I had the chance to speak with Qatar Airways’ Tony Hughes recently and had a fascinating conversation. Tony is the Senior VP for the Americas, so he runs the show here in the western hemisphere.

I started with most basic question – how do you pronounce the name of the airline (and country)? Then we dove into a wide-ranging discussion on performance of US markets, codesharing, and competition with other airlines. I’ve split it up into two parts. Today we talk about Qatar itself along with the airlines from states in the Emirates. Unless something earth-shattering happens tomorrow, I’ll run part two then.

Cranky: Let me ask the one question that everyone wants to know. How do you pronounce the name of the company and the country?
Tony Hughes, Senior VP Americas: Well you know you’re absolutely right. When we started in the States, we ran a series of adverts saying how do you pronounce Q-a-t-a-r? Now, I’m English so we would say ka-TAR. In the States, they say, KA-ter. In other words, I don’t really have a good answer.

Cranky: So really, call it whatever we want as long as we buy a ticket?
Tony: Exactly! One of the interesting things for us is obviously Qatar as a country is not particularly well-known by the general public whereas Dubai is a destination. So we have that side – not only do we have to get the name over, we also have to get the country over.

Cranky: I think for a lot of people, when they think of Qatar, it’s instantly tied in with some negative thoughts, even if there isn’t as much of that in the country, it’s the region in general.
Tony: Yeah, there is an element of that. Once people actually know that the US Central Command is based in Qatar and we have six American university campuses in Doha . . . but of course, how do you get that message over? The reality is, not belittling the issues, if you actually go to Qatar walking around the streets you’re safer than in Washington. But I understand what you’re saying.

Cranky: Yeah, general perception.

Tony: I think, as you know, we are one of 5 or 6 airlines that are rated five star by Skytrax. We’re an international world class airline, not just an Arab carrier.

Cranky: Yeah, although, you may not just be another air carrier, but you are competing with other airlines that have that same reputation, Emirates and Etihad.
Tony: They’re 4 star.

Cranky: Oh yeah? Well, they still have that reputation for Americans.
Tony: And I would not sit here and say they’re not good.

Cranky: And that’s where all the growth is coming, in that region.
Tony: I think two reasons. One is the geographical location. The age of long haul jets has literally made that part of the world the crossroads between East, West, North, South. And secondly, the capital investment that’s been available there is quite spectacular.

Cranky: In Qatar, it’s obviously not growing as the same extent as Dubai has been, right?
Tony: No. I mean, in world terms it’s exceptional. It is growing, has an area full of splendid modern office buildings going up. It has its own floating island, the Pearl. There is a lot of investment but far more conservative than Dubai.

Cranky: Let’s talk more about the US market since that’s your domain. You have what, Houston, New York, and Washington?
Tony: Yeah, daily 777s from each destination.

Cranky: When you look at the US market, are you still looking to expand? Or are you looking to solidify your position?
Tony: Yes and yes. The company has quite clearly stated expansion plans and aircraft orders. Some orders are to replace existing aircraft because it’s the company’s objective to have one of the most modern fleets in the world, and the rest are to expand. We don’t have any immediate plans to bring another service to the States. I’m sure at some stage we will, but we’re reviewing all the time.

Tomorrow, I’ll have part two of the interview. We’ll talk about codesharing and competition.

I haven’t written about Cranky Concierge much here lately, but things have been going quite well. We’ve just finished a banner week where we followed near 50 people heading to a conference, we’ve added more discounts for clients, we’ve made some website changes, and, what I’m most excited about, we’ve added a small business program. Oh yeah, and our newest concierge, Nicole, has joined the airline dork crowd. Like I said, we’ve been busy.

If you work for a big ole’ monster of a company, you undoubtedly have a managed corporate travel program, and we aren’t going to compete with that. We’re still happy to help when things go wrong, but where we think we can really add value is for small business.

There are a ton of small companies out there that are either paying too much for their travel programs or not using one at all. We can fill that gap and save money along the way while also providing excellent flight monitoring.

Small business clients do not have to pay each time they fly. Instead, we will bill you monthly. That not only makes it easier for you, but it allows us to apply small business volume discounts depending upon how much you use us during any one month. There is no contract required, so you can even give us a shot for a single month.

For more, go to crankyconcierge.com/smallbusiness.php or call us at (707) 797-7474 and we can tell you all you need to know.

We’re happy to add two new discount partners to the site this week. As you know, you can already get discounts on things like GoGo inflight internet (25% off), TripIt Pro, and more. Now we welcome our two newest partners.

• AwardWallet – I’ve written about AwardWallet before, and now Cranky Concierge clients can take advantage of the premium features of the frequent flier balance monitoring service for free. Yep, Concierge clients will get a free upgrade to AwardWallet Plus. We’ve also been working on a Cranky Concierge frequent flier program monitoring and management service, but that’s still in the works.
• On the Fly Seminars – You might know Nick Kralev from his days at the Washington Times. Many know him as the one to shed a broad spotlight on United’s Starnet blocking practice which prevents you from using awards that might be available on Star Alliance partners. After many, many years of traveling all over the globe, he’s now created the On the Fly seminars to help you maximize your travel budget, grow your mileage balance, reduce the hassle, and get upgrades. His seminars are all over the US and Cranky Concierge clients will get 15% off.

One of the more consistent problems we’ve seen is people not signing up for the right plan for their trips. It’s not your fault, it’s ours. So we’ve gone ahead and combined our pricing and details page into something much easier to understand. It starts with this:

Easy, right? We’ve also made changes to how you can send us your info when we’re helping you plan a trip. Once you complete payment, you’ll be taken to a thank you page that now has a form you can fill out with all the info we’ll need from you to get started. No more going back to your email to do it. You can just take care of everything right there.

Lastly, I’d like to welcome Nicole to our stable of airline dorks. Nicole actually signed up for Cranky Concierge for a trip to Indonesia, and after she ended up coming up with a more creative and cheaper route, I started talking to her about becoming a concierge herself. Sure enough, she’s onboard and will add a welcome female perspective to the crew. Nicole started training this week, so you can look forward to getting her help next time you sign up.

Welcome onboard, Nicole!

A couple weeks ago, I said that Delta’s growth in Washington smelled fishy. Now, US Airways is doing the same thing in New York at LaGuardia. Now the fishy smell is going away. It’s all becoming clear now. US Airways looks to be smacking Delta back for growing in Washington. Nothing says summer fun like an airline brawl, right?

There are far too many reasons for this to simply be a coincidence. For example, US Airways will increase its flying on October 31, the very same day Delta does it in Washington. The new routes are as follows:

US Airways will be adding a net of 17 new flights a day at LaGuardia. And where exactly are these magical slots coming from. According to US Airways, the slots were on a “short-term lease” that has now ended. Hmm, anyone want to guess to whom those were leased? If your guess isn’t Delta, hang your head in shame.

In the comments on the Delta post, reader David asked why Delta and US Airways didn’t just lease their slots to each other if they couldn’t get permission to sell them. I figured that wouldn’t be allowed at LaGuardia, but apparently that’s not true, at least in small quantity. Then again, who knows what the feds would have done had the airlines tried to go behind their backs on the entire process. You can’t hide that, and I can’t imagine it would have been looked upon favorably, to say the least.

So the story now starts to come together, at least in my mind. Delta and US Airways tried to do the slot swap and set up some slot leases as part of that to ease the transition. Then the deal got shot down. Delta, either not content to wait for the court ruling or simply not expecting to win, took its slots back from US Airways at National and decided to build them up. US Airways, obviously pissed about this, then took its slots back and decided to throw down in New York as well.

Of the 10 markets getting new or increased flying from US Airways at LaGuardia, seven of them are served by Delta. Six are actually only served by Delta right now. The Dulles move is probably an effort to get some Star Alliance connectivity via United’s hub. Then there’s Harrisburg and Hartford. I suppose it’s possible those were the next best markets out there that didn’t have service, but really? Hartford? That’s an easier drive. Maybe they think they can get some good connections via LaGuardia. Or maybe there’s just something really goofy there that I can’t figure out. (Maintenance base, aircraft routing efficiency?)

Either way, the message here is clear. If Delta wants to try and compete in Washington, then US Airways will do the same in New York. With US Airways now actually showing a profit in LaGuardia, this move could make sense . . . until the economy rolls back downhill again. But hey, let’s not let economics get in the way of a good old-fashioned round of fisticuffs. This is a lot more fun.

It was just last month that the Department of Transportation (DOT) said not to rush to judgment after seeing more cancellations and slightly fewer 3 hour delays in May. We needed more time, they said. Well apparently the DOT only thinks that’s the case if the numbers don’t help their cause. Now that June numbers are out, they’re jumping on them as proof of success. Slow down there, DOT. Your base level look at June numbers is way too superficial and smells simply of politics.

On the surface, things looked much better this year for long ground delays, and really, they were. There were three flights that sat on the runway for more than 3 hours during June 2010. In June 2009, that number was a whopping 278. This year, none sat for more than 4 hours. Last year, it was 42.

So did cancellations spike as a result? A little, but not much. Though the DOT would like you to think that both this year and last saw no change at 1.5 percent of flights canceled, that’s only thanks to rounding. In 2009, it was 1.48 percent. In 2010, it was 1.50 percent. So there was a very slight increase. In fact, three fewer flights were canceled this year but with 6,307 fewer flights operating.

Sounds like a tremendous success, right? Well, it’s good news for some, but it’s important to look at other factors year-over-year to see how we may have ended up in this place.

First, we have to remember that after last summer, the airlines did ramp up their efforts to reduce lengthy ground delays. So some of the reduction should be related to previous efforts and not simply the introduction of this rule. We’ll never know exactly what that is. But we can still dig in and see what happened last June. You’ll notice that the weather was significantly better, despite what many have said.

The Air Travel Consumer Report doesn’t give specifics on the flights that were delayed for three hours, but it does do it for the flights delayed more than 4 hours. So let’s focus on those. There were 42 of those, and most of them occurred during specific events. For example, 13 of them (11 at Dulles) happened in Washington on June 3, 2009. That’s the day that thunderstorms came and sat on top of Dulles from 8p to 10p.

So the weather was bad, but something had to be just as bad this year, right? Nope. In June, there were a couple days with quick passing storms, but the only day that saw sustained thunderstorms over a long period was June 28 when storms sat on Dulles from 145p to 3p, still a much shorter time period, especially when you’re looking at a 3 hour limit.

But the key is the time of day. I looked at flights scheduled on August 12, 2010 as a comparison. Not much should have changed between last year and this year. Between 145p and 3p, there are only 29 flights scheduled to arrive and 15 scheduled to depart. That’s an average of 23.2 arrivals per hour and 12 departures per hour during the time of the storm. Meanwhile, between 8p and 10p, 82 flights are scheduled to arrive and 32 scheduled to depart. Think about that, that’s 41 arrivals per hour or 16 departures. That’s a significant difference.

On top of that, the imbalance of arrivals to departures is huge at night. That’s because a lot of planes come in and stay the night before flying out in the morning. That means that the gates are full at night, so if planes don’t push back to depart on time, then arrivals have nowhere to go. That’s not usually the case during the day. And don’t underestimate the 2 hours of storms this year versus 1.25 hours last year. That’s a huge difference when 3 hours is your cutoff.

There were a couple other events we could look at in June 2009 as well, but I could paint a story for those too. I think the point is clear. Knowing that thunderstorms tend to be the biggest culprit for long ground delays during the summer, June was a luckier weather month in 2010 than it was in 2009.

That being said, even if we had the exact same weather this year, I would bet the performance would still have been better. Simply being more cognizant about the situation would have reduced the number of ground delays, but that’s going to have happened even if this rule didn’t exist.

The bottom line is that the DOT can’t have it both ways. If it wants to just use superficial results to advance its claim, go right ahead. But then don’t tell people who do more in-depth reviews that it’s too early to look at the results. This is a far more complicated issue than either the DOT or the pro-rule people want to admit.

Why is SkyWest Buying ExpressJet? – BNET Headwinds
You’ve probably been wondering why I was silent on this, but it was just a backlog of posts on the BNET site.

Why Delta Airlines Decided to Invade Iceland – BNET Headwinds
Delta’s going to Iceland, just like everyone else. But I don’t think it’s a bad move.

Stressed JetBlue attendant not flying solo – Crain’s New York Business
Crain’s asked me about the now famous JetBlue flight attendant who popped a slide and walked away.

JetBlue’s Stress Test: A Peek at the Secret Fantasy of Every Flight Attendant – BNET Headwinds
I honestly didn’t want to write about this, but the story blew up so fast, that I had to jump in.

Pilot Outsourcing a Tough Challenge for United-Continental Merger – BNET Headwinds
Pilot scope clauses are going to be front and center in the United/Continental merger. Did the SkyWest acquisition of ExpressJet have something to do with that?

JetBlue Plays It Smart (and Serious) After Steven Slater Incident – BNET Headwinds
It’s been an interesting week for JetBlue, and now the airline is talking directly to its employees about the Steven Slater incident. It’s an excellent letter.