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 . . .