American Asks to Defer Beijing Flights
It wasn’t long ago that airlines were climbing on top of each other to grab slots to China. Now the DOT can’t even get airlines to start the flights they’ve earned.

The Problem with the $150 Change Fee
Now that airlines are going to a $150 change fee, they’re actually going to leave money on the table. Something needs to “change” . . .

Midwest Receives $60 Million to Restructure
Midwest has restructured once again, and the airline now appears to be on its way to a regional model. Republic has to be pretty happy right now.

United, Northwest See Steep Decline in Pacific Traffic
This summer has seen a pretty steep drop in the number of people flying from the US to Asia. This probably explains why airlines are rethinking Asian expansion.

United Slow to Address Public Concern Over Paid Meals on International Flights
United made waves by announcing charges for meals on some international flights last week. Unfortunately, their PR efforts weren’t up to the task.

American Offers Wi-fi as a Differentiator
Last week, American enabled wireless internet access on its 767-200s. United better take note or they stand to lose significant share.

Allegiant’s Unique Reverse Enplanement Costs
In an interesting twist, Allegiant is loaning money to Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport for expansion purposes. This is a very smart move.

Labor Day Means Fall Flight Cuts are Coming
With Labor Day approaching, that means fall schedules go into effect. This year the cuts are very deep, and airlines need to pay close attention.

US Airways’ Scott Kirby Joins the Board of LodgeNet
US Airways President Scott Kirby is now on the LodgeNet board of directors. Could this mean a new inflight entertainment system is in the works?

Southwest Filing Fares in ATPCO Once Again
You may not know ATPCO, but I’m guessing that airlines all over the US are happy to see Southwest back in the system again. Why does it matter?

Jake Brace Leaves United
The oft-vilified United CFO Jake Brace has announced his retirement, but is it too late? Should this have happened sooner?

PETA’s Unique Advertising Proposal for Dallas/Ft Worth
DFW received an interesting request from PETA to put some offensive advertising on bathroom stalls. Are airports so short on money that this might become reality?

AirTran Announces New Routes
AirTran will serve Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) and Columbus (Ohio) this fall. Why am I bothering to write about this? New city announcements are rare these days.

TSA Damages Airplanes, Blames American Eagle?!
A TSA agent stepped on sensors on 9 different planes during safety checks. Instead of owning up to it, they’re turning it around on American Eagle. Yikes.

OpenSkies has been full of news this week. First it was the announcement of Amsterdam - New York flights and then yesterday it was the decision to ditch coach and go with all premium economy and business class. The news was quite literally earth-shaking. In the middle of the press conference, the 5.4 earthquake you probably heard about started to roll through downtown LA.

I was sitting next to my friend Johnny Jet, and we looked at each other and instinctively headed for the doorway. Once it was over, a lot of the people didn’t seem too comfortable with the idea of hanging around and hovered by the door (anyone want to bet how many of them were from the east coast?), but as an LA native, I headed back to my seat without pause. OpenSkies MD Dale Moss seemed a bit rattled, but he picked up where he left off.

Enough about that. So what was it that was so rattling? The Amsterdam news was interesting. Dale said, “I always love to go into a market in which we can make a refreshing change and stir it up a bit.” Uh oh. For those keeping score, that means OpenSkies will now serve the two largest Air France/KLM hub cities from New York effective October 15. How long before AF/KL strikes back with a vengeance? This might be fun to watch.

But I think the bigger news is that only a couple months in, the airline has decided to reconfigure its airplanes. Instead of having 24 seats in business (called Biz), 28 seats in premium economy (called Prem+), and 30 seats in coach, they will now replace those 30 coach seats with 12 more in Prem+.

So now they’ve got a mere 64 seats onboard to cover the costs of an entire 757 flying across the Atlantic. Dale seemed confident that having the backing of BA, codesharing, access to their frequent flier program, fuel hedging, etc is going to make a big difference. I agree, but I wonder if it’s enough. They have what looks like a fantastic product, but their fares don’t seem very high right now.

I asked Dale if this was simply a strategic move or if early demand for the Prem+ seats was driving the change. Dale responded that it was a strategic decision. They’ve always wanted to focus on the premium passenger and even though it was “almost always oversold,” coach was “a distraction.” So now they don’t have to worry about that anymore, I guess. He also noted that the reduction in capacity will help give them longer legs on a full tank of fuel.

He also said that Prem+ demand has been strong, but more interestingly he said, “The closer we got with our friends at L’Avion, it validated that.” So, is it possible that L’Avion gave them such incredible information that paying the costs of reconfiguring only a couple months after the planes were first configured makes sense? I’m skeptical. It sounds like they’re ready to make that jump strategically, something they’ve probably wanted to do since the beginning but for some reason did not.

They’ve got what appears to be a very nice product and low fares for what’s being offered. I’d certainly keep them in mind if you’re in New York. Dale also mentioned that Boston and Washington are possibilities for future service in the US with cities like Brussels, Milan, and Barcelona in the EU. They’re going to be expanding, and that’s good for travelers.

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?

We knew it was coming. When Midwest said it would ditch its MD-80s, that had to mean a lot of flight cuts and schedule shuffling. Well, now we know the extent of the damage. The new schedule not only cuts 11 cities, but it shuffles a lot of service around as well. This all begins on September 8.

That day, Midwest service to San Diego, Ft Lauderdale, and Ft Myers will end completely. Midwest Connect will also drop Baltimore, Hartford, Louisville, Muskegon (Michigan), Raleigh/Durham, St. Louis, San Antonio, and Wausau/Stevens Point (Wisconsin). Madison (Wisconsin) will lose flights to Kansas City but it will keep Milwaukee flights.

Los Angeles and Seattle will lose Milwaukee flights, probably because the MD-80 was the only plane in the fleet that could make it nonstop. The 717 will serve both those cities from Kansas City instead. Here’s a crudely drawn map as only I (or an untalented 5 year old) could put together. The slashes are Midwest Connect drops and the “x’s” are Midwest drops.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Midwest is also expanding its Northwest codeshare to include many more city pairs as part of this. Anyone get the sense that Midwest is quickly slipping into irrelevance? They’ve already asked for draconian pay cuts from their employees, but part of me thinks the ones who keep their jobs are the unlucky ones. My guess is that as the airline strengthens its ties with Northwest, more and more Midwest service will slip away.

As you can see in the map above, the airline now is essentially connecting Milwaukee and Kansas City with a handful of cities on the coasts. Is that not something Northwest could build up overnight if they really wanted to? It may just be a matter of time.

Sometimes, it pays to have good timing. A fellow airline dork came across a very interesting message on the JetBlue website. Unless there’s some sort of technical glitch, it appears that JetBlue will be starting up a Portland (Oregon) focus city on October 9. Flights will begin that day to Long Beach, Austin, Chicago/O’Hare, and Las Vegas. Don’t believe me? Head to jetblue.com or just take a look at this screen shot.

I tend to think that the IT team screwed up and put this up there too early. My guess is that we’ll see an announcement as soon as tomorrow, but really who knows? Those other flights on there have already been announced. Richmond to Orlando came out yesterday, White Plains to Tampa came out today, and so did Washington/Dulles to three new sun destinations.

So, I’d imagine we’ll see the announcement that the airline is going to bump up service in the Rose City come out very soon. This is an interesting move, and Alaska won’t be happy. Last time someone tried this, I believe I was able to fly a Delta MD-11 up to Portland from LAX. Ok, so that was more about Delta creating a Pacific gateway, but this is still not exactly a place full of successful airline moves.

One thing I’m curious about is the Long Beach flights. Where did that slot (or slots) come from? My first guess is San Jose, because there have been some low fares in there lately. Something tells me business hasn’t been so great. But maybe it will come out of the long haul world instead. Time will tell.

UPDATE 7/16 @ 814a: I’ve received word that only Portland to Long Beach will be starting. The press release will be going out soon. That means the others are connecting opportunities. Two daily flights - the first starts October 9 and the second on November 2.

Southbound
PDX 730a LGB 945a (begins 10/10)
PDX 210p LGB 425 p (begins 11/2)

Northbound
LGB 1110a PDX 135p (begins 11/2)
LGB 505p PDX 730p (begins 10/9)

Also, I’m told that slots will come as a result of the usual “pulldowns from Long Beach in the off-season (mostly transcons).”

The writing had likely been on the wall for sometime, but it looks like Delta’s experiment in building up LAX is coming to a rapid end. Last week, Delta and ExpressJet announced that their agreement (covering 23 regional jets) would end on September 1. Something tells me we won’t see anyone else come in to fill their place.

The press release had plenty of hints at the ultimate plan for LA. Expressjet had been flying 13 aircraft under a prorate agreement (meaning they take all the financial risk), and I had fully expected those to disappear, but apparently the 10 other aircraft under the cost plus agreement will go as well.

Those 23 planes under the Delta brand had been flying mostly out of LAX and some out of Salt Lake. The release makes it clear that “Delta intends to award a portion of this flying, including all routes currently operated by ExpressJet at its Salt Lake City hub, to another Delta Connection carrier.” That doesn’t address how much of the LAX flying will be replaced, but I think it’s safe to say that the deafening silence says it all.

Many of the flights are already removed from the booking systems. Boise, Portland, and Reno, for example, are already out. Others show reduced flying still in effect, like a single daily Phoenix flight and some Bay Area flying, but most of those don’t have any seats for sale. If that’s the case this far in advance, that means they’re toast, but they just haven’t removed them completely yet. Of course, this also means the smaller Mexico markets like Leon and Torreon will disappear as well. The LA Times confirms that flights will drop from about 93 to near 60 by Labor Day.

It’s entirely possible that some of these will come back via another carrier, but that would really surprise me. This was just a failed experiment, and now it’s time to go back to where they were before. I’m sorry to see some of those Mexico markets go away, because I think they still might work one of these days. But they would have a better chance of working with someone like United or American with a larger local base here in the LA area as well as better connecting opportunities.

Now, I wonder what will happen to Delta’s physical presence in LA. This is a tough one. On one hand, they have a nice, functional terminal over in Terminal 5, but it will now go down to being severely underutilized once again. It would be nice to just bring Northwest over after the merger and fill out the terminal, right? Not so fast. Northwest has an equity stake in Terminal 2, and that’s a nice little asset that they might want to hold on to. Meanwhile, LAWA has to be excited at the prospect of opening up more gate space, but I’m not sure that there’s much they can do beyond working with Delta/Northwest to help them come to the right decision.

Wouldn’t it be nice for Delta to do the right thing here and make room for more airlines to come in? Yeah, right. I think we all know there’s slightly less than no chance of that ever happening. Maybe LAWA can find naked pictures of Delta’s CEO to help get them to move. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets resolved.

(Original LAX image from Flobrio)

Yesterday, American announced the details of its fall flight cuts and the big surprise to me is how deep New York/LaGuardia flying is going to be cut. Meanwhile, United announced it was pulling out of two fairly large cities, Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as from several international routes. On the flip side, Southwest said it will drop a couple routes but add several as well, mostly in Denver and Florida. Let’s get to it.

American
Let’s start with American since that was much bigger in scope. It appears that Miami comes off unscathed while Dallas/Ft Worth will see 5% of flights go and Chicago/O’Hare will lose more than 12%. That looks good in comparison to St Louis (down 27%) and astoundingly, New York/LaGuardia which will be down 33% from 126 departures a day to only 84.

None of those shock me except for the LaGuardia pulldown. For the longest time, airlines have clamped down on congested airport fortresses like LaGuardia and Washington/National, and have not been willing to let slots and gates go. LaGuardia has always been one of those places that you just assumed wouldn’t see massive cuts from the incumbent carriers, because no matter how bad things got, the value of those slots would always be worth it when things got better . . . or at least that WAS conventional wisdom.

This cut tells me that American has decided that nothing is sacred, and that’s a good thing. They can’t continue to lose money on bad flights in the short term just because they might be better in the long run. This is time to make some serious survival decisions and they’re doing it.

Of course, they’re not going to do it quietly. They’ve now petitioned the government to reduce slots at LaGuardia by 20% in the name of improving operations. Yeah, right. In other words, we want to pull down flights but we don’t want to allow anyone to take our place. Hmm, 42 daily flight openings would make a nice little operation for Southwest, huh?

A quick note about the rest of the cuts. Overall, American will mostly be cutting frequencies, but a few cities will see American disappear completely. We already knew about Oakland, Samana (Dominican Republic) and London/Stansted, but now Barranquilla (Colombia), Albany, Providence, Harrisburg, and San Luis Obispo go as well. San Luis Obispo also loses its maintenance base. I’m guessing that may have been where they maintained the now disappearing Saab 340 fleet, which would make sense.

United
Now let’s look at our other route cutter. First, United will pull out of Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. These aren’t small cities, and it’s really amazing that United’s presence has eroded to the point where the airline ends up dropping places like this. United gave up on Florida a few years ago when it became virtually all-Ted. All the decent money around these areas would have fled to other carriers, if it was even at United in the first place. Besides, United could get you to Dulles, but Florida is a New York kind of market. Oh well, I guess they’ll just have to codeshare with US Airways and Continental now.

The bigger cuts for the airline are coming internationally. The recently launched Denver - London/Heathrow and LAX - Frankfurt flights are gone, so is San Francisco to Taipei and Nagoya. There will be some other schedule shifts as well as United prepares to ditch 6 747-400s and to start Dulles - Moscow and Dubai flights. I think the international pain is just beginning.

Southwest
Lastly, (man this post is long), let’s look at Southwest’s announcement today about its fall schedule. Nothing too crazy or surprising here. I mean, they’re beefing up Florida, as any airline would do once summer is over (uh, except United I guess). Oh, and the Denver onslaught continues. Southwest moves into yet another Frontier market - Denver to Orange County - as well as one that isn’t competitive - Denver to Tulsa. Oh, and eleven of the existing Denver markets get increased frequency, including 3 new flights to Chicago/Midway alone. Wow. I guess they had to do something to replace a lot of the long haul frequencies from Midway that are being cut back. And two routes will go away entirely - Oakland to Tucson and Kansas City to Sacramento.

If you’d like to see more detail, here’s the PDF with all of Southwest’s fall schedule changes.

(Original LaGuardia Tower Image from 10cuidados on Flickr)

Looks like United has given in and agreed to modify its Palmdale flying schedule. Beginning in September, instead of two daily CRJs to SFO, there will be four daily Brasilias, the 30 seat turboprop that United has slowly been phasing out. Anyone want to bet that this will work? Anyone? Bueller?

If you read my post earlier this month on the subject, you’ll know that I’ve been critical of LAWA’s efforts to pour time and money into Palmdale. And if you haven’t read the comments section, I’d highly recommend it. I apparently hit quite a nerve with someone doing work for LAWA, and it’s an entertaining read to say the least.

But my position hasn’t changed. I still don’t see this working right now. Let’s look at the fundamentals. Palmdale is in the heart of the Antelope Valley, an area that has seen rapid growth over the years because of its relatively affordable housing. But guess what? It’s an exurb, and those distant communities are taking the biggest hit in the current economic downturn. If you’d like to do a little reading, you can see this article from the LA Times in April 2007. Things have only gotten worse since then.

So it’s a probable that Palmdale alone isn’t going to be supporting major flights. There has been an effort to get people from the Santa Clarita area, the next major popular center, to use the airport by establishing bus service. Now if you don’t know where that is, it doesn’t really matter, but you can see it on the map at left. What matters is that it’s about 20 miles further to go from Santa Clarita to Palmdale than it is to go to Burbank. Even with the traffic, why would you go to Palmdale from there?

You wouldn’t. If you want to go to the Bay Area, you can fly Southwest or United from Burbank for less money and on more frequent flights than out of Palmdale. And it’s not like we’re talking LAX here. Burbank is a nice, small, and easy airport to navigate.

So can service work in Palmdale? Eventually. However, I don’t think San Francisco is going to be sustainable for a long, long time, even with more frequency. My guess is that any sustainable service at all is a few years off still at best. That’s why LAWA, the federal government, and others have had to pour $4.6m into this new service just to see if it can work. So far, the results haven’t been good.

Admittedly, the schedule will greatly improve with these new flights. Instead of northbound departures at only 6a and 11a, there will now be flights at 6a, 1015a, 1220p, and 645p. And instead of southbound flights at only 918a and 925p, there will be flights at 830a, 1035a, 5p, and 1020p. That being said, the flights will now take 18 to 33% longer on the northbound flight in the slow Brasilias. Block time increases from 1h9m to 1h32m northbound and from 1h13m to 1h26m southbound. That gives the Santa Clarita residents yet another reason to drive to Burbank.

I just have to wonder why United has decided to honor this request. They must still have a bunch of Brasilias under contract that are sitting around in the desert somewhere so they figured they’d give it a shot. All I know is that in May, the airline filled 42% of its seats. That means 42 out of the 100 seats flown each way per day were filled on average. Now there will be 120 seats in the market, and even if you can stimulate traffic by 50% because of this new glorious schedule, you’ll still only have a 52.5% seat factor. That seems quite optimistic to me, and it’s not going to cut it unless you’re getting some fairly incredible fares.

You can bet I’ll be keeping an eye on this one as time goes by. I’m heading out of town this afternoon and won’t have email access again until Sunday, so please write comments and I will approve them (if necessary) when I return.