Reason Number 1,423 Why the Essential Air Service Program is a Huge Waste of Taxypayer Funds – BNET
Little Visalia, California is getting a ton of money to maintain air service that nobody uses. Great.

US Airways Pilots Oppose New York Slot Swap with Delta, Defy Logic – BNET
I roast the US Airways pilots for their decision to oppose the slot swap. It makes no sense.

best flying tip: arrive early – antibride.com
If you’re stressed about travels, the best thing you can do is arrive early. Just give yourself some extra time.

Airports in Boston and San Francisco Team Up with Twitter Promo – BNET
You don’t often see two airports getting together for promotional purposes, but that’s exactly what Boston and San Francisco are doing.

ExpressJet CEO Leaves for a Lesser Title at American – BNET
Looks like ExpressJet’s CEO has had enough of the regional biz, he’s heading to American to run maintenance. Hmm.

Airline Year Over Year Unit Revenue Changes Aren’t As Good as They Seem – BNET
Yes, the year-over-year comparisons are good, but that’s because things had fallen off a cliff last year. It’s not time to get excited just yet.

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.

It wasn’t that long ago that I questioned Virgin America’s decision to focus more on short hauls. Well, they’ve announced their latest city, and once again, they aren’t going far.

This time, the winner is Seattle. They start 3 flights a day from SFO on March 18 and then 3 daily from LAX on April 8. LAX will get a fourth flight on May 11.

They’re definitely staying away from transcon flights. Fuel prices are probably making that a tough market for them. But at least LAX-SEA is a longer haul route so people can enjoy the onboard amenities. Only problem? Alaska Airlines.

People in the Pacific Northwest tend to actually like Alaska Airlines. You don’t hear that about airlines very often, but this is an exception. Can VX really go up against these guys? Their biggest problem, as it has been in every market they’ve entered, is lack of frequency. In this case, Alaska smokes them with 12 daily from LAX to SEA and 8 daily from SFO. That, of course, doesn’t include 19 flights to four other LA Basin airports and 13 to other Bay Area airports.

Yes, VX will be dropping prices when they enter, but you know Alaska will match (they probably have already). This one isn’t going to be easy.

Trying to predict Southwest’s future destinations is a time-honored tradition practiced by just about everyone in this industry. Most recently, Denver and Philadelphia were unexpected and left people scratching their heads at this new strategy of flying to big city airports.

Even considering that past history, I don’t think anyone could have predicted today’s announcement that the airline would return to San Francisco (SFO) in the Fall. This one is the most surprising of all.

Back on March 4, 2001, the airline packed up and left the airport. At the time there were 14 daily flights to only Phoenix and San Diego, but the combination of horrible delays, gate constraints, and high costs made them decide it wasn’t worth it. They said that they would serve the Bay Area through San Jose and the much larger operation at Oakland.

Well today they’ve decided to come on back to town. Reading the release alongside this SFGate article and this Inside Bay Area article makes it clear that costs have come down enough to make it attractive again. In addition, they say there is enough gate space. The long term plan to renovate the old international terminal (now Terminal 2) means there are growth opportunities in the long run. But how is on time performance doing?

Well thanks to the DOT, we can pull this info up fairly easily.

As you can see, on time percentage bottomed out at around 60% for the year 2000. It’s no wonder the airline pulled out in early 2001. But you can see that the numbers began to rebound. Of course after 9/11, there were a lot fewer flights so being on time was a lot easier.

Now look where we are today. The number of flights rebounded in 2006 so that there were only 2.5% fewer flights than in 2000. That comes out to about 9 fewer flights per day on average. Yet the airport still was able to achieve a 70% on time arrival rate – 10 points higher than in 2000.

Why exactly is Southwest doing this? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s probably a competitive move. Frontier has expressed an interest in expanding in San Francisco. Its flights to Las Vegas are said to be doing well while its flights to Los Angeles struggle. Still, this seems to be a pretty clear sign from Southwest that they’re going to play hard. Alaska has also said it wants to expand further in California, so this could be a hint to them as well.

I’m not so sure this says anything to JetBlue. That airline has effectively abandoned its plans to expand in the West unless it connects into the east coast network. I wouldn’t expect to see Southwest flying the long hauls from here, at least not in the beginning. In fact, they said they’ll probably have 12 to 14 flights at the beginning. I’d put my money down on Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, and Chicago/Midway. They should be able to coexist with JetBlue. I also don’t think this is a message to United or American either.

The big loser here? Well it very well may be Virgin America. Now JetBlue, AirTran, and Southwest will all fly to San Francisco. JetBlue and Southwest also fly to Oakland and San Jose. I think they’re trying to build a case that there isn’t a need for another airline in the Bay Area, because they are already providing low fares and good service. It’s true they don’t have the cool inflight entertainment that Virgin does, but that doesn’t motivate the DOT. The DOT wants low fare competition from majority US-owned airlines. If there already is low fare competition, I would think they’d be less likely to revisit Virgin America’s application, especially in light of the ownership issues so far.