Earlier this week, US Airways finally got the preliminary injunction it had asked for against its pilots related to the operational disruption that’s been going on for a few months. This was a clear victory for the airline as the judge seemed to agree with US Airways in great detail. I would highly recommend reading the 45 page ruling for some of the juicier tidbits. Chime in with your comments below.

And I thought I’d throw in a bonus topic this week for its insanity. Not sure how much readers know about Stelios Haji-Ioannou, but he is the man behind the “easy” name. The best known easy brand is easyJet, one of the largest airlines in Europe. While Stelios is still the largest shareholder, he doesn’t run the company. He has, however, inserted himself at times and made life difficult for all involved. Now, it appears he’s fed up and wants to start a rival airline, Fastjet or E-jet, to compete with, um, the airline he owns a big chunk of? Riiight. This one is just downright silly.

Have I mentioned that I think the federal government has done an excellent job of looking at the tarmac delay rule impact? Don’t fall out of your chair; I’m not talking about the misguided Department of Transportation (DOT). I’m talking about the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which just put out a study on the rule and a few other air travel issues. It agrees with most of the known universe in saying that the tarmac delay rule is having, say it with me, unintended consequences. In other words, it’s causing increased cancellations.

The GAO’s job is to be a watchdog and to make sure the government isn’t doing anything stupid. As you can imagine, it’s a very busy agency. Not only is it busy, but it does great work. The GAO was asked by a couple of Congressmen to look into a few things around air travel and the result was this report. While it doesn’t draw many conclusions other than saying more info is needed, it makes a very clear assessment of what’s been happening, and not just with the tarmac delay rule.

But let’s start with that rule, since it’s the most visible piece of the review. The GAO said that yes, long tarmac delays had been almost completely eliminated due to the rule. No surprise there. But using multiple statistical models, the GAO found that flights were more likely to cancel between May and September 2010 than they were in that same period in 2009, before the rule was in effect. Here are the details.

But just because flights are more likely to cancel, does that mean it’s because of the rule? Yes, that’s exactly what this chart is isolating.

Results from the tarmac-cancellation model suggest that the implementation of the tarmac delay rule is associated with a greater likelihood of cancellation for flights that taxi-out onto the tarmac. . . . Results from the gate-cancellation model also indicate that the tarmac delay rule is associated with a higher rate of flight cancellation.

The GAO calls out the DOT for its brand of analysis, saying that the DOT analysis is “limited because it includes only a portion of all flights, considers the total number of cancellations instead of the rate of cancellation, and does not control for other factors that can affect cancellations.”

The report is a great read, giving a very clear explanation of the situation that should be required reading for anyone interested in this topic. Maybe some of the so-called “flyer’s rights” activists should cuddle up with this and educate themselves.

For its part, the DOT is ignoring this report saying that the rule needs tweaks, at least publicly. A recent blog post from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the agency’s “analysis shows that our new protections have not directly affected cancellation rates, though we continue to monitor and study these.” Uh huh. I really hope they’re going to seriously study them instead of paying lip service, but I’m somehow skeptical. Shocking, I know.

If you’re curious about the rest of the report, there were some other interesting findings. GAO was asked to look at whether cancellations and delays were more likely at smaller airports, and sure enough, they are. The agency calls out the DOT for not collecting the right data to show this. Since only larger airlines are required to report to the DOT, the data is skewed since smaller cities are served by smaller airlines that don’t have to report performance information. The GAO study worked with FlightStats to get a more complete picture and found dramatic reductions in reliability for smaller towns.

The other piece was around the passenger protections in Europe. We’ve talked about the strict rules in the European Union here before, but is it a good thing? I think the result is not a surprise. “Care and compensation requirements provide protections and benefits for passengers whose flights are disrupted, but they also increase costs to airlines and could increase passengers’ fares.” It also said that the rules aren’t clear and there are real challenges in the way it’s set up.

So what’s the upshot of all this? There were two recommendations for the DOT that came out of this.

• Collect and publicize more comprehensive on-time performance data to ensure that information on most flights, to airports of all sizes, is included in the Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ database. DOT could accomplish this by, for example, requiring airlines with a smaller percentage of the total domestic scheduled passenger service
  revenue, or airlines that operate flights for other airlines, to report flight performance information.
• Fully assess the impact of the tarmac delay rule, including the relationship between the rule and any increase in cancellations and how they effect passengers and, if warranted, refine the rule’s requirements and implementation to maximize passenger welfare and system efficiency.

That last one is sort of fluffy in that it doesn’t really tell the DOT to do anything. But maybe now that there’s a concrete report from a fellow government agency, the DOT will take notice and do something about it. (Stop laughing. It could happen. Um, sure it could.)

As you all know by now, I made a couple stops around the country on a recent trip that had me on three different airlines. First, it was up to Seattle on JetBlue for the APEX expo. Then I went to New York on Alaska where I met up with my wife (who came from work in Orlando) for a wedding. After over a week away, we flew back on Delta via Atlanta. That might not have actually hit each corner of the US, but it certainly felt that way.

The first flight cost $121.70 on JetBlue and the second $283.70 on Alaska. Both of those were reimbursed by the APEX folks. The last flight home cost $175.40 on Delta. (You might remember my decision-making process on this one.) Overall, it was a good trip.

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September 11, 2011
JetBlue 290 Lv Long Beach 705a Arr Seattle 949a
Long Beach (LGB): Gate 23, Runway 30, Depart 12m Early
Seattle (SEA): Gate A10, Runway 34C, Arrive 29m Early
N729JB, Airbus A320-232, Mosaic Tail, “If You Can Read This, You’re Blue Close”, ~50% Full
Seat 7A
Flight Time 2h07m

This was the first September 11th I’d flown on since before THE September 11th ten years ago. Being the tenth anniversary, I figured I’d arrive early in case security was stepped up. That was totally unnecessary. We left from the northern gates at Long Beach and the security line was shorter than usual. The waiting room, however, was jam-packed.

With the construction at LGB, we had to walk for about 5 minutes before we got to our airplane. Once there, we boarded quickly – the flight was only about half full.

The flight itself was uneventful as we headed north. JetBlue struck a deal to show a sneak preview of that new Zooey Deschanel show “New Girl” before its network debut, so that was a nice change of pace. (Show isn’t bad, actually.)

Then I watched an hour of NFL Gameday before I had had enough. That’s when it got weird. I flipped to MSNBC where the network was replaying NBC’s coverage from September 11, 2001 in full. I have no idea why, but I couldn’t stop watching.

I saw the confusion when American 77 hit the Pentagon. Then I saw one of the towers fall. Seeing this from an airplane was surreal. I’m not sure why I didn’t shut it off. I kept watching until we arrived at our gate in Seattle.

Once there, I met up with a friend and hitched a ride into town for a very good time at APEX. By Thursday, it was time to move on.

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September 15, 2011
Alaska 8 Lv Seattle 905a Arr Newark 525p
Seattle (SEA): Gate D6, Runway 16L, Depart 6m Early
Newark (EWR): Gate B41B, Runway 4R, Arrive 22m Early
N548AS, Boeing 737-890, AlaskaAir.com Colors, 100% Full
Seat 18F
Flight Time 4h41m

I had never flown Alaska for a long haul before, so I was looking forward to it. I took the light rail to the airport and found an insanely long security line – took me I think about 30 minutes to get through.

Alaska had been kind enough to give me a lounge pass when I had visited the airline earlier that week, and I was happy to take it so I could see the lounge. But since it took so long to get through security, I only had about 15 minutes to spare.

I went into the lounge near gate D1 and it’s a nice two level lounge with a great view. I went straight upstairs to try the much-vaunted pancake machine. It was awesome. Then I grabbed a glass of water at the kitchen window (which reminded me of a middle school cafeteria, in a good way) and then headed off to my gate.

When I arrived, I found our AlaskaAir.com liveried aircraft already fully boarded. It was still very early, but I got on. Seattle had been murky and chilly all week, so I was looking forward to a little sun. We took off and got through the clouds fairly quickly. Unfortunately, clouds stayed under us for much of the trip toward the Great Lakes, an area over which I had never flown before.

Onboard, I planned on using wifi, and it was lightning-fast. Probably helps to be in a part of the country where very few airplanes are flying.

But I also got myself a DigEPlayer onboard – one of those standalone movie players. This was pretty good, and I enjoyed watching X-Men First Class, but there were a couple problems. The biggest issue was that I hardly had room for two devices on my tray. I needed a place to hang the DigEPlayer. But more concerning was the cost – it was $14 to rent that thing. Sheesh. I watched one movie and then couldn’t finish the second. That’s a lot of money to pay for 1.5 movies, even if it can access the internet as well.

After we went just north of Chicago, we aimed for Newark. A front was rolling through so there were a lot of clouds, some rain, and a bunch of wind. Our pilots deftly weaved us through the traffic, plunking us down hard on the runway nice and early . . . in Newark . . . when the weather was bad. Crazy.

I took the AirTrain to New Jersey Transit into the city and spent a couple of great days in New York. Thank you to everyone who chimed in with suggestions on Trippy.

After heading up to Tarrytown for a wedding, we headed to Westchester Airport for our flight home.

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September 19, 2011
Delta 4951 Lv Westchester 1030a Arr Atlanta 1248p (operated by ASA)
Westchester (HPN): Gate C, Runway 16, Depart 4m Early
Atlanta (ATL): Gate C42, Runway 8L, Arrive 3m Late
N605QX, Bombardier CRJ-700, Standard Delta Colors, ~99% Full
Seat 13A
Flight Time 1h57m

It was a beautiful day in New York as we headed to the airport. Westchester is such a tiny terminal, undoubtedly due to rich residents nearby refusing to build an adequate terminal to service the traffic. Instead, the check-in area is tiny with lines criss-crossing all over the place.

We went through the small security area fairly easily, but then we were sitting in the one big hold room where seats were just about completely full. There were four of us traveling together on this flight, and we had to settle for two seats in the waiting area until another flight boarded and seats opened up.

Our airplane, a former Horizon bird that’s now with Atlantic Southeast, pulled up right on time and we boarded the newly Delta-fied aircraft.

There are a few things I hate about the CRJ-700, and the biggest one is the tiny size of the bins. My bag was able to be wedged into the bin, but from the looks of all the open space, not many others were successful.

After a short air traffic control delay (which the captain dutifully kept us up to date on), we took off to the south and I took notice of the significant cabin noise from being in the back. We were just one row behind the exit, but it was really noisy.

We sat in light chop through a high cloud layer much of the way down to Atlanta. The seatbelt sign stayed off, however, and I was able to use the lav. It’s not really that small, but the engine noise is deafening, and this one was pretty dirty.

We landed almost on time despite having to loop around to land from the west. At that point, our two friends went off to their flight to San Francisco and we went to try to get an earlier flight home.

When I originally booked these tickets, the flight was a 757 with wifi. I was looking forward to being able to get some work done after pushing things off all week long as I traveled. That didn’t happen.

Our airplane was replaced with a 777. That’s usually not something to complain about, but I really needed to get work done. When the swap was first made, I called Delta to see if I could change my flight. The agent said I could, but she said that the earlier flight was an illegal connection with just under an hour. That’s actually completely legal, but I got busy with something else and never followed up again. So we stuck with our flight.

But when we got to Atlanta, we figured we’d try to stand by. We went from our C arrival gate to the B gates only to find an agent unwilling to even put us on the standby list it was so full. So we trekked back to the E gates for our original flight.

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September 19, 2011
Delta 637 Lv Atlanta 305p Arr Los Angeles 447p
Atlanta (ATL): Gate E12, Runway 9L, Depart 5m Late
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 57, Runway 25L, Arrive 2m Early
N701DN, Boeing 777-232LR, Spirit of Delta Colors, ~99% Full
Seat 45J
Flight Time 4h1m

If there’s one thing I really don’t like about flying, it’s flying through storms. Yet sure enough, there was a big line heading east over Mississippi, and I was getting anxious about it.

This was not helped after we boarded the aircraft and the flight attendant repeated every 5 minutes that the captain said everyone would have to stay seated for the first hour due to rough air, so if anyone needed to go to the lav, they should go before we departed.

She was actually very good at keeping people informed, but it just raised my anxiety. (Yes, I know it’s silly, but I’ve yet to figure out a way to get my fear instinct to accept that.) When we took off, we pointed west and climbed to reach cruising altitude before we got to the weather.

In the end, it was a total non-event. We flew right in the cloud tops, and there was barely a bump. About 45 minutes in, the seatbelts signs were off and it was smooth sailing.

We went just north of Dallas and waited for drinks and food to arrive. It took well over an hour after the seatbelt sign went off before they reached our row in the middle of the coach cabin. I have no idea why they were so slow, but it was frustrating We were really thirsty, and I was hungry so I had a tasty roast chicken and red pepper sandwich.

I flipped on a movie but got bored quickly. The screen was a real pain to use anyway because the touch sensitivity seemed to be about an inch to the right from where it should have been.

But that was fine – I could still get some work done while not connected to the web, so I did that and watch out the window as we went far south, barely skirting along the Mexican border over El Paso.

We came up just north of Tucson and landed in LA a couple minutes early.

Several years ago, Alaska Airlines realized that the way ticket counters were set up didn’t make much sense. People came up to the counter, did their business, and then had to backtrack out to move on to the next step in the process. Back in the day, this may have made more sense since ticket counters were actually used for ticketing and not everyone was passing through the system. But as that changed, the arrangement made less and less sense.

Back in 1997, Alaska Airlines decided to tackle the issue with an internal group focusing on improving the pre-security experience. The result was the Airport of the Future that was implemented in 2002 in Anchorage. The design is now also in place in Seattle with Los Angeles under construction and Portland on the drawing board. The result is a more efficient use of space (50 percent less) and people (more than double productivity). While I was up in Seattle, Alaska gave me a tour of the facility, and I put together a little video (sorry for the shaky hand) showing you how it works.

It’s amazing how much better it feels with the open arrangement like this. There’s nothing worse than finding a long snaking line when you walk in the door. This eliminates that completely.

The basic idea was the now-patented two step process. You walk up to a kiosk to start and do what you need to do to get checked in. Then you move on behind the kiosks to check your bag, if needed. There are lobby assistants around the area to help everyone, including those who might not be pros with technology. Instead of reaching a dead-end at the ticket counter and having to backtrack, you just keep walking forward through the system.

The process worked so well that there have been very few tweaks since the first installation. It’s mostly been around ergonomics – height of the computer, bag belt speeds, etc. All minor stuff. In the future, the hope is that the FAA will allow for self bag-tagging and that will speed up the process even more. (A test is underway.)

My biggest question – why hasn’t this happened in other places? There are a few reasons. First, sometimes the economics don’t work. Alaska won’t do it unless a payback will happen within about 2.5 years. In Seattle, the project cost $26 million and the business case was solid. In a place like Portland, however, Alaska is hamstrung by a long term lease, so it couldn’t generate the savings by giving back counter space. I’m assuming something is changing in that regard since Portland is now being revisited.

In LA, it’s different. Alaska finally got through the complicated web there to move over to Terminal 6. Since Alaska was on a month to month lease at LAX, it had a lot more flexibility. That will be done next year.

But what about other airlines? Alaska patented the process but it opened it up so the industry could use it. So far, there isn’t much of that. Delta has done a little of it in Atlanta, but it’s not quite the same. So why haven’t others done it? Part of it may simply be the availability of capital. Most airlines don’t make sustained profits and so the idea of spending money on something like this might not be at the top of the list when other projects seem more important. The money just isn’t there.

Hopefully something will change, because the Airport of the Future is a much nicer experience to start the trip than using a traditional counter.

Watch out for flight changes, tight connections – CNN Out of the Office
I talk about how to deal with frustrating flight schedule changes.

4 trip-planning services often overlooked – Overhead Bin on MSNBC
Cranky Concierge was lucky enough to be mentioned here as a planning service worth considering. I agree.

In the Trenches: Handling Sensitive Customer Data – Intuit Small Business Blog
Handling sensitive customer data is a huge issue in general, and it’s a nerve-wracking one for many a small business owner.

United, Continental to roll out combined frequent-flier program next year – Chicago Tribune
I was asked to comment on the new MileagePlus, but of course, as readers of this blog, you already know my thoughts.