You might be surprised to know that it’s not just airlines that can get the Cranky Jackass award. Today, I have the pleasure of awarding it to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, the girls who say that being so hot got them banned from Southwest for life.

Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, it is. But this irresponsible piece of journalism from a Tampa news station proves that it must have been a slow news day when it happened. The girls claim that they were harassed from the moment they got on board, and at the end of the flight they were met by law enforcement and banned for life from flying Southwest. Why? Because they’re “decent looking.” Don’t believe me? Watch the video yourself, complete with camera panning head-to-toe in order to give you a good look.

Now, last time Southwest had a sex scandal, they ignored it and it blew up to epic proportions. The girl with the short skirt, Kyla Whats-Her-Face, even got herself invited to a Richard Branson party for Virgin America. When they finally did respond, it was a day late and a dollar short. The damage had been done. So you knew Southwest wouldn’t make that mistake again, and it was exactly their response this time that even made me consider writing about this event.

First, they put out a press release with all the facts from the point of view of the crew members involved as well as uninvolved passengers on the flight. Also, I received a quick response from Southwest spokesperson Paula Berg when I asked for more details. She immediately pointed me to an updated story from the same person who filed the original report. This one presented Southwest’s side of the story.

As you might imagine, they have a very different interpretation of events, and one that I find to be far more believable. They say the girls (or at least one of them) got angry that someone was in the bathroom so long. They pounded on the door, and when asked to stop acting that way, they refused. When the person came out, words were exchanged, at the very least. Once they landed, they took them off the plane and canceled the return on their tickets, giving them a refund for that fare. Oh, and Paula added, “the two ladies are not ‘banned’ from ever traveling on Southwest in the future.” Sounds a lot more plausible to me.

But what’s really interesting here is that they fought the YouTube video with a response video of their own from spokesperson Brandy King.

She may very well be a good spokesperson behind the camera, but she didn’t come off very well in front of it. The content was fine, but she fumbled and stumbled her way through the minute-long video. I still like the proactive effort, but really, the entire time I was watching this video, I kept thinking two things.

1. Nice strategic placement in front of the picture that says “A beautiful way to fly.” Hah.
2. If Southwest decided to ban pretty people from flying, Brandy King wouldn’t be able to fly her own airline

Despite the fumbling in the video, I think this was handled pretty well by Southwest. It’s nice to see them learn from their past mistakes. A look at the 900+ comments on that news story shows that most people side with the airline on this one (but definitely not all). My favorite comment? “I didn’t know Paris and Nicole were still friends?!!”

This one is just mind-boggling. US Airways has quietly slipped in a $5 surcharge when you book flights at usairways.com, their own f*&*’n website! I’m not sure when it started, but it had to have been recently. Combine this with the expiration of the online booking bonus at the end of November and they have not only eliminated any incentive to book on the website, they’ve actually created disincentives. Add in the fact that they bury this surcharge into the base fare so you won’t find out it’s there and US Airways gets the first fire-red-with-anger Cranky Jackass.

First of all, let me show you what I found. I always participate in the Phoenix HeartWalk every spring, so I looked up flight options from Long Beach to Phoenix leaving Feb 29 and returning Mar 2. I usually start with a metasearch site like Kayak or Sidestep and then go directly to the website for booking. This time, I tried Farecast and saw this:

I clicked through to US Airways and the price didn’t show up as $117 but rather $122.30, as you can see here:

I started trying to figure out what was going on, so I looked around at a bunch of other sites. You can see I’ve cobbled together the prices from the OTAs below:

They’re all also $122.30 except for Orbitz with its penny rounding error and Priceline with its $117.30 price. So while Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia add their $5 service fee, US Airways has quietly decided to do the same for bookings on their own site. What’s even more shady about this entire thing is that US Airways has buried it into the base fare so you would never know that you were paying $5 more than the base price. And since Priceline no longer has booking fees, you can actually get the flight for less money by booking on Priceline.

Now my curiosity got the better of me, so I called up reservations to see what they’d say. They told me that fare would be $122.65 plus a $10 reservation fee. I have no idea how they ended up being $.35 more than anywhere else, but it’s clear the $5 fee applies to phone reservations as well. And that’s on top of the $10 fee they already charge. At this point I decided to see if I could get to the bottom of this, so I opened up the KVS Availability Tool and looked at the surcharge fare rules in the SABRE system. Unfortunately, this is what it gave me:

Though this won’t show me the surcharge, I have to think there is one in there or it wouldn’t be hidden from agency view.

This makes absolutely no sense to me on so many levels. First of all, all US airlines, including US Airways, have spent years trying to convince customers that the best place to go to find the cheapest fare is their own websites. It was an unwritten agreement between airline and customer that you could go to the website and not find it cheaper anywhere else except for possibly from the stray consolidator or when packaged with hotels and car rentals. Now, US Airways has decided to chuck that right out the window. The years and money they’ve spent on building up that reputation have been flushed right down the toilet. And the fact that they try to hide it in the base fare so the customer can’t see it makes it even worse.

What does this mean to me? Well, if I do fly US Airways (and this does make me slightly less likely to do so), I’ll book at Priceline. There’s no reason to spend more money to buy on the US website if I can get it cheaper elsewhere.

Did they really think people wouldn’t find out about this? Did they think they could charge more and nobody would change their behavior? I asked my PR contact at the airline and he wasn’t aware that this was happening he said “the $5 increase you’re seeing is essentially a fare increase to fares booked at usairways.com.” (updated 12/11 @ 1002p)

I’m sure they’ve done the calculations. They’re smart people. The bet is that they can make more money with that $5 hidden surcharge than they’ll lose from people ditching the airline, migrating to Priceline for cheaper fares, or booking via other OTAs for more amenities and better service. Sadly, that bet is probably right in the short term and potentially right even in the long term but that’s harder to predict. That’s why if they had done this so that people could clearly see the fee, it might be hard for me to argue even though I don’t agree with the decision. But the sneaky nature of this just leaves me feeling cheated.

What does this mean for the OTAs? Will Priceline re-institute a booking fee or will they continue to have a price advantage? If I were Priceline, I’d keep the advantage and enjoy the influx of people who will book on the site. But you have to think that US Airways will pressure them to add a fee again. If not, lower back-end commissions may be in their future. (I’m assuming they still get some.) For all the other OTAs, well, things just got interesting. Many of them offer customer service above and beyond what customers get through the airline, so if the price is the same, why not get more for your money by booking through OTAs?

And what about the metasearch guys? After I found that issue on Farecast, I looked at Kayak and Sidestep as well, but USAirways.com didn’t even show up as a seller. Maybe US Airways will plan on backing away from all metasearch guys now that they won’t look as competitive as they did before. If not, metasearch sites like Farecast will have to adjust their USAirways.com fares by $5 to be accurate.

Wow. This one is just incredible.

A couple of months ago, when delays were at their worst, the President came out and said he was going to fix things. Today, we learned exactly what he’s planning on doing and it’s a pretty sorry effort. Despite what you might expect, I’m not blaming the President for everything. I just blame him for picking the wrong Secretary of Transportation.

It’s the President’s responsibility to find a Secretary of Transportation who can actually addresses the issues going on in the country’s transportation system, and after today’s recommendations, I’m convinced Secretary Peters doesn’t really understand the problem here. That’s why she and her department have earned the coveted Cranky Jackass Award for their efforts.

If you’d like, you can read the Fact Sheet on the proposal or the President’s Speech, but I would say the best read is Secretary Peters’ press conference. The lack of organization is readily apparent in her speech. Enough pre-talk. Let’s dig in.

1) Of all the proposed changes, the one that they think is the most helpful is opening military airspace for commercial flights during the busy Thanksgiving weekend.

Hooray! More airspace! Oh wait, airspace isn’t the problem right now. A friend of mine who has intimate knowledge of the East Coast air traffic problems said it best:

“The greater use of the military deep water airspace is advantageous during the summer months when t-storms block overland routes up and down the coast. When was the last time we had East Coast thunderstorms during Thanksgiving or Christmas?”

Ah yes, good point. See, in the summer, thunderstorms close down airspace (you don’t want to fly through one of those) and that’s when things get sticky. But we rarely see that happen in the winter. In the winter, it’s not airspace problems, because snow storms don’t shut shut down airspace. Snow shuts down airports. So, these new routes aren’t going to do anything substantial.

Oh, and if that’s not enough, these are overwater routes. If they’re more than 50 miles offshore, this would fall under Extended Overwater Operations, and not every airline has the right equipment onboard to allow them to use those routes. Ugh.

Really, the saddest thing about this is the press conference. You’ll need to read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts from Secretary Peters and her VP of Support Operations Nancy Kalinowski.

QUESTION: But you still have that — you still have sort of the choke points if you are at the airport, you still have to land them — I mean, you might be able to get out of New York a little quicker, but on the other end you still have the runway capacity you have, as far as landing the planes.

MS. KALINOWSKI: We believe it’s going to be able to help us get out of New York quicker for the holiday season.

QUESTION: Do you have any idea how many airplanes you’ll be able to move — I mean, is there a number that you can quantify at all?

MS. KALINOWSKI: It’s going to depend on the weather. No.

SECRETARY PETERS: And by the way, let me introduce who Nancy is, so you know who she is. Nancy Kalinowski — and we’ll spell that for you later if you need that — she’s the vice president of support operations, basically the air traffic part of the organization. And I’m sorry, how many more planes, Nancy?

MS. KALINOWSKI: We’re not — we haven’t done those statistics, so we just feel like we know how much traffic we’re going to have for the holiday season and we’re just going to get them out of the New York area quicker, especially –

Holy crap. Talk about confusion. They say this is going to be great, but they have no idea how many planes it will help move. Uh, ok. But I really shouldn’t say “they,” because on Kalinowski says that. Right after she says it, Peters asks here the same question that Kalinowski said she couldn’t answer just two seconds earlier! This is just too much. But there’s more.

QUESTION: A quick follow up to what you just said. You said you were making, effectively, two new airways available. How many exist now?

MS. KALINOWSKI: Well, there are no airways through that airspace now.

QUESTION: Right, right, I know. But what I’m saying is, if you’re thinking of it like a consumer does, how many lanes currently exist, and you’re adding two more?

MS. KALINOWSKI: We’re essentially adding to a route which allows airplanes to move up and down through that airspace.

SECRETARY PETERS: Nancy, absent opening these two new routes, how many routes are available under the normal configuration?

MS. KALINOWSKI: Oh, we have hundreds of routes up and down the East Coat. I mean –

QUESTION: So how much of a percentage increase in capacity is this?

MS. KALINOWSKI: It’s not necessarily a capacity; it’s more of an efficiency. It’s an ability to have an alternative if we have bad weather on the East Coast. I mean, every day planes move up and down the East Coast. They move over land, some of them move slightly off the coast, or they use what we call the amber routes, which are outside of the warning area airspace.

QUESTION: So if the weather was perfectly clear during the Thanksgiving period, this actually wouldn’t really help that much. It would really help only if there was bad weather; it gives you additional routes to reroute planes?

MS. KALINOWSKI: It will especially help during the bad weather. But I think many of the airlines are going to take advantage of these routes, even if we have good weather up and down the East Coast.

ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!! I think my head just exploded. What is wrong with you people?!?!? Ok, enough. Let’s say what else they’re going to do.

2) “. . . impose a holiday moratorium on maintenance projects that are not time-sensitive. . . .”

Really? What made you think that non-essential work would be worth doing during the busy season of the year in the first place? But I really want to know what they’re talking about here specifically. I haven’t seen any specifics on what projects are being stopped that will positively impact delays.

3) “The FAA is partnering with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to reduce bottlenecks in the New York metro area . . . .”

These guys have to learn to keep their stories straight here. First, they said that JFK was a mess and they’d fix it, so they made some operational tweaks and promised to make more. But wait. Then they decided that they need to cap flights at an artificially low 80-81 flights per hour at the airport during peak times even though they were trying to expand the airport’s capacity. Now they’re talking about congestion pricing to encourage airlines to use off peak times, but what about all those capacity increases that will make those unnecessary? Back and forth and back and forth.

The priority should absolutely be to increase capacity. If you can’t do it quickly enough, then you should enact congestion pricing or use caps to restrict traffic temporarily, but it certainly doesn’t make sense to do both at the same time. What is the point of the capacity increase if you’re just going to restrict operations?

4) “The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the FAA are encouraging airlines to take their own measures to prevent delays.”

Hah! That’s awesome. It’s exactly what the airlines want to hear. Hey airlines – you guys come up with something and we’ll take credit for it.

5) “Double the amount of compensation passengers receive when they are forced off overbooked flights.”

This really won’t do much to reduce delays, but it will encourage airlines to become more conservative when it comes to overbooking. I’m not really against this idea so much, but I don’t think it’s going to help delays either.

6) “Require airlines to collect and provide DOT with better data on the sources of flight delays.”

They say they want more information about the causes of delays and the the amount of time they sit on the ground, but that information is out there. I can find the gate times on the airline website and I can find the actual wheels-up and wheels-down times at FlightAware. Causes are reported in each DOT monthly report, but I guess they want more details? More importantly . . . what are they going to do with it?

The only action I’ve seen in this area is regarding chronically delayed flights. If a flight is delayed more than 70% of the time, the government wants to consider that deceptive practices and that means big monetary penalties. I like this idea, actually. Delays happen for a variety of reasons, but if you’re delayed more than 70% of the time, it’s either the worst weather month ever (in which case this will be problematic), or the flight isn’t scheduled properly. But that information is out there free for anyone who wants it, so I don’t know what this request will do.

7) “. . .mandatory contingency plans to aid stranded passengers and penalties for chronically delayed flights.”

I get nervous when something sounds like a passenger bill of rights, but this is actually not all bad. They’re letting the airlines decide what goes into the contract, but the DOT is going to require that it be legally binding. Again, this won’t help delays at all, but it could have an impact depending upon what the airlines put in there.

8) “The FAA is also going to better inform consumers by providing real-time updates on whether flights at a particular airport are on time or delayed, and by how much. This information will be available at: www.fly.faa.gov.”

Um, they’ve been doing this for years. I like how they try to act like they’re doing something great here.

9) “To Solve Delay Problems In The Long Term, Congress Must Pass Legislation Modernizing Our Aviation System”

Ziiiiiiiiiing! There’s the whole point of this thing. Let’s bring politics in to the picture. After this headline, the Fact Sheet goes on and on saying how Congress has to act or everyone is screwed. I find it amazing that the President seems to have no qualms about expanding the powers of the presidency in other areas, but when it comes to fixing the problem here, he just punts and blames Congress.

Oh man, this is just sad. And that’s why the DOT and Secretary Peters have earned themselves the Cranky Jackass Award. Congratulations.

In a time when parts of our air traffic control system can shut down for two hours without backup, you know it’s tempting for Congress to get involved, especially with the upcoming FAA reauthorization. Wait, the FAA reauthorization is still spinning in circles? So what could they be working on?

It’s been awhile since I’ve whipped out the Cranky Jackass, but Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) and Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) have certainly earned it this week. While there are plenty of major problems facing the US Congress right now, these two have opted to launch a bid to pass the Family Friendly Flights Act.

This ridiculous piece of legislation is designed to force airlines that don’t make all programming family friendly (what does that mean, exactly?) to create sections on every airplane that would not have viewable movie screens. Why? To protect children from seeing images that are too graphic. Why the heck is Congress involved with this? Don’t you have better things to do?

You know what ends up happening here? A bunch of passengers suffer without inflight entertainment just because a couple of parents can’t prevent their kid from watching the movie. Give ‘em a blindfold or some baby Ambien (or something else that doesn’t exist just in fantasy land). Or better yet, just don’t fly on planes with overhead screens. This doesn’t impact flights with personal screens because you can turn those off yourself, so there are plenty of options for parents who really care about this.

On overseas flights, make sure you fly someone that has personal screens. For domestic flights? Fly Southwest – you won’t see a screen on any airplane. Or fly American’s MD80s – not a screen to be found. There are million different options if you really want to “protect” your children. But don’t rely on the government to step in and do something that will anger more people than it will help.

And as for you, Congressmen . . . get back to doing some real work, please. This is a waste of everyone’s time. Let’s hope this goes nowhere, kind of like most of Shuler’s passes in the NFL.

It’s just been one long week of problems in the industry, that’s for sure. Of course, the biggest and most tragic was the TAM accident in Sao Paulo, but huge delays on the east coast due to bad weather, Virgin America’s website failure, and the whole JetBlue-O’Reilly flap made it a difficult week all the way around.

So why shouldn’t we end on a down note? (I know, not what you were looking for going into the weekend.)

At the risk of fanning the flames once again, it’s time to go back to the JetBlue-O’Reilly fight. JetBlue has apparently made the worst decision from a PR standpoint that they could have made in this situation, and that’s why they get the not-so-coveted Cranky Jackass award.

According to DailyKos, JetBlue told the website to pull the sponsorship banner down. They’ll still give them the tickets, but now they don’t want any recognition for it.

Are you kidding me, JetBlue? Now O’Reilly supporters still hate you because you’re still giving them tickets, but DailyKos supporters hate you as well because you’re hiding your support. Way to go, champ.

I’m sure we’ll hear some excuse like, “oh, they weren’t allowed to use our banner without permission anyway,” but is that going to help? Nope. They’ve still just found a way to piss people off on both sides of the aisle.

What a week.