It’s been awhile since I’ve written about my hometown airport here in Long Beach, so how about an update? The good news is that things are actually moving along quite nicely. Yesterday, they broke ground on the new parking structure and today, I’ve got preliminary plans for the new terminal. It’s fantastic to see so much progress since my interview with JetBlue CEO Dave Barger back in March set off a local firestorm.

The rain was nice enough to hold off yesterday and we ended up having a beautiful day for a groundbreaking. It may be hard to get excited about a parking structure, but this is incredibly important in Long Beach. The current parking setup isn’t sustainable, primarily because the long term lot is leased from Boeing. They’re trying to sell it, and when that happens, the airport will eventually lose the use of that lot. So, more parking was required. The easiest way to do that? Build a garage on the existing surface lots. When it’s done, all Long Beach airport parking will be within walking distance of the terminals. Here’s how it’s going to look from above.

That odd-looking structure in the middle is the new one, and it will be done by the end of summer 2011. (The terminal is on the left end.) Why is it shaped like that? They wanted to keep the lines of sight open toward the terminal as people come into the airport. Ok, fine. I’m just glad to see it happening.

Airport Director Mario Rodriguez said just a few months ago that he hoped to break ground by the end of this year. Sure enough, he did. Yesterday’s event was like most groundbreakings, lots of smiles and pats on the back for getting to this point. I was actually quite surprised by the turnout (at left). There were a lot of people there, as you can see, including some unlikely surprises. Perennial anti-airport activist Joe Sopo was there, and he even held a shovel for a photo opp. I don’t get it.

There were speeches given by several people including Mayor Bob Foster, Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske, Mario Rodriguez, JetBlue’s SVP of Government Affairs Rob Land, and other local business leaders. Most people were praising Mario for his efforts in finally making this happen after years of waiting. Only Gerrie Schipske had a different message – she wanted everyone to know that the city council has been doing things right all along. Lots of confused looks in the audience at that message.

I spoke with JetBlue’s Rob Land after the ceremony and he simply reiterated the airline’s commitment to Long Beach. They’re very pleased to see things moving along, and they had a pretty large turnout of crewmembers to show their support.

Now the next hurdle is the terminal. The plan is to break ground by the end of next year. Will it happen? They’re making progress. I’ve gotten my hands on a few sketches of the current design. Here’s what it should look like, assuming the design doesn’t get tweaked too much.

I’ve gone ahead and marked the double wide trailers that are currently on the property. They will both mercifully be ditched, hopefully burned down and forgotten completely. In the new terminal, customers will continue to check-in where they do now in the historic terminal building. Baggage claim will also continue to be outside on both sides where it is now. It’s everything in between that changes.

To go through security, you will walk in the way you used to – through the existing structure which currently has JetBlue security and a gate area along with bathrooms. That whole thing will be converted into a large, single security checkpoint for the entire airport. Hooray.

After, you’ll walk outside into a garden area (in green). From there, you’ll be able to turn left or right to get to the two holdrooms where customers will continue to board via airstairs at ground level. The garden area in the middle will actually have palm trees sticking up, framing the old terminal from the airside. There will be a variety of concessions and restrooms throughout. Pretty nice plan huh?

Sure, I’d like to see it built a little bigger, but this plan maxes out the amount of space that can be used for holdrooms in the environmental impact report. So while they could build the terminal bigger, it wouldn’t really impact the customer.

Overall, I like what’s happening. The ground-breaking yesterday was nice, but I think everyone sees it as an appetizer to next year’s main course groundbreaking on the terminal improvements. That’s when the real party begins.

The first true winter storm of the year rolled through the middle of the country yesterday, and that was the first big test for Cranky Concierge. I’m happy to report that we had success. Here’s the story of a client who was trying to get from Chicago to Dallas via snowy-Minneapolis . . . and made it early thanks to Cranky Concierge.

Our client (let’s call him Montezuma just because that name is awesome) was scheduled on Delta 2978 leaving Chicago/Midway at 245p and heading toward Minneapolis. He was connecting to Delta 3380 arriving Dallas/Ft Worth at 747p. We saw the storm coming and prepared Montezuma to be patient. He knew we’d be there ready for him, and sure enough, we got him there early thanks to some quick thinking and flight changes.

Yesterday morning, his flights were still showing on time, but earlier flights had been canceled and delayed thanks to the snow blanketing both Chicago and Minneapolis. He was lucky to be flying out of less-congested Midway, but there were still bound to be problems. Montezuma finished up his work early and headed toward Midway. He told us he would be arriving at about 1130a so he could take an earlier flight out if there was one.

Unfortunately, the 1150a flight had already been canceled while the 111p flight was already delayed 30 minutes (it would eventually depart more than two hours late). This was not a good sign, so we sprung into action.

The weather that had snarled Atlanta the day before had moved out, and Delta had a flight heading there from Midway at 1225p that was actually on time. We figured that was Montezuma’s best bet. He went up to the counter and they put him on that flight, as airlines will do during bad weather situations. They also confirmed him for an Atlanta connection that would have him arrive at 718p in Dallas. There was an earlier connection they wouldn’t put him on for some reason, but we resolved to get that fixed when he got to Atlanta. We just wanted to get him out of Chicago.

Sure enough, his flight left town 3 minutes early, and he even scored a first class seat thanks to his basic elite status. Even after deicing, it arrived Atlanta just a few minutes late. We sent an email that was awaiting Montezuma upon his arrival telling him where to go to try to get on the earlier connection that the agents in Chicago didn’t put him. We were seeing plenty of availability on that flight, and the plane was already there so it was going on time. No sense in waiting around.

Sure enough, Montezuma went to the gate and he walked right on the airplane and into first class once again. He ended up arriving Dallas at 621p, more than an hour earlier than his original schedule and more than two hours earlier than his original flights actually got there.

What happened to his original flights? Well, the 245p from Midway was eventually canceled, so they probably would have put him (assuming there was room) on the very delayed 111p which eventually left after a creeping delay at 330p. That flight arrived Minneapolis at 520p and Montezuma would have had to schlep across the airport mall from the D gates to the F gates where he would luckily find his delayed flight to DFW still hanging around. That flight left an hour late and would have had him in to DFW just shy of 9p.

That was just over an hour later than he would have arrived otherwise, but think of all the stress and hassle he avoided. Having to deal with canceled and delayed flights is a real pain and we bypassed that for him completely.

For more info on Cranky Concierge, go to crankyconcierge.com, send us a note at info@crankyconcierge.com, or call us at (707) 797-7474.

That post title doesn’t make much sense, does it? United couldn’t be ordering new planes and shrinking at the same time, right? Actually, that’s exactly what’s happening. United is ordering new planes, but they’re smaller planes to replace existing aircraft. It’s nice to finally see United order an airplane again, even if it does mean fewer seats for customers.

United announced that it has ordered 25 787s and 25 A350s for its widebody replacement plan. It also holds another 50 “purchase rights” for each of the aircraft, probably just putting down roots for when they figure out their next move.

My understanding is that the order is for the 787-8 and the A350-900 versions of the aircraft. The 25 787s will replace the 21-strong international 767 fleet while the 25 A350s will replace the 24-plane 747 fleet. No replacement for the 777s has been announced, but I imagine that all or part of those 100 purchase rights can be executed for that purpose when the time comes.

The 787-8 is a natural replacement for the 767-300. In a typical three cabin layout, the 767-300 holds 218 people. The 787-8 will hold 210 people, so it’s a very close match. I’m using typical three cabin layouts for comparison purposes because United is always less dense. The 767-300, for example, has 183 seats in United’s configuration, so my guess is that the 787 will look similar. There is no real loss of capacity here, but there is a gain in range.

Take a look at this map from the Great Circle Mapper (which just published its 100 millionth map, congrats!) that shows how far a 7,500nm range would you get you from Washington/Dulles:

The dark outline is where the airplane can’t reach (and the splotchy dark areas are too far from the nearest airport using 180 minute ETOPS rules) assuming 7,500nm range which will hopefully be less than actual. Dulles-Tokyo? Sure. Dulles-Kuwait? Oh yeah. And West Coast-Asia as well. Perfect. These can handle a lot of the routes that require 777s for range purposes today but don’t have the demand to support them. This airplane is a natural fit for United

The A350 order, however, is not an exact replacement for the 747. The 747-400 seats 416 in a typical three cabin configuration (347 in United’s), but the A350-900 will seat 100 fewer people in a typical configuration with just a few hundred more miles in range. So this will be a big cut in capacity on those planes, and that’s probably a good thing from United’s perspective.

In United’s international fleet, the 747 is the ugly duckling. It has a lot more coach seats and an inferior coach product when compared to the 767 and 777. This is United effectively saying that it doesn’t want that many coach seats, so it’s hacking away in the back of the bus. When these start coming in, you can expect fewer cheap fares from United.

But why bother splitting the fleet? A very good question indeed, and one that I’m talking about over on BNET today. So when will you get to ride in one of these bad boys? Not for a long time.

Deliveries are scheduled between 2016 and 2019, but United has the right to defer built into their contracts. So it could be even later than that if they so choose. Of course, let’s just wait to see one of these planes even get in the air on a test flight. For the 787, that should be here in the next couple of weeks. Then it’s only a 6+ year wait before you see one in United colors.

[Updated 12/9 @ 1103a to show that the map was for flights from Dulles]

My first use of wifi onboard Virgin America last month made me realize something. My laptop is way too big. Ok, maybe the seat pitch is way too small, but either way it presents a problem. I want something smaller, especially now that Cranky Concierge is starting to take off (more than 50 clients so far) and I need to be in touch. Sony recently gave me the chance to take a netbook for a spin, and I think the netbook is going to be the way to go.

Believe it or not, the idea of finding a smaller laptop is not anything new. My current laptop with the 15.4″ screen (on the right) is actually much smaller than the absurdly large desktop replacement I had before. But now, I want to shrink again. Somehow I got on Sony’s press distribution list, and I saw a release for their P series. I sent a note to them asking for more info and they actually sent me a loaner version for 2 weeks. Cool.

This thing is an absolute rock star, but for that reason, it’s not cheap. It’s tiny, but it’s also powerful. The P Series has an 8 inch screen and it weighs only 1.4 pounds. That’s just silly.

My biggest fear was that the keyboard would be too small to be useful, but it actually was a piece of cake for typing. My only problem is that the Page Up/Page Down keys were difficult to use, and as a frequent tab flipper in Firefox, that was a pain. But typing wasn’t tough at all.

Don’t think that this is some mini-PC on the inside. It’s pretty damn powerful. It uses an Intel Atom processor between 1.33 to 2 GHz depending on the version. All versions have 2 gigs of RAM and anywhere from 80 gigs to 256 gigs of storage. The version they sent me was top of the line and instead of a hard drive actually has a solid state drive. No fan, no moving parts, just awesomeness. This was also my first look at Windows 7, and it ran with ease.

There are a couple of USB ports to hook into, and there’s a built-in camera. Of course, there is a wireless card, but even more interesting is that there is a Verizon mobile card built-in as well. If you want to sign up with Verizon, you can access the internet anywhere there’s Verizon service. The battery lasts up to 3.5 hours, but there is an extended life one you can get as well.

I’ve been using a touchpad for a long time now, so I was afraid that the little pointer stick thingy would be annoying. They’ve really improved these things since I first had one about 10 years ago. You can now tap on the pointer to click, and there’s a third button that you can use to scroll. In other words, you can do just about everything you can do with a touchpad.

As the pictures show, “tiny” is an understatement. This makes other netbooks look large and clunky. I took it with me everywhere, and I had plenty of googly-eyed stares from people wanting to touch it and play with it. It’s definitely a head turner. So what’s not to like?

It ain’t cheap. The base level costs $850. The cheapest solid state drive unit is $1000, and the one I tested is a whopping $1900. Considering that other netbooks start around $300, that’s going to hurt its market size. But those other netbooks are larger, clunkier, and at the $300 pricepoint, slower. It’s the small size that really grabbed me and has me seriously considering buying one.

If I get one, it would the $1000 solid state drive model, but can I justify it? I’m still working that out, but man do I want it. Anyone have netbooks they love or hate? Chime in below.

[Sony P-Series information]

Did you guys see this really odd story about some problem passengers on an AirTran flight last month? I can’t quite figure out how this thing blew up to the point where people were thinking it was a terrorist dry run, but it looks like the reports were embellished by someone claiming to be on the airplane. (He wasn’t.) The email started shooting through cyberspace at lightning speed. It’s amazing how false rumors get spread and taken as truth so quickly. (Just ask Fox News.)

On November 17, AirTran flight 297 was supposed to leave Atlanta at 440p for a flight to Houston. There were some issues on the plane, they pulled some people off to question them, and eventually they let them back on. According to FlightAware, AirTran 297 lifted off at 745p. Seems pretty routine, but then Tedd Petruna stepped in.

Tedd says he was a passenger on that flight, and it was a much more dramatic than what was initially reported. In his email regarding the flight (thanks, Airline Biz), Tedd says he was up in first class (AirTran actually has business class, not first, but ok) and he got involved.

Eleven “muslim men” got onboard (how he knew that, I couldn’t tell you) and scattered throughout the plane. Apparently one guy up front called to another guy in the back (again, how he knew he called a guy in the back, we’ll never know) and started speaking loudly in Arabic. The flight attendants repeatedly told him to turn the cell phone off, but he wouldn’t.

Then, in the back of the plane, two younger Muslims started watching porn (how the hell did a guy in the front of the plane see this?) and in his eyes, that’s only allowed right before Jihad (apparently not true).

This crap goes on and on until our hero Tedd apparently wrestles the guys to the ground until the TSA and police stormed the airplane. They took the 11 guys off the plane and removed their bags. We’re done, right? Nope.

The 11 get back on the plane and the crew decided to walk off instead of fly with these guys. Tedd got up and stormed off the plane as well. Apparently so many people stormed off the plane that they canceled the flight (we obviously know isn’t true) and he eventually landed at 1230a (they have no flight that late.)

So without even doing any additional fact-checking, this thing seems highly suspicious. But it gets even more hi-lariously wrong. AirTran told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Tedd Petruna wasn’t even on the plane in the first place! Oh sure, he was supposed to be on it, but he missed his first flight from Akron/Canton to Atlanta, so he ended up not making it to Atlanta until about a half an hour after 297 first tried to leave.

According to AirTran, it’s a very different story. It sounds like these guys weren’t dressed in any particularly memorable way, and there wasn’t any sort of fight on the airplane. No TSA or police officer ever came on the airplane either. So really, it sounds like a rowdy group of guys who wouldn’t turn their cell phones off so they pulled them off the plane to check it out. After they talked to them and checked to make sure they weren’t a security threat, they let them back on and that was that.

Twelve passengers opted not to travel on that flight, and the crews were swapped (probably because they didn’t want to fly with these guys), but that was it.

I just wonder why AirTran isn’t really being more proactive here. They posted a refutation on their “internal website” of each point made by Tedd in his email and they sent it to the media. I’m not sure how long of a list that was, but I never saw anything. I’d think they would want to get the truth out there, because it sounds like they handled the situation just fine. As for our hero Tedd, I really have to wonder what the heck he was thinking.