Delta’s SkyClub Promotion Slightly Misses the Mark – BNET
Delta offered club access to some elite members for a day. Good idea, not great execution.

Guest Posts From My Favourite Bloggers : Brett Snyder – The Cranky Flier – Flying with Fish blog
I wrote a guest post for Fish about the recently announced V Australia/Emirates codeshare.

US Airways and Delta Raise More Money – BNET
Airlines are raising money left and right these days. Might as well do it while they can.

United Goes Back Into Mini-Expansion Mode Domestically – BNET
Don’t look now, but United has started adding new flights and new cities once again. That’s always encouraging, though I do wonder about some of these.

Virgin America’s Improved Second Quarter Performance Details – BNET
Now that the government data is out, we can take a look at Virgin America’s performance in greater detail. Not too bad, but there’s still work to do.

I actually touched on this possibility when I interviewed Virgin Blue CEO Brett Godfrey in February. When talking about Delta, he alluded to this . . .

You might say, well, does Delta want to put their traffic on Qantas in Australia? A lot of the market flies beyond Sydney, so maybe that’s an opportunity for us to say, well, quid pro quo . . . . There’s some opportunity there. No discussions held in that regard . . . but that’s an opportunity.

And here we are five months later with a deal in hand. This partnership will have frequent flier reciprocity, codesharing, and it will ask for antitrust immunity so they can discuss routes and fares. This seems like it should be an easy one for the DOT to approve, because up until this year, only 2 airlines flew the route. If this doesn’t get approved, my bet is that Delta’s days to Sydney are numbered, so there is a clear benefit to consumers to approving this deal.

It also allows Delta to feed people into Los Angeles from around the US and Virgin Blue to feed people into Sydney (and other gateways) from around Australia. I would hope that we’ll see some serious frequency cuts in order to try to get back to a more normal level of capacity on the route.

I was emailing with Dan Webb over at Things in the Sky last night about this, and he was very interested in what this means for Virgin America. This type of joint venture certainly diminishes Virgin America’s importance to V Australia. If it weren’t for space constraints, I wonder if V Australia would even rather move over to Delta’s terminal at LAX and leave Virgin America behind.

This also raises the question about what happens to the Virgin Blue/United partnership. Right now, Virgin Blue shares United’s code on flights beyond Sydney in Australia. I can’t imagine Virgin Blue would cancel this deal, but I wonder how United will feel about it. They may very well need the traffic, so it’s possible it could stay, but that would make for an odd arrangement.

I also find myself wondering if eventually Air France could join this agreement with its LAX to Tahiti flight. Virgin Blue subsidiary Pacific Blue doesn’t fly to Tahiti yet, but this could be another interesting twist.

I like this move. It should help to stabilize the routes between the US and Australia, though it should mean fares will rise for consumers. Considering that fares are too low to be sustainable right now, that’s a good thing.

So what do I mean when I say it’s fairly limited? Well, as of now, it can only be booked via V Australia’s call center or a travel agent. Starting June 8, you can also book on on the V Australia website. But nothing can be handled from the Virgin America side of the house.

There is also no frequent flier reciprocity at this point. You can only earn frequent flier points in the program of the operating carrier. That means Velocity points for the Transpacific flight and eleVAte points for the domestic US run.

So why is this so limited? It’s the same thing that prevented this whole thing from getting off the ground until now . . . technical issues on Virgin America’s side. According to Virgin America spokesperson Abby Lunardini, Virgin America and V Australia are “working towards reciprocal interline and codesharing agreements ultimately. We hope to have that functionality in our VX systems sometime in 2010.” The timeline is similar for reciprocal frequent flier earning, though that should be in early 2010.

Until then, at least you’ll be able to transfer your bags directly.

I think Godfrey made a lot of sense in the video. V Australia wants to partner with anyone and everyone who can benefit them, and that’s a smart way to operate (similar to Alaska, actually). I’m glad to hear that the mystery of why they weren’t partnering with Virgin America has now been solved. It’s simply a technology issue that’s causing the delay, as suggested by commenter Ellis Taylor.

Virgin America was crowing about how great it was that they were doing a lot of their tech work in house, but I think it’s clear that the strategy has been quite problematic. There was never any question that they would want to codeshare with other Virgin airlines from the very beginning, so it now seems that the reservation system choice was a costly mistake.

Meanwhile, V Australia will continue to partner with everyone that makes sense for the airline. As I mentioned in the video, I could see a deal between them and Delta being a smart move. Their flight times are complementary and they could feed each other on both ends. Clearly, Godfrey seems up for that, but it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Click if you missed my overview of the Friday launch event.

It doesn’t appear to be a codeshare, because it shows as an Alaska Airlines flight number, but you can book the entire itinerary on the V Australia site. This just seems so strange to me. V Australia’s Sydney flight gets you to LA at 430p (that shifts to 5p later on in the year). Those flying to Seattle come over to Terminal 3 at LAX, but instead of taking the 710p flight to Seattle on Virgin America, they’ll take one of several Alaska flights around the same time.

On the way home, Alaska makes you sit at LAX for almost 4 hours before the V Australia flight goes back to Sydney. On the other hand, Virgin America could get you to LA with only 1 hour 10 minute layover, something that’s just about perfect for a domestic to international connection that doesn’t require changing terminals.

I’m not sure why Virgin America isn’t carrying this traffic, but it absolutely should be doing it. Why hasn’t this codeshare happened yet?

[Updated 2/2 @ 528p to fix codeshare language]

The Delta and V Australia flights really seem to be designed for connections. The flights from LA are redeyes, as is every other flight on the route these days (an afternoon Qantas flight doesn’t seem to be running this summer), so that’s easy to connect into at night or out of in the morning. But the flights back from Sydney provide more time flexibility.

The Delta flight leaves early from Sydney and lands very early as well. That’s awful for people coming from elsewhere in Australia but great for people connecting to the east coast who want to get in at a decent hour, and it’s going to make it attractive for those people.  The V Australia flight, on the other hand, leaves Sydney after 8p, long after any other airline and arrives at 5p.  This is great for collecting connecting passengers from around Australia, but it makes for a limited number of connections upon arriving in LAX at 5p.  Clearly, both these airlines are playing to their bases, as they should be.

It’s likely that these airlines won’t make a huge dent in Qantas’s offerings since Qantas has so many seats in the market and such entrenched loyalty, but United stands to be the big loser here. Its inferior product in coach will be put under severe pressure as these other airlines bring down fares and offer much better products.

Will this be successful for everyone? I’d be surprised. My guess is that Delta will have a hard time of making this work, but they are hell bent on flying everywhere these days. I’m not sure that there’s room for this many airlines on the route in the long term, but for now it should help bring fares down significantly and improve the travel experience for many.