There has been a ton of interesting news to write about in the last few days, and I’d been having trouble figuring out with what to lead . . . until yesterday. Turns out that I was voted one of the the world’s 50 most powerful blogs by The Observer in the UK.

Holy crap! That’s kind of scary. But, I’m guessing that means I’ll have a bunch of new visitors from that side of the Pond (welcome, everyone), so I’m going to post Sunday night instead of my usual Monday morning. And, while I’m being accommodating, let’s focus on something that probably causes you newbies pain and suffering more often than not: Heathrow.

Usually, any discussion of Heathrow involves a lot of cursing, rising blood pressure, and possibly some crying. With any luck, we’ll see less of that in the near future, but it’s likely to get worse in the short term. Why?

Well, we’re getting closer to the big terminal move. On March 27, BA will land its first flights at the brand-spanking new Terminal 5 and that begins a long period of transition for the airport as just about everyone save Virgin Atlantic moves locations.

I’ve tried to put together a handy guide on all the terminal moves so you can actually figure out where you’re supposed to go for your next flight. First, we’ll start with oneworld airlines, since they have the most changes happening the earliest.

Now let’s take a look at SkyTeam. In short, when Delta, Northwest, and Continental start flying to Heathrow in March, they’ll be in BA’s old Terminal 4. The rest of the carriers won’t move until early 2009, when a major terminal renovation will have been completed. Anyone who has flown BA out of that terminal lately knows that it is in desperate need of some help.

I’d like to list the Star Alliance changes here as well, but I haven’t been able to find them. In fact, while oneworld and SkyTeam have been on top of the changes, Star Alliance has been silent. I sent the alliance a request and their response left me wondering if they actually meant to insult my intelligence or if they just don’t speak English very well.

We would like to inform you, however, that the Star Alliance is a network of 19 individual airlines. Operational matters are handled by the airlines themselves. Therefore, for more information, you will need to contact the individual Star Alliance member airlines directly.

Really? You guys aren’t an airline yourself? No sh**. Well, I also asked United directly and spokesperson Robin Urbanski told me that the airline will be moving to Terminal 1, but it’s unclear when that might be and that will happen on June 1. Clearly, this alliance is a little less organized, probably because the changes aren’t coming as quickly as with the others.

We know that the airlines in Terminal 1 will stay there for now. Terminal 2 will be demolished starting this year, so those guys have to move somewhere. On March 27, BA moves nearly all of its domestic and European flights out of Terminal 1, so I have to assume that everyone from Terminal 2 will move in before their terminal disappears. Will the Terminal 3 airlines move at the same time or will they stay longer? My guess is that they won’t move immediately because there’s no urgency. Here’s how they stack up right now along with my best guesses as to where they’ll go. The only thing I know for sure is that US Airways will go to Terminal 1 when it starts service to the airport on March 30.

Update 3/25 @ 822a – Star has put out a press release with much more guidance. All Star carriers will be expected to move to Heathrow East in 2012 when the terminal is completed, but I haven’t included those changes in here.

Of course, not all airlines are in alliances. Virgin Atlantic, for example, will stay in Terminal 3, so you won’t see any changes there. All other unaligned airlines (except for former oneworld member Aer Lingus which will be in Terminal 3) will end up in Terminal 4. Again, I’m not entirely sure when that might happen, but one thing is clear . . . there will be a lot of confusion at Heathrow until things settle down, and that could take years.

If you have to go to the airport in the near future, leave plenty of time and bring lots of patience. If you have the misfortune of connecting through Heathrow, especially while these changes are in progress, may God have mercy on your souls.

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I had a completely different post lined up for today, but really, when news like this breaks, it’s hard to stay away. For those who haven’t yet heard, JetBlue will issue a bunch of new shares to Lufthansa giving them 19% of the company for about $300m. So far, there is no relationship between the two airlines in a commercial sense, but Lufthansa will hold a seat on JetBlue’s board, and after listening to their conference call this morning, it’s clear that they want more.

First thought? Enjoy your bitch-slap, United. Oh sure, that young little hussy JetBlue can’t replace you . . . yet, but Lufthansa is clearly not as faithful to you as you might have hoped. Maybe you shouldn’t have let yourself get so out of shape over the years.

Second thought? This is great for JetBlue. They get a bunch of cash, which is nice, and they get some solid external guidance from a very large, profitable European airline on their board. And yes, there are so many opportunities for cooperation here. Sweet.

Third thought? What exactly is Lufthansa thinking? This is why my brain hurts right now. They’ve already got a very strong presence in the US with both United and US Airways in the Star Alliance. Why not buy into them? Maybe they don’t like where things are going with those guys. But point-to-point JetBlue?

Even at the bare minimum, I think this makes sense. JetBlue’s shares, like those of most other airlines right now, are in the toilet. It’s a nice cheap investment that’s made even cheaper by the exchange rate. So, they have a good investment that also can give them a little presence in NYC with even the most basic of interline agreements, something that Star Alliance doesn’t have.

At most, it could be much bigger. I’m not really worried about US Airways in this equation, because they’ve never been a major Star Alliance player. But Lufthansa and United were founding Star members, lovers, and they share revenue on flights over the North Atlantic.

But let’s say that Lufthansa is sick and tired of United not paying attention to their business. Maybe they aren’t happy with management and they want something different. Hello, JetBlue.

United isn’t going to walk away from Lufthansa, because they have nowhere else to go (unless someone buys them). They need Lufthansa and Star more than the other way around. So, Lufthansa can keep United around while JetBlue has the chance to build up its domestic operation into a strong network. Does that take years? Most definitely. Can Lufthansa wait? Yeah, sure.

But what about international flying? Who cares? Right now, Lufthansa has to split Transatlantic revenues with United. So, they can kick them out and do the flying themselves with JetBlue waiting on the other end to fill up their planes. Remember, now with open skies, Lufthansa can fly from anywhere in Europe to anywhere in the US.

What about Pacific routes? Eh, ANA, Thai, Air China, Air India, Singapore . . . the list goes on and on. There are plenty of carriers on the other side that can take care of that market. So, JetBlue can become a major domestic powerhouse and then auf wiedersehen, United. They would lose US government traffic across the pond (since they have to fly US carriers), but I’m not sure how much business that is for them now.

Am I crazy? Probably. But remember, United has been talking about mergers for a long time. They may go run off with someone else and leave Star Alliance anyway. If Tilton can make enough money for him and his investors, don’t think he won’t do it.

Do I think this is going to happen? Nah, but it’s fun to think about it. We’ll probably see something happen that’s more in between these two extremes where Lufthansa gets to play with everyone. Pretty cool.

Buying a plane ticket can be a frustrating experience. As a former airline pricer, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people complain about how often fares change and how there seems to be no logic involved. Why do they pay more than another person for the same seat?

It makes perfect sense to me, of course. Airlines price their seats based on supply and demand, so if you book early when the plane is empty (high supply) and you travel on an uncrowded day (low demand), you’ll likely find the best price. I’m simplifying, of course, but you get the idea. People hate the lack of transparency and the fact that they don’t seem to get more for paying more.

It certainly doesn’t help that airlines use the same systems to sell tickets that they used 30 years ago. Those systems are very rigid in what they can and cannot do, so even though there are plenty of great ideas out there, very few can be implemented without major changes.

That’s where Air Canada has excelled.

Why Air Canada? Well, it probably helps that they have the lion’s share of the market up in Canada, so they can experiment without nearly as much consequence as someone down in the US. Still, they’ve done some very innovative things that have made them a model in terms of revenue generation.

First, start with their new tiered fare structure. They have five different fare groupings. The lowest, called Tango, is bare bones. You only earn 50% of the miles you fly, there are change fees for everything, and you have to pay $12 just to get an advance seat assignment. That is followed by Tango Plus, Latitude, Latitude Plus, and finally Executive Class (which is their premium cabin). For a full explanation of the difference in classes, go here.

It’s rare in the airline world, but with these fare groupings, you can now see what you’re getting by paying more. Of course, this only works if you have the right interface for customers, so Air Canada did a major makeover on their website. If you searched for a flight from Vancouver to Toronto, for example, here is what you would see.

The first thing you might notice is that it looks a lot like the Southwest website. It shows you every available flight and then which fare classes are open for sale on those flights. Even better than that, they have tabs at the top showing the lowest fares for five days on either side of your chosen date, just in case you’re flexible. It makes it very easy to get a good picture of the fare landscape.

One thing I like as a former revenue guy is that they change fares within each fare group. You may have to squint, but look at the first flight as compared to the second flight. In Tango, you’ll pay $168 for the first one, but $194 for the second. Even within each category, they’re looking to match supply with demand. It may still hearken back to the black box idea of revenue management from the customer perspective, but it’s a good middle-ground that offers good transparency for the customer as well as the ability to revenue manage for the airline.

Now, in their latest move, Air Canada has taken things one step further to actually creating a world of a la carte pricing. So now, let’s say you want the Tango fare. When you select it, you’ll go to this screen.

This was just launched last week, and I think it’s great. The idea is to get to the point where every person can pay a different fare and actually feel good about doing so.

You don’t care about earning miles? Well, save $3. Air Canada will give you the discount so they don’t get the liability of those miles on their books.

You don’t need to check bags? Great, save $4 for not using the resources to get your bag in the belly of the plane.

Do you know you won’t change your flight? Excellent, save $6 on that one as well.

The best part about this is the presentation. US carriers will often tack on fees for various things. Air Canada could easily have said that there is a $4 fee for checking bags, but instead, they give you a $4 discount for not checking bags. It’s the same thing (assuming they can bump the base fare up $4 – something they can probably do in Canada), but the customer ends up feeling good about it.

So is this the future of ticket sales? I really hope so. It makes a lot of sense to tailor tickets to each person’s needs if you can. Let each person choose what they want and the buying process becomes much more pleasant as well as transparent.

Will the US carriers try this? Probably not in the near future, at least not the big guys. First, it requires a big change on the tech side. More importantly though, if competitors don’t go along with it, there is a lot of risk involved. If there was one big airline I’d expect to give something like this a shot, it’s US Airways since they have been known to take risks, but most of the others are probably too conservative to do it right.

In the meantime, Air Canada will continue to innovate. They’ve announced that they’ve signed on with ITA Software to replace their reservation system internally. That new generation software can only open up additional opportunity to improve the purchase process for everyone.

Remember the good old days when frequent flier miles lasted forever? Those were good times. Then a few years ago, the airlines decided that they would start expiring – they required that you earn mileage at least once every three years. Otherwise, they’d expire.

Well, Upgrade: Travel Better points out the sneaky move by US Airways to cut that time to a mere 18 months now. Once you click into the page on the US Airways site, you find that this new policy goes into place on Jan 31, 2007. If you need more than 18 months, you have the option to pay $50 + $.01 per mile to reactivate the account for another 18 months. After that point, they’re gone forever. The horror!

Wait . . . I like this idea.

If you can’t earn a single mile in over 18 months, what’s wrong with you? It’s not like you even need to fly. You just need to earn with any partner. That means you could get the credit card and earn miles, you can stay at a hotel, rent a car, and you can even buy some friggin’ flowers to get miles. If it’s not even important enough for you to do one of those things in 18 months, then you really don’t care too much about your miles, and the airlines should be able to wipe them off their books.

I guess this is what happens when Philadelphia Eagles fans are allowed to sling bags.

For a long time, Philly has been a nightmare of a baggage problem for US Airways. You may remember a couple winters ago when they had the meltdown at Christmas and tons of bags were lost. After that incident, the airline blamed the workers for walking out on the job, but it was later determined that management had left the airport severely understaffed.

That, in a nutshell, explains the oh-so-terrible labor relations at the old US Airways. Now that America West has taken over, they’re trying to right the ship, but it’s going to be a long road. Yesterday’s article in the Philadelphia Inquirer took a look inside the baggage operation for US Airways in Philly, and it found some pretty ugly stuff. Try this one for starters:

While most US Airways veterans are white, many recent hires are African American. Often, the two groups hang out in different break rooms. Some white workers won’t help pay for DirecTV in one break room, complaining that the set is always tuned to BET.

“The issues are generational, but they manifest themselves racially,” a veteran said. “It’s pretty ugly.”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll have to read the article to get an accurate impression of life at US Airways, but definitely keep in mind that it does seem a bit sensationalized.

Even with that in mind, this is a pretty ugly story. It’s a great example of why taking over US Airways won’t be as smooth for America West as it has seemed so far. The old US Airways employees are angry over pay cut after pay cut, and the change in way of life. As the article notes, working on the ramp used to be a good job you could have for life. Now, it’s considered something for people to do for a few years and then get out. The pay is much less, and that is reflected in the quality of the new hires. Apparently, the pay had even been cut too much, because the new America West management has already raised wages since taking over. This clash between older, highly skilled workers and green new hires is indicative of the difficulty the airline will face in trying to merge these workforces. Even they decide to operate the airlines separately, the problems will remain.

It’s going to take someone who can command respect in Philly to turn that ship around. They’ve gone through so many senior leaders over the years that finding someone who will simply stay around for a couple years might be considered a victory in itself.