Reliable sources tell me that Allegiant will announce in the coming days that its new “sun destination” is LAX. With the exception of its original base in Las Vegas, Allegiant has specialized in turning secondary airports into big funnels for people traveling from small towns to resort areas. It appears that strategy is going to see a slight alteration with this move, and I look forward to seeing how it performs.

All Allegiant is saying publicly is that it will open a new base to a “sun destination” with initial service to twelve cities, and they’re running a contest for everyone to guess what destination that may be. The twelve cities are:

• Bellingham (Washington)
• Billings (Montana)
• Des Moines (Iowa)
• Fargo (North Dakota)
• Grand Junction (Colorado)
• McAllen (Texas)
• Medford (Oregon)
• Missoula (Montana)
• Monterey (California)
• Sioux Falls (South Dakota)
• Springfield (Missouri)
• Wichita (Kansas)

My initial thought was that it would be San Diego, but that was proven wrong when the airport manager in Sioux Falls let it slip that it would be to the LA area. At that point, I figured Allegiant would try the currently empty San Bernardino Airport since those guys would likely pay Allegiant to fly there. But recently, I learned that LAX would actually be the chosen airport.

This surprises me, and not for the reasons you might think. Allegiant has shown that it isn’t afraid of flying to larger airports. Obviously Las Vegas is one, but they’ve also recently ventured on to routes like Bellingham to Oakland and San Diego. As long as there’s a smaller airport on one end, it shouldn’t be an issue.

What does surprise me is that flying out of LAX means they’ll be entering routes that already have nonstop service. Monterey is served by United and American and Medford is served by Horizon. Allegiant historically has not liked to go head to head with other airlines, so this is an interesting move, assuming it proves to be true.

There’s no question that bringing people from small towns to LA a couple times a week could be a lucrative business, and I think there’s a very good chance that Allegiant can be successful with this move. Their unique model has shown that it can work with a handful of tweaks to it, and I don’t see why this tweak won’t be successful. I will, however, be closely watching those towns with competing nonstop service to see if the incumbent airlines feel the need to respond or not. That will probably make or break those routes.

Last week, Delta announced that it would lower its fares at its Cincinnati hub. I’m sure this is a last ditch effort to save the hub from being dismantled, but somehow I doubt it will work. Still, it does mean that there are finally some more affordable fares out there for travelers. But how much more affordable will they be, exactly?

I took one route, Cincinnati to Los Angeles and picked it apart with the help of Rick Seaney over at FareCompare.com, a consumer airline ticket comparison website, to show exactly what kind of discounts we’re talking about here. The verdict? It’s substantial. Let me give you an idea of what I mean. Below, I’ve put together a table with various scenarios of how far in advance someone is booking and how long they would be staying. You can see the new fare structure is significantly cheaper. (These are the published fares and don’t include all taxes, but those would apply equally before and after the change, so the savings are still accurate.)

As you can see, the cuts have come across the board. This ignores all sales fares, so it’s entirely possible that you could get some cheaper fares for advance purchase travel, but this is still a very significant reduction. As I said, it appears to be a last effort to save Cincinnati from its demise as a hub. It’s been said that both Detroit and Cincinnati are showing greater weakness than others for Delta during this economic downturn, and I’m sure that Detroit is in a better position to remain a hub than Cincinnati. Delta must be hoping that this will help the airport become more competitive with surrounding low fare airports like Dayton and Louisville.

For those who want to geek out more, here’s the full comparison by fare basis for Delta’s new and old structures between Cincinnati and LA.

I had the chance to speak with Virgin Blue (owners of V Australia) CEO Brett Godfrey at the V Australia launch on Friday, and he had plenty to say about V Australia’s future partnering plans, the subject we just recently discussed here.

For the first time, I bring you an Across the Aisle interview in video form. It’s less than four minutes, but you’ll hear Godfrey talk about Alaska, Virgin America, Northwest, and others. I found him to be quite knowledgeable about his business and friendly as well. His answers seemed genuine and not full of the PR-speak that I’m used to seeing. See for yourself, and be sure to come back after the video for my thoughts below.

I think Godfrey made a lot of sense in the video. V Australia wants to partner with anyone and everyone who can benefit them, and that’s a smart way to operate (similar to Alaska, actually). I’m glad to hear that the mystery of why they weren’t partnering with Virgin America has now been solved. It’s simply a technology issue that’s causing the delay, as suggested by commenter Ellis Taylor.

Virgin America was crowing about how great it was that they were doing a lot of their tech work in house, but I think it’s clear that the strategy has been quite problematic. There was never any question that they would want to codeshare with other Virgin airlines from the very beginning, so it now seems that the reservation system choice was a costly mistake.

Meanwhile, V Australia will continue to partner with everyone that makes sense for the airline. As I mentioned in the video, I could see a deal between them and Delta being a smart move. Their flight times are complementary and they could feed each other on both ends. Clearly, Godfrey seems up for that, but it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Click if you missed my overview of the Friday launch event.

Friday marked the first aircraft delivery for V Australia, Virgin Blue’s long haul arm that will inaugurate service on February between Sydney and Los Angeles. On the way down from Boeing, V Australia brought the plane to LAX for a reception and viewing of the onboard product, and I was able to get on board. First thoughts? Coach and Premium Economy seem to be quite good, but Business, while good, is not quite best-in-class.

Usually we get picture-perfect Southern California days for these events, but Friday was filled with cloudy skies and rain. That didn’t stop V Australia from throwing a heck of party. There were free drinks, trendy seating areas, loud music, and of course, famous folks (I’m pretty sure I saw Chase from House there). In other words, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Virgin airline, though probably not the best way to spend money in these lean times.

Though there was a lot to like at the event, it started out on a sour note when they brought members of the USC marching band and cheerleading squad out to greet the plane. As a UCLA fan, I couldn’t support that at all. (Ok, maybe the cheerleaders did look pretty good.)

Finally, the plane arrived and Sir Richard Branson went into PR mode. He came out on to the wing with some members of the crew and popped open a bottle of champagne. At that point, it started to rain so people started to retreat into the tent where LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa fawned all over Branson for bringing jobs to the area, and Branson announced on stage that the airline would begin 3 times weekly flights from LA to Melbourne in addition to the already announced flights to Sydney and Brisbane. Flights from Sydney to Johannesburg were also announced.

After that, it was time to go on the plane. I joined Grant Martin from Gadling (click for Gadling’s coverage) and Juliana Shallcross from Jaunted (click for Jaunted’s coverage) along with the rest of the media in a preview tour. First impression of the airplane? It looked like a Virgin bird, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

As usual, there was mood lighting in full effect. We settled down at the bar toward the back of Business Class as Branson and Villaraigosa popped another bottle of champagne and made a toast to the airline. At that point, they turned the lights down and showed off the nighttime lighting which projects stars on the ceiling. Branson actually said that he wanted to get a skylight in the bar, but Boeing told him that wouldn’t happen.

Another reason it seemed like a Virgin plane? Padded toilet seats. I’ll let you connect the dots on that one.

Let’s get to what matters here. The Business Class product was nice, but it isn’t the best in its class. Despite what you might expect, the airplane does not have the herringbone configuration that Virgin Atlantic pioneered. Instead, they’ve opted for a 2-3-2 configuration that is forward-facing and is said to go fully flat.

My friend Paul and I tried the seat out (you may remember him from previous events at LAX), and while it was comfortable, the bed didn’t feel completely level to me. That could have just been me though, but it wasn’t bad. The biggest problem? If everyone is sleeping, there’s a lot of climbing required to get to the aisle from the window seat. And nobody is going to want to be in that dreaded middle seat. The footrest was also sort of awkward and I couldn’t quite figure it out.

One quick tip – if you’re flying in Business, I’d go for row 5. It’s separated from the rest of the Business Class, and it’s very private back there.

If you’re flying Premium Economy, you’re going to get a very comfortable leather seat with 38 inches of pitch. I personally liked the little flat square at the end of each armrest that acts as a cupholder when the tray isn’t being used.

Coach has about 32 inches of pitch, so it’s about average (though better than United’s Economy Minus by an inch). My friend noted that the color scheme was going to show a lot of dirt, and these aren’t leather seats. So there could be some cleanliness issues here. Overall however, it was a relatively normal-feeling coach seat with decent legroom. So why do I say it’s best in class? The inflight entertainment.

Every seat has Red, the same system Virgin America uses, though it won’t have live television. Oh, and unlike Virgin America, coach seats don’t have power outlets (Business and Premium Economy do). Very lame.

But overall, I’d say the seats were good and relatively comfortable, something that’s very important for the long haul flights they’ll be operating. Hopefully this added competition will help keep prices lower on a route that has historically been filled with high fares. I’m glad to see V Australia flying this route, and I think they’ll do well.

Stay tuned for part two to be posted soon with my interview with Brett Godfrey, CEO of Virgin Blue Group (owner of V Australia).

To see all my pictures from the day, visit my Flickr Photoset.

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