American Airlines’ In-flight Internet Raises Porn Questions
Now that American has started to test in-flight internet, some are getting angry that the airline isn’t restricting which websites people can see.

US Airways is Happy That Nobody is Buying Drinks
It hasn’t been very long since US Airways started charging for drinks, but the airline is already crowing about the benefits they’ve seen so far.

United Gets Smart By Allowing Economy Plus Upgrades Anytime
United is making it easier for anyone to upgrade to Economy Plus at any time before they fly. It’s a smart move that’s good for everyone involved.

Southwest’s Stance on Fees Could be Problematic
Southwest has been very clear that they will not charge fees. Are they backing themselves into a corner with this aggressive marketing?

Financial Crisis Likely to Contribute to Premium Cabin Weakness
Massive bank failures will hurt many areas of the economy and the airlines are not exempt. There will be fewer premium travelers flying the skies.

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]

I was up in the Pacific Northwest this past weekend, and on my way home yesterday, I had a chance to walk around the Portland Airport. Since this place has been rated the best airport in the US by many, I thought I’d walk around to see what was so great. Sure there were short security lines and all that, but I was looking for things that really made the airport stand out. Here’s what I thought were the top 5 features.

5) Green-tastic

You’d think a place that gets far more rain in a year than should be legal wouldn’t care about water conservation so much, but they do. They’ve even installed the dual-flush handle on their toilets. Pull up for #1 (and less water) and push down for #2 (with more water). I have to wonder how many people pay attention to which way they flush, but hey, it’s a nice effort nonetheless.

4) Pull Up a Seat

It’s bad enough when you have to take your shoes off at security, but it’s the ultimate in frustration when you can’t find a place to sit down to put them back on. I’m not sure why the TSA has decided to be so friendly here at PDX, but it’s very nice to see that there are big benches just past security where you can sit and recompose yourself. Why can’t other airports do this? Maybe it’s a space issue, or maybe there’s just someone more compassionate running the show in this town.

3) Be Entertained

As I passed security, I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn’t in a Nordstrom store. Yesterday, William Fischer was tickling the ivories on this piano, and I found out that it was just part of an entertainment series that the airport puts on regularly. Nothing like live music to soothe the harried traveler. Then again, I wasn’t so harried yesterday but you get my point.

2) Get Online Free

This is becoming more and more popular around the country, but I still don’t see it nearly enough. Go to PDX and you’ll have free wi-fi throughout the airport. In addition, they have business centers with workstations to get things done. I think the other feature I find most useful here is the place to charge your cell phone/ipod. Sometimes finding a plug in the airport can be such a pain.

1) Public Transit to the MAX

There’s nothing I love more about an airport than good public transit access, and this has to be one of the best. The MAX light rail comes right in to the airport. How close? This picture was taken from behind security on one of the concourses. So yeah, it’s close, and it’s easy. You can get just about anywhere in the Portland area from here. Coming from LA, where our airports have some of the worst public transit connectivity around, this makes me very jealous.

American Preparing to Expand International 757 Flying
American is putting a true premium cabin on 18 757s so it can start doing more long haul international. What new routes might we see?

United Stock Tanks on False Bankruptcy Rumors
It was a seemingly small mistake. A 2002 bankruptcy article on United was republished as current, and then all hell broke loose.

Singapore Airlines Actually Reducing Fuel Surcharges
Singapore Airlines has made a move to lower fuel surcharges. It’s surprising, but is it an important move?

Advertising on Bald Heads
One airline has decided to offer cash to those who would advertise the airline on the back of their heads. Is this ridiculous or brilliant?

Aircraft Interiors Expo’s Focus on Weight
There was one consistent message throughout the Interior Expo, and it was all about weight. Why does it matter and will it change any time soon?

I had the chance to spend a day at the first running of the Aircraft Interiors Expo in the US this week, and I have to say, it was pretty interesting. I mean, it’s not all glitz and glamour as you might expect. Sure, there was a red carpet there, but . . . ok, maybe not.

When people think of aircraft interiors, they probably think of cool seats, but there’s a lot more than that. They have fasteners, carpets, and everything else to comes together to make up the interior experience. So as you can imagine, a lot of this would be boring to those not working in the industry (and probably boring for them as well), but there were a couple of cool products I saw that I thought might catch your interest.

aerokid - integrated infant/child seat
Parents will love this one. Lufthansa Technik has come up with a built-in child seat for aircraft. If there’s no kid in the seat, it looks nearly like any other seat. But if there’s a child, it folds down to reveal a fully functional child seat that also expands into a bed, like a bassinet.

So with this, you won’t have to lug that bulky seat through the terminal to take to the plane. This is a brand new product, and nobody has committed to it yet, but I think it’s got some potential. Sure there are issues. I mean, how do you accurately predict how many you would need on a plane? You can never get it right, but you can certainly improve the travel experience for some. We’ll see if anyone is willing to give it a shot.

Relaxor in-seat massage
I had a lot of fun talking to these guys at the show. First of all, I think it’s clear they should not go into aircraft seat decoration. Can you imagine an entire plane with leopard-printed seats? Yikes. But hey, it caught my attention, and that’s what they wanted.

These guys focus on in-seat massage. They’ve got units in seats in premium classes on a few airlines (eg Emirates, Etihad, etc), but nobody has put it in the back yet. And is that really a surprise? Nah. But maybe one airline will decide that they can get people to pay for it, so they will. Sounds like one of those coin-operated bed massages in cheap motels. All I know is that it felt good, and it probably helps with blood flow on those long flights. I doubt we’ll see it onboard anytime soon, though I’d like to be pleasantly surprised.

Nintendo Travel Network
If you’ve ever been to a Seattle Mariners game, you might have seen something like this in the Nintendo Fan Network. The idea is that you would download the Travel Network on to your DS. It will stay there until you turn the unit off at which point it would disappear and you’d have to reload. The airline would put a server on their aircraft that would allow anyone with a Nintendo DS portable video game system to interact with it. It could display the time left in-flight along with a map, it could allow you to stream movies, or it could even let you shop.

Nintendo says they have 75 million DS units out there, so there could be plenty of usage opportunities. I worried about the size and weight of the server, but they said it could be as simple as another DS broadcasting the information. This seems like a pretty easy way for an airline to enable a wide variety of inflight entertainment without having to invest much in the product. Of course, most of the people who own the DS aren’t likely your most frequent fliers, but it’s still a fun thing to think about.

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?

Has anyone had the chance to check out Yapta yet? The site originally launched as a way to see if the price of a ticket you had purchased had gone down. Since some airlines will give you a credit if the fare goes down, this could be a handy little tool to help you save some money. When it first launched, it required you to download a browser plug-in to work, but now you can get Yapta on the web. Unfortunately, there were some kinks that made the site unusable initially, but while some of those have been fixed, there’s still a ways to go before this is a helpful tool.

I decided to go to Yapta (Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant) and put in four itineraries I had already purchased to see what I could find.

Northwest to Indianapolis
This one ended before it started. You can’t check Northwest flight information on Yapta (maybe they won’t give you credit for a lower fare?), so I moved on.

United to Indianapolis
By entering my confirmation number and last name, Yapta originally told me that fare had gone down, but that’s because it saw our total price (for two people) as the per person price. Bzzzzt, no good. Now that’s been fixed, and it’s saying that the fare has gone up from $242 to $349. That’s still not quite right. I go on to United.com and it tells me that the price is $370 for that flight right now. So I’m not sure where this is coming from. True, the outcome is the same, but it won’t necessarily always be that way.

JetBlue to San Jose
I figured the third time would be the charm, right? Not quite. Yapta came back saying that the price has gone up from the $109 we paid to $149 per person so there’s nothing to gain here. But just out of curiosity, I checked JetBlue.com and the price is actually $139. Still nothing to gain, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when the fares are not accurate on every itinerary I try so far.

Alaska to Seattle/Portland
This one I thought would be interesting. I’m flying out of Long Beach, going to Seattle, and then flying back from Portland to Orange County. This time, it was just me traveling so there was no issue of viewing two fares as one accidentally. The result? It says that the fare has gone from $310.57 all the way up to $744. Whoa, not so much. I did pay $310.57 (with a % discount certificate), but the current fare is $324. For those keeping score, Yapta was 0 for 3 in getting the correct current price of the ticket. Not good.

Bottom Line
The site has a great idea, but man are there problems. I’m glad to see they’ve worked out the kinks on the fare initially paid. That’s working perfectly now, but every single time it returned the wrong “new” fare that was currently available. Both components need to be right for this site to be successful. Without that component, I still find myself going to the airline website to double-check to actual fare, and that makes Yapta not very useful. Once they solve these problems, it’ll be worth a return visit.

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.

My fiancee and I were supposed to fly JetBlue in February, but our trip plans changed. I had them move the fare amount into a credit, minus the change fee, knowing I’d use it some other day.

That day came this week, and guess what? Using your credit on JetBlue isn’t very easy. In fact, you can’t do it at all online unless you sign up for a frequent flier account. That’s really annoying and probably Cranky Jackass material. For some reason, I’m feeling benevolent today and will just let them off with a stern finger-wagging (and a post for all my readers to see).

So what happened? Well, I found the flights, filled out my information, and then went to the payment screen. Here’s what it showed me.

Um, so how do I use that credit again? Clearly it’s not a voucher - I don’t have a “voucher code” or anything like that. This is a credit, and there’s no way to use it. So, I called up reservations and asked what to do. That’s when I found out that, well, you can’t do it unless you’re a TrueBlue frequent flier program member.

What? That seemed ridiculous, but sure enough, you can’t use your credit online unless you sign up for an account. Then, they’ll transfer your credit into that account, and the payment-by-credit option will come up.

Personally, I didn’t want to join TrueBlue, so what could I do? Well, I could book it on the phone, but they charge $10 more per ticket to do that. It seems very United-like to charge someone to do something over the phone even though it’s not possible on the internet. So, I broke down and created a TrueBlue account. If they start spamming me, I’ll have to consider forwarding the emails to random JetBlue addresses.

For this, JetBlue, you suck. Please fix it. (Or maybe I should be pleading with your reservation system provider. Is it still Navitaire?)

When I heard about InsideTrip.com’s launch, I got excited. See, when I was running PriceGrabber’s now-deceased travel site, we tried to incorporate more than just price and schedule into the shopping experience. We added on-time information, seat pitch, powerports, etc. For some reason, other sites have never felt the need to show this sort of information, even if it can give the passenger a reason to pay more for one airline vs another. Now InsideTrip.com has done just that, and I must say, they’ve done a great job collecting and displaying this information.

I think the best way to explain what they have done is to just walk through a search. I figured I’d go for the route that has the most potential. Horrible delays, many competitors, unique product differences? Oh yeah, it has to be LA to New York. So let’s look for a trip from LAX to NYC on some random days in April (9-16).

As you can see (sorry I can’t have a wider picture here), my first results weren’t exactly ideal. A connection to LaGuardia one way and back from Philly’s train station (!?!) the other way? I think not. So, I cleaned it up using filters that any site would have to only show nonstop flights and only to Newark or JFK.

So now, my cheapest flight is $233 on United. Many people would just jump on that one if the flight times were fine and be on their way. But now, all of a sudden, I can see that for $40 more, JetBlue’s option received a 92 instead of an 86. Is it worth it? Well, it depends on what matters to you. Let’s look at the details. First, you’ll see the United flights and then below that the JetBlue flights. I’ve tiled across the three different tabs to make it easy to see everything.

Check out the details and you’ll see that there’s no difference in speed (duh, it’s a nonstop flight on both). When it comes to comfort, JetBlue gives me more legroom and if I’m checking bags, JetBlue does a better job of making sure that they arrive with me.

So is it worth it to pay more? I’d probably pay it, but that’s a personal decision, of course. For me, the most important thing is something that isn’t even addressed here but would be a nice addition. Long Beach is a far easier airport to navigate than LAX is. Sure, it looks like they both have similar security line situations, but anyone who has used both airports knows that you can park closer and cheaper, get to your gate quicker, and have an overall easier time at the airport if you fly out of Long Beach.

It just goes to show that there’s plenty more information that could be useful, and this first round of information that’s still in beta is really just the tip of the iceberg, albeit a very large tip.

There are, of course, some other issues, but I’ve been assured by InsideTrip.com CEO Dave Pelter that they’re working on them. They don’t handle information on codeshare flights accurately all the time. A LAX-LHR search showed that they were using information on Delta aircraft for a flight actually operated by Air France, but that’s something that’s easily fixed. If you happen to see any inaccuracies, Dave asks that you send any issues to info@insidetrip.com so they can fix them.

Fortunately, you can take things out of the trip quality calculation that may not interest you. I would certainly recommend removing aircraft age out of there, because that’s completely irrelevant. Try flying on a 20 year old US Airways 737 and a 40 year Northwest DC-9 and you’ll probably be begging for the DC-9 every time once you see the inside.

Probably the biggest issue I see is that you can’t pick and choose which attributes are most important to you by direction. If I’m flying to Europe, seat comfort will be most important so I can try to get a good night’s sleep, but if I’m flying back, then I care about food and inflight entertainment a lot more. Right now, you can only choose what’s important for the whole itinerary and they don’t have any plans to change that in the near future.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the back end is powered by Orbitz, so these fares will include the booking fee. Once you find what you want, you might still want to head over to the airline website to save a few bucks. Or you might decide that it’s worth the extra money to keep an informative site like this going. Hopefully they’ll start offering more options than Orbitz at some point, but until then, it’s still absolutely worth using this site.