• Southwest Airlines and AirTran are (finally) linking systems, which will allow for passengers to book a single itinerary with segments on both carriers. To avoid baggage fees when flying exclusively on AirTran, book on Southwest.com.
• The latest domestic airfare initiated by Delta has failed due to lack of participation. It was the third attempt this year by an airline to raise airfares. Rick Seaney of FareCompare.com said, “Given the weak economic numbers, it is likely that airlines are concerned that overcooking airline ticket prices right now could stunt demand.”
• Passengers on the Carnival Triumph were finally able to disembark last night in Mobile, Alabama. Most were either bussed or flown to New Orleans and Galveston, where the cruise originally departed last Thursday. Each passenger will reportedly get $500 in cash, among other compensation.
• Ever leave loose change in the bins after going through airport security? The TSA reported travelers left more than $500,000 in change at checkpoints last year, up about $45,000 from the previous year. And the TSA gets to “keep the change.”
• And finally, in rather odd news, a study was conducted showing that it’s actually beneficial to… uh… pass gas onboard a flight. I know, not “notable” at all, but it caught me off guard that a study actually took place. Here’s my favorite line from the article: ” ‘If the pilot restrains a fart, all the drawbacks previously mentioned, including diminished concentration, may affect his abilities to control the airplane,’ the researchers say.” Is there a Federal Aviation Regulation for that?

Related posts:

Notable Airline, Hotel and Travel News: February 14, 2013

Notable Airline, Hotel and Travel News: February 12, 2013

Notable Airline, Hotel and Travel News: February 11, 2013

In other airline, hotel and travel industry news last week…

• United Airlines shifted its Washington Dulles to Buenos Aires flight over to Newark on Friday. They didn’t totally Continental it up, though, as they’re using a legacy United 3-cabin 767 on the route. The airline is also ending service to Accra and Copenhagen later this year, according to Airline Route. Washington Dulles to Accra ends July 3 and Newark to Copenhagen terminates on September 26.
• US Airways has completed conversion of 14 of its 16 Airbus A330 aircraft with the new Envoy Class and is expected to get the remaining two birds completed by the end of summer. The seats are actually pretty darn nice looking and setup in a reverse herringbone 1 x 2 x 1 configuration. The airline was also awarded the “2012 MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) of the Year” award last week by Aviation Week and Overhaul & Maintenance magazine.
• Virgin America officially launched service to Philadelphia last Wednesday from Los Angeles and will begin San Francisco-Philly service tomorrow. Sir Richard Branson greeted the first arrival at PHL and hosted a “tailgate on the tarmac” party with a bunch of invited guests. Later that night, the official launch party was held at Hotel Palomar downtown and based on some Twitter reports, it sounded like a fantastic time.
• Allegiant Air began charging passengers with new reservations from last Wednesday for large carry-ons, joining Spirit Airlines in charging for the privilege to use the overhead bins. One bag is still free, but it must fit underneath the seat. You can get a discount on the $35 fee if you book the space in advance online.
• Southwest Airlines shifted some the flying it took over from AirTran in Atlanta back to the carrier, including flights to Los Angeles, Chicago Midway, Phoenix, Denver and Las Vegas. A combination of IT issues and route optimization appear to be the reason. A Southwest spokesman said, “In some cases, until we get to a point a little bit further down the road, it makes sense to transfer some of that flying from Southwest to AirTran.”
• Starwood Hotels will open a dual-branded ski resort complex in China later this year. Both a 257-room Westin and 296-room Sheraton are opening in August next to the slopes of the Changbai Mountains.
• My “air traveling idiot of the week” award goes to a man who tried to smuggle a knife through security in a jar of mayonnaise. What? Yes, that’s correct. He was flying from New York’s Kennedy airport to Mexico City when the banned items were found and confiscated during routine screening. Amazingly, he was still allowed to catch his flight.

Finally, here are some other noteworthy items from last week:

• A TSA screener throws coffee on a pilot at JFK.
• A Delta Air Lines flight attendant was removed from a flight for irregular behavior.
• Alaska Airlines will begin testing a nextgen ATC system at SEA in June.
• Qantas’ stranded A380 in Singapore will return to service in May.

In other airline, hotel and travel industry news last week…

• Southwest Airlines acquired AirTran in May last year and received a single operating certificate from the FAA last month, but each carrier remains an independent operation for the time being meaning AirTran’s baggage and other fees will remain intact. Unlike the relatively faster integration between Delta & Northwest and United & Continental, Southwest says it will take, “several years to fully transition AirTran into Southwest Airlines to become one airline.” The fees will continue through at least the end of 2013 and possibly into 2014.
• US Airways is expanding its Gogo Wi-Fi service across their entire Airbus fleet and Embraer 190 aircraft, eventually bringing onboard internet capabilities to 90 percent of its domestic mainline fleet. Regional carrier Republic Airlines will also add the service to its Express Embrarer 170 and 175 aircraft. Gogo Vision will be included where passengers have the option to download movies, TV shows and other content directly to their Wi-Fi enabled devices.
• Lufthansa announced their new Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental aircraft will be deployed on the Frankfurt to Washington Dulles route shortly after deliveries begin April 23. It will replace the existing 747-400 flights, LH 418 and LH 419. All of Lufthansa’s 747-8 aircraft will feature the new business and first class product, as well as 787-style overhead bins and LED lighting. I look forward to burning some miles to fly this bird in a premium cabin later this year.
• Japan Airlines took delivery of its first two Boeing 787-8s this past week making it the second airline to receive the long-delayed Dreamliner. The airline is expected to begin 787 flights to Boston this month and to San Diego later this year. I may have to start building up my American AAdvantage miles for a future redemption.
• Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel predicts Chicago O’Hare’s newest runway will be built and in use by 2015. The city will rely on financial help from both American and United to get it built and predicts once in use, it will reduce delays by 80 percent and allow for 300,000 more passengers annually.
• My “air traveling idiot of the week” award goes to a woman onboard US Airways flight 1697 from Charlotte to Fort Myers who, in an allegedly intoxicated state, kicked, scratched and spit on flight attendants, even knocking one to the ground. Unlike other recent incidents, the flight didn’t divert and continued to Fort Myers after she was restrained with the help of an off-duty sheriff’s deputy.

Finally, here are some other noteworthy items deserving of a click-through:

• A revealing Q&A with American Airlines CEO Thomas Horton.
• Alaska Airlines dedicates it’s new Terminal 6 location at LAX.
• New York-area airports may fine and prosecute disruptive passengers.
• Airlines for America ends its lawsuit over the EU ETS “tax” scheme.
• New Marriott properties will pop up in 2014 at L.A. Live in Los Angeles.

In other airline, hotel and travel industry news this week…

• Southwest Airlines will be adding an extra row of seats on their entire fleet of 737s with the introduction of new seat cushions and seatback pocket materials. The carrier claims the new seats are more comfortable than what’s currently flying, though seat pitch will suffer an inch going from 32” to 31” to accommodate the extra row. Separately, the carrier announced it will drop service to several AirTran cities, including Allentown, Harrisburg, Lexington, Sarasota, Huntsville and White Plains.
• A woman was arrested this week after bringing a gun with her through security and onboard an American Airlines flight at DFW. What’s just amazing, though, is that TSA agents detected the gun in a scan, but the woman was able to get her bag from the conveyor belt and proceed into the terminal without being stopped. This is a clear failure of the TSA, actually, as that bag never should have proceeded to a point where she could pick it up off the belt. Oh vey!
• Hawaiian Airlines is increasing flights in Hawaii to 180 daily, up from 157 and will further expand service in Maui so it can serve as a hub for interisland flights and those to the mainland. I was surprised to read they didn’t already have nonstops between Maui and Kauai, but that route, along with flights to Hilo and Kona on the Big Island will begin on March 11. Also, during the peak summer months, Hawaiian will operate a daily nonstop from Maui to Los Angeles using a Boeing 767.
• Airbus raised the price of its A320neos by 6.1% and other aircraft by 3.9% at the beginning of the year. The company’s COO-Customers said the price increase “reflects the strong demand for our modern, eco-efficient aircraft families.” He further mentioned the A320neo offers a 15% fuel cost savings for airlines. In terms of revenue, Airbus has a 54% share of the global market to Boeing’s 46%.
• Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) advised the least expensive airfares processed by the clearinghouse in 2011 were bought six weeks in advance of flight time. Those fares were on average 5.8% lower than the overall average fare of $358.30. They warned that they’re not advising people to exclusively purchase tickets at that time because it’s not guaranteed that’s when the best deals are out there. Separately, ARC mentioned mega corporate travel agency air transactions (AMEX Travel, Carlson Wagonlit, etc.) dropped 4.6% in December, the biggest decline seen in 2011.
• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) ordered the reinstatement of a pilot who was fired from AirTran for his frequency in reporting mechanical problems. The pilot was terminated in 2007 and the carrier must now pay him more than $1 million in back wages, interest and compensatory damages. AirTran had no comment.
• Finally, President Obama signed an executive order to ease travel requirements for foreigners wanting to travel to the United States. This will entail expanding reciprocal trusted-traveler programs, adding countries to the Visa Waiver Program, streamlining visa processing, and other U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board changes. The U.S. State Department issued 17% more visas in 2011 than 2010.

In other airline industry news this week…

• Air New Zealand was named Airline of the Year by Air Transport World Magazine as part of its 38^th Airline Industry Achievement Awards. ATW bestowed the honor to NZ due to “industry-leading innovation and motivation of its staff which resulted in exceptional performance across market position, customer service, financial performance, fiscal management and operational safety.” The only U.S. carrier to receive an award was Alaska Airlines – the Joseph S. Murphy Industry Service Award – for service benefitting the airline industry and being involved in numerous environmental and corporate-giving initiatives.
• United Airlines, read Continental Airlines, received a lot of heat this week for their numerous amount of flights from Europe to the East coast that have recently required fuel stops due to unusually strong headwinds. The Wall Street Journal reports that United confirmed 43 flights operated with Boeing 757 aircraft had to stop for fuel last month due to the winds and limited range of the aircraft, up sharply from 12 the year earlier. That caused delays and misconnections for thousands of passengers and brought using the limited range jet into question. To the airline’s credit, though, the headwinds are the most extreme they’ve seen in the past 10 years.
• American Airlines will cut their Chicago-New Delhi nonstop March 1^st and totally withdraw from Burbank effective February 9^th, as well as lay off 150 employees citing “operational and business changes” resulting from its bankruptcy filing. The carrier is also hoping to delay their lawsuit against Sabre, a GDS, by three months while it focuses on reorganization. The still separate regional entity American Eagle, meanwhile, has hired Bain & Co. – to the tune of $525,000 per month – to assist in labor-cost assessment and negotiations.
• Tony Webber, a former Qantas executive, has boldly come out and proclaimed, “People weighing more than average should pay more for their airfares than slimmer passengers.” Ouch. He claims the extra fuel needed comes out to about $472 per plane and is affecting the airlines’ profits. As it stands, the airlines have an average weight they predict per passenger and while I don’t remember the figure from my days in Flight Dispatch with United Airlines, I do recall it being awfully low. Instead of an airfare increase, airlines need to up their average passenger weights and adjust their loads accordingly. Would you step on a scale at an airport?
• Horrible airplane etiquette continues in 2012 with a 65-year old man having been arrested for allegedly assaulting a Delta Air Lines flight attendant on a Tokyo to Honolulu flight. He was forced to surrender his passport and stay on Oahu to appear at a hearing on January 20^th. His bad behavior was apparently due to over imbibing on multiple glasses of wine.
• Southwest Airlines will launch a daily flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles beginning June 10^th. This is in addition to AirTran’s existing three daily flights already in the market. Southwest officially launches service February 12^th with 15 daily nonstops to five cities: Baltimore, Chicago (MDW), Denver, Houston (HOU) and Austin. Las Vegas and Phoenix service from Atlanta commences March 10^th.
• Finally, Hawaiian Airlines set a new company record for the most passengers carried in a single year – 8,666,319 in 2011 – a 17% increase from 2010. I imagine 2012 will be another record year as the airline continues to expand on the mainland with new service to JFK beginning in June.

In other airline industry news this week…

• As I expected and not at all surprising, American, Delta, United and US Airways have added a $6 roundtrip surcharge for flights to Europe to offset the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme. United’s 767-300s that fly to Europe hold a total of 183 passengers. If it goes out full in both directions, United will collect $1,098 in surcharge fees. I haven’t looked into what type of fees airlines will pay if they go over their allocated carbon emissions, but I can’t help but wonder if this might be a new mini-profit center for them.
• In fantastically pleasurable news to myself – and many, many others – United Airlines has officially confirmed that “Rhapsody in Blue” will continue as their theme song. Phew. The tulip has wilted, but I’m happy to cling onto at least one aspect of “my” carrier that I’ve grown to love.
• Staying with United for a moment, the carrier opened up exclusive experiences via MileagePlus that allow members to bid on a variety of auctions. I blogged back in April that I’d like the option to redeem miles on once-in-a-lifetime type events and United now offers some of them, including flight simulator rides, tickets to PGA Tour events and a host of other items.
• American Airlines was officially delisted from the New York Stock Exchange this week for failing to hold a minimum share price of more than $1 for a consecutive 30 days. I remember when United suffered the same fate, but they’ve bounced back and I’m certain American will, too. Sadly, current shareholders will likely see their stake in the airline wiped out while the carrier reorganizes in bankruptcy.
• AirTran Airways was fined $60,000 for failing to include a “prominent link” in an advertisement last fall that would take a customer to a page fully detailing additional taxes and fees. These type of fines will certainly be less frequent come January 26^th when airlines will be required to advertise prices inclusive of such fees. I look forward to it, actually, as the prices we see will be all-in and represent the actual amount we have to pay.
• With their reduction of international services, about 150 Qantas pilots have taken unpaid leave. The carrier has offered the option since the 2008 financial crisis and many pilots end up accepting jobs with overseas airlines. This is total conjecture, but one of my Cathay Pacific pilots on my trip last year had an Australian accent, so now can’t help but think he might be a Qantas pilot on leave.
• Brussels Airlines, a Star Alliance member, is set to begin service to the United States on June 1, 2012. Daily flights between Brussels and New York’s JFK airport will commence at that time with two-cabin Airbus A330 aircraft, either the -200 or -300 series, according to the carrier.
• Finally, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported this week that the world’s airlines netted $5 billion in profits for the third quarter of 2011, down from $9.71 billion for the same period in 2010. IATA also said passenger yields continue to increase due in part to “careful capacity management, particularly in the United States.”

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is about to begin a major realignment that will purportedly cost the airport and airlines upwards of $100 million during the next two-years. It will basically uproot and relocate every carrier’s current terminal lobby locations and gate areas.

The dynamic nature of the airline industry, with new entrants, consolidations and defunct carriers, along with the rise and fall of demand among those carriers that service SEA has necessitated this rather significant project. Twenty years ago United Airlines was the dominant carrier at the airport, but due to their reduction of service and the expansion by Alaska Airlines, its subsidiaries and contract carriers, Alaska now carries 51 percent of the market share.

Image courtesy: Port of Seattle/Sea-Tac Airport

As such, United no longer needs its exclusive presence of the North Satellite terminal and now many Alaska flights lease United’s unwanted N-gates. Alaska also currently operates gates in the C and D concourses. Their desire is to move nearly their entire operation to the more spacious North Terminal while retaining needed space on the C concourse.

As United merges with Continental Airlines, the combined carrier will move to the A concourse as Continental vacates its current location on the B concourse. Also, the AirTran and Southwest Airlines merger will see them relocate from the A concourse to saddle up next to Southwest’s current location on the B concourse.

It’s a dizzying array of shifting around and will obviously have to be well choreographed. Here are the tentative plans:

• AirTran’s move from A to B has already been completed, and they’ve co-located with Southwest already in the ticketing lobby.
• Mid-2013: American Airlines and JetBlue will move from A to D and Frontier will move from A to B.
• Late-2013: Both Hawaiian and Virgin America move from A to B, opening up the A concourse for the big move of United-Continental.
• Once United has fully vacated the North Satellite, Alaska is planning to remodel the space along with the portion they’re keeping on the A concourse.

For international flights operating out of SEA, the South Satellite is nearly to capacity and the airport’s director of operations, Mike Ehl, said “the airport can handle perhaps two more foreign flights at the South Satellite before it has to consider changing the international operations.”

The article I sourced this material from linked above and again here then brought to light the efficiencies of common-use ticketing areas and gates. In September I listened in to a webinar hosted by Air Transport World discussing the significant advantages of having such a layout, possibly even airport-wide. Santa Ana Airport (SNA) aka John Wayne Orange County Airport has implemented a nearly perfect version of this “Airport of the Future.”

Image couresy ATW & IATA

Basically, as our mobile technology and that at the airlines and airports advance, the check-in experience at any airport could eventually turn the question of “Where’s my airline check-in terminal or desk?” to “Where is the nearest kiosk?” Common-use kiosks are already found at many airports allowing check-in with a variety of airlines and more and more gate areas can be used by a variety of airlines. The future will also bring the wide-scale ability to self-bag-tag our bags and drop them off at designated locations. Roaming airline-specific agents would still of course be necessary, but I know as our technology improves, the constraints airports like Sea-Tac are facing today will be diminished.

I see some of the “smaller” airports like SEA and SNA, and even larger ones such as Orlando (MCO) being ideal given their layouts for being among the first candidates for this “Airport of the Future” redesign. Others, such as Chicago O’Hare and Los Angeles International are far more Terminal driven with uniquely separate areas that would be more challenging to evolve into such a layout.

Until the future is here, though, airports like Sea-Tac and the airlines within will continually need to oversee multi-million dollar relocation projects.

Southwest Airlines has been in the news in recent days for a couple of incidents, and successfully winning government approval to proceed with the AirTran Airways merger.

Yesterday, Flight 1919 from Denver skidded off runway 13C after landing during a rainstorm at Chicago’s Midway Airport. None of the 134 passengers or five crew members were injured. It’s nice to see they disembarked using jet stairs according to the picture in the linked article. The cost to replace each escape slide, had they been used, can reach into the upper thousands of dollars according to various sources.

Image courtesy AirTran Airways

Also yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department cleared Southwest’s acquisition of AirTran Airways. There are several routes where Southwest and AirTran overlap in nonstop service, but I would expect scheduling adjustments and service reductions to occur in those markets, depending on demand. Many of them originate from AirTran’s home base in Orlando and include nonstops to New York-LaGuardia, Minneapolis, Chicago-Midway, Kansas City, Detroit, Boston, and many more. Both carriers do also have a presence in long-haul transcon routes, such as Los Angeles & San Francisco to Baltimore. In the end this merger was about Southwest’s biggest “hole” in their network, namely Atlanta, where they will now enjoy an extensive route structure courtesy of AirTran.

Finally, NTSB inspections of the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 that decompressed due to a rupture in the fuselage over Arizona earlier this month are pointing to errors in the manufacturing process at Boeing. The results are preliminary and no final determination has been made, but it appears the rivet holes holding overlapping sections of the fuselage together were too wide. Inspections of about 190 737s made around the same time as the Southwest jet are continuing with about 75% completed to date.