JetBlue Leaves Open Skies for Sabre
The Open Skies system may be simple, but it no longer provides what many low cost carriers need. That’s why it’s Sabre time.

Abandoned Airport Looks to Solar Energy
Palmdale Airport may not work as an actual airport, but a solar energy farm? Now we’re talking.

JetBlue Offers Refunds For Those Who Lose Their Jobs
JetBlue says not to worry about losing your job, because they’ll give your money back if you do . . . with several restrictions.

Aircraft Demand Continues to Drop
Drive by Marana or Mojave and you’re likely to see plenty more airplanes collecting dust than at this time last year. The trend isn’t changing either.

Delta Replaces Northwest from Los Angeles to Las Vegas
Northwest has flown Vegas to LA for years to feed people from Tokyo and other Asian cities, but that’s ending. Delta is taking it over and changing the times.

Large Aircraft Security Proposal Threatens to Strangle General Aviation
The TSA is at it again. This time, they’re trying to slap commercial aviation-style security on general aviation. Uh oh.

Sabre Allows Travel Agents to Sell United’s Economy Plus
It took them long off, but United and Sabre have finally teamed together to allow travel agents using Sabre to sell Economy Plus upgrades on United.

Alaska Gets Its Wireless Internet Test Up and Running
Alaska now has one plane test flying with onboard internet. When will one of these test airlines actually commit?

There’s some great news of out Los Angeles these days now that LA World Airports (LAWA) has finally decided to give up on bringing service to Palmdale Airport. Of course, some are unhappy about this, but it’s absolutely the right thing to do. And for that reason, I’m giving LAWA a big gold star.

For those who haven’t followed, I’ve written extensively about what a poor decision it was to focus on bringing regional flights to far-out Palmdale Airport, and I’m happy to see that others are now seeing the same thing. And they’re really not mincing words about it anymore.

“There is no viability in service at Palmdale,” said Mike Molina, senior director of government affairs for LAWA, which operates Los Angeles International, Ontario, Palmdale and Van Nuys airports.

“There’s no population up there to support it, and there’s no ground transportation linking the desert to downtown,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose district includes LAX. “Until those things happen, Palmdale won’t work out.”

Wow, they sound shockingly wise with these quotes. The Mayor’s office tried to jump around the issue by saying that “the mayor has not backed away from Palmdale, but the national economy has.” Yeah, right. There has yet to be viable service at this airport. I don’t dispute that one day it will occur, and with the building of a new high speed rail line beginning, they have the opportunity to make this airport relevant again. But for now, it’s just not going to happen.

Now LAWA can refocus on putting its efforts toward LAX and Ontario, where spending money on service development is less likely to be a complete and total waste.

Let’s stick this one in the “I told you so” file. Back in June, I said, “I’m sure that the second that subsidy is gone, United is out of there.” I was right.

United started flying to Palmdale on June 7, 2007 and committed to stay for 18 months. The flights never did well, but LAWA did get United to double the number of flights. Of course, LAWA knew the writing was on the wall, because they applied for another federal grant to keep United in town beyond the 18 month point. The feds weren’t exactly supportive (PDF):

This year, 10 applications either did not meet the basic criteria for participation outlined above and were determined ineligible for selection, or the application itself was deemed incomplete. Most often, the applicant sought additional funding for the same, or essentially the same, project that was funded in a previous grant.

Yep, that’s you, Palmdale. So guess what, the last day of flights is December 6, 2008 . . . 18 months after they started. I know this source isn’t confirmed, but see if you can book the flights past December 6. You can’t, and that’s proof enough for me.

I can’t say I’m sorry about this. The only thing that bothers me is that so much money was wasted in trying to force this service to work. Hopefully now LAWA will move on and focus back on the local airports that matter.

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.

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.