Everybody know what time it is? That’s right kids, it’s time to figure out who the f*&@ Vision Airlines is! You might have heard of the airline in previous incarnations, but things have changed a lot. And since Vision has just announced it’s starting commercial flights from Atlanta to Louisville and has designs on Allegiant-style flying, I thought it would be an appropriate time to dig in.

When I arrived in Atlanta last month, I was surprised to see Vision listed on the baggage claim board. See, I hadn’t heard the name in years, and the last time I heard about those guys, they were doing Grand Canyon charters from their base in Vegas. Could this be the same airline? Yep. It is, but it’s doing things differently these days than when it started in 1994.

Most recently, Vision was in the news for something completely different from what you’d expect. It was the airline that carried Russian spies over to Europe for the big spy swap this past summer. Yep, Vision had gotten into the charter game and won that contract. But that’s just one part of a lot of different businesses that Vision has been dipping its toes into. According to the website, here’s what they’ve been working on.

• Casino Charters to bring desperate gamblers from their homes to casinos.
• Sports Charters to carry teams and sometimes fans to games.
• Vacation Charters usually meant to bring pasty white tourists to warm, sunny spots, usually for travel agencies that put packages together.
• Capacity Substitution for airlines that need a little extra capacity, possibly to augment existing fleets during busy times or to step in for an airplane that’s out of service for a temporary time.
• Wet Leasing which seems like capacity substitution except for longer periods of time (like a season instead of a week) and probably more integrated with the contractor brand.
• Bus Travel through its Vision Coach subsidiary.
• Grand Canyon tours still live on through the Vision Holidays subsidiary.
• Scheduled Charter service, the newest part of the business.

In other words, it’s an airline with no focus at all but apparently a lot of ideas of things it thinks it could be doing. So to fulfill that dream of doing everything, Vision has a motley fleet. To the best of my knowledge, there are four 767-200s in the fleet, including the seventh off the line which was built for United way back in 1982. There is also one 737-300, three 737-400s, and one 737-800. Most of these seem to have been obtained from lessors after the previous airlines failed, and many were in storage for quite some time. They probably got great rates on these airplanes.

But that’s only part of the story. Vision is also the last airline in the US buzzing around with Dornier 228s and 328s turboprops that I know of (at least in the lower 48). The 228s are primarily for the Grand Canyon business, but the 328 is what’s being used for the first scheduled charter service.

That’s right. Beginning on December 13, the Dornier 328 will go into service twice daily between Louisville and Atlanta. You can book it yourself at visionairlines.com or via the phone at 877-FLY-A-JET. (Yes, it’s hilariously misleading since this route is actually flown by a prop.) Is there a need for this? Well, Delta flies that route nine times a day but nobody else does, so Vision thinks there’s a market for low fare service. One of the airline execs is from Louisville, so he thinks he knows that there’s huge demand for low fare service. He also thinks, according to an interview with Today in the Sky that he can snag corporate customers from companies like UPS and Home Depot.

Meers thinks Vision can siphon of some of those corporate customers since its fares will be lower than what Delta is currently charging.

If he really thinks he can get those guys to send their business away from Delta, he’s got a rude awakening ahead. UPS and Home Depot need Delta for a lot more than just flights to Louisville, and Delta will make that very clear.

I wish I could ask about this and a lot more, but I’m unable to get a call back. I’ve left messages at the airline’s headquarters and have yet to receive a response. I’ve also emailed their contracted PR person Bryan Glazer who said “You can use the news release. I sent an e-mail to my client asking if he’ll speak with you. standby.” I’m still standing by and haven’t heard anything. Glazer, you might recall, was also the spokesperson for Jet America when it failed to launch. I think that in itself explains this quote from him in Today in the Sky.

Unlike other start-ups, Vision Airlines has been in business for 16 years; it is a financially solid company.

Heh, kind of funny. So for now, I have to go with what’s public. But would I really be writing about this airline if it was just content flying from Louisville to Atlanta? Nope. It now has its sights set on a new Allegiant-style business as well.

. . . the carrier expects to announce a “fairly significant” growth plan that will add up to a dozen new cities, with various point-to-point routes among them. Vision does not plan to operate a hub-and-spoke operation focused on connecting passengers.

When pressed on where the carrier might fly, Meeks says “it’s reasonable to assume it will be to typical Florida leisure destinations,” though he didn’t rule out other “underserved” markets in the region.

Wait, is this actually the reincarnation of Jet America under another name? I suppose we’ll find out if we see any flight going to Toledo or Melbourne. I actually think there is an opportunity for more Allegiant or Spirit-style service in this country, but will Vision and its strategy of trying everything on the map be the one that make it work? I doubt it. But if I can get a call back from them, I’ll be happy to let them change my mind.

[Original Photo via Flickr user boboroshi/CC 2.0]

There are no columns more fun to write than those diving into some obscure little airline that has grandiose startup plans. This time, it’s California Pacific, but it’s different from most of the others I’ve profiled. First of all, these actually have some money and have a shot at getting off the ground. Second of all, the idea isn’t a bad one. That doesn’t mean I think the plan is perfect, but this is certainly one of the more promising startups I’ve profiled here.

California Pacific, or hilariously enough for all you Canucks, CP Air, is planning to set up shop in Carlsbad, California. Carlsbad lies in north San Diego County, about 35 miles north of San Diego’s Lindbergh Field and 60 miles southeast of John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Today, only United flies to Carlsbad with six daily props up to LAX. That’s it. US Airways used to fly in from Phoenix, but those flights are gone.

So why the heck do we need more service at this airport when it’s surrounded by others? Well it’s really not going to draw from Orange County. Even though it isn’t that far, people in Orange County don’t think about going south for their flights. This is really targeted at people in north San Diego County, and that’s a big group of people. There is a lot of business in North County and traffic can suck driving down to Lindbergh. Then you have to park and wait in line as you do at any big airport. Carlsbad, meanwhile, just got upgraded from a double-wide trailer to a nice and small terminal that is completely efficient. You can roll up and be on a plane in just a couple minutes, so the time savings are dramatic.

Despite the new terminal, however, the runway is pretty short at 4,897 feet. That’s almost a thousand feet shorter than the already very short runways at John Wayne, so they really can’t fly very many types of planes out of there, at least not with a full load.

So what will CP Air be doing? Flying Embraer 170s. These airplanes can fly out of there since the runway is just about the same length as London/City and they fly in there safely (with crazy dive-bombing approach procedures as well). They also have decent range, even on the short runway so they can cover the western US. I might like to see the Q400 here, but they wanted jets and this is probably the right one to choose considering the contraints.

I actually met with one of the guys working on this startup (a frequent Cranky reader), and we spoke for awhile about it. The airline is planning 4 times a day to Sacramento, Oakland, San Jose, and Phoenix. They’re also looking at 3 times a day to Vegas and a weekly trip down to Cabo.

What don’t I like about this? With the exception of the weekly trip to Cabo, these are all Southwest Airlines markets and that’s bad news for CP Air. Yes, CP Air can save you time all else being equal, but Southwest has 13 daily flights from San Diego to Oakland alone. That’s a huge frequency advantage that may very well prevent a lot of North County passengers (who already use Southwest anyway) from shifting to CP Air. If Southwest wants to play hardball, they can, not too mention United and their corporate contracts.

I’m also not a fan of the aircraft configuration. These planes are flying on 1 hour hops yet they’re planning on having First Class, Business Class, and Coach. Seriously? Who needs that? It adds complexity and takes away seat density that you’d really want to have to keep costs per seat low. I’d ditch it and maybe have a couple rows of extra legroom at most if they really think they need it.

Unlike most startups, I like the market area and the service plan, but if I were these guys, I’d be doing everything I could to keep things simple and cut out operational complexity. I’d also see if I could find a way into someone else’s frequent flier program. Maybe Alaska would set up a frequent flier partnership since they do it with everyone else? That would go a long way to attracting business travelers, that’s for sure, though I would be surprised if they could work that out easily.

Another X factor here? The founder. Ted Vallas founded Air Resorts to do the same thing in 1980, and now he’s back again and some of what he says concerns me. For example, he says, “My business plan of 1980 was nearly identical to my proposed plan of 2009.” Things have changed a lot since then, so a statement like that makes me very nervous.

To sum it up, the focus here has to be on the local business guys. Tourism is not going to be a good market here, so they should just forget about it. If people want to go to San Diego attractions, they’ll fly to San Diego. Legoland is right near the airport in Carlsbad, but nobody flies to San Diego just to go to Legoland. North County is not a destination. It’s all about business, so if they can make inroads there, despite their frequency disadvantage then they might be on to something.

You guys know I have an unhealthy obsession with featuring startup airlines that have little chance of actually starting up, right? Well, this one was too good to ignore. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you XAIR.

XAIR has decided that it wants to jump in to the public charter world with a most unusual effort. The plan is to fly from its Anchorage base to Seattle. Oh, by the way, they’ll be flying in an all-business class configuration. Oh boy. This’ll be good.

Let’s take a look at this 3 1/2 hour route. Alaska owns the market with 13 flights per day IN THE WINTER. From the first flight out of Seattle at 6a until the last flight at 1145p, there is never a gap of more than 2 hours between flights. In the summer, they have about 20 flights a day with rarely more than an hour in between. If you’re a frequent business traveler flying up front, that schedule is very appealing.

So,what’s the chance there’s really demand for a new operator in here? Spokesperson Johnie Martinez says “there is a segment of the traveling public unhappy with the barrage of additional fees for services and amenities that used to be included in ticket prices.” Yeah, but that’s not the segment that’s flying First Class. Those people don’t pay extra fees.

The airline had a quote on its website that says, “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” Now the quote is “Never, never, never give up.” That may be true if you have a good plan, but in this case, the outcome is certain to be better if you don’t try at all. Please, save your money.

My guess is this airline is dead in the water already. They have a Twitter account, but they’ve only tweeted twice since early October. One touted a new survey, so I took it. They asked me a bunch of questions about where I was from and then they just asked how important frequent flier programs were. That was it.

The other tweet? Just a link sharing that Virgin America was now a citizen. I think they sent that out just to prove that someone was still manning that account. After all, they have a whopping 30 people following them. Gimme a break.

I love covering new airline startups, because the chances that most of them go anywhere are slim to none. It’s fun to pick these apart and to see if anyone actually puts money into them (see: JetAmerica). The latest effort we have is called Viza Air, and I’ll bet this one doesn’t go anywhere at all.

I think the Viza Air name is appropriate. They’re trying to fly out of Gary, Indiana, so they could easily borrow Visa’s tagline and tweak it to say “It’s nowhere you want to be.” Maybe that’s not fair. At least Gary does serve the Chicago metro area. That’s better than I can say for Toledo. The plan is for flights to both Newark and Washington/National airport.

If you believe the airline reps, they say they have now secured slots at both National and Newark. If that’s true, then great. It’s better than JetAmerica has done. But I’m not such a quick believer. For what it’s worth, at least Gary is being smart about this one. They have been in discussions for a few months, but they still haven’t seen a business plan. Gary does make it clear that there won’t be any marketing funds offered here. They’ve been burned too many times by now.

So is there a need for this? No, I doubt it. I do like the idea of Gary in better economic times, but I would still focus on more leisure destinations like Florida than business destinations like DC and New York.

Long-time readers may vaguely remember my “who the f***” series of posts, but it’s been quite awhile since my last one. When I saw “Air Azul” pop up on my radar for the second time, I figured it was time to bring it back. So who the f*** is Air Azul?

First let’s clear the air. This is not the Spanish version of JetBlue. Nor is it related to David Neeleman’s Azul venture down in Brazil. And no, it has nothing to do with Pakistan’s AirBlue. It’s just another airline trying to ride on the “coolness” that was “blue” when JetBlue took flight.

It’s first semi-scheduled route connected Nashville with Somerset, Lake Cumberland Regional Airport (Kentucky) four times a week with little Metro props. The service started on December 27, 2008 under a $1m grant, but if you believe the website, it’s ending May 1. Nice. But the airline doesn’t actually operate any aircraft – it just leases the planes from Locair to fly as a public charter. (That’s why I say it’s semi-scheduled.) So if those flights are ending, why the heck am I even writing about this airline?

Air Azul has a new plan. They’re going to continue doing public charters like so many other failed airlines before (Remember SkyValue?), but now they’re going big. You can read all about it at FlytheNewBlue.com. Yes, apparently they have decided that JetBlue is old news, and now they’ll be so much better. What exactly is going to differentiate them?

My guess is that their biggest differentiator will be their empty planes. They’re using 737-800s from Sun Country. Those planes have a lot of seats, 162 to be exact, so you’d think they’d be flying to places with decent demand, right? Not so fast. How do these routes sound?

• Baltimore to Lansing (three times weekly)
• Baltimore to Rockford (twice weekly)
• Newark to Lansing (three times weekly)
• Newark to Melbourne (Florida) (twice weekly)
• Newark to Rockford (three times weekly)
• Newark to South Bend (three times weekly)
• Newark to Toledo (three times weekly)

Something tells me that now is not the time to be betting on secondary airports in the suffering Rust Belt, but that appears to be the plan. They seem to be trying to channel Allegiant but instead of sun destinations, they’re going for New York and Baltimore. Could it work? Maybe in theory to New York, but Baltimore? I wouldn’t bet on it.

I also wouldn’t want to be flying expensive 737-800 aircraft around for this kind of operation. Let’s just say that they have an uphill battle, and that’s being kind. I’ll be particularly interested in seeing how they do with their on-time performance since their plane flies through Newark at least once a day.

I’m not quite sure what these guys are thinking, but apparently they think they’ve got something here. Anyone want to take bets?