American Turns to HP Over SABRE For Next Reservation System – BNET
Even though SABRE was American’s greatest invention, the airline has decided to go elsewhere. This has been coming for awhile.

August 2009 Traffic Numbers – BNET
August traffic numbers are out and they look a lot like what we saw in July.

American Follows United From London to Brussels – BNET
If you thought it was goofy that United was flying from London to Brussels, you’ll be surprised to hear that American is doing it as well.

Indianapolis airport security reflects the new reality – Indianapolis Star
Someone at the Indy Star asked for my comment on security at the new airport since I spend a fair bit of time there.

Frontier’s Reorg Plan is Approved But What Is Their Business Plan? – BNET
Now that Frontier is marching toward bankruptcy exit, it’s time to start thinking about what their business plan will be.

It’s September 11 again. You would think that after eight years it wouldn’t sting quite as much, but it still does. This is the fourth September 11th that I’ve written a post, and it’s the third in which I’ve followed Holly Hegeman’s tradition of publishing the names of the flight crews killed that day. This year, I’ve decided to make my background black for the day. I’ve also included a picture of the haunting Pentagon Memorial, since all too often I feel like those who died there are overshadowed by the World Trade Center.

But as usual, I want the focus to remain on those airline employees who lost their lives just doing their jobs. Please read through the following names and remember what they went through eight years ago today.

American 11 (Boston to Los Angeles)
Crashed into World Trade Center
John Ogonowski, Dracut, Mass., Captain; Thomas McGuinness, Portsmouth, N.H., First Officer; Barbara Arestegui, flight attendant; Jeffrey Collman, flight attendant; Sara Low, flight attendant; Karen Martin, flight attendant; Kathleen Nicosia, flight attendant; Betty Ong, flight attendant; Jean Roger, flight attendant; Dianne Snyder, flight attendant; Madeline Sweeney, flight attendant

United 175 (Boston to Los Angeles)
Crashed into World Trade Center
Victor J. Saracini, Lower Makefield Township, Pa., Captain; Michael Horrocks, First Officer; Amy Jarret, flight attendant; Al Marchand, flight attendant; Amy King, flight attendant; Kathryn Laborie, flight attendant; Michael Tarrou, flight attendant; Alicia Titus, flight attendant

American 77 (Washington/Dulles to Los Angeles)
Crashed into the Pentagon
Charles Burlingame, Captain; David Charlebois, First Officer; Michele Heidenberger, flight attendant; Jennifer Lewis, flight attendant; Kenneth Lewis, flight attendant; and Renee May, flight attendant

United 93 (Newark to San Francisco)
Crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Jason Dahl, Colorado, Captain; Leroy Homer, Marlton, N.J., First Officer; Sandy Bradshaw, flight attendant; CeeCee Lyles, flight attendant; Lorraine Bay, flight attendant; Wanda Green, flight attendant; Deborah Welsh, flight attendant

[Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/79493961@N00/ / CC BY-SA 2.0]

It’s always good to see airplanes and trains coming together to make a more seamless travel experience. Now it appears that Virgin Atlantic has linked up with Eurostar to provide easy one-stop booking on Eurostar’s chunnel routes to Brussels and Paris. Unfortunately, the booking is the only thing that’s easy. This is far from seamless.

Those of you familiar with London have probably already spotted the problem here. Heathrow and Eurostar’s London-terminus at St Pancras are nowhere near each other. Were Eurostar to operate out of Heathrow, it would be an incredibly credible way to get to Brussels and Paris from anywhere in the world, but that’s not the case.

Once you land at Heathrow, you can hop on the Piccadilly line to Cockfosters (heh, heh) and about 45 minutes later you’ll be at King’s Cross. St Pancras is basically right next door, but you will need to walk. You could also take Heathrow Express to Paddington and then a cab or the tube to St Pancras, but that will add a transfer and only save you 10 to 15 minutes or so. Either way, you can imagine how little fun this would be if you have a bunch of bags with you.

So is this partnership really anything special? Well, yes and no. It’s not special for those looking to connect to a train, but if you have business in London and Brussels or Paris, it’s a nice step toward seamless booking. We have a long way to go before planes and trains are better connected, but I suppose you have to start somewhere. It’s not like they can just will the train stations to move closer to airports.

We don’t see this very often, but the folks at the newly-reinvigorated Frontier have decided to make some changes. While bag fees are going up $5, the big news is that the change fee is going down from $150 to $100. Huzzah!

The $150 change fee is something that just makes me angry. Considering the fare levels that are out there today, many fares have become effectively non-refundable. I was just looking for a one way from JFK to LAX, and American had a $119 all-in while United had $144. You can book it, but it’ll cost you more to change it than it will to just throw it away and start over. That’s crap. (BTW, I’ll be having my first Virgin America long haul experience for that trip – $98 all-in.)

Here you can see a chart of domestic change fees for many US-based carriers. Yes, I realize it looks suspiciously like something you might wave at a reggae concert. On the right side, I’ve included a completely arbitrary decree regarding what’s fair and what isn’t.

Why do I say this is completely arbitrary? Well, I don’t have change fee data to back me up here. All I can do is go by what seems fair considering the fares I see out there. To me, anything over $100 is completely absurd. Anything between $50 and $100 seems possibly fair, but it still may be too much for shorter haul carriers considering the fares that are out there. To me, the $25 to $50 range is the sweet spot for short haul while anything below $25 seems like a wasted opportunity. (We’ve talked about this before regarding Southwest.)

But let’s get back to Frontier. They were in the zone of ridiculousness, and they’ve now moved down into the zone of questionability. Why? Well I asked Frontier spokesperson Peter Kowalchuk, and he actually gave a pretty straightforward answer.

We’ve always been a customer-focused company. We realized a couple things. Aside from the great experience that our customers enjoy flying with us, our customers love us for our low fares. We also understand that our customers sometime need to change their plans and the change that we made in the change fee allows them to enjoy our low fares and have the flexibility they need to change their flights. . . . This fee change makes our fees more proportional to our actual fare. Airfare has dropped but fees haven’t.

My interpretation here is that, as I said above, fares have gotten so low that the $150 change fee probably results in people just throwing away their tickets because the change costs more. So now by lowering it 33%, they’re likely hoping they’ll get more than a 33% bump in the number of changes being made. I hope this actually happens, because it gives us hope that other airlines will review their fee as well.

I can dream, can’t I? But least Frontier is moving in the right direction. Kudos to the furry little animal tails.

I’m trying to think if there’s a codeshare that’s been as widely anticipated as that between Lufthansa and JetBlue. It seems like this thing has been in the works forever, but now they’re finally getting the partnership up and running. Bookings should begin in October.

It was all the way back in December 2007 when Lufthansa announced it would buy a 19% stake in JetBlue. At the time, there was no cooperation announced, but most people felt it was inevitable. Eventually, it became obvious that it would happen. On a JetBlue flight earlier this year, I even saw this ad (at left) on my seatback TV. But it took until now for the codeshare to actually be announced.

Neither United nor US Airways have much of an operation at JFK, so this provides Lufthansa with a strong partner and a solid product to feed its flights. It just makes sense.

When Lufthansa purchased its stake, I said “Enjoy your bitch-slap, United. Oh sure, that young little hussy JetBlue can’t replace you . . . yet, but Lufthansa is clearly not as faithful to you as you might have hoped. Maybe you shouldn’t have let yourself get so out of shape over the years.” As I said a the end of the article, I didn’t actually think JetBlue would replace United as Lufthansa’s main partner, and I still feel the same way. If it were true, Lufthansa wouldn’t have bothered will all the time and effort to get the Atlantic Plus Plus alliance going with Continental, Air Canada, United, etc.

But this is the next natural step for Lufthansa, since they own a piece of the airline. The codeshare will begin connecting only 12 JetBlue destinations through Boston and New York/JFK into the Lufthansa network. Those cities are Austin, Buffalo, Ft Lauderdale, Ft Myers, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Raleigh/Durham, Rochester, San Juan, Syracuse, Tampa, and West Palm Beach. You’ll notice that none of these are particularly strong destinations for United, so it makes a lot of sense. Besides, those Germans love Florida.

You’ll be able to book a ticket between those cities and much of the Lufthansa network. This is a big step for JetBlue. The airline’s first attempt at a codeshare was not exactly a full-blown arrangement. You can buy a ticket on the Aer Lingus website to travel from Ireland to the US connecting on a JetBlue flight, but that’s it.

This Lufthansa deal will allow for booking on either airline’s code via airline websites or via travel agents. It’s a full codeshare agreement, and it’s probably the first of many more to come for the Blue Crew.