Both US Airways and United received a present from Uncle Sam yesterday in the form of some hefty fines ($5.4 million and $3.8 million, respectively) for maintenance violations. Should we all run away screaming from these airlines? I don’t think so, but these are both quite serious. The United fine is actually the most disturbing one I’ve seen in a long time. [Ok, maybe it's not as disturbing as I originally thought.]

United’s $3.8 million fine was actually more massive than the one levied on US Airways on a per incident basis because United’s was for a single violation on one airplane. What the heck did they do? At least one enterprising mechanic apparently decided to use a shop towel as an airplane part. This is even worse than it sounds.

In December 2007, a single 737 went into the shop for maintenance. Someone decided to use “two shop towels instead of required protective caps . . . to cover openings in the oil sump area.” That’s just unreal and frightening.

[After speaking to United spokesperson Megan McCarthy, I think this needs to be clarified. The caps are only supposed to be used during the maintenance procedure and then removed. So this was not meant to be a flying replacement. This does mean that two things went wrong.

But these two things together are far less frightening than what I originally thought.]

What’s more frightening is how they found out about it. The plane kept flying in this condition for more than 200 flights until April 28, 2008. On that day, the airplane left Denver and then promptly returned after shutting down an engine due to low oil pressure. That’s when maintenance found the problem.

Holy crap.

As soon as United management found out about it, they self-reported it to the feds, as they should, but there are still so many unanswered questions. Who did this? Was it on purpose as an act of revenge against the airline or was it simply a mistake? If it was a mistake, shouldn’t someone else have caught it somehow?

[Now that I have a clearer understanding of what happened, it seems highly unlikely that this was intentional. Maybe using towels instead of caps was intentional but that seems relatively minor. Leaving the towel in there? My guess is that someone screwed up. United says that it has made some procedural changes to make sure these things get caught, but they wouldn't go in to details.

What I don't understand is why they haven't broadcasted this more publicly, because I've heard a lot of people concerned about the incident.]

During an interview with Houston’s NewsRadio 740 yesterday, I was asked whether I thought additional governmental oversight was necessary due to some of these issues. I just can’t see how this would have been caught by more inspectors. They can’t be everywhere, all the time. I just hope United has hunted down the guy who did this and fired him (or them).

For US Airways, it was a different story. They were fined for a bunch of different things regarding maintenance lapses during the merger integration. Most significantly, they had a single Embraer 190 that flew 19 flights without inspecting the cargo door to make sure it wouldn’t open during flight. They also had a couple of A320s the flew some flights without being inspected for potential landing gear cracks. Both of these were required by Airworthiness Directives and that’s a big deal.

They also had a bunch of other problems here and there on a variety of aircraft. Read here for all the details. Just the simple fact there are enough violations here that I don’t even list them all shows that there could be some major systemic issue, right? It appears that way, but US Airways says it has been fixed.

As usual, US Airways was very quick to publicly respond about this problem. I’ll let them explain . . .

Today’s proposed penalty dates back to challenges we experienced during the integration of maintenance systems and processes on flights that occurred in 2008 and January 2009. Our team worked cooperatively with the FAA to investigate and correct any discrepancies to the FAA’s satisfaction.

Over the past nine months, we and the FAA have completed a formal review of our aircraft maintenance tracking systems as well as a comprehensive review of our maintenance program. This collaborative process included efforts to identify the issues, drill down to find the root cause and develop comprehensive fixes.

So this has been known for quite awhile, obviously, and clearly the FAA is satisfied that the problem is solved or they wouldn’t let them continue flying. I imagine that they will be kept on a very, very short leash for awhile. That’s a good thing.

But it does point to issues with mergers. Combining maintenance programs is no simple task. I hope the FAA is keeping that in mind as it watches the Delta/Northwest integration proceed.

Both of these are some very serious fines. That being said, I still wouldn’t hesitate to fly either of them today.

[Updated 10/15 @ 320p to clarify the United incident]

Guess what time it is, kids? It’s airplane p*rn time! (Yes, that’s now with an asterisk to try to circumvent corporate filters.) You know how much I love airplane p*rn, and we’ve got two good ones this week with JetBlue and AirTran. Let’s start with JetBlue.

The buzz started last week that JetBlue would be rolling out a brand new livery for its whole fleet in celebration of the airline’s upcoming 10th anniversary. It turns out the hype was a little too much for what it actually was, and in my mind that’s a good thing. It wasn’t so much a new livery as it is a tweak on the old one. And really, what was wrong with the old one? Not much. But they made some good improvements. Take a look. First, they rolled out a new tail to add to their family of tails.

I like this one. The white on the tail makes it stand out, and it fits the brand very well. This will just be a new tail to add to the stable, so it will go on some airplanes, just like all the existing tails. But they also made changes to the rest of the airplane.

Can’t tell the difference? Let me refresh your memory.

The changes are small. The little Jetblue titles are now much bigger and visible. Also, the two tone gray/blue title is now all blue. I think it makes the name more recognizable, and that’s good. Also, you’ll notice that the website on the engines has morphed from www.jetblue.com to jetblue.com and it’s bigger as well. So, not really any huge changes but they didn’t need them.

This is a good change. It will be rolled out very slowly. When planes go into the paint shop, they’ll get the tweaks (not necessarily the tail), so it will take awhile. And there will be more tails coming. An employee contest will be held to design a new one. Let’s just hope they do better than when America West let a kid design the Teamwork plane. That was awful.

But if you want to see a truly spectacular new livery, look no further than AirTran which has painted a 717 in the colors of the Atlanta Falcons. This thing looks like a rocket, and the new black fuselage is just awesome. It’s too bad this is only on a 717. That means we won’t see it out here in LA.

AirTran sent me these pictures, but I have no idea why they didn’t send one of a full body shot. Click here to see a great shot from Mario Rodriguez of the airplane taking off (or should I say, launching).

You’ll hear lots of fanfare around the Travel Promotion Act these days, but you certainly won’t hear it from me. In fact, I think it’s time for a rant. The Act looks like it’s on its way to sailing through Congress, and in my opinion, it will simply be yet another deterrent for visitors to the US. I was a guest on the Airplane Geeks podcast again this week, and we talked about it. Afterward, I decided to read up on it further and I don’t feel any better about it.

Roger Dow, President and CEO of the US Travel Association says, “the United States must invest in better explaining its security policies and attracting foreign travelers.” Yeah, right. What exactly is it about our unfriendly policies that we want to be better at communicating? If we actually changed our policies to be more welcoming, maybe it would be worth talking about.

You can read the full text of the Senate’s version of the act here. The idea is to create a non-profit corporation to promote US travel to foreign visitors. This corporation would be overseen by a board of directors built from the travel industry. What will this corporation do? Here’s what it will be generally responsible for.

• . . . provide useful information to foreign tourists, business people, students, scholars, scientists, and others interested in traveling to the United States, including the distribution of material provided by the Federal government concerning entry requirements, required documentation, fees, processes, and information concerning declared public health emergencies, to prospective travelers, travel agents, tour operators, meeting planners, foreign governments, travel media and other international stakeholders




• . . . identify, counter, and correct misperceptions regarding United States entry policies around the world




• . . . maximize the economic and diplomatic benefits of travel to the United States by promoting the United States of America to world travelers through the use of, but not limited to, all forms of advertising, outreach to trade shows, and other appropriate promotional activities




• . . . ensure that international travel benefits all States and the District of Columbia and to identify opportunities and strategies to promote tourism to rural and urban areas equally, including areas not traditionally visited by international travelers




• . . . give priority to the Corporation’s efforts with respect to countries and populations most likely to travel to the United States

Assuming you didn’t fall asleep before finishing that, you’re probably scratching your head just like I was. Do we really need to tell people to come visit the US? Isn’t that going to be top of mind for many people anyway? I mean, I can understand why Zimbabwe might benefit from a campaign (hey, we only kill you if you own land – come visit!), but the US? And exactly what misperceptions will be dispelled about the entry procedures. Traveling to the US isn’t exactly the easiest thing around. Sometime tells me that most of things people hear aren’t misperceptions.

Most importantly, how are we funding this? Were this all a self-sustaining private fund, well, ok. By 2011, funds must come from the private sector, but those funds will be matched 1 to 1 with money from yet another visitor fee. Great.

That’s right. We are going to promote travel by slapping another fee on our visitors. Good thinking. This fee will only be charged to those visitors who don’t have to pay for the $100+ visa. That means that only the visitors from countries where we actually have a lot of visitors (hence, the Visa Waiver Program) will pay.

The Visa Waiver Program is in effect for most of Western Europe, Australia, Brunei, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea. Those from Belgium, Andorra, Brunei, Liechtenstein, and Slovenia must have machine-readable passports. Oh, and those from the UK must have passports specifically notated with “British Citizens” or “with unrestricted right of abode in the United Kingdom” to be allowed. If you qualify, you must use the ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) system to gain approval once every two years. It’s when you get that ESTA approval that you will have to pay $10 for travel promotion.

Remember, we make things easy here in the US. I’m so glad we’ll be able to tell the world all about it.

Watch out, LAN. There’s going to be another Latin mega-carrier now that Avianca and TACA have decided to come together to form . . . AVIANCTACA? Ok, they’re not going that far. In fact, the brands will stay separate, but this is an interesting development in Latin America.

Avianca is based in Bogota, Colombia, and it traces its routes to SCADTA, an airline founded in 1919. That makes Avianca one of the oldest airlines in the world. Of course, it has had its ups and downs with management changes and insolvency. In recent years, it has seemed to regain solid footing under its latest ownership group, Synergy Group. This group also owns AeroGal and VIP in Ecuador along with OceanAir in Brazil.

On the other side, we have TACA, the group formed by Central American carriers TACA (El Salvador), NICA (Nicaragua), LACSA (Costa Rica), and Aviateca (Guatemala). They also started TACA Peru in the last few years.

So now the airlines are coming together to form a mega-carrier covering much of Latin America. The plan is to keep separate brands but consolidate management. Yes, it’s the Republic Airways of South America.

It looks like the senior management team will be shuffled between the two carriers. I don’t know a lot about Avianca’s team, but if they’re smart, they’ll make sure that TACA’s team sticks around. They have a very bright group of people over there and they’ve done a fantastic job with that airline group.

What this means for customers is still not clear. Avianca recently resumed its codeshare with Delta, but it also partners with Star-carrier Air Canada and oneworld-carriers Iberia and Mexicana. Meanwhile, TACA has been aligning itself with Star Alliance carriers, though it has yet to officially join. So will this new airline come together and move into a single alliance? It definitely won’t be oneworld with LAN a member, but the others could be up for grabs if they so chose. Regardless, this does create a fairly formidable presence throughout Latin America.

Lots of changes here this week. First, I started writing a twice monthly piece for Antibride.com and Destination I Do magazine. Not a likely partnership? Maybe, but one thing I know quite well is that travel is a huge part of weddings, and that’s where I’ll be focusing. My first two posts are up:

cranky concierge takes to the sky
let’s get cranky

Of course, we had the big Cranky Concierge launch this week as well and that received a ton of good coverage:

Budget Travel
FlightWisdom Podcast
Johnny Jet Website of the Week
OnlineTravelReview
Random Notes from a P.R. Guy
Upgrade:Travel Better
uptake Travel Industry
USAToday
Via Her

And yes, there’s the usual weekly links as well. A busy one, indeed.

This Week is Small Community Air Service Development Week 2009 – BNET
It’s time once again to review the most interesting bids from airports for funds in the SCASDP 2009. This is the kick off post.

Building Ground Service Operations to Attract New Airlines (SCASDP Week) – BNET
Bemidji and Corpus Christi may not have much in common, but they do have an interesting proposal for how they would use federal funds to grow service.

United Offers One-Year Pass for Checked Bags for $249 – Bloomberg
We talk about United’s interesting new bag fee subscription product.

The Sad Tale of the Manu’a Islands in American Samoa (SCASDP Week) – BNET
They don’t want much money, but it can really make a big difference.

Maine Islands Fight for a Bigger Airplane to Solve Their Troubles (SCASDP Week) – BNET
On the other side of the empire, the little Knox County islands need some help to maintain decent service.

New York Airports Want Air Service Funds for a Bus and a Website (SCASDP Week) – BNET
They couldn’t all be good. There were a couple wacky proposals from upstate New York this year.

North Carolina Looks to On-Demand Air Taxis For Growth (SCASDP Week) – BNET
I’ll give points for creativity on this one – these airports don’t want commercial service but rather something different and more appropriate.