Bombardier Kicks Off Farnborough by Launching the C-Series
Bombardier has talked about it for years, and now it’s official. The 110 to 130 seat C-Series has launched, and it’s promising massive fuel savings.

ExpressJet Ending Branded Service with Full Planes
ExpressJet may have announced the end of branded service, but those flights are flying full this summer, showing this may work one day with lower fuel costs.

Is US Airways “Intimidating” Its Pilots?
US Airways wants to use less fuel, so the airline is training its pilots to do just that. Is this stepping over the line?

Farnborough Order Counts
Farnborough Air Show is more than halfway through. That means it’s a good time to step back and see where the aircraft orders are coming from.

Delta To Keep Pinnacle Flying
Delaying entry into service of a handful of planes may have convinced Delta not to drop Pinnacle’s contract, but the reliability question still hangs in the air.

Am I the only one who thinks this whole boarding pass advertising thing is a little creepy? It’s not the concept that bothers me. You want to throw some ads on my boarding pass? Go ahead. It’s the fact that they’re using my demographics to target ads that makes me nervous.

The basic idea is that right now, when you print your boarding pass at home, it’s just a boarding pass. So, American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and US Airways have now all partnered with a new company called Sojern that will sell ad spots on your boarding pass and mask it by offering weather information. Of course, the spin is that this makes life easier for the traveler. Whatever. I’ve never had trouble clicking on Weather Underground to get my own weather, but if you want to put it on there . . . fine.

None of that bothers me. What bothers me is something that I haven’t really seen talked about. Yes, the company admits that it’s targeting based upon where you’re going, and others have mentioned that. Well duh, that makes sense, and I don’t mind them sharing that information. But, if you click on the sample boarding pass (PDF), it states “Sojern’s new media delivers tailored advertising messages based on travelers’ unique itineraries and demographics.”

Hold on here. How are you getting my demographic information? Is the airline sharing it with you if I’m logged in to an account when I check in? I don’t like that at all.

The writing had likely been on the wall for sometime, but it looks like Delta’s experiment in building up LAX is coming to a rapid end. Last week, Delta and ExpressJet announced that their agreement (covering 23 regional jets) would end on September 1. Something tells me we won’t see anyone else come in to fill their place.

The press release had plenty of hints at the ultimate plan for LA. Expressjet had been flying 13 aircraft under a prorate agreement (meaning they take all the financial risk), and I had fully expected those to disappear, but apparently the 10 other aircraft under the cost plus agreement will go as well.

Those 23 planes under the Delta brand had been flying mostly out of LAX and some out of Salt Lake. The release makes it clear that “Delta intends to award a portion of this flying, including all routes currently operated by ExpressJet at its Salt Lake City hub, to another Delta Connection carrier.” That doesn’t address how much of the LAX flying will be replaced, but I think it’s safe to say that the deafening silence says it all.

Many of the flights are already removed from the booking systems. Boise, Portland, and Reno, for example, are already out. Others show reduced flying still in effect, like a single daily Phoenix flight and some Bay Area flying, but most of those don’t have any seats for sale. If that’s the case this far in advance, that means they’re toast, but they just haven’t removed them completely yet. Of course, this also means the smaller Mexico markets like Leon and Torreon will disappear as well. The LA Times confirms that flights will drop from about 93 to near 60 by Labor Day.

It’s entirely possible that some of these will come back via another carrier, but that would really surprise me. This was just a failed experiment, and now it’s time to go back to where they were before. I’m sorry to see some of those Mexico markets go away, because I think they still might work one of these days. But they would have a better chance of working with someone like United or American with a larger local base here in the LA area as well as better connecting opportunities.

Now, I wonder what will happen to Delta’s physical presence in LA. This is a tough one. On one hand, they have a nice, functional terminal over in Terminal 5, but it will now go down to being severely underutilized once again. It would be nice to just bring Northwest over after the merger and fill out the terminal, right? Not so fast. Northwest has an equity stake in Terminal 2, and that’s a nice little asset that they might want to hold on to. Meanwhile, LAWA has to be excited at the prospect of opening up more gate space, but I’m not sure that there’s much they can do beyond working with Delta/Northwest to help them come to the right decision.

Wouldn’t it be nice for Delta to do the right thing here and make room for more airlines to come in? Yeah, right. I think we all know there’s slightly less than no chance of that ever happening. Maybe LAWA can find naked pictures of Delta’s CEO to help get them to move. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets resolved.

(Original LAX image from Flobrio)

Let’s face it. It sucks to have to book travel right now. Ok, it clearly sucks to actually be an airline far more, but we’ve beaten that horse to death already. So why do I say it’s so bad to book? Uncertainty.

With my wedding coming up in October, there are a ton of flight arrangements that need to be made. There are showers, receptions, and more, and they all require family members hopping on aircraft to criss-cross the country.

Now, I know fares are high. That’s fine. I have no complaints about that at all. In fact, I’d complain if they weren’t. But if I buy a ticket, I want to make sure that flight will actually go. Unfortunately, that’s not something that we can really rely upon as much these days.

I started thinking about this when JetBlue pulled their LAX service before it even started. Now just about every other airline has decided to reduce capacity, so buying a ticket is like a game of chance. Will your flight still be there when it comes time to travel?

So, I’ve tried to put together some pieces of advice on how to best position yourself to have your flight actually exist when you go to travel. Here are my somewhat feeble thoughts. Sorry I don’t have anything more substantial, but everything is so fluid right now that it’s tough to really know how to deal with this best.

• Fly During Busy Times - That 8am flight to Chicago isn’t going away, but maybe that 6a or 10p flight will. When airlines look to cut flights, you’ll generally see it happen at off peak times. Sure, the flip side here is that the peak times will cost more, but that’s the price you’ll pay.




• Don’t Fly Northwest or Delta - Yes, this is being pretty harsh. And yes, I’m actually flying Northwest in August, so why do I say not to fly them? Well, they’re merging, and though their pleas to Congress have stated that they won’t be cutting service, I think that’s a load of crap. My guess is that flights will be cut, and smaller hubs will be shrunk significantly, regardless of what they say now. They’ve even started to hint about it. So, if you’re booking very far out, you might want to keep that in mind. Even if the merger were approved tomorrow, I wouldn’t expect major cuts to begin until after the summer. If you do end up flying on these guys (or any airlines that decide to merge), at least try to avoid marginal hubs like Cincinnati and Memphis for your connections. Those will likely see the greatest impact, I’d think.




• If You’re in Denver, Fly Southwest - As we’ve seen often over the last few months, Southwest is hell-bent on kicking Frontier out of Denver. So, they’re actually adding flights instead of cutting them. To be fair, they aren’t really doing much cutting elsewhere in the system either, so they might be a good one to book in general. Then again, what they’ve done so far isn’t necessarily an indicator of how they’ll behave in the future.




• Don’t Book Too Far in Advance - The easiest thing to do is wait until it’s closer to your travel time before booking. When flights get cut, there will be some advance notice, so if you’re traveling within a month, you should be fine (unless you were flying JetBlue to LAX, I suppose). I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, and yes, you’ll have to pay for more this privilege, but it will give you more certainty.




• Keep Your Fingers Crossed - If you can’t drive, there’s really not much else you can do but keep your fingers crossed and hope that your flight goes. I know I make this sound like every flight is at risk, and that’s not the case. I’d like to think that I’m overstating the possibilities here, but it’s better to think about these things beforehand. The good news is that if flights get cut, you’ll be reaccommodated on another flight on that airline, but it may not be as convenient as you’d like.

It’s a tough time to be a traveler right now. So, just be patient and hope that your flight doesn’t get cut. What other tips do you have out there?

I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a huge fan of Garrison Keillor’s work, but it’s not like I dislike him either. I’m just sort of ambivalent. But every so often I come across a column of his that I really enjoy. Before I left town on vacation, I came across a piece he wrote entitled “The Old Scout: Singing the Delta Blues” (via Get the Flick), and I thought that others might like to read it as well. It’s a perspective that only someone growing up in Northwest’s backyard could have, but it’s a nice reminder of the romantic side of air travel that exists even today. I recommend reading the entire article, but here are a couple of excerpts to whet your appetite.

We are good travelers, we middle Americans, and when Northwest opened a route to Beijing, everybody and their cousin talked about going there, and this spring the direct Minneapolis-Paris route opened, a beautiful idea to us as we scrape the ice off our windshields. We don’t actually go, of course—we go to work—but we could go on any given day, could write “Au Revoir, Ma Famille” on a paper towel and leave it on the kitchen table under a salt shaker and drive to the airport on the bank of the Minnesota River, abandon the car in a snowbank, flash the plastic, board the plane, and wake up in Paris, like Lindbergh.

And so I mourn the loss of my childhood airline and the silver planes with red tails that rose from the corn. What is a Delta? A delta is mud deposited by the river. Also the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. Also a sort of triangular shape. But to me it is mud which forms a rich bottomland where they grow cotton and late at night old black men sit in a juke joint and play an old beat-up guitar and sing: “I wanted to go to the Orient someday. Get on a silver plane marked NWA. But that plane that would take me, it done flew away. I heard it on the morning news. They’re wiping out the Ns and Ws. That’s why I got these Delta blues.”

It’s on like Donkey Kong. Yesterday, Northwest and Delta finally announced that they would merge. This of course follows speculation that began back in 1932 when C.E. Woolman and Lewis Brittin first discussed such a possibility. Now, before I go any further, let me just say once that this all completely depends upon receiving antitrust approval from the government. I’d argue that this administration is likely to be friendly to such a merger, but it’s still far from guaranteed. Enough of the disclaimers; let’s get it on.

You can read the bible-length press release issued by both airlines if you’d like to get all the details. If that’s not enough, you can go to the new Delta website found at the ridiculous url of newglobalairline.com. I’ll just focus on what this means to you, the customer. But first, a brief rundown of the deal.

Let’s make no mistake about it; Delta is the lead dog here. The name of the combined airline will remain Delta and it will continue to be headquartered in Atlanta, though oddly there will be “executive offices” in Minneapolis as well. Delta CEO Richard Anderson will be in charge, and his second lieutenant Ed Bastian will continue as President and CFO. So what does Northwest get? Well, the shareholders get 1.25 shares of Delta stock for each share of Northwest stock, and everyone else gets . . . um, screwed.

Routes
On paper, this airline looks mighty sexy. You’ve got Delta’s strengths in the South, Northeast, Europe and in the West to a limited extent. Combine that with Northwest’s domination in the Upper Midwest and Asia and you’ve got very little overlap at all. Now, about the hubs. Delta says it “will maintain all hubs at Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Memphis, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York-JFK, Salt Lake City, Amsterdam and Tokyo-Narita — each of which will benefit from improved global connectivity.”

The guys who wrote that release were very careful to say that no hubs will be eliminated but notice that they don’t say the same about flights. In fact, they do say in the release, “The transaction is expected to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue and cost synergies from more effective aircraft utilization, a more comprehensive and diversified route system and cost synergies from reduced overhead and improved operational efficiency.”

Wow, that’s a lot of bullcrap, isn’t it? Anytime I see “synergies” mentioned, I throw up a little. But what this says to me is that they’ve got $1b worth of ideas on how to make this airline more efficient. And that has to involve cutting capacity out of the system. Where are the most likely candidates? I’m looking at you, Memphis and Cincinnati.

Yes, they should keep all their “hubs” if they use that term loosely. By the time they’re done with Memphis and Cincinnati, they might look more like Indianapolis. See, all those small Upper Midwest cities that Delta serves from Cincinnati can now very adequately be served from Detroit and Minneapolis. And all those southern cities that Northwest serves from Memphis can be served from Atlanta. Heck, those two cities themselves are only 400 miles apart. So, I would completely expect to see those hubs shrunk down. Whatever cities they can serve due to strong local demand, they will. But many of those other cities can be better served elsewhere. And Northwest has plenty of old DC-9s that they can just send to the boneyard to easily reduce capacity. And don’t forget, Delta just kicked Mesa’s 50 seaters off the property, so they now won’t need to replace that capacity either.

Internationally, this will probably only result in growth. There aren’t any real overlap issues here. With the recently approved antitrust immunity approval from the US government, they won’t even have to wait until the merger is done to start coordinating with Air France/KLM on routes and fares over the Atlantic. In the Pacific, Delta has just about no presence at all, so this will only create more opportunities.

Onboard Product
Great, so there will be a bunch of flights, but what will it be like onboard? We get one clue from the press release. “The combination will accelerate the upgrading of existing international aircraft with lie-flat seats and personal on-demand entertainment.” Now I’m not sure if they consider Northwest’s angled lie-flat seats to be “lie-flat” but I’d bet those seats will be hanging around for awhile since they’re pretty new. As the Northwest-ordered 787s get delivered, however, I’d expect a true lie-flat product more along the lines of Delta’s new seats.

It will be interesting to see what else Delta plans to do here. It’s probably a safe bet that the current Delta onboard product will become the standard. Northwest currently has no inflight entertainment on their domestic fleet and Delta has been installing personal televisions on a pretty good chunk of their fleet. Will this change their installation plans at all? We’re getting way into the weeds here. This will all come out in time.

Customer Service
Oh no, this isn’t going to be good. If you thought Doug Parker over at US Airways had a tough job integrating labor groups, that’s now going to look like a walk in the park. Originally, Delta and Northwest said that they wouldn’t merge unless they could get the pilots to agree to an integration plan before the deal happened. Um, yeah, that didn’t work out so well and the deal fell apart a couple months ago because of it. Why are they so focused on the pilots? That is the only large employee group at Delta that’s unionized. Ah, now it becomes clear.

So what do they do? Delta goes to its pilots and gets an agreement with them that will go “through the end of 2012. The agreement, which is subject to pilot ratification, facilitates the realization of the revenue synergies of the combined companies once the transaction is completed. It also provides the Delta pilots a 3.5 percent equity stake in the new company and other enhancements to their current contract.”

Again, what the hell does that mean? It “facilitates the realization of the revenue synergies of the combined companies”? Please shut up. No, just stop talking. I can’t take it. What this actually means is that the pilots get good raises every year until the contract is done and they walk away with a stake in the new company. But what about those Northwest pilots? How about . . . nada. In fact, they’ve already said that they’re against this merger.

On the brighter side, “The company also expects no involuntary furloughs of frontline employees as a result of this transaction and the existing pension plans for both companies’ employees will be protected.” Well that’s good, but that’s also dependent upon them getting enough voluntary furloughs to make up for the job cuts they’ll need to make this work. I’d guess that they’ll be successful on that front. Northwest employees will probably run away in droves.

So, you can expect all kinds of customer service hiccups as this thing goes through. Just hold on tight and try not to cry too much.

Summary
Let’s see, what else can I say? This has been a long time coming. Is it as necessary as everyone claims it is? I wouldn’t say that, but I’m not going to say it’s bad either. It all depends upon how well they execute. If the combined airlines can trim Cincinnati and Memphis at the very least, the industry will be better off. Will fares go up? They should. There, I’ve said it. Hate me if you like.

The airline industry has been an unstable roller coaster ride for 30 years. If this allows airlines to better match capacity to a level where they can actually fly profitably, then it’s a good thing. Though low fares are always nice for the customer, it’s better to have a stable airline industry that can actually survive the ups and downs.

Oh, one more thing before I go. A lot of you have written me over the last few months asking why I hadn’t said a word about the rumored merger. The reason? I’ve seen way too many rumors and barely anything actually come to fruition. So, I won’t speculate on the rumored Continental-United merger. For those who don’t know, Northwest holds a “golden share” in Continental. That means they have the ability to block Continental from merging with anyone. This stems from a deal they made years ago, but when Northwest enters a merger agreement, Continental can buy that back for a hundred measly dollars. We know Continental and United have been talking. If it turns into something more, then I’ll be back with another post.

Until then, I’m going to continue to digest this avalanche of info, and I’ll update you when I find something interesting.

I saw a discussion about Delta installing a radically different type of seat in coach and I immediately assumed it was an April Fool’s joke. But after rooting around a bit and seeing confirmation of the news from FlightGlobal, I think it’s real.

Apparently, Delta will be installing the Cozy Suite by Thompson Solutions on its internationally-configured 767 and 777 aircraft starting in 2010. What the heck is a cozy suite? Let’s start with a couple images off the Thompson site.

Pretty different, huh? As you can see the seats are staggered so you have your own little personal space. If you want to be next to someone for a conversation, it may not be ideal, or on the off chance the flight is empty enough for you to have your own row, well you can’t stretch out, but there are plenty of benefits. First, you get your own armrests. At least, it looks like the shared armrest is long enough so that one person is up front and the other in the back. Second, the seats recline in their own space, so it won’t bother the person behind you.

Most importantly, you have a nice place to rest your body on a long flight. I have trouble sleeping on planes in general, but this will still be more comfortable as a relaxing position. It’s also rumored that the song “Hold Me Now” will be pumped repeatedly through the seats’ headrests to help passengers pass out. (Get it? Thompson Solutions . . . Thompson Twins . . . “Hold Me Now.” Ah, nevermind. You guys are lame.)

For Delta, there’s speculation that this will allow them to add more seats to the plane. Thompson says that a 767 will have 8 seats across instead of 7, and that would allow for a lot more seats onboard, but I have to assume that they’ll lose at least a couple of rows by having these staggered seats that trail backwards. So there may be a net gain, but it’s probably not as big as some may say.

I have to say, this is a fantastic move by Delta . . . if it works. An unproven seat is always a gamble, but then again so are most innovations. If they can meet all the FAA requirements with this seat, it should give them a big advantage on long international flights in coach. I haven’t been in the seat, but if it’s as comfortable as it would appear to be, I would most certainly pay a premium for it on one of those long hauls.

Whether the premium will end up justifying the expense for Delta is another question. You do, however, have to take risks if you want to be a market leader, and this is a risky but honestly pretty exciting move. Nice work, Delta. Let’s hope it works. I’m just sorry we have to wait until 2010 to see it.

Recent media reports might make it seem like the sky is falling; as if every airplane you encounter may be unsafe. Just over the last few days, we’ve seen a rash of very public maintenance issues:

• Southwest rechecks 737s after maintenance record problems found
• United checks 747s for improperly calibrated altimeters
• American reinspects MD 80 aircraft wiring
• Delta follows American and reinspects MD-88 and MD-90 aircraft
• FAA orders 737s to be inspected for fuel leaks

It’s a pretty long and scary list, huh? Well, let me just say this.

You still shouldn’t worry about flying on any of these airlines. Many of these things have to do with record keeping issues. It’s usually just double checking something that’s already been addressed, and I haven’t heard of any major problems discovered in any of these inspections so far.

Now that the FAA has been scared into action after they messed up the whole Southwest debacle, they need to look like they’re doing good things. (And to be honest, they are, I think.) The carriers are going to comply as quickly as possible with this stepped up oversight. This can only be good, because it’ll clear out the cobwebs. I’m not expecting to see any major safety issues come out of this.

So, now that we have that out of the way, let’s discuss this from the perspective of someone flying this week. You guys might want to panic. Ok, ok. Panic is a little strong, but all of these checks are causing a ton of canceled flights. If you’re booked on an MD-80/90 type aircraft (also known as Super 80 in American’s marketing speak), you might want to rethink your travel plans while the airlines scramble to get these checks done.

It’s been in the planning stages for awhile, and now Delta has finally started to firm up details for the new BusinessElite (premium cabin) seats going forward. They had already announced they’d be using the Virgin Atlantic/Air New Zealand-style diagonal 6 foot, 3 inch beds (picture)for their brand new 777-200LRs, but they hadn’t said a word about the rest of the fleet.

Now we know that the 767-400s will have a completely different type of seat (picture), but it will still be flat. This one will be 77 inches (they can’t even standardize their units of measurement, that’s 6 foot, 5 inches.) But wait, there’s more.

The 757s will have a different seat still. These will be cradle seats that might be like the current BizElite seat. Confusing? Here’s a handy chart for you to keep in your pocket so you can figure out exactly what type of seat you might have.

Notice those question marks. They already have three different seat types planned for the fleet, but they still don’t know what they’re doing on the 767-300 and the regular 777-200. I thought it was interesting that they carefully worded the press release to say “Eventually, all of Delta’s international Boeing 767 aircraft will feature a full-flat seat.” Notice it says “a” full-flat seat, and not “this” full-flat seat.

With that in mind, I sent a note to a contact at Delta’s PR firm, and she promised to get a response for me quickly. She did, but it was pretty cryptic. “At this time, Delta is still evaluating all opportunities and suppliers to retrofit the rest of its international fleet with a full-flat seat product.”

There’s that “a full-flat” wording again. You’d think that with 3 different seat types already, they would have had plenty of opportunity to evaluate every seat under the sun, but I guess not.

Why are they doing this? Well, it’s probably all about how things fit on the plane. Each cabin has a different width and length, so they’re apparently going to pick the one that fits best on each fleet.

So as a Delta passenger, you do know that once this conversion is done, you can be assured of getting “a” fully flat seat in BizElite unless you’re on a 757. Got it?

It’s been a long time since I put one of these together, but there were so many, well, random bits of info around that I decided to do it this way today. Unfortunately, most of the news is bad today as some routes and even some airlines becomes endangered species.

It would be nice to have some happier news, but, well, at least I’ve tried to end on a high note at the bottom. Just be glad you aren’t stuck in the ice storms in the middle of the country. (If you are stuck in those storms, well, um, I’ve got nothing.)

• Delta’s LAX Hub - Looks like Delta is pulling down some LAX flying. Just after the new year, nonstops to Columbus, Jacksonville, Raleigh/Durham and more disappear. Sure, some of them seem to come back in a few months, but I wouldn’t put money down on that staying put. Interesting that Skybus flies from Columbus and Greensboro to the LA Area. I’m not convinced these are connected, but it could very well be the straw that broke the camel’s back. More likely, Delta’s realizing that LAX isn’t working for them as well as they’d hoped.




• United’s Intra-LA Basin Flying - There’s nothing more fun for an airline/LA dork than flying from Ontario or Orange County to LAX. I’ve flown the latter, and it’s a great ride. You depart Orange County to the south and then make a big backwards “S” before landing at LAX shortly after departing. Sadly, those days are numbered as both routes get the axe from United. Those little Brasilias are going to be phased out, and these short hauls had to get the axe first, especially with fuel prices where they are.




• Icelandair’s Home in North America - Icelandair may still have their US headquarters outside of Baltimore for now, but as of early January, they will no longer actually FLY to Baltimore. In my college days, my friends and I took a far-too-cheap Spring Break trip from BWI to Glasgow for 3 nights and then Reykjavik for three nights. Why was it cheap? Um. Iceland in March? Exactly. The flights were great, but the hostel that doubled as a homeless shelter left much to be desired. BWI will miss you, Icelandair.




• MAXjet - We knew MAXjet was losing a bunch of money, but the recent request to have shares suspended from trading made the situation seem much more dire. Mark over at Upgrade: Travel Better has good coverage of this. Hopefully they’ll keep going . . . I haven’t had a chance to try them yet.




• Emirates Across the Pond - Those Dubai runs may be working well for Emirates (check out Towers and Tarmacs’ coverage of the Houston inaugural), but apparently that one run from New York that goes through Hamburg is getting killed. Don’t worry. The few of you who want to go from New York to Hamburg can still fly from Newark on Continental.

See, lots of doom and gloom. Let’s try to end on a happier note. Delta put out their latest in their Planeguage video series, and this is a great one. Every time I get an empty middle on a full flight, it does seem like divine intervention. Though sadly, the first question I had after watching this video was, “How did they get all those wrapped presents past the TSA?!” Enjoy.