Am I the only one who thinks this whole boarding pass advertising thing is a little creepy? It’s not the concept that bothers me. You want to throw some ads on my boarding pass? Go ahead. It’s the fact that they’re using my demographics to target ads that makes me nervous.

The basic idea is that right now, when you print your boarding pass at home, it’s just a boarding pass. So, American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and US Airways have now all partnered with a new company called Sojern that will sell ad spots on your boarding pass and mask it by offering weather information. Of course, the spin is that this makes life easier for the traveler. Whatever. I’ve never had trouble clicking on Weather Underground to get my own weather, but if you want to put it on there . . . fine.

None of that bothers me. What bothers me is something that I haven’t really seen talked about. Yes, the company admits that it’s targeting based upon where you’re going, and others have mentioned that. Well duh, that makes sense, and I don’t mind them sharing that information. But, if you click on the sample boarding pass (PDF), it states “Sojern’s new media delivers tailored advertising messages based on travelers’ unique itineraries and demographics.”

Hold on here. How are you getting my demographic information? Is the airline sharing it with you if I’m logged in to an account when I check in? I don’t like that at all.

Has anyone had the chance to check out Yapta yet? The site originally launched as a way to see if the price of a ticket you had purchased had gone down. Since some airlines will give you a credit if the fare goes down, this could be a handy little tool to help you save some money. When it first launched, it required you to download a browser plug-in to work, but now you can get Yapta on the web. Unfortunately, there were some kinks that made the site unusable initially, but while some of those have been fixed, there’s still a ways to go before this is a helpful tool.

I decided to go to Yapta (Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant) and put in four itineraries I had already purchased to see what I could find.

Northwest to Indianapolis
This one ended before it started. You can’t check Northwest flight information on Yapta (maybe they won’t give you credit for a lower fare?), so I moved on.

United to Indianapolis
By entering my confirmation number and last name, Yapta originally told me that fare had gone down, but that’s because it saw our total price (for two people) as the per person price. Bzzzzt, no good. Now that’s been fixed, and it’s saying that the fare has gone up from $242 to $349. That’s still not quite right. I go on to United.com and it tells me that the price is $370 for that flight right now. So I’m not sure where this is coming from. True, the outcome is the same, but it won’t necessarily always be that way.

JetBlue to San Jose
I figured the third time would be the charm, right? Not quite. Yapta came back saying that the price has gone up from the $109 we paid to $149 per person so there’s nothing to gain here. But just out of curiosity, I checked JetBlue.com and the price is actually $139. Still nothing to gain, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when the fares are not accurate on every itinerary I try so far.

Alaska to Seattle/Portland
This one I thought would be interesting. I’m flying out of Long Beach, going to Seattle, and then flying back from Portland to Orange County. This time, it was just me traveling so there was no issue of viewing two fares as one accidentally. The result? It says that the fare has gone from $310.57 all the way up to $744. Whoa, not so much. I did pay $310.57 (with a % discount certificate), but the current fare is $324. For those keeping score, Yapta was 0 for 3 in getting the correct current price of the ticket. Not good.

Bottom Line
The site has a great idea, but man are there problems. I’m glad to see they’ve worked out the kinks on the fare initially paid. That’s working perfectly now, but every single time it returned the wrong “new” fare that was currently available. Both components need to be right for this site to be successful. Without that component, I still find myself going to the airline website to double-check to actual fare, and that makes Yapta not very useful. Once they solve these problems, it’ll be worth a return visit.

Yesterday, American announced the details of its fall flight cuts and the big surprise to me is how deep New York/LaGuardia flying is going to be cut. Meanwhile, United announced it was pulling out of two fairly large cities, Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as from several international routes. On the flip side, Southwest said it will drop a couple routes but add several as well, mostly in Denver and Florida. Let’s get to it.

American
Let’s start with American since that was much bigger in scope. It appears that Miami comes off unscathed while Dallas/Ft Worth will see 5% of flights go and Chicago/O’Hare will lose more than 12%. That looks good in comparison to St Louis (down 27%) and astoundingly, New York/LaGuardia which will be down 33% from 126 departures a day to only 84.

None of those shock me except for the LaGuardia pulldown. For the longest time, airlines have clamped down on congested airport fortresses like LaGuardia and Washington/National, and have not been willing to let slots and gates go. LaGuardia has always been one of those places that you just assumed wouldn’t see massive cuts from the incumbent carriers, because no matter how bad things got, the value of those slots would always be worth it when things got better . . . or at least that WAS conventional wisdom.

This cut tells me that American has decided that nothing is sacred, and that’s a good thing. They can’t continue to lose money on bad flights in the short term just because they might be better in the long run. This is time to make some serious survival decisions and they’re doing it.

Of course, they’re not going to do it quietly. They’ve now petitioned the government to reduce slots at LaGuardia by 20% in the name of improving operations. Yeah, right. In other words, we want to pull down flights but we don’t want to allow anyone to take our place. Hmm, 42 daily flight openings would make a nice little operation for Southwest, huh?

A quick note about the rest of the cuts. Overall, American will mostly be cutting frequencies, but a few cities will see American disappear completely. We already knew about Oakland, Samana (Dominican Republic) and London/Stansted, but now Barranquilla (Colombia), Albany, Providence, Harrisburg, and San Luis Obispo go as well. San Luis Obispo also loses its maintenance base. I’m guessing that may have been where they maintained the now disappearing Saab 340 fleet, which would make sense.

United
Now let’s look at our other route cutter. First, United will pull out of Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. These aren’t small cities, and it’s really amazing that United’s presence has eroded to the point where the airline ends up dropping places like this. United gave up on Florida a few years ago when it became virtually all-Ted. All the decent money around these areas would have fled to other carriers, if it was even at United in the first place. Besides, United could get you to Dulles, but Florida is a New York kind of market. Oh well, I guess they’ll just have to codeshare with US Airways and Continental now.

The bigger cuts for the airline are coming internationally. The recently launched Denver - London/Heathrow and LAX - Frankfurt flights are gone, so is San Francisco to Taipei and Nagoya. There will be some other schedule shifts as well as United prepares to ditch 6 747-400s and to start Dulles - Moscow and Dubai flights. I think the international pain is just beginning.

Southwest
Lastly, (man this post is long), let’s look at Southwest’s announcement today about its fall schedule. Nothing too crazy or surprising here. I mean, they’re beefing up Florida, as any airline would do once summer is over (uh, except United I guess). Oh, and the Denver onslaught continues. Southwest moves into yet another Frontier market - Denver to Orange County - as well as one that isn’t competitive - Denver to Tulsa. Oh, and eleven of the existing Denver markets get increased frequency, including 3 new flights to Chicago/Midway alone. Wow. I guess they had to do something to replace a lot of the long haul frequencies from Midway that are being cut back. And two routes will go away entirely - Oakland to Tucson and Kansas City to Sacramento.

If you’d like to see more detail, here’s the PDF with all of Southwest’s fall schedule changes.

(Original LaGuardia Tower Image from 10cuidados on Flickr)

You likely won’t be surprised to hear that I had a great time at the bachelor party this weekend, but that means I had very little time to write. So, since every travel blogger on earth has written about the announcement that Continental will be leaving SkyTeam, joining Star Alliance, and instituting a very tight partnership with United, I thought I’d just point to a couple of the more interesting posts I’ve seen.

Make no mistake, this is more than just a codeshare and frequent flier mile deal. Continental will join United, Lufthansa, and Air Canada in a joint venture for all transatlantic flying. Latin and Asia joint ventures will be developed as well. There will be broad systems integration as well.

In terms of routes, the rest of the Star Alliance will be happy to finally have a big international presence in New York. Dan Webb takes a look at route compatibility here.

If you’re a member of United’s Mileage Plus or Continental’s OnePass programs, this will certainly mean changes. Take a look at View From the Wing’s effort to breakdown what this may mean, despite the fact that we have very few details so far. His take? Well, it’ll be a good thing for Continental fliers, but it’s a little less clear for United loyalists.

We don’t know what this will mean for US Airways right now. Is three a crowd when it comes to the Star Alliance in the US? They say they aren’t going anywhere, but they also haven’t had talks with Continental about cooperation either. Could they partner with American now that CO/UA and DL/NW are getting together? Maybe. Or maybe they’ll try a different tactic, as Holly suggests here in PlaneBuzz.

For American fliers, this could be decent news as well. Strange, I know, but it could theoretically mean that getting antitrust immunity with British Airways would become easier, as Terri Maxon discusses on the Airline Biz blog.

There are a lot of different angles to this partnership with a ton of potential ramifications throughout the industry when it develops. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.

Looks like United has given in and agreed to modify its Palmdale flying schedule. Beginning in September, instead of two daily CRJs to SFO, there will be four daily Brasilias, the 30 seat turboprop that United has slowly been phasing out. Anyone want to bet that this will work? Anyone? Bueller?

If you read my post earlier this month on the subject, you’ll know that I’ve been critical of LAWA’s efforts to pour time and money into Palmdale. And if you haven’t read the comments section, I’d highly recommend it. I apparently hit quite a nerve with someone doing work for LAWA, and it’s an entertaining read to say the least.

But my position hasn’t changed. I still don’t see this working right now. Let’s look at the fundamentals. Palmdale is in the heart of the Antelope Valley, an area that has seen rapid growth over the years because of its relatively affordable housing. But guess what? It’s an exurb, and those distant communities are taking the biggest hit in the current economic downturn. If you’d like to do a little reading, you can see this article from the LA Times in April 2007. Things have only gotten worse since then.

So it’s a probable that Palmdale alone isn’t going to be supporting major flights. There has been an effort to get people from the Santa Clarita area, the next major popular center, to use the airport by establishing bus service. Now if you don’t know where that is, it doesn’t really matter, but you can see it on the map at left. What matters is that it’s about 20 miles further to go from Santa Clarita to Palmdale than it is to go to Burbank. Even with the traffic, why would you go to Palmdale from there?

You wouldn’t. If you want to go to the Bay Area, you can fly Southwest or United from Burbank for less money and on more frequent flights than out of Palmdale. And it’s not like we’re talking LAX here. Burbank is a nice, small, and easy airport to navigate.

So can service work in Palmdale? Eventually. However, I don’t think San Francisco is going to be sustainable for a long, long time, even with more frequency. My guess is that any sustainable service at all is a few years off still at best. That’s why LAWA, the federal government, and others have had to pour $4.6m into this new service just to see if it can work. So far, the results haven’t been good.

Admittedly, the schedule will greatly improve with these new flights. Instead of northbound departures at only 6a and 11a, there will now be flights at 6a, 1015a, 1220p, and 645p. And instead of southbound flights at only 918a and 925p, there will be flights at 830a, 1035a, 5p, and 1020p. That being said, the flights will now take 18 to 33% longer on the northbound flight in the slow Brasilias. Block time increases from 1h9m to 1h32m northbound and from 1h13m to 1h26m southbound. That gives the Santa Clarita residents yet another reason to drive to Burbank.

I just have to wonder why United has decided to honor this request. They must still have a bunch of Brasilias under contract that are sitting around in the desert somewhere so they figured they’d give it a shot. All I know is that in May, the airline filled 42% of its seats. That means 42 out of the 100 seats flown each way per day were filled on average. Now there will be 120 seats in the market, and even if you can stimulate traffic by 50% because of this new glorious schedule, you’ll still only have a 52.5% seat factor. That seems quite optimistic to me, and it’s not going to cut it unless you’re getting some fairly incredible fares.

You can bet I’ll be keeping an eye on this one as time goes by. I’m heading out of town this afternoon and won’t have email access again until Sunday, so please write comments and I will approve them (if necessary) when I return.

US Airways loyalists (and I mean the old East loyalists) aren’t going to like what I’m about to say, but I think they’ll probably agree that it’s true. When US Airways announced several new fees and other changes yesterday, it made sense considering that airline’s strategy; however, when United did the same thing, it didn’t.

US Airways fliers have seen this coming for a long time. In fact, I’m surprised they can even find the energy to get frustrated anymore. It was clear when America West management took over US Airways that the airline was going to become more like an America West-style product and less like a full service legacy-style product that used to be the norm for the airline.

Benefits have slowly eroded since the takeover, and as far as I’m concerned, the writing has been on the wall since day 1 of the “new” US Airways. Management has made it clear that they want to provide a clean airplane that flies on-time for a low price. That’s about all you can expect. Everything else is just a legacy benefit that seems to me will slowly be stripped away. So with that strategy in mind (whether misguided or not), yesterday’s moves make sense.

This time, the airline adopted American’s $15 fee for a first checked bag, and to be honest, I’m surprised they didn’t think of this first. You’ll also now have to pay $2 for a soda and $7 (up from $5) for alcohol. There will be fees for using a Dividend Miles award, and a bunch of other fees will increase. On top of this, elite members in Dividend Miles will no longer receive bonus miles, and that is bound to have the FlyerTalk crowd up in arms more than anything else.

But is anyone really surprised? I mean, aren’t you just waiting for them to start charging for elite first class upgrades before they remove the first class cabin from the plane completely? The only thing that’s missing here is that while they’ve tried to go bare bones and low fare in some ways, there are still plenty of high fares lurking. I suppose it’s all about supply and demand. If people will pay, then that won’t change, but it doesn’t exactly fit with their persona. Still, the changes announced yesterday fall exactly along the lines of what I’d expect from this airline.

But then there’s United, which also matched the $15 first bag fee yesterday. This is an airline that has long talked about how it likes to be more of a premium carrier, but once again it has shown that it is not really trying for that market. Sure, elite members will be exempt from these fees, but the unwashed masses in the back of the bus will be treated like, well, unwashed masses. It’s a very confusing message, especially when an elite who pays a $100 fare will get treated better than a non-elite who pays $400.

This shows the problem that United is once again trying to serve all different types of passengers when that really shouldn’t be the case. Yes, I understand that they need cash right now and that they’re in worse shape than others due to mismanagement, but if you want to be a premium carrier, you don’t implement fees like this. You try to differentiate yourself instead of helping Southwest establish itself as the true premium carrier that doesn’t actually charge these fees.

In fact, Southwest has been stepping up its “no-fee” campaign lately, and if people are serious about despising fees, they should be voting with their wallets and flying Southwest more often. Maybe then the other airlines will see that there is demand for this type of service. Until then, it will apparently continue to be a race to the bottom.

While there’s certainly plenty of room for airlines at the bottom, I think the further they go, the more opportunity there will be at the top. United would seem to be the airline best-positioned to try that strategy, but it’s clear that won’t be the case. Instead, the airline will set expectations too high and customers will be disappointed time and time again.

[Original image: iandavid at Flickr]

Tedward, known to all as “Ted,” was taken off life support yesterday, June 4, after a long illness. He is survived by his father, United. He was only 4 years old.

Ted’s life was a very common and familiar story. His father, United, had a long history of tawdry affairs with low cost carriers. United’s first child, Shuttle, came to be after sexy Southwest moved to town, but Shuttle passed away in 2001. (You can still see his remains scattered throughout the United 737 fleet.) Ted was his second child, born after pretty-young-thing Frontier caught United’s attention in Denver. The two children couldn’t have been more different. While Shuttle spent most of his time with businessmen and women, Ted was more of a man of leisure.

Growing up wasn’t easy for Ted. He was teased as a child with taunts like “Ted is the ass end of United.” Even his father’s employees snapped at him with chants like “Ted is United without ‘U-N-I’.” That chant subsided when it was decided to avoid any meaningful cost savings and have United’s employees work with Ted for the same pay, but Ted never forgot those times. Despite these troubles, Ted was modestly successful in his early years. He grew quickly and found himself traveling to places like Florida, Arizona, Vegas, and Mexico. Unfortunately, he became a tremendous distraction for United, who spent long hours and loads of money on his son while other, far greater problems brewed.

Ted tried to take it all in stride. He listened to his TedTunes, watched Tedevision, read TedTimes, and eschewed the First Class luxuries that his father embraced, but he was never able to fully escape his darker side. As he entered his awkward teens, he began drinking (lemonade, which his father did not support). Then Ted fell in with the wrong crowd. He started hanging out on the South Side of Chicago, over on Cicero Ave, with all those bald Irish guys (at left, incredibly from an actual ad that ran). His stay there was short, and he soon started to drift.

Eventually, Ted’s personality began to fade as his family belatedly began to focus on other more important problems. The music was gone, he started reading his father’s magazine, and he even stopped drinking his forbidden lemonade. If it weren’t for that big blue nametag and the lack of First Class seats, nobody would have even known who he was.

Ted continued to ply his trade even though his support system kept getting weaker and weaker. Finally, Ted succumbed to his long illness after months of speculation.

Ted has opted to donate his organs for a necessary aircraft transplant for his father, by whom he is survived. In lieu of flowers, please donate cold, hard cash at united.com.

I have to say that I’m completely shocked. It looks like United CEO Glenn Tilton, now without any merger options left, has actually decided to run an airline. There are some extremely painful cuts in here, and it’s tough to see as someone who used to work for the airline and still has friends there. But, I have to say, it seems like the right thing to do. This seems to go deeper than American’s previous round of cuts, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more follow from around the industry. (US Airways?)

So what exactly is happening? Well, to sum it up, domestic mainline flying bears the brunt of the pain. It will be down a mind-numbing 17 to 18% (in terms of available seat miles) by the end of 2009. This will come from the combination of all 94 737s being retired (the 30 737-500s were already planned) and the death of Ted, which will see First Class seats return, and therefore, fewer seats onboard. International will take a hit as 6 747s head to the desert. Express, however, will be up. So in the end, we get domestic capacity down 12.5% to 13.5% and systemwide capacity down 9 to 10%. The airline says that most of the cuts will be in the form of reduced frequencies and smaller planes, but there will also be some market exits (as we’ve already seen with Anchorage).

So, we know the basics here. Fuel goes up, fares need to go up. How do you do that? Pull capacity out. United is doing the right thing, but of course, it will mean higher fares for you. Let’s focus on what’s good for the customer here.

Those ratty old 737s will be grounded

If you’ve been on a United 737, you know they are in rough shape on the inside. Those things have needed to be refurbished for years. They still have the old oven-less Shuttle by United configuration on some of them, so First Class service wasn’t consistent at all. By the end of 2009, they’ll all be gone, and you’ll be on much more comfortable Airbuses as well as 70 seat regionals which are all nicer than the 737s they fly today.

You’re less likely to be on the 747, the worst plane in United’s fleet

With 6 747s disappearing, that means when you fly internationally you have less of a chance of getting stuck on one of the most uncomfortable planes in the sky. Those 747s are relics from a previous age. There are not even personal screens onboard, so forget about audio/video on-demand. And the upcoming reconfiguration with the new Business Class will add a much greater percentage of Economy Minus seats than on the other aircraft types. The fewer the better.

Floridians and desert rats can fly First Class once again

Oh Ted, I can’t even begin to express how happy I am to see you go. And actually, I’ll be devoting a separate post to Ted’s demise, but let’s just say that I’ve waited for this day for a long time. This change will mean that United will offer more consistent service throughout its fleet (well, its fleet of aircraft with 70 seats and higher). Europeans flying in a premium cabin through Dulles to Vegas can now get a premium cabin the whole way through. People living in Phoenix and Florida will again be able to fly long distances in First if they so desire. The downside here? Right now, with 156 seats, Ted has four flight attendants dedicated to coach. That will clearly change after the reconfiguration.

I have to say it again. These changes are encouraging. It’s better for the customer, even if it does mean higher fares. I only wish it didn’t mean so many job losses. What do you guys think?

You know I love talking about my local airports here in LA and what I consider to be a misguided regionalization strategy. Well, we’ve got some news out of Palmdale that backs me up.

Los Angeles World Airports, which operates Palmdale as well as LAX, Ontario, and Van Nuys, put in $4.6m in incentives to lure commercial service back to Palmdale airport last year. United won the bid and started operating twice daily flights from Palmdale to San Francisco on regional jets. How’s it doing?

Terrible. So far, flights are less than a third full, and I’m sure that the second that subsidy is gone, United is out of there. The airline has already tweaked the schedule, but that hasn’t helped things. LAWA has made other futile efforts to make this work, like adding bus service from Van Nuys to Palmdale. Now, why the heck would you take the bus from Van Nuys to Palmdale 50 miles away when you could go 10 miles and get to Burbank with more flights and lower fares? You wouldn’t.

So now, LAWA has a new plan. They think they need more frequent flights out of the airport. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Instead of two daily jet flights, they want four daily turboprop flights. Um, have they even talked to United about this? The only props United flies under its name right now are the 30 seat Embraer Brasilias. These are slowly being phased out, and I’d be surprised if United was looking to start new service with them.

So what should LAWA do? Look, if you need a subsidy to make a route work, it’s not a route that’s going to work. Are there people living in Palmdale that want to fly out of their local airport? Sure. But I would argue that San Francisco is not the right place to go. That means that any connection to the east is backtracking, and it’s via an airport that has terrible delay problems when the fog rolls in. I’ve always thought that a US Airways flight to Phoenix would have the best shot of success, but with fuel where it is right now, I wouldn’t expect to see anyone taking that risk.

LAWA needs to realize that people are not going to want to fly out of Palmdale unless they live in that area. It may eventually become the next Burbank, but it won’t be the next LAX. The sooner they get that through their heads, the sooner they can stop wasting money out there and start using it on upgrading LAX instead. That will have an impact on a lot more people.

I noticed on One Mile at a Time yesterday that United has quietly started allowing people to upgrade to Economy Plus at the time of booking. Great idea. In fact, I almost thought about giving them a gold star, but not quite. While it’s a good idea, I have some issues with the way they’re doing this.

Don’t get me wrong, this is the right thing to do. If someone wants to pay more up front to sit in Economy Plus, why would United want to turn down that revenue opportunity? They shouldn’t, and they’ve now fixed that problem. BUT, looking at United’s page on the subject, I see that the pricing for the upgrade is the same regardless of whether you do it at the time of booking or at the airport. The value, however, isn’t the same, and United needs to make an adjustment to account for that, otherwise they’re leaving money on the table and possibly angering their elite customers.

Economy Plus is primarily meant as a bonus for elite members, supposedly the airline’s best customers. When they sold the upgrade at the time of check-in, most elites would have already been seated in Economy Plus so it wouldn’t be a big deal. But now, if someone upgrades at the time of booking, it could be taking a seat away from a valuable elite member. I don’t know how often the Economy Plus cabin fills up completely, but this would certainly make that more likely to occur.

So, if United wants to sell an upgrade at the time of booking, they should charge more for it than for an upgrade at the airport because the potential loss of value for the elite customer who gets stuck in Economy Minus is increased. Also, having an Economy Plus seat secured at the time of booking is of greater value to the purchasing customer, so the price should be higher.

Also, it’s a little disappointing to see that all classes of service pay the same amount for the upgrade. When United stopped giving people booking full fare tickets access to Economy Plus, I thought it was completely ridiculous. Now, I would have thought they might have reconsidered. If you paid that much money for a ticket, I think that access to Economy Plus is only fair. It should at least be discounted for the handful of non-elites who actually buy those fares, but it isn’t.

So . . . good idea, United, but you’re leaving money on the table and possibly angering your elite customers. Maybe some tweaking on the execution side would be a good idea.