I’ve seen many people criticize Delta for what it puts on its blog, but they’ve been putting more and more useful information on there lately. I’d encourage those interested in Delta to go back and give it another chance. My favorite posts are those from Marie Force, Delta’s archive manager. But in the last couple days, there have been a couple of posts with some current developments that are worth noting.

1) Upgrade and Standby lists on Delta.com and Soon, Mobile

Delta was the first that I can recall to invest in flat screen monitors to make all sorts of information available to the people waiting around at the gate. Included in that was the standby list. Did you make it on the earlier flight? Had they even cleared the list yet? What about the upgrade to First Class? The screen had all the info. It has taken them several years, but they’ve finally brought this functionality to the website.

Now when you’re flying, you can go online and make sure you’re on the standby/upgrade list. More importantly, you can see how many seats are available, and you can learn where you are on that list. Nice, huh?

This is only on the website right now, but they say it will be on the mobile version “shortly.” Then it will become much more valuable.

2) Wifi Progress

If you’re one of those people rejoicing at having wireless internet onboard, you’ll be happy to know that Delta has made some real progress. Just yesterday, they said 44 aircraft were outfitted, but this morning they said it was up to 59. As of today, 53 of the MD-88 aircraft (out of 113), 5 757s (out of 128), and the very first MD-90 (out of 16) have been outfitted with wireless internet. One more MD-88 and one MD-90 go in tonight.

If you include all 78 737s, all MD-88s, all MD-90s, and all 757s in the calcuation, that means that 17.6% of the domestic fleet is outfitted. Some of those 757s, however, are part of the international fleet, and some of the 767s are part of the domestic fleet, so it’s not exact. Of course, this doesn’t (and won’t) include regional aircraft.

Still, if you’re on an MD-88, you now have a 47% chance of getting a wireless-enabled aircraft. That’s very good, and it’s progressing quickly.

3) More Room for Crap on 757s

The rest of the updates weren’t exactly earth-shattering, but they’re still kind of interesting. And the blogger who wrote about them writes in pretty technical language, so I thought I could serve as a translator.

One update was on the “75E” aircraft. That’s actually just their internal code for the 757s that fly over the Atlantic. So what did they do? They added larger lav tanks. Apparently, people were cooped up a little too long on those 757s and they must have been running out of room in the lav tanks. Yuck. The modifications will be done on all the international 757s by June 1. Might want to avoid drinking too much water on those planes until then.

Other good news: they put headrests on the coach seats while this was going on.

4) More Business Class on 777-200LR

Delta’s longest haul aircraft, the 777-200LR, is slowly entering the fleet. The third aircraft was just delivered, and they’ve apparently found a way to squeeze in another two business class seats. So instead of 43, there will now be 45 onboard. The first two aircraft will be modified to have two more business class seats in the next couple months as well.

According to Today in the Sky, United is no longer going to send E-fare emails to its customers. E-fares, the ones that are for last minute weekend travel, will still be around on the United website, but they just won’t proactively tell you about them anymore. So what’s up with the customer unfriendly policy? I’m guessing it’s related to United’s new corporate motto, “If it’s broke, don’t fix it.”

I don’t get the E-fare emails from many airlines anymore, or if I do, I just delete them, so I don’t know the state of United’s emails. But there is really no good excuse for removing customer notification for a program that isn’t going away. Here’s how I imagine the conversation going over at United.

Marketeer #1: We’ve got a problem.
Marketeer #2: Just one? So we’re getting better?

Marketeer #1: Very funny. You know those E-fare emails? They don’t work well. We don’t send people the information they want, and it’s an expensive/inefficient system.
Marketeer #2: Hmm, well if it’s a bad experience, we should fix it.

Marketeer #1: Nah, that takes effort. Instead, I think we’ll just stop sending the emails. Then it won’t be bad anymore!
Marketeer #2: But, um, then won’t people have an even worse experience by having to search for the E-fares each week?

Marketeer #1: I’m sorry . . . did you say something?

I can fully understand if United wanted to ditch this program entirely. I mean, these last minute fares have been around for a long time and they likely aren’t generating a huge amount business. But if you’re going to keep the program, you’d think that United would want to at least make it user-friendly.

*sigh*

Updated on 3/12 @ 944a – United Spokesperson Robin Urbanski sent me a note saying the following. “They were discontinued because customers have asked us to reduce the frequency of emails and most go to united.com to find and book our special deals, including e-fares.”

So that appears to be the official stance, but I’ve heard differently from others.

Well, hello TripAdvisor. A couple of weeks ago, Fly.com showed us a travel search site that looked a lot like Kayak and didn’t add any real functionality. When I saw that TripAdvisor was also launching a metasearch site, I rolled my eyes and figured, “here we go again.” Boy was I wrong. This could be my new favorite site since it actually includes fees in the comparison, if you ask it to do so.

TripAdvisor has done a lot of things right here. Let’s walk through the process of a search and you’ll see what I mean. I figured I’d do a sample search to visit the in laws in Indianapolis in a couple weeks. (Don’t worry guys, we aren’t really coming yet.) The initial search screen is as you would expect, but there are a couple of things that stand out in the results.

The very first deal is on US Airways, and it looks pretty cheap to me. You may notice that I’ve circled both Expedia and Travelocity in the results. As far as I know, neither of these sites have participated in the flight search for any other metasearch site. Expedia and Hotwire have common ownership with TripAdvisor, so it’s no surprise to see them. I just hope there’s no bias going on here, but I can’t imagine TripAdvisor would be that stupid. I am surprised to see Travelocity showing up in the results.

The only ones left out? Priceline, which doesn’t work with anyone on flights, and Orbitz, which will only work with you if you give them exclusivity (see Kayak). The site also searches some Global Distribution Systems directly to find the lowest fares. By the way, TripAdvisor has also included some pretty cool filters on the left for airline dorks. You can filter by specific aircraft type. Sweet.

The second thing I’ve circled here is the Fee Estimator. This is something that everyone seems to say they’re “working on,” but this is the first time I’ve seen it up and running. It’s also integrated quite nicely. Click the button and it asks you to fill in what might change the total price for the flight.

Let’s say that I want to check a bag, I want a snack and headphones, and I’m an elite member on Northwest. Click the button and guess what? We have a totally different set of results.

That US Airways flight is long gone. With what I want, the fees pushed the price on that flight up to $241. Since I’m an elite member with Northwest, the bag fee doesn’t apply to me, and now Northwest is a better option. (That Midwest flight is actually just a codeshare on Northwest.)

Oh sure, there are glitches. I said that I wanted a headphone but guess what? Northwest doesn’t even have screens on its domestic fleet, so that won’t be happening. It also doesn’t recognize that as a Northwest elite, that applies to Delta flights now as well. But hey, those can easily be fixed.

There’s also plenty more they can do here. They own SeatGuru, and they’ve incorporated those seat maps into the search. But they still need to find a way to take it one step further and overlay the seats which are actually available on each flight on each seat map. I looked at doing this a few years ago and it was not an easy task, but someone will figure it out some day.

I’m just glad to see that there’s finally a search engine that lets you incorporate the total cost of your flight into the decision-making process. Nice work, guys.

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?

I’m sure you’re familiar with Kayak, Sidestep, Farecast, etc in addition to the Expedias, Orbitzes, and Travelocitys of the world. There are obviously plenty of places to book tickets, but there’s another one you probably haven’t heard of that might be worth a look . . . cFares. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.

These guys have a different model than most. Yes, they are a metasearch site, so you can go on like anywhere else and search for flights. The sorting and filtering functions are fine, and the interface is relatively clean. The only problem with their basic metasearch functionality is that they don’t show you where you’ll buy your ticket until after you click and they send you there. That’s enough for me not to use them were they simply competing with Sidestep directly.

But on top of this, they have their Platinum fares. In short, if you become a Platinum member by paying $50 a year, you can get a rebate to help bring the cost down of your trip. For example, we’re not heading back to see my wife’s family for the holidays this year, but what if we wanted to change our minds? Here’s what cFares shows me.

As you can see, the regular fares are on the right, but Platinum members could save $29 via a rebate. Two of these tickets and you could easily pay for your $50 annual fee.

So how do they do it? It’s pretty interesting actually. Some of the rebate comes from the membership fees, advertising revenue, etc. But they’re also starting to work with airlines and online travel agents who are interested in dynamically changing prices when the search happens.

For example, US Airways (I don’t know if they actually participate, but theoretically) might say that if anyone beats their price by $20, they’ll rebate the difference. cFares can handle that. You would book your ticket on whatever site they send you, and then you enter your confirmation number and they’ll give you the rebate on your credit card.

This makes it worth a look, but it’s definitely not the place to go as your only booking site. On this particular example, I actually found something on Orbitz (via Kayak) for less than even the Platinum rate. On other searches, however, I’ve seen these guys beat everyone else.

Another thing to consider is that they might be sending you to an online travel agent. You might be able to get your own “rebate” by just going to the airline site directly on some occasions.

The rebates also change often. I spoke with the President of the company last week and we both did the same search. For whatever reason, my search showed a rebate of $2 more than his search.

This site isn’t going to replace your existing booking sites, but it’s a good one to add into your toolkit.