. You guys might want to panic. Ok, ok. Panic is a little strong, but all of these checks are causing a ton of canceled flights. If you’re booked on an MD-80/90 type aircraft (also known as Super 80 in American’s marketing speak), you might want to rethink your travel plans while the airlines scramble to get these checks done.

Here’s an invention you can file under “really bad idea that should never see the light of day.” Yes, it’s the EMD Safety Bracelet. What does EMD stand for? Electro-Muscular Disruption. Oh yeah. This nasty little device will give flight crews the ability to physically disable you with the touch of a button.

Check out this video touting the not-so-fantastic benefits of this terrible product.

I think this is my favorite part.

To a businessman on his way home to be reunited with his family or to a young family going south for a winter holiday, wearing an EMD safety bracelet for a few hours during a flight is a small inconvenience to ensure their safe arrival. We feel if given the choice between taking a flight employing the added security provided by the EMD safety bracelet system and taking a flight without the additional security, many if not most passengers would happily opt for the extra security of the EMD safety bracelet.

This is just too much. So they’re suggesting that a passenger would gladly give up their ability to control their movements to a grumpy flight crew? I think not. What if the flight attendant had a bad day and didn’t like the way you asked for a drink? Eh, just shock the passenger into submission. Yeah yeah, I’m sure that there are all kinds of safety precautions, but I’m not buying it. If you like it, head on over to learn more about the system for yourself.

(via reddit and Infowars.com)