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?

When SAS started talking about how they would actually replace those Q400s they’re ditching, I noticed plenty of discussion about wet leases and dry leases. That made me realize it was a great time for the latest installment in the far too infrequent “What the F***” series.

The basic idea of a lease is pretty simple. An airline pays the owner of an aircraft for the ability to use that aircraft in the operation of their flights. Usually, the owner is another airline or an aircraft leasing company that specifically buys airplanes in order to lease them out to others. But there are a bunch of different types of leases, and that’s where it starts to get confusing. Below, you’ll see a handy chart showing what is included in the different types of leases.

So those are the basics. Why am I bothering to write about this? Well, as a passenger, you might find yourself on planes in some of these situations and it may seem kind of strange. Now you’ll know why.

Aircraft on a wet lease (also called an ACMI lease) tend to be the easiest ones to spot. The reason for that is because the crews are actually employees of the aircraft owner instead of the airline you bought your ticket on. There have been a handful of airlines recently in the US that have operated exclusively under a wet lease. Most of you probably haven’t heard of them, but SkyValue and (the last attempt at) Western were really just a brand name being operated by a different airline entirely.

Airlines in general tend to consider wet leases for more short term needs. That’s why SAS is looking to replace their Q400s in the next couple of months with planes operated by another carrier. These types of leases are certainly much more common in Europe than here in the US. Airlines will often lease extra planes during the busy summer season and then send them back in the winter over there. That’s when you see airplanes wearing funky paint schemes because it’s in a hybrid of the owner and the lessee.

Then we have dry and damp leases. For a customer, the difference between a damp lease (which is rare) and a dry lease is virtually indistinguishable, because on both aircraft the crews are from the airline from which you bought your ticket. Most of the time you’ll never know if your plane is leased or owned by the airline unless you bother looking it up. (You can look up US-based aircraft here.) Dry leases tend to be for longer periods of time than wet leases for obvious reasons. You don’t want to hire and invest in training for crews and maintenance personnel if you’re just going to have to let them go in a couple of months.

If you’d like to learn more, I found this page that can get you into even more detail.

They aren’t kidding when they say what goes up must come down. I was working on a post about the new Western Airlines when I found out that they’re already going out of business!

The airline started service on January 18 from its base in Bellingham (Washington) to San Diego, Ontario, and Mesa (near Phoenix). Since Bellingham is so close to Vancouver, they thought they’d be able to steal traffic from across the border. Unless they had figured out a magic way to cross the border quickly (they didn’t), I would have been surprised if that strategy worked.

Airline dorks were pretty excited to see the Western name return to the skies 20 years after the original was bought by Delta. The airline even used “Still the Only Way to Fly” as their slogan, a take on the old Western’s line.

The airline was “wet leasing” a plane from XTRA Airways. That means XTRA was responsible for flying the airplane around under Western’s name. Apparently Western forgot that they had to actually pay XTRA for that privelege, and that’s where the trouble started.

Clue #1 – If you go to the Western website, click on the reservations link. It has said “System Update in progress . . . please check back later!” for at least a day now.

Clue #2 – XTRA Airways sent out a blast email yesterday with the following:

XTRA aviation are pleased to advise of the following
Availability update:
We will have a B737-400 with 12J / 138Y (150Y) which will be available for
ad-hoc Charter from 12 Feb – 01 April 2007 inclusive Please forward all
outstanding requests and any new request which Xtra Aviation will be happy to
re-quote

Clue #3 – Well, this is more confirmation than a clue. The Bellingham Herald put out an article confirming that San Diego flights are canceled while the others likely will be as well. The company is out of money and is trying to find more. Good luck with that.

So, we say so long to Western. They almost made it a month.