The writing had likely been on the wall for sometime, but it looks like Delta’s experiment in building up LAX is coming to a rapid end. Last week, Delta and ExpressJet announced that their agreement (covering 23 regional jets) would end on September 1. Something tells me we won’t see anyone else come in to fill their place.

The press release had plenty of hints at the ultimate plan for LA. Expressjet had been flying 13 aircraft under a prorate agreement (meaning they take all the financial risk), and I had fully expected those to disappear, but apparently the 10 other aircraft under the cost plus agreement will go as well.

Those 23 planes under the Delta brand had been flying mostly out of LAX and some out of Salt Lake. The release makes it clear that “Delta intends to award a portion of this flying, including all routes currently operated by ExpressJet at its Salt Lake City hub, to another Delta Connection carrier.” That doesn’t address how much of the LAX flying will be replaced, but I think it’s safe to say that the deafening silence says it all.

Many of the flights are already removed from the booking systems. Boise, Portland, and Reno, for example, are already out. Others show reduced flying still in effect, like a single daily Phoenix flight and some Bay Area flying, but most of those don’t have any seats for sale. If that’s the case this far in advance, that means they’re toast, but they just haven’t removed them completely yet. Of course, this also means the smaller Mexico markets like Leon and Torreon will disappear as well. The LA Times confirms that flights will drop from about 93 to near 60 by Labor Day.

It’s entirely possible that some of these will come back via another carrier, but that would really surprise me. This was just a failed experiment, and now it’s time to go back to where they were before. I’m sorry to see some of those Mexico markets go away, because I think they still might work one of these days. But they would have a better chance of working with someone like United or American with a larger local base here in the LA area as well as better connecting opportunities.

Now, I wonder what will happen to Delta’s physical presence in LA. This is a tough one. On one hand, they have a nice, functional terminal over in Terminal 5, but it will now go down to being severely underutilized once again. It would be nice to just bring Northwest over after the merger and fill out the terminal, right? Not so fast. Northwest has an equity stake in Terminal 2, and that’s a nice little asset that they might want to hold on to. Meanwhile, LAWA has to be excited at the prospect of opening up more gate space, but I’m not sure that there’s much they can do beyond working with Delta/Northwest to help them come to the right decision.

Wouldn’t it be nice for Delta to do the right thing here and make room for more airlines to come in? Yeah, right. I think we all know there’s slightly less than no chance of that ever happening. Maybe LAWA can find naked pictures of Delta’s CEO to help get them to move. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets resolved.

(Original LAX image from Flobrio)

LAX announced yesterday that the new center taxiway on the south runway complex has opened for business. There’s lots of talk about how this increases safety, but for the average traveler, I don’t think this really resonates without further explanation of what actually happens at the airport. So I decided to put together a little post to show you why you should care. Below you’ll see NACO airport diagrams from end of 2005/early 2006 (thanks Wikipedia) as well as the brand new one from today (pdf).

Before you walk away cursing this fairly complex-looking map, let me give you a little positioning help. You can see the terminals in the middle at the top of each diagram. Where it says C6 - that’s the ramp between United Terminals 7 and 8. The next one over is Terminal 6 where Continental, Virgin America, and others fly. Then Terminal 5 is Delta’s, Terminal 4 is American’s, and you can see half the Bradley terminal. This map is positioned so that North is straight up and the ocean is to the left.

Now, take a look at the runways. Previously, there was nothing separating them in the middle. Planes usually depart on the top runway and land on the bottom one. So, it would be typical for an airplane to land from the right and take a high speed exit on taxiway J, K, M, or T. It’s rare but not unheard of for an unfamiliar pilot to just keep rolling right on through the departure runway on his/her way to his gate. LAX has one of the worst near-miss rates and this is one of the reasons.

Now look at the new one. There are still some high speed exits that go straight through but not as many. Also, the new procedure will require that the aircraft exit on to the center taxiway before proceeding. So you might hear an aircraft directed to exit on AN and then turn on to AC. At that point, the pilot will have to wait before being cleared across the departure runway.

Hopefully that helps explain why this is good. It will help improve safety, and it’s a good investment. Unfortunately, the northern runways remain close together, and there is an active community protest to prevent the northernmost runway from moving a bit north to make room for a center taxiway. As you can imagine, I support the airport on this one in the name of safety, but then again, I don’t live in the neighborhood.

UPDATE on 6/25 @ 4p: Ian Gregor, FAA Spokesperson tells me that while my explanation is correct, the current NACO map is actually not so current. Apparently the new center taxiway now extends all the way west to where taxiway U lies. So, this is even better. NACO just hasn’t updated the file. This one says it’s good until July 3, so I assume we’ll see a new one next week.

It’s hard to write so many posts in advance of a long trip, so I asked my coworker and Cranky Photographer, Christopher Craig, to pick out a photo from his collection that I could post while I’m gone. Now keep in mind, I wrote this post on April 26, and I’m just going to guess that there’s been more merger activity since then. So, has this merger happened yet?

I’d like to blame this ridiculous idea on my brain not getting enough oxygen at the high Peruvian altitudes, but I guess I already told you I wrote this before I left. Oh well. My plane is landing as this post goes live (assuming we’re on time), so I guess I’ll find out what really happened soon enough. I’ll be back posting on my regular schedule again tomorrow.

I know you guys have been champing at the bit, waiting for an update on the latest with Alitalia. I’ve actually been wanting to write about this for a little while, but I figured I’d wait until I went to last night’s launch party at LAX for the new LAX-Rome service. It was a surreal event; like hanging out on the Titanic while half the ship is already under water.

As for the event itself, it was a relatively nice and simple affair over at the always fantastic Flight Path Learning Center. The food and Peroni were good, and they handed out a few freebie tickets on the new LAX nonstop. I think the highlight was when Alitalia’s North America head said that the current situation made it seem like Alitalia should be on Jerry Springer. At least he has a sense of humor about it. I actually felt sorry for some of these guys. So what exactly is the latest?

When we left off last time, Alitalia had accepted the AF/KL bid and even the government had gotten behind it. But, they still needed to get the unions to back the bid. Um, that didn’t happen. And even worse, the Italian government fell apart. Without the approvals they needed, AF/KL walked away, but I’m sure they’d come back if all the other parties decided to stop acting like children.

In the election for the new government, Alitalia, the symbol of national pride (what a horrible symbol), was one of the top campaign issues. Silvio Berlusconi, the man that the Economist called “unfit to lead a modern democracy“, campaigned on the idea that he could prevent Alitalia from falling into non-Italian hands.

Sadly, he won.

So now, not only are the unions against AF/KL, but so is the government. Let’s be clear here. Berlusconi talks a big game. He’s said:

Many businesses, including big ones, have come forward to guarantee the necessary capital for a completely Italian team which, once it knows the accounts of Alitalia, will be able to present a bid.

Um, no. Or, somebody will come forward, but it won’t be even close to being as attractive of a bid as the one from AF/KL. Really, AF/KL is the only true hope for this company to survive, and Berlusconi is beating his chest, acting proud, and sounding like a complete idiot. Of course, he has to cave, but not until he can save some face. Just yesterday, he said:

As concerns the Air France hypothesis, if we went back to the initial project for Alitalia which gave the same weight to Alitalia as the other two airlines as well as being Italian orientated, I would be happy to discuss the possibility and once I take office I will speak about this subject with President Sarkozy.

See, he’s starting to change his tune. You know what’ll happen next. He’ll get a couple of concessions and then he’ll let AF/KL buy the airline. Then he’ll try and look like a hero even though he’s doing nothing good.

I guess I should be happy about this. When AF/KL is allowed to take them over, it’ll probably mean I’ll have to find another “Worst Airline Ever” to pick on. I’m just going to enjoy this for now.

You may have heard of Australia’s second largest airline, Virgin Blue, but you probably haven’t heard of V Australia. That’s because until yesterday, it didn’t really exist.

V Australia is Virgin Blue’s new long haul arm. It launched officially yesterday as the US and Australia signed an open skies agreement which allowed the airline to start flights between Australia and the US. First up will be a daily Sydney - Los Angeles trip beginning on December 15, 2008, just in time for high summer season in Australia.

US-Australia flying has always been an interesting market. There are really only three nonstop options, and only two are major players. Of course there’s Qantas, Australia’s largest airline, and then there’s also United. The third player? Hawaiian flies from Honolulu to Sydney, but that’s not a strong option for many people on the Mainland.

Air New Zealand used to fly the route, but they abandoned it several years back. And Singapore has been trying to fly it for years as well, but Australia’s protectionist policies won’t let them in. This has led to high fares and not nearly enough competition. Now, there will finally be a third major option.

You might expect V Australia to come in with a torrent of low fares, but really they aren’t. Their lowest published fare starts at just 16% below the current lowest published fare (if you believe their own press). They have been touting a sale fare, but it’s already sold out for the first two months. Then again, this is high season, so I wouldn’t expect many deals.

We’ll see how much competition really does to lower fares once the shoulder and low seasons come around, but in a market that has previously been so restricted as this one, it should only be good news.

Remember that whole strategy from LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about airport regionalization? Well, it took yet another step backward yesterday with the recommendation of the Burbank airport authority to enact a hard curfew (via this excellent Airliners.net thread).

You can guess where this is coming from - the surrounding community. Thanks to their objections, the airport wants to prohibit any operations between 10p and 7a. Is that a horrible idea? Well, not entirely. We have one of those here in Long Beach, and it’s nice to have peace and quiet while we sleep. That being said, these are very different in that Burbank will have much stiffer fines. That’s bad news for travelers.

In Long Beach, airlines don’t pay a fine for violating the curfew until their third violation. At that point, they pay a whopping $100. Then each subsequent violation in a twelve month period will cost $300. (Read more) The Burbank fine, according to the Application (pdf), will cost $3,671 for the first fine, $7,342 for the second, $11,013 for the third, and $14,684 for the fourth over a twelve month period. If an airline has four violations, it’s banned from the airport for a year.

I know, you’re wondering what this has to do with you, right? Well, with penalties that steep, airlines will be less willing to schedule any flights near that curfew time at night for fear that they’ll miss it. Right now, there are a couple of flights scheduled to go before 7a and I think one after 10p. The night flights, even the ones before curfew, are most at risk, because if they’re delayed in the slightest, they won’t be able to land. Then early morning flights get in trouble because the plane that usually spends the night in Burbank ready to fly early the next day won’t be able to land until morning. That, of course, is dependent upon the airlines being willing to even schedule flights at those times with the potential penalties so high.

Probably even more annoying than having your flight not get out on time will be when you’re on a late arriving flight into Burbank. Let’s say you’re on the last flight from SFO and fog has delayed flights a couple hours. Well, that last flight would probably go if it were heading to Long Beach because the cost of violating the curfew isn’t prohibitively steep if it doesn’t happen often. (Honestly, it could rise some and still be ok.) At Burbank? Forget it. They’ll just park the plane or divert you to another airport instead. Great, huh?

My advice: If this curfew gets enacted, don’t fly into Burbank too close to the curfew. Fly to LAX instead. Not what the Mayor of LA had in mind, right? Well, he’s not exactly following his regionalization plan either. While Burbank is thumbing its nose at the that strategy, Mayor Villaraigosa is crowing about a new flight that he’s landed at LAX.

The new flight is on Korean Air. The airline will now fly from LAX to Sao Paulo, presumably as an extension of one of the daily Seoul/Incheon flights. Asian carriers that want access to the largest city in South America can’t fly nonstop (range problems) so they need to find a place to go first. JAL used to fly via LAX (I actually took the flight once), but now they go through JFK. So, Korean will now pick up the slack and try to make a go of it.

Now, Mayor Villaraigosa claims in the city’s press release that the flights are “a direct result of the Mayor’s 2006 trade mission to Asia.” Um, right. I really hope the airline isn’t sitting around saying, “Gee, you know I like that guy. How cool was it that he came to visit us? We should start a flight to Brazil from his city.”

So, what are the takeaways here?

• If Burbank enacts this curfew, don’t book a flight arriving there near the curfew for fear you may not get there in time
• If you’re flying to Sao Paulo from LA, congrats. You now have a nonstop option.
• Regionalization isn’t as easy as you (or the Mayor) might think

A nice side benefit of attending JetBlue’s press conference yesterday was that I had the opportunity to meet Ian Gregor, Communications Manager for the FAA’s Western-Pacific Region. We started talking shop, and soon enough I realized that there was something worth writing about here.

LAX has recently started using Continuous Descent Approaches (CDA) for some flights arriving from the East. What, that’s not exciting to you?

Ok, let me explain exactly what that means. Better yet, let’s go with an image here.

Just about everyone is used to the stepped approach that has been the standard for some time (and I’ll guess nobody has experienced the drunken pilot approach). You know the feeling. The pilot reduces thrust, you start to descend, then he increases it and you start to flatten out. This goes on for quite some time until you end up on the ground. It’s like going down stairs, whereas the CDA is like going down a ramp. When the aircraft gets ready to descend, the pilot cuts power and the plane maintains a constant rate of descent all the way until touchdown.

That means no more powering up along the way and no more ear-busting changes in pitch of the aircraft. As you can imagine, that helps reduce noise (since the engines don’t spool up) and it helps reduce fuel usage. Good news for everyone, right? Why wouldn’t they have done this before?

Well, it’s not like there’s unlimited room to pull something like this off. You need to make sure that during your continuous descent, you don’t happen to get in the way of, oh, say, airplanes coming from Ontario or one of the other many airports in Southern California.

That’s why this can only be implemented for landings from the East. If you come from the North and West, you usually have to make that turn around downtown LA to come in. There just isn’t enough room to make this work out there. The good news, however, is that half of the arrivals at the airport come from the East. Although only half of those are using CDA right now, the other half will be soon enough.

This procedure was first tested in Louisville, and there was a “34 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions below 3,000 feet, and a 30 percent reduction in aircraft noise within 15 miles of the airport. UPS aircraft flying this approach also save between 250 and 465 pounds of fuel per flight.” Sounds good to me. Maybe this will get some of those testy airport neighbors to stop whining so much.

They’re also rolling this out in other airports, so next time you come in for landing, see if you notice any difference.

As I briefly mentioned in yesterday’s post, JetBlue has decided to expand their presence in Southern California mostly starting May 21. This is welcome considering that after the initial burst of service at Long Beach and a minor move at Burbank, there really hasn’t been much action from them out this way.

Apparently JetBlue thinks this is a huge deal, because they had a lot of pomp and circumstance around the announcement. Their CEO flew in along with an army of crewmembers from Long Beach for the announcement. And LA Mayor Villaraigosa along with Councilman Bill Rosendahl (LAX falls in his district), literally rolled out the red carpet for them, as you can see at left. Fortunately, I had the chance to attend the press conference at LAX, but no, I didn’t get to hitch a ride on the flight from Long Beach.

On the surface, this looks like a big expansion, but what most media outlets aren’t reporting is that much of it is really just a reallocation of resources. Take a look at this table that summarizes the changes. The numbers are the changes in frequency. Anything in italics is a new route.

Table Edited 2/13 @ 105p to reflect changes confirmed by JetBlue PR that conflict with information received at the press conference. There will now be only one Dulles flight cut from Long Beach. Instead of cutting the second one, they will cut one of the two O’Hare flights instead. The remaining flight will become a smaller Embraer 190. It is undecided what they will do with the now-unused O’Hare slot.

Table Reverted 2/13 @ 309p because it was apparently correct in the first place. O’Hare will not be changing. Hopefully the PR story won’t change again, but watch this space.

So, you see LAX gets flights to JFK and Boston, but those are taken away from other airports. That’s probably important at JFK where there isn’t much room to expand these days, but it’s most important at Long Beach. Remember, the airport is maxed out and JetBlue can’t start any new flights unless they get rid of some other ones. Before we get into that, let’s talk about LAX.

Like I said, the airport will get flights to JFK and Boston. They can’t have many more than that, because they only have one gate in terminal 6. That’s gate 69, to be precise. Hmm, they should try a Southwest-style “love” message with that gate number.

Anyway, this is nothing but bad news for Virgin America since they’re targeting the same travelers and offering similar amenities. Virgin America may have one more flight per day, but JetBlue has better times, most significantly on the westbound. Virgin has no flight leaving JFK between 930a and 510p. JetBlue has a midday trip at 11a.

Down in Long Beach, most of the changes they’re making appear to be so they can introduce the smaller Embraer 190 into the market. Austin starts (the only one to begin May 1) probably because it’s the best way to get the plane from the east coast to the west coast, but San Jose and Seattle are interesting moves. Seattle is in direct competition with Alaska. They must think there’s enough room for two players in this market, because they’re going to be at a frequency and loyalty disadvantage. The odds aren’t stacked against them nearly as much as they are for Virgin America going against Alaska at LAX, however. They’re also doing Seattle to San Diego. Meanwhile, Burbank gets a couple Dulles flights, which is a nice addition.

I thought it was funny that at the press conference, the theme was all about the regionalization of airports in LAX, but that’s far from the case here. Sure, they added a couple flights at Burbank, but the restrictions on flying at Long Beach means they didn’t add anything, they just moved the flights around. It’s kind of hard to regionalize when the desirable regional airports don’t have any room.

Really, the big announcement is that they added LAX flying which goes against LA’s effort to move away from LAX. I thought it was pretty funny to see JetBlue CEO Dave Barger pressured to start more Ontario and even Palmdale flying. He laughed uncomfortably, but until Ontario lowers its fees, I can’t imagine they’re going to see much more traffic. And Palmdale? That’s way too far out there today.

So, good news for LA travelers in that you can now fly JetBlue out of LAX. It’s nice for LGB travelers to have more destinations, even if it is at the expense of some east coast flights. There are still plenty of options in those markets. I’m just happy to see JetBlue finally taking their eyes away from Northeast to Florida flying and giving us some love out here on the West Coast.

Click to see all my photos from JetBlue’s press conference.

Alaska, always the gentleman, has decided to roll out the red carpet for Virgin America’s upcoming arrival in Seattle by announcing a bunch of new flights and double bonus miles. Wait, that’s not very welcoming, is it?

Alaska has effectively decided to turn their Seattle - California services into a shuttle-style operation with flights either on the hour or half hour starting April 27. From Seattle to LAX, southbound flights will depart 15 times daily on the hour (up from 12 daily) while northbound flights will depart on the half hour. Flights to San Diego, Orange County, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose will follow the same schedule, but they’ll run every two hours.

If the flight times aren’t good enough, maybe you’ll like the mileage promo. Fly twice from March 15 through May 15 between Seattle and LAX or SFO and you’ll get double miles for every trip on those routes from May 16 through the end of the year.

This seems like a particularly nasty response to Virgin America’s impending entry, wouldn’t you say? I mean, VX will have 3 flights a day to SFO and 4 to LAX when they’re at full strength. These moves make the VX schedule look like nothing, but then again it already looked that way before.

Is the demand really there for this? Maybe. I mean, United has pulled capacity in those markets over the last few years, and Delta is only flying RJs, so there isn’t nearly as many flights as there has been in the past. The shuttle-style service will probably be well-received so this could be ok for them, but I’d be surprised.

How are they adding these flights? Well, they’re canceling the Orange County - Oakland route. That competed with Southwest anyway, so it’s probably a better move to cancel those. Whether this is the best use of those aircraft is questionable.

But let’s be honest, they wouldn’t be doing this without the VX threat. These are two of their biggest markets (if not the top 2), and they are not going to let VX establish even the tiniest of presences without a fight. Which once again makes me wonder why VX would bother with a market like this. It’s not like Alaska is a weakling that people hate. VX is just asking for it.

If you’re flying to the west coast today, be ready for a delayed and bumpy ride. We’re getting hit with the worst storm we’ve had in 3 years over here. Check out the satellite shot right now. Looks like a freakin’ hurricane.

If you’re up in San Francisco, things are really ugly. As of 1130a PT, SFO was seeing delays between 4 hours 1 minute and 4 hours 15 minutes and INCREASING. Holy crap.

I’ve been listening to the live air traffic control feed at SFO this morning (yes, I’m a dork), and it’s ugly. There are constant windshear alerts and there have been microbursts on the runway. I just heard an aircraft cleared to land with 42 knot winds gusting to 52 knots and a windshear alert with a 20 knot loss of speed due to wind change. Those controllers and pilots deserve medals for flying through this stuff today.

And outside my window in LA, the rain just started. We’ll get the worst of it tonight and tomorrow, hoping that the recent burn areas hold up and don’t end up turning into mud rivers. All that being said, we need the rain and snow throughout California. Stay safe today.