In the Trenches: Finding the Right Employee – Intuit Small Business Blog
Now the search is on for a new employee, but it’s not as easy as I might like it to be.

The Alaska Formula: How the Airline Changes and Keeps Customers Happy – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Alaska announced it was adding seats to airplanes this week, but the way it’s doing it means there are real benefits to the traveler.

US Airways ups change fee to $200 – USA today
I was asked about whether US Airways matching United’s change fee increase meant others would follow.

The airline with the Eskimo on its tail has to be feeling a little uneasy right now after JetBlue announced it would enter Alaska’s flagship Seattle to Anchorage market. The motivations for this move seem a bit murky, but the payoff could be huge.

Friday morning, Alaska announced it would start flying from San Diego to Boston once a day beginning March 29. This is clearly part of Alaska’s plan to grow San Diego, since it has added several destinations lately from the city.

The only other airline in this market is JetBlue. It must be a decent market because JetBlue flies it twice a day. Of course, JetBlue appeals to the Boston crowd more. And though Alaska appeals to the San Diego crowd, its partnerships with Delta and American make that market attractive to a lot of frequent fliers on either end.

Where this gets interesting is that less than two hours later, JetBlue dropped the bomb that it would start flying from Anchorage to Seattle once a day beginning May 16.

Regardless of whether or not this is a retaliatory move, it’s bad news for Alaska. In fact, Alaska has to be feeling pretty nervous about this. Anchorage to Seattle is a great market and Alaska owns it. Even during the slow winter, Alaska flies 11 daily flights on a weekday. In the summer? You’re looking at basically hourly flights with 22 a day. These airplanes have a lot of people onboard, but they also are full with cargo in the belly. It’s a very good market.

But what’s even more remarkable is that this big market is largely competition-free. There used to be more flights before airlines had the range to fly nonstop from their hubs to Anchorage. But now most have walked away.

United still has one or two flights a day depending upon the season, but that’s it. And United is certainly not trying to be a pricing leader in this market. But JetBlue is a different story. Even though it’s only coming in with one flight a day, if Alaska ignores it, this service could grow quickly.

We don’t know what JetBlue pricing will look like. That’s another reason this announcement seemed a little suspicious with it’s timing. Fares aren’t filed and neither are flight schedules. No pricing was given in the press release; not even an introductory sale. But it’s safe to assume that JetBlue is going to come in and charge a lot less than what Alaska charges today.

How good is this market? For the first half of this year, the average nonstop fare in the market was $295 each way. (Alaska alone was a few bucks higher.) That was roughly the same average fare as we saw in the lucrative LAX to JFK market. These are total average nonstop fares, so that includes all the high dollar premium traffic flying between LA and New York. Oh, and the JFK to LA flight is 1,000 miles longer.

Sure, the Seattle to Anchorage market is smaller than LA to JFK by a factor of 10 from a passenger number perspective, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for another airline to come in and make some good money.

Now to be sure, Alaska owns this market and that won’t change. It has all the cargo deals and it has locked up the business traffic that goes back and forth. JetBlue won’t change that with one or even a couple flights per day, and that’s why JetBlue won’t try to fly this market during the winter, at least to start. But JetBlue can get a lot of tourists to fly during the summer, and that’s exactly the plan.

With one flight, it’s not a threat to Alaska, but if it does well, Alaska can put more airplanes in there. And the threshold for success might be relatively low. JetBlue pulled in about $190 each way per person on its Anchorage to Long Beach route last year. That was more than $30 less than Alaska brought in from LAX, but JetBlue is bringing the route back again next summer for the third year in a row.

With higher fares and a bigger market, Seattle has to be attractive to JetBlue. Even if this is just a response to Alaska’s San Diego to Boston flight, it was just a matter of time before someone entered that market.

[Original photo via Shutterstock]

I had been looking forward to this vacation for a long time. My family headed out to Maui to celebrate my dad’s 65th birthday and we decided to fly Alaska over there. The airline was fantastic, and the crews were both stellar. Unfortunately, the Cranky Baby was, um, pretty Cranky on the flight home but it all worked out.

So how did we fly Alaska to Hawai’i when we live in the LA area? We drove to San Diego. My parents were coming out of San Diego and we decided to fly with them. So we took the later of the two Maui flights operating that day and planned to just drive down that morning. Flights cost $590.40 per ticket.

We were on the road by 430a with a sleepy baby in the back. Roads were empty until we got to San Diego and after parking, we were at the terminal by 645a. This was my first chance to use self bag-tagging for our two checked bags, and I was underwhelmed. Checking in at the kiosk was easy, as was putting the tag on the bag. We turned around and went to the counter to drop the bags, but she needed to check all our IDs, our bag tag stubs, and our boarding passes. It took just as long if not longer to get those all scanned and into the system. For those who use this system, check as many bags under 1 name as you can so you only need to pull out one ID.

Once it was done, we headed through security to an old rotunda-style terminal that is barely able to hold up with the heavy passenger loads on Alaska and United. The one Starbucks in there had a line around the block and seats were scarce. The bathrooms had long lines (even the mens room) and were definitely undersized. With Alaska adding a lot of flights in San Diego, I imagine something is going to have to give.

Soon enough, it was time to board.

---

September 14, 2012
Alaska 819 Lv San Diego 815a Arr Kahului 1057a
San Diego (SAN): Gate 17, Runway 27, Depart 4m Early
Kahului (OGG): Gate 6, Runway 2, Arrive 7m Early
N534AS, Boeing 737-890, Lei Tail, 91% Full
Seat 19B
Flight Time 5h24m

My wife and I preboarded so that we could get our son’s car seat secured in the seat. We had to put it in the window because it was big enough that it would have blocked egress for the window seat if it were in the middle. Once we got it set up, flight attendant Karin came up with some bad news. We were in the row behind the exit and Karin said car seats couldn’t be in that row because the seats in front need to come down in an emergency. So Karin quickly had us move to the row behind and stood there to ask those in that row to move forward once they got onboard. It wasn’t a problem for anyone – a very smooth operation.

In our seat, there was a thick paper outline of what we could expect on the flight. It told us about the services and when they would occur. That along with the Hawaiian boarding music and the hibiscus flower in each flight attendant’s hair made the flight seem just a little more Hawaiian right off the bat.

We took off on time and headed northwest. Once over Catalina Island, we hung a left and went straight toward Maui. The seats on this year-old aircraft were very comfortable and the legroom actually seemed to be better than I usually expect to find in coach these days. We got a DigEPlayer for $10 to pass the time and my mom promptly took the little guy to play with him.

The flight attendants earned their wage on this flight – they were constantly up and down the aisles doing three full services and multiple smaller passes. On the first, I had the Hawaiian breakfast skillet which was Portuguese sausage, egg, rice, pineapple, and coconut. It was really, really good.

I was really glad we bought a seat for the little guy this time instead of doing the lap child thing. When the seat belt sign came on, we strapped in him and I didn’t have to worry about hitting turbulence that could hurt him. We won’t be traveling with him as a lap child again.

The flight was very baby friendly. One of the lavs had a changing table and that made life much easier. Also, when my wife was feeding, Karin came by and gave her extra bottles of water to make sure she stayed hydrated. She kept a running conversation with us throughout the flight. I noticed all the flight attendants doing similar things with passengers throughout the cabin. The service was certainly appreciated by those all around us.

I knew we were getting close when Alaska broke out the free mai tais – a standard service for flights to Hawai’i. They were really, really sweet, but it was still a nice gesture. After 5 hours, I could see the Big Island in the distance and that meant it was time to start descending. We made our way into a windy Kahului (as usual) and parked at the gate a few minutes early. By the time we got down, our bags were already on the carousel and we were off for a week of island fun. (With a baby, that meant early mornings and bed by 9p.)

On the way back, we checked in at an empty ticket counter, gave them our bags, and headed toward security. Security was a complete mess, and my experience with the TSA was so awful that I’ll be writing this up in a separate post. This downright stupid implementation of “security theater” meant that by the time I got to the gate over 30 minutes later, boarding was starting.

---

September 21, 2012
Alaska 854 Lv Kahului 140p Arr San Diego 1010p
Kahului (OGG): Gate 5, Runway 2, Depart 7m Early
San Diego (SAN): Gate 18, Runway 9, Arrive 25m Early
N516AS, Boeing 737-890, Lei Tail, ~95% Full
Seat 19B
Flight Time 4h45m

There really wasn’t a ton to say about the flight home. The flight attendants were again excellent on this flight. One of them even took the Cranky Baby for a walk into the First Class cabin because he had been fussing so much. They all wanted to help out despite doing constant services up and down the aisle.

The flight home was quick thanks to a nice tailwind and the fact that we landed to the east, a San Diego rarity. After we got off, I made a beeline to the shuttle to get the car, and ran into the crew. I asked the captain how it was we were able to land to the east when we saw airplanes departing to the west as usual after we landed. He said air traffic control was feeling friendly and let us land straight in.

We got the car and then hit the road for the long drive north. It was even longer since the 405 was closed just south of Long Beach for construction. I finally hit the sack after 1a, never wanting to do that drive again. That being said, it was great to fly Alaska.

It’s time for another post in my series talking about the benefits of NextGen air traffic control. Last time, we were in New York, but this time we’re heading across the country to Seattle where Alaska Airlines has been spearheading some major efforts to shorten flight times and reduce fuel burn thanks to new approaches in Seattle. I spoke with Sarah Dalton, Director of Airspace and Technology for Alaska along with Oscar Vela, a First Officer at Alaska who has been working on this project, to learn more.

The project is being called Greener Skies over Seattle, and I was first told about it when I visited the airline last September. The idea is to use RNP to enable a much quicker path into the airport. The picture on the right is a great one to show how this works for approaches from the South.

Today, aircraft coming from the south descend into Seattle using a traditional step-down descent. That means that airplanes are cleared to descend to certain altitudes. When they get there, they spool the engines up and level out until they are cleared to the next level below. Though this works well in practice, it is a waste of fuel since it requires constant increasing of thrust and then decreasing it again. There is now a new descent profile which will allow aircraft to come down smoothly and without interruption all the way down to 6,000 feet.

Once the aircraft gets to 6,000 feet, it is going to be about where the yellow and blue lines meet on the left side of the image (at least using this particular approach). It’s across the water from Sea-Tac Airport. Today, aircraft mostly have to continue on the blue line and then make a turn further up north before coming back around. The entire process is choreographed by the air traffic controllers with specific instructions on altitude and heading until the airplane is lined up with the runway. When the visibility is bad (which I assume is every single freakin’ day in Seattle), the aircraft will then use an ILS approach to come straight in for landing.

For those airlines that have RNP-equipped aircraft and trained crews, air traffic control now has the ability to give them an RNP approach. Instead of going further north, aircraft would engage at 6,000 feet and would automatically be guided around the curve and lined up for landing. This not only cuts off flight time and saves fuel, but it keeps a large swath of populated land north of the airport without airplane noise.

This sounds great, but why is NextGen necessary for this to work? Well, it’s the accuracy of the computer navigation that allows this to happen. Seattle has three parallel runways and often is landing on two runways at once. The FAA has a rule today in Seattle that if an airplane is coming into a turn on approach into the airport, there has to be at least 1,000 feet vertical or 3 miles horizontal separation. They can’t make that work so close to the airport so they have to send airplanes further north to get them lined up with cutting capacity at the airport.

The FAA and air traffic control are now trying out this new procedure, which began flight testing in June. It’s a big change for those who are used to controlling traffic, because they have to let go of some of that control. How are the tests going so far? Quite well. There have been 1,300 flights operated by Alaska under the test so far and there’s hope that this will be in place as a real procedure by spring of next year.

I asked if they had learned anything from the trials that required tweaking yet, and there was one thing. Since this is a much more precise approach, managing the speed on the airplane becomes much more important. So that’s something they need to make sure is hammered home with the pilots.

One of the criticisms brought up when I wrote about JetBlue at JFK in the last piece in this series was that some said it would rarely matter because runways weren’t usually in those configurations. That is not the case here.

The approach I mentioned is just one of the ones being tested. There are approaches that use this technology for landings to the north and to the south. It is used for traffic coming from the west, north, or south as well. The only traffic that can’t benefit from these approaches is that coming from the east. For Alaska, that means 75 percent of its traffic (and around 60 percent of Horizon’s traffic) can take advantage of this, and Alaska accounts for a huge chunk at the airport. All of the airplanes are equipped and the pilots are trained in those fleets, so there is significant benefit right off the bat.

But others with RNP capability can use this as well. It’s just one example of how landing procedures can be rethought with more accurate navigation. The result is less noise, less fuel burn, and shorter flight times.

A couple of weeks ago, Alaska Airlines announced it would start aggressively rolling out self bag-tagging for its customers. This might sound like a little thing but it was a painful process to finally get government approval. I spoke with Jeff Butler, VP of Customer Service – Airports for Alaska to understand what really went into this.

It sounds so simple, and for those outside of the US, it is. When people go to check a bag in many places outside the US, they can go to a kiosk, print out a bag tag, and put it on the bag. Then they drop it on a bag belt and go on their way. In the US, however, that wasn’t allowed.

The TSA was overly concerned about security. It was all about “control of the bag tag.” There was this thought that if people could print out the tags without having an airline employee watching over them, they could find a way to get a bag on an airplane without actually getting onboard themselves. I have a hard time seeing this as a real threat since bags are scanned in multiple places along their journeys before they get on an airplane, and certainly if people can print their own boarding passes, there’s more danger in that. But that doesn’t matter; the feds set the rules.

So Alaska participated in a trial with the TSA to allow this to happen. It set up shop in Redmond, Oregon. American applied for a test in Austin and Air Canada did one in Boston. The idea was to prove that letting people tag their own bags wouldn’t be the end of the world. And that, they did. During the six month test, each airline had to collect reams of data regarding the technology, volume of bags, customer feedback, etc. This all had to be submitted to the feds.

Over the next year, Jeff and the Alaska team were back and forth to Washington multiple times to try to finally get them to agree that self-tagging wasn’t this horrible safety risk. After a year, it is finally in place, but there are restrictions.

Not Quite Self-Checking
As it is now, the TSA has set up a program where airlines can apply to have their passengers be permitted to self-tag but not self-check. This application involves a crushing amount of paperwork. To make things even more cumbersome, airlines have to re-apply for every single city in which they want to do this. Jeff is hopeful that this cumbersome application-by-city issue will disappear soon enough.

Alaska jumped on the application process as soon as it could and started things in Seattle. You can now find about a dozen of the kiosks on the southern side of Alaska’s check in area at Seattle. Machines are coming to the north side as well. The process works like this.

You have to go inside the terminal because the TSA has not approved this for curbside. (I really wish I knew of any kind of rationale here.) Once you head inside, you go to a kiosk just like you normally would. Previously, you would say how many bags you needed to check and then you would go over to a podium and give your bag to the agent. The agent would tag your bag and send it on its way. The only difference now is that you print out your tag at the kiosk, put it on the bag, and then give it to the agent.

That’s right. The TSA still won’t let you put your own bag on the belt. You have to give it to the agent where the agent then scans it and sends it. Apparently this is all part of the TSA’s obsession with controlling the bag tag. Every tag that is printed must be tracked and only a fraction of a percent are allowed to not be put into the system as planned. Technically, if someone prints a tag, messes up, and throws it away, Alaska is supposed to go and fish it out of the trash can. Is this really worthwhile?

According to Alaska, yes. It has seen 30 percent less processing time for someone who just drops off the bag versus someone who needs to get the tag printed out by an agent. So if Alaska can shave 30 percent off the process, it’s a good thing. And the airline is going all-in here.

New cities will all have self-tagging when they open. That includes Ft Lauderdale and Philly. Any remodels or expansions will also be met with self-tagging capability. That’s why you’ll find it in Monterey and in San Diego. And the rest of the stations will get the new kiosks as soon as they are replaced on their normal cycles, about 25 percent get replaced each year.

Where this gets really interesting is what it means for the future. Hopefully this is the small opening that we need to do what we should already be doing today. I hope we’ll soon see people able to print their own bag tags at home and then just drop the bag off when they get to the airport. I hope that we’ll also see permanent bag tags for frequent fliers. Just stick some sort of RFID chip on your bag and the sortation system will know where to send it. But we’re not there yet and the TSA is standing in the way. With any luck, this change here will make it easier to get further improvements pushed through in the future.