It looks like the good folks at Southwest have slipped in a little change to your ability to use ticketless travel funds. As with any change, that has some people unhappy. Instead of being able to use your funds for anyone to travel, you’ll only be able to use it for yourself. I’m not a fan of this move.

A friend of mine sent me the news when he saw the story on FlyerTalk. Beginning January 28, 2011, funds that are in your name can only be used when you travel on Southwest. The way it is today, if you have a credit, you can use it for anyone.

Let’s say you booked a ticket to Birmingham, Alabama (not sure why you’d do that, but ok) and then found you couldn’t go at the last minute. We all know that Southwest has no change fees, so the amount you paid for that ticket goes into a credit that you can use on Southwest within one year of ticketing. The beauty of those credits is that you can use them for other travelers and not just you. So if I don’t have a reason to use it, I can offer it to my dad or to a friend. I’ve actually done that before where an expiring credit would have simply disappeared so I gave it up to someone else.

That luxury is going the way of free airline meals. Now you have to be the one traveling to use the credit. That sucks. I think we all understand why Southwest would do this. Without being able to transfer the credit, more people won’t be able to use it and Southwest will get to keep the money. It also eliminates any black market that may have been out there to get some cash for credits that would have gone unused. So this is a revenue-generating move, but I think there are better ones out there than this.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I think Southwest should have a change fee. Just put a reasonable $25 fee on there and the airline can start raking in the dough. It can also eliminate a lot of the uncertainty out there. If someone really needs to make a change, that person would pay $25. It would hurt those who just book for the sake of booking a cheap flight and then bank the credits later if they don’t take the flight.

Why do I like this better? I think it’s more flexible and useful. I know there is always an outcry when I mention a Southwest change fee, but if you could share your credit with someone else for only a $25 fee, then it would be better than not being able to share it at all. I know Southwest hates change fees, but there are only so many messages that an airline can promote. It’s been almost entirely about bags flying free lately and that’s a good campaign. Why not keep the focus on that. It’s not a conflict because a $25 fee would be fair.

This, however, isn’t happening anytime soon. And that’s too bad, because I find a change fee to be more palatable than a restriction on credit use.

[Original photo via Flickr user flygraphix]

I love trips like this. Just as our cold June and early July gave way to sizzling 90 degree heat, it was time for me to head to the mountains. My brother and I joined 7 other guys for some drinking, hiking, and fishing up at Lake Tahoe.

What the heck does this have to do with Smurfs? Well, in the airline pricing world, you rarely say the name of a city. Instead, you just sound out the airport code. Even though there’s no “r” in SMF (the airport code for Sacramento), it somehow became known as Smurf.

I had the option of flying out of LAX to Reno and then driving an hour or flying from Long Beach to Sacramento on JetBlue and driving two hours. Needless to say, I chose Sacramento and the tickets were $179.40 roundtrip.

As usual, I left for the airport an hour before the flight and I was sitting around in the boarding lounge (read: double wide trailer) within 20 minutes. For midday flights when the lines are shorter, I may just start leaving home later.

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July 15, 2010
JetBlue 262 Lv Long Beach 1119a Arr Sacramento 1237p
Long Beach (LGB): Gate 2A, Runway 30, Depart 1m Early
Sacramento (SMF): Gate B25, Runway 16R, Arrive 6m Early
N589JB, Airbus A320, Blue Skies Ahead, ~75% Full
Seat 6F
Flight Time 1h2m

When we started boarding, the friendly gate agent was very careful to tell people where to go, especially since it was a long walk to the plane. He said something like “when you get out there, stay within the metal fences and you’ll get to the plane. It’s the only one out there and it’s called Blue Skies Ahead.” I started smirking, thinking about people wandering aimlessly looking for planes, getting lost, left to die. It’ll be nice when the ramp work is done here.

The flight was completely uneventful and enjoyable. I do have only a couple minor nits that JetBlue might want to think about.

I get that LiveTV is free, and I have no trouble with JetBlue putting ads up to make revenue off the product, but I hate the timing. They let you watch TV on the ground without any issues, but then when you take off, they run ads for a couple minutes. I was in the middle of watching the Daily Show at the time, and I missed the end because of the JetBlue ads.

The other issue is with this “express” service. Once again it was water, Coke, Diet Coke, or Sprite along with Doritos, Munchie Mix, and Animal Crackers. That was it. Since JetBlue has been promoting its new blueberry juice option, I thought I’d give it a try. Not on this flight. Same for my beloved ginger ale. And not even blue chips?

I asked the flight attendant what the cutoff was for a normal service. She said it was an hour, and then looked a bit sheepish after realizing the captain had just told us our flight would be an hour and two minutes. She then said, “Well, it’s really by route. We just don’t have enough time to do a full service on a full flight.”

That excuse was pretty lame since this flight wasn’t nearly full, and the flight attendants had plenty of time to sit in the back of the plane and chat. I know the flight attendants don’t decide if they run a full service or not, so something tells me management might want to look at this policy again.

Other than those minor annoyances, the flight was great. We landed a couple minutes early in the retro Sacramento Terminal B. I was on my way to meet my brother and friends to head up to Lake Tahoe.

It was a fantastic weekend, and after the nine of us caught 27 salmon in the lake, we had a great feast. Tired and a little hungover, we headed back down the mountain. As you would expect, there was traffic on a Sunday afternoon, but we arrived at Sacramento Airport as planned at 430p. I dumped them off for their flight and then I went to return the car before mine.

The shuttle dropped me off again at Terminal B, which lies in the shadows of the massive new Sacramento terminal project. That’ll have to be the subject of another post. For now, I was stuck in a time warp. (Check out the restroom sign.) I sailed through security and popped on to free wifi to do some work before it was time to board.

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July 18, 2010
JetBlue 265 Lv Sacramento 645p Arr Long Beach 807p
Sacramento (SMF): Gate B25, Runway 16R, Depart On Time
Long Beach (LGB): Gate 2, Runway 30, Arrive 11m Early
N504JB, Airbus A320, Shades of Blue, ~100% Full
Seat 9A
Flight Time 1h0m

Although the plane came in on time from Long Beach, it was slow to deplane and we found ourselves pushing up against the departure time. Finally, we started boarding and it started with a bit of bad news.

I saw that we were on N504JB, the second airplane JetBlue took on back in 2000. It looked good for its age, but the insides weren’t keeping up today. They announced that LiveTV wasn’t working. Boo . . . ish. I love LiveTV, but I get a $15 credit (as does everyone else on the flight) since it didn’t work. I’ll take it.

The boarding process was nothing short of awesome. A woman whom I believed to be the station manager started walking the line, making sure everyone had their boarding passes out and even tore off pieces to make sure it would be easy for the gate agent to rip. We boarded very quickly and pushed almost right on time. Great work.

Once onboard, I found a packed flight, and of course, I was the one sitting next to the guy who just had to be farting his way through. On top of that, he was talkative. Without LiveTV to hide behind, I was in trouble.

Fortunately, he did let up as we made a mad dash toward the runway. We launched into the warm evening and headed out toward the Sierras. It was a beautiful ride down as we butted up against the foothills the whole way. We had another express beverage service and I did some work.

We descended in over a smoggy LA. I had a great view of the beach on my left and enjoyed watching airplanes come out of LAX, climbing high as we dropped down.

We came through the thin marine layer before landing in a nice and cool Long Beach.

Strong June Traffic Means It’s Time For Airlines to Raise Airfares — Cautiously – BNET
Continued strong traffic numbers mean airfares are going to continue on the march. But airlines need to be careful not to go too high. Huh?

US Airways Shows Stellar Operational Improvement, but Nobody Knows It – BNET
US Airways has really done wonders for its operation and that’s great, but nobody else knows about it. They need to work on that.

How JetBlue Tends To Its Brand – BNET
There was a good interview with JetBlue SVP Marty St George about how JetBlue focuses on its brand.

A road trip is a great way to tell a person’s story, as The Cranky Flier proves -Budget Travel
Sean over at Budget Travel had a great review of my newly-released book.

Why Allegiant Shuffles Airports in Ways Most Airlines Wouldn’t Dare – BNET
Allegiant is switching its Idaho Falls flights from LAX to Long Beach. Seems strange, but there is a method to the madness.

American, oneworld Step Closer to Legitimacy with EU Approvals – BNET
The EU has approved the American and BA joint venture along with the BA and Iberia merger.

I never thought things could get any worse for Alitalia, but they have. No, no. It’s not that they’re performing worse. It’s that they’re no longer feeding me with excellent fodder to support my claim that they’re the worst airline ever. It’s really a drag. But fear not, there are still some gems out there that make me reluctant to remove that title just yet.

Alitalia has, without question, been performing better, but that’s a relative term. In the first quarter of 2010, the airline lost a mere €125 million. I know, still awful, right? But that’s better than the €210 million loss in Q1 2009. Most of that is probably coming from filling an terrible 64.5% of seats as opposed to last year’s frighteningly terrible 52%.

The airline has also just joined the Air France/Delta joint venture. I joked with someone that it must have made Air France and Delta an offer they “couldn’t refuse.” Last time Delta CEO Richard Anderson flew on a flat bed on Delta, he probably woke up with a horse’s head awaiting him.

Why exactly am I writing about them if the news isn’t that bad? Well, I saw this interview with the awesomely-named Antongiulio Zecchini, Alitalia’s network planning manager. Maybe it’s a language barrier, but I found it to be quite confusing. When asked to explain the dual airline Alitalia/Air One strategy, Antongiulio said this:

Alitalia is now hubbing at Rome Fiumicino and optimising Milan operations to serve the main local markets. It also serves premium flows in Linate, taking care of the time-sensitive flyers from/to (Milan) Linate city airport and long-haul operations.

While Air One is the ‘smart carrier’ dedicated to short and medium-haul price-sensitive travellers from/to Milan Malpensa and competes with low-fare carriers.

Alitalia’s integration with Air One also brought a legacy of bases in the Italian province. As well as feeding the long-haul network, priority has extended to covering routes bypassing Rome and Milan, to better serve customers along the Italian peninsula.

Ok, so lemme get this straight. We know that Rome/Fiumicino is a hub. Milan Linate is just for the “premium flows” – heavy shorter haul biz traffic markets, I assume. Malpensa is served by Alitalia on the best routes while Air One serves the rest of Malpensa by going up against the low cost carriers. It’s also looking to beef up the domestic markets that don’t touch Rome and Milan. So it’s a huge mix of point-to-point and hubbing.

I think I get it, but then he goes and contradicts himself by saying that Alitalia codeshares with Air One to feed intercontinental operations at Malpensa. That sounds like a hub. But if it is a hub, it’s not doing a very good job, because Alitalia keeps moving other short haul services to Linate. This dual airport thing in Milan is just killing that city. If that’s not enough, there’s Milan Orio Al Serio as well, and Air Italy is serving that. Yep, Alitalia is codesharing with that airline now as well.

I mean, Milan isn’t even a huge focus for the airline. That’s supposed to be Rome. Meanwhile there are all kinds of efforts to grow the airline outside of Rome and Milan altogether in other Italian cities as well.

And we haven’t even talked about the fleet yet. For shorter haul, the airline is finally getting close to ditching its last MD-80. But there is still a split fleet between the A320 family and 737s. Let’s not forget it also flies Embraer 170s and CRJ-900s. Nice of them to sample each manufacturer. (Yes, it’s even believed that there will be an order coming soon for the Sukhoi SuperJet.)

On long haul, there’s a motley mix of ten 777s, six 767s, and two A330s. The A330s are being used from Malpensa while the rest of the fleet seems to be in Rome.

Got that? I swear, this airline is in a strange place. On the one hand, it needs to do a lot of work to get in better shape. On the other hand, it seems to be trying to do too much at once. I have no idea how to fix that, but hopefully that means it will provide me with good fodder for years to come.

Today is the official launch of my book, “Where the Hell Am I Going?” (What makes it official? ’cause I said so.) It’s now up for sale on Amazon (with the search inside feature, for those who want to read a sample) and on Kindle. I’m surprised to see places already offering used copies as well. Sounds shady to me. Since it’s the official launch, I figured I should take the advice of one of the commenters on my last post and give an opportunity to win a copy of the book. If you’re game, keep reading.

For those who didn’t see my previous post, this book is a combination of a couple of things. It’s a travelogue about my three-week odyssey driving around the US shortly after a) getting married and b) getting laid off. As you can imagine, sitting on the road for that long gives one a lot of time to think. So the travelogue is combined with me searching through memories and trying to figure out, uh, where the hell I was going (figuratively, not literally – I’m awesome with navigation, usually). If you’re worried that it’s going to be a sappy, boring book, you clearly don’t read this blog often. It’s got my usual snark in there, and I’ve received some great feedback from people who have read it.

The list price is a mere $14.99, but those wacky book people at Amazon are selling it for $10.79. That’s a mere 4 cents per page. Can’t do better than that on a per page cost! (Ok, maybe you can if you hoard those free pamphlets in Vegas that tell you to get over your gambling addiction, but whatever.) The Kindle edition is only $9.99 and you get “free delivery” via Amazon Whispernet. Sounds like people who used to name airplanes (Whisperjet) have found a home at Amazon.

Is $10 just way too much for your budget? That sucks. But don’t worry, there’s hope. I’m looking for the five best reasons as to why I should give you a free copy. It’s easy to buy and it’s pretty cheap, so you’ll need to get creative on this one. You can post your reason in the comment section below (make sure you use the email you’d like to be contacted on if you win) or you can email it in to cf@crankyflier.com. The deadline for submission is one week from today. Yep, you have until Thursday, July 22 at 12 noon Pacific Daylight Time. Winners will be posted on Friday, July 23.

If you can’t stand suspense and just want to buy a copy, you know where to go.

Buy “Where the Hell am I Going?” From Amazon
Buy “Where the Hell am I Going?” For Kindle

[Original photos via Flickr user wbaiv and Flickr user Matt Mordfin]