http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-travel-blog/

Since I normally don’t post on Sundays, I figured it wouldn’t be too annoying for me to post one final plea to vote for me in the 2008 Weblog Awards. (Ok, maybe it’s a little annoying, but too bad.)

http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-travel-blog/

At last check, it was a three-way race for second place and I’m right in the thick of it. I’m only 100 votes behind first place as well, so you guys can help me get there just by clicking a couple of times. Is that so hard?

I’m really excited to announce that President Elect Obama has endorsed me in this race, so you should jump on the bandwagon too!*

http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-travel-blog/

*This is, uh, completely not true. I’m sure the two of us have been in the same city at the same time before, but that pretty well summarizes the extent to which our relationship has developed so far. But hey, can you blame me for trying to ride those nice, long coat tails? [Original photo via Boston.com]

Frontier’s November Results Not as Positive as They May Seem
Frontier issued its monthly operating statement for November over the holidays. The results looked great on the surface, but as usual, it’s not always as it seems.

December Traffic Looks Better Than November
November traffic was downright ugly for several airlines, but December is looking much better. Continental breaks it down for us, as usual.

Frontier Asks for Bankruptcy Court Extension
Frontier’s not quite ready to exit bankruptcy. They’ve asked the judge for a 120 day extension until June, and I imagine they’ll get it.

PhoCusWright Chairman Joins Travel Innovation Summit Winner’s Board
In November, iM@ was voted the winner of PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit. Now one of the judges, PCW’s Chairman, is joining iM@’s board.

Mesa May Issue Twelve Times Its Current Outstanding Shares
Mesa has received approval to issue up to 900 million shares, up from the 75 million that are authorized currently. Why exactly are they doing this?

December Airline Traffic Numbers
The December traffic numbers are in, and overall, the results were better than November. See all the numbers inside.

Delta Shows International Traffic Declines
December traffic may have held up well overall, but international was a different story, especially on the Atlantic.

I saw an op-ed in the New York Times over the holidays from a former TWA flight attendant that got me so riled up, I had to write a response. I sent it in to the NYT, but it was way too long to be considered as a letter to the editor, and my email to the op-ed team went ignored. So, I thought I would post it here, especially since some similar discussion has been brewing in the comments section lately. This is what I sent.

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Ann Hood’s op-ed entitled “Up, Up, and Go Away,” published last week was difficult enough for me to read that I thought it worthy of a response. The days of glamorous air travel in coach are, as Ms Hood noted, certainly long gone. And with their disappearance we’ve also seen a decline in customer service, but there’s a good reason for that. Deregulation enabled fares to plummet, and people have been hooked on a cheap fare ever since. Until that changes, we won’t see a dramatic increase in customer service.

I should certainly hope that service was better back in the old days. Planes were half full and there were more flight attendants onboard. That means that each flight attendant could devote more time to each individual onboard; enough to serve elaborate dinners. Schedules weren’t nearly as demanding on flight attendants either, so they could enjoy their longer layovers more than they can today. They really did get to travel instead of simply passing out from exhaustion in some random hotel for a few hours until their next flight.

Once the industry was deregulated in the late 1970s, it all began to change. Why? Airlines could finally compete on price. That was prohibited in the past, so airlines did their best to compete on product. But once that restriction was lifted, fares went down quickly.

A TWA timetable from 1962 shows that a 707 could get me nonstop from LA to New York in roughly the same amount of time it would take today, but all those fancy amenities were quite costly. A roundtrip fare would have cost me $290.20. That’s about $2,000 in today’s dollars. Were I willing to take the “slow boat” and fly a prop across the country, I could get it for the bargain-basement price of $224.90 roundtrip, a “mere” $1,500 today.

If the airlines still charged those rates today, I wouldn’t be traveling very often and neither would most Americans. The industry would be a lot smaller, but I’m sure service would be outstanding . . . for those who could afford it. Instead of keeping fares so high, the airlines realized that if they brought fares down, they could get more people onboard. Today, flying is no longer a luxury enjoyed by elites. It’s something that’s within nearly everyone’s grasp.

As fare competition increased, the airlines began to look toward costs so they could continue to push fares lower. Now flights were more full, and the number of flight attendants onboard shrunk to reduce costs. Airlines also worked hard to get more productivity from their flight attendants to keep costs down. The days of the glamorous airline job ended when the craving for low fares grew.

Today, most people flying domestically in coach choose their flights based on price and schedule. Until people begin choosing airlines based on product and service, even if costs more, we aren’t going to see airlines willing to go above and beyond on that side of the business. So for now, we’ll continue to hear horror stories from time to time when things go wrong.

While the news constantly reports when things go wrong, we never hear when things go right. If an airline has fewer than 7 out of 10 flights arriving on time, it’s considered terrible performance. This fall, as a result of good weather and reduced flying, airlines had some of the lowest cancellation and highest on-time numbers they’ve had in years. Yes, when bad weather rolls in, things get bad quickly. But would a smile or some peanuts really make you feel better at that point? I doubt it. Getting where you need to go as quickly as possible is the only thing that matters then.

I’m not saying the airlines are perfect. There are always things they can do to improve. But I can fly somewhere exotic once a year and domestically a few more times during the year without breaking the bank. I’d much rather be able to fly somewhere with a surly crew than not be able to fly at all.

Anyone heard of Airtime Airlines out of South Africa? If not, you’re about to hear about it as every blogger that covers airlines is bound to write about it. These guys want you to buy minutes for travel like you buy minutes for cell phones. Let’s be clear here. This isn’t a good idea.

Before I get into why it’s bad, let’s talk about exactly what it is a little more. You buy a certain number of “minutes” and then you have to spend however many minutes it takes for a flight to complete. Now this isn’t real-time minutes we’re talking about here. It’s just based on the scheduled time. That would really suck if they billed you extra for circling during a thunderstorm, huh? And what if you ran out? Yikes.

The airline was scheduled to start up very soon with flights from Johannesburg to Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town, but it appears their deal for aircraft fell through. If it does happen, the Durban flight, for example, will take 75 minutes, so that’s how much you’ll have to pay.

It looks like you buy a starter kit with minutes at South African R5.00 (about 50 US cents), and then you top-up as you go. The top-up rate changes whenever they want it to change. When I looked on their obnoxious Flash-powered site, it was R6.00 per minute, so that’s about $50 each way to Durban, but it could go up or down from there. This appears to be the only form of revenue management they have, and that’s why it won’t work.

As my wife said to me, the simplicity in the message to the consumer is about the only thing that they’ve got going for them. It may work in the cell phone world, but for the airlines, this just isn’t a good idea, and it all comes back to the high fixed costs and perishable product in the industry.

Effectively, this ties fares to costs, and it completely ignores demand. Since airlines have high fixed costs and those seats can’t be sold once the plane has departed, the key is to maximize the amount of revenue that goes on to each flight. But this doesn’t allow for that. So let’s say that you sell a bunch of minutes to people who want to go to Cape Town, but you aren’t selling any minutes to people who want to go to Durban. You could try to drop the cost of minutes, but then that will lower the rate for people who want to go to Cape Town as well.

Sure, you could also offer deals to Durban saying that you only need half the minutes for the flight, but once you start getting away from the simple message, then you lose the whole point of the plan in the first place. If a minute doesn’t actually mean a minute, then just stick with fares and don’t bother with calling them “minutes.”

What if there’s a huge cricket match in Durban one weekend. Will you make people use double minutes for the peak time? If you do, people won’t be happy with the sudden and seemingly random devaluation of their purchase. As you can see, the simple method breaks down quickly.

It’s not like this is the first time this has been tried. It’s effectively how US fares were structured before deregulation (but they used miles). And what happened after deregulation? The airlines adjusted fares to match demand in the market. That meant they could lower fares in most places since the comfy confines of regulation had pushed them too high, but it also meant they could offer multiple tiers of fares with a variety of fences to get people to pay closer to what they were willing to pay.

I definitely appreciate the desire to make things easier for the customer, but the high fixed costs and perishable product in this industry make this a bad idea.

It’s time for the 2008 Weblog Awards, and it appears that I’ve actually been nominated by some of you out there as Best Travel Blog. I’m not sure if you were all drunk or high at the time, but hey, a nomination is a nomination. Thank you. Now it’s time to vote for the winner.

I’m one of 10 blogs nominated and with early voting in, I’m in next to last place. Let’s shoot for breaking the top 5. Here’s the link:

2008 Weblog Awards – Best Travel Blog

And as they say in Chicago, vote early and vote often. You can actually vote once every 24 hours until the polls close on January 13 at 2p Pacific Time.