I know I’m a little late with this one. When I rode the A380, very few others had seen the inside. The Embraer 190, however, has been in service for awhile now and it, along with its slightly smaller and larger siblings (Embraer 170/175/195), has seen plenty of customers around the US. That being said, it’s still my first time riding it, so I thought I’d comment for those who haven’t had the chance yet.

For JetBlue, the Embraer 190 was an opportunity to serve smaller markets that could only fill 100 seats instead of the 150 on the A320. Other airlines have used the aircraft in this family as a 70 seat regional jet (United, US Airways) and a mainline 100 seat aircraft (eg DC-9) replacement. (Yes, that’s Northwest.) It was supposed to give the feeling and comfort of a big aircraft cabin but still only hold 70 to 110 people. It’s sort of a hybrid between a regional jet and a traditional narrowbody. Did it live up to its billing?

I’d say it did, although the slightly small overhead bin means that larger regular-sized carry-ons need to be gate checked. If that’s the biggest problem I have, you know it’s not bad at all, even if the inconsistency is a bit nagging. Read below for the full trip report which included an A320 on the way up and the Embraer 190 back down.

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August 16, 2008
JetBlue #220 Lv Long Beach (LGB) 700a Arr San Jose (SJC) 815a
LGB: Gate 2A, Runway 30, Dept OT
SJC: Gate C4, Runway 30L, Arr 6m Early
Aircraft: N624JB, Airbus A320-232, “Blue-T-Ful”, ~99% Full
Seat: 7A
Flight Time: 54m

I’ll keep this part brief because there wasn’t much to say. The security line in Long Beach took a whopping 15 minutes. I was surprised until I realized that the bottleneck was the incredibly slow ID checker and the lines to get through the security checkpoints themselves were non-existent. How frustrating.

But it didn’t matter. We made it with plenty of time and leisurely boarded our early morning trip up north for a friend’s wedding. I passed the short flight time by watching Olympic basketball, and before I knew it we were on the ground. I haven’t been to San Jose in a long time, but they are really doing a number on this airport. Terminal B is finally being built, and the old Terminal C, where JetBlue flies, is on its last legs. I’ll still take it over the overcrowded and inadequately-sized Terminal A any day.

After a great wedding, we had hoped to fly back around midday. Unfortunately, JetBlue’s schedule leaves a huge hole in the middle of the day, so we had to wait until an afternoon flight. Fortunately, we had no trouble filling our time by wandering around my old Stanford stomping grounds. I still miss that campus. (And if you’re ever up there, make sure you stop in for a sandwich at JJ&F.)

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August 17, 2008
JetBlue #225 Lv San Jose (SJC) 340p Arr Long Beach (LGB) 454p
SJC: Gate C4, Runway 30R, Dept 23m Late
LGB: Gate 4, Runway 30, Arr 25m Late
Aircraft: N193JB, Embraer 190-100 IGW, “Peek-A-Blue”, ~99% Full
Seat: 3A
Flight Time: 59m

We made it back to San Jose with plenty of time, so we grabbed a seat and relaxed. The screen said that our flight was boarding, but the inbound hadn’t even arrived yet. The agents did come on the PA and say that we would be only 10 to 15 minutes late. The plane finally arrived just before our departure time and boarding began.

The agent made an announcement that this was one of JetBlue’s “express” aircraft. (I don’t think they call it that, and if anyone over there is reading this, they might not be too happy.) But the point was that the overhead bins were smaller and wouldn’t fit the bags that you can fit on a regular-sized aircraft. I just had a backpack and a garment bag, but my fiancee had a roller that she thought she’d try to fit.

Upon boarding, my fiancee turned to me and pointed out what looked like duct tape holding the engine onto the wing. I know it’s speed tape, and I’m sure that it’s not actually holding it on the wing, but it still caused some concern among other passengers. I tried to get a picture of it inflight, but it didn’t really come out very well (at right).

Once onboard, the roller bag did fit, but it only fit sideways and her bag was relatively thin so it barely made it. Unfortunately for my garment bag, the bins were short enough to prevent me from fitting the bag on top of other bags. That wasn’t good.

But other than that, the product was similar to what you’d find on any other JetBlue airplane. It was nice only having 2×2 seating so there was no middle seat, but it definitely gives a more claustrophobic feel to the cabin. It was at least a taller cabin than a regional jet, and the cabin height was plenty for most people.

The only other thing that stood out for me was the window size and spacing. The windows were nice and big, but they were relatively far apart. It left for plenty of wall space and imperfectly placed windows, as you can see at right.

I had plenty of time to pay attention to these things since the television system, though working on the ground, shut off before departure and didn’t start up again until we were at cruise altitude. They were clearly having trouble with the system on that flight, but it did finally stabilize. We came down to the west of LA and had a spectacular view all the way down. Then we flipped around over Catalina and came in for a nice landing to the northwest.

Nobody has ever accused Ryanair of being a “nice” airline. On time? Yep. Cheap? Oh yeah. But if you’re looking for more than that, you’re in the wrong place. That’s why it’s no surprise that Ryanair is starting to crack down on how people buy tickets on the airline. To make sure you don’t get caught in the crossfire, if you fly these guys, you’ll want to book direct at ryanair.com.

So what exactly is going on here? I must admit, I had no idea this type of problem even existed. Companies can’t just start selling tickets on an airline unless they have access to the airline’s schedule, fares, and availability. When airlines participate in distribution systems like Sabre and Worldspan, travel agents all over gain access to that. When it comes to selling on the web, the big sellers will tend to have deals with the airlines directly that allow them to make more money from a sale as well.

Ryanair isn’t a fan of these things, so it doesn’t participate. The airline isn’t alone here. Airlines like Southwest have long shunned these distribution systems because it costs money. Southwest has recently begun playing more and more in the systems in order to get the business traveler, but you still won’t see them on any consumer-facing sites. Ryanair, as far as I can tell, doesn’t play with anyone and has really clamped down since they told everyone to stop selling their tickets back in May.

So I was surprised when I saw the news that Ryanair announced it would be canceling reservations that were booked on third party sites against their will. I couldn’t figure out how this was happening, but I think I get it now.

Some websites out there were scraping fare and availability info from the Ryanair website and then selling the tickets via their own interface. I have to assume this meant that they were just automatically making the bookings via Ryanair.com and then charging the passengers extra for it. Back in May, Ryanair told them to knock it off, and the bigger guys did. Some of them continued, and now Ryanair says it will cancel bookings made through those sites.

So, if you’re heading over to Europe and you want to fly Ryanair, you should really book direct. Or, if you just want to fly on those routes and you don’t care who it’s on, you should definitely shop around. The online travel agents are trying to fight Ryanair by giving good deals elsewhere. Check out CheapOair, for example. They’re offering 15% $15 off flights on routes that Ryanair flies as long as you fly on a DIFFERENT airline on that same route. It’s true that there aren’t many airlines that fly to Ryanair’s remote airport locations, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any overlap.

As far as I’m concerned, Ryanair has the right to do whatever they want with their own inventory. If they don’t want anyone else selling it, so be it. But as a consumer, I’d be happy to take advantage of the deals that seem to be popping up because of this spat. Do your homework, but if you choose Ryanair, make sure to book on their website so you don’t find yourself in trouble.

Edited @ 742a on 8/19 to change CheapOair discount from 15% to $15.

How Important is Aircraft Type?
Do people really care what type of plane they’re flying on? A report from Boeing says that they do, but I’m not entirely convinced on this one.

Air Canada’s Olympic Ads Work, United’s Don’t
United and Air Canada have both put out ads as official Olympic sponsors. While Air Canada’s work for me, United’s do not.

Northwest’s Smart WorldPerks Marketing
There are plenty of reasons not to like airline marketing, but I received an email from Northwest after my latest booking that was very smart on their part.

United and American Make Opposite Fleet Moves
United is likely to cancel its narrowbody commitments while American is ramping up. Why are the two airlines taking such different tacts?

American and British Airways Apply for Antitrust Immunity
Now that open skies between the US and Europe has opened up Heathrow, American and British Airways and looking to catch up to the other alliances.

This fight between Kayak and American has become downright ugly. Now we have allegations and lawsuits flying back and forth as both sides stick firmly to their stances. Kayak isn’t exactly in an enviable place, and the user experience is suffering greatly. What exactly is going on here, and will it ever get resolved?

American has decided to step this up in a big way by suing Kayak. You can find the link to the suit here, but it’s basically saying that Kayak needs to stop using American’s fare and availability info immediately, regardless of where it’s coming from. Since Kayak signed an agreement with American originally, American says that once it was terminated they forfeited the right to use their information, even if Orbitz is the one providing it.

Apparently, Kayak seems to think there may be a case here because they have, in fact, stopped showing AA’s flights altogether. Now if you go to Kayak, you’ll see that no American results are returned. Instead, there’s a link in the filters on the side that you can click for “info.” This leads you to a message that says:

We’re sorry, but we are not currently displaying American Airlines’ fares. We hope to resolve this issue soon. In the meantime, if you are interested in comparing their fares or booking a flight on American Airlines, you can do so by clicking on any of the links below for other travel websites

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that the “links below” are to Orbitz and CheapTickets. And yes, it does say they’re “sponsored” links.

I have to say, this is a pretty crappy experience. Without availability info from one of the largest airlines, this isn’t exactly a helpful site. So now Kayak is stuck with the very difficult position of deciding which is better for their customers – no online travel agents displaying American’s flights or no American flights at all?

Of course, if the decision were that basic, it would be a no-brainer. But it’s not that easy. The second American is successful in getting Kayak to stop showing online travel agents on their flights, every other airline will line up and make them do the same thing. Kayak has said that they “are dedicated to providing a comprehensive and objective display to our users. We’re unwilling to amend this pro-consumer philosophy that is the core of our business by suppressing results based on a partner’s request.”

Really? Are they actually unwilling to amend this philosophy? I’d say that’s clearly not true, from past behavior. For domestic flights, Orbitz and CheapTickets (owned by the same company) are the exclusive providers of online travel agent fares. Sounds against their pro-consumer philosophy, right? Well, I contacted Kayak and received this quote from CEO Steve Hafner:

We did the [Orbitz/CheapTickets] deal at a different time in our business, when we had no traffic and no leverage. At that time, OTAs were not interested in participating in meta-search. Times have changed and we would not do the same deal again. In fact, in Europe we preserved flexibility and have multiple agencies coming on board.

They wouldn’t tell me when it was signed or when it expires, but I can use some of my own experience to put this in perspective. We never had any leverage at PriceGrabber Travel, and we did have Orbitz on the site. If you used the site, you likely saw other online travel agents like OneTravel and Airfare.com popping up with fares that were often better than Orbitz, especially in the international arena. So clearly there wasn’t an exclusive deal in place. We closed up shop in the spring of 2007 and Kayak had plenty of leverage long before that point. So if they signed this deal when they had no traffic, this happened a long, long time ago. That seems unlikely since we never had that issue. Something’s fishy here.

The bottom line is that Kayak has a pretty poor user experience right now. We see them not actually showing all the online travel agent options out there because they have exclusivity with Orbitz/CheapTickets, but they aren’t willing to budge on the American deal in the name of the consumer. So now, the consumer has a relatively poor experience since they can’t display American’s fares.

I’d say Kayak is in a tough spot, and something is going to have to give. Kayak tells me that discussions with American to fix this problem are continuing. I’m just not sure how they can get out of this predicament without having to make some changes they aren’t going to like.

I know you’ve been putting off entering the contest to celebrate the 2 years anniversary of the TSA liquid ban until you had the best idea possible, but you’re running out of time. The contest ends 24 hours from when I write this, at 9p Pacific Time on August 15, so you better enter now.

Remember, all you need is six little words to describe your thoughts on the liquid ban, and you could win an iPod Nano or a BottleWise Duo wine travel bag. (Seriously, if you’re a wine drinker, you’ll like the Duo.)

To enter, do NOT write in the comments section here. (Anything written in the comments section here won’t count.) Go to this page for full details and write your best effort in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Happy writing!