What we’re seeing is Delta being really smart, and really aggressive. That’s fun to watch from an airline that used to just be a sleepy old Southerner. The first thing people say about this is . . . there’s no way it would pass anti-trust review. But is that true? I’m not an expert in anti-trust law, but I have no doubt that Delta has been actively working with its lawyers to see what would work and what wouldn’t. If Delta is truly expressing an interest, then it’s done its homework to make sure that it would even be a possibility under the law.

I think the key here is that I imagine Delta isn’t entirely interested in walking away with all of American. Remember when I first wrote about how US Airways should buy American, I suggested that maybe US Airways wouldn’t have much interest in LA or New York? Well, guess who would be interested? That’s right, Delta.

In LA, the market is highly fragmented. I can’t imagine any sort of anti-trust concern if Delta took over American’s operation there. It might even benefit LA by finally building up a stronger single carrier. Sure, the Asian oneworld partners would have a fit, but that’s not Delta’s problem, or the US government’s.

In New York, it might be a tougher sell, but it’s not really that much of a stretch. At JFK, JetBlue carries around 40 percent of the passengers already. So Delta and American combined wouldn’t be a monopoly by any measure. LaGuardia would probably be more of a concern, but the DOT could require some more slots to be auctioned off to low cost carriers and fix that problem right up. I’m sure Delta would be happy to comply if it means eliminating a full service competitor and sprinkling the slots around to other low cost guys.

Of course, this is just one possible scenario, Delta might want Miami as well here, or some other pieces. The point is that the default assumption that the big three airlines can’t combine isn’t true. There are creative ways that they could try to come together with other entities to make a proposal that could work. With American in bankruptcy, it’s really anybody’s game to win, except American’s.

Sure, American could stay as a standalone entity, but the oddsmakers (analysts) aren’t giving that a good chance of happening. When you go into bankruptcy, you lose absolute control of your company. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get out unscathed, but it means that others are going to take a real shot.

Do I think it would be better if Delta bought American? Nah. I mean, I think it’s good to have three large airlines in three separate airlines that can compete with each other. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m against bits and pieces being moved around to make each remaining airline stronger. But would American be able to survive if Delta took New York and LA?

I don’t see why it couldn’t work if US Airways took the rest. Were I the surviving American in this case, I’d look to buy Alaska Airlines immediately to solidify at least one strong position on the west coast and take that partnership away from Delta. Not sure if that could happen or not, but the point is that there are opportunities for three large airlines to survive even if Delta “buys” American in some fashion.

Will it happen? I have no clue, but Delta would be stupid not to be sniffing around. (And in case you were wondering, United would be stupid TO be sniffing around because it’s hands are very full right now.)

Unlike Delta, US Airways is going with a phased introduction of new flights. Of the 42 slot pairs that it’s getting from Delta, it looks like it’s only announcing what will happen with 26 of them. I’m told by the airline that more will be announced in February. Meanwhile, Delta has already shown which flights will be getting the axe, so we have a pretty good picture of what’s happening. Here it is.

Now, I pulled all this up by hand, so there could be a couple of issues with the number of frequencies in some of these markets, but you get the idea. I’ve highlighted the most interesting ones to me in green.

As expected, Delta is pulling out of every market save for its hubs with one little exception. Want to guess which one that is? It’s Lexington, Kentucky, where it appears Delta will continue to have 1 daily flight on a CRJ. Why? I have no clue. Maybe there’s something special about that particular slot which will keep Delta serving that market, or maybe it was just an oversight and will be removed shortly. Regardless, other than that, there are no other non-hub flights for Delta.

That includes the ditching of all flights between Boston and Washington/National, a market which has probably suffered greatly with JetBlue in there. There’s plenty of room for US Airways and JetBlue in there, but it was probably a little too crowded with Delta anyway. There’s also a noticeable reduction in flights to JFK. I assume that’s because Delta is really trying to shift domestic flying over to LaGuardia. It doesn’t need as many flights to JFK anymore.

But let’s get to the meat of this story. What is US Airways doing? It is not following Delta by ramping up service in larger markets. Instead, it’s really serving some of the little guys out there. Look for flights to Fayetteville and Jacksonville . . . North Carolina. There will also be service to Ft Walton Beach, Pensacola, and Tallahassee in Florida. These are cities that have been begging for service to the nation’s capital and now they’re getting it. I imagine a lot of this is actually military traffic, come to think of it.

The upshot here is that US Airways is really bringing some great new service to smaller cities, a rarity today. That does mean that some of the cities Delta abandons will truly suffer. Des Moines and Jackson (MS) are the big losers here; they lose their only nonstop to National when Delta pulls out. Unless US Airways adds them in the next round of flights announcements, they’re out of luck.

Mid-sized cities Charleston (SC), Columbus (OH), Jacksonville (FL), New Orleans, Providence, and Tampa will all keep the US Airways service they have today, but they won’t get more flights. They will, however, be losing Delta as nonstop competition. That’s bound to impact fares to some extent. Grand Rapids and Madison are losing Delta as well, but they have new service from Frontier coming in just in time. That actually might turn out to do alright.

It’s funny to see big cities like Miami lose Delta service but not get US Airways in return. That’s probably a smart move on the part of US Airways. The airline doesn’t want to serve every big city from National. It wants to serve every city it can serve profitably. The high costs and massive frequency and loyalty advantage held by American in Miami probably make it worth avoiding.

But what will the next round of adds bring for US Airways? Great question. I would assume that the airline wanted to add the routes it thought had the most potential first, but there could be more in the next round that will surprise. Maybe we’ll even see some summer seasonal stuff, I don’t know. Either way, it seems to be a very methodical process for the airline, somewhat different from Delta in New York.

With Delta, it seems like it has an idea about which cities need to be served from New York in order to “win” the town. The airline made the flashy announcement so it could make its mark. For US Airways, however, it’s really a market-by-market decision based on viability, with no effort to “win” a city. Not quite as flashy, but it gives great insight into the amount of demand to different cities from Washington.

I look forward to seeing what’s next.

There’s great news for people in bigger cities, primarily other hubs. Delta will be providing some competition there that didn’t exist before. But that growth means someone else loses, and it’s primarily smaller cities. This isn’t really a surprise, but it’s going to make people pretty unhappy that need those routes. Ultimately, these can be divided into four different categories. Let’s go through each of them.

Big Cities, Big Winners
What Delta is really trying to do here is offer frequent nonstop service in top business markets. That’s good for travelers but not for other airlines. The biggest likely loser? American.

Of these 14 cities, American serves five of them nonstop, so it won’t be happy. As if that’s not bad enough, Delta’s new flights to Halifax will certainly pull from JFK, where American operates the only nonstop flights to Halifax today. For two cities, Nassau and Halifax, this will be the only nonstop flights in the markets, so they’re just going to be happy in general.

You’ll notice that Halifax, Montreal, and Ottawa all are getting service but Toronto is not. Seems strange, right . . . oh wait not so much. Remember, some of those divested slots went to WestJet, and the expectation is that most if not all will fly to Toronto. Oh, and did I mention that Delta and WestJet are planning to codeshare? Not so much of a divestment, eh? Here’s the list of winners.

A Little Bit of Growth
Those markets above aren’t the only winners. Others will actually see some growth or at least stay the same. These fall into a couple different categories.

Most of them are markets that are already served by Delta today but aren’t served by US Airways. In these, Delta is adding an additional flight, so it’s all good news for this group.

There are two that don’t fall into that category. Washington/Dulles will see its 4 daily US Airways flights replaced with 4 new flights from Delta. That might seem like a wash, but US Airways loyalists could always fly United before and can continue to do so and still earn miles. Delta brings convenience to its loyalists, so it provides better utility. Also, some will be happy to see jets replacing turboprops, but that doesn’t matter to me.

The last one is a special case. The 4 daily US Airways flights to Syracuse will be replaced by 5 from Delta. Not bad, but why is this happening? Delta has been particularly careful to court the New York politicians in this process. That relationship has helped open plenty of doors, so those upstate New York markets will be taken care of quite nicely. Here’s the list:

Just a Haircut
Now it’s time to start talking about the losers, but let’s ease into it by talking about those with pretty mild losses to start.

In this group there are really two types of cities. The first group loses the least. These are cities that have US Airways service today but no Delta service. The US Airways flights will disappear and Delta will step in, just with fewer frequencies. These cities get “upgraded” to jets, and they’ll have at least two flights a day. So, there is a loss in terms of the number of flights but it’s pretty minor.

The other group will be less happy. These are cities that had both US Airways and Delta service before, but they’ll now be losing US Airways completely. In return, these cities will get more flights from Delta, but not enough to replace what was lost by US Airways. It also means there’s one less competitor in the market. Here’s the full list:

Little Cities, Big Losers
It’s time to talk about the bad news. There are some cities that are just getting wrecked here. In general, the plan is this. These cities have service from US Airways today and that’s all going away. Delta’s either not coming to these cities or it’s adding a single, measly flight.

Basically, it sucks if you need to go between these cities and New York because your options are greatly reduced. There is one in this list that’s not like the others. That is Baltimore. Delta has declined to go into that market, and I know why. Southwest is the only other airline in the market. So people who need to fly between New York and Baltimore still have an option, but Southwest only has 3 flights in there. US Airways has 7 flights that are going away, so this market is taking a big hit. It’s just not as bad as those markets that lose absolutely everything. Here’s the list:

As you can see, there are some winners and some losers here. In general, the little cities are the odd men out, but many smaller cities do retain at least some service. It’s completely clear why Delta is doing this. It wants to make its slots at La Guardia as useful as possible, and that means serving larger markets. Delta is also upping its game at JFK (I wasn’t able to get the full details on that one yet), which will really make it so that Delta can adequately get anyone in New York to just about anywhere they need to go.

As I said above, this hurts American the most. American now becomes an even more distant third place in New York, and that’s even if you count JetBlue as its partner. For Delta, this is a smart way to use the slots. Of course, I say that as someone who doesn’t have to travel to Ithaca or Providence.

American Airlines About to Make a lot of People Much Happier – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Great news from American this week as it followed in Continental’s footsteps and added “incoming flight” information to its flight status. This is great news.

Delta’s Bag Tracking App: Game Changer? – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Delta has rolled out a nifty little bag tracking app on the iPhone which builds on the website. Tracking your bag like FedEx is awesome.

In the Trenches: How to Treat the Media – Intuit Small Business Blog
We had a blogger use Cranky Concierge for a trip, and that left us thinking about if we should treat him any differently. (We didn’t.)

Spirit Grows Dallas/Ft Worth
Spirit has has now refocused on domestic flying, and DFW is getting a big new spot on the map. This expansion will see one flight per day to Atlanta, Boston, New York/La Guardia, and Orlando. It also announced a day later that it was going to add a daily flight to Mesa (outside of Phoenix) as well.

Let’s be clear on this one: this doesn’t hurt American much. Sure, it has the potential to siphon off some seriously price sensitive travelers on to Spirit, but American shouldn’t be targeting those people anyway. The flight times here aren’t very good with a redeye on the DFW-Boston and Mesa-DFW flights and some mid-day runs on the others. This isn’t going to pull off business travelers in any way, and I can’t imagine Spirit wants to do that. Just as it has tried to do in Chicago and in Vegas, Spirit sees an opportunity to go with super low fares and skim traffic off the bottom.

For Spirit, the timing was perfect. Spirit thrives on using outrageous slogans or promos to get free press. So when Spirit saw American file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it was too good to ignore. The press release makes that clear with references to a “new chapter in Dallas/Fort Worth’s history” along with $11 fares. You have to love an opportunistic airline. Spirit is like a parasite that lives off the misfortune of others – it’s brilliant.

This really shouldn’t be viewed as much of an assault on American, but many will draw the parallel. And American, like most legacy airlines, has nothing against irrational response so we’ll see where this goes. But American isn’t the only one that’s thinking about these moves. . . .

JetBlue Starts Boston to DFW
Another move that would seem to be more alarming to American is JetBlue’s decision to fly Boston to DFW three times daily. JetBlue has avoided DFW so far, and it has a strong relationship with American, so this might seem curious. Why is JetBlue doing this? I think it’s more about Spirit than American.

Is JetBlue trying to make a move on American’s turf? Well, it is doing that, but I don’t think it’s particularly targeting American. JetBlue stands to benefit through greater cooperation with American after the bankruptcy process wraps up, and it wants to be a strong partner. That makes this seem like an odd move.

And that’s why I think this is more about Spirit. JetBlue has previously been VERY aggressive at tackling ultra low cost carriers. When Allegiant announced it would begin flying from Long Beach to Las Vegas, JetBlue ramped up to offer 5 daily flights in the market and launched the additional flights with a $19 each way sale. Overkill? Yeah, probably. But then again, Allegiant pulled out.

JetBlue has tried a similar move with Spirit. Less than a week after Spirit announced it would do a daily flight from Chicago to Boston, JetBlue added a fourth flight on that route. While JetBlue doesn’t care about competing on Boston to Myrtle Beach and it probably accepts Spirit flying to its home base in Ft Lauderdale, it’s not going to be willing to sit there while Spirit moves in on other destinations. That’s why I think we’re seeing this move.

Delta Steals Gol from American
In a completely unrelated blow to American, Delta signed an “exclusive” deal with Brazil’s Gol to be the only US partner with the airline. That means that American’s current partnership with the airline is going to disappear. Delta paid a pretty hefty price to get in on this – it had to invest $100 million in Gol and now has a seat on the Board of Directors.

While I can’t imagine this has anything to do with American’s bankruptcy (this kind of agreement had to be be in the works long before), I do think it was more about Delta feeling a little desperate about Latin America. Avianca/TACA and COPA will all be in Star Alliance. Though I don’t think it’s been announced, the combined LAN and TAM have to pick an alliance, and the scuttlebutt is that they’re leaning toward oneworld (as they should). That leaves Delta with a messy Aerolineas Argentinas and absolutely no presence in the increasingly important Brazilian market. This was an effort to buy a place in that market, and it’s a place that American likely won’t need assuming LAN brings TAM into oneworld.

So, lots of moves that impact American recently, but it’s not a direct hit, as the title of this post says.

[Original surfer photo via Flickr user The Pug Father/CC 2.0]

American
In the last month, there has been a ton of momentum for American to finally come to an agreement with its pilots. This comes from a combination of two things. American pilots elected a far more rational leader awhile back in Dave Bates, so that right away makes a deal more likely than under the old regime. From the other side, American is feeling pressure for a few reasons.

Probably most pressing is the fact that American has seen a large number of pilots retire in the last few months, far more than normal. That means that American needs to do a lot of shifting and training to fly its airplanes, and it’s trying to get relief from the pilots to be a little more flexible during the transition. The pilots, however, said that no relief will be given unless it’s part of a full contract. This is where the potential for disruption lies. If American doesn’t have enough pilots, then some flights could cancel. American should know this in advance, however, so I wouldn’t look for any last minute issues.

The other big issue for American is that investors are getting antsy. Without a new contract in place, there’s a higher concern that American could file bankruptcy. The stock has been beaten up, losing half its value in the last three months. We all know that American’s leaders don’t like when that happens, so the pilots have some leverage here.

There seemed to be some progress on the negotiations until American put out its last, best offer. The airline decided to negotiate in public by putting this out on its website. The pilots were not happy with either of the two options. While I always expect union leaders to complain, it sounds like the rank and file doesn’t like it either. And that means we’re probably back where we started.

I still don’t expect bankruptcy any time soon, but if it happens eventually, this would undoubtedly be like many of the other bankruptcies over the last several years where operations aren’t impacted. So don’t worry.

Delta
Delta is the good news “meat” in between the two slices of “bad news” bread here. After a long, drawn-out process, there is finally labor peace with the flight attendants. See, pre-merger Delta flight attendants were non-union but pre-merger Northwest flight attendants were union. There was an election a year ago to see which path would win, and the votes went in favor of doing away with the union by a clear amount.

The union, however, challenged the results, saying that Delta had interfered with the election. This is generally standard operating procedure any time a union loses, but this time, the union was told to stuff it. The National Mediation Board says that there wasn’t enough interference to influence the outcome, so the vote stands. Delta’s flight attendants will remain non-union.

While some flight attendants will be unhappy with this outcome, it’s a done deal and the integration can continue.

United
Then there’s United. The negotiations with pilots are ongoing, and really I haven’t heard about much progress. But the bigger, more important short term issue is with training.

Continental and United both have different procedures in the cockpit, but they need to be harmonized before the airline can become one under a single operating certificate. According to the pilots, it sounds like on the 757, 767, and 777 fleets, there are a lot of changes being made and most of them are standardizing with Continental procedures. So, the United pilots have a lot of learning to do.

The airline has decided to do all this new training via computer instead of in a simulator or in a classroom. The union thinks this is inadequate considering how big of a change it is, and I get the feeling after talking to some folks about this that very well might be the case. This is far from my area of expertise, so maybe some pilots can chime in below. (You can read the full report from the union.)

The airline keeps pushing on, however, and CEO Jeff Smisek had some harsh words, saying that union leaders “are crossing a line that is shameful and inappropriate between safety and industrial relations.” The FAA won’t step in, so it looks it’s a go. The new target date is, I believe, November 30.

What’s the hurry to get this done? According to the union, there are financial incentives for execs at the airline to get a single operating certificate by a certain time. It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?

So will this cause any disruption? I’m not sure. It would seem that if a pilot is scheduled to fly and doesn’t feel comfortable with the new procedures, then he might refuse the trip. I can’t imagine a pilot agreeing to fly if he thinks he’s not prepared. I haven’t heard a word about any real disruption, but I would think some mineor ones are always possible depending upon how this proceeds.

—
To sum things up, there shouldn’t be any labor issues that disrupt flights during the holidays, but some of these related issues could have some sort of tiny impact. Personally, I wouldn’t worry about it. Just worry about the potential for snowstorms to snarl your plans. That’s the bigger potential problem.

The program had actually started becoming attractive to me before this move, but this just makes it even better. With my “somewhat frequent but not too frequent” travel schedule (one that I assume many of you share), this program really hits a sweet spot for me. But before we get into that, let’s talk about what’s happening. The following benefits will be available to elite members in each program when flying the other airline.

• Priority check-in
• Priority security lines
• Priority boarding
• Preferred seating
• Two free checked bags domestically
• Elite qualifying miles (this isn’t new)

This might not sound like anything special, right? I mean, American has these benefits with its oneworld partners. Most airlines have some sort of program like this within their alliances. It doesn’t even have reciprocal upgrades, so who cares?

I do. And that’s because Alaska has done something that’s very difficult to do. It has cultivated very close partnerships with arch rivals.

Alaska is already closely tied with Delta. Mileage Plan elite members earn elite qualifying miles and they get priority boarding, priority security, priority seats, and two free checked bags on Delta. They even get free upgrades on the day of departure on Delta, if available. Now similar (though not quite as robust) benefits are exchanged with American as well.

If I tried to consolidate all my paid flying in a year on one airline, I would probably qualify for silver status. But I don’t like to fly one airline. It’s rare that one airline is going to provide me with the best option every time. Even if I did squeak out elite status, I would just be an entry level elite so I wouldn’t be looking at a lot of upgrade opportunities. It would really just get me priority screening/check in/boarding and free bags, something that might become much more handy with a kid on the way.

And that’s why I find myself drawn to Alaska. First off, I like the airline. It’s a nice airline to fly with a sharp management team that has created a great business. The biggest problem is that Alaska doesn’t fly very many places. It’s pretty much up and down the west coast for me being based near LA. But when you throw in Delta and American, then it provides a ton of opportunities.

Though I don’t like consolidating my travel with one airline, there’s a better chance of me flying American, Delta, and Alaska enough in a year to get 25,000 miles than with any other program. (And if I did fly all on Alaska, I would only need 20,000 miles for elite status. It’s only 25,000 when including partner airline travel.)

It also opens up a lot of redemption opportunities. Alaska is partners with a good number of oneworld and Skyteam airlines, including Qantas, British Airways, Air France/KLM, Korean, etc. So there are some great ways to spend miles.

What do I lose by not earning on Delta? Not much. I mean, I don’t get upgrades in advance, but I probably wouldn’t get those anyway with lowly status. I also lose out on redeeming for standard awards on Delta itself. That’s ok, because those are usually overpriced anyway. I’m not a fan of Skypesos. (If you haven’t seen it, View From the Wing has a great overview of the program and how to make it work for you.)

The same goes for American, though the AAdvantage program is much more flexible for redemptions. So there is a bit more of a loss there. But it’s not a huge loss for me.

The main point is that I can quite possibly qualify for elite status on an airline without having to change my behavior much. I don’t live for elite status, but if I can earn it without a ton of effort, it will save me from having to pay for checked bags. So as a friend of mine who just made the same decision up in the Bay Area said, I’m going all-in.

In the past, I’ve just earned either Delta or American miles when I’ve flow Alaska, but on my last trip, I signed up for a Mileage Plan account and even earned Alaska miles when I flew Delta. I’m going to stick with that plan next year and see where it gets me. I’m also probably going to sign up for a Mileage Plan credit card, though I haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. Seems like a good move for someone like me.

[Original photo via Flickr user Bucajack/CC SA 2.0]

So, who would look at this with the harshest eye? Potentially an entry level Delta elite frequent flier out of Atlanta. I’m not sure why, but I have this enduring image of a stereotypical Delta elite who looks like Colonel Sanders and sounds like Foghorn Leghorn. Ridiculous? Sure. But then I started playing out an interview with Colonel Leghorn in my warped little mind on Economy Comfort. Here it is.

Colonel Leghorn I say, I say, what’s happenin’ here?
Cranky: Well, last summer, Delta decided to introduce Economy Comfort seats to international flights. Like United’s Economy Plus, it mostly meant a few extra inches of legroom in the same exact seat as you’d find in regular coach. But it also came with extra recline, priority boarding, and free drinks. Not a bad proposition, and apparently it worked well. Now, Delta will bring the offering to its domestic fleet – any jet with more than 50 seats on it will have Economy Comfort. This will be in place for travel beginning next summer (though you might get lucky and snag some legroom before then on a converted airplane).

The Colonel: Internat’nal Economy Comfort ain’t bad, I guess, since I’ll never spring for an M fare to upgrade to Business Class. Is this the same thing?
Cranky: Not quite. If you purchase a domestic Economy Comfort seat, you’ll get more legroom. You’ll also get priority boarding. Neither of those change. But you won’t get any more recline (Delta says it’s because on shorter flights, people need to work while on longer flights they need to sleep) and you won’t get free drinks.

The Colonel: I’m a drunk, so that’s just downright unpleasant. But I say, I still love my legroom. How do I get it?
Cranky: If you were a Diamond, Platinum, or Gold Medallion member, you’d get it for free. But since you’re just a Silver Medallion, you get a 50 percent discount if you buy in advance or you get it free at the time of check-in (if available). Full fare passengers get it included as well (something that United took away years ago). Everyone else can just pay up if they want it. It’s $19 to $99 each way.

The Colonel: What in tarnation?! I deserve to get for free, I say. So my Kentucky Fried Travel Agent can just reserve it for me, right?
Cranky: Not so much. It can only be done directly through Delta, whether online, at a kiosk, or over the phone.

The Colonel: I’m not thrilled, son, but I only plan on reserving those seats if my much-deserved and never paid-for upgrade fails to come through. Wait, they aren’t cuttin’ First Class, are they?
Cranky: On most airplanes, the number of First Class seats won’t change, but that’s not the case everywhere. You elites who love your upgrades won’t be thrilled if you’re on an A320. According to Delta spokesperson Chris Kelly, A320s will lose “a few” First Class seats. I take that to mean 4 of the 16 seats will disappear. Any more than that and there will be mutiny. If you saw the post on FlyerTalk with the proposed configurations, ignore it. They aren’t right, and the MD-90 will not be losing First Class seats as noted there.

The Colonel: Son of a biscuit. Guess I won’t be flying A320s anymore. But what if there are too many higher elites and my upgrade fails to come through? Are there are a lot of these Comfort seats for me to sit in?
Cranky: Delta says the first 3 to 5 rows of coach will be Economy Comfort. That means 12 to 20 on a big regional jet, 15 to 25 on an MD-80/90, and 18 to 30 on an A319/A320/737/757 aircraft. That’s less than United, which has 50 seats on a 757 and even 28 on the big regional jet. But it’s better than nothing.

The Colonel: That ain’t good, especially if them other elites get ‘em first. But what if the worst thing I could possibly imagine happens, and I get stuck in Economy Discomfort with the rest of the chickens? I will, I say, yell at the nearest gate agent and remind him how important I am.
Cranky: It shouldn’t be much different than today, though we’ll see exactly what happens. Delta says that regular coach seat pitch won’t change and that the legroom will come by “removing a negligible number of seats from the current cabin configuration.” Not sure what a negligible number is, but hey, we’ll find out soon enough. The airline can also move “monuments” around – galleys, lavs, etc – to try to squeeze out some more room. Not sure if that’s the plan, but it would make some sense. Lastly, if you look at the press release, it’s clearly stated that “Delta’s standard Economy Class seat pitch is currently 31 inches.” According to SeatGuru, however, the A319 has 30-32″ pitch, the 737s have 31-32″ pitch, and 757s show 31-33″ pitch. Something tells me the days of 32 or 33″ pitch may be gone as a way to make room.

The Colonel: I guess this sounds fine and dandy, but I’ll still tell Delta that I’m not getting rewarded enough for flying on really cheap tickets. I’ll just threaten to leave and then forget, I say, forget to actually do it. Besides, where will I go? With AirTran goin’ all-coach and cuttin’ seat assignments when it gets eaten up by Southwest, that airline simply ain’t an option for this big bird.
Cranky: You said it, Colonel, not me.

The first flight cost $121.70 on JetBlue and the second $283.70 on Alaska. Both of those were reimbursed by the APEX folks. The last flight home cost $175.40 on Delta. (You might remember my decision-making process on this one.) Overall, it was a good trip.

This was the first September 11th I’d flown on since before THE September 11th ten years ago. Being the tenth anniversary, I figured I’d arrive early in case security was stepped up. That was totally unnecessary. We left from the northern gates at Long Beach and the security line was shorter than usual. The waiting room, however, was jam-packed.

With the construction at LGB, we had to walk for about 5 minutes before we got to our airplane. Once there, we boarded quickly – the flight was only about half full.

The flight itself was uneventful as we headed north. JetBlue struck a deal to show a sneak preview of that new Zooey Deschanel show “New Girl” before its network debut, so that was a nice change of pace. (Show isn’t bad, actually.)

Then I watched an hour of NFL Gameday before I had had enough. That’s when it got weird. I flipped to MSNBC where the network was replaying NBC’s coverage from September 11, 2001 in full. I have no idea why, but I couldn’t stop watching.

I saw the confusion when American 77 hit the Pentagon. Then I saw one of the towers fall. Seeing this from an airplane was surreal. I’m not sure why I didn’t shut it off. I kept watching until we arrived at our gate in Seattle.

Once there, I met up with a friend and hitched a ride into town for a very good time at APEX. By Thursday, it was time to move on.

I had never flown Alaska for a long haul before, so I was looking forward to it. I took the light rail to the airport and found an insanely long security line – took me I think about 30 minutes to get through.

Alaska had been kind enough to give me a lounge pass when I had visited the airline earlier that week, and I was happy to take it so I could see the lounge. But since it took so long to get through security, I only had about 15 minutes to spare.

I went into the lounge near gate D1 and it’s a nice two level lounge with a great view. I went straight upstairs to try the much-vaunted pancake machine. It was awesome. Then I grabbed a glass of water at the kitchen window (which reminded me of a middle school cafeteria, in a good way) and then headed off to my gate.

When I arrived, I found our AlaskaAir.com liveried aircraft already fully boarded. It was still very early, but I got on. Seattle had been murky and chilly all week, so I was looking forward to a little sun. We took off and got through the clouds fairly quickly. Unfortunately, clouds stayed under us for much of the trip toward the Great Lakes, an area over which I had never flown before.

Onboard, I planned on using wifi, and it was lightning-fast. Probably helps to be in a part of the country where very few airplanes are flying.

But I also got myself a DigEPlayer onboard – one of those standalone movie players. This was pretty good, and I enjoyed watching X-Men First Class, but there were a couple problems. The biggest issue was that I hardly had room for two devices on my tray. I needed a place to hang the DigEPlayer. But more concerning was the cost – it was $14 to rent that thing. Sheesh. I watched one movie and then couldn’t finish the second. That’s a lot of money to pay for 1.5 movies, even if it can access the internet as well.

After we went just north of Chicago, we aimed for Newark. A front was rolling through so there were a lot of clouds, some rain, and a bunch of wind. Our pilots deftly weaved us through the traffic, plunking us down hard on the runway nice and early . . . in Newark . . . when the weather was bad. Crazy.

I took the AirTrain to New Jersey Transit into the city and spent a couple of great days in New York. Thank you to everyone who chimed in with suggestions on Trippy.

After heading up to Tarrytown for a wedding, we headed to Westchester Airport for our flight home.

It was a beautiful day in New York as we headed to the airport. Westchester is such a tiny terminal, undoubtedly due to rich residents nearby refusing to build an adequate terminal to service the traffic. Instead, the check-in area is tiny with lines criss-crossing all over the place.

We went through the small security area fairly easily, but then we were sitting in the one big hold room where seats were just about completely full. There were four of us traveling together on this flight, and we had to settle for two seats in the waiting area until another flight boarded and seats opened up.

Our airplane, a former Horizon bird that’s now with Atlantic Southeast, pulled up right on time and we boarded the newly Delta-fied aircraft.

There are a few things I hate about the CRJ-700, and the biggest one is the tiny size of the bins. My bag was able to be wedged into the bin, but from the looks of all the open space, not many others were successful.

After a short air traffic control delay (which the captain dutifully kept us up to date on), we took off to the south and I took notice of the significant cabin noise from being in the back. We were just one row behind the exit, but it was really noisy.

We sat in light chop through a high cloud layer much of the way down to Atlanta. The seatbelt sign stayed off, however, and I was able to use the lav. It’s not really that small, but the engine noise is deafening, and this one was pretty dirty.

We landed almost on time despite having to loop around to land from the west. At that point, our two friends went off to their flight to San Francisco and we went to try to get an earlier flight home.

When I originally booked these tickets, the flight was a 757 with wifi. I was looking forward to being able to get some work done after pushing things off all week long as I traveled. That didn’t happen.

Our airplane was replaced with a 777. That’s usually not something to complain about, but I really needed to get work done. When the swap was first made, I called Delta to see if I could change my flight. The agent said I could, but she said that the earlier flight was an illegal connection with just under an hour. That’s actually completely legal, but I got busy with something else and never followed up again. So we stuck with our flight.

But when we got to Atlanta, we figured we’d try to stand by. We went from our C arrival gate to the B gates only to find an agent unwilling to even put us on the standby list it was so full. So we trekked back to the E gates for our original flight.

If there’s one thing I really don’t like about flying, it’s flying through storms. Yet sure enough, there was a big line heading east over Mississippi, and I was getting anxious about it.

This was not helped after we boarded the aircraft and the flight attendant repeated every 5 minutes that the captain said everyone would have to stay seated for the first hour due to rough air, so if anyone needed to go to the lav, they should go before we departed.

She was actually very good at keeping people informed, but it just raised my anxiety. (Yes, I know it’s silly, but I’ve yet to figure out a way to get my fear instinct to accept that.) When we took off, we pointed west and climbed to reach cruising altitude before we got to the weather.

In the end, it was a total non-event. We flew right in the cloud tops, and there was barely a bump. About 45 minutes in, the seatbelts signs were off and it was smooth sailing.

We went just north of Dallas and waited for drinks and food to arrive. It took well over an hour after the seatbelt sign went off before they reached our row in the middle of the coach cabin. I have no idea why they were so slow, but it was frustrating We were really thirsty, and I was hungry so I had a tasty roast chicken and red pepper sandwich.

I flipped on a movie but got bored quickly. The screen was a real pain to use anyway because the touch sensitivity seemed to be about an inch to the right from where it should have been.

But that was fine – I could still get some work done while not connected to the web, so I did that and watch out the window as we went far south, barely skirting along the Mexican border over El Paso.

We came up just north of Tucson and landed in LA a couple minutes early.