Here we are at the end of January and a merger between US Airways and American still has not been announced. This is downright silly since just about every party agrees that it’s the right thing to do. So what’s up? Well, I say “just about” every party, because from what I can see, it’s American’s current management team that is the lone holdout. And it’s that stubborn stance that seems to be keeping the right thing from happening here.

Last week, Reuters put out a joke of an “exclusive” article saying that a merger between the two could come in the next two weeks. Why was it a joke? Apparently the airlines were in final negotiations with “the final price and management structure still to be resolved.” So the “only” two sticking points are the ones that have always been the issue. Maybe this was leaked to try and help build some more traction, but it didn’t really say anything new.

Now the latest “news” of the day is that American CEO Tom Horton may end up being the Chairman of the combined entities. There is some good and some bad to this kind of thing. The good is pretty simple to explain. If Horton is willing to settle for a Tilton-esque agreement where he can just sit in a fancy office and collect a huge paycheck for a couple of years, then that finally removes the last real barrier to a merger – the fight being put up by management.

On the other hand, if he insists on a more active role, then it’s a bad idea. There are very few supporters of Horton outside management ranks. Wall Street has been quite clear that Horton’s plans to date are unacceptable. In particular, the plan to grow the hubs by 20 percent is suicidal. As one analyst, Dan McKenzie, puts it, the growth plan “would be toxic for industry pricing and ruinous for shareholders….” The views throughout the financial community appear to echo that sentiment. If Horton has any kind of influence in the merged entity, then the money folks will not be happy. And that hurts the chances of the deal going through.

Other than Wall Street, we know the employees have lost all faith in the current management team. That happens to any leadership team that takes an airline through bankruptcy, as it should. That’s why it’s best to have a new team to take you out of bankruptcy. Delta did this well.

Delta Does Bankruptcy Right
When Jerry Grinstein took over at Delta, he started making deep cuts and then led the airline into bankruptcy. He wasn’t exactly hated since he was quite upfront with what had to happen and didn’t take excess compensation, but it was always meant to be a temporary job so there would be no residual friction. When he stepped down, the hard restructuring work had been done. Richard Anderson stepped in to lead the resurgence which included the Northwest merger. Today, Delta is the industry leader.

American could have a similar story if it wanted. Tom Horton has made a lot of necessary cuts that have angered people in order to get this airline in a position where it would even have a shot at competing. He should get credit for that, but now it’s time to step aside and let the people who know revenue take over. When you come out of bankruptcy, you need a new leadership team with a solid revenue plan that people can rally behind. Horton is clearly not the guy to lead that team.

When I talk about the leadership team, I think some people might picture US Airways management coming in and throwing American leaders out the window, but that’s not the case. There is clearly a need for American leaders to run a combined airline. The US Airways team has to know that. In fact, I bet there are people in high places at American who secretly want to see a new leadership team at the top, because it will provide more opportunity for them. This new leadership team needs to fill the key roles at the very top. The rest will be a mix of experience between the two sides.

Too Many Promises
Without a new team, what we get is a current leadership team with a highly questionable plan. The thought seems to be that if American promises enough bells and whistles, people will fly the airline. And it will need 20 percent more capacity to serve all this magical new demand. Not a good plan. First, the promises are lofty and expensive. Today is the first day that any passenger on American can experience those amenities with the introduction of the 777-300ER on the Dallas/Ft Worth to Sao Paulo route, but that is just one airplane. It will take years for the airline to consistently deliver a product that can live up to what is being promised. All this “new American” stuff including the new livery will result in the worst thing possible – overpromising and underdelivering for years to come.

But even then, does it make sense to put all of these amenities out there? Some, yes (like flat beds in biz, of course), but probably not all. It seems like the airline is going overboard with announcing its plans just to try to sway people who may have influence on whether a merger happens or not. If it doesn’t happen? With a 20 percent increase in capacity and no merger, the airline is not going to have the revenue base to support all these expensive promises anyway. (It may not have it afterwards either, which is why the promises should likely be scaled back.)

At this point, my assumption is that the only reason we haven’t seen the merger announced is because the current management team is fighting it. Everyone else seems to be in agreement that it’s the right way to go. If that’s true, then it will happen. There are a lot of great people at American and around the US who deserve just that. It will just take longer than it should. And there will be more pain involved in the process.

[Original child tantrum photo via Shutterstock]

Have you seen the supposed “safety rankings” for 2012 from the Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre (JACDEC)? I know some of you have, because I’ve received emails about it, and it is a truly awful way to measure airline safety. You know I hate to give press to these types of things, but considering that I received emails on the subject, I thought it better to pick this apart instead of letting it stand alone, misleading people.

This safety ranking looked at 60 airlines and ranked them on a safety index. The safest airline in here was Finnair with a .005 ranking. The least safe was China Airlines with a 1.171 ranking. How do they come up with these numbers? Let’s just go straight to the horse’s mouth.

Based on our annual safety calculations which include all hull loss accidents and serious incidents in the last 30 years of operations in relation to the revenue passsenger kilometers (RPK) performed in the same time. We also took into account the international safety benchmarks such as the IOSA Audit and the USOAP country factor. Furthermore we included a time weightening factor which increases the effect of recent accidents and weakening the impact of accidents in the past. All calculation data ends after a period of 30 years. Fatalities are only counted when they were on board a passenger flight. No ground casualties or 3rd party fatalities in other aircraft. All accidents that fulfills the above mentioned criteria were involved in our calculation, regardless of causes or responsibilities.

That’s right. The “annual” safety ranking looks at accidents in the last 30 YEARS. This is a shockingly long time, and it makes no sense at all if you’re considering safety today. It also doesn’t take into account whether an accident was even the fault of the airline. Oh boy.

Let’s look at China Airlines, the worst airline on the report. There is no question that China Airlines was an unsafe airline back in the 1990s and early 2000s. It had multiple accidents that killed hundreds of people. The accidents were caused by everything from poor maintenance to crew mistakes and lack of coordination. The airline was a mess.

But since that last major accident in May 2002, over 10 years ago, China Airlines made big changes. The result is that there has been only one incident in the last decade. That one was partially due to a maintenance issue but also due to a manufacturing problem. Nobody died.

Now, this hardly makes China Airlines the safest airline around, but it also hardly seems fair to determine its safety currently from its 30 year history. The same goes for Korean Air.

Korean ranks as the fifth most dangerous airline in this year’s survey. Korean also was an airline I would have avoided in the late 1990s as a series of accidents plagued the airline. But Korean was a founding member of SkyTeam in 2000 and it has worked closely with several airlines to make sure its maintenance and crew practices were up to speed. The last incident in the database was in 2000, more than 13 years ago.

I think I’ve made my point, but I’ll use one more a little closer to home. How about SkyWest Airlines? You probably know SkyWest as a regional provider for just about every airline in the US. (Seriously – Alaska, American, Delta, United, and US Airways all use SkyWest.) When is the last time you heard about a safety incident with SkyWest?

Well, the last one that JACDEC counts was waaaaaay back in 1991 when a US Airways 737 landed on top of a SkyWest Metro. People often remember that accident, but it wasn’t SkyWest’s fault. Air traffic control made a fatal mistake. In fact, there is only one incident in the database that appears to be SkyWest’s fault and that resulted in no casualties.

Considering that SkyWest operates more than 1,500 flights a day, you would think that the airline would rank pretty well with such a strong record. But it doesn’t. It’s the tenth least safe airline on the list. That’s worse than airlines like Aeroflot and Alitalia. Though those airlines don’t concern me today either, it’s hard to believe that SkyWest’s record in the last 30 years is worse than Aeroflot’s.

Of course, this survey doesn’t even look at some of the more dangerous airlines out there – those who fly around hot spots in Africa or Indonesia. So if you’ve come across this study, I’d just disregard it.

We had to head to Dallas for a wedding, and it ended up being a super cool trip. Why do I say that? We flew Virgin America, rented from Silvercar, and stayed at an aloft hotel. That’s WAY too cool for me, but it was a fun one.

We flew Virgin America for one reason – it was cheap. In fact, I almost paid more to fly American because the first return on Sunday on Virgin America wasn’t until 240p and I wanted to get home earlier. But Virgin America had a little one day sale that had a discount plus a free wifi code. It was only $268.30 a person, way better than we could have done any other way.

The flight looked empty in First Class, so I went to check in the night before to see about an upgrade. Apparently you can’t upgrade until 6 hours in advance unless you’re an elite, and there was no way I was waking up at 3a to do it. By the time I woke up, First was full. But considering they were charging $138 to upgrade to Main Cabin Select, I can only imagine that the price for first would have been too high for me to bother anyway.

With little traffic along the way, we got to the airport early. Terminal 3 still looks the same at LAX except there’s a lot more red paint. Oh, and the other half where Alaska used to be is pretty empty. Here’s a panaroma shot I took while waiting for our flight on the other side.

---

January 18, 2013
Virgin America 874 Lv Los Angeles 9a Arr Dallas/Ft Worth 155p
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 35, Runway 24L, Depart 8m Early
Dallas/Ft Worth (DFW): Gate E33, Runway 18R, Arrive 14m Early
N638VA, Airbus A320-214, “San Francisco Pride”, ~65% Full
Seat 12F
Flight Time 2h33m

We headed over to the gate to board and I handed over my mobile boarding pass. It worked flawlessly at TSA, but here the agent was having trouble getting it to register. She hit the screen of my phone and that did it. It showed that the session had timed out so we had to step outside to log back on and check in again. These mobile passes are still a pain in the butt.

Once onboard we found that the flight was not that full. Most middle seats behind the wing were empty, but we were in a full row. No big deal. The captain came on to tell us that he wouldn’t be talking to us during the flight because he didn’t want to interrupt our movie-watching. He said if we wanted to know where we were, we could look at Google Maps. (The same announcement was made on the return.)

We pushed back a little early and were in the air right about the time we were supposed to be pushing back. Nice. I watched TV the entire time and used my free wifi code to get some work done. I was determined to try out the ordering system for food since I hadn’t done it before. (The only other time I’ve flown the airline was from LA to SF and back.)

They came around with drinks and I got a ginger ale. They also were handing out bottles of water for those who wanted it. Later, I ordered a tasty roast beef sandwich that was delivered to me in just a couple minutes. The system was definitely easy to use, although the touchscreen seems to require a little harder of a touch than I would like. I kept thinking I was bugging the person in the seat in front of me.

The rest of the flight passed very quickly since it was just like another work day for me. I think I must be shrinking because the legroom seemed much better than the last time I flew the airline. (Nothing has changed, so I really must be shrinking.) Overall it was a great flight. My only complaint was that the power outlet didn’t work.

Soon enough, we were descending into DFW and it was time to try out Silvercar. That post will be live on CNTraveler.com later this week. This was also my first stay at an aloft hotel. For $89 a night, it was great. But it’s kind of funny to see a loft-style efficient use of space in the wide open plains of Plano where it’s more novelty than necessity.

Thank you to everyone who came out to do a little Crankyspotting that Saturday morning. We had a good couple dozen folks come out, I’d say. Lots and lots of silver birds at DFW, but no sign of the new livery.

After a busy weekend, we were ready to come home, and I was determined to try for an upgrade this time. Sure enough, six hours before departure, I went to check in. It was $278 to upgrade. That’s way too rich for me for a 3 hour flight, so I passed.

When we dropped the car off, we hopped on the rental car bus to the terminal. I tried to check in on my phone to pull up the boarding pass and it just said “online check in not available for this flight” or something like that. Great. The Virgin America ticket counter is far from the gate, and we had planned on going straight to the gate. It was a slight annoyance that was alleviated when we found a kiosk right out front that worked.

This time, they offered us an upgrade for $139 each, half price. We decided to take it. It said ok and told us to pick a seat. There was only one on the seat map. We couldn’t move on without choosing seats for both of us, so we had to cancel and check in as normal. When we got to the gate, the agent said that First was now full. Bummer. We were ready to go.

---

January 20, 2013
Virgin America 879 Lv Dallas/Ft Worth 240p Arr Los Angeles 405p
Dallas/Ft Worth (DFW): Gate E34, Runway 18L, Depart 5m Early
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 35, Runway 24R, Arrive 24m Early
N624VA, Airbus A320-214, Virgin America standard, ~65% Full
Seat 13F
Flight Time 2h48m

The gate agent was in a very good and extremely corny mood. She started by boarding the “Amazing A” boarding group. Then it was the “Beautiful B,” “Charming C,” “Dazzling D,” and “Excellent E.” We headed into the very long jet bridge at A34 and found it backed all the way up. Once down to the aircraft a few minutes later, we hopped on to find it looking about as empty as our original flight out.

We were buttoned up early and headed out to the runway complex on the west side of the airport. Soon enough we were airborne and winging our way west.

I had a nice brunch with friends beforehand so I wasn’t hungry on this flight. And I may have had a beer or two too many the night before, so I just stuck to water for this flight home. Really, all I needed was this:

The NFL playoffs were plenty, but I also had wifi and the air was smooth as glass. My only complaint? The noxious odor coming from someone in our general vicinity. Whew, it was bad.

Ok, I lied, I had one more complaint. My power outlet didn’t work again. But this time, the other one in our row did work and nobody was using it. So I stretched the cord out and we were good to go. My lithium ion battery didn’t even explode.

Soon enough, we were back home.

It’s a rare day that I post on a Sunday, but it’s an even rarer day when we lose a very young member of the online aviation family.

Many of you know NYCAviation.com as a great place for airline dorkiness. The site is co-owned by Phil Derner and Matt Molnar. Shockingly, Matt died Thursday night while he was with his fiancé. He was only 33 years old.

Matt’s family really consisted only had his younger brother and his fiancé, Gina. Now she is sadly putting their wedding funds to a more awful purpose – medical and funeral expenses. Phil has set up a fund to try to offset the remaining costs so that Gina doesn’t have to feel a financial burden in addition to the heavy emotional one.

If you would like to donate to the fund, it has been set up at GiveForward.

Any remaining funds will go to Matt’s favorite charities, The Humane Society and the Wounded Warrior Project.

I didn’t know Matt personally, but I do know Phil and others who knew him well. The online aviation world may seem vast, but it really isn’t that big. When something awful happens to one of our own, I’m happy to be able to provide what little support I can. If you would like to do the same, you can donate as well.

What If You Have a Ticket on a 787 Dreamliner? Airlines’ Back-Up Plans – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
I put together a little summary of how airlines are dealing with the 787 grounding. Of course, that changes by the minute as the grounding stretches further.

Southwest charges extra to board first – CNN.com
CNN asked for my thoughts on Southwest’s new $40 fee for early boarding.

In the Trenches: When Service Offerings Begin to Blur – Intuit Small Business Blog
Sometimes the difference between urgent assistance and monitoring can be a blurry line.

Episode 68 The Cranky Flier – Travel Tales Podcast
I sat down with Mike at the Travel Tales podcast and he poked and prodded me for an hour talking about me and the business. It was a fun one.