Continental’s CEO Talks About the Rochester Overnight at NBTA – BNET
At NBTA, Continental’s CEO Larry Kellner talked about flight 2816 and why he has concerns about legislation.

Akron-Canton’s Savvy Strategy – BNET
Akron-Canton may not be at the top of your list of places to visit, but the airport is doing some very impressive work.

Southwest and those parts – IAG Podcast
Addison over at IAG had me on to discuss the latest issues with Southwest and their “unauthorized” parts.

Alaska Pushes on Virgin America’s Ownership Question – BNET
This is getting old quickly – the Virgin America ownership debate continues.

The Nerd Bird Thrives – BNET
The Nerd Bird is really coming back strong – Alaska has decided to add a second daily flight.

8 Things an Airline Would Never Tell You – Budget Travel
Budget Travel asked me what to do if an airline kicks you from a nonstop to a connecting flight. (Yes, Delta, I’m looking at you.)

August Revenues Look a Lot Like July’s – BNET
August revenue numbers are rolling in, and they don’t look much different than July.

I know I’ve been writing a lot about Southwest lately, but they’ve had a lot of news to talk about. The latest is the launch of EarlyBird check-in which allows you to pay to get to the front of the boarding line. The idea is a good one, but the implementation has some real flaws.

I suppose this is a good time to go over just exactly how Southwest boards. I think most people know that Southwest has no assigned seating, so when you get on the airplane, you just grab any seat you want. That’s why boarding order matters so much. Here’s how that works:

Under the current system, you get a letter and a number that splits into groups of 5, so A45 will board within the group A41-45, etc. I think most of the rest here is self-explanatory except possibly for Rich Uncle Pennybags up there. The A-list is the group of super travelers who fly all the time. They get to board early no matter what. Business Select is the top fare level that Southwest introduced that also allows pre-boarding as well.

Now, this EarlyBird deal will let people pay $10 each way to board after the A-listers/Business Select-folk. Basically, Southwest will run a sweep 36 hours prior to departure and assign each person in that group a number in the order that it was purchased. Then they’ll do another sweep at 25 hour prior to departure to catch anyone who booked during that window. At 24 hours prior to departure it opens up for general boarding. So you’ll get a great seat if you pay up . . . or will you?

There is absolutely no cap on the number of people who buy an EarlyBird seat. So it’s theoretically possible that you could pay for EarlyBird boarding and be stuck in the B group, or, horror of all horrors, in the C group. That’s garbage. Southwest spokesperson Brandy King explained:

Currently, we do not have a cap on the number of Customer who can purchase the product – we didn’t want to make an assignment without knowing what the demand will be. If the number of EarlyBird passengers gets so high that it is not providing a benefit to the Customer (ex. starts to dip into the “C” group), we would make adjustments to the number sold.

Weak. If you don’t want to have people pushed into the C group, then just make it a rule. Then you don’t have to worry about it actually happening. My gut tells me this is another one of Southwest’s dreaded technology issues.

And what does this do to the Business Select people? The biggest benefit by far of paying for that fare is early boarding. Now that has been gutted. Oooh, I still get a free drink. Yippee. If they want to keep Business Select as a viable product, they need to really do something to add value again. I know Business Select still boards ahead of this group, but come on. That’s not going to be enough for me to pay for that full fare.

If they wanted to really do this right, they should tell you what your check-in position will be before you purchase it. They could even charge more for the highest spots if they wanted. At the very least, they could cap the number of seats so they can guarantee value.

I know some people are moaning that this is a fee, and Southwest said they wouldn’t add any fees (now they say no “hidden” fees), but I disagree. To me, this is an example of creating additional value in a way that many people will appreciate. It makes it easier if you don’t have to sit by the computer waiting for that magical 24 hour time to check-in. They should have done this long ago.

BUT, the implementation is kind of sloppy, and that’s my biggest concern. Still, it’s a good idea in theory. Let’s see how it does in practice. If anyone has had any experiences with it, hit the comments.

Publishing Note: Monday is Labor Day, and I’m taking it off. I’ll be back here on Tuesday.

[Bunch of photo credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddharmonic/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/majorvols/ / CC BY 2.0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42dreams/ / CC BY 2.0
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How Much Rest Should Pilots Get? – BNET
Pilot rest rules are being discussed at a fever pitch now. See what the sides are saying.

Talking to IHG’s VP of Loyalty Programs on the Psychology of Point Redemption – BNET
I spoke with IHG’s loyalty guy about their new Flights Anywhere program and ended up digging in to the psychology of point redemption.

Does a Hotel Company Need an Umbrella Brand? – BNET
As an aside to our conversation about psychology of point redemption, we touched on the subject of whether an umbrella brand for hotels even matters.

Fly from Rockford and Shreveport to Branson – BNET
Rockford is always coming up with some hare-brained scheme, but this is one I actually kind of like.

I really haven’t written much about bird strikes on the blog. Yes, they happen a lot, and they can be dangerous, but the hype after the FAA released its data was certainly overdone. I didn’t see a need to join in. But when someone from Tableau Software, a company that focuses on building visualizations from data, reached out to me to offer an exclusive preview of their visualization of the FAA bird strike data for Cranky readers, it piqued my interest.

I was skeptical at first, because I figured it was just another effort to scare people about bird strikes, but I was wrong. It’s really just a cool way to look at the data in a way that’s easy to digest. Here’s my favorite visualization of all the ones they offered. (And yes, this cool thing is completely interactive – if you’re reading this in email, you’ll need to come to the site.)

You can play with this thing for hours and it never gets old. (Or maybe that’s just the dork in me.) But some things really stick out. As you can see, since 1990, 86.51% of strikes have resulted in no damage whatsoever. If we only look at data since 2005, that number climbs to 90.08%.

A whopping total of .06% of bird strikes destroyed the airplane. That’s 11 airplanes out of the 20,000 that have hit birds since 2005. (And this only goes through 2008, so it doesn’t include the ditching in the Hudson.) You’ll notice that props receive damage more often than jets. I’m guessing that’s because jets digest birds better? But we’re still talking tiny numbers here.

One thing that is interesting is to drag this back out to 1990, and you can see that bird strike reports have gone way up in the last 10 years. Are the birds now out to get us? Yes, but that’s why there’s no airport in Bodega Bay. The reality is that if an airplane is severely damaged or destroyed, that’s always going to get reported. It’s the ones that are minor and cause no damage that probably get ignored. Since the late 1990s, there has clearly been a trend for more people to report those as well. That’s a good thing.

Even with this increase in reports, the total number is probably still being underestimated. There are likely many more minor bird strikes out there that still don’t get reported, so the percentage that cause damage is probably even lower than the already low number you see.

There’s a lot more to play with on the Tableau site at tableausoftware.com/snarge. What is “snarge” you ask? I wanted to know that as well. Apparently that’s what they call the bird remains that are found on the airplane – you know, the stuff they send to the feds to analyze. Nasty. But what a great word.

As you can tell, bird strikes are a threat, but they’re a very small threat in the scheme of things. That doesn’t mean they should be ignored, but it’s important to keep them in perspective.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about Southwest’s parts problem, right? If you heard about it from cable news, you probably heard some hysterical pundit flipping out about how big of a deal this is. Well it’s not. At least, it’s not a safety issue directly and the FAA has given Southwest more time to fix it instead of grounding the planes. My only concern is whether this points to a need for greater oversight.

What happened? An FAA inspector was poking around some airplanes at Southwest when he discovered that there was an unapproved part on the plane. Sounds dangerous, no? Well, it’s actually not. Unapproved does not necessarily mean unsafe. My understanding of the situation is that one of Southwest’s contractors subcontracted this work to another firm without proper approval. So the part was considered unapproved, and that’s a problem.

The part in question was on 82 737-300 and 737-500 aircraft and 43 have already been replaced. What is this part? It’s a hinge in the mechanism that deflects hot engine exhaust away from the flaps when they’re extended for takeoff and landing. You’ll find a helpful visual explanation at left.

According to a Southwest spokesperson, this is how things went down on Saturday, August 22 when they first found out what was going on.

Once the information was brought to our attention [by the FAA], Southwest decided to hold our aircraft on the ground until receiving further clarification from FAA and Boeing. On Saturday afternoon, we received written approval from both parties that there was no safety concern and our [aircraft] were safe to operate with the parts. Boeing said the parts were repaired to their exact specifications.

So if you’ve heard some of the scare tactics coming from Kate Hanni and friends, you can calm down now. (When did she become a safety expert, anyway?)

According to Kate, “If the FAA allows Southwest this exemption, it will be rewarding the airline for using unauthorized parts in the first place, and will lead to a Niagara of non-conforming parts exemption requests from Southwest’s competitors that will ultimately imperil passenger safety.”

Is this a joke? Sadly, no, but it will get press coverage. Here’s the deal. Southwest still has to replace every single unauthorized part no matter how safe it is, and that ain’t cheap. Southwest simply asked for an extension on doing it so it didn’t have to impact its schedule anymore than it already has. So this is hardly a “reward” for the airline. It’s costing them a lot, and that’s without even considering the avalanche of bad press. There isn’t going to be a rush on installing suspect parts by other airlines here.

Personally, my only area of concern isn’t related to this specific incident but rather to what it could signify. That’s why I say it isn’t a direct safety issue, but I do wonder if there are indirect issues that this highlights. Southwest has long outsourced a fair bit most of its heavy maintenance operation, and it has always prided itself on good oversight.

But how did this one slip by the airline? Who has the responsibility to make sure things like this don’t happen? Where was the breakdown? I asked Southwest if this was going to result in any changes in their oversight, but I’ve yet to receive a response.

This is now two very public run-ins with the FAA in recent memory, and that’s going to hurt the airline’s reputation in the public eye. Do I have any qualms about stepping on a Southwest airplane? No. But others may not feel the same way, especially if they’re only watching the pundits claiming the sky is falling.

[You can listen to me joining Addison Schonland on a podcast before the FAA's decision was announced.]

[Original photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterkaminski/ / CC BY 2.0]

[Updated 9/2 @ 449p to clarify that mostly heavy maintenance is outsourced and not the lighter stuff.]