One of the big complaints people have about airline fees is the ability to figure out exactly what’s being charged. It can be confusing but most of the sites that try to aggregate fees seem to only give you long lists that don’t really help that much. Now there’s a new site that takes the next step toward calculating fees for you. It’s better than most of what’s out there today, but it still has a ways to go before it’s truly a great option. Still, it’s the best we have so far, so if you have bag fee questions give iflybags.com a shot.

The site lets you enter your flight information and it spits out what bag fees will be. Here’s the advanced search screen:

You can enter your flight info and it will spit back how much your bag fees will be. It even lets you enter if you have elite status or not, so you can check to see if you’re exempt (though you likely know you’re exempt if you’re an elite). Where is all this data coming from? The airlines.

Most airlines file their fares and fare rules with a central clearinghouse called the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO). ATPCO created a new category that lets airlines file their bag fees in a standardized manner, and this new site is just putting a pretty face on that data. So if the data isn’t filed correctly or isn’t filed at all, this site won’t help. But for the vast majority of trips that Americans take, this will work quite nicely. (Even Southwest participates.)

You can use the site two ways. You can either look up the fees for the number of bags you’re planning on checking, or you can just use the site as a reference to look up the airline bag fee policies. It gets pretty deep into the weeds – if you need to check a bow and arrow, this will help. Though the reference guide is really just a long list of bag fees and isn’t the most user-friendly.

This all sounds good, right? So why do I say that it has a ways to go? Because this is really only helpful if you know the flight you’re taking. If you bought that ticket on Delta and you want to know how much you’re going to have to shell out, that’s great. But what if you’re shopping around, looking for flights to a city and a lot of airlines pop up as options? Are you really going to look up every single flight’s bag fees after you find the fares for each one? I think not. If you do, you have way too much time on your hands.

What really needs to exist is a site where you can search for flights and then specify the number of bags you’ll check. That will be married with the price for each flight so you can make an informed decision.

The ability to do this is there – ATPCO has an XML feed that could be integrated by developers. It just has to happen. The company behind iflybags is Farelogix. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Farelogix is one of the companies that provides direct connect technology to help airlines bypass the Global Distribution Systems (GDS). You can be sure that Farelogix has a good reason to do this. It will once again help prove that direct connect technology doesn’t hide fees and make shopping more difficult. This is one example of that, but it’s a visible one and it’s good for consumers.

So, if you need bag fee info for your trip, this is the place to go. Hopefully we’ll see it integrated into a booking site soon enough.

In general, the renaming of a regional airline isn’t a very interesting thing. After all, travelers never buy tickets to fly on that specific airline. Instead, they buy tickets from the mainline airline, which then contracts for the regional carrier to do the flying. Many travelers won’t even know which airline they are flying on. But in the case of the ASA-ExpressJet merger, the renaming turned into a saga that was a fun story to watch. And now we finally have resolution using a very familiar name.

In short, here’s what happened:

Now for the long story.

ExpressJet is best known for being the main provider of Continental Express service. The airline was owned by Continental but after it was spun off, it started trying to find its own way. You probably remember its 2007 effort to start point-to-point flying between smaller markets. That failed for a variety of reasons, but I still liked the idea.

The end of the road came when SkyWest decided to buy ExpressJet and merge it with its Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA) subsidiary.

The new combined management got to work on picking a name for the new
airline, and the result was a disaster. In July, it was announced that the new name would be SureJet.

SureJet? It had the ring of a consulting project gone wrong. The press release made it sound like the management team was trying to be inclusive in the naming process, but it forgot to actually check to see if the name sounded good on it own.

“SureJet” was developed using front-line employee feedback about qualities and characteristics such as assurance, reliability and trustworthiness. . .

All great things, but instead of actually just running a great airline, the company decided it needed to have a name that reflected it. It really came off as an airline trying to convince itself and its partners that it was a reliable airline, whether it was or not.

Less than week later, the name was shelved for good reason. Everyone hated it. In fact, the company was very up front about it.

Since the announcement, we have heard significant concerns from team members about the name SureJet, and it appears we’ve missed our mark.

And that was that. Fast forward to last week, and a new, or shall I say old, name resurfaced. The combined airline will now be known as . . . ExpressJet.

Atlantic Southeast dates back to 1979 when it started flying for Delta regionally with props, and it’s seemingly had an identity crisis at many different points. Since the early days, it was closely tied with Delta when it flew solely for the airline.

In 1999, Delta even bought the airline and held it until it sold in 2005 to SkyWest. The airline had fluctuated between the Atlantic Southeast and ASA names for years. To me, it was never a strong moniker.

ExpressJet certainly started off tied at the hip with Continental as Continental Express, but it moved away from that under the ExpressJet name as a newly-independent airline. The ExpressJet name defines the airline and its role well. It makes sense to just keep that name instead of creating a new one.

Management isn’t completely leaving ASA out in the cold. It’s keeping the logo and branding from ASA (in the few places where branding exists for regionals), just changing the name on it.

This doesn’t always work, but in this case, it seems like a good fit. And management looks good for actually listening to the feedback and taking it to heart. Maybe they’ll also dial back on the consultants over there as well after this whole thing.

What to do when an airline goes bankrupt – CNN Out of the Office
With all the rumors flying around about an American bankruptcy, I thought it was a good idea to talk about what to do when an airline does go bankrupt (not suggesting that it’s happening to American anytime soon).

How to Skip Long Security Lines at the Airport – Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
I was asked what the new TSA trusted traveler program could do and this is what they pulled out of it. Didn’t say “x-ray” machine but rather the backscatter. It got changed in editing, I suppose.

In the Trenches: Reconsidering the Prepaid Model – Intuit Small Business Blog
I always think about how we charge for our services to see if there’s a better way. So far, I’m not convinced there is.

Delta has quietly started shrinking Memphis again. Beginning January 4, service will cease between Memphis and Baltimore, Grand Rapids, Gulfport/Biloxi, Mobile, Northwest Florida (Panama City), Seattle, and Wichita. Delta will also cut one daily flight between Memphis and Cleveland, Huntsville, Jacksonville, Newark, Philadelphia, and Shreveport. Where will this end? What’s the future (or lack thereof) for the Memphis hub?

We had a wedding up in wine country this past weekend, and it was a typical trip on JetBlue from Long Beach, for the most part. It was, however, my first pat down courtesy of the TSA. That happened at SFO on the return, and though it didn’t bother me, it was VERY thorough. I’ll have more on that down below.

We were staying right near Santa Rosa Airport, so we thought about flying on the LAX nonstop on Horizon, but it was double the price. Not worth it, especially since we could pay half and fly from Long Beach instead. Tickets were bought on September 5 for $181.40 each into Oakland and back from SFO because it was cheaper (even with the small drop charge on the car).

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October 7, 2011
JetBlue 248 Lv Long Beach 315p Arr Oakland 435p
Long Beach (LGB): Gate 3, Runway 30, Depart 6m Early
Oakland (OAK): Gate 9, Runway 29, Arrive 8m Early
N552JB, Airbus A320-232, Windowpane Tail, “Blue Jay”, ~90% Full
Seat 14F
Flight Time 56m

I got to the airport a little early and my wife met me there later. I parked myself in front of the always-packed wine bar and watched the beginning of game 5 in the Dbacks-Brewers series. As a die-hard Dbacks fan since day one, I was very glad to be flying JetBlue so I could continuously watch the game on my way up.

Boarding started about 45 minutes before departure, and we were the last couple people on. (Had to wait for the inning to end, of course.) There was plenty of bin space despite the full flight, and I quickly flipped on the game. Not sure how I got lucky, but there was some glitch that had the TVs working in the “F” seats without interruption. PA announcements didn’t freeze the picture, and we didn’t even have to endure the long “welcome on board” video after takeoff. The only downside was that my wife’s TV (and many others around her) didn’t work. The tried a “partial reset” but it didn’t work. Go figure.

We weaved through what seemed like a busy day of traffic in the LA Basin and landed in Oakland on time. This felt like a fast flight since I was riveted to the game the whole time. I even made my wife wait a couple minutes until the inning was over to get off. Then we ran to the car and listened as the Dbacks lose a great one in extra innings. Sad, but I’m really glad I got to watch what ended up being a great game.

On Sunday morning, we headed back down to SFO, and I got a little nervous as we sat in fog on our way down. SFO + fog = suck, but not that day. It cleared out nicely and we were right on time.

At the TSA checkpoint, they were using the backscatter machines. I’d used them before, and it doesn’t bug me, but I figured this would be a good time to suffer through a TSA pat down since I hadn’t done one yet. I opted out and was told to stand to the side. They let my wife go right through the metal detector (and nobody else). Maybe pregnant women aren’t sent through the advanced imaging machines?

The worst part was waiting and then being grilled. It took about 10 minutes before a guy finally came over. He asked why I was opting out, and I told him I didn’t want to do it. He pushed me again and asked why. I couldn’t believe I was getting this kind of pressure, and just told him that I didn’t know much about the effects of the machine and wanted to get a pat down instead. He marked something in a book, apparently explaining why I opted out, and then we went on.

Like I said, that was the worst part. The pat down was incredibly thorough with long, lingering strokes over all parts of the body, but the guy doing it was very professional and explained everything before he did it. Probably the most invasive part was when he ran his fingers inside my waist band, but again, didn’t really phase me. After, he told me to sit while he tested his gloves for what I assume was trace explosive residue. That was it, and we were off to the gate.

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October 9, 2011
JetBlue 1435 Lv San Francisco 1225p Arr Long Beach 147p
San Francisco (SFO): Gate A10, Runway 28L, Depart 4m Early
Long Beach (LGB): Gate 1, Runway 30, Arrive 5m Late
N665JB, Airbus A320-232, Windowpane Tail, “Something About Blue”, ~95% Full
Seat 19A
Flight Time 1h00m

The gate agents were apparently in a very happy mood as they first congratulated a couple (via the electronic sign) that I assume got married. Their electronic boarding announcements were also punctuated with emoticons.

The guy taking boarding passes wasn’t nearly as friendly as the signs were. I asked him who Jeremy and Kerry (the couple receiving congrats) were, and he grumbled “I have no idea. This isn’t even my flight. I just came over here to help them out.” Ok.

As you can see, we got out early but landed late. What happened? It’s fleet week in San Francisco so they’ve restricted airspace to make room for all the demonstrations (Blue Angels and all). So we couldn’t take off from the usual runway 1L and instead had to taxi all the way out to 28L. That’s why we were delayed.

The flight was completely uneventful with beautiful views the whole way. My only complaint was around the TVs. As usual, the second we took off, they went into a long-winded welcome video. Then, as we sat off the coast, we couldn’t get a signal. There were a lot of agitated guys on the plane as the early NFL games were finishing up. Maybe 20 minutes into the flight, we got the TV signal back and a collective sigh of relief was heard.

After the early games were over, I flipped back to baseball. My favorite team after the Dbacks actually is the Brewers (picked them up when I moved to Chicago back in 2004, for some reason). So I found myself in the odd situation of rooting for the team I was rooting against just two days earlier.

We landed and taxied back to the south boarding lounge for the very last time. That’s right. The old JetBlue gates are being retired this week in favor of . . . more trailers. Seriously. They had to clear out the current one to build the new concourse, so there’s a brand new trailer park that you’ll probably see if you fly out of Long Beach on JetBlue in the next year or so.