This trip wouldn’t be complete, however, without a trip report. Allegiant picked up the tab for the flights, so I don’t have exact amounts. I had hoped to fly out of Long Beach both ways, but there wasn’t a flight early enough on the way out so I had to go to LAX. In fact, my talk was originally early enough that I had to do the 6a flight on Southwest. When my talk was pushed back 30 minutes, they moved me an hour later. On the way home, I could still fly back to Long Beach. Both flights were uneventful.

On the way out, I got to LAX at 6a and was thrilled to find the security line inside the terminal. Still, it took me about 20 minutes to get through. My new laptop case was TSA-friendly, as promised, so that was a nice change of pace. By the time I got through, I went over to the cramped gate 2 for the flight.

From the looks of the gate area, this flight was going to be full. It was. We boarded on time and I grabbed a window seat on the right side. This airplane unfortunately had the old seats. I was hoping to try out the new Evolve ones.

From my seat, I saw a very un-Southwest site. There was a mountain of bags outside the window, all with a pink “transfer” sticker on them. Point to point? Not quite. The flight attendants were friendly but were smart enough not to get too cutesy at this early hour. They took drink orders before we pushed back so that they would be ready to go once we were in the air on our short flight.

We took off into the shallow marine layer and you could tell these pilots were enjoying themselves. We climbed quickly and had some sharp turns in there to get us on our course to Vegas. A couple bags of peanuts and pretzels later, we were landing in Vegas. (Unfortunately, it was the lightly salted peanut’s turn instead of honey roasted.)

I was off the plane quickly and on my way to New York, New York, where the event was being held.

I stayed the night in Vegas so I could join the airport folks for dinner and a show (Ka, which is kind of awesome). The next morning, I headed to the airport for my flight back to Long Beach. The line of cars getting into the terminal area was massive. I was reminded that it was mostly cabs coming in to pick up people coming to town – Friday in Vegas. I hopped out of the car as soon as we were near the terminal.

I had checked in the day before but I didn’t have a seat and none were on the seat map except for Even More Space seats and I didn’t want to pay the $15 for the short flight. So I checked in again at the airport, and it just printed out a boarding pass with no seat, saying to go to the gate.

As usual, the security line was insane. It took probably 20 minutes to get through, however, because they move those lines pretty well. The boarding pass said gate D18, but when I walked by D16, it said Long Beach on the board so I stopped there. The agent said no, that was next door and this flight was JFK. Ok.

I went next door and asked for a seat. They had me in a middle in Even More Space. I said, “I assume there are no windows open, right?” She said there actually was one but it didn’t have the extra legroom. I was fine with that. (JetBlue’s normal generous legroom is more than enough for me.)

So I grabbed seat 21F and boarded.

This flight was packed, and it was hot when I boarded. Fortunately it cooled down. We were ready to go on time, but the captain came on and said we’d be delayed 3 or 4 minutes due to “stuff.” Seriously. Really helpful announcement. Despite what the JetBlue flight status showed, we actually didn’t push back until about 15 minutes late. With LiveTV to watch, it was only mildly annoying.

We taxied out to what for me was a rare departure off runway 1R. We bounced out along the desert until we climbed above the heat for the short flight home. JetBlue has an express service so I just had a bottle of water and I passed on the snacks.

It was a very hazy day in the LA Basin, as we descended, but I had still a great view of Lake Arrowhead. Final approach was surprisingly bouncy. I was half expecting a go-around, actually, but he ended up putting us down almost halfway down the runway. We used all of what was left before taxiing back to the gate.

One of the perks of being at the back in Long Beach is that I was able to come down the back stairs. For a dork like me, that’s a great way to end a trip.

The DOT had four slot pairs to give away at National as part of the recent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization. As a quick refresher, National has a rule that prevents any flights longer than 1,250 miles from operating at the close-in airport. About a decade ago, Congress started allowing exemptions, primarily so Congressmen could fly nonstop to get to their home district (my interpretation, at least).

As part of the reauthorization bill this year, eight more slot pairs (one takeoff and one landing) were added to the pool. Four of them were meant for the big incumbent airlines at the airport. These airlines could convert one normal slot to one long haul. Here’s what they did.

• American will start a daily flight to its Los Angeles “cornerstone”
• Delta will add a second daily flight to its Salt Lake hub
• United will start a daily flight to its San Francisco hub
• US Airways will start a daily flight to San Diego

With the stage set, there were four more to give away either to new entrants or limited incumbents. There was a lot of competition for these, so the results weren’t easy to predict. Let’s start with the losers.

• Air Canada wanted to fly to Vancouver, but it’s a small, highly seasonal market.
• Alaska wanted to fly to San Diego, but that was its second choice. Once US Airways announced it would fly the route, this became a tough sell.
• Frontier wanted to fly to Colorado Springs, but that’s a very small market and would have been hard to justify.
• JetBlue wanted to fly to Austin, but that was also a second choice and Southwest put that up as its first choice.
• Sun Country wanted to fly to Vegas, but there are already a lot of flights in that market and Sun Country couldn’t connect people anywhere from there either.

Each of those had a big flaw, especially when compared to the four that seemed to deserve the flights far more. Incredibly, those four are actually the ones that won. Here they are.

• Alaska gets one daily flight to Portland. Portland is the airline’s second hub and has a decent-sized local market. Alaska will not only bring good service to the locals, which are largely loyal to Alaska, but it also adds good connecting options for a lot of small cities. This one seemed like the most obvious winner to me.
• JetBlue gets one daily flight down to San Juan. This one is a great move since JetBlue has been building up its presence in San Juan. This gives nonstop service to a place that will benefit from it, and it also opens up new connecting opportunities into the rest of the Caribbean. I like this route and how it fits into JetBlue’s strategy quite nicely.
• Southwest gets one daily flight to Austin. Nobody flies to Austin from National today and if anyone can serve it well, it’s Southwest. That’s why Southwest was obvious for this route while JetBlue was a longshot. It’s no surprise that Southwest won this.
• Virgin America gets one daily flight to San Francisco. Even though San Francisco will already get its first nonstop to National from United, that certainly won’t be a low fare service. Besides, Virgin America was the only applicant with no service to National, so you had to figure that the airline would get a foot in the door. The airline actually wanted two pairs, but the DOT rightfully shot that down and spread the wealth. This market should do well.

So, for once, I’ll say “good work, DOT.” Something tells me this praise won’t last very long.

If you’d like, you can read the full decision at regulations.gov.

What is one-way codesharing, you ask? It’s where Airline A places its code on the flights of Airline B, but Airline B doesn’t place it’s code on the flights of Airline A. Anyway, here’s what Robin had to say.

…if you look at what a lot of the costs really come with code-share, it really comes around when you are placing your code on another carrier, because you now get into an exhaustive list of disclosure requirements. You are providing a lot of training for your staff or crew members at JetBlue, whether that is in the call centers or ticket desks, and we have been careful to avoid two-way code. We have started doing it in interline where we have sizable interline partnerships and we see benefits that take that to the next level, which has been one-way code, which puts the onus on our partner to manage that complexity.

JetBlue is an increasingly popular participant in this kind of arrangement. The airline recently announced codeshares with both Japan Air Lines (JAL) and Emirates. In these codeshares, you can buy a ticket on, say, JAL from Tokyo to Buffalo, but you can’t do the same on JetBlue. Why not? Because it’s a real pain.

JAL, as a longtime flag carrier and member of oneworld, is used to dealing with complex relationships like this. In fact, most global carriers deal with these types of situations every day. For JetBlue, it’s easier to sit on the sidelines and take advantage of the opportunity without having to add the complexity.

That means JAL needs to train its people on knowing JetBlue’s rules while JetBlue just has to carry passengers and bags that JAL delivers to JetBlue’s door.

I still don’t like codeshares, but I get why JetBlue does this. It means more traffic for JetBlue because of the way tickets are sold today. But it’s not enough of a benefit for JetBlue to want to put its code on the other airlines.

That makes some sense to me. I mean, nobody is thinking about flying JetBlue to far flung destinations, so if people saw flights on JetBlue to Japan, they’d probably be scratching their heads anyway. But for people in Japan, they certainly expect to be able to fly JAL to the US and that could very well include Buffalo.

The funny thing is that JAL already offers that with a codeshare with American, but now it can offer even more options with JetBlue as well. I’m not surprised to see this is how JetBlue views the world of codesharing and I bet we’ll see more of it down the road.

And then if you go over to JFK, just a little update. Of course, terminal five, we’re close to celebrating four years of really just optimum performance through that facility. We’re very close with the Port Authority of extending terminal five. We call it T5 International internally. It’s on the footprint of the former terminal six. Terminal six is — was not landmarked. It was obviously, as you know, originally there to support National Airlines decades ago. It is now a tarmac, and we are very hopeful that we will be breaking ground on an international arrival facility similar to what you see happening over at terminal four. There’s a lot of growth happening at Kennedy. We believe that having all of our operation under one roof — and again we will have Hawaiian Airlines in here very shortly — is really exciting.

This might not be breaking news, but it’s the first time I’ve really thought about this. An international facility at Terminal 5 would do wonders, wouldn’t it? Of course, it would allow JetBlue’s own international arrivals to land at Terminal 5 instead of running a split operation today, but it can do much more than that.

JetBlue has already announced that its partner Hawaiian will begin flying out of T5 when it comes to JFK. Hawaiian, however, is the only partner that can do that right now. American is certainly too large and it has its own new facility there anyway. Cape Air, the only other domestic partner, doesn’t fly to JFK. All the other partners are international, though I do wonder if Aer Lingus could move today because of its pre-clearance. I’m not sure. But, if JetBlue builds a new international wing on the footprint of the old Terminal 6, that opens a whole new opportunity, and it comes at a good time. Here’s JetBlue’s corner of JFK:

Remember that Delta is actively working to take over a huge chunk of Terminal 4 as a replacement for Terminal 3. With that, all existing airlines in Terminal 4 will be pushed to the eastern concourse, I believe. And you know which airlines are included there?

Aer Lingus, El Al, Emirates, LOT, Singapore, South African, TAM, and Virgin Atlantic are all both partners with JetBlue and tenants in Terminal 4. Given the opportunity to make connections simple and move to a brand new facility, you would think that many of these would jump at the chance. Sure that might not include airlines like Virgin Atlantic, which have invested a significant amount of money in facilities, but others don’t quite have those deep ties.

That would create a monster of an opportunity. Keeping all those flights in the same terminal reduces minimum connecting times and allows airlines to schedule tighter connections. For an airline like El Al, it could help make connections more competitive by reducing total transit time. The shorter the travel time, the higher those flights show up in reservation system displays. That could be a big deal for some of these airlines, which might be at a disadvantage versus other airlines that can connect within the US on their own flights.

I haven’t seen a ton of information on this Terminal 5 expansion yet, but it seems like a great plan for both JetBlue and its partners.

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]

At La Guardia, there were two bundles of 8 slot pairs being auctioned off. That means that two airlines will get the right to operate 8 takeoffs and 8 landings per day at good times. The bidders had to be either new entrants or airlines with very small presences at the airport already. One of the winners has been officially announced . . . WestJet.

That’s right. Those crazy Canucks are swooping in to fly 8 daily trips to La Guardia. It’s not a surprise that WestJet was interested. The rumors were that WestJet’s proposed partnership with Southwest ended over something closely related to La Guardia. See, WestJet wanted to be able to partner with multiple airlines in order to help feed its network. This was important at La Guardia, where Southwest couldn’t add much. Southwest supposedly didn’t want to see WestJet partner with anyone else. The partnership ended so that WestJet would be free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment, er, um, multiple partnerships.

Earlier this year, Delta launched an interline partnership with WestJet. I imagine we might see it get a little cozier now that Delta will have so many flights that could feed WestJet. Someone is going to need to fill those 8 flights, most if not all of which are undoubtedly bound for Toronto.

But what about the other eight? That’s a bit more of a mystery. Though it hasn’t officially been announced, Bloomberg reports that JetBlue won that bid. It also is said to have picked up the 8 slot pairs down at Washington/National as well. That’s a big win for the Blue Crew.

JetBlue’s interest should be no surprise. It already runs just shy of a dozen daily flights out of La Guardia to Ft Lauderdale, Orlando, and West Palm Beach. At National, it has nine with flights to Boston, Ft Lauderdale, and Orlando. This will help the airline expand its reach at those airports with a nice chunk of new slots.

So is anything surprising about this whole thing? You bet. The most surprising thing is that Southwest didn’t win anything. It has a gajillion* dollars in the bank (*rough estimate) and certainly could have outbid anyone if it wanted. It has made serving big cities a priority lately as a way to get its customers wherever they need to go in the US.

Southwest fought its way into La Guardia when it got 8 slot pairs there to start flights to Baltimore and Chicago. It gained more when it acquired AirTran, which has about 20 slot pairs. It acquired its first beachhead at National with AirTran’s 12 slots there. So you would think it would have been hungry for more, and in fact, it has expressed great interest in the past. It just somehow got outbid this time.

So, Southwest fans won’t be thrilled, but JetBlue lovers should be. There will be more JetBlue flights coming soon, assuming the deal gets done. And Canadians can rejoice that they will have another option to get to New York.

Now we just have to wait for all the “i’s” to be dotted and “t’s” crossed. Oh yeah, and we’re still waiting for final governmental approval in a couple areas. But things are starting to shape up nicely.

If you want to follow this closely, head on over to Things in the Sky. Dan Webb is keeping a close eye on this.

[Original photo via Flickr user Bob n Renee/CC 2.0]

We were staying right near Santa Rosa Airport, so we thought about flying on the LAX nonstop on Horizon, but it was double the price. Not worth it, especially since we could pay half and fly from Long Beach instead. Tickets were bought on September 5 for $181.40 each into Oakland and back from SFO because it was cheaper (even with the small drop charge on the car).

I got to the airport a little early and my wife met me there later. I parked myself in front of the always-packed wine bar and watched the beginning of game 5 in the Dbacks-Brewers series. As a die-hard Dbacks fan since day one, I was very glad to be flying JetBlue so I could continuously watch the game on my way up.

Boarding started about 45 minutes before departure, and we were the last couple people on. (Had to wait for the inning to end, of course.) There was plenty of bin space despite the full flight, and I quickly flipped on the game. Not sure how I got lucky, but there was some glitch that had the TVs working in the “F” seats without interruption. PA announcements didn’t freeze the picture, and we didn’t even have to endure the long “welcome on board” video after takeoff. The only downside was that my wife’s TV (and many others around her) didn’t work. The tried a “partial reset” but it didn’t work. Go figure.

We weaved through what seemed like a busy day of traffic in the LA Basin and landed in Oakland on time. This felt like a fast flight since I was riveted to the game the whole time. I even made my wife wait a couple minutes until the inning was over to get off. Then we ran to the car and listened as the Dbacks lose a great one in extra innings. Sad, but I’m really glad I got to watch what ended up being a great game.

On Sunday morning, we headed back down to SFO, and I got a little nervous as we sat in fog on our way down. SFO + fog = suck, but not that day. It cleared out nicely and we were right on time.

At the TSA checkpoint, they were using the backscatter machines. I’d used them before, and it doesn’t bug me, but I figured this would be a good time to suffer through a TSA pat down since I hadn’t done one yet. I opted out and was told to stand to the side. They let my wife go right through the metal detector (and nobody else). Maybe pregnant women aren’t sent through the advanced imaging machines?

The worst part was waiting and then being grilled. It took about 10 minutes before a guy finally came over. He asked why I was opting out, and I told him I didn’t want to do it. He pushed me again and asked why. I couldn’t believe I was getting this kind of pressure, and just told him that I didn’t know much about the effects of the machine and wanted to get a pat down instead. He marked something in a book, apparently explaining why I opted out, and then we went on.

Like I said, that was the worst part. The pat down was incredibly thorough with long, lingering strokes over all parts of the body, but the guy doing it was very professional and explained everything before he did it. Probably the most invasive part was when he ran his fingers inside my waist band, but again, didn’t really phase me. After, he told me to sit while he tested his gloves for what I assume was trace explosive residue. That was it, and we were off to the gate.

The gate agents were apparently in a very happy mood as they first congratulated a couple (via the electronic sign) that I assume got married. Their electronic boarding announcements were also punctuated with emoticons.

The guy taking boarding passes wasn’t nearly as friendly as the signs were. I asked him who Jeremy and Kerry (the couple receiving congrats) were, and he grumbled “I have no idea. This isn’t even my flight. I just came over here to help them out.” Ok.

As you can see, we got out early but landed late. What happened? It’s fleet week in San Francisco so they’ve restricted airspace to make room for all the demonstrations (Blue Angels and all). So we couldn’t take off from the usual runway 1L and instead had to taxi all the way out to 28L. That’s why we were delayed.

The flight was completely uneventful with beautiful views the whole way. My only complaint was around the TVs. As usual, the second we took off, they went into a long-winded welcome video. Then, as we sat off the coast, we couldn’t get a signal. There were a lot of agitated guys on the plane as the early NFL games were finishing up. Maybe 20 minutes into the flight, we got the TV signal back and a collective sigh of relief was heard.

After the early games were over, I flipped back to baseball. My favorite team after the Dbacks actually is the Brewers (picked them up when I moved to Chicago back in 2004, for some reason). So I found myself in the odd situation of rooting for the team I was rooting against just two days earlier.

We landed and taxied back to the south boarding lounge for the very last time. That’s right. The old JetBlue gates are being retired this week in favor of . . . more trailers. Seriously. They had to clear out the current one to build the new concourse, so there’s a brand new trailer park that you’ll probably see if you fly out of Long Beach on JetBlue in the next year or so.

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.

Carmageddon was supposed to result in epic gridlock thanks to the closing of the 405 freeway in a key spot between West LA and the San Fernando Valley. The freeway is being expanded and they had to knock down a bridge as part of that project. That required a weekend-long shutdown. The public awareness was tremendous, and in the end, the freeway reopened way early and there was no gridlock. Kudos certainly go to all the authorities involved for getting the word out so well that people stayed local this weekend.

But many of the warnings in advance were that there would be terrible gridlock. Every electronic road sign on every freeway flashed closure info. They even trotted out temporary signs. The local media had been covering it for weeks, and when it was given the name “Carmageddon,” it really stuck. Meanwhile, there had been a few efforts to figure out ways around the mess including discounted helicopter flights and things like that. JetBlue decided to jump in on Wednesday by offering two roundtrip flights between Burbank and Long Beach for cheap. Really cheap.

The flights were scheduled for Saturday afternoon and would cost only $4 all-in each way, $5 if you wanted to spring for extra legroom. Get it? 4 or 5 = 405. The flights sold out in less than three hours. In fact, JetBlue says that this was the fastest selling promotion it has ever launched.

Clearly JetBlue didn’t expect to make a profit on these flights alone. Each flight generated $642 in revenue. That’s enough to buy just over 200 gallons of fuel, and I bet the flight used even more than that. But that wasn’t the point. This was all about generating exposure, or as JetBlue said, “the value we are receiving beyond the publicity is earning new customers and educating the community on about all of the cities we serve. Our research shows that once a customer tries us, they become loyal fans!” If that’s the case, then this worked wonders.

The response was immediate. Within minutes, news vans had swarmed JetBlue’s operations in Burbank and Long Beach to cover the story. After so many weeks of covering the same boring stuff around the closure, this was a fun story that really hit the spot and was top story on several newscasts. The local coverage was priceless. JetBlue hasn’t been as visible in SoCal as it was during its early days, but this was a clear stand of solidarity with those who live here. JetBlue knows your pain, and JetBlue is going to try to relieve it and help you fly down to the beach.

Emails quickly flew through cyberspace – I had all kinds of friends sending me notes about this, asking if I’d be taking it. You might think that there could have been backlash from environmentalists decrying such a waste, but I saw none of that. In fact, environmentally-friendly transport lovers jumped on the bandwagon. A biking group called Wolfpack Hustle put together a challenge to see who could get from a location near Burbank Airport to the Long Beach Aquarium the fastest – someone who flew or someone who biked. The bikes won considering the drive time to the airport and the waiting time as well. That little wrinkle simply gave the story staying power. It was covered nonstop leading up to the flights. Of course, when the flights operated on Saturday, there was more coverage as well.

Even though this was a marketing coup, the idea didn’t come from marketing at all. According to JetBlue, it came from “a crewmember outside of the marketing department, and we ran with it!” I’m guessing it came from someone here in SoCal. JetBlue has a large presence with its Long Beach crew base, so it could have come from anyone, and hopefully they get a little thank you note, at the very least. There aren’t a lot of places where something like that could come together that quickly, but JetBlue is one of those places. This idea came up on Monday, was launched on Wednesday, and flew on Saturday.

On Saturdays, JetBlue has a thinner schedule in Burbank. One airplane comes in from JFK at 1118a and doesn’t leave for Vegas until 355p. So they stuck a roundtrip to Long Beach in there while it was on the ground. The next flight lands from Vegas at 555p but doesn’t go back to New York until 920p. They slotted another roundtrip to Long Beach in there. All they needed were crews to fly the extra legs, but with a Long Beach crew base, I can’t imagine that was hard to find for a little flightseeing around SoCal.

JetBlue even went to the FAA to make sure that it wouldn’t have any trouble getting a clear flight path through crowded air space. No problem.

The result was a well-liked promotion that got the airline coverage all over the US and even around the world. Excellent move.