You go away for a few days and all kinds of crazy stuff happens. Here’s the latest.

• JetBlue said on Monday that they received approval for four daily flights to Chicago/O’Hare. The flights would have to start by January. They don’t have a gate yet, but US Airways indicated they don’t need an old America West gate in Third World Terminal 2, so that would be the best bet now. I would also guess that all four flights would go to New York/JFK.
• United said today that they’ll return to Rome with nonstop flights from Washington/Dulles beginning April 1. They haven’t flown to Rome (or Milan for that matter) for several years. This flight will run with a 777. They’ve added a good amount of 777 flying lately, so I’m really curious where these planes are coming from.
• Qantas says they will bring back flights between San Francisco and Vancouver for December and January. That flight had previously brought cruise traffic to Vancouver in the northern summer months. Fly in the first 10 days of December and you can go for $119 each way.
• Frontier will continue to add flights in California, away from its main Denver hub so it can diversify. The latest announcement came Tuesday saying that they have applied for three times weekly service from Sacramento and four times weekly service from San Jose to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico starting next March. They will also start one daily flight between San Francisco and Las Vegas on December 14. That flight appears to just take advantage of a plane sitting on the ground in San Francisco. It leaves there at 820p and turns around right away getting back to San Francisco at 1150p.
• It wouldn’t be a route announcement without something from Delta. Starting January 11, the airline will begin three daily flights (two on weekends) between Boston and Chicago/Midway. This one defies all logic, especially since the schedule isn’t very good. The first flight from Chicago isn’t until 9a and the last flight back from Boston is at 435p. This is clearly aimed at the Boston market, but I’m not so sure it’s going to work when American and United basically fly hourly to O’Hare.

Those who have been following my ongoing fight with US Airways (here and here) will be happy to hear that it’s finally over. After returning from my trip to Puerto Vallarta yesterday (trip report coming in the next few days), I found two $80 vouchers for future travel on US Airways in my mailbox.

You can read the old posts for the full details, but here’s the short version of what happened. I bought tickets to Puerto Vallarta and the fare dropped $80. US Airways and many other airlines have a rule that if a fare drops, you can get the difference in fare refunded for a $100 fee or you can get the full amount in the form of a voucher. Now, US Airways said that since the fare was an internet special, it wasn’t eligible for the refund. After reviewing the contract of carriage, I found that while it did say that was true for domestic flights, there was no mention in the international contract so I decided to fight.

US Airways of course did not admit defeat here. They said it’s just a “courtesy to a valued customer” and that’s a bit disappointing, but I’m happy to read between the lines. I commend US Airways for being so responsive on this and I hope they will now have the contract of carriage changed to reflect the rules stated on the website. More importantly, they should probably review the rule entirely. Since it says that no sales fares apply, it would seem to be better to just get rid of the rule instead of disappointing most people who try to use it.

There are two lessons here.

• Airlines should make sure that their rules are reflected in their contracts of carriage correctly. If they aren’t, they will continue to find problems like these.
• If you’re a customer, you should always look to the contract of carriage in a dispute. If you can prove your case using that document (which can be found on any airline website), you should win.

Here is the full text of the letter:

Thank you for contacting Customer Relations at US Airways. We
apologize for your disappointment with the fare for your recent travel, and
appreciate the chance to offer an explanation.

The Guaranteed Air Fare Rule applies to tickets purchased through US
Airways Reservations or through www.usairways.com . As with most fare
rules, certain restrictions and exceptions apply.

The original ticket must be fully unused and the reissued ticket (to the
decreased or new fare) must reflect the exact itinerary with no changes made to
dates, times, cities, or passenger name. Additionally, all conditions of
the new fare must be met, including booking code, advance reservations and
ticketing requirements. If the decreased or new fare is a fare for sale
for a limited period of time only, this rule does not apply. If the fare
is limited to Internet booking only, the rule does not apply, as this type of
fare is not a filed/published fare with industry reservation systems. In
other words, a Reservations agent must be able to view the decresaed fare or new
fare in our booking system.

When a fare qualifies for the Guaranteed Air Fare Rule, the customer may
request a refund of the fare difference. A $100 change fee per ticket will
be assessed; however, a customer may choose to receive the difference in fares
in voucher form. In that instance, the change fee would be waived.

As a courtesy to a valued customer, I have enclosed two $80 Transportation
Vouchers which may be applied toward future travel with US Airways.
Although the document has the America West name, you may apply it toward travel
on any US Airways operated flight.

Again, thank you for contacting US Airways. We’re confident and
excited about our future. Your patience and understanding is appreciate,
and we look forward to exceeding your expectations on a future flight.

I’m taking off for a few days of R&R south of the border this week, so I won’t be posting again until I return. You can expect to see my next post on Thursday when I’m back in town. Don’t cry, it’s not that long. Talk to you again next week.

Virgin America may not be able to get off the ground as an airline anytime soon, but they sure do have a lot of airplanes. If you’d like to read a good summary of the saga, head on over to State of the Airlines blog. I don’t want to get into that right now, but I do want to talk about the latest contest.

The other day, the airline had a rollout of their first plane which they named Jefferson Airplane, after the band. Grace Slick, former lead of the group, even showed up for the dedication. Now Virgin America has turned the reigns over to the public for naming the rest of their planes. Those planes are just sitting in the desert, sad and all alone, waiting to carry passengers, so maybe management thought that giving them names would keep their spirits up.

Head on over to this website if you’d like to submit your name. While you’re there, you can vote for mine. It may have been a flop at the box office, but I think that “Snakes on This Plane” would be an excellent plane name.

As they say in Chicago, vote early and vote often.

I really thought that after last year’s transatlantic expansion to place like Kiev (Ukraine), Delta would have started to let up a little.

Guess not.

This morning, they announced another seemingly crazy expansion plan. Let’s dig in one by one:

• Atlanta – Prague starts May 2

This one makes a lot of sense actually. SkyTeam partner Czech already flies it out of JFK. It seems a natural for them to connect their biggest hub with the hub of a partner. It makes a lot more sense than some other routes.

• Atlanta – Vienna starts May 21

Vienna is not a big aviation market, but if they can make other smaller European cities work, this might not be too bad. Previous rumors of Austrian’s defection from Star Alliance to SkyTeam would have made this an easier choice, but those seem to have quieted down recently.

• Atlanta – Dubai starts May 31

Well, this is probably going to be a good one. Dubai is growing by leaps and bounds. I mean, Emirates can support three daily flights out of JFK alone right now! Imagine what the Atlanta hub can feed here.

• Atlanta – Seoul/Incheon starts June 4

This one falls into the same category as the Prague flight. Korean is a member of SkyTeam, so this allows Delta to send people through Korean’s hub in Seoul. The difference is that Korean already flies this one daily year round with more flights during the summer. Is there enough demand?

• New York/JFK – Pisa starts April 1

Huh? Well, they clearly think there’s a market to tap in Florence, because they’re marketing this as “Pisa/Florence” on the press release. At first I thought this would be to feed an Alitalia hub, but that airline has a very small presence there and they only fly to Milan and Rome. This one just boggles the mind.

• New York/JFK – Bucharest starts June 5

I’ve heard Bucharest is going to be the next place to go in Europe, but it’s certainly not there yet. Again, this one seems really, really odd.

There are a couple other changes like double daily flights on New York/JFK – London/Gatwick, nonstop JFK – Shannon (instead of coupling it with Dublin), and a second daily New York/JFK – Sao Paulo during the next northern summer.

All the Europe flights will be on 767s while the Asia flights (including Dubai, I assume) will be on 777s. They only have 8 777s in the fleet right now, so I’m not sure where all this extra capacity is coming from.