As the new United ponders whether or not to keep its Economy Plus premium economy product, Delta has decided to jump into the game for the first time. Starting in May, you’ll be able to fly in Economy Comfort on international flights for $80 to $160 each way.

This product is similar to Economy Plus in several ways. First of all, the seat itself is the exact same seat you’ll find in regular economy (which I assume we should now call Economy Discomfort?) And like Economy Plus on United, Delta fliers will get a few extra inches of legroom. But instead of explaining it this way, let’s do a handy comparison table:

So there you have it. It’s kind of a mixed bag. If all you want is extra legroom, then United is probably going to be a better value. That’s particularly true if you have a long domestic connection because Delta won’t even offer it on the domestic leg. But Delta has really tried to build this up into more of a separate product with early boarding and free drinks. I like that because it makes it seem like there’s more value to be had in different ways.

I know the Delta Silver and Gold members will be up in arms over the fact that they don’t get free access to Economy Comfort, but it actually makes a lot of sense. On the 767, for example, this will only be the first four rows of coach. That means there will only be 28 seats available. United, however, has 71 seats in Economy Plus. So it makes sense that United would offer it for free to all elites while Delta only offers it to its top elites. Otherwise, Delta would run out of room relatively quickly and would end up angering a lot of elites. So, instead by offering discounted access, Delta still recognizes its elites but helps keep demand at a manageable level.

There are still questions that I couldn’t get answered, though I tried. It sounds like the announcement today is really just an announcement of the concept. The full details won’t be out for a little while. Here are some of the things I want to know.

• We know that this will be on all 747s, A330s, and 777s. The international 767s and 757s (including JFK-LA/SF) will get it as well, but we don’t know exact details of how many seats each will have. The 767s will have four rows. The 757s will apparently only have Economy Comfort on one side of the aisle, but I don’t know how many rows on that side will have it.

It appears that there is no standard. Delta says “…suffice it to say the average is 31 seats per aircraft and you’ll find about that many on the majority of our international aircraft. The outliers are the 757s (12) and the 747s (42).”

• Delta’s new international standard is to have power in the first 10 rows of coach. These seats will be part of those 10 rows, but the release makes it sound like not all are guaranteed to have power. We’ll see if that changes.

There will be power onboard in all Economy Comfort seats when the power retrofit is complete in 2013.

• It’s unclear to me if this fee is per flight or per direction. For most people, that will be the same thing since you’ll have only one international flight each way. But what about those people going LA to Tokyo to Bangkok? Or Atlanta to Amsterdam to Mumbai?
• What if you’re on one of the few domestic flights on an international airplane, like the flight from LA to Atlanta on a 777? Will Economy Comfort be sold on those flights or will they just be given away to elite members and not sold?

These seats will not be sold and will be held back for elites to use.

I’m waiting to get some clearer answer on this from Delta, but it sounds like all of the answers may not be known yet. I do find it interesting that Delta has chosen to go with the same seat as is used in coach while Air France opted for a new seat in its Premium Voyageur class. It makes you wonder if, having seen Air France’s sales numbers from the seat, Delta decided the investment wasn’t worth it but there was enough demand for more legroom to make this lesser product worthwhile.

Overall, I like the idea. Economy Plus was always a great differentiator for United that helped foster loyalty. Delta can now try to tap into that same benefit. Of course, the bigger question now is whether or not the new United will decide to stick with Economy Plus. I imagine it will in one form or another. I just want to hear the details.

[Updated 2/8 @ 1135a with info from Delta answering questions.]

When I saw JetBlue announce it was moving its flight to Ft Lauderdale from Long Beach to LAX, I wasn’t surprised. It was just one more step in the effort to move long hauls away from Long Beach and into LAX. Looking back at JetBlue’s nearly 10 years in Long Beach, you can see how stark the change has been. Long Beach serves a very different role now than it did originally for the airline.

JetBlue doesn’t do much flying in the middle of the country, so it’s no surprise to see very little of that type of flying happening in Long Beach. But it is surprising to see how few long hauls are left at the airport.

From Long Beach, JetBlue originally started with flights to New York in September 2001 and followed with Washington soon after. One year after starting at Long Beach, the first short haul began up to Oakland. But long hauls still remained the focus and didn’t start to really go away until early 2008.

Since that time, the drop in long haul flying has been dramatic. Here’s another way to look at it. Look at the number of daily departures from Long Beach to New York.

At one time, JetBlue flew eight daily flights between the two cities. That’s just unreal. It’s now down to just two daily, and at times even that second daily flight doesn’t run every day. Meanwhile, in June 2009, JetBlue started flying to LAX. Today, there are three flights most days from LAX to JFK and that number will rise to five daily this summer.

So what’s the story? When JetBlue started at Long Beach, people were willing to drive for the low fares, live television, and great service. But that’s because low fare, long haul trips were few and far between at LAX. JetBlue chose Long Beach for its lower costs and lack of competition. Today, things are very different.

Low fare service has gone into primary airports across the board. In the LA-New York market, Song showed up in 2005 before being merged back in to Delta. Now, Virgin America is the prime provider of low cost service to New York along with JetBlue (and a bunch of connecting options). The point is, people who prefer LAX do not have to drive to an alternate airport to get low fares anymore. So that changes the math at Long Beach.

JetBlue realized that with people not having to drive to Long Beach to get low fares, long haul flights wouldn’t be as lucrative down there. Besides, people coming from far away didn’t even know Long Beach and had a strong preference for LAX anyway. It moved into LAX in order to keep the traffic that used to be willing to go to Long Beach. But short haul is different.

Those who are traveling on shorter flights are less willing to drive to airports that are further away. So people that live in the heavily-populated area around Long Beach will drive to LAX if they’re going to New York, but they’re less likely to do it if it’s just a jaunt to Vegas or San Francisco. So JetBlue has repositioned Long Beach as a short haul-focused operation serving that community. Low fares are good, but it’s the convenience of the airport that makes it work best.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Long Beach couldn’t support any long haul flights, but JetBlue has to make a choice. Since Long Beach is heavily slot-restricted, JetBlue has to use its 30 daily flights in the best way possible. Considering the current dynamics in the industry, it decided that short haul is the way to go, so long haul will continue to migrate up the road to LAX.

Moving this Ft Lauderdale flight allows JetBlue to add yet another flight to Vegas. Apparently, JetBlue sees enough business traffic potential in this market that it is creating a business-type schedule instead of the afternoon-only leisure schedule that used to be in the market.

Yes, this is partially a response to Allegiant (JetBlue’s network planning chief tells me that the airline “competes hard”) but it’s also an effort to optimize its slots. And these days, short haul flying is far more optimal for secondary airports.

American May Be Turning the Tables in Its Feud With Orbitz – BNET Headwinds
American’s deal with Priceline pokes holes in some of the arguments against the direct connect model, including the idea that it will be difficult to compare across airlines.

How An Airline Justifies Investing in Its Onboard Service (Since Most Don’t) – BNET Headwinds
I sat with Air New Zealand’s outgoing chief of long haul Ed Sims to talk about how the airline decided to invest in the product.

In the Trenches: The Difficult Process of Hiring – Intuit Small Business Blog
My plan to do some limited hiring has been thwarted by complex regulations around having an employee. I need to find a different way.

Ranking America’s Safest Airlines Is a Silly Exercise – BNET Headwinds
US News decided to rank America’s safest airlines. This is ridiculous.

The feds have decided to let JetBlue throw a few Garmins on an airplane and use GPS instead of radar. Ok, so maybe it’s not that dramatic, but JetBlue will be installing GPS to test out the NextGen air traffic control system that has been talked about for years. Is this a good thing? Do you trust the technology? Will it really help gridlock in the end?

Over the last week, the protests in Egypt have reached a boiling point. As we all know by now, the residents of this generally peaceful country followed the lead of Tunisia and poured into the streets to try to topple the government. As people on the outside watched with great interest, those on the inside were blinded when the government shut down internet and mobile networks. Through it all, many airlines continued flying to Egypt, but as you can imagine, a lot of people didn’t want to go. In fact, most were advised not to go by their home governments. In what can only be considered a greedy money grab, some airlines like Air France effectively forced people to fly or lose money. For that, Air France (and anyone else with the same policy) has earned the Cranky Jackass award.

When you see headlines like “As Mubarak hangs on to power, Cairo’s residents fear lawlessness,” and “Looting Engulfs Cairo, Other Egyptian Cities,” it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to go to Cairo for tourism in the immediate future. Stories are surfacing about mass chaos in the airports and officials requiring bribes to allow people to get on planes out of the country. It could be months before stability returns. Some airlines recognized that and treated their customers properly. British Airways, for example, posted these options for its customers::

• Change the date of travel to a later date up to 28 February 2011.
• Cancel your booking and obtain a refund to the original form of payment.
• Use the value of your ticket towards the purchase of a new ticket to any other destination.
• If you are due to travel in or out of Cairo you may choose to travel in or out of Sharm El Sheikh.

That’s the kind of flexible policy that should be commended. BA gave its customers a lot of options, regardless of whether the flight was canceled or not. Then there’s Air France. Air France treated this like a weather event and posted this policy:

Despite the current situation in Egypt, our flights to and from Cairo continue to operate. However we are compelled to modify the schedules to comply with the curfew instated by the Egyptian authorities.
Please check your flight schedule on this website by clicking “Flight & destination information”.

Moreover, if you hold a ticket to travel to and from Cairo between January 28 and February 04, 2011, we have implemented commercial instructions that enable you to modify and/or postpone your journey. Please contact your point of sales.

Unless your flight was canceled, the only option for customers was to “modify or postpone” the journey. Air France is looking at this as a simple business issue instead of a complex scenario that demands additional flexibility. Instead of realizing the magnitude of the problem, it simply threw out an inadequate policy and refused to give reservation agents the necessary power to alter it. What’s even more strange is that wholly-owned subsidiary KLM seems to have a more flexible policy, though I didn’t put that to the test.

We had two Cranky Concierge clients that were scheduled to fly Air France to Cairo for a couple days and then go on to Rwanda for some charity work. They thought it would be best to simply bypass Cairo and go straight to Rwanda, but Air France wouldn’t allow it. Air France also wouldn’t give a refund, so the client had two choices. Go as scheduled or postpone the flight to Cairo. The latter obviously wasn’t viable because they still needed to be in Rwanda. Allowing a refund or even putting the funds back into a credit would have been perfectly fine but that also wasn’t allowed. Most of the agents we spoke with were actually Delta agents handling Air France in the US. They were very apologetic but said their hands were tied.

Eventually, after a couple of days of trying, we were able to use our agency relationship to get someone in the Preferred Account Services desk to help mere hours before their scheduled departure from Boston. Those people should be commended, because they were the only ones willing to help. Most travelers don’t have access to those services, however. To make things even more frustrating, we later found the Cairo flight did cancel, but not until hours after our clients would have been on their way to Paris from the US. What a nightmare.

Come on Air France. Even easyJet allowed customers to have a ticket refunded into a credit that could be used anytime in the next year. Your kind of restrictive policy has no place in a very fluid, dangerous situation like this one. These types of crises need quick responses with flexible options.