It’s been a busy year south of the US border with all three alliances trying to make big land grabs in Latin America. So far, it looks like Star Alliance and oneworld are doing the best with Skyteam coming in a sad third. But these alliance loyalties are not static, and we could see more changes soon.

Let’s start with a map showing in which countries each alliance has a presence. This assumes that all announced members actually become members and it doesn’t include non-alliance partnerships. (For example, Gol may work with American but it’s not part of oneworld.)

Now let’s think about some of the major changes that altered this map in recent months. The list is enormous.

• oneworld member Mexicana went under, leaving Aeromexico’s Skyteam presence as the only one in Mexico
• Avianca and TACA merged and then decided to join Star Alliance
• Copa decided to join Star Alliance
• Aerolineas Argentinas decided to join Skyteam
• LAN acquired AIRES to give it a presence in Colombia

And that’s all pretty recent. Crazy stuff, right? So now we see Star Alliance having a stranglehold on Central America now that TACA and Copa will be in the same alliance. LAN rules the southwest of the continent with Avianca-TACA making strides in the northwest. And then there’s Brazil.

All eyes are on the most important market in Latin America these days. The big player in the country, TAM, is currently part of Star Alliance, but there is plenty of speculation about what will happen after its merger with LAN is completed. Will LAN come to Star? Will TAM go to oneworld? Or will the airlines both keep their respective alliances? My money is on the latter, if they can figure out a way to walk that tightrope.

Then again, Star has given itself a little cushion here. If TAM goes to oneworld, then Star will have the option of trying to help Avianca grow its Brazilian subsidiary, if it thinks it’s necessary. And LAN might want to bring TAM into oneworld to try to push off American’s growing relationship with Gol, right? This is better than a Mexican soap opera.

The one thing we can all agree on now is that Skyteam is mostly left out of this game. Sure, Aeromexico is a part of Skyteam but that’s far from where this fight is taking place. It’s a different market entirely. And Aerolineas Argentinas? Yeah, that’s one mess of an airline. As a government-owned entity, it’s not going anywhere, but it’s not exactly the alliance prize of Latin America.

Latin America is booming and there are a handful of very well run airlines down there (most prominently, LAN). This is going to be a fascinating area to watch as alliances look to cement relationships to give the best coverage in the region.

Weak July Traffic Shows Allegiant Lost Altitude – BNET Headwinds
Allegiant saw weaker traffic numbers in July. It’s not what you expect from an airline that continues to find ways to fill more and more seats.

LAN-TAM Merger: U.S. Carriers Sweat The Fate of Alliance Partners – BNET Headwinds
LAN and TAM are merging, and everyone wants to know which alliance the combination will choose. Could it be both?

how to keep your flight attendant from jumping off the plane – Antibride
Admittedly a fluffy story, but it’s a light-hearted look at how to treat a flight attendant onboard (with some serious points).

JetBlue’s All-You-Can-Jet Turns Back to Twitter to Fill Seats – BNET Headwinds
It’s baaaackk. JetBlue’s All You Can Jet has returned and the airline is relying on Twitter to get the word out.

Flight Attendant Demands May Block Southwest’s Push Toward Bigger Planes – BNET Headwinds
I thought Southwest’s announcement about getting a larger plane was odd, but I then I started looking at the labor angle.

How to Fix LAX By Bringing Alliance Partners Together< - BNET Headwinds
I admit it’s a reach, but LAX won’t be able to spend much money and this could be a big improvement for the customer.

Well here we are with part two of my conversation with LAN (see part one here) and you’ll see at the end that we talk about the importance of Japan Air Lines to the South American airline. That’s particularly appropriate since JAL announced today that it would be sticking with oneworld. (see my piece on BNET) I’m sure there are a lot of sighs of relief down in Santiago today since, as you’ll see, JAL is an important partner for the airline.

Cranky: Will the San Francisco flight go beyond Lima?
Pablo: Yes. The plane is going to continue to Sao Paulo. We have a lot of demand there from companies and leisure traffic going to Brazil. But also it will connect with Santiago and Buenos Aires and most of the rest of South America; we fly to more than 50 cities.

Cranky: It’s an interesting hub in the middle of the night in Lima.
Pablo: We’re making some changes actually. We are working right now on what we’re calling internally, the double hub. The one that you flew was in the middle of the night, but we want to have another connection bank in the middle of the day, around noon, so we will have more alternatives for US passengers.

Cranky: Will Los Angeles have a flight that gets in during the day?
Pablo: Yes, we will have both.

Cranky: When it that starting?
Pablo: We are still working on that because there is a lot of work to be done. It should be probably by June or something like that. The same will happen from New York. The feedback is the same, they don’t want to stop in Lima in the middle of the night.

Cranky: I assume there’s not much you can say about the rumors about TAM and LAN potentially working together?
Pablo: Of course. That’s some very confidential information that I don’t even have. What I can tell you is what our CEO has already stated for the last couple years is that for LAN it’s strategic to be in Brazil. We have been working on different alternatives to have something similar to what we have in Peru, Argentina, and now Ecuador. About this rumor with TAM, no we don’t have any concrete information.

Cranky: I was wondering about that with Brazil. Is there a reason you haven’t started LAN Brazil? Are there too many regulatory reasons?
Pablo: Yes, there are a couple of reasons but one of the main ones is the legal structure. In Argentina or Peru, for example, the government helped us to create these companies with local investors. In Brazil it’s much more complicated, because you can’t do that. You can’t have external investors having most of the equity. So in this case, that’s the main reason. Of course, we’ve been evaluating alternatives. Brazil is almost the size of the rest of South America altogether, so for LAN it would almost double the size of the company when we go to Brazil, so we have to be very careful.

Cranky: I’m always interested to watch LAN in South America because you’re obviously the broadest airline down there in terms of covering the continent well. I’m very interested to see what TACA and Avianca are going to do together. I assume you pay attention to them closely?
Pablo: Yeah, definitely. They are an important player now more than before but actually it’s not very threatening to us. We have been dealing with a lot of competition down there. They are not exactly where we are in South America. We believe that we still have important strategic differentiations, and our business model is, I believe, very strong. Of course, we are always looking at the competition. We are realistic.

Cranky: Can we expect further expansion in the US? Are you looking at additional cities?
Pablo: This year we are expecting a lot of growth. For example, out of New York, we are growing our seats 25%. We are growing a lot but more in terms of consolidating our routes and more frequencies, especially for the corporate travelers. Plus this new gateway to San Francisco. Then we might look at expansion like we did a couple years ago to Toronto, the last gateway we opened before SFO. We might evaluate something like Montreal or Vancouver or Chicago but there is no specific project with a concrete date. We know the next cities in terms of traffic that are important are Washington, Chicago, Vancouver, and we’re always evaluating them.

Cranky: I know I’ve heard some people wondering about Washington.
Pablo: Yeah, last year we were almost there. We had everything ready to fly to Washington from Lima a year ago, more or less, but the crisis was much worse than what we expected, especially on the cargo side of the business and then we had to withdraw the project. We expect to fly to Washington in the middle term.

We never start an important route and then drop it. We always start and then we stay there. We work with the community to increase tourism and traffic. That’s probably why we take a little longer on starting projects like this, but I’m pretty sure we’ll go to daily flights out of San Francisco before we reduce capacity.

Cranky: One more question and then I’ll let you go. Oneworld has been in the news a lot lately. Are you guys involved in the package that American, British Airways, and Qantas have put together? Are you happy with oneworld?
Pablo: In general I would say that we are very happy. We are still, even though we’ve been growing double digits over the last 10 years, we are still one of the small brothers. Being part of the AAdvantage program has been very important because we can go with American or with Iberia in Europe. Oneworld has been working well for us. We don’t see any good reason to look for alternatives.

Now, if you see things happen with JAL and Delta and everything is going to be restructured in the next 1 to 2 years, of course we’ll be willing to evaluate things. In markets like the US, it’s a point we use a lot, to promote LAN as part of oneworld because it gives us more awareness as an important world class airline.

Cranky: Do you get much traffic from JAL?
Pablo: I hope they don’t leave. They bring quite an amount of clients to our routes from LA and now we expect to have them in San Francisco, so that’s something we are working on with them.

Cranky: Thanks again for taking the time to speak with me.
Pablo: It was very nice to talk to you.

It’s been awhile since I last put together an Across the Aisle interview. Sure, I’ve spoken with plenty of people, but I haven’t done the straight interview format lately. So, when I was contacted to see if I would be interested in talking to LAN’s VP of North America and Caribbean, Pablo Yunis, I was certainly interested to kick start this series again.

See, LAN just announced it would begin flying to San Francisco from Lima four times a week beginning July 1. LAN is also looking at growing elsewhere in the US and in Peru and Brazil. Beyond that, with oneworld having its share of issues in Asia, I thought it would be great to get a South American perspective on things.

Cranky: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. I’m really curious about the San Francisco route because Los Angeles has been on the network for years but San Francisco never has been, right?
Pablo: No, it’s the first time and we are very excited because we’ve been planning this for a very, very long time. We needed to grow in the US and flying directly to a very important gateway like SFO was a huge step for us.

Cranky: How did you determine this was the right time to fly to San Francisco?
Pablo: That’s a good question, because we’ve been planning this for a couple of years and we were seriously thinking about starting it up last year. With the crisis and especially the decreased demand in the cargo business, we put it on standby. In the end, we realized that it’s going to be good timing now because the demand has improved.

It’s a very important gateway because we are not only bringing clients to South America from the US but also from Canada and Asia on the same route. When you combine all those demands, and of course, there are no other carriers flying nonstop to South America, you see the opportunity.

Cranky: Are you taking new 767 deliveries or is this just taking the place of some other flying?
Pablo: We are receiving some 767s this year and also at the same time we are making some changes so we have some more availability in the US. There will be some growth this year that we didn’t expect a year ago.

Cranky: Is this a route, maybe Los Angeles too, that would see 787s? You’re taking delivery of them sooner now, right?
Pablo: The original plan was for 2013. Some rumors are on the news, because of what is happening with some Japanese carriers, we might have something sooner, but it’s not confirmed. I don’t have any dates or anything.

Cranky: Oh, so these are just rumors?
Pablo: I read it myself online like you. We would like to have those 787s as soon as possible. We have a very important growth plan for the next 5 years, so it’s strategic for us to have those planes or alternatives. And we are open to alternatives with either Boeing or Airbus.

Cranky: How did you decide to fly this with LAN Peru aircraft? I know that from LAX, you have one from LAN Peru and one from LAN Chile.
Pablo: This is kind of the way we’ve been growing in South America. In this case, LAN Peru is very well established in Peru, having very good relations with the authorities. Peru looks like the most important in terms of demand from Asia and from the US. That’s why we decided that this project should be under the LAN Peru umbrella. In the end, all this is very internal. In terms of the commercial part, we have only one brand, which is LAN and that’s it. That’s what we want to communicate to our clients. We are one airline, one brand, one service, flying and connecting all of South America to the world.

Cranky: I’m curious about Peru right now especially with all the floods around Machu Picchu and the railroad tracks being washed away. Some people anticipate this will hurt tourism. Is that going to hurt you?
Pablo: It’s important but it’s not as big as you might think. Peru is important to us as a destination and as a way to connect people to other parts of the world. We have been talking to the Peruvian government and the authorities there. The impacts of this could be very large, but for us and for passengers going and coming from Peru it shouldn’t be that that big. They expect to have the railroad fixed within the next 6 to 7 weeks.

On the other hand, Cusco is fully operating and has a lot of attractions different from Machu Picchu. You can go to Cusco today and there is no problem there. Of course, we know that Machu Picchu is an important attraction, so we are doing different things. We are working together with the government tourism group in Peru. We are launching a contingency plan campaign where we lowered our fares aggressively to Peru. We are actually promoting to go to Peru now, because people are very focused on Machu Picchu, but you can go to the rest of Peru. So we have these very low fares already on the web and through travel agencies. We pretty much expect that by March we should have traffic back to normal.

Cranky: My wife and I went to Peru two years ago and flew LAX to Lima on LAN and we went to Cusco and loved it, but in the US people think of Macchu Picchu first.
Pablo: You mention that, it’s very important. The campaign we just talked about, the focus is to say that Peru is much more than Macchu Picchu. Something like “discover the rest of Peru.”

Tomorrow we’ll finish up here with talk about a growing Lima hub, TAM and Brazil, as well as oneworld.

We’ve all heard about “NextGen” air traffic control, but besides the generic guarantee of shorter delays, do we really know what it will do for us? Sometimes the benefits to the traveler aren’t really all that clear, and that’s probably because the actual definition is more of a nebulous catch-all for change than anything else.

Today, I’m going to talk about Required Navigation Performance (RNP), a form of Performance-based Navigation (PBN), and what it can do to help airport arrivals. But instead of defining it in boring terms, I’ll look at a recent implementation high in the Andes to show how you can benefit from it.

RNP allows airplanes to fly precise, complex approaches without the need for any ground-based navigational aids. Today, the use of Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) hampers the ability to run complex approaches in some areas, because difficult terrain prevents these ground-based systems from adequately guiding the aircraft. Consequently, when visibility is bad, some of these airports see serious constraints.

One of those places is Cusco, Peru. Here is a picture I took looking east after landing there last year:

It may not look like much, but consider this. That runway is about 11,000 ft above sea level. It sits in a dead-end valley with only way good way out. As you can see, those mountains go up pretty quickly. And by the way, this view is actually of the GOOD way out of the valley.

Airplanes fly in from the west, descend into the valley, and then do a sharp loop to land back toward the west. It was a fairly dramatic arrival for us, though the clear blue skies made it seem routine. Combine that complexity with gusty winds and fog or rain and you’ve got one incredibly tricky arrival.

In fact, it’s so tricky that you’ll never experience it. When the weather gets bad, flights get canceled. Until now. LAN Peru, the largest operator at the airport, recently finished testing a system from Naverus that allows it to fly an RNP approach into the airport.

The added precision of the RNP approach allows LAN to fly with more accuracy on a very complicated approach, and that means they can land safely in lower visibility situations.

This isn’t a new thing. Alaska, for example, first tested RNP flying into San Francisco several years ago. When the fog rolls in, SFO has to spread out its arrivals because the two runways are too close for comfort using existing systems. Just imagine if SFO could actually operate at normal capacity during foggy days thanks to more precise approaches. Delays would disappear from the airport.

This is just a glimpse of the future. There are other systems that can have similar results, and of course there are other pieces of NextGen that impact other phases of flight. When you hear buzzwords about NextGen and RNP, this is the type of thing that will eventually be possible. If you’d like to learn more, take a listen to this podcast on the subject. (It’s a little dry, but the information is good.)