You all know I was a big fan of the idea behind ExpressJet’s branded service, but the combination of high fuel prices, the wrong type of plane, and the lack of connectivity into a larger network/frequent flier program conspired to bring it down. So how is it that I found myself walking on to one of these jets (at left) long after the branded flying had been killed?

Once the branded stuff shut down, those planes had to go somewhere. Many were returned, but others were used to grow the Corporate Aviation group. They had one of their corporate birds in Long Beach recently, and that’s what I was able to get onboard. Sadly, we didn’t go anywhere, but it was an interesting visit.

If you’re expecting lavish couches and beds with champagne, that’s not quite what they’re doing here. Picture one of their 50 seat Embraer regional jets. Ok, now remove all the scheduled passengers and put charter customers onboard. That’s it. Well, at least that’s the case for 22 of the planes in the fleet. The other 8 actually have only 41 seats onboard and seat pitch grows from 31″ to a comfy 38″ (at right), but it’s still just a regular seat. I had the chance to hop on one of the 41 seat aircraft, and it definitely had plenty of legroom.

Is there a lot of demand for this? Apparently ExpressJet thinks so, considering how the group has grown. The group started with only 4 airplanes at the same time as the branded flying, but it had grown to 12 by the time the branded flying was shut down. Then it grew to its current level of 30 airplanes. According to John Yeng, the Sr Manager of Marketing who showed me around, business is good, and January and February were actually booked very well.

Who is flying on these planes? They’ve flown sports teams, bands, and employees from some Fortune 500 companies to name a few. The range is 1,600 nautical miles, and they’ll take you anywhere in the Americas. John mentioned a recent Mexico charter so international boundaries clearly aren’t an issue, and the brochure even talks about South America, though that’ll probably require some stops.

Is it really just the same as any other plane you might fly? That’s entirely up to the people paying for the charter. They keep upgraded pillows and blankets on hand for those who really want to pay more for it. They also can cater the plane with anything, though one big drawback is that they don’t have any ovens onboard right now. (They’re looking into it.) They did keep XM radio in each seat from the old branded service, and they’re looking into wireless internet onboard the aircraft as well. But for the most part, it’s just a regular plane.

How much for one of these charters? He gave me a rough estimate of $25,000 for a charter, and the brochure says $27,600. Of course, that can change depending upon how much time you need, but you get the idea. Cheap at twice the price, right? Not so much, but if you can pack every seat and you’re going somewhere that doesn’t have convenient (or any) commercial service, it actually can make good sense.

This is an interesting idea in that I don’t think anyone else is doing it. Sure, you can charter bigger airplanes from any number of sources, but who is offering a regional jet in a normal passenger configuration? I’m sure you can get one from all the usual suspects, the regional airlines, but they don’t have any aircraft dedicated to this as far as I can tell. Let me know if you know of others who are offering this.

Glad to see the ExpressJet livery live on, though I’m still bummed that the branded flying is done for. I’ll be watching closely to see if this group is able to succeed for the airline or whether they’ll eventually just have to go back to being a regional feeder and nothing else.

We all remember the BA 777 that lost power and crash-landed at London/Heathrow, right? Last September, an interim report was put out on the accident saying that ice buildup blocking the fuel flow was the likely culprit. Now Boeing is not only agreeing with that conclusion, but it is saying that it caused another 777 incident on a Delta aircraft. According to Boeing, the problem is only occurring with Rolls-Royce powered aircraft.

I’ll try not to get too deep into the weeds here, but there’s a place in the engine where fuel passes in tubes right next to engine oil. The hot oil warms the cold fuel and the fuel cools the oil so everything is in good shape. Apparently, the Rolls-Royce engines are not always able to adequately heat the fuel if it’s too cold, so ice has formed and blocked the fuel flow temporarily. In the BA accident, it was so close to the ground that there was no hope of recovery. In the Delta incident, the plane was cruising, so they were able to restart it without any serious issues.

It’s odd to see this report come out before the investigations are finished, but Boeing must have seen something that it really thinks needs to be fixed. The chance that this could cause another accident is slim, especially now that they’ve recommended some operational changes (like, fly lower where it’s warmer if necessary) that will help avoid the problem. But if you’re nervous about flying with a Rolls-Royce engine on the 777, let me try to put your mind at ease. Here is the breakdown of which airlines do not fly Rolls-Royce powered 777s. (This isn’t a comprehensive list, but it should cover the biggest operators.)

Non Rolls-Royce Powered 777s

• Air Canada
• Air France
• ANA
• Continental
• JAL
• United

Air New Zealand (777-200s), American, British Airways (some), Cathay Pacific, Delta (all but the Long Range aircraft), and Singapore are just a few examples of airlines that fly Rolls-Royce engines on their 777 fleet. I wouldn’t hesitate to fly on any of these planes right now, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to give a little peace of mind for those who feel a little nervous.

After a long battle against the DOT, Virgin America has now finally been required to release its financial results to the public. What’s the verdict? It’s not pretty. I’ve already tackled the high level financial side of Virgin America’s information over on BNET, but over here I wanted to discuss what these dismal numbers mean for travelers. The answer is . . . probably not much right now, but I’d keep my eyes open.

The results are staggering, and it’s certainly no surprise that they’d want to keep this info quiet. The best quarter they’ve had so far, the third quarter of 2008 (which is the most recent information we have) resulted in a -52% margin. That’s right. They lost nearly $60m on merely $114m in revenue. Even if fuel were free, they would have only broken even. At the end of the second quarter, their cash plunged to only $11m on hand. That bounced back to $25m at the end of the third quarter, but that had to be from additional money flowing in and not from operations. They really have burned through a lot of cash, though I understand they received another infusion in October so they’ve got a more comfortable cushion once again. If you’d like to get more detail on their reported numbers, I’ve created a spreadsheet with the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Fuel Prices, and Load Factor by Route for you to download.

With these numbers, you’d think they’d be trying to do some damage control, and of course, they are. The airline is saying that everything is fine, they’re on plan, and there’s nothing to worry about. I suppose they have to say that or bookings would disappear overnight, but is that really the case? It appears to be. As I said, the airline claims that it received more cash in October and it now has a healthy cushion. It also is saying that it expects to even be profitable in the second or third quarter of this year. You’ll obviously have to decide for yourself if you believe it or not, but for now death doesn’t appear imminent.

Certainly, lower fuel prices will help slow the bleed tremendously, but it won’t put them into the black. They are adding new routes, so possibly the additional scale will help them, but that requires those routes to perform well. So far, load factors seem to be pretty decent with New York long hauls doing the best in the 80%+ range. Washington long hauls and most short hauls are weaker but have clawed up toward 80%. Oh, but if you’re in Seattle, it’s a different story. Those loads have been horrendous.

Good load factors aren’t actually good news in this case. If they’re already filling seats, that means that there isn’t much room to just add more people on the plane to reach profitability. They have to become profitable the hard way, by charging more money. Sure, they’ve probably added a little to the bottom line from Main Cabin Select (we won’t see the impact until the next quarter comes out), but this is a small impact in the scheme of things. The weakening economy sure isn’t going to help, and yesterday I received an email about another fare sale from them. So we’ll see if they can somehow find a way to be profitable, but they appear to have a long way to go.

So would I hesitate to book them right now? Probably not, but I might think about trying to book my trip a little closer to the actual departure date just to be sure. It would surprise me if Sir Richard Branson let this fail without a fight, and he’s better equipped than most to keep it going for awhile. The airline says that it’s on track, and as long as the investors don’t panic, they’ll keep on trucking. So, play with the data (download the spreadsheet) and make a decision for yourself.

It was almost a year ago that JetBlue announced it would begin flying to LAX in addition to its main Southern California operation at Long Beach along with smaller operations at Burbank and Ontario. Once fuel started climbing, they walked away from LAX. But now, a year later, JetBlue is back and ready to begin flights to LAX. Should we bother to believe them this time?

I’d say yes, though if oil spikes again (HIGHLY unlikey considering the state of the economy), then all bets are off. But JetBlue has always wanted to do a better job of serving the LA area. They dropped Ontario last year, so until June, when the first LAX flights start, you’ll only see them in Burbank and Long Beach. That’s not really much coverage.

So LAX makes sense, and the airport’s traffic is so far down this year that finding a gate isn’t the toughest thing around. Unfortunately, they aren’t exactly picking routes that are lacking for competition. On June 18, the airline will start two flights a day to both New York/JFK and Boston. This low frequency is not in any way favorable compared to the rest of the competition in the market. It also doesn’t help that Virgin America only recently announced service from LAX to Boston. So there’s just a ton of service here already. Why are they going into this as the frequency laggard?

I suppose it goes back to the JetBlue strategy. They aren’t going for the business traveler here, and if they were they’d be slaughtered. They’re more interested in the leisure traveler, so this allows the airline to reach a greater audience than just at Long Beach and Burbank. Not a bad plan, but the overabundance of flights in those two markets will make it a tough sell.

There could be another reason here. Right now, JetBlue has more flights scheduled at Long Beach this summer than it has slots. So, there are going to have to be a couple of cuts. Could it be that they’re hoping to shift some people to LAX in order to cut back on long hauls from Long Beach? It’s pure speculation, but something has to give over there.

Either way, I tend to think that JetBlue will actually start LAX service this time around, but just in case, you may want to wait until it gets a little closer before booking.

I received a note from a reader down under recently pointing out that Aussies can now book flights to Seattle on the V Australia website. Is this the long-anticipated codeshare with Virgin America finally showing its head? Nope. It’s actually a codeshare partnership with Alaska. For some reason, I don’t remember this deal being announced. Did I miss something?

If you’d like to check it out, you have to go to the V Australia site in Australia. You can’t book trips from Seattle, at least not yet, but those in Australia can fly to either LAX or beyond to Seattle. What happens if you choose Seattle? Take a look.

It doesn’t appear to be a codeshare, because it shows as an Alaska Airlines flight number, but you can book the entire itinerary on the V Australia site. This just seems so strange to me. V Australia’s Sydney flight gets you to LA at 430p (that shifts to 5p later on in the year). Those flying to Seattle come over to Terminal 3 at LAX, but instead of taking the 710p flight to Seattle on Virgin America, they’ll take one of several Alaska flights around the same time.

On the way home, Alaska makes you sit at LAX for almost 4 hours before the V Australia flight goes back to Sydney. On the other hand, Virgin America could get you to LA with only 1 hour 10 minute layover, something that’s just about perfect for a domestic to international connection that doesn’t require changing terminals.

I’m not sure why Virgin America isn’t carrying this traffic, but it absolutely should be doing it. Why hasn’t this codeshare happened yet?

[Updated 2/2 @ 528p to fix codeshare language]