Way back on March 5, 2010, Allegiant announced it would purchase some used 757s so that it could go to Hawai’i. Here we are more than 2 years later and the strategy is finally, mercifully, being put into place. Flights to Honolulu begin on June 29 from one city you undoubtedly expected and another that’s a bit surprising.

There has been plenty of speculation over the years and one city that has often been mentioned is Fresno. Fresno is the heart of the largest Combined Statistical Area west of the Rockies without service to Hawai’i, so you’d think it could support something, right? Allegiant is the perfect airline to fly it, and it will start with 1 weekly flight. That seems like a smart way to start and I bet it does very well.

The other city, however, is Las Vegas. Vegas is a big city, and there’s a lot of traffic wanting to head in each direction on that route, but Hawaiian flies to Honolulu 17 times a week already. Allegiant hates head-to-head competition, so why is the airline doing this? I think it’s playing it safe from an operational perspective.

Here’s how the airplane will fly. On Wednesday morning, the airplane will leave Vegas for Honolulu and it will turn right back around in the afternoon with an evening arrival in Vegas. It does the same thing on Friday. On Saturday, it goes out to Honolulu at the same time, but then the afternoon return goes to Fresno. Sunday morning, it flies back to Honolulu with a Sunday afternoon return to Vegas. That Fresno flight is what’s called an “inside turn,” which means that that it does a roundtrip from Honolulu to Fresno inside of its regular Vegas – Honolulu roundtrip.

This allows Allegiant to keep the 757 close to home. It will end every night except for Saturday in Vegas, and its crews will be Vegas-based. I’m told that on routes that it can, Allegiant will use a three-person cockpit so that the crew can fly the entire roundtrip each day. My guess is that Vegas was picked more for operational convenience than anything else.

That being said, clearly Allegiant thinks that it has a chance of making this route succeed, but it also wouldn’t surprise if it didn’t. But so what? If it doesn’t work, I assume Allegiant will be comfortable enough down the line that it can put the 757 in places like Bellingham, Eugene, etc. (I’d guess those will happen sooner than later anyway – new Hawai’i routes should be announced for the Fall.) In other words, there is no shortage of opportunity if Vegas doesn’t succeed.

What will it be like if you fly Allegiant to Hawai’i? Not much different than if you fly within the mainland today. You’re just on a bigger airplane with more people. The 757s seat a whopping 223 sardines people. I don’t know about legroom, but I’d guess seat pitch is in the 30″ range. But hey, if you want to get there cheap, this will be the way to go.

Allegiant says one way fares from Vegas will start at $174. Of course that doesn’t include all the extras you’ll need to buy along the way, but it will still probably end up less than if you fly someone else. And Allegiant is naturally hoping you won’t just be buying airfare. The airline wants to make money selling you a whole package, and it’s lined up dozens of the main hotels in Hawai’i to help it make money.

While I’m not quite as bullish on Vegas, I am excited to see how Hawai’i flying does in general. The demand should be there, but will it be profitable? After years of speculating, we’ll finally be able to see for ourselves soon enough.

It was just announced that the new United will start flying 757s from Washington to Europe for the first time when it adds a second daily flight to Paris. This has a lot of people wondering why United never bothered doing this before. After all, pre-merger United had around 100 of those airplanes and never flew them over the Atlantic. It’s actually because not all 757s are created the same, and United simply didn’t want to invest in making its airplanes worthy of flying across the Pond. With Continental management in charge, this will certainly change.

The new plan has a Continental 757 starting that second daily Dulles-Paris flight on June 9. During the leaner off-peak season, the Washington-Amsterdam flight will become a 757 (Sep 1) and the first daily flight to Paris will also go on a 757 (Sep 29). Some United widebodies will move up to Newark for a couple flights to balance things out. Pre-merger United passengers are probably dreading this move, but they shouldn’t. The onboard experience on a Continental 757 is nothing like a United 757.

By this summer, every Continental 757 will have the same flat beds in business class that Continental is installing on its widebody fleet. There will be 16 of those and 159 coach seats, all of which have full audio/video on demand and power ports that don’t require an adapter. In other words, the seat experience on these airplanes is better than what you’ll find on United except for the lack of Economy Plus.

The 757 is a great airplane for the North Atlantic for a couple reasons. First, it allows airlines to fly more frequently between cities that can’t support multiple flights on a widebody. Washington to Paris is a perfect example. Right now, that’s flown once a day with a 777 that has (or will have once the flat beds are installed) 48 Business and First class seats along with 221 in coach. Now, the airline will be able to run two 757s which combined have 32 Business and 318 seats in coach. This is great for markets with less premium cabin demand that could potentially be boosted by having more frequency. In this case, it helps to compete with Air France’s double daily flights.

Second, this airplane is great for opening up markets that don’t have enough demand to support even one widebody. Continental has been able to fly routes like Newark to Hamburg because of this airplane.

So why didn’t United bother doing this before? The answer? It was too cheap to do it. Maybe that’s not fair. I’m sure somebody did a cost-benefit analysis. They just came to different conclusions than the Continental folks. Here’s the difference.

Aircraft Maximum Takeoff Weight
Continental ordered its 757s with a maximum takeoff weight of 255,000 pounds while United’s are only 240,000. Why does this matter? Because Continental can pack on an additional 15,000 pounds of fuel over a United airplane with a similar passenger load. And you need that fuel to get across the Pond. Could United have changed this? Yes. It’s my understanding that a higher weight is a paperwork issue. They would have had to pay to have the plane re-certified but that’s all they’d have to do. There’s another cost here. Airports base landing fees on max takeoff weight, so better need that extra weight if you’re going to bother having it.

Engine Thrust
Continental has Rolls Royce RB211-535 engines with 42,540 pounds of thrust. United has Pratt & Whitney PW2037 engines on its birds with 37,000 pounds of thrust. More thrust is a good thing, and United doesn’t have it. Now, United could upgrade its engines to PW2040 or PW2043 engines with more thrust with ease, but it chose not to do so. Again, the airline didn’t want to pay for what’s an easy technical upgrade.

Crew Rest
This might be the stickiest area. FAA rules require a relief pilot on flights over 8 hours and the westbound flights tend to be over that amount thanks to headwinds. But each airline has a different contract with its pilots stating what facilities are required for crew rest. For Continental, I believe it’s just a blocked biz class seat on a 757 for pilots. Flight attendants also have their own requirements. United’s union contracts tend to provide more, but I don’t believe the 757 is addressed directly right now. So, there would have to be some negotiation on what a rest facility on the 757 would look like, and it’s unclear how difficult that may or may not be. This will undoubtedly be one of the areas of discussion on the new combined pilot contract.

So that’s why United’s 757s don’t fly over the Pond and Continental’s do. I would assume we’re going to see more of this from Washington as time goes by because it’s something that Continental has used very successfully from Newark over the years.

Delta whipped up a surprise yesterday when it announced it would begin flights from both Raleigh/Durham and Pittsburgh to Paris/Charles de Gaulle next summer. I think I like this move, at least it seems like it’s worth a try, but I do find myself wondering if the planes will actually make it that far.

The flights will operate five days a week beginning June 2/3 with 757s. According to the Great Circle Mapper, the Pittsburgh flight will be 3,910 miles while the one from Raleigh clocks in at 4,052 miles. You know that Continental Newark-Berlin flight that has to make fuel stops a lot? Yeah, that’s only 3,980. So how the heck are they going to make this work? Maybe Delta’s Pratt & Whitney engines have longer legs than Continentals’ Rolls Royce ones. Or maybe they’re planning on lots of fuel stops.

But let’s assume they’ve figured out how to make this work technically. Will it work from a business standpoint? Pittsburgh is US Airways territory. Even though they’ve virtually abandoned the city, that’s still the big airline in town. And Raleigh, despite having lost its American hub years ago, is still an American loyalist stronghold. So, Delta, member of SkyTeam, is taking aim at the Star Alliance and oneworld carriers here by trying to steal some share. So how can they go into these cities where they have no loyalty and make a European flight work? It’s all about Air France.

If they take passengers from these cities and send them into Paris, they can connect them on to a ton of Air France flights all over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. All of a sudden, the service looks pretty interesting in that it can make a current two stop itinerary (US city to US gateway to EU gateway to EU city) into a one stop one (US city to EU gateway to EU city). And that can be attractive. Unfortunately, Delta’s red-tailed stepchild Northwest has tried this once and failed.

You may remember when Northwest started Hartford to Amsterdam as a way to take the traffic from Hartford and send it through Northwest partner KLM’s Amsterdam hub. It sounded good, but it lasted only a year before they announced the flight would be dropped. Maybe that was just because of high oil prices, and now it looks completely different, but if that was the case, you’d think Delta would be bringing that flight back instead of trying something new. In Hartford, there isn’t a loyalty to a single carrier like you have in Raleigh and Pittsburgh, so I’d think it would be an easier one to make work. Of course, if there isn’t enough local traffic, loyalty doesn’t matter. I figured that they might feel safer trying it from a Northwest stronghold like Indianapolis, but then again, that’s another 100 miles further than Raleigh, so I have no idea if they could even make that trip.

I have to give Delta credit for trying this one. If it works, it opens up a lot more opportunity for Delta from the East Coast to Paris and Amsterdam. If only Boeing would have kept the 757 production line and created an extended range 757-200 instead of wasting their time with the stretched 757-300. Just imagine what airlines would be flying right now if that plane had more range.

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The 757 is an aircraft that missed its calling. It was supposed to be a replacement for the 727 back in the 1980s. This meant its mission was for mid to longer-range domestic flights. The longest hauls were still the domain of the widebodies.