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)

Remember that whole strategy from LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about airport regionalization? Well, it took yet another step backward yesterday with the recommendation of the Burbank airport authority to enact a hard curfew (via this excellent Airliners.net thread).

You can guess where this is coming from - the surrounding community. Thanks to their objections, the airport wants to prohibit any operations between 10p and 7a. Is that a horrible idea? Well, not entirely. We have one of those here in Long Beach, and it’s nice to have peace and quiet while we sleep. That being said, these are very different in that Burbank will have much stiffer fines. That’s bad news for travelers.

In Long Beach, airlines don’t pay a fine for violating the curfew until their third violation. At that point, they pay a whopping $100. Then each subsequent violation in a twelve month period will cost $300. (Read more) The Burbank fine, according to the Application (pdf), will cost $3,671 for the first fine, $7,342 for the second, $11,013 for the third, and $14,684 for the fourth over a twelve month period. If an airline has four violations, it’s banned from the airport for a year.

I know, you’re wondering what this has to do with you, right? Well, with penalties that steep, airlines will be less willing to schedule any flights near that curfew time at night for fear that they’ll miss it. Right now, there are a couple of flights scheduled to go before 7a and I think one after 10p. The night flights, even the ones before curfew, are most at risk, because if they’re delayed in the slightest, they won’t be able to land. Then early morning flights get in trouble because the plane that usually spends the night in Burbank ready to fly early the next day won’t be able to land until morning. That, of course, is dependent upon the airlines being willing to even schedule flights at those times with the potential penalties so high.

Probably even more annoying than having your flight not get out on time will be when you’re on a late arriving flight into Burbank. Let’s say you’re on the last flight from SFO and fog has delayed flights a couple hours. Well, that last flight would probably go if it were heading to Long Beach because the cost of violating the curfew isn’t prohibitively steep if it doesn’t happen often. (Honestly, it could rise some and still be ok.) At Burbank? Forget it. They’ll just park the plane or divert you to another airport instead. Great, huh?

My advice: If this curfew gets enacted, don’t fly into Burbank too close to the curfew. Fly to LAX instead. Not what the Mayor of LA had in mind, right? Well, he’s not exactly following his regionalization plan either. While Burbank is thumbing its nose at the that strategy, Mayor Villaraigosa is crowing about a new flight that he’s landed at LAX.

The new flight is on Korean Air. The airline will now fly from LAX to Sao Paulo, presumably as an extension of one of the daily Seoul/Incheon flights. Asian carriers that want access to the largest city in South America can’t fly nonstop (range problems) so they need to find a place to go first. JAL used to fly via LAX (I actually took the flight once), but now they go through JFK. So, Korean will now pick up the slack and try to make a go of it.

Now, Mayor Villaraigosa claims in the city’s press release that the flights are “a direct result of the Mayor’s 2006 trade mission to Asia.” Um, right. I really hope the airline isn’t sitting around saying, “Gee, you know I like that guy. How cool was it that he came to visit us? We should start a flight to Brazil from his city.”

So, what are the takeaways here?

• If Burbank enacts this curfew, don’t book a flight arriving there near the curfew for fear you may not get there in time
• If you’re flying to Sao Paulo from LA, congrats. You now have a nonstop option.
• Regionalization isn’t as easy as you (or the Mayor) might think

It’s amazing how fast time flies. It was a year ago that the inaugural Travvies were handed out, and I was fortunate enough to receive a pair - Best Single Author Blog and Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog. Today, nominations for the 2008 awards have opened.

Once again, Mark Ashley over at Upgrade: Travel Better is hosting this year, so unfortunately he is ineligible once again. We’ll really have to get someone else to host it one of these years so he can have a shot. If you aren’t reading his blog, you should.

Go to this page for all the info you need. Basically, you have two weeks to nominate up to three blogs per category. Then a panel of judges will pick the four finalists, at which point everyone gets to go back and vote for their favorites.

Make sure you head on down to nominate your picks.

It looks like high oil prices may have claimed their first airline victim. Aloha Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, and unlike their last stint, I’m not so sure they’re going to come out of this one.

What does that mean if you have a ticket on Aloha? Nothing right now. Everything is operating as scheduled, thanks to bankruptcy court approval but I wouldn’t expect it to stay that way for long.

It’s long been said that there isn’t room for three airlines in Hawai’i, and many accusations have been made that go! came in with the expectation that they could run Aloha out of the market. They may have succeeded, at least, that’s whom Aloha is blaming. It’s going to be awfully hard to come up with a business plan for Aloha in which someone will be willing to invest. I mean, that’s why the current owner decided to cut off funding now. With oil prices where they are and fares as low as they are within Hawai’i, it’s not looking good for the airline.

I hate to say it, but I personally would be hesitant to book a flight on Aloha for an interisland flight more than a couple weeks out right now. You’re probably better off sticking with Hawaiian. The question now is whether or not any part of the airline will survive in one form or another. Seems to me that breaking the airline up might be the best option available right now.

The long haul flying could be attractive to someone. Might Southwest decide to pick up Aloha’s 737-700s with ETOPS certification? Could be an interesting little operation for them, especially since there’s no way to count on ATA staying in the Hawaiian market right now.

Something tells me this is going to be the first of many bankruptcies this year. If you’re booked on Aloha, you should be fine for now, but you’ll want to keep any eye on any developments that may change that. Probably saddest of all here is that if Aloha does go out of business, it will mark the end of scheduled 737-200 operations in the US. It wasn’t that long ago that America West, Southwest, US Airways, United, Alaska, and Delta were all operating the type.

My brother lives in Philly, and Wednesday night he had the unfortunate task of trying to fly out of that place in a soaking rain. Now, you know rain in general doesn’t cause problems, but in that magical Northeast corridor, it means congested airports like Philly basically grind to a halt.

He had to work a full day and then take the last flight out to Phoenix on Southwest (via Chicago/Midway). When he headed to the airport, there were average arrival delays of 3h 43m, and you know that, of course, means that departures weren’t going out on time either. Needless to say, his flight was going to misconnect in Chicago by a couple hours, leaving him stranded overnight.

What could he do?

I thought I’d piece together how I helped him with the thought that it might be helpful for others as well. Remember, in situations like this, the airline employees just want to get you out of there as quickly as possible, because they have thousands of people to help. So, the rules that may have applied to your ticket before are out the window. If you do the legwork and present a viable option, they’re likely to let you do it.

1) Determine Your Goal

When the weather is a mess like that and delays are rampant, you need to figure out your goal. For some people, it might be worth rescheduling your trip and going home. For others, you may need to have a certain time you need to be at your destination. Still others may just prefer to take the easiest option, even if it isn’t the quickest.

For my brother, he needed to be in Phoenix by 8a Thursday morning. With that in mind, I went to work.

2) Look for Earlier Flights

Knowing that his flight to Chicago would be delayed for a long time, it’s a natural move to look for any earlier flights. Those are probably also delayed and can end up getting you to your connection point at about the same time you were supposed to arrive. Sure enough, there was an earlier flight to Chicago, but the chances of getting on it very slim to none. Besides, there were other options out there that looked more appealing so he passed on trying for standby.

3) Look for Nonstops

My brother took the late connection because the last Phoenix nonstop was too early in the day. With delays, however, he had a chance on getting it. As I mentioned, when operations are horribly messed up like this, most airlines will get you there anyway they can; forget about fare rules and restrictions. So, he went to the gate and got on the standby list. With #26, his chances weren’t good, but they looked better than the earlier Chicago flight that was leaving at about the same time. He didn’t make it.

4) Grab the Route Map/Timetable

While he waited for the nonstop, we looked into backup plans. For smaller airports, this may not be necessary because there aren’t very many options. But in bigger airports where there are many destinations, the best thing you can do is figure out what options are out there. Most airlines offer a timetable on their website, so you can just download that and take a look. It’s a good idea to do this before you travel, just in case you need it. If you’re at the airport without it, just scan the departure screens to see where flights are going. Still, you’ll be much better off with an internet connection so log on or call a friend if you can.

I just started looking through all the cities Southwest flew from Philly and tried to manually build connections. Nothing worked that would get him there that night. So then I started going back to the goal. He needed to be in Phoenix by 8a. Now, my brother is used to not getting much sleep (he’s a doctor), so I knew that he would be willing to give up sleep to reach his ultimate goal.

His worst case scenario was that he took the Chicago flight, spent the night, and flew out first thing Thursday morning. That wouldn’t get him in until 915a, still a little too late. So, I looked for better alternatives. The closer I could get him to Phoenix that night, the easier it would be to get him to Phoenix early in the morning.

Sure enough, I found a flight to Austin that would allow him to take an early morning flight to Phoenix arriving at 740a. And besides, who wouldn’t rather spend the night in Austin than Midway?

He was fifth on the standby list, but that flight took none. Damn. But wait, there was one more chance. There was a slightly later flight that actually went through Nashville before arriving in Austin. He tried that one.

Success! Sure, he didn’t arrive Austin until just before 2a, but he did get about 3 hours of sleep before taking the 7a flight on Thursday to Phoenix. In the end, he made it by 8a, and for him that’s all that mattered.

So remember, keep your ultimate goal in mind. You won’t always get lucky like this. That last flight could have just as easily not worked out. He would have had to go to Chicago and fly out later Thursday morning. But knowing your options means that you have a much better chance than a lot of other people.

You could have seen this one coming from miles away. As of April 1, JetBlue will begin charging if you want to sit in those seats with extra legroom up front. My reaction? I can’t believe it’s taken them this long.

Usually, airlines try to carve out reasons to charge more for a variety of things, but rarely is there a true benefit to the traveler. In this case, you get more legroom so you should absolutely should pay more. They say that the price will start at $10 for a short haul. A quick check of Long Beach - JFK shows that they’ll charge $20 for that route, so you can expect the price to fall within that range.

There’s actually a lot more that’s going into this plan than just slapping a price tag on some seats. They’re actually going to reconfigure the aircraft. Now, only rows 2 through 5, 10, and 11 will have extra legroom. Everything else will be standardized at 34″. Oh, and this only includes the A320. The Embraers will not see any change, and only the single exit row will have more legroom for more money.

So why are they doing this change on the A320? They must not think there are enough people to pay for all those seats with 36″ in front of the wing. So, rows 1 and 6 through 9 will go down from 36″ to 34″ allowing rows 2 through 5 to move up to 38″. Rows 10 and 11 always were at 38″ since they’re exit rows. Make sense? Yeah, I thought not. Take a look at this chart I put together showing the history of JetBlue’s A320 configurations.

Better?

Now there are 36 seats on the A320 and 4 on the Embraer 190 that offer 4 extra inches of legroom for $10 to $20 per flight. Remember, even regular coach seats on JetBlue have 2 to 3″ more legroom than most other airlines do in coach. So, is it worth it? I think I’d probably pay it for the long haul trip but not on a short haul. What does everyone think?

By the way, it only takes 14 man hours to reconfigure the airplane, so these will all be completed in the next couple of days. If you fly between now and the end of the month, consider it a bonus that you get great legroom for no extra money.

Edited @ 944a on 3/20: Picture updated with correct seat count along with further description