I’ve got more to write about from NBTA (tomorrow I’ll feature the battle of the First Class suites), but today I’m going to take a break and talk about Virgin America’s latest. Though I was supposed to meet with Virgin America spokesperson Abby Lunardini at the show, she ended up not being able to make it because it was right after the earthquake and she got stuck at her hotel. Of course, that won’t stop me from talking about their news of the week.

Remember when I posted earlier this month that Virgin America was up to something with their premium coach seats (bulkhead and exit row)? Well, they’ve finally announced what they’re going to do, and um, it’s ok, I guess.

Please excuse my lack of enthusiasm here, but I thought it was going to be something really good. I thought that maybe they would add more First Class seats or possibly create an elite level of their frequent flier program. It was nothing so bold. Instead, they’ve just created Main Cabin Select. If you sit in the bulkhead or the exit rows, you’ll still get a regular coach seat with a little more legroom. But now you’ll also get First Class amenities – free movies and food, premium check-in, etc.

See? Not exactly a huge change. It’s effectively First Class service in a Coach seat. The question is now . . . how much will it cost? They didn’t announce that, but they did say that you can begin purchasing these on September 15 for flights beginning mid-October. Previously, you had to pay between $15 and $50 depending upon the length of the flight to sit in those seats.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this is a bad idea. I’m just a little lukewarm because my expectations were higher. My guess is that people weren’t paying for the extra legroom before, so Virgin is trying to package things together to get people to find value in that offering. If this does that, then more power to them.

Possibly the more interesting news for Virgin America fliers came in this release about their Virgin Galactic partnership. No, that partnership isn’t very interesting, but it does say way at the bottom that “By Oct. 1, 2008, Elevate members will be able to begin redeeming points for Virgin America flights on-line.”

I’m happy to see that finally happen. The airline has been around for about a year now, and they’re only now getting around to defining the program. This should be good news for those of you who have been stockpiling flight credits with no place to use them.

OpenSkies has been full of news this week. First it was the announcement of Amsterdam – New York flights and then yesterday it was the decision to ditch coach and go with all premium economy and business class. The news was quite literally earth-shaking. In the middle of the press conference, the 5.4 earthquake you probably heard about started to roll through downtown LA.

I was sitting next to my friend Johnny Jet, and we looked at each other and instinctively headed for the doorway. Once it was over, a lot of the people didn’t seem too comfortable with the idea of hanging around and hovered by the door (anyone want to bet how many of them were from the east coast?), but as an LA native, I headed back to my seat without pause. OpenSkies MD Dale Moss seemed a bit rattled, but he picked up where he left off.

Enough about that. So what was it that was so rattling? The Amsterdam news was interesting. Dale said, “I always love to go into a market in which we can make a refreshing change and stir it up a bit.” Uh oh. For those keeping score, that means OpenSkies will now serve the two largest Air France/KLM hub cities from New York effective October 15. How long before AF/KL strikes back with a vengeance? This might be fun to watch.

But I think the bigger news is that only a couple months in, the airline has decided to reconfigure its airplanes. Instead of having 24 seats in business (called Biz), 28 seats in premium economy (called Prem+), and 30 seats in coach, they will now replace those 30 coach seats with 12 more in Prem+.

So now they’ve got a mere 64 seats onboard to cover the costs of an entire 757 flying across the Atlantic. Dale seemed confident that having the backing of BA, codesharing, access to their frequent flier program, fuel hedging, etc is going to make a big difference. I agree, but I wonder if it’s enough. They have what looks like a fantastic product, but their fares don’t seem very high right now.

I asked Dale if this was simply a strategic move or if early demand for the Prem+ seats was driving the change. Dale responded that it was a strategic decision. They’ve always wanted to focus on the premium passenger and even though it was “almost always oversold,” coach was “a distraction.” So now they don’t have to worry about that anymore, I guess. He also noted that the reduction in capacity will help give them longer legs on a full tank of fuel.

He also said that Prem+ demand has been strong, but more interestingly he said, “The closer we got with our friends at L’Avion, it validated that.” So, is it possible that L’Avion gave them such incredible information that paying the costs of reconfiguring only a couple months after the planes were first configured makes sense? I’m skeptical. It sounds like they’re ready to make that jump strategically, something they’ve probably wanted to do since the beginning but for some reason did not.

They’ve got what appears to be a very nice product and low fares for what’s being offered. I’d certainly keep them in mind if you’re in New York. Dale also mentioned that Boston and Washington are possibilities for future service in the US with cities like Brussels, Milan, and Barcelona in the EU. They’re going to be expanding, and that’s good for travelers.

It was an action-packed day at NBTA today. I think I talked to enough people and sat in enough seats to really have a couple weeks of posts here. Unfortunately, as you might expect, the focus is almost entirely on the premium cabin experience. So, much of this won’t be useful for many of you (including me), but it’s still fun to see what’s going on. Let’s just forget about how crazy it seems that airlines spend a ton of money on their NBTA booths while they bleed and instead just talk about the news.

The big news from yesterday was Continental’s announcement that it was installing a lie-flat seat in BusinessFirst . . . unless you’re flying on a 767. The 777s will get the new seats first starting in fall of next year. Then they’ll move on to the 757s. And of course, when the 787s show up, they’ll get the new seats as well.

So why not the 767s? It’s a matter of space. On the 777s, they’ll keep 50 seats up front and lose only one row of coach. The 757s won’t lose any seats at all, but the 767s are a different story. CEO Larry Kellner was clearly very proud of the fact that their seats are wide. (This seat is 25″ wide with the armrests down in the fully flat position.) They are currently set up with 2-1-2 abreast on the 767s and they don’t want to go 2-2-2 and reduce space. So, these seats don’t work for them in that configuration. When I asked Larry about it, he said they plan to keep looking, and they expect they’ll find a lie-flat solution soon.

Let’s forget about all the boring stuff and let’s talk about the seat itself. It’s nice. After sitting in United’s seat yesterday as well, I realize that the seats seem similar with a couple differences. First, Continental gives you a little less privacy, but you have a LOT more storage. You can see the Continental seat above left and the United seat at right. Continental also seems to have a bigger screen in the seatback. Oh yes, and half United’s seats face backwards while Continental’s all go the same way.

But back to that storage thing. Behind the headrest, Continental has put a ton of stuff. Besides being a storage area, there is a universal power outlet, a USB port, and the headphone jack. They’re calling it the Tower of Power (at left), and I think it’s a smart place to put everything, because it’s not in your way. Unfortunately, they’re not sure if the storage area will be usable during takeoff and landing yet, but they’re trying to make that happen. I’d say it needs to happen for it to really be useful. At the very least, there is storage underneath the seat in front of you that can be used at all times.

Oh, and about that area in front of you . . . there isn’t much room for your legs (at right). With shoes on, my feet barely fit and I have small size 9 feet, but without them, it should be ok if not a bit cramped. They say that it will accommodate a 6′ 6″ tall person, and apparently CEO Larry Kellner was the model used to make sure it worked.

Larry is not a small man.

They also ran this by a bunch of frequent fliers in Houston and Newark to make sure they liked it. Apparently they did, but I still have one concern. If you see the picture at left, you can see that getting out from the window to the aisle is not easy. You’re going to have to climb over someone, and you better be limber.

The response to that? Mark Bergsrud, SVP of Marketing Programs and Distribution for the airline, said that they weren’t willing to reduce the number of seats, and this was the best solution available considering the constraints. Their customers wanted a lie-flat seat and while it isn’t the easiest thing to climb over, it’s actually easier to get out of than it is to get out of their current BusinessFirst seat. So they’re pretty happy with it despite its drawbacks. It will be interesting to see if that causes a lot of problems in production.

Other than that, the seat was impressive, comfortable, and quite wide. They’ve done a very good job here, considering the constraints.

This weekend, we had a quick trip up north to do some more wedding planning. We took JetBlue up since Long Beach is always our first choice. But we saved over $100 flying back on Southwest, and they had a better schedule for us anyway. Since a friend offered to pick us up at LAX, it was a done deal. Flights were good both ways.

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July 26, 2008
JetBlue #242 Lv Long Beach (LGB) 8a Arr Oakland (OAK) 917a
LGB: Gate 2A, Runway 30, Dept 3m Early
OAK: Gate 9, Runway 29, Arr 2m Early
Aircraft: N566JB, Airbus A320-232, “Blue Suede Shoes”, ~90% Full
Seat: 18F
Flight Time: 52m

We left home at 7a for our 8a flight. Security lines were short, and we had plenty of time to spare. They boarded the front rows of the plane first, strangely. Apparently they hadn’t pulled up the stairs to the back of the plane yet, so they just made us wait. When they did get that ready, we went toward the back and I snapped this great shot of the tail. I love boarding via airstairs.

Not much else to say about this flight. It was good and the flight attendants were friendly. The only thing of note (at least in my warped mind), was the snack selection. Apparently Frito Lay has given up innovating completely and has now decided, “Hey, why don’t we just throw all of our chips into one bag and sell it as something new and cool?” Behold, the Munchies. They also threw in some of those fancy 70% organic cookies. I still think that’s funny.

We landed and grabbed our Budget rent a car (with the awesome 9,999 bonus Delta miles). It was a nice weekend, and we got everything done that we needed to do. The only downside was that it was race weekend in Sonoma, so we ended up paying $150 for a Quality Inn that should have been half that price.

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July 27, 2008
Southwest #1655 Lv Oakland (OAK) 2p Arr Los Angeles (LAX) 320p
OAK: Gate 28, Runway 29, Dept 5m Late
LAX: Gate 5, Runway 24R, Arr 5m Early
Aircraft: N455WN, Boeing 737-7H4, Canyon Blue, ~99% Full
Seat: 12E
Flight Time: 54m

We did our work in Napa yesterday morning and then we raced to the airport, hoping we’d make our 2p flight home. We dropped the car off and took the 30 hour shuttle ride back to the terminal. Man, that thing is far. It took 10 minutes to print our boarding pass and get through security, and then we went to the brand new concourse that Oakland probably is now regretting they built (traffic . . . dropping).

One complaint for the folks at OAK. There are some prime airplane watching areas when you’re walking down toward the new concourse (picture above), but they covered it up with art. Give me windows! When you get into the new area, it looks a lot like a nice version of LAX Terminal 8. There are stores on one side and gates on the other. They couldn’t have built gates on both sides, because that’s basically at the perimeter of the airport and planes don’t enjoy parking in the bay.

Southwest has rolled out some parts of its new gate area design here and it’s pretty nice. They had normal gate area seating, but there were a couple rows at each gate with these comfy chairs. The best part? You can see the USB ports and power outlets in there. Nice.

Anyway, boarding worked as well as it should these days. Nobody lined up until the gate agent called for it. And then, plenty of people tried to cheat the system. The gate agent stopped them all and said it happens all the time. Glad to see they’re enforcing it.

For some reason, Southwest couldn’t get their stuff together here and we pushed back 5 minutes late for no good reason. At this point, the captain apparently decided it was time to make up for lost time. I can’t think of a shorter taxi that I’ve had at an airport before. We headed right out to the runway and entered it part of the way in (taxiway U for those who care). I don’t think he used the brakes at all when we taxied and soon enough, we were airborne and through the low cloud layer.

It seemed like we were ascending pretty quickly and my ears were feeling it. It wasn’t long before we settled at the extremely high altitude (for such a short flight) of 41,000 ft. They threw a few peanuts and drinks at us and then it was time to land. We were at the gate 5 minutes early and on our way home in no time.

I’ll have a trip report from my short weekend up in the Bay Area tomorrow morning, and then I’ll be spending the next couple days at the NBTA (National Business Travel Association) convention. If you’re in town for the show, drop me a note (cf@crankyflier.com) and let me know.

The good news is that I have plenty of press conferences to attend and meetings to have, so I should have some good posts this week. Stay tuned.