Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Monday it’s Aloha, Thursday it’s ATA, and now Saturday it’s Skybus. The airline flew its final flight last night, and now all the shiny new Airbii (um, let’s just pretend like that’s the plural of Airbus) are grounded. I think I speak for everyone who follows this industry when I say, “holy crap.”

It’s not the fact that these particular airlines went out of business that leaves me in shock. I mean, they were all sort of knocking on death’s door anyway. It’s the fact that ANY airline actually went out of business, let alone three of them. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that probably would have happened on a much larger scale earlier this decade had the government not stepped in, but they did. Now the industry is finally going to rationalize . . . I hope.

For travelers, this Skybus shutdown is a little better than the others. Skybus isn’t filing for bankruptcy until Monday, and if you believe USA Today, everyone who held tickets will be “eligible for a full refund.” Aloha and ATA travelers (including a few friends of mine) should only be so lucky.

This one also feels different for me personally. Though I have fond memories of ATA and Aloha from past travels, I never got the chance to fly Skybus. Heck, they didn’t even make it a full year. That being said, I’m not completely untouched by this one. Two of my friends work, er, worked at the airline. There are a lot of people out of work after these three shutdowns, and that’s a very sad thing.

So now Skybus is gone, probably doomed from trying to fly to too many secondary airports in mid-sized metro areas. I still think there’s potential for Gary (outside Chicago) to work one day, but they barely even touched that airport. Columbus just didn’t seem like the right place, let alone Greensboro. So, they’re gone. Who’s next?

(Original image)

It’s kind of strange writing an obituary for ATA right now. I mean, it’s like it happened in slow motion even though it actually happened very quickly. I guess technically it started a couple years ago, but things really sped up month when I posted about their decision to shed the Chicago/Midway hub. I felt like I was writing an obituary back then, and really, I was. Combine that with my brief heads up yesterday on ATA’s bankruptcy filing and the excellent comments that followed, and there’s not really much left to say, but of course, that’s not true.

When ATA brought back John Denison, former CEO of the airline and Southwest guy, I thought maybe the airline would swing back to realign more with Southwest. But when FedEx decided to drop ATA from its military flying contracts, what else could the airline do but shut down? That was such a big piece of their operation. I don’t know for sure why they were dropped from the contract, but I’d guess it’s a safe bet that ATA is no innocent bystander here.

The strange thing is that ATA is survived by World Airways and North American, both of which ATA acquired last year. Those airlines will operate as normal, and who knows what else will happen. Maybe they’ll pick up some of ATA’s planes. Will Southwest look at picking up ATA’s 737-800s and start a Hawai’i operation of their own? Who knows. If they weren’t interested in picking up a piece of Aloha, I’m not sure they’d be interested in this, but the price could be right. There’s definitely a dearth of seats going to the Islands right now, so there could be some opportunity.

If World and North American don’t pick up ATA’s planes, that’ll mean the end of passenger carrying DC-10 and L1011 aircraft in the US. Add that to the 737-200s that disappeared from US skies with Aloha last week and really most of the fun and cool aircraft are gone. Get on those Northwest DC-9s while you still can.

As for ATA, this brings the airline to an end after almost 35 years of flying. That’s pretty good for a little charter airline (let’s just forget about that ill-fated late-90’s expansion). I know a lot of people have had really bad experiences flying ATA over the years, but my four trips with them were excellent.

Back in the late 1990s, I flew with my parents and brother on the PHX-OGG flight. Our flights were on time and the crews were friendly. My next experience was during my last days at America West; Labor Day Weekend of 2002. A few of us got together and decided we wanted to fly the L1011 one more time before it left scheduled service (the L1011s were only on charters the last 5+ years). We flew to Indianapolis and hopped the next to last scheduled L1011 flight which went to Vegas. Once again, the flight was on time, the crews were great, and we were even invited to hang around for a tour of the plane.

My last two experiences were related to each other. The first was a one way trip back in 2003 from Washington/National to San Francisco via Chicago/Midway. When I got to Midway, the flight to San Francisco was oversold and they offered me a free flight if I waited until the next day. I gladly took it, spent the night with a good friend who lived in Chicago at the time, and made it home on-time the next day. That free flight was very welcome, because I used it to fly from San Francisco to Indianapolis to be the best man in that same friend’s wedding in March of 2004. Once again, the flight were on time and the crews were great.

So, while many may have stronger and angrier feelings, I will actually miss ATA.

(Original Image from Wikimedia)

The rumors started swirling yesterday, and it was confirmed overnight. ATA is shutting down effective this morning. They lost their military contract, and so they’re done. I’ll have more on this tomorrow (my regular post here today will be up soon). If you were booked on them, try to get a refund from your credit card or see if any other airline will accommodate you. If you booked them via a Southwest codeshare, Southwest will take care of you.

Remember when ATA was considered a “major” carrier with over $1b in annual revenue? It seems like so long ago now. They had a nice operation at Chicago/Midway and they had Indianapolis, Hawai’i, etc. Now, they’ve got just about nothing after announcing that they’re completely shutting down the remains of their Midway operation.

It was only about 4 years ago or so that airlines started fighting over who would bring ATA out of bankruptcy. America West was interested in establishing a Chicago hub as was AirTran. But in the end Southwest won the race to help the airline out. They took just about everything ATA had and made the airline a puppet for entering congested airports, serving overwater destinations, and serving the international world. A codeshare was set up, and everything seemed to be ok.

They’ve been shrinking ever since. There were a handful of routes started up to try to feed Southwest. Routes like Houston/Hobby to New York/La Guardia failed miserably and disappeared. Denver came online, but when Southwest entered the market, ATA walked away. Late last year, ATA announced it would be pulling out of Washington/National and New York/La Guardia altogether. Apparently the Southwest name wasn’t enough to make the flights pan out.

But there was still hope for the airline to become the international feeder for Southwest. They had a nice and easy customs and border patrol facility at Midway that served places like Guadalajara. As of June 7, all of that will end as well.

What’s left? Almost nothing. They still have their 80 flights to Hawai’i per week:

Las Vegas - Honolulu (daily)
Los Angeles - Honolulu (twice daily)
Los Angeles - Maui (daily)

Oakland - Hilo (6 times a week)
Oakland - Honolulu (twice daily)
Oakland - Lihue (4 times a week)
Oakland - Maui (twice daily)

Phoenix - Honolulu (daily)
Phoenix - Maui (daily)

And that’s all that feeds Southwest. Presumably the problem of a 5 hour overwater flight is not something Southwest wants to tackle on its own yet, at least not with the aircraft they have, but you have to assume it’s coming eventually.

ATA is starting to do some Latin flying from Miami to Guatemala City and San Jose, Costa Rica (both daily), but that looks to be run in conjunction with USALatinSky, so it’s not really their own scheduled service (I think).

And that’s it. The rest of the airline has gone back to its charter routes, and that’s probably where all the focus will be in the future. You’ll still see ATA airplanes around, but it probably won’t be a on scheduled basis for the most part. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hawai’i go away at some point as well, especially as fuel prices start to climb and charter flights look better and better on the bottom line.

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.

Since Southwest helped ATA out of bankruptcy a few years ago, ATA has basically become Southwest’s testing ground.  For the most part, ATA now flies to Hawai’i, Mexico, and to congested airports like LaGuardia.  This allows ATA to feed their customers into Southwest’s network as well as bring new options to Southwest customers without Southwest having to take big risks.

The other day, ATA announced they would begin flights from Chicago/Midway to both Ontario and Oakland.  That seemed strange because instead of complementing Southwest, this actually competes with them directly.  Southwest doesn’t fly Chicago to Ontario nonstop, but on Chicago - Oakland Southwest flies nonstop six times a day.  Why would ATA want to do this and possibly jeopardize their relationship?

I don’t think they’re jeopardizing anything here, actually.  Most importantly, these are utilization flights.  ATA will fly into Chicago on the redeye and back west in the early morning.  Those are on planes that usually sit on the ground overnight before returning to Hawai’i.  This tells me that ATA is doing everything they can to reduce their cost structure, and increasing your flying is a great way to do that.  Besides, Southwest doesn’t fly redeyes, so they only are competing with a single early morning westbound flight and that’s not a big deal.
What does this mean for you?  Utilization flights like this often mean lower fares, and ATA is not disappointing.  Right now, you can fly between Ontario or Oakland and Chicago for $138 roundtrip on Tuesday/Wednesday/Saturday or $158 on any other day.  Take advantage of it while you can.

All this talk about the launch of Air Asia X, the new long haul low cost carrier got me thinking. With the proliferation of low cost carriers (LCCs) in the last few years, you probably could get around the world flying only LCCs these days.

With that idea, I decided to see what I could come up with. I used our site at PriceGrabber Travel as well as individual airline sites to do the planning. As I went, I realized it could definitely be done but I created some rules to make it a little tougher:

• All fares must be one way fares
• Connections are allowed as long as the LCC allows it (ie AirTran sells connections but easyJet does not)
• Each airline can only be used once (a connection counts as one as long as it’s one fare)
• You must start and end at your home airport (any airport in your area is ok but you can’t start from one and land at the other)
• The entire trip cannot take more than one week
• The total fare must be US$2,000 or less

As you can imagine, with all these restrictions, it made it tougher. But, I was able to put this together from my home airport of LAX.

25MAY AirTran 60 Lv LAX 940p Arr Atlanta 445a 737-700
26MAY AirTran 279 Lv Atlanta 920a Arr Boston 1150a 717-200
One Way Fare US$183.80

26MAY flyglobespan 736 Lv Boston 630p Arr Glasgow 630a 757-200 (?)
One Way Fare US$259

27MAY easyJet 686 Lv Glasgow 840a Arr London/Gatwick 1010a A319
One Way Fare GBP24.99 (US$48.22)

27MAY OasisHK 707 Lv London/Gatwick 810p Arr Hong Kong 230p 747-400
One Way Fare GBP179.52 (US$346.40)

28MAY Jetstar Asia 692 Lv Hong Kong 815p Arr Singapore 1150p A320
One Way Fare HK$806 (US$103.44)

30MAY Tiger Air 702 Lv Singapore 820p Arr Darwin 235a A320
One Way Fare SG$185.23 (US$120.50)

01JUN Virgin Blue 442 Lv Darwin 140a Arr Brisbane 550a 737-700
01JUN Virgin Blue 306 Lv Brisbane 715a Arr Melbourne 940a 737-700
One Way Fare AU$199 (US$155.18)

01JUN Jetstar 1 Lv Melbourne 515p Arr Honolulu 745a A330-200
One Way Fare AU$598.42 (US$466.64)

01JUN ATA 4754 Lv Honolulu 110p Arr LAX 930p 737-800
One Way Fare US$212.71

There it is, and all for a grand total of US$1,895.89.

I picked random dates in May to start the trip since I figured all the heightened summer schedules would be well in place by then. That flyglobespan trip across the Pond didn’t start until the end of May either, so that was a constraint.

I guess you could call it cheating that I have one segment on Jetstar and one on Jetstar Asia, but they are technically different airlines. I would have preferred another segment on Jetstar from Darwin to Melbourne nonstop, but I had to settle for a connection on Virgin Blue for AU$20 more instead. I also would have liked to have flown nonstop from Long Beach to Boston on JetBlue on the first leg for US$20 less but then I wouldn’t have ended at the same point from which I departed.

It’s amazing that you can fly around the world for under $2,000 and stop in so many places. The next step is to see if someone actually flies it . . .