There were a couple of somewhat minor milestones in the eyes of travelers this week, but I thought it was worth sharing.

First, Continental and United started operating on a single operating certificate. Even though they’re using the old Continental certificate, the United call sign is surviving. If you’re listening to air traffic control, you will no longer hear “Continental” being used. For travelers, this means nothing since the passenger cutover isn’t until March. But it’s still one more step in the integration.

Also this week, US Airways operated the last flight with former America West 737s. Flight 48 arrived in Phoenix from Vegas early on November 29 at 144p. This also marked what I consider the official death of the already dramatically reduced Vegas hub with the end of flights to LA and other places.

If you want to get all misty-eyed and reminisce, go for it in the comments.

It appears that more cuts are coming at the US Airways (formerly America West) Las Vegas hublet. Over the next few months, we’ll see flights to Calgary, Edmonton, Baltimore, and Portland disappear. But the one that really gets me is the end of Vegas to New York/JFK. To me, this officially marks the end of one of the most fun hub operations around, so please excuse me while I get a little nostalgic.

Why is the end of the JFK route so monumental? For years, that was THE route out of Vegas for America West. It was one of the few routes where we actually sold a lot of First Class tickets instead of just filling the cabin with upgrades. The number of New Yorkers that wanted to blow their money in Vegas was astounding, and even the entrance of low-fare disaster National Airlines didn’t spoil the party. I suppose now with American, Delta, jetBlue, and Virgin America flying the route, it just doesn’t make sense.

So, with only around 50 or 60 flights a day (fewer than 10 of them after 9p) to about 20 cities, I think we must now officially call the Vegas hub dead. Let’s take a look back.

The hub started during the 80′s when America West realized that if there was any place where people would fly in the middle of the night, it was Vegas. Before the hub, planes would usually arrive at their destinations around the US in the evening, spend the night, and fly out in the morning again. With the Vegas hub, they could fly those planes into Vegas late night, then fly them back in time for the morning departure. The additional cost of squeezing an extra roundtrip in was minimal, so the hub flourished.

With this plan came some of the strangest people you would ever meet. Traveling through the Vegas hub at midnight was like a walk down the seediest back alley in, well, Vegas. The piercing per person ratio was probably in the double digits, and tattoos were everywhere.

Now take that group of people and cram them into a perennially overcrowded terminal (that always seemed to be under some sort of construction), throw in some clanging slot machines, and you had something that belonged in the seventh circle of hell.

Why would these people subject themselves to such pain? Two reasons. The flight times actually were great for Vegas travel. You could finish work, hop on a plane, and be drunk and broke at O’Sheas by midnight. Oh yeah, and it was cheap. Cheap + Vegas = Lots of passengers.

Certain flights stood out as being the real winners. The Thursday night flights from LA? Lots of strippers. (I think they mostly fly Southwest now.) And of course, there was the flight that was near and dear to every America West employee’s heart. The late night flight home to Phoenix.

Every night for years and years, long after most people were in bed (or at a strip club), America West would shuttle a plane or two from Vegas back to headquarters in Phoenix to prepare for flights the next morning. Sometimes there was one flight, other times there were two. Back in the early 1990s, they even operated this with the massive 747 that was acquired for Hawai’i flying. But one thing was clear: 95% of the people on this plane were America West employees coming home from a long night of drinking and gambling. Man that was fun.

My favorite experience on this flight was when a female gate agent joined me in LA for a UCLA football game. After the game, there were no more nonstops home, so we went to Vegas. And once in Vegas, you might as well have some fun right? I believe that night the last flight home was around 230a, and the flight was packed with employees. You would think that a flight like that, even if it is only 45 minutes, would be full of sleeping people, but no. It was full of employees telling stories about their night. When we landed shortly before 4a, spirits were still high.

That flight was killed a couple years ago, and I think every America West employee was sad to see it go. I have plenty of other stories about my Vegas hub flying. There was the time it took me four flights on four different airlines to get home. Or the time when a bunch of us flew to Mexico City and there were only 5 other people onboard. I can remember early mornings choosing between one of the three flights that all left at 7a to go back to Phoenix. Those were the busy days for that hub, but now it’s gone. The end of the JFK flight really is the end of an era.

It was a bittersweet day last Wednesday, Sep 26, when America West and US Airways officially merged on to one operating certificate. Yes, they still have workgroups to merge, but in the eyes of the FAA, they are one airline. That means America West is truly no more, and that’s a sad day for me.

I started working at America West as a summer intern during college ten years ago. I continued to intern with the airline throughout my college years, and I moved back to Phoenix to work in Pricing/Revenue Management in 1999. I spent the next three years there, only leaving in September 2002 to attend business school. At right, you can see me at my desk on one of my last days with the airline.

I have so many memories, good and bad, of my time there . . . the rollout of the first A319, the summer of 2000 meltdown (and going to help out at the Passenger Assistance Counters), the Eagle outage, the opening of the new Washington/National airport (at left), watching that first flight come in to Phoenix after September 11. I could go on and on.

I am probably most proud of my involvement in the 2002 transformation of the airline into a low fare carrier. I basically lived in the office that last week leading up to the change. Getting there at 6a and leaving at 2a for a short nap was not my idea of fun, but Red Bull, coffee, ukulele music, and a plastic candy cane got us through it. Don’t ask.

I used to travel a lot while I was there. In all, I took 209 flights on America West and America West Express going over 165,000 miles. True, almost a quarter of those flights were to the LA area, including my first nonrev experience going for a day trip to Orange County on July 4, 1997. But I also spent many flights shuttling back and forth between Phoenix and DC. Back then, that meant stopping in the Columbus hub. Really, there was nothing more painful than flying Phoenix to Columbus in the middle seat of the last row of a 737-200, but at least I could almost always stretch out in first class on that last leg to DC.

It wasn’t all just shuttling back and forth. I went to Anchorage (at right), Chicago, Atlanta, Kansas City, Boston, Dallas, New York, Portland, New Orleans, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico City, and yes, even Yuma. (Again, don’t ask.) That doesn’t count all the flights I took on other airlines while I worked there.

My last flight as an employee happened on September 14, 2002 when I flew back from San Jose to Phoenix to pick up my car and drive it up to school. I was sad to leave that airline, and I will never forget my time there.

I know that the management team and the headquarters building are the same, but it’s not the same airline. That’s inevitable when you merge with someone else that more than doubles your size. Though I have a ton of pictures, I just picked out a handful that I thought I’d share below. I apologize that the quality isn’t very good, but these are print photos that I scanned in.

From the parking garage roof at Phoenix Terminal 4. This was one of the first times I saw a lineup of planes all in the new Flintstones colors. There was no rush to paint the planes for several years, and in fact, the Phoenix airport had the old colors on just about everything for a looooong time after the image update occurred.

From the parking garage roof at Phoenix Terminal 2. A 757 in the old colors landing on PHX’s north runway. My first nonrev trip involved a return from Orange County on a 757 with 14 people onboard (only two were paying customers). That thing took off like a rocket. It wasn’t actually this ship. It was ship 916, the first Arizona flag airplane that was returned to lessors long ago.

From the Phoenix maintenance hangar. A320 ship 627 had a little mishap while being pushed back from the gate. You can see the smashed in horizontal stabilizer. They flew the Airbus Beluga in with the replacement part, and we went out to the airport to see that monster land.

From Phoenix Terminal 4. Short on parts? Just borrow a radome from your neighbor, Southwest. I also remember seeing a United nose on an A320. I believe this was taken when I went on one of my many trips to LA to see UCLA football games with my dad. Most of those trips were easy, though we did have to turnaround in flight one time when there was an engine problem. That was on ship 622, my personal nemesis. I don’t think that plane ever took off on time when I flew it.

Like I said, I could go on and on with stories, but I’ll save that for when I’ve got a beer in front of me. For now, I’ll just say “So long, America West.”

It’s a busy day today and though I can’t wait to comment on the newly agreed upon Open Skies agreement between the US and the European Union, it’ll have to way until tomorrow. So for now, I’ll leave you with some good ole’ airline porn, video style.

What do you get when you combine schmaltzy songs and cheesy powerpoint slide transitions? A rockin’ tribute video, of course. This one is nearly 20 minutes long, and it’s basically a bunch of photos looking back on the history of America West. Unless you have a strange yearning for Dolly Parton’s version of “I Will Always Love You” or “The Morning After” by Maureen McGovern, let me suggest you turn the sound all the way down.

There seem to be a lot of stories today that I’d like to talk about, but as I wrap up work and get ready to head out of town, I thought I’d better just summarize . . .

• London Fog – The mythic London fog apparently isn’t just a rumor as it battles Denver for weather story of the week. London and other parts of the UK are completely socked in, and flights are severely delayed or canceled. Naturally, this is causing complete and total chaos. Heathrow is by far the hardest hit of the airports – right now it is seeing freezing fog with no vertical visibility and only 400 ft forward visibility on the runway. Ouch.
• Cash for Emissions – The EU announced plans to include airlines in an emissions trading plan. In 2011, all flights within the EU will be restricted while in 2012, all flights to or from the EU will be included as well. Basically, airlines will be given an allotment of emissions “credits” based on their actual emissions in the 2004-2006 time period. If they want to go over that amount, they’ll have to buy credits from someone else who is willing to sell them. If they’re under, they can sell their credits to someone else. It effectively caps total emissions at today’s rates.
• Beeches in Boston – Delta announced a deal with Big Sky Airlines to fly 8 19-seat Beechcraft 1900 aircraft from Boston beginning next spring. No routes have been announced yet, but with those small planes, it’s bound to be smaller regional routes. Big Sky must be breathing a sigh of relief since they’re owned by Mesaba’s parent company, and Mesaba is in dire straits. This should help them bolster their own business going forward.
• Cross one off for US Airways – US Airways announced they had come to an agreement with the flight dispatchers’ union which has both old US Airways and America West dispatchers transitioning to the old US Airways contract which presumably was higher paying. This is a nice development, but until the pilot and flight attendant deals are done, nobody can breath easily.
• Muslims Welcome in Tel Aviv – In a welcome piece of good news, the Israel Airports Authority has decided to open a mosque in the Tel Aviv airport. This is only one of the efforts made by the authority to reach out to Muslims. They have also created a special team to be in charge of customer service for Arabic-speaking passengers, and they have launched a website in Arabic as well. It’s a small olive branch, but it’s certainly the right thing to do.

That’s all for me this week. I’m off to Indiana tomorrow and I don’t expect to be writing again until Tuesday or Wednesday. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate. I’ll talk to you again next week.