The big day finally arrived. We took the little guy on his first airplane trip, and all went well, fortunately. Our chariot of choice was Delta, and for the most part, they did a very good job with a couple glaring exceptions (read on . . .). We paid $461.20 per person roundtrip to vacation with the inlaws, and that was a slight premium over what we could have paid. Paying this amount allowed us to upgrade to First Class for 12,500 miles each way, so we did it. We’re glad we did.

We had prepared well for the big day with a very different packing regimen. For the first time in years, we checked a bag (two on the return). That meant we brought only his necessities along with a computer or two in our carry-ons. Oh, and we brought the car seat and stroller to be checked at the gate. It worked out well.

To make things easier, I decided to try a service recommended to me by my friend Johnny Jet. We drove to LAX Parking Curb Express, and for $14.95 a day, they drove us from their facility to the terminal and dropped us off. It was well worth the price.

We went to the Sky Priority check in area since we were traveling in First Class and a friendly agent got our bags tagged and we were on our way. Security took forever with a baby. We had to pull him out of the stroller and my wife walked through the metal detector with him. The car seat went through the x-ray machine, but the stroller had to be hand-inspected. Then they tested the breast milk. It was pretty cumbersome, but we left plenty of time for that reason. (The TSA agents were far from friendly that day, so I’m glad we weren’t in a hurry.) Then we were off to the gate.

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April 21, 2012
Delta 2054 Lv Los Angeles 730a Arr Atlanta 240p
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 51B, Runway 25R, Depart 2m Early
Atlanta (ATL): Gate A19, Runway 9C, Arrive 3m Late
N143DA, Boeing 767-332, Standard Delta colors, 100% Full
Seat 2B
Flight Time 3h52m

We pre-boarded and my wife got settled while I dismantled the stroller and car seat to check at the gate. Once onboard, the flight attendants were fantastic. We were on a 767, so the First Class cabin was good-sized, but every flight attendant came over to say hello and offered to help if we needed it. Welcome drinks were offered as another flight attendant announced to the coach passengers that “now is the time during boarding that we like to call creative stuffing” – she encouraged people to find ways to get their bags in.

The little guy was dressed for the occasion, though he had the wrong airline in mind. (Thanks for a US Airways friend for that baby gift.) My wife tried to feed him as we climbed through the shallow marine layer, but he was out like a light before we left the gate. He apparently inherited that from her. He slept the first couple hours while we ate (I had the cereal while my wife had the omelette, which she really liked). We logged on to Gogo wifi and had a movie going in the seatback TV as well. Totally connected.

He woke up a couple hours in and we prepared for the worst. Fortunately, he was in a great mood. We went to change him in the empty area near door L1 (the flight attendants said that was our best bet since that plane had no changing table) and we ended up staying in the galley for about 10 minutes with the flight attendants because they were having fun with him. They even gave him his first wings. (Wing pins are back!) I asked the flight attendant if she could ask the captain for the aircraft registration since I couldn’t see it at LAX, and the first officer actually came out to give it to me. He asked what I did and we started talking a little. He’s one of those guys who thinks that he should have the same contract he had in 2000, but I wasn’t about to argue with him when he had an airplane to fly.

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April 21, 2012
Delta Connection 5106 Lv Atlanta 410p Arr Wilmington 533p (operated by ExpressJet)
Atlanta (ATL): Gate C55, Runway 9C, Depart 18m Late
Wilmington (ILM): Gate 5, Runway 17, Arrive 5m Late
N907EV, Bombardier CRJ-200, Standard Delta colors, ~90% Full
Seat 3C
Flight Time 49m

Our connection was looking a little tight until they switched the runways around and we unexpectedly landed early. We found an elevator to get us down to the train and made our way to the C gates. Our plane was all the way at the end, but that gave us a chance to stretch our legs (and change him in a restroom along the way). Our corner of the ATL wasn’t having much luck. First a Knoxville-bound flight went mechanical, then another flight was weight-restricted, and finally ours broke too. We were told that a tire needed to be changed, but upon further inspection, they changed their minds. Seriously. I asked after the flight and the first officer told me that they found out the foreign object wasn’t as deep as he first thought.

We boarded to find a CRJ in terrible condition. The bulkhead was threadbare. There were multiple holes in each seatback pocket. The lighting was dirty with stains. The safety placards were all worn down. Delta should have been embarrassed to have ExpressJet flying this airplane under the Delta name. It looks even worse in this photo because of the flash, but it was bad in any kind of lighting. (I tweeted it and Delta responded quickly. They informed maintenance that the airplane needed to be looked at.)

Fortunately, the airplane itself worked just fine. The little guy wasn’t nearly as thrilled with his coach ride on a CRJ. But he did hold his own for most of the flight. The flight attendant was great, introducing herself personally after we boarded in case we needed anything. She did a nice job with service on the sub-1 hour flight. We stayed just north of an imposing storm most of the way and somehow landed without even touching a cloud.

On the ground, it took them some time to get the door opened for us to walk out on the ramp, and the airplane was hot. The little guy had enough and started wailing. At least he made it that far. Everyone on the airplane was very friendly about it and tried to see if they could calm him from their seats. Soon enough, we were off the airplane and in the very tiny Wilmington terminal.

—

Our return started very early – at 1215a Pacific Time when we woke up to make the trek to the airport. It was supposed to be a beautiful sunny day, but apparently a surprise storm showed up and it was overcast with rain in the area. We were dropped in front of the sleepy, North Carolina-inspired terminal and went to check in. There was an earlier connecting flight in Atlanta and we hoped we could do same day confirmed for $50 to get on it. We went into the Sky Priority line and a woman at the counter shouted a question whether we had checked in at the kiosk. We told her no, because we wanted to see if we could make this change. She told us that we had to get in the other line to do that. I asked what the point of Sky Priority was, and she said something about how they don’t really do that. They just worked one line. Right.

Clearly this woman had no idea what to do because the other guy behind the counter told her to do it. She said she didn’t know how. He told her to call someone. She didn’t, and he finally dismissed her and said he’d just deal with it. So we had to wait for him to finish helping someone. Finally, he told us that it’s impossible to do same day confirmed unless we’re changing the first flight. I found out when I was in Atlanta that wasn’t true, but it meant we wasted about 20 minutes that we didn’t need to waste.

We went through security and it was an odd experience. They pulled me aside for a random check, which meant swabbing my shoes and that was it. No pat down, no bag search, nothing else. Then they made my wife hold the little guy for awhile because they wanted to swab the stroller but they didn’t have anyone to help right then. That was a lot of fun.

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April 25, 2012
Delta Connection 5305 Lv Wilmington 6a Arr Atlanta 727a (operated by ExpressJet)
Wilmington (ILM): Gate 5, Runway 24, Depart 3m Early
Atlanta (ATL): Gate D44, Runway 27C, Arrive 8m Early
N681BR, Bombardier CRJ-200, Standard Delta colors, ~90% Full
Seat 3D
Flight Time 1h8m

Having left plenty of time we made it into the gate area before boarding began and we were ready to go when it was time to pre-board. This ex-Atlantic Coast/Independence Air aircraft was built around the same time as the aircraft that brought us to Wilmington, but its interior was in MUCH better shape. We took our same seats as on the way out and soon we were on our way to Atlanta.

We were in the clouds and it was pretty bumpy for the first 20 minutes or so. Turbulence on those CRJs always feels worse, I guess. We finally got out of it and landed in a nice, clear Atlanta day. Since we had checked bags, there was no way to change to an earlier connection even if we could have, so we had a couple hours to kill. We wandered around, my wife got coffee, and I stared at airplanes.

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April 25, 2012
Delta 1655 Lv Atlanta 940a Arr Los Angeles 1151a
Atlanta (ATL): Gate A18, Runway 26L, Depart 2m Early
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 58A, Runway 25L, Arrive 15m Late
N126DL, Boeing 767-332, Standard Delta colors, ~90% Full
Seat 2A
Flight Time 4h16m

We pre-boarded once again, and I was definitely used to the stroller/car seat routine. The first officer was coming up from his walkaround and he stopped to say hi to the little guy. I asked how the ride was looking, and he said it was bumpy on the way in from Jacksonville and “it’s always bumpy over the Rockies.” Ok. (We never even got near the Rockies, passing over El Paso.) This wasn’t the last oddity to come from the cockpit.

On the airplane, the flight attendants were once again very friendly and eager to visit with the baby. He, however, was exhausted and after fussing a little at the gate, conked out for a couple hours. Despite their best efforts, the flight attendants couldn’t get the inflight entertainment system working, so it was all up to Gogo to carry the load (and it carried it well).

We took off to the west and that’s when the seatbelt follies began. First, the captain came on and told us that it was going to be bumpy so he was going to turn the sign on. But he had never turned it off, so he actually flipped it off when he meant to turn it on. I mentioned it to the flight attendant but the captain didn’t fix it. Later, he did the reverse, eventually correcting it when the flight attendant told him that time. There could have been a serious liability issue if we hit severe turbulence and the sign was mistakenly off.

But we didn’t hit anything severe, though there was light chop much of the way. I held the little guy for a lot of the flight, and I didn’t end up eating. My wife had a different kind of omelette than on the way out that she really liked. The little guy decided to wake up and scream briefly, and we got nervous that we were bugging those around us. We went up front and changed him, and soon he was back asleep again. Whew.

We sat in the clouds of a late season storm for much of the last hour or so, but we landed very early. Ah, the curse of landing early. We slowly taxied out to the very end of a taxiway and sat there. The captain came on to tell us that an airplane was in our gate and it would be about 10 minutes. About 15 minutes later, he came on and said that the airplane was just doing some last minute catering and then we’d be there in 5 minutes. We started moving, but we stopped again. Meanwhile, we had a diaper breach and had to change him. But we couldn’t get upon an active taxiway, so we had to do in the seat.

Finally, more than 45 minutes after we landed, we were at the gate. The captain’s inaccurate and sporadic updates were frustrating.

Once we pulled in, our stroller car seat came back up, but the stroller was damaged. A mud flap was gone and the foam handle was broken. We were told to file a report, so we did. When we finished up, I had called LAX Parking Curb Express to come pick us up. They showed up quickly, we checked out the car, and we were on our way. They send another car to pick up the driver so we didn’t have to take him back.

Overall, it was a very successful first trip with the baby. The flight attendants absolutely stood out on all these flights for doing some great work.

As always, this year’s Phoenix Aviation Symposium was packed with great, thought-provoking discussion. A few of us were constantly posting updates on Twitter under the #PHX2012 hashtag. I’d suggest taking a look if you’re interested. But there were small nuggets that came out throughout the conference that I thought deserved a deeper look. First up is the issue of joint ventures and whether they might actually mean trouble for airline alliances.

Andrew Watterson, Vice President, Planning & Revenue Management for Hawaiian Airlines made a comment during the strategy panel that caught my attention. He explained that while Hawaiian is “outside an alliance, we sense the friction between joint venture partners and non-joint venture partners. I can’t imagine what that’s like inside the alliance.” In the end, he suggested that with airlines like JetBlue and Hawaiian (you could throw Alaska in there as well, domestically) offering partnering opportunities without an alliance, some members might start to think twice.

What’s the Difference Between an Alliance and a Joint Venture?
But first, we should back up. Let me explain the difference. Most of us know what airline alliances are. The big three are United-led Star Alliance, American-led oneworld, and Delta-led SkyTeam. These alliances are really focused on providing reciprocal benefits to members of each frequent flier program of the member airlines. You can earn miles (even elite qualifying miles) on all member airlines, and if you’re an elite member, you will get reciprocal benefits like priority boarding, lounge access, etc. There is limited cross-upgrading opportunity between some members but that benefit isn’t a very strong one at this point.

These alliances, are full of independent airlines that still compete with each other, even though they may be partners. When US Airways flies from Philly to Chicago, it is going head to head with United in that market, for example. United and US Airways do codeshare, and that allows them to expand their reach, but it’s not a requirement to codeshare to be an alliance member. In other words, it’s a fairly loose commercial cooperation at its core.

A joint venture, however, is a different story. The idea there is that two or more airlines agree to put all revenues into a big pot for travel in a geographic area. The money is then divided up between the airlines depending upon how much they fly. A good example of a powerful one today is the Atlantic Plus Plus venture led by United and Lufthansa. This also includes Lufthansa-owned Austrian, bmi, and Swiss as well as Air Canada.

The idea is simple. Since governments like that of the US have not been willing to allow mergers across borders, a joint venture is as close as airlines can get to merging under the law. Today, if you fly on a Lufthansa airplane or a United airplane, United shouldn’t care. It works with Lufthansa to coordinate schedules and pricing, and it splits the revenue up. (It’s not as simple of a split in actual terms, because there are adjustments depending upon a variety of factors but let’s not make this too complex.)

Now think about an airline like US Airways. US Airways is a member of Star Alliance, but it is not a member of the joint venture. While US Airways can connect people from all over the US to Europe, Lufthansa now has less incentive to put people on US Airways. Why not connect passengers within the US on United instead where it stands to gain? Lufthansa can keep more of the revenue that way, in all likelihood. It can also work with United to study traffic flows and arrange top connections to be as convenient as possible from a scheduling perspective. US Airways theoretically loses out.

I say theoretically, because in reality US Airways is doing just fine. In fact, I asked President Scott Kirby about this at media day last week. He responded that they are happy to consider joining the joint venture, but their transatlantic flying is doing so well that they would end up having to pay more out because of that. That’s not ideal, but if it starts seeing less benefit from the alliance, you would think it might have second thoughts. Certainly it might think twice about joining today if it weren’t already a member.

Getting Back to the Point . . .
But let’s get back to Hawaiian’s point. There is a feeling of haves and have nots. While US Airways is an incredibly rational airline that looks at numbers above all, not all alliance members will feel that way. There is bound to be a tension that grows when those airlines that feel left out think they deserve to be a part of the “in crowd.”

In the past, even those emotions were too hard to act on since the revenue from cooperation was so good. But if there is an alternative, then does that sway things? The airlines that use this, as JetBlue calls it, “open architecture” which allows for partnerships with any interested airline, have been growing quickly. They provide more schedule options and feed opportunities each day. So at some point, do airlines get fed up with alliances and start going it alone?

It’s incredibly rare for an airline to leave an alliance unless it goes under, but it has been done. Aer Lingus was a member of oneworld but is now independent. It has been aligning itself more closely with JetBlue to the point where there has been discussion about JetBlue buying a stake. There was a discussion last year about Aer Lingus rejoining an alliance, but the costs to join are steep and Aer Lingus didn’t think it could get enough benefit. With more successful niche airlines looking to go it alone, the temptation to stay out of an alliance may very well become a desirable option, especially as core members get closer and closer via joint ventures.

From the title, you might think that last week’s media day that US Airways held in Phoenix was a total bust, but that’s not true. It WAS boring, but that’s because US Airways is running a good airline these days. There were a couple of announcements about expanding wifi and new Washington service, but for the most part, it was another chance for US Airways to tell its always-consistent story. For those of us who go to US Airways media day every year, it was another affirmation of a strategy that has served the airline well. Boring? Yes, in a sense. But it was refreshingly boring.

Consolidation
CEO Doug Parker and the team weren’t stupid. They knew that many of the questions of the day would revolve around consolidation and whether a US Airways-American merger was in the cards. Of course, there was no way that Doug could comment on anything like that despite repeated questions asking the same exact thing. Doug did address it right at the beginning, however. Doug reiterated his belief that consolidation has been very good for the industry, and he is not averse to participating. He was, however, quick to make the distinction that consolidation is now “no longer a strategic imperative.”

In other words, while the industry needed consolidation to get healthy in the past, there has been tremendous benefit from what’s happened to date and US Airways doesn’t need to participate to remain viable. That being said, US Airways isn’t shying away from it. You know that it was difficult for Doug to say “no comment” every time someone mentioned a certain AAirline, because he would have loved to talk about it. But he just couldn’t. We’ll have to wait to see how that plays out.

Five Goals
Back to running the airline at hand, we were given five goals for the year, and as it was noted, they haven’t changed must from past goals. Consistency was certainly the theme of the day. The goals were:

1. Ops: Industry leader in operating reliability
2. Revenue: Maximize value of existing assets
3. Costs: Maintain strategic cost advantage
4. People: Actively engage employees
5. Long-term strategy: Control our destiny through sustained profitability better than our peers

In short, US Airways needs to continue to run a great operation and keep its costs lower than other legacy carriers because its network will continue to produce less revenue than the other guys. To do that, it needs to make sure to keep explaining this strategy over and over to employees so that everyone understands the situation at hand.

Fuel
Much of the discussion of the day touched on the cost of fuel. The point was made that in 2008, US Airways actually paid a little less for fuel than it did in 2011 ($3.11 per gallon vs $3.09). In 2008, however, the airline lost over $800 million while in 2011 it made over $100 million. The difference? The airline could pass along over 85 percent of the increase in 2011 while 2008 saw demand crash so quickly that it was a bloodbath. Some of that new revenue is from fare increases, but ancillary revenue plays a big part as well. In fact, nobody seemed to think that the industry would exist today in its current form if it weren’t for ancillary revenue, of which US Airways brought in $537 million in 2011. Oh, and let’s not forget the benefit that comes from the industry collectively keeping capacity under control.

Operations
The operations discussion was an easy one. On time percentage is way up, baggage mishandling is way down, and complaints are way down as well when looking back toward the dark days of 2007. This year, thanks to benign winter weather, things have been going even better. On January 31, US Airways hit an all time record for the airline with 96.1 percent of flights arriving on time. The airline also has already had more days without a cancellation in 2012 than in any previous FULL year.

Irregular Operations Recovery
While the mantra used to be about reliability, convenience, and appearance, the latter has now been switched out to “recovery.” The airplane interiors are in much better shape these days and a lot of work is underway to create more opportunities to fix problems when things go wrong. One tool that we were shown was Sensis Aerobahn, which is a real-time ground radar program that shows where all airplanes are while on the ground at an airport. It will help identify short connecting opportunities where there is risk of misses, and it will allow the airline to more easily switch gates around to help make connections. This is being rolled out to all the hubs.

 

Capacity and More DC Flying
This year effectively marks the end of the US Airways transition to focus its flying on its Phoenix, Charlotte, and Philly hubs along with its Washington/National focus city. In 2006, only 83 percent of flying touched these cities, but with the completion of the LaGuardia slot swap with Delta that gave US Airways more slots in Washington, it’s now up to 99 percent. All non-hub flying from Vegas is gone. Same goes for LaGuardia except for the Shuttle to Boston along with Pittsburgh flights. Nearly all Pittsburgh and Boston flying is gone with the exception of a few random markets like Boston to Buffalo and Pittsburgh to St Louis. In its hubs, US Airways is the number 1 airline, so it’s playing to its strengths. The comparison to American’s weaker position at three of its five hubs was not lost on anyone.

As part of this discussion, US Airways announced what it would do with the remainder of its Washington/National slots that it acquired from Delta. It will begin flying to Augusta (GA), Minneapolis, Northwest Arkansas (Wal-Mart), Montreal, Quebec, and Toronto. In addition, it will use its newly-earned long haul flight exemption to start a San Diego flight. This comes at the expense of a DFW flight. Interestingly, San Diego will be operated with an A320 – I really didn’t think that airplane could make it that far off National’s short runway, but apparently, it can.

The Fleet
US Airways has effectively committed to no fleet growth in the near future. It will take delivery of 12 new Airbus narrowbody airplanes this year, but those will all be replacements for old 737s. The 737-300s will be gone by the end of this year with the 737-400s being gone a year or so after. Meanwhile, fleet refurbishment is going well. All the big regional jets now have First Class seating onboard, and the A330-300 Envoy (business) Class upgrade to the flat bed will be completed by the summer.

 

Employees
There actually was a really interesting discussion about everything US Airways does to communicate with employees. There are a surprising number of tools in the arsenal. Some are publicly available, like an employee Twitter feed. Others, like webcast employee group discussions, are not. But it’s safe to say that US Airways does invest a lot of time into trying to communicate. (I’d be curious to know how current employees feel about its adequacy.)

 

While I was live-tweeting the event, the one tweet that got the most action was one talking about one of the employee-support programs that the airline offers. For every 50 hours an employee donates to charity, US Airways will donate $500 in travel to that group. I like it. There are a myriad of other incentive and award programs that the airline puts out for employees to be able to benefit personally as well.

PreferredAccess
US Airways has now started to sell premium services as an ancillary revenue benefit. So you can buy PreferredAccess for your flight, and that includes premium check in, security lines, and boarding.

Wifi
US Airways also announced that it will expand wifi from just being on A321 aircraft to being on the entire Airbus narrowbody fleet. In addition, it will put it on the Embraer 170/175/190 fleets as well. The 737s won’t get it, but they’ll be gone soon enough. More interestingly, the only other large regional jet in the fleet, the CRJ-900s operated by Mesa, won’t be getting it either. I asked why that was the case, especially since those just got First Class along with the others, and the official line was that it’s easier to pick one new fleet type at a time. So we might see it later. But I will note that the contract for those Mesa jets comes up in just a couple years. Maybe there’s not enough certainty about whether they’ll be kept around or not.

As part of this, US Airways will also add GogoVision, the onboard offering that allows you to watch movies directly on your device. This, along with a better antenna, will be added to the fleet. Completion is expected by the middle of next year. Unfortunately, during that time there will be no indication of whether or not your flight has wifi so it will be a crapshoot until the fleet is done.

Like I said, not a ton of news, but just more of US Airways doing what it does best these days – run a good, profitable airline. With any luck, next year’s media day will be much more exciting. Maybe it’ll be in Ft Worth . . .

Today is Valentine’s Day, so how about a little LUV story? One of the things about Southwest’s takeover of AirTran that I like the most is the transition plan. The way it’s being done is incredibly customer-friendly, and it’s likely to have a very minor impact on travelers, unlike what happens in most mergers. That is probably because the Southwest/AirTran merger is completely unique in how it’s proceeding. In other words, no other mergers could use this plan.

What’s so unique about this merger is that AirTran truly is disappearing. This isn’t a “merger of equals” or anything else like we’ve seen in other big mergers. This is Southwest taking AirTran and turning its assets into Southwest. Because of that, the transition can occur much more easily. Effectively, this is how it will work.

Southwest has already started slowly canceling AirTran flights and re-creating them as Southwest flights. For example, today, AirTran operates three flights between LA and Atlanta while Southwest has none. Flash forward to a Tuesday in September and there are now three daily flights on Southwest as well as one single redeye on AirTran. So Southwest replaces the AirTran flights and has the ability to grow a little as well.

If you fly on an AirTran flight, you’ll get the AirTran onboard product. There will be business class, assigned seats, bag fees, etc. If you fly on a Southwest flight, you get the Southwest product with open seating, all coach, and no bag fees. Over time, all the AirTran flights will disappear and the Southwest flights will be the only ones to remain.

It seems so simple, and really, it is. Southwest has dramatically reduced the number of AirTran flights starting this summer (from 680 daily departures on a Friday all the way down to 568). This will allow the airline to start pulling out airplanes from the AirTran fleet to send them through the car wash where they’ll come out looking exactly like Southwest airplanes inside and out. At the same time, crews will begin coming over from AirTran to Southwest. They’ll get training and will be assimilated into the Southwest operation.

If you’re a cook, it’s like slowly adding an ingredient and mixing as you go instead of just dumping everything in at once. It just makes a lot of sense to do it that.

So why can Southwest do this so effortlessly and the others can’t? Because the other mergers are completely different animals. Whether it was America West/US Airways, Delta/Northwest, or Continental/United, these were all true mergers in the sense that they took bits and pieces from each other to create the new combined airline. Think about the harmonization of the frequent flier program as just one piece of the pie. There isn’t one airline that stays the same in these mergers, but there is in the Southwest/AirTran merger. AirTran is effectively disappearing and will leave barely a trace, and that allows Southwest to gradually phase it out without making any big changes to the surviving operation along the way.

I’m not exaggerating when I say tat AirTran is disappearing. According to Southwest spokesperson Chris Mainz, “we haven’t announced or decided on anything concrete that we plan to pull over from AirTran and incorporate into Southwest.” There will be some things behind the scenes that need to come over. For example, Southwest isn’t capable of flying internationally but AirTran can. That not a customer-facing issue, but it is something Southwest will need to incorporate behind the scenes to allow it to fly internationally. That’s why I imagine that toward the very the end, AirTran will just be a collection of international flights and redeyes, the two things that Southwest doesn’t do today. (Southwest has said that some limited redeyes are likely to come over.)

In the meantime, Southwest and AirTran continue to operate separately with Southwest getting bigger and AirTran getting smaller. There are efforts to connect the two systems with codesharing, but Southwest’s technology team is the hold-up. It can’t codeshare yet, despite years of trying. The plan is to have that up and running sometime in the near future, and that will make it easier to transition AirTran out slowly without completely killing the feed in the Atlanta hub.

Meanwhile, Southwest is doing what it can to relocate AirTran flights to be near Southwest in airports around the US so they can operate together, even as they continue to operate as two separate airlines.

[Original Southwest photo via Flickr user fdenardo1/Original AirTran photo via Flickr user PhillipC/Original Car Wash photo via Flickr user Ralph Hockens/All via CC 2.0]

While last year saw very little in the way of big airlines failing, this year is already off to a quick start with both Spanair and Malev abruptly halting flights. Malev is a particularly interesting case study, because it showcases why flag carriers simply aren’t necessary for many countries anymore. There’s always someone else to step in.

Malev was born out of World War II, becoming the flag carrier for Hungary in 1946. Though at various points in its history it had designs on longer haul flying, it learned its role in the last decade as nothing more than a regional player. In the end, Malev flew mostly 737s only within Europe along with a couple of near Middle East destinations. It successfully brought people to and from Hungary, and it was well-positioned to carry some connecting traffic through Budapest, but it usually did so at a discount.

As part of oneworld, Malev was able to find a niche as a regional feeder. American had a flight from New York that fed Malev. (That flight was abruptly discontinued as soon as Malev failed.) It could also feed people to BA in London, Iberia in Madrid, and Royal Jordanian in Amman. This strategy sounded promising, but it just didn’t create a profitable business. After a couple of stints with privatization, Hungary nationalized the airline once again in 2010. The courts recently ruled that Malev had to repay illegal subsidies that it had received, and that was the end of the airline.

So Malev is gone, but does anyone care? Sure, the sentimentalists who remember the once proud airline and its long history will lament the death, but travelers? Not so much. Those in Budapest can continue to fly oneworld, but they won’t be able to fly Malev. They’ll need to connect through London or Madrid and they can then get just about anywhere they need. If they want to go east, Qatar and Turkish can take people just about anywhere. I’m guessing Etihad and Emirates will get there eventually. But that doesn’t help for short haul travel, so what about that?

Ryanair was quick to announce a massive new operation which, though not yet agreed upon by the airport operator, is already selling on the website. The new base will have more than 30 routes. Meanwhile, local low cost airline Wizz Air has stepped up its game as well with 10 new routes being added right away.

In other words, shortly after Malev disappeared, all the routes with significant demand were served again. Now, is there someone who wants a full service airline to take him to, say, Rome? Probably, but is there enough demand to profitably fill an airplane? Apparently not, since even Alitalia doesn’t serve that route.

In other words, Malev had a lot of capacity in the market that didn’t need to be there, but as the flag carrier, it felt compelled to have out there. There just isn’t a need for that anymore. If a route is good, someone will serve it. If it’s not, only a flag carrier would serve it because someone decided it had to for political or national pride reasons.

Does this mean all flag carriers should disappear? No. But it means that we don’t need them either. The bigger the flag carrier, the harder it would be to replace all that capacity in such a short time, but it would get replaced eventually. That goes for a big airline like, say, American, too. That’s why I’m not a fan of the bankruptcy process in the US. Airlines should be allowed to fail and then others can step in to fill the void. But that’s another story.

What’s the point to this whole post? While it’s sad to see an airline with a rich history like Malev disappear, it’s probably better for the industry. When the weaker airlines disappear, healthier ones step in to fill the void, and most travelers end up better off.