The big day finally arrived. We took the little guy on his first airplane trip, and all went well, fortunately. Our chariot of choice was Delta, and for the most part, they did a very good job with a couple glaring exceptions (read on . . .). We paid $461.20 per person roundtrip to vacation with the inlaws, and that was a slight premium over what we could have paid. Paying this amount allowed us to upgrade to First Class for 12,500 miles each way, so we did it. We’re glad we did.

We had prepared well for the big day with a very different packing regimen. For the first time in years, we checked a bag (two on the return). That meant we brought only his necessities along with a computer or two in our carry-ons. Oh, and we brought the car seat and stroller to be checked at the gate. It worked out well.

To make things easier, I decided to try a service recommended to me by my friend Johnny Jet. We drove to LAX Parking Curb Express, and for $14.95 a day, they drove us from their facility to the terminal and dropped us off. It was well worth the price.

We went to the Sky Priority check in area since we were traveling in First Class and a friendly agent got our bags tagged and we were on our way. Security took forever with a baby. We had to pull him out of the stroller and my wife walked through the metal detector with him. The car seat went through the x-ray machine, but the stroller had to be hand-inspected. Then they tested the breast milk. It was pretty cumbersome, but we left plenty of time for that reason. (The TSA agents were far from friendly that day, so I’m glad we weren’t in a hurry.) Then we were off to the gate.

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April 21, 2012
Delta 2054 Lv Los Angeles 730a Arr Atlanta 240p
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 51B, Runway 25R, Depart 2m Early
Atlanta (ATL): Gate A19, Runway 9C, Arrive 3m Late
N143DA, Boeing 767-332, Standard Delta colors, 100% Full
Seat 2B
Flight Time 3h52m

We pre-boarded and my wife got settled while I dismantled the stroller and car seat to check at the gate. Once onboard, the flight attendants were fantastic. We were on a 767, so the First Class cabin was good-sized, but every flight attendant came over to say hello and offered to help if we needed it. Welcome drinks were offered as another flight attendant announced to the coach passengers that “now is the time during boarding that we like to call creative stuffing” – she encouraged people to find ways to get their bags in.

The little guy was dressed for the occasion, though he had the wrong airline in mind. (Thanks for a US Airways friend for that baby gift.) My wife tried to feed him as we climbed through the shallow marine layer, but he was out like a light before we left the gate. He apparently inherited that from her. He slept the first couple hours while we ate (I had the cereal while my wife had the omelette, which she really liked). We logged on to Gogo wifi and had a movie going in the seatback TV as well. Totally connected.

He woke up a couple hours in and we prepared for the worst. Fortunately, he was in a great mood. We went to change him in the empty area near door L1 (the flight attendants said that was our best bet since that plane had no changing table) and we ended up staying in the galley for about 10 minutes with the flight attendants because they were having fun with him. They even gave him his first wings. (Wing pins are back!) I asked the flight attendant if she could ask the captain for the aircraft registration since I couldn’t see it at LAX, and the first officer actually came out to give it to me. He asked what I did and we started talking a little. He’s one of those guys who thinks that he should have the same contract he had in 2000, but I wasn’t about to argue with him when he had an airplane to fly.

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April 21, 2012
Delta Connection 5106 Lv Atlanta 410p Arr Wilmington 533p (operated by ExpressJet)
Atlanta (ATL): Gate C55, Runway 9C, Depart 18m Late
Wilmington (ILM): Gate 5, Runway 17, Arrive 5m Late
N907EV, Bombardier CRJ-200, Standard Delta colors, ~90% Full
Seat 3C
Flight Time 49m

Our connection was looking a little tight until they switched the runways around and we unexpectedly landed early. We found an elevator to get us down to the train and made our way to the C gates. Our plane was all the way at the end, but that gave us a chance to stretch our legs (and change him in a restroom along the way). Our corner of the ATL wasn’t having much luck. First a Knoxville-bound flight went mechanical, then another flight was weight-restricted, and finally ours broke too. We were told that a tire needed to be changed, but upon further inspection, they changed their minds. Seriously. I asked after the flight and the first officer told me that they found out the foreign object wasn’t as deep as he first thought.

We boarded to find a CRJ in terrible condition. The bulkhead was threadbare. There were multiple holes in each seatback pocket. The lighting was dirty with stains. The safety placards were all worn down. Delta should have been embarrassed to have ExpressJet flying this airplane under the Delta name. It looks even worse in this photo because of the flash, but it was bad in any kind of lighting. (I tweeted it and Delta responded quickly. They informed maintenance that the airplane needed to be looked at.)

Fortunately, the airplane itself worked just fine. The little guy wasn’t nearly as thrilled with his coach ride on a CRJ. But he did hold his own for most of the flight. The flight attendant was great, introducing herself personally after we boarded in case we needed anything. She did a nice job with service on the sub-1 hour flight. We stayed just north of an imposing storm most of the way and somehow landed without even touching a cloud.

On the ground, it took them some time to get the door opened for us to walk out on the ramp, and the airplane was hot. The little guy had enough and started wailing. At least he made it that far. Everyone on the airplane was very friendly about it and tried to see if they could calm him from their seats. Soon enough, we were off the airplane and in the very tiny Wilmington terminal.

—

Our return started very early – at 1215a Pacific Time when we woke up to make the trek to the airport. It was supposed to be a beautiful sunny day, but apparently a surprise storm showed up and it was overcast with rain in the area. We were dropped in front of the sleepy, North Carolina-inspired terminal and went to check in. There was an earlier connecting flight in Atlanta and we hoped we could do same day confirmed for $50 to get on it. We went into the Sky Priority line and a woman at the counter shouted a question whether we had checked in at the kiosk. We told her no, because we wanted to see if we could make this change. She told us that we had to get in the other line to do that. I asked what the point of Sky Priority was, and she said something about how they don’t really do that. They just worked one line. Right.

Clearly this woman had no idea what to do because the other guy behind the counter told her to do it. She said she didn’t know how. He told her to call someone. She didn’t, and he finally dismissed her and said he’d just deal with it. So we had to wait for him to finish helping someone. Finally, he told us that it’s impossible to do same day confirmed unless we’re changing the first flight. I found out when I was in Atlanta that wasn’t true, but it meant we wasted about 20 minutes that we didn’t need to waste.

We went through security and it was an odd experience. They pulled me aside for a random check, which meant swabbing my shoes and that was it. No pat down, no bag search, nothing else. Then they made my wife hold the little guy for awhile because they wanted to swab the stroller but they didn’t have anyone to help right then. That was a lot of fun.

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April 25, 2012
Delta Connection 5305 Lv Wilmington 6a Arr Atlanta 727a (operated by ExpressJet)
Wilmington (ILM): Gate 5, Runway 24, Depart 3m Early
Atlanta (ATL): Gate D44, Runway 27C, Arrive 8m Early
N681BR, Bombardier CRJ-200, Standard Delta colors, ~90% Full
Seat 3D
Flight Time 1h8m

Having left plenty of time we made it into the gate area before boarding began and we were ready to go when it was time to pre-board. This ex-Atlantic Coast/Independence Air aircraft was built around the same time as the aircraft that brought us to Wilmington, but its interior was in MUCH better shape. We took our same seats as on the way out and soon we were on our way to Atlanta.

We were in the clouds and it was pretty bumpy for the first 20 minutes or so. Turbulence on those CRJs always feels worse, I guess. We finally got out of it and landed in a nice, clear Atlanta day. Since we had checked bags, there was no way to change to an earlier connection even if we could have, so we had a couple hours to kill. We wandered around, my wife got coffee, and I stared at airplanes.

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April 25, 2012
Delta 1655 Lv Atlanta 940a Arr Los Angeles 1151a
Atlanta (ATL): Gate A18, Runway 26L, Depart 2m Early
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 58A, Runway 25L, Arrive 15m Late
N126DL, Boeing 767-332, Standard Delta colors, ~90% Full
Seat 2A
Flight Time 4h16m

We pre-boarded once again, and I was definitely used to the stroller/car seat routine. The first officer was coming up from his walkaround and he stopped to say hi to the little guy. I asked how the ride was looking, and he said it was bumpy on the way in from Jacksonville and “it’s always bumpy over the Rockies.” Ok. (We never even got near the Rockies, passing over El Paso.) This wasn’t the last oddity to come from the cockpit.

On the airplane, the flight attendants were once again very friendly and eager to visit with the baby. He, however, was exhausted and after fussing a little at the gate, conked out for a couple hours. Despite their best efforts, the flight attendants couldn’t get the inflight entertainment system working, so it was all up to Gogo to carry the load (and it carried it well).

We took off to the west and that’s when the seatbelt follies began. First, the captain came on and told us that it was going to be bumpy so he was going to turn the sign on. But he had never turned it off, so he actually flipped it off when he meant to turn it on. I mentioned it to the flight attendant but the captain didn’t fix it. Later, he did the reverse, eventually correcting it when the flight attendant told him that time. There could have been a serious liability issue if we hit severe turbulence and the sign was mistakenly off.

But we didn’t hit anything severe, though there was light chop much of the way. I held the little guy for a lot of the flight, and I didn’t end up eating. My wife had a different kind of omelette than on the way out that she really liked. The little guy decided to wake up and scream briefly, and we got nervous that we were bugging those around us. We went up front and changed him, and soon he was back asleep again. Whew.

We sat in the clouds of a late season storm for much of the last hour or so, but we landed very early. Ah, the curse of landing early. We slowly taxied out to the very end of a taxiway and sat there. The captain came on to tell us that an airplane was in our gate and it would be about 10 minutes. About 15 minutes later, he came on and said that the airplane was just doing some last minute catering and then we’d be there in 5 minutes. We started moving, but we stopped again. Meanwhile, we had a diaper breach and had to change him. But we couldn’t get upon an active taxiway, so we had to do in the seat.

Finally, more than 45 minutes after we landed, we were at the gate. The captain’s inaccurate and sporadic updates were frustrating.

Once we pulled in, our stroller car seat came back up, but the stroller was damaged. A mud flap was gone and the foam handle was broken. We were told to file a report, so we did. When we finished up, I had called LAX Parking Curb Express to come pick us up. They showed up quickly, we checked out the car, and we were on our way. They send another car to pick up the driver so we didn’t have to take him back.

Overall, it was a very successful first trip with the baby. The flight attendants absolutely stood out on all these flights for doing some great work.

Delta started a test a couple weeks ago of a new fare offering called Basic Economy. The idea is that it’s a highly restricted fare that gives you nothing more than the promise of some seat on the airplane. It’s not a bad plan at all, but it shines yet another light on how poor the booking experience is becoming with online travel agents, Travelocity being the only one to have tried to address the issue so far.

Basic Economy was first rolled out in the Detroit to Orlando, Ft Myers, Ft Lauderdale, and Tampa markets. If you’re surprised by those markets, don’t be. Those all have multiple flights per day on Spirit, and Delta must be concerned that it is losing out on passengers to fill up the back of the bus. So it introduced Basic Economy which has the following rules:

• No changes are permitted at all
• Fare are completely non-refundable
• Seats are randomly assigned at check-in and cannot be changed
• All fares on a reservation must be Basic Economy (no mixing with other fares or other airlines)

You can buy some of what Delta is now calling “Trip Extras” to add on with things like priority boarding, etc, but that’s about it. It’s a highly restricted ticket. Delta shows it this way on its website:



It’s very clear what you’re getting when you book this way, so there won’t be any surprises. But what about those who book through an online travel agent? Looking at the four big guys, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, and Travelocity, only Travelocity made any attempt to show that this fare was different than others. Here’s how they break down, from worst to best.

Priceline
Priceline is by far the worst here, because not only does it not make any effort to disclose that there are extra rules here, but it actually makes you think you can choose seat assignments in advance. After going through the entire booking process, Priceline presents a link to the raw fare rules and restrictions as filed by the airlines and leaves it up to the traveler to decipher it. Priceline asks if you want to assign a seat, and then lets you pick from the seat map. Undoubtedly, that will get bounced out by Delta later, but will the traveler even know?

Orbitz
Orbitz, like Priceline, makes you go through the whole booking process before it shows you a link to the airline-filed rules on the payment screen. This is incredibly frustrating because you have to go through multiple pages of upsell attempts before you can find the rules, if you would even bother to pull up the link that’s buried. I can’t imagine anyone is doing it.

Expedia
Expedia is only slightly better than Orbitz because it brings the link to the rules page further up front. Right on the flight details page after you pick your flights, you’ll find the link, which again goes to airline-filed rules. This is at least much easier to access because it’s earlier in the booking process.

Travelocity
Travelocity is the only one that makes any attempt to differentiate the fare in the fare display itself, so it should receive kudos for that.



It’s not perfect, especially since it appears that the link is broken, but I imagine if it worked, it would link to a page or pop-up that would show all special restrictions on the fare.

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I understand how difficult it is for online travel agents to try to make sense of all the different rules that different airlines put out there, but even something as simple as what Travelocity has done will make a tremendous difference.

I spoke with Ben Baldanza, CEO of Spirit Airlines, when I was at the Phoenix Aviation Symposium and asked him how many of his bookings came from online travel agents. He said it was around 25 percent, but he noted that 100 percent of the complaints about the airlines policies are from those bookings. People who book direct have a very clear understanding of what’s included and what’s not on every airline website. The online travel agents, however, aren’t keeping up with changes in this industry.

And this isn’t limited to just online travel agents. Metasearch sites like Kayak are also not doing a good job. Kayak shows you the Delta fare without any details at all. The difference is that it sends you to the Delta website, but it deeplinks you. So you do see that the ticket is non-changeable in small type but you don’t get that clean display that you would if you went to Delta.com directly.

Travelocity certainly deserves credit for at least doing something about this problem, but there’s more that needs to be done. If nothing changes, then online travel agents will make themselves more and more irrelevant as time goes on.

Word is out this week that Delta wants to get into the oil refining business. I would assume the idea is to be able to buy fuel at cost, but I really don’t know enough about the oil business to know whether this is brilliant or completely insane. So which is it?

Another day, another bankruptcy. On Sunday night, Pinnacle Airlines Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to the surprise of nobody. I should say, to the surprise of nobody who has ever heard of the airline.

You probably haven’t heard of Pinnacle because it and its subsidiary airlines fly under the Delta Connection, United Express, and US Airways Express names. The group carried nearly 20 million passengers last year, so this should be a big deal. But it’s not if you’re a passenger. Let me explain why that’s the case.

Pinnacle Airlines itself was originally called Express Airlines I. It proudly carried the red tail as Northwest Airlink for many years (and Republic Express before that). A name change came a few years ago and it tried to expand. After getting Delta to give it some flying, Delta and Northwest merged bringing the airline back to square one with a single partner.

In recent years, Pinnacle expanded through merging. It acquired Mesaba from Northwest and it acquired Colgan Air. You may know the Colgan name. That’s because Colgan operated the Q400 that crashed in Buffalo a couple years ago. It’s no surprise that Pinnacle planned to phase out the Colgan name in favor of Mesaba, but it never quite got there. So now, bankruptcy is going to accelerate some big changes.

One of Pinnacle’s big problems is that it agreed to a lot of unprofitable contracts to fly express operations for major carriers in its effort to break into new flying opportunities. That wasn’t the smartest plan, but now those are all going to end.

Colgan built up a small Saab 340 turboprop operation for US Airways at LaGuardia, but with US Airways shrinking that operation thanks to the Delta slot swap, there was no need for Colgan anymore. The remaining few flights will be done soon. That has very little impact on travelers since it wasn’t going to last much longer anyway.

Perhaps more surprising is Colgan’s decision to end operations as United Express. Some of that was on Saab 340s but the real shock was the decision to stop flying its thirty Q400s as well. The Q400s had found a nice niche in the northeast as Continental Connection, but apparently the contract simply wasn’t producing for Colgan. It’s walking away completely with all flights under the United name stopped by the end of November.

Now that does seem like something that should concern you as a traveler, but it really shouldn’t. It’s not like these routes are going to disappear just because Colgan walks away. I asked United for a statement and was told this:

We are working with Colgan to transition their flying for United Express to other carriers, and are working hard to accommodate our customers. We have contingency plans in place and will contact any customer whose reservation may change as a result of the transition.

In other words, while there could be some disruption, United will just find someone else to take over Colgan’s flying. Maybe United will turn to Horizon Air, a very experienced Q400 operator. Or maybe Republic will pick up the flying since it has been flying those airplanes for Frontier. Or maybe United will just transition to jets. The point is, United can fill the hole and you won’t ever know the difference. That’s one reason airlines like outsourcing. They can always replace an operator if things don’t work out.

Pinnacle will also be reducing its Delta flying a little, but not much. A handful of CRJ-900s will disappear since they fly under yet another unprofitable contract. But Delta is now the sole reason for Pinnacle to exist.

In fact, Delta is forgiving $44.3 million in debt as well as pumping in another $30 million to keep the airline flying while it restructures. If Delta didn’t pump money in, then Pinnacle might not have been able to arrange financing at all and could have been gone by June.

In return for this infusion, Pinnacle agreed to modify its “most valuable contract” operation 50 seat CRJs with Delta to be more favorable. As part of this, it got an extension to allow it to fly all 140 of those airplanes until the next decade.

So what does all this mean? It means flights will continue to fly. United will have to find someone else to do the flying while Delta will just get much of its flying for less . . . if you don’t count the $70+ million it’s investing in this deal.

If anything, this could be a good thing for passengers. Why do I say that? Well, Delta is getting a better deal on the CRJs because of this. That means some marginal small city routes might now look better with lower costs applied.

But beyond that potential benefit, there really isn’t much here that concerns the traveler. It’s just yet another bankruptcy.

[Original photo via Flickr user DearEdward/CC 2.0]

One of the more interesting panels in Phoenix last week was the one that focused on fleet strategy. There’s always a ton of discussion about buying airplanes, and each airline has a different philosophy. On the panel, there were representatives from Air China, Delta, Hawaiian, and Southwest from the airline side. The CEO of Airbus Americas Barry Eccleston was also there.

Today, I want to focus on the the three US airlines there and their different strategies. It’s interesting that all may include the Boeing 717 in one way or another.

 

Delta the Opportunist
I was most interested in hearing from Delta’s VP of Fleet Strategy and Transactions Nathaniel Pieper. You might remember my post addressing why Delta had bought current generation 737-900ERs instead of waiting for next generation airplanes. Certainly Delta’s fleet strategy has differed from other legacy airlines.

I was particularly interested in the rumor broken by Holly Hegeman at PlaneBusiness that Delta would be acquiring the AirTran 717 fleet from Southwest. We didn’t get any details on that in this panel, but after hearing Nathaniel speak, it seems clear to me that the 717 would work quite nicely for Delta considering its strategy.

Nathaniel described Delta’s fleet strategy as one of opportunism. “We have every fleet type known to man.” That’s because Delta will go into the secondary market and buy airplanes if it makes sense. The MD-90 is a perfect example of that. Delta has been acquiring every MD-90 that’s on the market because they’re cheap to acquire and they’re good airplanes that can fly many of Delta’s medium haul missions.

Nathaniel wasn’t afraid to judge others, noting that you “won’t see us enter into a commitment for 460 firm aircraft with 500 options. We’d rather play the game a bit more conservatively, be in the game a bit more frequently and take smaller bites instead of one big chunk.” Hmm, I wonder why he picked that “460″ number. Oh right, that coincidentally matches a certain recent order from American. Heh.

What about airplanes even smaller than the 717? The news is not good. To the surprise of nobody, Nathaniel explained that the “economics of the [50 seat RJ] is very challenging right now.” As if that wasn’t clear enough, he confirmed that Delta would like to shrink that fleet “substantially lower.” What would replace those airplanes? Either fewer flights on bigger jets or some markets might lose service all together.

Hawaiian Loves Its Fleet
Moving over to airlines that actually operate the 717 today, how does Hawaiian feel about the airplane? Peter Ingram, EVP and Chief Commercial Officer for the airline has nothing but love. “For the unique flying we do of 100 to 200 mile hops in the islands, the 717 is very good…. We like the 717 fleet and expect to be in it for this decade at least.”

The more interesting fleet for Hawaiian is that of the bigger jets. In the last two decades, Hawaiian has gone from the L1011 to the DC-10, then to the 767 and now to the A330-200. Why the A330? The airplane apparently has “great economics” to the west coast while at the same time giving more range to reach more places in Asia. Since that’s where Hawaiian has been expanding, this makes a great deal of sense.

Southwest, the Simple Airline
Let’s go from an airline that loves its 717s to one that wants to see them gone yesterday. Did Southwest tip its hat about the fate of the 717 at the airline? No, but the way Brian Hirsham, SVP of Technical Operations spoke, it sounded like the writing is on the wall to me.

Brian explained that the Southwest fleet strategy has two parts. The first part is simplicity. “We realize tremendous synergies by operating a simple fleet.” The 717 hurts that simplicity argument, of course.

The second piece? Flexibility. “We have the ability to flex up and down in terms of fleet size.” Southwest will be retiring 120 737-300/500 “classic” aircraft over the next couple years and replacing them with current generation 737-700/800 instead. But if demand rises, Southwest can simply keep those classic 737s flying longer. And yes, that could happen if, say, Southwest decided to drop an entire fleet type.

In the end, everyone seemed pretty confident with their strategies, and that’s no surprise. A good fleet strategy is key to running an airline. Sometimes, what works for one airline might not for another. And that’s why I’m keeping a close eye on those AirTran 717s…

[Photo via Flickr user redlegsfan21/CCSA 2.0]