When it comes to technology, Alaska tends to be ahead of the curve when compared to other airlines. Their latest release? They now have a low fare calendar that shows you the lowest fares for an entire month for both your outbound and return.

This isn’t exactly a new idea; British Airways, for example, has had it for quite a long time and Southwest has had its “Shortcut” for some time as well, but anything that can be done to improve the booking process is a welcome addition.

You enter your search criteria just as you would on any site. Then when you select the low fare calendar, it brings up this view:

Pretty easy, and if your dates are flexible, it can save you good money. But your dates have to be really flexible for this to matter. I mean, if you’re putting together a weeklong summer vacation, you might be able to switch weeks, but I don’t know how helpful it is for the majority of people. That’s probably why it’s not the default search on their website.

For me, there are better ways to do this. I think you can get a lot of the benefit by using the implementation that JetBlue and Virgin America use. They show you the flights for the days you chose, but at the top they have tabs with the lowest price on the three days on either side of your date, like this.

But hey, this IS an improvement over what they have now, and I would like to commend them for actually showing the price including taxes on that first page. My only real complaint is that when you choose your flights, it takes you to the old page that shows the roundtrip flights by price. Personally, I prefer the search by schedule that shows lowest fares on all the outbound and then return flights. It’s easier to put options together. Fortunately, you can still get there by clicking again from the search by price page, but that takes yet another click.

So, nice work by Alaska, but nothing revolutionary here. I’d like to see something with more filtering options than just First Class so you can really find the lowest fare on flights that would work for you on each day. One of these days, we’ll get there.

A month ago, Horizon Air revealed its plans to focus on the Q400, drop the Q200 and CRJ-700 aircraft, and shrink its operation by a fair amount. Then last week, American announced its decision to cut 11 to 12% of itself for the fall schedule. Yesterday, both airlines decided to throw out some details, and there are some interesting moves.

Let’s start with American. The airline will drop Chicago to Buenos Aires and Boston to San Diego on September 3. Meanwhile, Chicago to Honolulu will fly on peak days only from September 3 through January 5 and then it disappears altogether. In a separate press release today, American said it will cancel its flying from New York/JFK to London/Stansted on July 2 as well.

None of this should be terribly surprising. We’re looking at long haul (read: gas-guzzling) flights with a high percentage of leisure demand. Still, I’m a little surprised that Honolulu is losing a flight considering how much capacity has already dropped to the Islands with the disappearance of Aloha and ATA. And I’m also surprised about Stansted . . . mostly that it wasn’t dropped sooner. It was clearly a thinly veiled attempt to drive Eos and MAXjet out. They’re gone, so why stay? Again, not a big surprise.

Where it does get interesting, however, is in the American Eagle moves. The press release doesn’t say much, but an internal memo sent out to American Eagle employees says that American will slash San Juan departures from 55 to 33 this winter, the peak season down there. It will be mostly frequency reductions, though flights will cease altogether from San Juan to both Aruba and Samana (in the Dominican Republic, they say, though I’ve never even heard of it). That means they’ll free up some of their ATR 72 turboprops which will transfer over to Dallas where they will take over the flying currently done by Saab 340 turboprops.

There are currently 29 Saab 340s in the active fleet, and they will all be retired. Some of those are in Dallas, but the rest fly out of LAX. From LA, they currently fly to San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Fresno, and Monterey. According to the memo, these aircraft will be replaced with regional jets, though there will be some flight reductions. Schedules, however have yet to be finalized.

I’ll be amazed to see how long they can keep this flying up out of LA. I mean, RJs are not cheap to fly, and those short routes don’t see too many local passengers. It’s mostly for connections and I think they’ll be hard-pressed to justify keeping these flights around.

Now on to Horizon. These guys had much more comprehensive changes announced today. Only Butte to Seattle and Billings to Portland will go away completely. A slew of others will see reduced frequency, and you can see those in the above link. There are a couple of new routes coming out of this as well and they’re, well, weird.

Billings to Helena? San Jose to Sacramento? Yeah, that’s just odd. Basically they’re creating round-robin trips where you fly from point A to point B to point C and then back to point A. These have never really worked well for airlines in the past, so I’m not sure what makes them think this will be a winner this time.

These announcements are just going to be the beginning for Horizon and American. The Horizon schedules still include ample Q200 and CRJ-700 flying, and we know both those aircraft will be leaving the fleet. American, meanwhile, is nowhere near reaching the 11 to 12% cut they’ve announced was coming. Hold on tight. There’s more to come.

Hey everyone. I made it back from Peru yesterday morning, and let’s just say it’s going to be a VERY busy end to the week. I hope you enjoyed the guest posts while I was gone, and hopefully we’ll get both Henry and Benet to return at some point in the near future. I think I’m going to spend the rest of this week catching up on snippets of what happened while I was gone. You’ll see more in depth discussion about my trip which included new airlines, airports, and airplanes, starting on Monday. For now, let’s see what I missed while I was away.

Continental Tells United to F*&# Off - This was a welcome surprise, I must say. Continental decided that it won’t be merging with United or anyone else for that matter. That left United to go lick its wounds and see if US Airways would come out and play. Meanwhile, Continental, not exactly thrilled at the prospect of playing second fiddle to DL/NW in SkyTeam has started looking elsewhere as well, including a possible oneworld membership.

Eos Won’t See Another Dawn - Just before I left, Eos quietly disappeared from the skies. This one is a little bittersweet for me, because I actually worked with the founder back in 2003 as he was just getting this idea off the ground. I always believed in the idea, but it was going to be tough to succeed even with fuel prices at lower levels. With fuel where it is, the only funding available appears to have been from foreign sources and that wouldn’t have worked with existing foreign ownership rules.

Virgin America Pumps Up the Frequency - You know I’ve been strongly against Virgin America’s strategy of entering highly competitive markets with low frequencies. Well it looks like the airline has finally realized that’s a bad idea. Business travelers will see a more frequent flight schedule on transcontinental routes as well as Seattle to SFO. While I still think these are bound to lose a ton of money with fuel where it is, it’s still the right strategy (except for that SFO-SEA route), if there is such a thing for them at this point.

JetBlue Goes Ex-LAX - While Virgin America builds up, JetBlue walks away. The airline now says it will “delay” its new LAX service. The airline says fuel is too expensive, but you know that also means revenue isn’t where they wanted it to be. It must have been really bad to cancel this service within a few weeks of it starting. This is of course good for Virgin America, but it also shows how hard this market is. Congrats to JetBlue for not being afraid to walk away.

Alaska Throws Down with Virgin America - Alaska, meanwhile, is not going to throw Virgin America a bone at all. Right after Virgin said it would beef up flights between SFO and Seattle, Alaska said it would do the same. Oh, and how about some double miles on the route? This looks like a losing battle for Virgin America, but Alaska’s going to bleed in the process.

Southwest Turns the Knife Further - Fresh off the latest round of Denver increases, Southwest is at it again. On August 4, the airline will start nonstops to Ft Lauderdale, New Orleans, and Sacramento. You’ll also find another daily nonstop to Phoenix. The good news for Frontier? Um, well, they don’t fly to New Orleans, so, uh, that’s good, right? Also, in unrelated Southwest news. If you haven’t seen Southwest’s new blog setup, check it out. The airline continues to be leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else.

That’s all for today. You can expect an international edition of what I missed tomorrow. Then I’ll have more on Peru next week.

There were a couple of interesting things to come out of Alaska Air Group’s first quarter earnings last week. The most interesting item? Horizon will drop all of its 20 CRJ-700 aircraft in the next 2 years. That combined with the previously announced ditching of the smaller Q200 aircraft means that the airline will only operate 48 of the 76-seat Q400s. That’s a major downscaling of the airline, but Horizon expects to be able to shrink its workforce through attrition.

It’s a very interesting move for an airline that serves some pretty long routes. What about some of those longer flights that the CR7 flew? Flights like LAX to Portland and Santa Barbara to Seattle? Assuming that’s too far for the Q400 to fly (is that even a fair assumption?), the smallest plane in the Alaska fleet will be the 737-700 which seats 124. Can they justify putting that much more capacity on some of these routes? I’m not sure.

Questions at the other end of the spectrum arose when Horizon decided to ditch its smaller Q200 aircraft. Can Wenatchee, Lewiston, and Pendleton really support flights on planes that seat 76 people? I’d be surprised. I sense some big route changes coming as they rationalize the fleet.

Meanwhile, big brother Alaska has also announced a variety of fee changes that are bound to annoy travelers, no matter how necessary they are.

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air plan to raise certain fees to better align them with the current costs of providing added services. These include increasing the charge for booking through reservations and airport sales agents from $10 to $15, raising the fee for overweight baggage from $25 to $50, increasing the charge for transporting pets in the cabin from $75 to $100 one-way, and raising the unaccompanied minor fee from $30 to $75 for one-way nonstop flights and from $60 to $75 for connecting flights. The increases are effective May 21, 2008. By summer, the airlines also will begin charging $25 for a second checked bag. First class and top-tier Mileage Plan members and customers on flights within the state of Alaska will be exempt from the new fee.

That’s a lot of change, but I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures.

Yesterday, Alaska rolled out a “virtual assistant” named Jenn for its website, and you know what? She’s kind of hot.

The idea behind a virtual assistant is that instead of just searching through the help section when you have a question, you bring up the assistant’s window and ask her the question directly. She’s not a person at all but just a program that can respond to questions verbally and in writing, assuming the programmers have anticipated the questions you might ask.

I had a few questions of my own, so I decided to sit down with Jenn and have a chat in the latest “Across the Aisle” interview. (Yes, my fiancée knows about it.)

Cranky: Hey good lookin’ - what’s your name?
Jenn: My name is Jenn.

Cranky: Nice to meet you Jenn. I’m Brett.
Jenn: Thanks, I try!

Cranky: OK, that’s weird - how old are you?
Jenn: I am rather young, or as we say in the virtual world - new. But I like to think I have the experience of someone much older. How can I help you?


Cranky: Experience is good . . . hey, this isn’t one of those Dateline NBC exposés on child molesters, is it?
Jenn: Is your child traveling alone, or will they be accompanied by an adult?

Cranky: Not quite what I was asking, but oh well. So, what’s your job?
Jenn: I am a virtual assistant, here to help you navigate our Web site.

Cranky: Ah yes, so who do you work for?
Jenn: Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, along with a cutting edge company called NextIT, created me. I’m the first of my kind in the airline industry, here to help you quickly navigate our Web site, while answering your questions. What can I help you with?

Cranky: Interesting - tell me about this “Alaska Airlines”
Jenn: Good question. I’m not sure how to answer that. Please try rewording your question. I understand simple questions best.

Cranky: You’re pushy - what does Alaska Airlines do?
Jenn: I am not positive that I understand what you are asking. Please try rephrasing your question.

Cranky: Nevermind - where does Alaska fly?
Jenn: Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air offer a wide range of flight destinations. Browse this page to see where we fly.

Cranky: I’m more of a visual person. Do you have a route map?
Jenn: Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air serve more than 80 cities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. You can view or download the latest Alaska and Horizon route maps here.

Cranky: Mexico, nice - want to go to Cabo with me?
Jenn: Reservations can be made for up to 7 travelers and a maximum of 330 days in advance. I can answer general questions you may have while booking.

Cranky: Alright, let’s go to Cabo in April
Jenn: Please fill in the remaining fields to continue your search. Next time you shop, you can go directly to the available flights page by providing me with the cities you are traveling between, departure and return dates. For example: Seattle to Denver on May 4 and return May 10.

Cranky: Wait a second. Are you married?
Jenn: I am not married, but you never know what my inventors are working on now.

Cranky: Um, inventors? You’re not a Scientologist are you?
Jenn: We know that it is important for parents to have all the information when their child travels alone. As you go through the booking process for a child traveling alone, you will be presented with a contact information form that must be filled out for the child to travel. Additional information is provided on this page.

Cranky: Why do you keep talking about kids? That’s really a turn off.
Jenn: I know quite a bit about traveling with Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air. What can I help you with?

Cranky: I get it. You won’t talk until we finish planning that Mexico trip. Next you’ll want me to pay you, huh?
Jenn: I would love to help you, but I am not sure I understand your question. Could you please rephrase that for me?

Cranky: Fine. How much do you charge?
Jenn: We have several types of fares available. The easiest way to view our fares is to enter the city pairs and dates you would like to travel, click “continue,” and you will receive a fare display based on the requested information. Here you can view fares and rules by clicking on the fare categories.

Cranky: This is really complicated. I bet you even have conditions of contract.
Jenn: Air transportation is subject to the Contract of Carriage. For more information, see this page.

Cranky: If you weren’t so hot, I would just walk away right now.
Jenn: I would love to help you, but I am not sure I understand your question. Could you please rephrase that for me?

Cranky: Arrrrrrgh, I give up. I’ll see you in Cabo in April.

So there you have it. Maybe not the most informative chat, but it was certainly one of the most entertaining for me.

Actually, if you ask questions related to Alaska Airlines, regardless of how NOT fun that is, you do seem to get pretty good answers. Go check her out for yourself.

Alaska, always the gentleman, has decided to roll out the red carpet for Virgin America’s upcoming arrival in Seattle by announcing a bunch of new flights and double bonus miles. Wait, that’s not very welcoming, is it?

Alaska has effectively decided to turn their Seattle - California services into a shuttle-style operation with flights either on the hour or half hour starting April 27. From Seattle to LAX, southbound flights will depart 15 times daily on the hour (up from 12 daily) while northbound flights will depart on the half hour. Flights to San Diego, Orange County, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose will follow the same schedule, but they’ll run every two hours.

If the flight times aren’t good enough, maybe you’ll like the mileage promo. Fly twice from March 15 through May 15 between Seattle and LAX or SFO and you’ll get double miles for every trip on those routes from May 16 through the end of the year.

This seems like a particularly nasty response to Virgin America’s impending entry, wouldn’t you say? I mean, VX will have 3 flights a day to SFO and 4 to LAX when they’re at full strength. These moves make the VX schedule look like nothing, but then again it already looked that way before.

Is the demand really there for this? Maybe. I mean, United has pulled capacity in those markets over the last few years, and Delta is only flying RJs, so there isn’t nearly as many flights as there has been in the past. The shuttle-style service will probably be well-received so this could be ok for them, but I’d be surprised.

How are they adding these flights? Well, they’re canceling the Orange County - Oakland route. That competed with Southwest anyway, so it’s probably a better move to cancel those. Whether this is the best use of those aircraft is questionable.

But let’s be honest, they wouldn’t be doing this without the VX threat. These are two of their biggest markets (if not the top 2), and they are not going to let VX establish even the tiniest of presences without a fight. Which once again makes me wonder why VX would bother with a market like this. It’s not like Alaska is a weakling that people hate. VX is just asking for it.

It wasn’t that long ago that I questioned Virgin America’s decision to focus more on short hauls. Well, they’ve announced their latest city, and once again, they aren’t going far.

This time, the winner is Seattle. They start 3 flights a day from SFO on March 18 and then 3 daily from LAX on April 8. LAX will get a fourth flight on May 11.

They’re definitely staying away from transcon flights. Fuel prices are probably making that a tough market for them. But at least LAX-SEA is a longer haul route so people can enjoy the onboard amenities. Only problem? Alaska Airlines.

People in the Pacific Northwest tend to actually like Alaska Airlines. You don’t hear that about airlines very often, but this is an exception. Can VX really go up against these guys? Their biggest problem, as it has been in every market they’ve entered, is lack of frequency. In this case, Alaska smokes them with 12 daily from LAX to SEA and 8 daily from SFO. That, of course, doesn’t include 19 flights to four other LA Basin airports and 13 to other Bay Area airports.

Yes, VX will be dropping prices when they enter, but you know Alaska will match (they probably have already). This one isn’t going to be easy.

To say that this was a bad week for LAWA (the organization that runs LAX) would be an understatement. I mean, if this were a football game, there would have been a flag for unnecessary roughness. Judge Goodwin absolutely dropped the hammer on them. By the time I got to the end of the 210 page ruling (read at your own risk), I was surprised he hadn’t insulted the airport director’s mother.

But let’s back up for a second. What the heck am I talking about? There have been a few lawsuits flying around between LAX and the airlines lately, so let me try to clarify which one this is. This lawsuit, I believe, has nothing to do with the $10 surcharge that United added to their LAX fares a few weeks back. That one is in protest of the across-the-board rent raise that LAWA instituted on all LAX tenants.

From what I can tell, this lawsuit is about the Maintenance & Operations (M&O) fees which were dramatically increased by LAWA as well as the rent. (If I’m off base here, someone please help me.) These fees, however, only went up for airlines in terminals not tied to a long term lease. That means the airlines in Terminals 1 (T1) and 3 (T3) as well as those in the Bradley International Terminal (TBIT), on a separate lawsuit, had to pay up. Here’s a map:

Not only did LAWA increase the fees, but they made them retroactive all the way back to January 2006, so there was a lot of money in the balance here. The airlines balked and took LAWA to court, the People’s Court. Ok, it was actually the DOT, but close enough. In the end, the judge ruled against LAWA on everything. Now, this isn’t final. The judge’s ruling goes to the Secretary of Transportation who can accept it or override it in the next month. With a ruling this strongly worded, I would be surprised if she didn’t accept it though. Even then, either party can still take this to federal court, so we’re far from done here.

But, this is what we have now . . . so, wait, what exactly DO we have now?

Basically, LAWA’s plan to charge higher M&O fees to those airlines not under long term leases isn’t kosher. Since all the airlines have facilities that are effectively the same (don’t tell that to the airlines in ghetto Terminal 3), they can’t charge dramatically different amounts or use different methods for determining those amounts.

LAWA was also trying to start charging the airlines not under long term leases for the areas they don’t directly use (like the bathrooms or restaurant spaces), but that doesn’t fly either. And, they wanted to start charging based on what the market would bear instead of based on actual costs. That’s another no-no.

So if this ruling stands, the airport has to pay back all the increased fees collected since January 2006 and they have to pay interest on the money for as long as they’ve had it. Ouch.

But that was just the beginning. The judge then went on to discredit pretty much everything LAWA has ever done. He chastised them for using LAWA employees to determine the new rates instead of using an external auditor. He even questioned LAWA (and the Mayor’s) policy of airport “regionalization.” He said it could be against DOT policy, and it should be investigated.

Not enough? The judge said that LAWA was clearly using enough bad math to call every one of their assumptions into question. For example, the increase in fees related to security would mean that T1 and T3 are responsible for 70% of the total increase in security costs at the airport. Uh huh.

Sounds like they’re just trying to get the airlines in T1/T3/TBIT to cover some of the costs they can’t pass on to the other airlines in long term leases. And the judge won’t have any of that.

If the Secretary of Transportation agrees, this will impact LAX flyers. Lower costs for the airlines may make more new service
possible, but it also means that LAX will continue to be a dump. Without additional money, they can’t fix up the airport, and we all know it needs it. LAWA is going to have to find a legal way to collect additional funds, and apparently this isn’t it.

Today is the day that ExpressJet launches its first flights, and now the guessing game begins. Will they be able to pull this off? Initially, their flights didn’t get much of a competitive response from the other airlines, but a couple of challenges have trickled in to make this interesting.

First was American’s announcement that they would protect the Raleigh/Durham hub they abandoned years ago. American decided to put some 50 seat RJs of their own in Raleigh/Durham to Kansas City, Louisville, and Jacksonville (Florida). That goes head to head with ExpressJet. Unfortunately, I think we can all guess how this will turn out. Those are small markets in the first place and ExpressJet’s success was questionable without direct competition. Now that AA has decided to step in, I think it’s a safe bet that those routes aren’t to be long-lived. ExpressJet will probably not waste their time bleeding in the market for long and will pull their flights. Then AA will pull out soon after and Raleigh/Durham will not have the benefit of nonstop flights to those markets at all.

Meanwhile, up in the Eskimo cave, Alaska Airlines put together a response of their own using subsidary Horizon Air’s 70 seat RJs. It just came out last week that the airline will beef up its Spokane and Boise service in response to ExpressJet’s entry into those markets. Spokane will get a new daily nonstop to San Diego and a new second flight to Sacramento. Boise will also get a new nonstop to San Diego. Apparently, the airline is concerned that ExpressJet flights from Spokane to Ontario will be able to steal traffic from Alaska’s sole daily nonstop between Spokane and LA. Because of that, they’re pulling out the Alaska flight and replacing it with two Horizon 70 seaters. (Needless to say, frequent fliers aren’t happy about losing first class.)

I actually see this response a bit different than American’s. These are likely routes that have been on Alaska’s radar screen for some time. The ExpressJet competition may have moved the markets up the list, but they’re certainly markets that fit into the Alaska network well and that should help them survive. If Alaska does drive ExpressJet out, I would say there’s a much better chance of these routes sticking around in the Alaska system than the routes American is running out of Raleigh/Durham.  It’s probably safe to say that they never would have started these routes on their own.

A friend of mine was at the rollout of Alaska’s 75th anniversary plane yesterday in Seattle, and he sent a couple of pictures. This is one good looking bird, despite the crappy weather which made the plane blend in with the clouds.

I think the gray body turned out well, though it remains to be seen how shiny it will look in the sun. The script “Boeing” titles just of the nose are pretty cool looking.

I’m not quite sure what the stiltwalker is doing in that picture below. I’ll just hope that’s not the flight attendant uniform from the old days.