Sunday night was the launch party for the oneworld MegaDo. What the heck is that, you ask? Great question. It’s basically when a bunch of guys who fly too much actively get together to fly even more. I know, it sounds crazy, but it’s actually a very interesting phenomenon. Stick with me and I’ll explain.

If you’re familiar with the website FlyerTalk, then you know it as a place where frequent fliers and mileage junkies get together to discuss exactly what’s going on. There is a separate forum for each airline’s mileage program and the loyalists all get together to talk in great detail. The FlyerTalk founder, Randy Petersen, has moved on to create a new, very similar, site called MilePoint, and many of the FlyerTalkers have gone over there as well.

Over the years, some airlines have actively courted travelers on these sites, knowing that their most frequent fliers tend to be found here. Continental is one airline that was particularly active in this sense. It turned into meetings with execs as a perk for those active members of the community. Then airplanes started to get involved.

Star Alliance has participated in the past (and will keep doing so in the future), but last night was a chance for oneworld to kick it off as well. Now, it may be called the oneworld MegaDo, but it’s really all about American Airlines here. (At least on the flights side. Hyatt is the big player on the hotel side.) American had its AAdvantage chief (and burgeoning video star) Maya Leibman there along with many on her team to discuss details of what’s happening on the January trip.

So why was there a party when the trip itself isn’t for a couple months? That’s a really good question. Seems like a good reason to just get together and drink. But ultimately it was used to announce the details of the trip. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that people flew in from all over the place just for this party – anything to earn more miles, right?

The plan is to start off with people flying to London from New York to spend time with British Airways and then back to Dallas on American. That’s sort of an add-on that’s like a pre-party for the big show. In Dallas, the group will spend the first day hanging around with American’s top brass, poking and prodding them with questions. Then that evening, they are chartering an American 757 that will fly everyone up to Boeing Field where they’ll get wined and dined by Boeing. The next day will even include a VIP behind-the-scenes tour at Boeing. That afternoon, they’ll have another charter fly everyone down to LA. The final day will be filled with meetings with a variety of oneworld airlines.

If this sounds crazy, you’re not alone in thinking that. As Maya said in her speech, “You guys are a different demographic. You’re a different psychographic with emphasis on ‘psycho.’” That, of course, drew a lot of laughs. This isn’t a group that’s easily offended . . . unless you reduce their frequent flier benefits. I wonder if that’s part of the reason that American is doing this trip now.

This is American’s first real push to do a major event like this, but American wasn’t the only airline being discussed. United and its program changes were brought up many times at the event. You can sense some unhappiness and uneasiness about what’s happening at United, and you have to think American is trying to capitalize on that.

Plenty of people at the event were asking whether American would match status as part of this trip, and most of those questions were from United loyalists. It doesn’t look like there will be a straight match but clearly American is interested in wooing people. The airline did announce a big bonus mile offer that would go out to the people who take this trip – the more roundtrips you fly in a three month period, the more bonus miles you’ll get.

In the end, I wonder if the effort is worth it for the airline to do a MegaDo. Sure, everyone has to pay to attend the event, so it’s not like American is losing a bunch of money on the deal, but it does have to sink a great deal of time and effort into putting this together for a very small group. I mean, you had a bunch of AAdvantage team members along with PR people that had to fly in to spend their Sunday night at this party in LA. But I commend them for trying it at least once. They can decide whether it’s worth it or not after giving it a shot here.

If you’re interested in the trip, go to megado.com to learn more. It will likely start around $799 for coach and go up from there. Bookings should begin soon, and I imagine it will fill up quickly. (While I’d love to experience a MegaDo for myself, I won’t be on this particular trip.)

Those of you who used to read me over on BNET know that I used to spend a solid week each year looking at my favorite Small Community Air Service Development Program (SCASDP) proposals. Since I’m no longer writing for BNET, I spent a lot less time reviewing the program this year, and that makes me sad. I have fun with this. And yes, this year I’m late. The awards already came out, but that won’t stop me from talking about them.

By “favorite,” I don’t mean I look at those proposals that are great. I’m talking about those that seem outrageously misguided to me. The point of the program is a good one. Unlike Essential Air Service which just continuously plows money into small city routes, SCASDP is a short term funding plan that requires serious justification. The money should be used for helping to jumpstart new service through revenue guarantees, marketing, etc. There are a few uses but the point is the same. Money is meant to help get a project on its feet, but it won’t be there forever.

There have been successes. SCASDP has been responsible for successful long-running routes from Akron/Canton and Santa Rosa, for example. These are routes that airlines might not have tried on their own, but with the financial backing initially, they found them to be winners. And plenty of airports are trying to do just that right now. Many of these are small cities trying to get connected into a hub. Others are trying to get low cost service, often from Frontier this year it seems.

So which ones stood out for me? Here are 9 of the goofiest ones. I’m sad to say that three of these actually got awarded a grant. Oy vey.

• Albany, New York (WON) – Albany wants money to fund a flight to Houston, but that seems like a waste to me. It already has service from United and Southwest to several cities so it has access to their networks without having to go to Houston. Seems to me that the feds should have looked for proposals that would have had more of a network benefit than this, but the feds liked it and it got partial funding.
• Arcata/Eureka, California (LOST) – Like every other airport, Eureka complains of high fares on its sole flights on United to San Francisco and Sacramento. So what’s the solution? It wants nonstop flights to Denver, on United, the same airline that has high fares today. All this would do is hurt United’s existing service and make the market weaker overall. It won’t lower fares. Delta failed with flights to Salt Lake and Alaska/Horizon failed down to LA. This market just can’t support more service right now, it would seem.
• Bakersfield, California (LOST) – I don’t even get this. Bakersfield wants money to support 2 props a day up to Sacramento on Great Lakes. Without any connecting feed in Sacramento, this is bound to fail. There is a strange suggestion that there will be another 20 people connecting to Portland or Seattle. Really? I can’t see it – people going there would probably just take an existing airline that actually offers online connections.
• Bemidji, Minnesota (LOST) – I’ll give these guys points for creativity. They seem to think that people don’t fly out of Bemidji because they don’t know the airport has flights. So what will they do? Create a travel desk to book flights for people in Bemidji and those coming to town. This just isn’t going to do much since we all know that people coming to town aren’t going to call Bemidji to have flights booked. And locals should know the airport exists – they just drive because it’s cheaper or flights are more convenient from other airports.
• Casper, Wyoming (LOST) – Casper thinks that fares are too high on the short flight down to Denver on United. So what does it want? It wants Frontier to come in to lower fares. It says it asked United to lower fares to levels seen during the 1990s and early 2000s but was rebuffed. Apparently it forgot that fuel has spiked dramatically. So if Frontier comes in, what happens? It could push United to run away because lower fares will destroy the market. Then Casper would be pretty unhappy.
• Dubuque, Iowa (WON) – I love Dubuque because it has had some great, creative proposals in the past that didn’t win. So what happens? The city comes up with a not-so-good one and it wins. Go figure. Dubuque has been losing service and now it only has American Eagle flights to Chicago. What does it want? American flights to Dallas. This won’t help fares and it will likely weaken the Chicago flights by pulling people away. There’s limited additional benefit to Dubuque, but guess what? It’s going to get a shot to see if it works.
• Flagstaff, Arizona (WON) – Flagstaff is like many small cities in thinking that it’s perpetually underserved and it deserves better than what it gets. In this case, that’s turboprop flights to Phoenix. It also says fares are too high. In fact, it says the average fare is $58 one way higher than Phoenix. That doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me, but Flag thinks it knows that the premium should only be $30 to $35 one way. So Flagstaff wants a new airline to come in. It did have Alaska/Horizon to LA for a brief time but that failed. Why would some other service work? It won’t. But it won a grant, so we’ll probably see someone else come in soon.
• Mammoth Lakes, California (LOST) – Mammoth gets the brass balls award for having the gall to ask for this one. It has been subsidizing year-round flights, but it doesn’t have the money to continue. Without more money, the non-winter flights will probably go away, so it wants the feds to pump more money in. If the service doesn’t work now, then why would federal funds make it work? It wouldn’t.
• Marquette, Michigan (LOST) – Marquette is on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, meaning it’s basically Canada. So it wants service to the state capital, Lansing, because you can only get there via connections today. The problem is that a Marquette to Lansing flight will never have enough demand to support itself, ever. So why bother throwing money down a hole to subsidize it for a short time knowing it won’t work? There’s no good reason.

In the end, the feds selected 29 winners. That means more than 40 percent of applicants got a grant. Not too shabby. There were some winners that I liked to see. For example, I think Auburn/Lewiston, Maine had a good pitch for finally getting its first scheduled flights. I also think Latrobe, Pennsylvania has a good case for trying to further build its newly-acquired flights from Spirit. In fact, I’d say that this year, I probably liked what the DOT did more than in previous years, though clearly we still have some strong disagreements. That’s no surprise. Read the full list of grants here.

But congratulations to all the communities that won new service. Even if I’m skeptical in some cases, I hope that you can all make it work.

[Original photo via Flickr user Jeff Samsonow/CC 2.0]

Travel apps that really help – CNN Out of the Office
CNN is doing a lot of mobile stories this week so they asked me for some of my favorite travel apps. Here they are.

In the Trenches: Slowing Down – Intuit Small Business Blog
With a baby on the way, it’s time to re-set priorities and try to slow things down a little.

The Price You Pay For An Airline Ticket Is All In The Timing – CBS 2 Los Angeles
I was interviewed for one of those stories on when to buy a plane ticket and I turned into the center of the story, it seems.

I’ve been following this one closely, but I haven’t written about it yet. The Department of Transportation (DOT) is trying to require additional reporting requirements for fees. As you may know, DOT requires airlines to report limited financial data publicly, even if the companies are private. As part of that, some limited fee info has to be broken out, like change fees and bag fees. But now the DOT wants to require much broader reporting that will include everything from blankets to drinks, all broken out separately.

Does the government have any business requiring such detailed disclosure? What really is the purpose of it? Chime in below.

While I was up in Seattle for the APEX expo, I got invited to something fun. Dubai-based low cost carrier flydubai took delivery of its latest 737 from Boeing. It was following that up with an install of the new Lumexis inflight entertainment system. I was invited to see the install in progress. If you’ve ever wondered how an inflight entertainment system gets installed, here’s a look at it.

Flydubai took delivery of the airplane and it was immediately sent over to Paine Field in Everett where it would have the inflight entertainment system installed. You might remember Lumexis from my post a long time ago. That’s the company that introduced a fiber optic system that goes direct to the screen instead of via those bulky boxes that often block your legroom. The capacity of these wires is tremendous in that you can watch on a big screen in high definition. It’s a beautiful sight. The simple system makes it easier to install than a traditional inflight entertainment system, but it still does take time.

When the airplane gets to the installer’s hangar, it sits outside but is pulled forward into a bay where the nose sits (above). This allows the workers to get on and off the airplane inside – it also allows them to keep the seats nice and dry in the perenially-wet Pacific Northwest (below).

You can see the seats are all wrapped up – these are new seats that have the screens installed in them. (flydubai is also proud to say that these are the only seats with a painted seat recline button.)

Before these seats can go into the airplane, they have to install all the wiring. So walking in, we found an airplane that’s not nearly ready for primetime. We were early in the 3 day installation process so there was a lot of exposed area (below) that the customer will never see.

Some of this stuff was interesting to see from the side not usually seen by travelers. Below, you’ll see the back side of the passenger service units. You can see the air conditioning vents, the oxygen masks, and on the right, they’ve put life vests where the space is for a traditional drop-down screen for entertainment. (No need for those on this bird.)

The wiring itself comes from the front of the airplane where the head-end unit is installed. Wires go back through the ceiling so you’ll never see them, but there are surprisingly few wires anyway since fiber optics have a lot of capacity. Below is a shot of the entire bundle toward the front of the airplane. Wires start peeling off to go to each row until there’s nothing left in the bundle at the end of the airplane.

Some of those wires go off to power units in every few rows. These are in the sidewall of the airplane (below). They use electricity from the aircraft to power the entertainment systems. Since they sit in the sidewall, a passenger will never see them. Wires just come out to each row of seats from the unit, but that’s all covered well once the seats are installed.

That’s about it for the cabin. There are some units installed down in the avionics bay under the passenger floor. As you can see (below), they are small and barely take up any room down there.

And that’s really about it, believe it or not. Once they finish with this wiring, they can start putting the cabin back together. The seats will follow and then the system will work like magic, or something like that. This aircraft has certainly already been in Dubai for awhile, flying throughout the system which includes some pretty exotic places, by the way. I didn’t realize how quickly flydubai got big but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

If you want to try the Lumexis system for yourself, flydubai is your best bet right now. Transaero out of Russia is also installing the system and there are more on the way.