Delta Adds First Class to New York Shuttle Flights
Delta will reconfigure its Washington-New York-Boston Shuttle fleet to have First Class seating. This isn’t all about the customer experience.

Why I Didn’t Write About Delta and Northwest Approving the Merger
Delta and Northwest approved their merger last week, but there is still one more big hurdle. What is it and when will it happen?

Global Airline Traffic Slows in August
August numbers are out, and international air traffic continues to slow even at a faster pace than capacity. It may be time to cut capacity again.

SCASDP Grants Have Been Awarded
Remember SCASDP week over on BNET? Well, the grants have been awarded, and I didn’t exactly pick them as well as I would have liked. See which ones made the cut.

New York Airspace Redesign Reading
The airspace in the Northeast corridor is a huge cause of delays. Everyone is trying to tackle the problem, and here’s a nice long piece of reading to keep you busy over the weekend.

Bombardier Kicks Off Farnborough by Launching the C-Series
Bombardier has talked about it for years, and now it’s official. The 110 to 130 seat C-Series has launched, and it’s promising massive fuel savings.

ExpressJet Ending Branded Service with Full Planes
ExpressJet may have announced the end of branded service, but those flights are flying full this summer, showing this may work one day with lower fuel costs.

Is US Airways “Intimidating” Its Pilots?
US Airways wants to use less fuel, so the airline is training its pilots to do just that. Is this stepping over the line?

Farnborough Order Counts
Farnborough Air Show is more than halfway through. That means it’s a good time to step back and see where the aircraft orders are coming from.

Delta To Keep Pinnacle Flying
Delaying entry into service of a handful of planes may have convinced Delta not to drop Pinnacle’s contract, but the reliability question still hangs in the air.

I started putting this post on the airlines and the environment together a long time ago, and then it fell by the wayside. I dusted it off this weekend, and fortunately it’s still relevant. In fact, it’s only going to continue to become a bigger and bigger issue as time goes by.

I was prompted to write this post when I saw that the green community was up in arms over an incident involving American awhile back. You probably remember this one. The airline had the “audacity” to fly an airplane from Chicago to London with, *gasp*, 5 passengers onboard. Why? Well, they had canceled the flight but they couldn’t reaccommodate everyone on the other flights. There were 5 people left over. They had to fly the plane over to London to pick up the people flying westbound anyway, so they let those 5 people onboard for the trip east. That would have been called good customer service back in the day, but now many will call it a crime against the environment. It’s amazing how quickly times change.

I think this incident makes it pretty clear that airlines need to be paying very close attention to their impact on the environment. Even if you don’t believe in global warming, you have to understand that this issue is going to continue to snowball from a PR perspective and it will likely result in higher taxes on airline tickets if the airline don’t pay attention. You need to look no further than the actions over in Europe to see what’s undoubtedly going to make its way stateside with increasing volume. Over there, they’re talking about carbon trading schemes and insanely high taxes. It won’t be much longer before it reaches a fever pitch over here as well.

Now, I do believe that there is a human impact on climate change, but I also think the airlines are going to bear far more of the burden than they should. Air travel accounts for somewhere between 2 and 3% of greenhouse gas emissions and probably a slightly larger percentage of overall global warming. That’s a pretty small number in the scheme of things, but that’s not going to be a good argument in the public eye. But even looking within that 2 to 3%, why is it the airlines and not other contributors to the aviation industry get hit the hardest?

Well, they’re the easiest ones to nail. The problem here for the airlines, of course, is that they can’t pass along all these additional costs to consumers, and for environmentalists, that’s probably the point. The green people want fewer flights, but that’s a very bad idea if you care about the economy. We’re having a hard enough time keeping flying affordable in this country with the cost of fuel right now. Additional taxes on air travel are going to be detrimental. How else can this issue be addressed?

It seems to me that the best place to focus efforts here is on the manufacturers. I know, I know. Indirectly, anything that happens to the airlines will force the manufacturers to be more green, because the airlines will demand it. But with US airlines conserving cash and not looking at new aircraft orders, pressure from the airlines on the manufacturers won’t result in much change for a long time.

By going after the airlines directly and taxing them further, you’re bound to hurt the environment even more. In Europe, you have greener options. You can take a train instead of flying, but in the US that’s rarely an option. So, as costs rise, people will just head to their cars more. Even with the price of gas where it is, if you lump more taxes on top of an airline ticket, it’s going to be less economically feasible to fly and people will drive. Cars are way worse for the environment than flying an airplane over the same distance.

So instead, let’s focus on the manufacturers. If we want to truly be green, we should be offering tax breaks and R&D funding to help create greener aircraft, and that really begins with the engine manufacturers in particular. That’s where I think the gains can be made. Let’s fund alternative fuel and fuel conservation research. That’s how we can really have the greatest impact.

Let’s face it. It sucks to have to book travel right now. Ok, it clearly sucks to actually be an airline far more, but we’ve beaten that horse to death already. So why do I say it’s so bad to book? Uncertainty.

With my wedding coming up in October, there are a ton of flight arrangements that need to be made. There are showers, receptions, and more, and they all require family members hopping on aircraft to criss-cross the country.

Now, I know fares are high. That’s fine. I have no complaints about that at all. In fact, I’d complain if they weren’t. But if I buy a ticket, I want to make sure that flight will actually go. Unfortunately, that’s not something that we can really rely upon as much these days.

I started thinking about this when JetBlue pulled their LAX service before it even started. Now just about every other airline has decided to reduce capacity, so buying a ticket is like a game of chance. Will your flight still be there when it comes time to travel?

So, I’ve tried to put together some pieces of advice on how to best position yourself to have your flight actually exist when you go to travel. Here are my somewhat feeble thoughts. Sorry I don’t have anything more substantial, but everything is so fluid right now that it’s tough to really know how to deal with this best.

• Fly During Busy Times - That 8am flight to Chicago isn’t going away, but maybe that 6a or 10p flight will. When airlines look to cut flights, you’ll generally see it happen at off peak times. Sure, the flip side here is that the peak times will cost more, but that’s the price you’ll pay.




• Don’t Fly Northwest or Delta - Yes, this is being pretty harsh. And yes, I’m actually flying Northwest in August, so why do I say not to fly them? Well, they’re merging, and though their pleas to Congress have stated that they won’t be cutting service, I think that’s a load of crap. My guess is that flights will be cut, and smaller hubs will be shrunk significantly, regardless of what they say now. They’ve even started to hint about it. So, if you’re booking very far out, you might want to keep that in mind. Even if the merger were approved tomorrow, I wouldn’t expect major cuts to begin until after the summer. If you do end up flying on these guys (or any airlines that decide to merge), at least try to avoid marginal hubs like Cincinnati and Memphis for your connections. Those will likely see the greatest impact, I’d think.




• If You’re in Denver, Fly Southwest - As we’ve seen often over the last few months, Southwest is hell-bent on kicking Frontier out of Denver. So, they’re actually adding flights instead of cutting them. To be fair, they aren’t really doing much cutting elsewhere in the system either, so they might be a good one to book in general. Then again, what they’ve done so far isn’t necessarily an indicator of how they’ll behave in the future.




• Don’t Book Too Far in Advance - The easiest thing to do is wait until it’s closer to your travel time before booking. When flights get cut, there will be some advance notice, so if you’re traveling within a month, you should be fine (unless you were flying JetBlue to LAX, I suppose). I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, and yes, you’ll have to pay for more this privilege, but it will give you more certainty.




• Keep Your Fingers Crossed - If you can’t drive, there’s really not much else you can do but keep your fingers crossed and hope that your flight goes. I know I make this sound like every flight is at risk, and that’s not the case. I’d like to think that I’m overstating the possibilities here, but it’s better to think about these things beforehand. The good news is that if flights get cut, you’ll be reaccommodated on another flight on that airline, but it may not be as convenient as you’d like.

It’s a tough time to be a traveler right now. So, just be patient and hope that your flight doesn’t get cut. What other tips do you have out there?

A friend of mine who frequently flies out of London/Heathrow wrote to me recently and wondered why my coverage had been so light on the new Terminal 5. I guess I was just waiting to see when things calmed down. I mean, everyone has been talking about how horrible the problems have been since it opened, and I didn’t think I had much to add. Just about every facility has teething problems, even huge ones like we’ve seen in this case.

So, he gave me some good fodder for a post. Instead of focusing on the opening problems, let’s look at the experience as it’s supposed to be. The verdict? My friend is not so happy.

1. Limited-to-no premium check-in - My friend always flies business class for his frequent work trips, and he noticed that while there was a “tiny first class check in area,” there was “no dedicated first/gold card security lane” and “no business class check in at all.”
   
   Hmm, that didn’t seem right to me, but sure enough, that was BA’s plan all along. I spoke with John Lampl, spokesman for BA here in the US, about these issues, and he confirmed that “one of the concepts is . . . no dedicated queues for premium travelers, because what we expect them to do is check in online . . . get to the airport in time for their flight, go through the bag drop [if necessary] and security and go up to the lounge.”
   
   How strange. John says this comes from a great deal of research, but I know there are premium travelers who prefer the personal touch and want a human being to take care of things for them. Unfortunately now, if you want help from a real person, you have to wait in line with everyone else. The goal is, of course, to have no lines at all, but that’s not always realistic.




2. Security validation - Apparently BA has set up a fancy pants system that makes you scan your boarding pass when you go through security. According to John, if you have a valid boarding pass and you’re there more than 35 minutes prior to your flight’s departure time, then you shouldn’t have any trouble. That didn’t work out so well for my friend. He says:
   
   “I checked in online and printed [my] boarding pass but had to go to [the] check in desk to have my [ticket] ‘validated’ or activated in the system. This was after stopping by the first check in area and having been told to proceed to security.”
   
   Hmm, this doesn’t sound very good either. I’m sure there are opening day glitches, but it’s not far-fetched for a boarding pass to get corrupted or a system to malfunction. Sending someone back to the general check-in area every time there’s a problem is not only aggravating, but it’s poor customer service.




3. Lounge locations - As a gold card holder on BA, he’s entitled access to certain lounges. Apparently, it’s not very convenient in his eyes. He says:
   
   “There is a door into the lounge area right by security but it is for pax booked in first only (a gold card won’t cut it…) so to access the lounge you have to walk in a loop, go downstairs, then back upstairs.”
   
   That seems rather strange to me, but John says there is some hope here. “We had elevator problems in the first few days. He may have been forced to go downstairs and then upstairs.” So hopefully this one isn’t a problem.




4. Security bins - “Everything has to go in a security bin - even your bags. Someone tried to get way too clever and design an automatic bin return. Needless to say that does not work to well. And my carry-on got stuck in the stupid bin.”
   
   Yeah, that’s definitely frustrating. Sometimes, the most simple things are the best way to go. Designing an automatic return system may sound good in theory, but it could end up being more trouble than it’s worth. Hopefully this one is just part of those “opening day jitters.”




5. Lounge quality - Apparently, once my friend found the lounge, it was fine, but that’s about it.
   
   “Lounge is nice - food is nothing special at all. Virgin still kicks their ass on this front - in fact I think BA will lose a lot of business to Virgin b/c the setup here for a premium pax is stupid. . . . Regular lounges have same and more food than first. I don’t think it qualifies as a coffee house if you have automatic machines that make marginal cappuccinos. Champagne bars with only 2 champagnes would not last long. Oh - why can they do decent fresh oj on plane but [the] lounge has concentrate?”
   
   Something tells me this could be an issue of overpromising with the brand. What do I mean? If they’re going to call it a “champagne bar,” which they do, then it probably should have more than 2 types of champagne. If it’s just a lounge, then 2 champagnes are fine.
   
   The orange juice issue is the one that is most likely to get action. When I told that to John, he said, “I totally agree with him. We will take that comment and that will be sent to the people catering the lounges.”




6. Arrivals lounge - Once my friend returned, he sent me a follow up note about the arrivals experience. Though many of those gripes were probably just “teething problem,” I think his notes on the arrivals lounge were interesting.
   
   “Classic BA. Indifferent staff, no warm greetings and same crap food. You really think they could make something better on the ground than in an airplane. I especially like the “self service” luggage check. You present your bags, the counter clerk open the little gate and says “Yep. Take them back there”. Staffing levels clearly low. No one at the spa area or shower check in.”
   
   Sounds adequate but nothing more, in his eyes.

So that was about it. My friend summed it up after his trip by saying “Compared to [Virgin Atlantic], I would say BA completely lost the plot and missed a huge opportunity to create a great space for premium pax. Watch their load factors drop.” That’s certainly an unfortunate opinion and not one that will please BA. I know they were trying to do something amazing here.

So, for him it was clearly a disappointing experience, but one man does not represent everyone. Who else has an opinion of the Terminal 5 experience? Anyone else have a different view on things?

It’s been awhile since I broke out the gold star award. I thought about it yesterday with Delta’s new seat, but that’s still a couple years off from being anything tangible. But when I saw Air Canada’s new On My Way service, I thought it was immediately useful and definitely worthy of a gold star.

So, what is this On My Way thing? Well, it’s pretty simple. As you probably know, if your flight is delayed or canceled due to a mechanical issue or something else within an airline’s control, the airline will do a lot to get you out of town. If there are not flights available on that airline in the near future, they’ll put you on another airline. If they can’t get you out that day, you’ll get a hotel and meals. Pretty good, right?

Unfortunately, if you’re stuck with the common “uncontrollable delay” like weather or air traffic control, the airline generally does nothing for you. Sure, they’ll put you on another flight on that airline but that’s about it. Air Canada has been no different from everyone else in this regard, but now they’ve done something crazy.

They’ll treat uncontrollable delays like ones within their control if you’re willing to pay for it.

Here’s how it works. For $25 each way on itineraries of less than 1,000 miles and $35 each way on itineraries over 1,000 miles (in North America only), you can get that coverage. But for that fee, you won’t have to stand in line for hours to get help. You’ll get access to dedicated agents in the Air Canada call center to actually help you with your arrangements. Looking at the list of airlines on which they’ll rebook you, it appears they have pretty strong coverage. All the US legacy airlines, Alaska/Horizon, and WestJet are covered along with a few other small Canadian airlines.

The beauty of this is that it’s a great service for passengers even if it just ends up being peace-of-mind, but it’s also a good deal for Air Canada. Though they won’t know what percent of people that buy the service actually need to use it until they give it a few months, you have to assume that the bean counters did their homework here. They should be able to make money on this deal. It’s a win-win situation, assuming enough people buy it that don’t actually need to use it.

So would you buy it? For me, it’s entirely dependent upon the trip circumstances. If I have an important meeting, I’d absolutely buy it for the outbound flight. For the return? Only if I had to be home for work or something. But either way, it’s a really nice option to have and it can help take a lot of stress out of what has become a naturally stressful situation for a lot of people. For that, Air Canada gets a gold star.

The rumors started swirling yesterday, and it was confirmed overnight. ATA is shutting down effective this morning. They lost their military contract, and so they’re done. I’ll have more on this tomorrow (my regular post here today will be up soon). If you were booked on them, try to get a refund from your credit card or see if any other airline will accommodate you. If you booked them via a Southwest codeshare, Southwest will take care of you.

My brother lives in Philly, and Wednesday night he had the unfortunate task of trying to fly out of that place in a soaking rain. Now, you know rain in general doesn’t cause problems, but in that magical Northeast corridor, it means congested airports like Philly basically grind to a halt.

He had to work a full day and then take the last flight out to Phoenix on Southwest (via Chicago/Midway). When he headed to the airport, there were average arrival delays of 3h 43m, and you know that, of course, means that departures weren’t going out on time either. Needless to say, his flight was going to misconnect in Chicago by a couple hours, leaving him stranded overnight.

What could he do?

I thought I’d piece together how I helped him with the thought that it might be helpful for others as well. Remember, in situations like this, the airline employees just want to get you out of there as quickly as possible, because they have thousands of people to help. So, the rules that may have applied to your ticket before are out the window. If you do the legwork and present a viable option, they’re likely to let you do it.

1) Determine Your Goal

When the weather is a mess like that and delays are rampant, you need to figure out your goal. For some people, it might be worth rescheduling your trip and going home. For others, you may need to have a certain time you need to be at your destination. Still others may just prefer to take the easiest option, even if it isn’t the quickest.

For my brother, he needed to be in Phoenix by 8a Thursday morning. With that in mind, I went to work.

2) Look for Earlier Flights

Knowing that his flight to Chicago would be delayed for a long time, it’s a natural move to look for any earlier flights. Those are probably also delayed and can end up getting you to your connection point at about the same time you were supposed to arrive. Sure enough, there was an earlier flight to Chicago, but the chances of getting on it very slim to none. Besides, there were other options out there that looked more appealing so he passed on trying for standby.

3) Look for Nonstops

My brother took the late connection because the last Phoenix nonstop was too early in the day. With delays, however, he had a chance on getting it. As I mentioned, when operations are horribly messed up like this, most airlines will get you there anyway they can; forget about fare rules and restrictions. So, he went to the gate and got on the standby list. With #26, his chances weren’t good, but they looked better than the earlier Chicago flight that was leaving at about the same time. He didn’t make it.

4) Grab the Route Map/Timetable

While he waited for the nonstop, we looked into backup plans. For smaller airports, this may not be necessary because there aren’t very many options. But in bigger airports where there are many destinations, the best thing you can do is figure out what options are out there. Most airlines offer a timetable on their website, so you can just download that and take a look. It’s a good idea to do this before you travel, just in case you need it. If you’re at the airport without it, just scan the departure screens to see where flights are going. Still, you’ll be much better off with an internet connection so log on or call a friend if you can.

I just started looking through all the cities Southwest flew from Philly and tried to manually build connections. Nothing worked that would get him there that night. So then I started going back to the goal. He needed to be in Phoenix by 8a. Now, my brother is used to not getting much sleep (he’s a doctor), so I knew that he would be willing to give up sleep to reach his ultimate goal.

His worst case scenario was that he took the Chicago flight, spent the night, and flew out first thing Thursday morning. That wouldn’t get him in until 915a, still a little too late. So, I looked for better alternatives. The closer I could get him to Phoenix that night, the easier it would be to get him to Phoenix early in the morning.

Sure enough, I found a flight to Austin that would allow him to take an early morning flight to Phoenix arriving at 740a. And besides, who wouldn’t rather spend the night in Austin than Midway?

He was fifth on the standby list, but that flight took none. Damn. But wait, there was one more chance. There was a slightly later flight that actually went through Nashville before arriving in Austin. He tried that one.

Success! Sure, he didn’t arrive Austin until just before 2a, but he did get about 3 hours of sleep before taking the 7a flight on Thursday to Phoenix. In the end, he made it by 8a, and for him that’s all that mattered.

So remember, keep your ultimate goal in mind. You won’t always get lucky like this. That last flight could have just as easily not worked out. He would have had to go to Chicago and fly out later Thursday morning. But knowing your options means that you have a much better chance than a lot of other people.

The DOT Air Travel Consumer Report is out with December numbers, and US Airways landed the best on-time performance of all mainland carriers. (I always leave those Hawaiian carriers and their good weather out of the mix.) US Airways? Really?!? That may sound incredible, but there’s actually a lot more to this story.

How well did they do? They finished the month with 74.5% of flights arriving with 15 minutes of scheduled arrival time. That doesn’t sound particularly impressive until you see that the rest of the industry fell of a cliff.

Pretty ugly stuff, huh? US Airways did a very good job of holding their own here, but they really benefited from their hub locations. For once, the Northeast wasn’t the big problem, well, except for New York/LaGuardia which was terrible as usual. Really, Chicago/O’Hare, Minneapolis/St Paul, and Denver were the hardest hit by weather that month, and they took the biggest hit in on-time performance. It’s no coincidence that American (with a hub at O’Hare), Northwest (with a hub at Minneapolis), and United (with hubs at Denver and O’Hare) fell to the bottom of the pack and dragged the average down with them.

But let’s not completely take away the achievement by US Airways here. They’ve dramatically improved their on-time percentage against the industry over the last year. This next graph charts the difference between US Airways and the industry in a way that makes it easier to see how well they’ve actually done.

You can tell that February is where things really started to nosedive. It wasn’t until July or August that they were back in the same ballpark as the rest of the industry. But November and December actually had them finish above the average, and that’s something worth celebrating. Since they finished at the top, employees will each get a $50 bonus check. That’s enough to pay the hidden usairways.com booking fee on 10 whole tickets.

Seriously though, this is a nice trend to see. If they can keep this up (they’ve said January domestic numbers at at 79.5%) and get their baggage numbers in shape, maybe they’ll finally be able to pull out of the cellar of the complaints category.

Yesterday, as I was going through my usual morning ritual of scanning airline news and blogs, I came across a press release saying that the “Air Travelers Association” had submitted a “Passengers First” proposal to solve the congestion problems in New York. At first, I thought it was the ATA, but wait, that’s the Air TRANSPORT Association. This is definitely something different.

After reading the release, I became very suspicious. First, the release is very high level and offers no details. A visit to the Association’s website revealed nothing more than a very poorly put together site with a photo of an America West 757 in the original livery that must be at least 10 years old.

So what were “they” suggesting we do?

1. Eliminate corporate jets from LaGuardia - How many corporate jet flights are there from LGA every day? It can’t be that many. And where else would they go on the east side of the East River?
2. Do not permit “Non-Standard” departures from LaGuardia - This is a very rare occurrence. According to a New York air traffic expert friend of mine, this would have very little impact.
3. Eliminate all published connections at LGA - Why? He says it only accounts for 5% of the traffic at the airport. I can’t imagine that eliminating connections would do anything to relieve air traffic congestion. It would just reduce the number of passengers and not the number of flights. That isn’t the problem.
4. Eliminate the perimeter rule prohibiting flights over 1,500 miles - Huh? Again, this does nothing to reduce air traffic congestion. It just reallocates capacity to different areas. There will still be too many airplanes for the current system set up.
5. Change the definition of a “delay” from not just being 15 minutes - Again, huh? This doesn’t fix congestion. This just tries to convince people that they aren’t delayed. Wow.

That’s a heck of a list that leaves more questions than answers. After I finished reading this morning, I shot an email over to David Stempler, the man who appears to be the entire organization, asking many of the questions I posted above. I said that I was planning on writing this morning, so I asked to hear back by last night. I did not.

I suppose I shouldn’t expect such quick turnaround for a little blog like mine, but if you’re going to put out a press release and you want it to get coverage, I would think you would at least write back asking for more time to make sure you have a say in what happens. Hopefully I’ll hear back from him and can post updates here, but for now, I’ll just hope that someone reading can help fill in the blanks for me. What am I missing?

My biggest question is about who he is trying to support here. In his release, he says, “The Air Travelers Association is the airline passenger/consumer representative on the U.S. DOT’s New York Aviation Rulemaking Committee . . . .” He is clearly connected to someone if he made it on this committee, but as many others have asked, is he really supporting passengers?

Much of this proposal does not seem to address any of the issues passengers face today. Let’s say this does open up a little more space at the already saturated LaGuardia. Is that really going fix the New York area congestion issues? I think not. Flights will fill those holes very quickly. I’m just still trying to figure out the motivation here.

A quick Google search brought up a post from Chris Elliot with links to all sorts of sites that raise questions about the legitimacy of this organization. Hmm. Very questionable.