It was just announced that the new United will start flying 757s from Washington to Europe for the first time when it adds a second daily flight to Paris. This has a lot of people wondering why United never bothered doing this before. After all, pre-merger United had around 100 of those airplanes and never flew them over the Atlantic. It’s actually because not all 757s are created the same, and United simply didn’t want to invest in making its airplanes worthy of flying across the Pond. With Continental management in charge, this will certainly change.

The new plan has a Continental 757 starting that second daily Dulles-Paris flight on June 9. During the leaner off-peak season, the Washington-Amsterdam flight will become a 757 (Sep 1) and the first daily flight to Paris will also go on a 757 (Sep 29). Some United widebodies will move up to Newark for a couple flights to balance things out. Pre-merger United passengers are probably dreading this move, but they shouldn’t. The onboard experience on a Continental 757 is nothing like a United 757.

By this summer, every Continental 757 will have the same flat beds in business class that Continental is installing on its widebody fleet. There will be 16 of those and 159 coach seats, all of which have full audio/video on demand and power ports that don’t require an adapter. In other words, the seat experience on these airplanes is better than what you’ll find on United except for the lack of Economy Plus.

The 757 is a great airplane for the North Atlantic for a couple reasons. First, it allows airlines to fly more frequently between cities that can’t support multiple flights on a widebody. Washington to Paris is a perfect example. Right now, that’s flown once a day with a 777 that has (or will have once the flat beds are installed) 48 Business and First class seats along with 221 in coach. Now, the airline will be able to run two 757s which combined have 32 Business and 318 seats in coach. This is great for markets with less premium cabin demand that could potentially be boosted by having more frequency. In this case, it helps to compete with Air France’s double daily flights.

Second, this airplane is great for opening up markets that don’t have enough demand to support even one widebody. Continental has been able to fly routes like Newark to Hamburg because of this airplane.

So why didn’t United bother doing this before? The answer? It was too cheap to do it. Maybe that’s not fair. I’m sure somebody did a cost-benefit analysis. They just came to different conclusions than the Continental folks. Here’s the difference.

Aircraft Maximum Takeoff Weight
Continental ordered its 757s with a maximum takeoff weight of 255,000 pounds while United’s are only 240,000. Why does this matter? Because Continental can pack on an additional 15,000 pounds of fuel over a United airplane with a similar passenger load. And you need that fuel to get across the Pond. Could United have changed this? Yes. It’s my understanding that a higher weight is a paperwork issue. They would have had to pay to have the plane re-certified but that’s all they’d have to do. There’s another cost here. Airports base landing fees on max takeoff weight, so better need that extra weight if you’re going to bother having it.

Engine Thrust
Continental has Rolls Royce RB211-535 engines with 42,540 pounds of thrust. United has Pratt & Whitney PW2037 engines on its birds with 37,000 pounds of thrust. More thrust is a good thing, and United doesn’t have it. Now, United could upgrade its engines to PW2040 or PW2043 engines with more thrust with ease, but it chose not to do so. Again, the airline didn’t want to pay for what’s an easy technical upgrade.

Crew Rest
This might be the stickiest area. FAA rules require a relief pilot on flights over 8 hours and the westbound flights tend to be over that amount thanks to headwinds. But each airline has a different contract with its pilots stating what facilities are required for crew rest. For Continental, I believe it’s just a blocked biz class seat on a 757 for pilots. Flight attendants also have their own requirements. United’s union contracts tend to provide more, but I don’t believe the 757 is addressed directly right now. So, there would have to be some negotiation on what a rest facility on the 757 would look like, and it’s unclear how difficult that may or may not be. This will undoubtedly be one of the areas of discussion on the new combined pilot contract.

So that’s why United’s 757s don’t fly over the Pond and Continental’s do. I would assume we’re going to see more of this from Washington as time goes by because it’s something that Continental has used very successfully from Newark over the years.

Airlines Start Tightening Belts as Fuel Prices Rise – BNET Headwinds
Fuel prices are on the rise and that means it’s time for airlines to start revisiting growth plans. Delta’s already done it.

Low-Cost Airlines: Increasingly Flying to a Major Airport Near You – BNET Headwinds
Secondary airports used to be the place to find low cost carriers, but they’re now increasingly moving toward primary airports.

Why airline fees are good for travelers – CNN.com Out of the Office
I’m now writing a new weekly CNN.com column entitled Out of the Office. I started off with a very controversial topic, and the reaction was, um, stiff. People aren’t nearly as civilized with their comments on CNN.com, that’s for sure.

US Airways: Why We Don’t Bother Hedging Jet-Fuel Prices – BNET Headwinds
US Airways doesn’t hedge, and so far it’s paying dividends. See why the strategy makes sense for the airline today.

Google-ITA Rewards Orbitz and Undercuts Merger Opposition at the Same Time – BNET Headwinds
ITA signed a renewal with Orbitz and that might have some impact on whether or not Google’s effort to buy ITA gets approved.

In the Trenches: Getting Help with Hiring – Intuit Small Business Blog
After realizing that hiring on my own wasn’t going to work well, I looked elsewhere for help.

Heathrow-Virgin Spat: Virgin Caves, but Wins the PR Battle – BNET Headwinds
Virgin Atlantic’s effort to withhold funds from BAA has failed, but the war is still ongoing.

Delta ranks near bottom in on-time performance – Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I was asked whether a poor on time performance record would make fliers consider alternatives. Yep.

The DOT has released December on-time performance and as you would imagine, it was awful. Anything stand out for you in this month’s report?
http://airconsumer.dot.gov/reports/2011/February/2011FebruaryATCR.PDF

If there was any doubt that Mexican airline Volaris had designs on a big US presence, those have been put to rest. After announcing a couple of new routes over the last few months, Volaris has now applied for a slew of new routes covering the country. If you don’t know Volaris, that’s going to change very quickly.

As of now, Volaris flies to Guadalajara from Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Chicago/Midway, and, starting March 30, Las Vegas. It also flies from LA to Zacatecas, Morelia, and Toluca (Mexico City’s secondary airport). You might remember back in October when Southwest officially launched its partnership with Volaris to feed passengers between the two networks. Now, Volaris is ready to blanket the US with its own flights, happy to feed passengers into the Southwest system. Much of this is thanks to the demise of Mexicana.

Volaris has received approval from Mexico and is now applying for approval from the US to fly the following routes:

• Chicago to Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, and Zacatecas
• Dallas/Ft Worth to Mexico City
• Fresno to Guadalajara
• LA to Aguascalientes, Cabo San Lucas, Cancun, Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo, Mazatlan, Oaxaca, and Puerto Vallarta
• Miami to Cancun
• New York to Cancun
• Oakland to Leon and Mexico City
• San Francisco to Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta
• San Jose to Leon
• Sacramento to Cabo San Lucas, Guadalajara, Leon, and Morelia

See, I told you this was a big deal. But don’t get too excited about booking your next trip on Volaris, because these won’t start up immediately. At least, not all of them will. According to the filing, Volaris will start Fresno to Guadalajara immediately (there’s a lot of visiting family/friends traffic in that market) and those will soon be followed by Chicago to Zacatecas, LA to Aguascalientes, Oakland to Mexico City, Sacramento to Guadalajara, and San Francisco to Guadalajara. For the rest of the routes, service will “begin as warranted by commercial conditions.” I spoke with Volaris Chief Commercial Officer Holger Blankenstein and added that they “are not able to commit to dates on when we will launch some or any of these routes.

The reason Volaris is doing this all right now is because of the way the agreement between Mexico and the US works. The two countries still operate under an old-school bilateral agreement that only allows a certain number of airlines to fly each route. So Volaris has been submitting applications to the Mexican government over time and just received a lump response with approvals for all. Now, Volaris is taking those and asking the US DOT for approval as well. Volaris is stating its intentions and requesting that it be given the authority for one year on all these routes. If it doesn’t start service on all of these within a year, then the availability would just go back into the pool, I would assume.

You’ll notice that a lot of these routes are former Mexicana routes. That currently-dead airline (which continues to float rumors about a comeback some day) left open a lot of vacancies in the bilateral agreement. So Volaris is jumping on them and incorporating them into the airline’s growth strategy. Holger explained,

What we can say is that we have a significant expansion plans. We are growing fast thanks to our aggressive promos, our pre-purchase campaign, good itineraries and our on-time service. We are adding 8 aircraft in 2011, many, but not all, will be dedicated to MEX-US service. Our fleet age is 3.4 years, and currently we have 46 routes covering 25 cities. We are a very young airline that fortunately has had many early successes through a young and innovative workforce and hard work. Our main concern is to be a low-cost airline with a high quality service.

Some of these routes seem like they just want to hold a place in case the airline’s strategy shifts. For example, flying from one of the most expensive airports around, Miami, to Cancun wouldn’t seem to fit a low cost carrier model. But it’s a big route so it can’t hurt to hold a spot before someone else takes the authority. It might be worthwhile.

In the end, this will be a big expansion for Volaris. People were worried that the disappearance of miserable Mexicana would leave a vacuum between the US and Mexico. Instead, we see what we always see. A better airline is stepping into its place very quickly.

It’s a rare Wednesday post here on Cranky, but there has been some big news around these parts that I wanted to share. The first piece of news is that Cranky Flier was just named the Blog of the Year for 2010 by Flightglobal in its annual Webbies. I was told an official badge was on its way, but alas, it hasn’t arrived in my inbox. So I used my famously terrible Photoshop skills to create my own monstrosity.

Nice, huh? Thanks to Flightglobal and the judges, Mary Kirby (aka Runway Girl) and Addison Schonland (IAG) for picking Cranky. And congrats to pilot site MzeroA and friend o’ the blog, Airline Reporter for joining me on the pedestal.

The other big piece of news is that this week marked my first column for CNN.com. I’ll be writing the weekly “Out of the Office” column for business travelers until they decide they don’t like me anymore. For my first topic, I picked a particularly controversial one:

Why airline fees are good for travelers

So far, there are more than 300 comments, many of them calling me an idiot, moron, or of course, shill for the airlines. And they say civil discourse is dead . . . . Hopefully as the column matures, so will the commenters and we can get some good, substantial discussion over there. Come on by every Monday at cnn.com/travel to join in.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a regular Thursday post. Thanks to all of you for helping make Cranky what it is today.