I had to go to LAX three times this weekend to pick up and drop off some friends, and while I was there, I saw a few flashing signs noting some of the terminal shifts that have taken place lately. What’s going on? This is all to make more room for Virgin’s expected expansion.

In short, most of the airlines in Terminal 3 are moving elsewhere so that Virgin America and V Australia can move in and grow. I spoke with Abby Lunardini at Virgin America, and she told me that they will only take three gates to start. I can’t imagine V Australia will need a full gate for their flights when they start this winter, but even if they do take one, that still leaves two empty gates for Virgin America to expand in to if they want.

So, here’s where everyone else is moving. AirTran moved to Terminal 6 on Sept 5 while Frontier moved on Sept 8. Spirit and Sun Country will also move to Terminal 6, though both airlines are reducing or eliminating flights to LAX in the coming months. Midwest will move to Terminal 4 with American. The latest LAX map reflects all these changes.

Alaska and Horizon will continue to operate out of the six gates on the west side of Terminal 3 (marked in blue on the map at left), but Virgin America and V Australia will now take three (maybe four if V Australia has its own) of the six gates on the east side (marked in red on the map at left).

Virgin America says that they are “planning to update the space and help re-establish views of the runway and cityscape.” That’s what will happen before they move in. They are also “working with LAWA on the Phase 2 renovation, which will focus on creating a more guest-facing experience using innovative and sustainable design principles (with a bit of a retro twist back to the terminal’s original 1961 design). Now that’s something I’d love to see, but I do wonder how much effort Virgin America should be putting into this when they need to focus on running their business.

The move to Terminal 3 for expansion purposes isn’t a bad idea with everyone else reducing service at LAX, but I am curious to see how they use the new gate space. They act like they’re in expansion mode, but it was recently announced that they’d be operating charters for Myrtle Beach Direct Air. Abby tells me that they’re in an 18 month agreement on that one. It’s surprising that they don’t have a place within their branded operation to put that airplane, but it could be telling about the state of the business right now. So where will we see them use their new gate? They’ve talked about Miami and Chicago/O’Hare flights, but nothing has been announced. They could also try and connect the dots by flying to Vegas, though that’s a pretty crowded market. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.

Virgin America has yet to move in, and I’m still waiting to hear a final date from the airline I’ve now been told they’ll switch at the end of October. I’ll keep you posted.

American’s Pilot Fighting for Compensation Restoration Once Again
Once again, American’s pilots are fighting for “compensation restoration,” but take a look and you’ll see a very flimsy and inaccurate argument.

Frontier Gets Another DIP Option
A couple weeks ago, it was questionable whether Frontier would find any financing. Now they have a second offer to help.

Delta Adds Wi-Fi, Cancels Freedom Air Flying
Yesterday, Delta said it would add wi-fi to its entire fleet, but also announced that it would be ending its regional agreement with Freedom Air.

Southwest’s Fee-Fighting Marketing Efforts
Southwest has really gone all out to promote its “no-fee” strategy. They’ve even brought in the Super Heroes. But will it work?

Northwest Writes Off Midwest Investment
Northwest has decided to write off its investment in Midwest. Is this an ominous sign for the little airline or is it just a clean-up exercise before Delta comes in?

I have more from NBTA on BNET this week including discussions with both ANA and Lufthansa.

Frontier Receives DIP Financing from Perseus
I never thought we’d see it happen, but I’ve now been proven wrong. Frontier picked up $75 million to help them restructure and exit bankruptcy.

Continental’s Flat Seat Business Decision
It’s a large investment, so it has to be done right. Continental took a lot into account when deciding how to go flat in BusinessFirst.

Delta and Air Canada CEOs Talk to the Crowd at NBTA
NBTA had its big airline CEO roundtable yesterday, and Air Canada’s Montie Brewer combined with Delta’s Richard Anderson to talk shop and answer questions.

Emirates and the A380
Emirates picked up its first A380 this week, and with 57 more in the pipeline, the airline has big plans for the future.

Chatting with Star Alliance Members ANA and Lufthansa
I had the chance to sit with both ANA and Lufthansa at NBTA this week. What do they have in store for the US market?

I know I mentioned it before, but I thought it worth mentioning again that I’m now the airline blogger for BNET. My posts on Cranky are primarily focused on the frequent (or not so frequent) flier, but over on BNET, I get into more on airline management. Since I know that the last thing you want is to have to check two different places to see what I’m writing about, I thought I’d do a couple things to make this easier to find my content.

First, I’ve started using Google site search. Now anytime you search for something on Cranky in the upper right hand corner search box, it will also return results from BNET if there’s a better match for what you’re looking for. Cool, huh?

Second, I’m going to start posting every Saturday a summary of the previous week’s posts in BNET. If you’re interested, head on over and check out the full posts. If not, well, no big deal. Since today is the 4th of July, I’m not posting a regular post today. So, I thought I’d kick off my first week of this effort by posting a day early. Usually, you’ll still see my regular number of weekly posts with this bonus summary on Saturdays.

Monday, June 30
Midwest Facing Pay Cuts, Fleet Cuts, Layoffs
Midwest Airlines is facing some massive cuts in flying and employee pay right now. What will the future hold for these little guys?

Tuesday, July 1
Mesa Air Group Releases Delayed Second Quarter Earnings
Mesa announced a profit in its very-delayed 2nd quarter earnings release, but thanks to a settled lawsuit, all is not as rosy as that may sound.

Wednesday, July 2
Frontier Loses $22 Million in May
Bankrupt airlines have to report their finances monthly, and Frontier’s May was a very ugly one.

Thursday, July 3
Allegiant’s Incredible 94% Load Factor
Allegiant posted a fairly amazing 94% load factor in June. How is that even possible?

Poor Frontier. When they look out their windows, they must see Canyon Blue-colored vultures circling the premises. There’s no question that Southwest is going in for the kill. This week, Southwest said it would once again pump up its Denver flying.

First, here are the details. On June 4, Southwest will add an eighth daily nonstop between Denver and Vegas. The airline will also start twice daily service between Denver and both Portland and Indianapolis. On August 23, San Antonio gets a second flight from Denver.

The Southwest route map from Denver is starting to look quite similar to the Frontier map. Really, the big cities are mostly covered and now Southwest is getting into the secondary ones. To compound the problem, Frontier also announced this week that it would be terminating its contract with Republic to do some regional flying for them. That means they will no longer serve Missoula, Sioux City, Jacksonville, Little Rock, Tulsa, and former mini-hub Memphis. None of those are cities to which Southwest flies nonstop from Denver, so that means Frontier will only have even MORE exposure to the airline. The Republic service must have been an unbelievably poor performer for Frontier to want to ditch it that quickly.

This effectively leaves Lynx and its small fleet of Q400s (they launched Durango the same day this Southwest release came out) to keep the airline away from Southwest, but that’s not going to really cut it. Sadly, Frontier’s time may be up soon.

The airline is in bankruptcy, very low on cash, and looking for funding. With Southwest moving in heavily on Frontier’s only stronghold, I think it’s going to be tough to find someone willing to pour money into the airline. It’s sad, because I really like flying Frontier, but I just don’t know how they can get out of this mess.

It’s been a heck of a week. Nice of Frontier to cap it off with a Chapter 11 filing last night, huh? I’m a little nervous about this one. They say they filed because the credit card processor increased the holdback significantly. It’s no surprise. With all these other airlines going under, the credit card guys are getting nervous that they’ll be left holding the bag again, so they want more of a cushion. Meanwhile, that means Frontier had to throw together a bankruptcy filing and now hope they can find Debtor-in-Possession (DIP). If they can, then they’ll reorganize. If they can’t, well, they’ll join the rest of the guys in the graveyard. For now, nothing changes while they sort things out. We’ll see what happens.

So I say let’s forget this crap for now. I’m ending the week on a lighter note. I’m very sad to report that the Playmobil Security Checkpoint is no longer available on Amazon. This is a bummer, because it provided some pretty impressive inspiration for the 47 customer reviews. These are definitely worth a read.

Some of the highlights . . .

“I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up.”

“I especially appreciated the enclosed signed photo of Michael Chertoff and his letter explaining how necessary it is to start educating today’s youth early with toys like these, especially as their elders just don’t seem to be taking the whole thing seriously”

“I applaud Playmobile for attempting to provide us with the tools we need to teach our children to unquestioningly obey the commands of the State Security Apparatus, but unfortunately, this product falls short of doing that. There’s no brown figure for little Josh to profile, taser, and detain? Where are all the frightened plastic Heartlanders pointing at the brown figure as they whisper “terrorist?” Where are the hippy couple figures being denied boarding passes? And shouldn’t someone be forcing a mother figure to drink her own breast milk?”

“Unfortunately, this toy comes short in a few areas:
1) It does not show that if you’re rich, you don’t have to wait in line for hours. If you can travel first class, you get your own fast-track screening. Too bad the terr’ists have plenty of Saudi and Pakistani cash and can easily travel first class should they want to. They should have included another screening set in the box.
2) It does not come with the 300 tired-looking playmobils you would need to show the passengers waiting in line behind the screening area. “

“I wish this toy had been around when I was a child so that we might have learned important life lessons rather than the fluffy sugar-coated false utopia of Rainbow Bright and Friends.”

Come to think of it, this may not really be much of a lighter note after all. Ugh. I’m taking the weekend off this week. See you back here on Monday.

Frontier really is putting a lot of effort into Denver these days. Its new startup regional airline Lynx came out with its next eight cities, and every one will be served from Denver. Not surprising, of course. These new routes are interesting ones, and they’re a departure from the airline’s traditional path made possible by the introduction of the 70 seat Q400 turboprop. I’d say we can divide these routes into two parts, the Rockies and the Heartland.

In the Rockies, you’ll see flights from Denver to Colorado Springs, Aspen, Durango, and Grand Junction. My guess is that you won’t see too many local passengers on these flights. No, these are designed for people who want to connect in Denver to get some skiing done. Actually, they start in the summer, so skiing will have to wait.

The other ones are Fargo, Bozeman, Missoula, and Jackson Hole. These will probably have some more local traffic, but they’ll take strong connecting traffic as well. These are all part of the Heartland that Northwest has ruled over for so many years. Though to be fair, this is probably going to take more away from United and Delta which fly to these cities from Denver and Salt Lake, respectively.

In addition to the Lynx flying, the airline is beefing up the number of mainline flights to several destinations. Yup, keep strengthening that Denver hub . . . . It looks like these new flights will come at the expense of flights to West Palm Beach and Baton Rouge as well as Fort Myers and Jacksonville during the summer months.

Overall, I think these are pretty good moves. The airline is trying to hide from Southwest, and this will help. Until Southwest picks up some smaller aircraft, you won’t see them going to these cities. So for now, Frontier can bring down “really high” fares in most of these cities more toward the “marginally high” fare levels that will still make them money. If there are enough passengers to go around, this will probably work out well for them.

I know I didn’t get to it last week, but I couldn’t let Southwest’s massive schedule change go by without at least a passing mention. For those who missed it, Southwest decided to cut 57 flights and add 40 new ones beginning May 10. You math whizzes out there might notice that means they’re ending up with 17 fewer flights. I’d say that might be a good thing since demand has been lightening up.

If there’s one place that’s benefiting here, it’s Denver. The Mile High City will get 18 new flights including 15 to 6 brand new cities. Which cities, you ask? Well, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Raleigh/Durham, San Antonio, San Jose, and St Louis will all get nonstops. As you might have guessed, this is bad news for Frontier. They fly to five of those six cities, and they’re going to be hurting. Here’s a comparison with the number of flights offered on these new routes from Denver:

	Southwest	Frontier	United
Los Angeles	5	7	11
Philadelphia	2	2	3
Raleigh/Durham	1	0	1
St. Louis	3	3	5
San Antonio	1	3	5
San Jose	3	3	6

As you can see, United clearly maintains a large schedule advantage, but Southwest and Frontier are pretty close. This is just on top of the markets Southwest has already launched in the last year or so that sit on top of Frontier. It looks like they’re going for the jugular here. Kind of funny to see an airline that was in the same position 30 years ago turn around and do it to someone else.

Obviously, to fly these new flights, they’ve had to get the planes from somewhere else. They haven’t actually cut a single route, but they’ve cut frequencies in a bunch of markets. Some of these are mostly inconsequential, like Las Vegas to Phoenix going from 18 to 17 flights a day, but some routes are getting cut in half. Orlando to Detroit, for example, goes from 2 flights per day to 1. Some of the cuts are seasonal, so for example, a lot of Florida markets get cut for the summer while the Pacific Northwest gains a couple.

Overall, it seems like a pretty good move on their part. I am curious about the Denver strategy, however. They either must be seeing something they like in the trends over there or they’ve decided that it’s time to go after their prey and hope that things improve if they’re successful.

If you’d like to see all the changes, check out this PDF.

I’m baaaaaaack. Miss me?

If it’s the end of December, it’s time for Christmas in Indiana. This is my third year having traveled back to spend the long weekend with my fiancee’s family and once again, we decided to split the flying on one airline on the way out and another on the way back.

On the eastbound trip, I was cautiously excited to give Frontier a shot. It was $250.99 all-in per person, and though that was a little more than we could have found on other airlines, I liked flying Frontier back in July and wanted to fly them again. I say I was “cautiously” excited, because you may remember the nightmares of travelers stuck in Denver last year after the major snowstorm. Fortunately, we had none of those issues and the flights were excellent.

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December 21, 2007
Frontier #144 Lv Los Angeles (LAX) 625a Arr Denver (DEN) 944a
LAX: Gate 39, Runway 24L, Dept :17L
DEN: Gate A38, Runway 35L, Arr :09L
Aircraft: N947FR, Airbus A319-111, Maya the Jaguar, 100% Full
Seat: 11A
Flight Time: 1h47m

Since it was the Friday before Christmas, we figured we’d need to get to the airport really early to navigate around the inexperienced travelers that come out of the woodwork at this time of year. With a 625a flight that meant a very early wake up call. We pulled up to the curb at 5a and saw no lines in our terminal. It took 10 minutes to get through security thanks to a couple of pokey people in front of us, but then we sat at the gate for awhile. They boarded the plane early, and that was good because the terminal was really cold for some reason. It seemed like everyone was onboard early, but we just sat there for awhile. The captain came on and said there were a couple planes pushing in the alley behind us so we couldn’t go. When we did push out, we ended up sitting short of the taxiway for some time. I got a little restless since I knew we didn’t have the longest connection time in DEN.

The captain finally came on and said that there was a traffic jam at LAX and we would have to wait. He said something about “the lovely air traffic control system you’ve heard so much about lately.” I found out later that LAX was experiencing 30 minute air traffic control delays. Strange.

Once airborne, we climbed into a beautiful smog-less morning in the LA Basin, washed clean by several days of rain. At left, you can see a 757 climbing off the south runways in front of Palos Verdes and Catalina in the distance. The captain said that we wouldn’t need to worry about connections because we had an excellent tailwind that would get us in almost on time. After watching the view for a few minutes, I turned back to the TV.

Frontier has LiveTV like JetBlue, but they only have 24 channels instead of JetBlue’s 36. They also charge you $5 for the pleasure unlike JetBlue, but I had no problem paying for it. I watched Sportscenter for awhile and then flipped around for a few minutes before it was already time to come in for a landing. They had come by with a drink and granola bar service, so they passed through to clean things up early thanks to the captain’s warning that it would be a rough ride on the way in.

It turned out that the ride wasn’t very rough at all, and we had a beautiful view of the front range of the Rockies as we landed from the south. Snow was due later on in the day, but it was nothing but brilliant blue sky when we arrived.We made our way off the plane into the airport that took several hours of our time last July. Fortunately, it was a much quicker visit this time. A short walk to the east end of the terminal led us to our gate, and our flight had yet to start boarding.

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December 21, 2007
Frontier #618 Lv Denver (DEN) 1025a Arr Indianapolis (IND) 250p
DEN: Gate A51, Runway 34R, Dept :27L
IND: Gate C3, Runway 5R, Arr :15L
Aircraft: N917FR, Airbus A319-111, Doc the Snowy Owl, 100% Full
Seat: 11B
Flight Time: 1h56m

The plane was apparently late getting to the gate because the flight before it was delayed. So it took some time to get it cleaned and really nobody seemed to be in any sort of hurry. When we did start boarding, it was slow and leisurely, and we sat on the gate for a long time. No announcement was made, but as I saw breathless passengers stumble on to the plane over the next several minutes, I realized we must have been waiting for late connections. That was no big deal for us, and I sat and watched tv.

Once we were in the air, I flipped through the channels and landed on a guilty pleasure, the Game Show Network. As I sat there watching Rayetta (you can see her name tag at left proving that I couldn’t make up a name like that) win at Card Sharks, I realized that I don’t want wireless internet.

If I have internet access in front of me, I’ll end up blogging, checking work email, and doing all the other things that monopolize my day (and night) more often than not. I know you can say that I can turn it off and ignore it, but I’m not like that. If it’s there, I’ll use it and regret it later on. So as I flew Frontier watching a game show I probably haven’t seen since my youth (though this was the pre-Bob Eubanks version with which I grew up), I discovered how incredibly relaxing it could be. If I had internet access, it would be just like I was anywhere else. In an increasingly connected life, I like being forced to unplug.

They gave us a choice of Doritos or SunChips (I took the latter) as we made our way over the foggy Plains below. The less common east wind in IND meant we got to land to the east, a great treat indeed. That meant we didn’t have to circle around Indy, and more importantly, it left us even closer to the distant terminal on the east side when we landed.

When it came time land, we found ourselves in a low fog in IND from about 5,000 ft up. We couldn’t see anything until just a few seconds before we landed, but it was a smooth return to the earth as we slowly drifted toward the end of the runway.

I could see the new terminal on the left, and it looks like it’s coming along nicely. Hopefully by this time next year we’ll be landing there instead. After getting off the plane, we headed out for a nice long weekend in the Circle City.

Tomorrow, I’ll have the story of our insanely long return journey involving 2 planes, 3 flights, and four states.

The World Series is over, and now we have four long months of cold and darkness before the glory of spring training begins once again. My Diamondbacks fell a little short of the series this year, but they certainly exceeded just about anyone’s expectations. Nice job, guys. I can’t wait to see you again next Spring.

But the World Series is not just a time for celebration in Boston and sadness in Denver. It’s also a time for business to exploit your love of the game. Airlines are, of course, no exception.

I must admit, though, that I like what Frontier decided to do here. As you probably know, Frontier is based in Denver and almost all of its non-Mexico flying goes through the city. If you watched the Series, you probably also saw the big billboard at the stadium that they get as part of their package as official airline of the Rockies. So obviously, they wouldn’t be happy with the outcome of the Series. To make that quite clear, they took out print ads saying . . .

“Now you know why we don’t fly to Boston. Thanks for the best season ever.”

Ok, so that’s clearly not why they don’t fly to Boston, they actually pulled out a couple years back, but I like this kind of advertising for the hometown. There’s something to be said about trying to truly be a part of the hometown like that. It may not result in people immediately shunning United to fly Frontier, but it still sets the right tone and puts a smile on a lot of sad Rockies’ fans.

Meanwhile, over in Boston, Southwest decided to support the Red Sox Nation with a bonus. Now, I guess I should say “over in New England” since Southwest doesn’t actually fly TO Boston, but they have Manchester on the north side and Providence on the south.

I’m not sure how many people got this, but a reader in Massachusetts forwarded along an email with a play on Take Me Out to the Ballgame’s “1-2-3 strikes you’re out.”

Congrats to the 2007 World Champs! We’re stepping up to the plate in honor of this great achievement in baseball history by pitching 3 Rapid Rewards bonus credits your way! Victory—how sweet it is!

That’s a pretty good deal, especially since you don’t have to do anything for it! I wonder if they only sent it to those in Massachusetts or if they sent it out to the broader New England audience.

I’m guessing other airlines have gotten in on the act as well, but I wouldn’t receive any of the offers living here in LA. (Though that may change in the next couple years with Joe Torre coming to town.)

Has anyone else received anything?