Hey, remember Virgin America’s Main Cabin Select? This was the plan to offer First Class amenities in the coach bulkhead and exit row seats for a little extra cash. Well, it appears that it’s been delayed due to technical difficulties.

The original plan was to have the seats go on sale on September 15. That didn’t happen. So, I emailed Virgin America spokesperson Abby Lunardini (who, by the way, is very responsive and helpful), and she helped me get to the bottom of this. Apparently the program has been delayed because the airline is “in the middle of rolling out several new offerings on our booking site for guests, including the ability for Elevate members to redeem their points on-line.”

So, the good news is that EleVAte redemption is still coming in October. The bad news is that Main Cabin Select won’t be on sale until the week of October 6. I’m surprised that the airline would have announced such a firm date a couple months in advance if they didn’t have a very high confidence level that it would be ready. Then again, we know Virgin America has had IT issues before, so this could just be an extension of that. Either way, if you were foaming at the mouth waiting to book Main Cabin Select, you’ll have to wait a little longer, but EleVAte members can rejoice that they’ll be able to use their points soon.

[Original photo by howitz via Flickr]

My fiancée flew to Orlando again yesterday, so I was hoping to have some more great stories like the infamous dinner roll debacle or the more recent gum incident, but alas, she flew Delta. Instead of problems, she had great service, in-seat video, tasty buy-on-board food, and nothing to complain about. Good for her, but a bummer for the blog. So, let’s talk about Continental instead.

On September 5, Continental announced a handful of changes, including the elimination of the 500 minimum OnePass miles on all flights. Yesterday, less than three weeks later, that was reversed for elite members in the OnePass program. Quick reversals like these really make me wonder who is making these decisions over there.

The airline, always a good friend of FlyerTalk, actually announced the restoration of the 500 mile minimum in a FlyerTalk thread. Scott O’Leary, Managing Director, Customer Experience said:

Hi Everyone, earlier this month we announced our 2009 OnePass changes, and suffice to say after the hundreds of posts and messages received here at headquarters, it was clear that the elimination of the 500-mile minimum was the most impactful to many of you. Especially those of you who are Elite members.

What happened in the last two weeks to change their mind? US Airways was the first one to announce the elimination of the mileage minimum and the reaction was extremely negative. Did Continental not notice this reaction back then? Did they think it would somehow be different when they tried it?

I suppose we should just be happy that they actually are listening to customers and making changes, but I find it hard to believe they didn’t see this one coming.

I’ve got more to write about from NBTA (tomorrow I’ll feature the battle of the First Class suites), but today I’m going to take a break and talk about Virgin America’s latest. Though I was supposed to meet with Virgin America spokesperson Abby Lunardini at the show, she ended up not being able to make it because it was right after the earthquake and she got stuck at her hotel. Of course, that won’t stop me from talking about their news of the week.

Remember when I posted earlier this month that Virgin America was up to something with their premium coach seats (bulkhead and exit row)? Well, they’ve finally announced what they’re going to do, and um, it’s ok, I guess.

Please excuse my lack of enthusiasm here, but I thought it was going to be something really good. I thought that maybe they would add more First Class seats or possibly create an elite level of their frequent flier program. It was nothing so bold. Instead, they’ve just created Main Cabin Select. If you sit in the bulkhead or the exit rows, you’ll still get a regular coach seat with a little more legroom. But now you’ll also get First Class amenities - free movies and food, premium check-in, etc.

See? Not exactly a huge change. It’s effectively First Class service in a Coach seat. The question is now . . . how much will it cost? They didn’t announce that, but they did say that you can begin purchasing these on September 15 for flights beginning mid-October. Previously, you had to pay between $15 and $50 depending upon the length of the flight to sit in those seats.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this is a bad idea. I’m just a little lukewarm because my expectations were higher. My guess is that people weren’t paying for the extra legroom before, so Virgin is trying to package things together to get people to find value in that offering. If this does that, then more power to them.

Possibly the more interesting news for Virgin America fliers came in this release about their Virgin Galactic partnership. No, that partnership isn’t very interesting, but it does say way at the bottom that “By Oct. 1, 2008, Elevate members will be able to begin redeeming points for Virgin America flights on-line.”

I’m happy to see that finally happen. The airline has been around for about a year now, and they’re only now getting around to defining the program. This should be good news for those of you who have been stockpiling flight credits with no place to use them.

This week was Small Community Air Service Development Program (SCASDP) week over at BNET. Grant applications for this year’s program are rolling in, and I look at some of the best and worst. The federal government offers up this money to help small airports build up service in their area. Some take better approaches than others, and some come off as downright greedy.

Elko Applies to SCASDP for More Service to Reno
It’s SCASDP week here at BNET Travel. I’ll be looking at a new airport grant request every day. Today, it’s Elko and it’s odd request for more Reno flights.

Escanaba Looks to SCASDP for Marketing Funds
A new airline, new connecting hub, and two months without service. Escanaba wants a SCASDP grant to help tell the community what’s happening.

Dubuque Looks to Expand Its Unique Marketing Plan with SCASDP
An airport with a frequent flier program? That’s the kind of innovation the SCASDP should be supporting.

Midland Applies to SCASDP for More Flights to the West
Midland/Odessa has flights from American, Continental, and Southwest, but apparently that’s not enough. They want more to the West.

Bangor Wants SCASDP Grant for More New York Service
Bangor already has year-round service to the New York area. Why is it trying to get funds for even more?

It seems like airlines all around the world are racing to allow passengers to check in for flights using only a mobile phone. I wrote about Air Canada rolling it out last year, and lately both Continental and Delta have put out tests of their own. Delta just put out a blog post on their test as well. It sounds great in theory, but you might want to think twice about it if earning miles is really important to you.

Fellow airline geek and aviation consultant Roy Rosales brought up a good point in an email yesterday. If for some reason miles don’t get credited to your account, you usually have to send in your boarding pass for credit. If you use your cell phone . . . there is no paper boarding pass to send.

In Roy’s case, he flew on a Hawaiian Airlines flight and expected to get Continental miles. They never showed up, and he called Continental to see what happened. Roy was told that an original boarding pass was required in order to get credit. He was curious so he asked what would happen if he had checked-in online and the airline kept the boarding pass, as some do. The agent said it didn’t matter - no pass, no credit.

So, until the airlines decide to somehow alter those policies and email you a PDF that can be used for redemption, you might want to consider keeping a paper record, especially if you’re flying on one airline and trying to earn miles on another.

There’s really nothing surprising in the announcement that US Airways has taken a couple steps to devalue its Dividend Miles program. I mean, every airline has been doing this, but US Airways has come up with a unique and seemingly logical way to make it happen - making people only earn the miles they fly.

There were actually two changes. The first one involves eliminating the minimum mileage. So if you fly that 214 miles from Washington/National to New York/La Guardia, you’re going to earn, well, 214 miles. Until this change, anything below 500 miles still got you 500 miles. As you can imagine, people flying short flights aren’t going to be happy about this one, so that primarily impacts those flying in the Northeast. But for me, this change makes sense. Sure, it sucks that you used to earn more miles and now you don’t, but logically I can understand it.

I shouldn’t say that. Let’s be honest. Frequent flier programs like these don’t make sense at all. They reward people for flying miles and not for being profitable. So someone who pays $200 every week to fly roundtrip from LA to New York gets 250,000 miles and top tier in the frequent flier program while someone who pays $200 to fly every week from LA to Phoenix doesn’t even reach 40,000 miles, enough for only Silver status. The person flying to Phoenix is definitely more profitable and therefore more valuable so why aren’t they rewarded that way? If you can forget about that problem and assume that the programs make sense, then handing out miles as they’re flown should make sense as well.

The second change is the introduction of a fee for award travel booked within 14 days of travel. They’re actually charging less than others, but that doesn’t make it any better. Personally, I really hate this one. I mean, for the airline, this is a toss up. On one hand, you can be relatively sure that someone who books within 14 days isn’t going to take a seat away from a paying customer, so you’d think you’d want to reward that type of behavior. On the other hand, someone who books within 14 days is more likely to need to take the trip, and they’re more likely to actually pay the higher close-in fare for travel. You know airlines hate when someone uses their miles instead of buying an expensive last minute ticket. This is a way for them to get some of that money back, even if it shouldn’t be theirs to take.

So there you go. A couple changes that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, no matter how much you dislike them.

Oh happy day for members of Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan. Now you can redeem your miles for one way awards for half the mileage of roundtrip awards. That is definitely a development worth of a gold star.

If you’ve never needed to book a one way award, you probably don’t realize that on most airlines you can’t do it. You actually have to book a roundtrip award and throw away the return if you want to fly one way. Seems ridiculous, no? Well it is. But now Alaska is allowing one way redemption and that’s great news. According to this FlyerTalk thread, it happened last week. Let’s hope others follow (but don’t count on it).

I’m guessing that every single person reading this post has received one of the tantalizing mileage credit card offers. Oh you the ones . . . sign up and get 250 million miles for free. And if you transfer a balance, there’s another gazillion miles for you. But are these really good deals?

Upgrade: Travel Better has a great primer on the different types of cards out there today. I’d recommend having a look if you’re at all interested in the subject.

As for me, I’m a quite happy Starwood Preferred Guest Amex holder. Everyone gets obsessed with airline miles, but hotels can cost you a lot more on a trip. Think about it. You and your husband/girlfriend/pet/whatever decide to head to Hawai’i from the west coast. Even if you pay $500 a ticket, that’s only $1,000 out of pocket. If you go for a week, you’ll easily exceed that amount on your hotel bill. So definitely consider a hotel card before you get sucked in to the airline mileage cards.

It seems to be a no-brainer in the airline industry to have some sort of frequent flier program. In fact, people have come to expect it. JetBlue, for example, tried to go without it, but after 2 1/2 years of flying, they started their own program as well.

But a research paper released back in July called “Do Frequency Reward Programs Create Switching Costs” by Wesley Hartmann and Brian Viard at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business questions whether it’s a good idea at all. (Read a summary here.)

To be fair, the main research in this wasn’t directly related to airlines, they used a golf course that offered a “Buy 10, Get 1 Free” program, but the results are worth reviewing. In this study, they were looking to see if the program encouraged people to accelerate their playing behavior as they got closer to the reward.

They found that frequent users of the course thought the program to be very important, but their playing behavior did not accelerate as they closed in on the reward. Sure the effective discount did get them to play more, but it was because the cost was lower. A 10% decrease in price would have had the same effect without incurring the administrative costs of the program.

On the other hand, infrequent golfers did show some accelerated behavior as they got closer to the reward, but very few of the infrequent golfers played enough for that to even matter. So was it worth it?

In short, no. It is argued that the increase in play from the infrequent golfers wasn’t enough to offset the cost of giving away free games to the frequent golfers, so the program was not very successful.

They argue that the only way a frequent user program is really successful is if your most frequent users are extremely price sensitive. In that case, the loyalty program would make sense, because you would be increasing your returns from the majority of your users instead of a small minority.

Does this relate to the airlines? Sure.

In fact, the golf course admitted that they modeled their program off of Southwest Airlines’ famous Rapid Rewards program. It’s also probably safe to say that many of Southwest’s customers are price sensitive, so this might not be a bad program for them.

On the other hand, some of the bigger airlines generate the bulk of their revenue from people who are less price sensitive, so the program may not make much sense at its base level.

The difference is that those airlines have turned their frequent flier programs into more than just a free flight scheme. It would actually surprise me if most frequent fliers in those programs even cared about the miles. In those programs, it’s the elite status that matters - the product differentiators. If you’re an elite member, you get upgrades and special treatment that make it even more difficult for people to switch you.

So with that, you might consider removing miles from the program altogether, but in the world of airline economics, that doesn’t make sense either. See, airlines have found a way to turn miles into a profit center. Do you have that United Mileage Plus Visa? Maybe you’re a Delta SkyMiles Amex fan? Well, each time you earn a mile, those credit card companies pay the airlines, so the airlines can recoup the costs of handing those miles out in the first place.

In short, while the basic reward program might not make sense, airlines have evolved the programs to the point where I think intuitively they make sense but further research would certainly be required before coming to any conclusions.

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.