Southwest, AirTran merger may mean changes for Northeast Ohio airports – WKSU
I spoke with an Ohio public radio affiliate about the impact of the Southwest/AirTran merger on the region. (This should have been included last week, but I missed it.)

Frequent flier’s tips for dealing with jet lag – CNN Out of the Office
I had some challenging travel this week from a body clock perspective, so I shared some of my tips for helping with jetlag. Nothing works really well for me, but this isn’t bad.

In the Trenches: How to Stop Working So Much – Intuit Small Business Blog
It’s hard enough working at home, but if you aren’t careful, you’ll never stop working.

Frequent Flier Facts – Woman Road Warrior
I sat down to discuss my thoughts on elite programs and whether they’re worth it. This was a piece more for those who don’t know a lot about the world of elite status.

The Department of Justice approved the Southwest/AirTran merger without any changes this week. The DOJ said it had no concerns about an anti-competitive impact from the merger. Do you agree? Are you surprised that it sailed through?

I spent last week at two of my favorite events – US Airways Media Day and the Phoenix Aviation Symposium. As usual, one or two big headlines will come out of these things, and they’re usually reported incorrectly. This year was no exception. So let’s talk about US Airways and why it won’t actually be merging anytime soon despite some misguided stories.

Many outlets picked up on the fact that US Airways CEO Doug Parker once again spoke about how the airline believes that eventually the legacy carrier world will come down to three main players – American, Delta, and United. And again, Doug mentioned how US Airways could merge with any of these at some point. That’s not a surprise. He’s been saying this for years. But apparently there’s enough turnover in the people covering the airline industry that some treat this as if it’s actually some kind of news. Take a look at Shira Ovide at the Wall Street Journal, for example:

Doug Parker is flagging he’s more than willing to break out the “for sale” sign on his lawn. It’s also a sign that US Air, which combined with Parker’s then company — America West — more than five years ago, didn’t get the kind of scale it wanted from that deal.

*sigh* That “for sale” sign has been out there for a long time, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has even remotely paid attention to this industry. But the chance of a merger happening anytime soon is slim at best. There simply isn’t a good opportunity for US Airways with any of those three right now.

American
Let’s start with the one that everyone points to . . . American. Since Northwest and Delta linked up as did United and Continental, that means US Airways and American will as well, right? Wrong. It would be a disaster of epic proportions if American tried to merge with US Airways now.

US Airways is never shy about pointing out how it survives as an airline. Its hubs are in less desirable locations than the big three airlines and that means it is able to generate less revenue from them. How does it compensate? It has lower costs than the big three to offset the revenue deficiency. That’s how the math comes together. If American buys US Airways, it buys a route system that doesn’t generate enough revenue to cover American’s costs, but American would naturally bring US Airways costs up to its level. That is bad.

I can only think of two ways this works. One would involve American buying US Airways and running it as a separate airline under a holding company. This would not only be a wasteful distraction for American but it might not work. If the feds decide that the airlines have single carrier status (just as Republic/Frontier/Lynx/Shuttle America/Chautauqua just received) then it would mean a single workforce and costs would start to rise. American would also get little benefit. If it really wanted this kind of benefit, it would be better off just agreeing to a codeshare.

The other way is more plausible. If American continues its downward slide and ends up in bankruptcy, I would look for a US Airways bid just as it did with Delta. Then US Airways could rework American before it took it out of bankruptcy and come out with a highly competitive airline. Right now, this is the only plausible merger scenario I see, but American isn’t going into bankruptcy anytime soon.

Delta
The Delta/Northwest merger went so smoothly that some wonder if the airline could handle another one? I imagine it probably could, if it so chose, but there are too many problems and not enough benefit. Forget about the cost issue and look at the route overlap. The feds are unlikely to allow Delta to control Atlanta and Charlotte – the only two viable hubs in the southeast US. Also, the feds were so concerned about the US Airways/Delta slot swap because it would concentrate power in Washington and New York that they blocked it. Just imagine how concentrated the power would be if the two merged. In addition, Phoenix and Salt Lake would only work to hurt each other in the same airline. This would simply be about eliminating competition and nothing else. I just don’t see it happening now.

United
These guys are so tied up with the Continental merger right now that I can’t imagine them being interested in taking on something further. Besides, how do you think the feds would look at a Newark/Philly/Dulles hubbing situation? And there are a bunch of cities in the west where US Airways and United provide the only two options (e.g. Yuma, San Luis Obispo). There could be plenty of concern in the near term.

But overall, the cost issue is going to be the biggest one for any of these airlines. Does that mean that a merger can’t happen? Of course not. There have been plenty of stupid airline mergers of the years. But the chance of one happening anytime soon is remote, and that’s being optimistic. Down the line, things can always change, so will US Airways be around in 5 years? That one is much harder to predict.

Yesterday, the new United continued tweaking its offerings with three announcements on Mexico, China, and frequent flier reciprocity. While I’m sure there are going to be a few big announcements over the next few months, I imagine we’ll see a lot more small ones like these as the two airlines march toward one. I’m certainly not planning to write about these things every time they happen, but I thought yesterday’s were particularly interesting.

More Mexico
One of the announcements was a compilation of a bunch of moves being made in Mexico, some done before the merger and some new. Here’s what’s happening.

• LAX to Leon daily on a Continental 737-500
• Cancun to Austin, San Antonio, and Raleigh/Durham Saturday-only during winter season on Continental 737-700s
• LAX to Mexico City goes from daily to three times daily on United
• Chicago to Mexico City goes from Saturday-only to twice daily on United
• San Francisco to Mexico City goes from daily to twice daily on United
• Denver to Mexico City new daily service during the winter holiday season

One of these stands out like a sore thumb. I mean, Raleigh/Durham to Cancun? Delta is already flying that as a Saturday-only service, so is there really enough demand for two? There has to be something behind the scenes there. But the rest make a lot of sense on the surface.

All the Mexico City flying is a result of the perfect storm. When Mexicana shut down, it left a vacuum for more flights between Mexico and the US. But then the FAA declared Mexico a Category 2 country which meant that Mexican carriers could no longer add service until the country fixes the problem. That left huge opportunity for US carriers, and most of them have been beefing up service to fill the void.

I also really like the LAX-Leon flight. I could never figure out why United refused to look at more LAX-Mexico flying, but if anyone can do it, it’s Continental. This has to be the brainchild of the Continental guys, and I imagine we’ll see more like it. At least, I hope that’s the case.

Fighting American in Shanghai
Glad to see the stiff competition between United and American hasn’t disappeared with the Continental merger. It’s just moved to China. For years, China Eastern has been the only airline flying LAX to Shanghai nonstop. American has had its code on that flight for a long time as well. But now China Eastern is going to join SkyTeam and Delta will be the airline’s US-based partner. So American had to decide what to do. It apparently saw enough opportunity on the route to apply for service on its own. The DOT approved the application almost instantly.

But now, United isn’t happy about that and has applied for service itself. Great, what a waste. There was nothing stopping United from asking for this before, but it’s like the little kid that wants what his brother has. This flight would not only divert connections from the current San Francisco flight, but it would also flood the market with a lot of seats, if approved. (Is there even another frequency available in the bilateral agreement?) Either way, I don’t like this move.

Economy Plus for All
Lastly, OnePass and MileagePlus got even closer by implementing further reciprocal benefits for elite members in both programs. As of now, Continental elites can sit in Economy Plus on United and United elites can sit in the preferred seats on Continental. They can also get upgrades on either airline. In other words, it really doesn’t matter which program you’re in at this point. The benefits are virtually identical, though the final merger into a single program won’t come until next year sometime.

[Original photos via Rep Gingrey and Flickr user *clairity*]

I’ve seen countless articles/posts/interviews talking about how the Southwest/AirTran merger is going to be terrible for every other airline out there. The newly-created behemoth will dominate and crush everyone around. Seriously? Don’t believe conventional wisdom here. This merger is actually good news for most airlines. And one of the biggest winners might be Frontier.

For Frontier, there are a couple of things that should help relieve some pressure in both its hubs. We can start with the most obvious place for gains to be made, Milwaukee. Frontier, Southwest, and AirTran have been in a royal rumble in Milwaukee for awhile now. There isn’t enough room for the three of them, but nobody wants to blink first. Now, there will only be two airlines and rationalization of the network can’t be far behind. Here’s a fancy-pants Venn diagram showing where things stand today:

Southwest and AirTran only overlap on four routes out of Milwaukee (three of which Frontier flies as well), but on those, capacity will likely come down and that can only help the situation. But that’s only part of it. There are another five or six cities that AirTran and Frontier both serve from Milwaukee that I expect will only be served by Frontier in the future.

Right now, AirTran has a deal with SkyWest to fly regional flights in Milwaukee. There is no way that deal is surviving the merger, so my guess is service to those cities will quietly disappear. Maybe we’ll see one or two stay on with larger aircraft (St Louis?), but the rest will probably go away.

Lastly, there’s DFW. Southwest will not serve DFW when the merger is complete, so the current flight from Milwaukee will go away. Maybe it will eventually be served from Dallas/Love, but that won’t be legal until 2014.

So in Milwaukee, things should start to look better. And then there’s Denver.

Frontier and Southwest are competing in Denver, but AirTran has only a token presence. Why is that a good thing? Distraction. Much of Southwest’s growth has been focused on Denver, and now Southwest will be busy bringing AirTran into the fold. I don’t expect we’ll see nearly the focus on Denver as we’ve seen before.

That’s bound to be good for Frontier. (And yes, United’s distraction from its Continental merger will help there as well.) But Frontier isn’t the only beneficiary. Sure, distraction can help everyone except for Delta, which will be the focus of the distraction at its Atlanta home base. But what’s the chance that Southwest continues to serve all those smaller cities from Atlanta that AirTran serves today? Delta might end up with more frequency to compete against on big routes but competition might disappear completely on smaller routes. And that’s where legacy carriers enjoy the highest fares.

Oh, and what’s the chance that AirTran’s challenge to Allegiant in Orlando with sub-daily flights sticks around? I’d be surprised to see Southwest stick with that strategy. Spirit will probably be happy as well assuming that Southwest’s higher costs make it easier to Spirit to compete in the Caribbean. In other words, there are potential opportunities for just about everyone here, even Delta.