After I wrote my post “Booking A Flight In a Time of Uncertainty,” I knew it was bound to bite me. Sure enough, it happened yesterday when Midwest canceled one of my flights this summer. Though that’s a big deal to me, you guys probably don’t care. But there were a couple of things that I found during this process that I thought might be worth writing about.

It started just after lunch when I simultaneously received an email and a recorded phone call saying that there had been a schedule change and I needed to call Midwest to be reaccommodated. Uh oh. Since they said I had to call to be rebooked, I knew what that meant. My flight was toast.

I called the airline and had to wait for a full 10 minutes before someone answered to rebook me. Unfortunately, our redeye from LAX to Milwaukee has disappeared, so they offered to rebook us on a morning flight with a) a four hour connection in Milwaukee or b) an overnight in Milwaukee. Um, no.

So, I quickly went online while I sat there weighing my options and noticed that there were alternatives that were actually cheaper than what we originally paid. I told Midwest I wanted a refund and they obliged. Then I rebooked on Northwest (I know, I said not to do that in my post, but it was convenient). Now, we’ll get to our destination a little earlier and we’ll save $160 between the two of us. That brings me to my two points.

1. Since I had to wait for 10 minutes on the phone with Midwest, something tells me that our flight wasn’t the only one that was canceled. Anyone have any details on what else might have quietly been cut out?




2. Why the heck have fares gone DOWN for a flight this summer?!? That is definitely not a good sign for demand trends. I mean, I’ll gladly take it, but I certainly would have expected to pay more. Airlines cannot afford to be lowering fares right now.

Hopefully these flights won’t be canceled on me, but in this environment, who knows. At least I’m not flying Silverjet.

Hmm, that title sounds rather Seinfeld-y, doesn’t it? But seriously, what is the deal? Maybe I should back up. How many of you even knew that American had a blog? Take my quick poll below. (I haven’t done a poll in awhile, so I thought I’d break it out again.)

Would you like to see stories about sticky situations that our Cranky Concierge clients find themselves in?

• Yes, those kinds of stories are great
• Yes, but only if it happens on a Wednesday so it doesn't displace other content
• No, that's boring

View Results

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Now, I’m going to guess that a ton of people know about Southwest’s blog, fewer know about Delta’s, and just about nobody knows about American’s. And really, why should they?

Since the blog was first rolled out on April 11, there have been a whopping 5 posts. The last one? On April 25 – more than a month ago. Last we heard:

It’s time for us to officially join the mighty blogosphere, and that’s just what we have done. We’re going to take this “starter” blog and beef it up. And make sure our readers know that this is real folks at American blogging …and not someone’s nephew.

But while we get things rolling, we want to keep the dialogue moving. So, we’ll make some changes to spruce up the look of this space. In the meantime, keep checking in as I work to develop my voice on this blog and find others within American that can give new insight to our company.

Hmm. Since that time, nothing has changed. They certainly haven’t kept the dialogue moving. It still has the generic look and feel and nothing has changed. So, I sent a note over to Billy S, the man behind the blog, asking what was happening. The response? “Yes, we have been a little too quite. [sic]” That’s it.

I’m sure someone at AA reads Cranky. So, what’s the story? Are you guys in or are you out?

A month ago, Horizon Air revealed its plans to focus on the Q400, drop the Q200 and CRJ-700 aircraft, and shrink its operation by a fair amount. Then last week, American announced its decision to cut 11 to 12% of itself for the fall schedule. Yesterday, both airlines decided to throw out some details, and there are some interesting moves.

Let’s start with American. The airline will drop Chicago to Buenos Aires and Boston to San Diego on September 3. Meanwhile, Chicago to Honolulu will fly on peak days only from September 3 through January 5 and then it disappears altogether. In a separate press release today, American said it will cancel its flying from New York/JFK to London/Stansted on July 2 as well.

None of this should be terribly surprising. We’re looking at long haul (read: gas-guzzling) flights with a high percentage of leisure demand. Still, I’m a little surprised that Honolulu is losing a flight considering how much capacity has already dropped to the Islands with the disappearance of Aloha and ATA. And I’m also surprised about Stansted . . . mostly that it wasn’t dropped sooner. It was clearly a thinly veiled attempt to drive Eos and MAXjet out. They’re gone, so why stay? Again, not a big surprise.

Where it does get interesting, however, is in the American Eagle moves. The press release doesn’t say much, but an internal memo sent out to American Eagle employees says that American will slash San Juan departures from 55 to 33 this winter, the peak season down there. It will be mostly frequency reductions, though flights will cease altogether from San Juan to both Aruba and Samana (in the Dominican Republic, they say, though I’ve never even heard of it). That means they’ll free up some of their ATR 72 turboprops which will transfer over to Dallas where they will take over the flying currently done by Saab 340 turboprops.

There are currently 29 Saab 340s in the active fleet, and they will all be retired. Some of those are in Dallas, but the rest fly out of LAX. From LA, they currently fly to San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Fresno, and Monterey. According to the memo, these aircraft will be replaced with regional jets, though there will be some flight reductions. Schedules, however have yet to be finalized.

I’ll be amazed to see how long they can keep this flying up out of LA. I mean, RJs are not cheap to fly, and those short routes don’t see too many local passengers. It’s mostly for connections and I think they’ll be hard-pressed to justify keeping these flights around.

Now on to Horizon. These guys had much more comprehensive changes announced today. Only Butte to Seattle and Billings to Portland will go away completely. A slew of others will see reduced frequency, and you can see those in the above link. There are a couple of new routes coming out of this as well and they’re, well, weird.

Billings to Helena? San Jose to Sacramento? Yeah, that’s just odd. Basically they’re creating round-robin trips where you fly from point A to point B to point C and then back to point A. These have never really worked well for airlines in the past, so I’m not sure what makes them think this will be a winner this time.

These announcements are just going to be the beginning for Horizon and American. The Horizon schedules still include ample Q200 and CRJ-700 flying, and we know both those aircraft will be leaving the fleet. American, meanwhile, is nowhere near reaching the 11 to 12% cut they’ve announced was coming. Hold on tight. There’s more to come.

Ok, so maybe it’s not actually an Aerobed, but it’s close enough. Anyone get a chance to see Swiss’s new business class product yet? It’s an interesting concept, but I have to wonder if it’s actually as comfortable as they say.

For those who didn’t see it, you can see the press release and a flash demonstration on the Swiss site. What’s unique about it? First of all, check out the layout.

The seat goes flat, but to save valuable floor space, each person’s feet go underneath the seat in front of it. Instead of actually going under the seat, however, they go under the wide arm rest. I believe that’s similar to what United is doing and others as well, but this is different in that each row has a different number of seats. On the Airbus widebodies that Swiss flies, that means one row will have 1-2-2 configuration while the next will have 1-2-1. That provides plenty of opportunities for single travelers to be alone, but it also allows people traveling together to sit together. Nice.

What else is cool? Well, the Aerobed, of course. Yeah, it sounds weird, I know. These seats have no foam and instead just have a big air cushion (or two). It has a pneumatic air system that allows you to adjust how much air goes into the seat. That means you pick the firmness level, and it can change when you’re sitting versus when you’re sleeping. They say there are all kinds of additional benefits such as weight-savings and lack of flammable materials.

Apparently, this is already on Eurofly’s long haul aircraft, so I have to assume that Swiss did a lot of testing before opting for this one. That being said, I’ll have to reserve judgment until I have a chance to see for myself.

Installation begins next Spring and it will finish by 2011. It’s interesting to see Swiss trying to differentiate itself from Papa Lufthansa, which owns the airline. Maybe Lufthansa is using Swiss as a testing ground for its own future fleet plans.

I try not to bore you guys with my media mentions too often (if you really care, I put them on this page), but I thought you might like to see my TV debut. I got a call a couple months ago from the guys at Current TV asking if they could do a short profile piece on me. Of course, I said yes, but I had one stipulation – they had to send me a copy because I don’t get Current on my cable system. Fortunately, they put all their programming on their website.

So, here’s the clip. Head down below to read more about the filming experience and let me know what you think.

So, that’s it. It was actually a really fun experience. I started by telling my story to the guys at Current and they found a producer, Dave O’Brien, who came up with a plan. This seemed like it would be easy to set up with one exception. He wanted to do some filming on a plane.

Fortunately, the folks at Southwest were more than happy to help. They were able to arrange a Saturday morning visit to John Wayne/Orange County airport so that we could film on a plane. As you probably know, Southwest planes don’t sit on the ground for long, so if we wanted to do it, it had to be REALLY early in the day.

We met with our friendly Southwest contacts at 530a and went straight to the shiny new 737-700 that still had that new airplane smell. (It was only a couple months old.) We got that filming out of the way as quickly as we could so that they could prepare it for a full day of flying.

Once we finished in there, we filmed in the terminal, by the ticket counter, and just far enough away from security that the TSA wouldn’t hassle us. By 9a, I was already pretty tired, but the day was only half over. The producer and I had talked about some of my favorite planespotting sites, and of course I mentioned the park by the In ‘n Out at LAX. So, we left the OC and headed up the 405 to LAX.

Once there, he had the unique problem of getting me to focus on the camera long enough without looking up at the planes. As you can see in the video, that didn’t go so well because I couldn’t stop turning when I heard a plane go by. He had me talking for a long time over there about everything and anything related to the industry. Finally we finished around 11a and by then I was more than ready for a Double Double (animal style, no tomatoes) to cap the morning.

It was a very tiring day, but it was a lot of fun. Dave was a really nice guy, and though I’d never done anything like this before, he made it easy and time passed really quickly. The only snag? I have transition lenses on my glasses (yes, I’m a huge dork), so they couldn’t film me wearing them outside. I must admit, it’s pretty weird watching myself without my glasses on.

Just a couple notes here. InsideTrip was one of the many websites we discussed throughout the day, but they got some great PR here when the editing was done. In case you were wondering, I’m not affiliated with them in any way, but I did have an email exchange with the founder when I wrote my post about the site.

Also, you may be wondering why I didn’t dress up for the occasion. First of all, I hate dressing up. Seriously. I mean, I wear flip flops to PriceGrabber during the day. But more importantly, they wanted me to dress as I do when I travel. I always wear a sweater, comfortable jeans, and closed-toed shoes, usually tennis shoes.

Anyway, thanks to Current for being interested in putting this together, and thanks to Dave for doing a really great job with it.