Joe Sharkey At Large

Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine shut down last month after two years, and its lively Web site, Portfolio.com went dark, and took with it a lot of good business travel reporting, including Joe Brancatelli’s column, Seat 2B.

But while the print magazine is still dead, Portfolio.com — which offered original content as well as the magazine’s features — is being revived by Advance Publications, the company that owns Conde Nast. It comes back to life in July, under the aegis of Advance’s American City Business Journals, which publishes regional business journals.

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I love it. It’s almost as if some fun has returned to the airline business, which badly needs some.

Last week, AirTran cleverly surprised Delta by announcing that it, AirTran, would be the first to have its whole fleet outfitted with Wi-Fi. By mid-summer, AirTran said, all of its 86 Boeing 717s and 50 Boeing 737s would have the Aircell Gogo Wi-Fi service on board.

That move pulled AirTran ahead of the morning favorite, Delta, which has been busily converting all 300 of its mainline domestic planes to Aircell’s Wi-Fi system. A day before AirTran’s surprise announcement, Delta evidently got wind of it and hastily put out an announcement saying that it had already converted half of its mainline domestic fleet, and would have all of the fleet converted by September.

And then on the outside here comes scrappy Virgin American today — and Virgin is the winnah! Virgin America says it now offers Aircell Wi-Fi on every one of its 100 daily flights.

(Okay, Virgin has only 26 planes flying in its fleet (A320s and A319s), but fair is fair. They win the race.)

By the way, Virgin offers a plus: power outlets available for every seat, including in coach. Without power outlets, Wi-Fi users are limited by the life of their batteries.

The Gogo service on Virgin costs $12.95 for daytime flights of over three hours, $9.95 for daytime flights of less than three hours, $5.95 on red-eye flights and $7.95 for handheld devices.

Aircell is busily converting planes at locations all over the country, often working all-night shifts to do so. By the end of this year, Aircell expects to have 1,000 domestic airliners, from various airlines, equipped with WiFi.

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We’ll see if all of those flash fare sales finally help airlines start climbing out of the deep revenue hole this summer. So far this spring, the sales haven’t counted for much in terms of cash raised.

Passenger revenue for U.S. airlines fell 18 percent in April compared with April 2008, the Air Transport Association says.

Compare that against the decline in the number of passengers (6.3 percent) and the 12.6 percent decline in a key metric, the cost of flying a passenger one mile (the decline is due to lower oil prices), and you see that the fare sales may have maintained some volume, but without ginning up enough cash.

The fare sales are continuing — but soon, something’s got to give.

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The international travel game got a little more intense this morning when British Airways announced that it will start a new nonstop daily flight between Las Vegas and London Heathrow on Oct. 25.

The flights will be operated to and from Heathrow’s Terminal 5 by a three-class Boeing 777 offering Club World (business class), World Traveller Plus (premium economy) and World Traveller (economy). The Club World cabin offers seats that convert to 180-degree flat beds. (Missing from the mix is British Airways first-class cabin.)

Las Vegas will be British Airways’ 19th city in the United States.

This seems counter-intuitive, since U.S. airlines have been busily removing capacity from Las Vegas, which has been struggling with a sharp fall-off in tourism and business travel. Air service is off about 20 percent into and out of Las Vegas in the last 12 months.

But never short Las Vegas. If any city is going to market its way out of a slump, this one will. Foreign carriers like British Airways are not allowed to fly between U.S. cities, but many of the big ones have been steadily increasing the number of cities they serve in the U.S. from international locations, while firmly establishing their brands in the domestic market.

Big domestic airlines are warily evaluating the U.S. strategies of British Airways, Lufthansa and other sharp foreign competitors (including Air France-KLM and Virgin Atlantic). In some cases, of course, the domestic airlines are forging deeper alliance partnerships with foreign carriers (while working to manipulate around U.S. anti-trust regulations.)

Interesting to see one of them making a bet on Las Vegas.

According to British Airways:

The 777 on the new Las Vegas route will be configured with 36 Club World seats, 24 World Traveller Plus seats and 214 World Traveller seats.

The daily eastbound flight, BA274, will depart McCarran International Airport’s Terminal 2 at 7 p.m. and arrive at London Heathrow Airport at 12:50 p.m. the following day. The westbound flight, BA275, will depart Terminal 5, Heathrow, at 2:20 p.m. and arrive at Las Vegas at 5:10 p.m. the same afternoon.

Roundtrip fares in World Traveller will start at $461 and for World Traveller Plus, $1206. Roundtrip Club World fares will start at $3,255; all fares are subject to fuel surcharges, government fees and taxes.

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I was just chuckling over a quote in a story in this morning’s paper from Jeff Zucker, the boss at the NBC network. It reads: “Although ‘we have have seen the bottom,’ he said, ‘we don’t see an uptick.’”

I couldn’t help wondering: Isn’t that arguably another way to say,  “We may be  sunk.”?

Anyway, here comes the International Air Transport Association this morning with some very bad news for the airline industry (which of course is already well aware of the implications, since they’ve already counted the money): International premium-class traffic, which has been falling for at least six months, fell even more sharply in March, when 19 percent fewer passengers bought business-class or first-class tickets on international routes (as compared with March 2008).

Here’s the Reuters story out of Geneva. Oddly, IATA adheres to the self-defeating habit of releasing news abroad first, rather than simply posting it on its Web site so we Americans can see it at the same time it gets disseminated to the Continent.

“We have not reached a floor to the fall in air travel,” IATA said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

As international premium traffic plunges, airlines have been running big fare sales on overseas business-class and first-class seats. So while the gross decline in the number of premium-fare passengers is stark, the decline in revenue from those cabins — now being sold off at half price and less in many cases — is even more stark. IATA estimates that premium-class revenues were down 35 to 40 percent in the first-quarter, according to Reuters.

In recent years, major U.S. airlines made big bets on a future of robust international premium-class traffic, renovating front-of-the-plane long-haul cabins and shifting capacity from domestic to overseas flying.

My own guess is that in time, given inexorable global travel demand patterns, this important segment of the market will recover, and probably even to a greater extent than domestic traffic, which may settle in permanently at a 15 percent capacity reduction.

But I seriously doubt that the days of $11,000 business-class fares (even at half off for major corporate discounts) will return any time soon.

Airlines that made those big bets on overseas premium seats know they have to buckle up, as it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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In case you haven’t heard, the still-leaderless Transportation Security Administration sprung into place on Friday the initial phase of a requirement that the name on your airline boarding pass will need to exactly match the name on the government-issued I.D. you present at the checkpoint.

Exactly as in e-x-a-c-t-l-y.

Right now, the TSA is merely requesting that you do this, to help get the ball rolling on the new Secure Flight program, which is an initiative to try to straighten out the mess created by airline mis-administration of the terrorist watch lists at checkpoints. If your documents have only small differences, like a missing middle initial on one, you won’t be keelhauled … for now.

The requirement will be key to the smooth operation of the Secure Flight program now being phased in by the airlines and the TSA.

My head hurts every time I try to explain Secure Flight and the terrorist watch lists.

If you want your head to hurt, too, please see my May 7 post “Terror Watch List: Free Jack Anderson! All of Them!” for a detailed backgrounder on the whole mess of watch-list enforcement and chronic problem of innocent travelers being constantly detained for extra questioning because they have names that may be the same as or similar to, or a variant of, names on the actual, secret terrorist lists. Even if those names on the actual lists are clearly not of terrorists, but of persons who seem to be there only because  a long time ago they frightened Richard Milhouse Nixon or the easily alarmed J. Edgar Hoover.

Don’t get me started.

Basically, under Secure Flight, the boarding pass and I.D. will have to match precisely once this becomes Official. For example, both must say Richard Milhouse Nixon (not “Dick” Nixon on one) or “J. Edgar Hoover” (not “Jane”  or  “John”  Edgar Hoover.)

Anyway, here is the T.S.A.  announcement, from last week.

“WASHINGTON – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced today that beginning May 15 the Secure Flight passenger vetting program will begin asking passengers to enter their full name – as it appears on the government issued identification they will be traveling with – when making airline reservations.

This is the first publicly noticeable step in implementing the multi-phase Secure Flight program which shifts pre-departure watch list matching responsibilities from individual aircraft operators to TSA. The Secure Flight program satisfies a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, and congressional requirements from the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and the 9/11 Commission Act signed into law in 2007.

‘By enhancing and streamlining the watch list matching process, the Secure Flight program makes travel safer and easier for millions of Americans,’ said TSA Acting Administrator Gale Rossides. ‘During this phase of the Secure Flight program, passengers are encouraged to book their reservations using their name as it appears on the government-issued ID they will use while traveling.’

In the near future, small differences between the passenger’s ID and the passenger’s reservation information, such as the use of a middle initial instead of a full middle name or no middle name/initial at all, will not be an issue for passengers. Over time, passengers should strive to obtain consistency between the name on their government issued ID and the travel information they use for booking flights.

The second phase of Secure Flight begins August 15, 2009 when passengers will be required to enter their date of birth and gender when booking airline flights.

Once Secure Flight’s advanced technology is fully implemented in early 2010, enhanced watch list matching will be done by the government. Airlines will gather a passenger’s full name, date of birth, and gender when making an airline reservation to determine if the passenger is a match to the No Fly or Selectee lists. By providing the additional data elements of gender and date of birth, Secure Flight will more effectively help prevent misidentification of passengers who have similar names to individuals on the watch list and better identify individuals that may pose a known or suspected threat to aviation.

TSA’s goal is to vet 100 percent of passengers on all domestic commercial flights by early 2010 and 100 percent of passengers on all international commercial flights by the end of 2010.”

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Did the World Health Organization overreact to the outbreak of the flu formerly known as swine flu, to the point of panic, in cranking up the flu-threat level to one notch below Defcon 1?

My post here Friday had a brief look at that, based on the evidence that the H1N1 virus, while spreading, seems to be associated with a fairly mild strain of flu.

Dunno.

But there’s a letter worth reading in the Times this morning. It’s from a physician associated with the conservative Hoover Institution. He says the WHO response seems to have been “alarmist” and driven by “excessive risk-aversion” predicated on experiences during (and possibly fallout after) the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak in Asia.

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[Above: The WHO pandemic-alert chart]

Did the World Health Organization overreact when it cranked up the worldwide H1N1 flu alert to phase 5, the stage right before declaration of a worldwide pandemic?

This article today in Slate suggests that it did, saying that the WHO engaged in “scary speculation” over an outbreak of what, so far, appears to be a mild strain of flu. But this story isn’t over yet, and the flu continues to spread.

The WHO is starting to sound a bit defensive on the subject, saying that the H1N1 strain formerly known as swine flu “appears to be more contagious than seasonal influenza.”

Here’s the latest WHO update on the flu.

The number of cases jumped in the last day. See this from the Raw Story.

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Fewer people will be flying this summer, despite those frantic fare sales all winter and spring. Planes will be more crowded. Expect delays to start growing again after a lull all year.

Say what?

In its summer travel forecast, the Air Transport Association said today that 14 million fewer passengers will board U.S. airlines this summer. The total drop (domestic and international) will be between 6 and 7 percent, the airline trade group said.

Passenger traffic has been down far more than 7 percent so far this year, so a summer drop of a mere 7 percent actually reflects an improvement generated by all of those fare sales, it seems to me. (The summer period as defined by the airline trade group in its year-to-year comparison is June 1 through August 31.}

Approximately 195 million passengers are expected to fly this summer on U.S. airlines, down from 209 million during the summer months of 2008. The ATA projects that 7 percent fewer passengers (171 million versus 183 million) will travel domestically, and 6 percent fewer passengers (24 million versus 26 million) will travel internationally.

Airline data for the first quarter show that load factors — the percentage of seats filled with customers — are well into the 80 percent levels, meaning most domestic flights are taking off full. That’s because airlines evidently have had some success in reducing capacity — by dropping flights and removing planes from their fleets — in response to the decline in demand.

The ATA president, James C. May, said the poor economy is the main reason for the decline.

“The weak economy has forced additional aircraft out of the marketplace, so despite fewer travelers, planes will remain near full,” May said. He used the occasion to take a well-aimed shot (again) at our sagging, lagging air-traffic control system. “We remain concerned that delays may be inevitable due to the combination of an aging air traffic control system and convective weather period,” he said. [My comment: “Convective weather” meaning the summer thunderstorms, etc., that the airlines like to blame for everything that goes wrong.}

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[Above: This is how brazen the drug gangs are in Mexican border areas with the U.S. That's a roadside shrine to the drug trade's patron saint, one Jesus Malverde. I took the photo in late November in the hills outside Ensenada, Mexico.  At left is Serge Dedina, the executive director of the coastal environmental group Wildcoast, with Saul Alarcon, the conservation manager.]

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From the AP, via Newser.com this morning: “The bound, beaten, strangled, and stabbed bodies of four young Americans have been found in a van in Tijuana, AP reports. The two men and two women left their homes in the San Diego and Chula Vista areas last week to visit Mexican nightclubs.”

Here’s the link to the Newser.com report.

Later in the day today, the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper posted this far more detailed account. It suggests that the victims  were in the habit of going to Tijuana to “party,” and that at least one may have had some criminal connections.

Whatever, the dangers in these border towns, where innocent people have been killed in shootouts, have become unacceptable for travel, especially at night. People who travel south of the border to “party” need to understand that, for now, the party is over.

Here’s more horrific recent news out of Tijuana.

That’s it for me. I need no more evidence. I am going to avoid all of the Mexican border towns for the foreseeable future, and I urge you to do the same. Adios Tijuana, Mexicali, Nogales, Juarez, Matamoros and all the rest.

The Mexican tourism authorities in those stricken cities have been desperately urging Americans to return, insisting that reports of unending bloody violence (6,000 murders in a year) are exaggerated.

Baloney. My friends at Wildcoast, which is based in San Diego with offices in Baja, described for me on a road trip through northern Baja late last November the sort of extraordinary precautions they need to take to avoid hijackings, robberies, kidnapings and worse as they go about their work on the Baja coast.

On that trip, I was stunned by the deserted look of the downtown streets of Tijuana and Ensenada — usually thronged with American tourists.

I have a home in southern Arizona, and my wife and often visited Nogales on day trips with friends, sometimes just to have lunch.

No more. That’s it. It is simply too damned dangerous to visit the Mexican border towns. Avoid them.

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