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

• Delta Air Lines introduced new ancillary options available at booking called Trip Extras. The initial offerings are priority boarding starting at $9 per segment, a mileage booster starting at $29 for 1,000 miles (terrible value!) and a 24-hour Wi-Fi pass for $12. Since Delta’s own blog mentions them as being the “first offerings” to be available at booking, Trip Extras will certainly be expanded further growing the ever popular unbundling and ancillary product trend.
• Virgin America announced it will begin service to Portland, Oregon on June 5, 2012 – its 18^th destination. The airline will fly two daily roundtrip flights PDX-LAX and one PDX-SFO. CEO David Cush is hoping their entry will bring fares down noting, “Although there are strong business and leisure travel ties between California and Portland, the West Coast-to-PDX market generally has higher fares than similar flights to Seattle and the reason is competition.”
• I posted some of the insights I gleaned from United Airlines’ presentation at the J.P. Morgan investors’ conference last week and Southwest Airlines also participated revealing they expect to realize a first quarter 2012 loss. Citing an average fuel cost of $3.50 per gallon, Senior VP-Finance and CFO Laura Wright said, “Based on the current revenue and fuel estimates, we currently do not anticipate a profit in the first quarter.” The first and fourth quarters are typically the most challenging for airlines and given Southwest has earned a full-year net profit for 39 consecutive years, I wouldn’t be too worried as an investor.
• Besides the already reported new flights by American and United out of Washington’s Reagan National Airport, Air Canada, Alaska, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, Sun Country and Virgin America have applied for a piece of the remaining four slots open to “beyond perimeter” flying out of DCA. Both JetBlue and Southwest are hoping to begin service to Austin, each claiming United has a high-priced monopoly on their existing service from nearby Dulles International Airport.
• Google’s Flight Search expanded its legs last week and now offers U.S.-based users the ability to search international fares and flights. I honestly haven’t been back to it since my initial underwhelming review of the ITA Software-powered search tool, and probably won’t return until I start hearing rave reviews. It might be a good tool for the general traveler with simple flight search needs, so perhaps my more advanced knowledge and ITA Matrix experience is jading my opinion.
• Hyatt Hotels plans to install new TV technology allowing guests in North American properties to stream movies from their own Netflix or HBO accounts, as well as connect their laptops to use other services. Guests will have to pay the $9.95 daily internet charge to use the service, which will include the ability to request items from housekeeping, order room service and get information on local restaurants and city tours.

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

• United Airlines has signed with Next IT to create a virtual assistant on United.com, similar to Continental’s “Ask Alex.” “Next IT will provide a natural, or every-day, language solution to create an exceptional customer experience for travelers using the website.” If you’re unfamiliar with “Ask Alex,” it’s basically an interactive help tool where you ask a question and receive an audible and text answer back.
• Today, the first Continental Airlines aircraft equipped with Economy Plus is flying. The Boeing 767-400 also features the new flatbed BusinessFirst seats, on-demand touchscreen seat-back monitors in coach and United’s popular Channel 9 featuring live air traffic control communications.
• American Eagle Airlines was fined $900,000 by the Department of Transportation this week for exceeding the three-hour tarmac rule. 15 flights were impacted at Chicago O’Hare on May 29^th with a total of 608 passengers. The carrier has 30 days to pay $650,000 and the remaining $250,000 will be credited to those customers affected in the form of refunds, vouchers and frequent flyer bonus miles. If there’s money leftover, it will be used for future tarmac delays exceeding three hours.
• A Congressional report blasted the TSA this week calling the agency “bloated” and “plagued by significant problems.” Today marks the 10^th anniversary of its creation and I like to call it the Thousands Standing Around agency. Among the report’s findings: too many employees, 25,000 security breaches and expensive & inadequate technology.
• Hawaiian Airlines is pushing further East here in the contiguous 48-States and will begin daily service between Honolulu and New York’s Kennedy airport on June 4, 2012. CEO Mark Dunkerley said, “New York is an important part of our growth strategy. Adding service to the largest market in the Eastern U.S., Hawaii’s second largest tourism market, was a logical step.”
• Boeing received the largest-ever commercial airplane order from Indonesian carrier Lion Air for 230 aircraft. This tops the manufacturer’s previous record from just a week ago at the Dubai Airshow when Emirates placed an order for 50 Boeing 777 jets.
• Google is reported to soon bring international destinations to its underwhelming Flight Search tool. I haven’t been back to play around with the tool since my review of it, nor do I really have any desire to return until I hear reports of “something amazing.”
• Online Travel Agency Travelocity has changed the game of hotel reviews with a new Q&A-type function. Specific, heavily moderated questions appear, such as, “Is there a parking charge?” A previous guest replied, “No.” From the article, “Travelocity hopes the new question and answer formal will help hotel bookers in their trip-planning activities and improve the user experience.”
• A recent J.D. Power and Associates car rental study heralds ACE Rent-A-Car as taking the top spot for customer service. I’ve never heard of them, but they beat out the common ones down the list in order of Enterprise, National, Hertz, Alamo, Budget, Dollar and Avis. ACE has about 200 rental facilities worldwide, all independently owned and operated.

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

[Edited last minute to include:] Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has taken severe action and cancelled all flights in response to continued pressure by three union groups at the airline. He states, ”They are trashing our strategy and our brand. They are deliberately destabilising the company and there is no end in sight.” Paging Prime Minister Julia Gillard… would Julia Gillard please pick up the nearest white courtesy phone.

• All the major air carriers released their third quarter 2011 financial results in the last week. Most missed analyst expectations and all cited the approximate 40% increase in jet fuel prices from the previous year’s quarter as the main reason. Starting with the winners, United Airlines – Continental Airlines posted a combined net income of $653 million, down 23% from 2010, Delta Air Lines posted a profit of $549 million, up from $366 million in 2010 and US Airways netted $95 million, down from $243 million in 2010. Not unsurprising, American Airlines posted a $162 million loss this past quarter compared to a $143 million profit in 2010.
• The Chicago Tribune recently interviewed the founder of AirplaneFood.net, Luis Ramirez, after the reporter read an announcement that American Airlines will be working with two top chefs to provide in-flight meals on some flights. In my opinion, first class meals today are the free coach meals of 1990 and it’s a favorite gripe among travelers. Not surprisingly, Ramirez’s top three carriers for meals are foreign, namely Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Emirates. His bottom three are United Airlines, US Airways and Alitalia. I particularly like his quote about United’s meals: “Uninspired, unattractive, predictable, and most importantly, lacks minimum quality.”
• Even though domestic airlines claim they’re not seeing a drop in demand in business travelers, IATA – the International Air Transport Association – points to slowing growth for premium traffic. The association reports international premium traffic growth in August slowed to 2.3%, down sharply from July’s 7.5% rate. Routes within North America declined, actually, and were down 13.2%.
• When Google Flight Search launched last month it only offered links to book a ticket on the websites of the carriers it featured. It seems they’ve had a change of heart and now show the ability to “try this search” on the major Online Travel Agency (OTA) websites. I’m sure they had a bit of pressure from the OTAs and a Google spokesperson stated, “While this is just a start, we look forward to expanding our advertising efforts with partners and to continue experimenting with different formats, placements and targeting capabilities.” I honestly haven’t been back since I gave it a rather scathing review.
• Flight diversions make for a stressful situation for passengers, but some of the stress was shared this week with workers at Abilene Regional Airport. Dense fog at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport caused seven flights to divert to the small airport, which generally never sees that much traffic. One café ended up selling out of some items and had lines 25 people deep. A kind passenger reportedly helped the café out by changing out the trash bag!

I actually had a lot more to cover from the week, including bonus mileage and point offers from airlines and hotels, but the other fine bloggers here at BoardingArea covered them nicely. As this post goes live, I’ll be listening to View From The Wing’s Gary Leff give his Award Bookings presentation at the Chicago Seminars.

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

• An airline analyst predicts American Airlines could file bankruptcy in 2012. He points to the fact that American is “on track to lose $1.2 – $1.4 billion in 2011 and $1 – $1.3 billion in 2012.” The carrier’s cash position is also less than ideal and while I had a fantastic experience flying with them this year, I will not continue flying AA in part because of their financial situation and otherwise because I’m so close to million-miler status with United Airlines.
• Delta Air Lines is accelerating their addition of coach seats with extra pitch and revealed this week they will install their “Economy Comfort” seats on more than 800 aircraft by the summer of 2012. As is common in the industry today, those seats will be available for purchase to non-elite passengers for an additional fee between $19 and $99 depending on the flight distance.
• United Airlines has elected a new Air Line Pilots Association chairman as the carrier’s union representative. Jay Heppner will replace Wendy Morse in the position in January and he has been with United for 26 years & currently captains Boeing 777s. He states, “This election is not about our new contract (United & Continental).” He continues, “There are assuredly other issues that need to be resolved in parallel, but none so critical” as a joint contract.
• I previously reviewed Google’s Hotel Finder tool and they have now expanded it to include European cities. It’s a unique feature and allows you to search for hotels with the power of Google’s map capabilities. It still refers you to Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to complete a hotel purchase with the option to visit the hotel’s own website. I’ll be monitoring how Google proceeds with this tool and their currently underwhelming Flight Search feature.
• Orbitz, another OTA, has been fined $60,000 for “failing to adequately disclose taxes and fees in certain airfare advertisements in early 2011.” The fine comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation who claims Orbitz had ads on their homepage that would only reveal full tax & fee information after clicking into an alternate page. Orbitz claims they have rectified the error and are currently in compliance.
• Looking for a job in the travel industry? Priceline is reportedly adding more than 500 call center positions in the U.S over the next five years. The new hires will work in the OTA’s call center in Michigan and primarily focus on Priceline’s Booking.com branch. Priceline currently employs 750 people in the U.S. and 2,650 overseas.
• Finally, there’s a bunch of articles from the past week about Lufthansa and Frankfurt Airport. Lufthansa will adopt the full-fare advertising requirement here in the U.S. on November 1^st, earlier than the required January 24, 2012 date. The carrier also claims the recent court ruling disallowing night flights at FRAport will cost the carrier “double digit million of euros.” The new rule bans flights at the airport from 11:00pm to 5:00am. On a more positive note for FRA, they’ve opened a new $1.05 billion fourth runway last Friday. Before Friday, the airport had two parallel main runways that couldn’t be used simultaneously given their proximity, so the new runway will ease congestion and delays.

As widely reported and reviewed, Google launched their much-anticipated Flight Search feature after having completed the acquisition of ITA Software. ITA’s Matrix Airfare Search tool is bar none the most robust and user-friendly way to search for airfares – everything from simple roundtrips to complex multi-city combinations – and it’s my go-to website where I build all of my itineraries. The only thing it lacks is the ability to purchase directly on the site and we’ve all been expecting Google to come out with an industry leading booking engine packed with bells and whistles. The product they launched, however, is anything but revolutionary and is completely underwhelming.

I’ll get into my thoughts on why they launched it as is later, but first let me take you on a mini tour. My very first time plugging in an itinerary was met with a rather unfriendly error message. I searched for a simple Los Angeles to Chicago roundtrip leaving this Saturday September 24, 2011 and returning October 9^th.

Image courtesy Google

I was surprised to see the current restrictions requiring the itinerary to be shorter than 15 days along with the other notifications mentioning a minimum one-night stay and a maximum six-month booking window. Very un-ITA. I revised my booking dates and played with the map feature, which is actually pretty cool.

Image courtesy Google

It shows the rates to other cities in the United States for the same travel period, something useful if you also have your eye on another destination. As you can see from the map, only limited destinations are currently available and all within the U.S. One of the filtering tools allows you to set maximum price and duration (total travel time), but I think Google will confuse the average passenger here on how to manipulate the inputs, as well as what all those dots refer to.

Image courtesy Google

It looks more confusing than it should and I think they need to take away the “hit” points and just focus on the key inputs of price and duration with a better explanation to click on the “sliders” to adjust the filter. Would everyone know what the “sliders” are in this graphic? I think not. Continuing on below, I found several unfiltered (didn’t use the left-hand pane delimiters of # of stops, airline/alliance selection, connection points and times) flights from which to select my outbound.

Image courtesy Google

Nonstops were highlighted, but I think they need to do away with the confusing notification of result pulls. When you hover over the question mark next to “18 of 37 results,” it reveals “Longer and more expensive flights are hidden by default, increase the Price and Duration limits to see more results.” Okay, but then the notices next to each roundtrip price makes it seem like you’ll find 19 results, for example, if you were to click on that first American flight showing a $239 fare. That’s not the case and Google should remove those notifications. I selected a United flight and went on to pick the return.

Image courtesy Google

What’s incredibly strange here is the display of American flights for the return having picked United for the outbound. I’m at a loss why that happened, but played along and picked one of the flights. Notice here, though, that those pesky result notices, “XX from” have disappeared next to the price points. Google currently steers you directly to the airlines’ website to complete the booking, so when the “book” button appeared, it advised me I’d be ticketing the reservation with American (probably due to the fact it was the last segment on the itinerary). Shockingly, when I clicked through it did indeed setup the itinerary as selected.

Image courtesy American Airlines

How unfortunate for American had I continued to purchase with a United segment. Here, though, I finally get to see the aircraft type, something totally lacking on the Google side and while it might not be important to most people, I’m keen to know that during the selection process. I played around a bit more and was thoroughly disappointed at how lacking this initial incarnation was. I will give credit to its speed and correct transfer of data to the airline’s site, as well as being able to see nearby airports with ease via the dropdown option from the default airport based on your IP address (I assume).

Image courtesy Google

The obviousness that you’ve selected an outbound and return just isn’t there, however, so Google absolutely needs better and deliberate notification to the user that you’ve actually selected one or the other. There is a ton more I could criticize, but for now I’ll leave this post as is knowing Flight Search is an ultra-early deployment.

So why did Google release such an inferior and restrictive product? My guess is they wanted real-world load testing and who better to “employ” as beta testers than you and me? Our initial searches will do wonders for their analytics. Also, I’m certain they wanted these types of critical reviews before releasing what I’m expecting to be the leading search and booking engine. They know what they have with ITA and I’m certain we’ll eventually have a tool used as frequently as you would use native Google for any other search.

For further insightful remarks well beyond my simplistic example, be sure to check out Henry Harteveldt’s guest post on CrankyFlier. He takes you a bit deeper into the pros and cons of this immature release and correctly states “Google launched the product too soon.” Have you tried it out? What are your comments?

P.S., Be sure to check out my review of a more advanced tool available now: Everbread’s Haystack Flight Search. No, I have not been paid by, nor have any stake in Everbread or Haystack. I was just as critical of their preliminary public release, but have seen true innovation for what the future holds by way of a preview of its actual functionality that is light years ahead of this Google embarrassment.

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

• Google launched a much-criticized Flight Search feature this week. Limited to airfare searches for travel within the United States, this is definitely just a teaser as confirmed by Google’s Inside Search blog where the company states, “This is just an early look, not the final destination.” The highly critical industry followers were expecting a fully functional Googled version of ITA Software, and while I agree with their reviews, I’m certain this is beta version for which the company will now get earfuls of “free” testing data and advice. I’ll make a separate posting in the future comparing it against what I’ve seen of Everbread’s Haystack.
• Funding for the FAA has been given a stay of execution once again, now until January 31, 2012. This is the 22^nd “temporary” extension for the administration, if you can call more than four years temporary. Labor rules, subsidies, airport slot issues and even arguments over bike paths and walking trails in the bigger-picture transportation bill will have to be dealt with in the coming months. Even with the 2012 elections becoming the focus in Washington, I hope both sides take heart and draft long-term funding as transportation and aviation interest groups have been urging.
• I need to begin a trip originating at London’s Heathrow Airport soon to try out their new “laser-guided travel pods” that whisk travelers from the parking garage – sorry, car park – to the destination (terminal) of choice. Braniff envisioned something like this back in the 1960s assuming it would be available by 1975 (humorously). If Heathrow could get these pods to whisk you between terminals for connecting flights, now that would really be something.
• Do you use hotel safes? You know, the in-room ones where you select your own numeric code? I do, but will certainly be sure to test out whether or not it has a default password as demonstrated in this short video clip. Most do, I’m sure, but I don’t think it should be as obvious as 0000.
• The one-hour work stoppages by engineers at Qantas have been bad enough, but now 3,800 baggage handlers and other ground staff are planning a four hour strike this coming Tuesday September 20, 2011. Qantas will reportedly swap in larger aircraft on some routes in an attempt to more quickly reaccommodate passengers whose flights have cancelled. Here the unions are asking for five percent annual pay raises for the next three years, as well as job security entitlement.
• The Department of Transportation fining airlines isn’t anything new, especially for the easiest breach requiring them, for example, to disclose that the “United” flight you’re on from Los Angeles to Reno is actually operated by Skywest Airlines. In a first for the Global Distribution System industry, the DOT has fined Amadeus $95,000 for failing to follow through with travel agencies to ensure their software correctly displayed these codeshare flights. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood states, “We expect all companies that sell or facilitate the sale of air transportation – airlines, travel agents and GDSs alike – to comply with the laws we enforce.”