In a move that surprised nobody, Southwest told WestJet to take a hike last week after their relationship fell on hard times. It looks like Volaris will now be Southwest’s first modern codeshare partner while they look for other options on how to serve Canada. That’s too bad. Looks like the Canadian Mountie costume I wore to Southwest’s Halloween a couple years back was all for naught.

This little fight became publicly known in late March when new WestJet CEO Gregg Saretsky said he wasn’t happy with how long it was taking for Southwest to get its act in order. Then he went on to say they were talking with Delta about a codeshare, conveniently fitting with Delta’s plan to transfer 5 slots to WestJet at LaGuardia. Uh huh.

Southwest said that WestJet had asked for some material changes to the agreement awhile back and then on Friday, the axe fell. Southwest walked away. So what were those material changes? If I had to guess, I’d say it was related to other partnerships that WestJet wanted (duh). Did they give Southwest blanket exclusivity? I’m sure not, but I’m guessing Southwest wasn’t too happy with them trying to link up with another large domestic US airline. So that’s over.

Now, Southwest says (in a very stilted way) this:

We remain interested in exploring the possibility of one day offering service to Canada if it makes sense for Southwest and for our Customers. That would not rule out future codeshare relationships with Canadian carriers, or flying north of the border ourselves.

Hmm, future codeshare relationships? Well if it’s not WestJet and I can’t imagine Air Canada, that leaves some pretty slim pickings. Air Labrador is probably working on trying to feed Sun Country and its burgeoning Gander hub. Maybe Southwest can connect up with Buffalo Airways in Yellowknife? No, I know. It’ll be Aklak Air in Inuvik. Like I said, the pickings are slim.

At this point, Southwest probably needs to look at whether it’s even worth flying to Canada at all. Without WestJet, I imagine a codeshare opportunity is dead, so it becomes a matter of whether they want to build up a tiny operator in Canada (I doubt it) or start flying there themselves. There aren’t going to be that many cities that are attractive for high frequency service on a 737. I mean, look at Air Canada. They fly 70-80 seaters on a ton of routes to the US and they have all kinds of feed coming from within Canada already. Yes, Southwest can bring feed from the US, but I’m just not convinced it’s worth it.

Wondering why I’m posting on a Sunday? Well, it’s to welcome Washington Post readers to the site. See, today I had an opinion piece in the Post entitled Don’t let bag fees make you nostalgic. Airlines’ golden age wasn’t so golden. What spurred this article? Spirit’s carry-on fee, of course. But that was a broader piece on the industry, so I thought I’d bring it over here for a little more discussion.

The backlash on this carry-on fee has been heated, to say the least, but the hottest air of all is coming from the US Senate, and it’s ridiculous. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) led off the insanity by saying this was horrible, and now he has joined with six other senators to introduce the BAG Fees Act. Reading through their release, they clearly haven’t actually looked at Spirit’s fee.

For example, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) had this to say:

Carry-on luggage is where people keep items essential to their health, work, and safety like laptop computers, medications, food to eat on the plane, baby formula, eye glasses and other items that need to be kept close at hand. These are personal items that airline passengers should not be charged to keep with them in the cabin.

Thanks for playing, Senator, but everything you mentioned there remains free on Spirit. The airline is still allowing a personal item (like a purse, briefcase, etc) and things like diaper bags are free too. So, to help senators from embarrassing further, I’ve put together this handy guide:

To all my first time visitors, thanks for stopping by. I’m here every morning Monday through Friday, so come back often. And if you like what you see, you can sign up to receive your daily cranky via email for free.

WiFi When You Fly: A Battle of the Business Models – BNET
Is there a difference for the customer between GoGo and Row 44 inflight internet? Yep. There is.

Southwest seeks space at Reagan – GW Hatchet
The newspaper at my alma mater asked for my thoughts on Southwest coming in to Washington/National.

Which Airlines and Airports Are the Worst? Take the Quiz – BNET
Let’s see how well you know the February on time performance numbers. Take the quiz and see some surprising results.

Revenues Are Up, But Can Airlines Avoid the Perils of Overcapacity? – BNET
March traffic is in and the numbers look good. Can the airlines avoid adding too many seats and blowing this whole thing?

The Business Logic of Airlines’ New Standby Fees – BNET
The airlines are charging for same-day standby across the board now. That sucks, but it’s entirely understandable.

Regulators Gone Wild: FAA Fines Frontier $380K for Safety Card Glitch – BNET
Frontier got smacked with a $380,000 fine for failing to replace a placard. Is the FAA just trying to flex some muscle here?

It’s a rare week when there isn’t a strike at a European airline, but this appears to be one of them. Unhappy with this news, a big, mean volcano in Iceland called Eyjafjallajokull (strangely enough, pronounced simply as “Billy”) decided to start erupting. Thanks to the prevailing winds, many European airports are shut down until the ash cloud passes. Ugh.

Ash, in case you didn’t know, is like kryptonite for airplanes. No, it has nothing to do with reduced visibility as you might expect. That type of flying happens all the time. The problem is that the ash roughs up airplanes and has an unfortunate side effect of making engines stop running. So yes, it’s a good thing that air traffic has come to a halt. I’m just waiting to see how some lazy journalist finds a way to pin this on the airlines.

All London airports were shut down yesterday as were those up in Scandinavia. Airports on the continent starting shutting down a little later on as the ash cloud continued to move toward the southeast. The funny thing here is that Icelandic air traffic is largely unaffected because the winds are blowing the ash away.

So what exactly happens when an airplane flies into ash? It’s not good. There have been two very high profile incidents, both in the ’80s before they apparently realized that they should avoid flying into ash clouds at all costs.

The first was on British Airways in 1982. A 747 was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Perth when it flew through a cloud of ash at 37,000 feet. The engines apparently weren’t so happy with that so they all shut down and the plane became a glider. Once they got below the ash, they were able to get the engines restarted, though not before they reached 13,000 feet. Yeah, it was a long and scary glide down. They landed safely in Jakarta.

The second was on KLM’s ever-popular (or not) Amsterdam to Anchorage route. They thought they were flying into a normal cloud at 25,000 feet, but, um, it was ash. The engines all quit and they started heading down. The first engines came back at 13,000 feet and they again landed safely. In both cases, there was some serious damage to the airplane.

Come to think of it, maybe this is the airlines’ fault. They wouldn’t have to cancel all these flights if they were just willing to fly at 13,000 feet all the way around, right? Or they could just climb to cruising altitude and sell it as a weightless adventure when they plunge 20,000 feet before getting the engines restarted. I think they might be missing out here.

Really, this is frustrating for everyone. The airlines are losing a ton of money while passengers get stuck. And the worst part? You can’t even see the ash cloud from the ground, so people are going to have a tougher time understanding why their flight is grounded. On top of that, they don’t know when the thing is going to move on. Sheesh.

If you’re flying to or from Europe this weekend, bring a lot of patience. It’s going to be a tough one.

[Original Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kimon/ / CC BY-SA 2.0 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdelriccio/ / CC BY-SA 2.0]

A distraught reader sent me a note yesterday about a bonus mile offer he received from United, and I thought it was worth sharing with everyone. Take note – always do a search on United.com with and without the code to make sure you’re getting the lowest fare.

This particular deal gives you an increasing number of bonus miles for each roundtrip you fly this Spring up to three total. It looks like it’s targeted at Colorado residents as part of the big brawl between Southwest, Frontier, and United but it can be used by anyone (just enter promo code MPD330). Sounds pretty good, right? Might as well get bonus miles if you’re flying, but be careful. This deal is only good on fares in Q class or higher. So let’s say you want to go from LA to Dulles on some random dates in May. With the promo code, I see this:

You’ll notice that it tells me that “To qualify for the promotion, all selected flights must be promotion-eligble,” but they don’t bother telling you that they are only showing fares that are promotion eligible. If I take away that promo code, guess what I see?

Holy shnikes! That’s over $400 less. Now, if I’m a savvy traveler, I might see at the bottom of the terms and conditions that it’s limited to fares that are in Q or higher, but that doesn’t mean I expect to not be shown lower fares. Many people are likely to miss that restriction anyway. There should be something here that shows the lowest fare without a promotion code so people can evaluate if this is good offer or not.

I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would pay a $400 premium for some bonus miles. For that price, I could just flat-out buy over 10,000 miles directly from United.

So be careful if you’re using a United promo code on their website. Make sure you always do one search with the code and one without so you can ensure that you aren’t missing out on a much better deal.