Many of you guys asked for a story where Cranky Concierge couldn’t help someone escape a delay or cancellation. I’ve got a perfect example for you that just happened. Even though we weren’t able to help this client get to his destination in time for his meeting, he said he was still thrilled to have someone giving him updates and just being there to answer questions.

This client, let’s call him Long Duk Dong, was flying from Guayaquil, Ecuador to Beijing via Miami, San Francisco, and Hong Kong. Yeah, this was a heck of an itinerary. He had one ticket going Guayaquil to San Francisco on American and another going San Francisco to Beijing on Cathay Pacific/Dragonair. He didn’t have much time to connect in San Francisco, so he was concerned.

Things looked good leading up to the flight. The weather was good and the American 767 arrived in Guayaquil the night before, ready to go. Long Duk Dong had boarded the plane when I noticed that the flight had been delayed for 45 minutes and I sent an email. He replied that I had beaten the PA announcement with the email, but they said there was a brake problem that needed to be fixed. Um, 45 minute delay? This didn’t look good.

I started looking for alternate ways to get him to San Francisco just in case, and then the flight took another delay. A huge one. His flight was now delayed more than 12 hours. It seemed pretty clear to me that American was going to fly down a part on the regularly scheduled Miami flight. Then they could take off, but that meant he wasn’t getting to his San Francisco flight. I sprung into action.

FlightStats showed a flight to Miami on Martinair, but their reservations office was closed and Long Duk Dong said that flight wasn’t anywhere to be found. Maybe they weren’t taking local passengers. There wasn’t another Miami flight that would get him on to his connection to San Francisco.

Next up, I found an option on TACA that would go to San Jose (Costa Rica), then San Salvador, and then San Francisco just in time for his connection. Only one problem. That flight from Guayaquil had no seats left. Ugh. That was our only chance to get Long Duk Dong to San Francisco in time for his connection. Now we had to move on to damage control. Could we get him to Beijing in time for his meeting?

There was a flight on COPA via Panama City to LAX that could have connected to a flight on Air China, but again, there were no seats available out of Guayaquil on that flight. We looked at JFK, but it wasn’t going to work out. This just wasn’t going to happen.

Ultimately, Long Duk Dong was able to reschedule some of his meetings, so he spent the day in Guayaquil until his flight eventually made it to Miami and then on to San Francisco. Had Cranky Concierge failed? Well, no . . . and yes.

We weren’t able to get him to Beijing in time for his meeting. Unfortunately, we don’t have the option of chartering a plane when nothing else works (though we could do that for a much higher fee . . .). What we did, however, was keep Long Duk Dong fully updated on what was happening, and he had complete confidence that every effort had been made to get him out. In the end, he was a happy client despite the problems he had flying. I just wish we could have gotten him there in time.

You might have heard about the guy with tuberculosis who was allowed to board a US Airways flight over the weekend despite being on a “Do Not Board” list. It’s yet another failure for our complicated security system, but how did we get there? I decided to dig in to see how the system works, and you won’t be happy.

In June 2007, a Do Not Board program was created for passengers with communicable diseases. It starts off when local and state (or foreign) health officials find out about a person with a highly contagious disease. They then notify the Center for Disease Control (CDC) about that person. The CDC is the keeper of the list along with the Department of Homeland Security, but for once, DHS is willing to let those who know how to handle these things take the lead. The CDC really populates the list.

This list isn’t just for anyone with the flu. It’s only for very serious diseases that can cause major health problems. In fact, only 88 people have been put on the list since it started. To get on the list, there are three criteria that must be met.

1. The person “likely is contagious with a communicable disease that would constitute a serious public health threat should the person be permitted to board a flight
2. The person “is unaware of or likely to be nonadherent with public health recommendations, including treatment”
3. The person “likely will attempt to board a commercial aircraft.”

In other words, if you get on this list, it’s a huge deal. So far all the cases have been people with pulmonary tuberculosis. What happens after the CDC decides that you’re worthy of being on the list? This handy diagram should help.

Right now, the TSA takes the list and then communicates it to the individual airlines to manage. As you can imagine, this means there’s a lot of lag time in the process and that’s a problem. Remember, to be on this list, the patient needs to be a threat to get on an airplane, so there is no time to lose. This past weekend, the CDC put this guy on the list on Friday. He flew on Saturday. With all those steps between being sick and the person getting on the plane, it’s not a surprise that the system didn’t react fast enough to keep him off the plane.

I reached out to the TSA to find out if the new SecureFlight program will handle this in the future. Theoretically, that would eliminate a step by taking the airlines out of the equation since the TSA would handle the matching process. I got in touch with a spokesperson at the TSA, but she didn’t know the answer and has yet to get back to me. So, it’s hard to know for sure if this process will improve or not.

Yet another failure of the system. *sigh*

You guys know I have an unhealthy obsession with featuring startup airlines that have little chance of actually starting up, right? Well, this one was too good to ignore. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you XAIR.

XAIR has decided that it wants to jump in to the public charter world with a most unusual effort. The plan is to fly from its Anchorage base to Seattle. Oh, by the way, they’ll be flying in an all-business class configuration. Oh boy. This’ll be good.

Let’s take a look at this 3 1/2 hour route. Alaska owns the market with 13 flights per day IN THE WINTER. From the first flight out of Seattle at 6a until the last flight at 1145p, there is never a gap of more than 2 hours between flights. In the summer, they have about 20 flights a day with rarely more than an hour in between. If you’re a frequent business traveler flying up front, that schedule is very appealing.

So,what’s the chance there’s really demand for a new operator in here? Spokesperson Johnie Martinez says “there is a segment of the traveling public unhappy with the barrage of additional fees for services and amenities that used to be included in ticket prices.” Yeah, but that’s not the segment that’s flying First Class. Those people don’t pay extra fees.

The airline had a quote on its website that says, “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” Now the quote is “Never, never, never give up.” That may be true if you have a good plan, but in this case, the outcome is certain to be better if you don’t try at all. Please, save your money.

My guess is this airline is dead in the water already. They have a Twitter account, but they’ve only tweeted twice since early October. One touted a new survey, so I took it. They asked me a bunch of questions about where I was from and then they just asked how important frequent flier programs were. That was it.

The other tweet? Just a link sharing that Virgin America was now a citizen. I think they sent that out just to prove that someone was still manning that account. After all, they have a whopping 30 people following them. Gimme a break.

I highly doubt you needed another reason to avoid congested New York/JFK Airport, but here’s one for you just in case. Starting in March, JFK is shutting a runway down to be re-done. It’ll reopen (mostly) in July. I understand the need for this project, and the airlines and airport are preparing, but man, it’s gonna suck.

The runway being closed is 13R-31L. That’s the airport’s longest runway – almost 15,000 feet long – and you can see it in red at left. Why are they closing it? Well, the Port Authority finally realized that if they removed that curve in the runway, they could actually speed up traffic. Who knew? (File that one under “phun with photoshop”)

In reality, it just needs to be rebuilt. See, it was last re-done in 1993 and received some repairs in 2004. It’s beyond the expected life of an asphalt runway so they just can’t wait anymore.

This time, they’re going to do it right. They’re replacing the asphalt with longer-lasting concrete. They’re expanding it to be 200 feet wide instead of 150 feet, so it can handle the A380. They’re also going to fix up the taxiways around there to make them more efficient and to add more waiting room for airplanes (that’s not what you want to hear).

So it’s a good thing, but there’s one problem. It has to be done when airplanes want to use it. Of course, JFK never uses every runway at the same time, especially since three of them cross. But this particular runway is used very frequently, so it will mess things up.

What are the airlines doing about it? The good news is that they’ve agreed to keep flying their winter schedule until July 1 when they’ll ramp up to the busier summer flying. That should help. For example, last summer, JetBlue had 176-178 daily departures from JFK. This summer they’ll only have 162, but that won’t start until July. Until July, there will only be 153-154. Other airlines should have similar cuts.

This will also require some creative air traffic control work. They have other configurations that they use that don’t require runway 13R-31L, but the weather will determine if they can use those or not. The spring, fortunately, is a better weather time to do this than summer or winter, but it’s not perfect.

Airplanes like to take off and land into the wind. They need to be going a certain airspeed to get into the air, and when they fly into the wind, that means the groundspeed can be lower. Lower groundspeed means they need less runway. Hooray! Light tailwinds and moderate crosswinds are fine, but when they get worse than that, you have trouble.

Looking at this map, you can see that a strong Southeasterly wind would be the biggest problem here. If it gets strong enough, you would only be able to use the single 13L-31R. Uh oh. That shouldn’t happen too often, but when it does, run away screaming.

So, if you’re booking spring trips to New York, think about LaGuardia or Newark. (I never thought those would look like good options to avoid delays.) And if you’re looking at a trip connecting through JFK, think again. Avoid that place if you have a choice.

The DOT has ruled once again that the “America” in Virgin America isn’t a lie. Despite Alaska Airlines’ efforts to have the airline ruled to be under foreign control, the DOT decided that wasn’t the case. But to get to that point, Virgin America had to make some real concessions according to a letter from the DOT (pdf). The bottom line? They aren’t going away anytime soon, but they had to make a lot of changes to get that to happen.

The secret rumors of a change in control at Virgin America proved true. Let’s see if I can make this make sense, because it’s somewhat complicated. Richard Branson’s Virgin Group will continue to own the maximum 25 percent of voting shares in the airline that’s permitted for international investors. The rest is owned by VAI, as it was before. Before, the shares of VAI were owned primarily by Black Canyon Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners funds, but they cashed out with the guaranteed return that was promised to them.

Now, the new owners are in four groups. The biggest is a familiar name, Cyrus Capital. They’re back with 42% of the airline. Another 12.5% of the airline is owned by a group set up for distribution to employees if they sell or go public. A very tiny 0.2% is saved for management. But it’s the last group that I find most interesting.

VAI MBO Investors was formed to own just over 20%. Who is behind this? Five Virgin America board members. Actually, it’s four current members, including CEO David Cush, alongside a new guy. Robert Nickell will become a board member as soon as the deal closes. So why is this so interesting? While they were able to get Cyrus back onboard, it looks like they had to get their board members to pony up the rest of the cash. The DOT actually likes this move, because it makes the American management team more invested, but it also makes me wonder if they couldn’t find anyone else to give them money.

But simply replacing the existing equity wasn’t enough for Virgin America. They’re low on cash, so they’re pulling in some more loans. Cyrus will loan the airline $5 million in new money and $15 million to replace some existing Virgin Group debt. Meanwhile, Virgin Group will loan another $63.4 million to the airline. The amount of money they’ve poured into this airline is just amazing.

In return, they’re getting a bunch of warrants. Virgin America will issue 60 million warrants to Virgin Group and 62 million to Cyrus and the board members. Isn’t that problematic for ownership percentages? Nope. These aren’t considered voting interests unless they’re exercised. And if they’re exercised, they have to alert the DOT.

But this structure alone wasn’t enough to get the DOT to sign off. They had to make some more changes. The biggest is that no guaranteed return is allowed for these investors. That’s a good thing since it keeps it more like equity and less like debt.

Virgin America will also add a ninth board member to its roster. CEO David Cush will now be a full-fledged voting member, probably something he wanted as a new investor. The DOT also likes this because it dilutes the say that the Virgin Group has on the board.

There are also a ton of additional restrictions being put out there to restrict Virgin Group’s ability to control the airline. Virgin America will now be able to make more decisions without asking for Virgin Group’s approval. A host of other provisions have been added that you can read in the letter from the DOT if you care.

To me, this looks like Virgin America needed new investors and it needed money. Virgin Group had to give up a lot here and the board members had to throw in some cash, but in the end, Virgin America seems to have a new lease on life. Let’s see if they can keep up the improved financial performance they showed in the last quarter. If so, they’re in a decent place right now.