I traveled to Atlanta on Delta this week, catching the first flight departing Reagan National. Those 6am flights always come early, and this one was no different. I’d checked in the day before on Delta.com, so no need to stop by the ticket counter. As this was a daytrip, there were no bags to check either. Security was remarkably uncrowded at 5am. There’s normally a bit of a back up, but I’ve noticed on my last two trips departing DCA that TSA has begun opening one lane prior to the mass security opening, usually at 5am. This appears to have helped alleviate back ups of passengers trying to catch those first flights.

In any event, my Medallion upgrade had cleared and I was seated in in the bulkhead row of First Class. The First Class cabin was full, but coach appeared pretty light. Not shocking for Tuesday morning at 6am, but rare nonetheless. Service was polite and professional when delivered, but the flight attendants disappeared after the first round of beverages, never to be seen until collecting cups and glasses before landing. I suppose I could’ve asked for a warm up of my coffee, but I don’t think I should have to.

Returning that night, I had some time to spare, so I visited the Delta Crown Room at the center of the A Concourse. I access the Delta Crown Rooms via my American Express Platinum Card. I’ve posted about this before, and will say it again now. If you fly American, Continental, Delta or Northwest, the Amex Platinum Card is one of the wisest investments in your sanity that you can make. You can access the private lounges of these four airlines when traveling on these airlines simply by presenting your Platinum Card and your boarding pass. Delta’s Crown Rooms are pretty standard with the added benefit of free booze, and some light snacks. They even have Nutella! Delta partners with T-Mobile for wi-fi services, so you have to pay or have a T-Mobile account. I believe Delta provides free access cards to those who are Crown Room members, but not to those who access via other methods such as Amex cards that offer the lounge benefit. Wi-fi aside, there are worse places to spend airport time, and I find the Crown Room staff to be almost universally helpful and friendly. The A Center club in ATL is spacious, and wasn’t that crowded this Tuesday evening. However, I prefer the T Concourse club in Atlanta. Admittedly, I haven’t visited the club on the E Concourse, which may be better than any given that it serves Delta’s departing international flights.

My flight home was on a Delta MD-88, which only has 14 First Class seats. My upgrade did not clear, but I did have an aisle seat on the exit row, which was very comfortable aside from the jerk sitting next to me who hogged the armrest and leaned at least a quarter of the way into my seat space for most of the flight! Seriously, if I’d been flying more than an hour I would’ve said something to the jerk.

We departed on-time and worked our way up to number three for take-off. Then I saw flight attendants approach a passenger, one of which was carrying an oxygen bottle. They administered oxygen to the passenger while the Captain got us out of the takeoff queue and taxied to an empty gate where we were met by paramedics. We were refueled and back out in line in a reasonable amount of time, but this still made us almost an hour late.

The inflight service was fine, and the flight attendants were frequently in the aisles and visible, the way its supposed to be. We made it back to DC in fine form, minus the delay. All in all, not a bad series of flights. Delta’s people were as friendly as they usually are, and it was a nice way to return to the road after a too-long hiatus.

American Airlines is the latest airline to announce changes in its checked baggage policy.  The policy is effective for travelers who purchase domestic economy class tickets for travel on or after May 12.  Here’s a link to AA’s announcement.

Continental is widely regarded as the best run domestic airline. Today, it became apparent why. Continental has abandoned its merger talks with United according to this New York Times article. Look for United and US Airways to announce something soon.

This could lead to Continental joining the Oneworld Alliance along with American, or they could stick with SkyTeam. Continental and American do have a connection as American’s current Executive VP of Marketing, Dan Garton, once worked for Continental. My bet is that they stick with SkyTeam. Time will tell.

I just learned that Eos Airlines, the all business class carrier operating between JFK and London Stansted (STN) is closing its doors. Here’s a link to their website.

Let’s see…. in no particular order: 

Delta CEO Richard Anderson, and Northwest CEO Doug Steenland marched on Capitol Hill to start selling their merger to the Judiciary Committees of both the House and Senate. I was not able to tune into the hearing, but I’m sure it would’ve been entertaining for an airline nerd like me.

And then SkyWest announced an offer to buy ExpressJet for a whopping $3.50 per share. Of course, this represents a premium of approximately 60 percent over ExpressJet’s paltry share price. My favorite thing in all this is a letter from Continental’s CFO to ExpressJet which basically said we’ve negotiated a deal with your proposed buyers. By the way, we’re pulling 51 jets from our capacity purchase agreement with you in short order, and then we’re going to let the agreement expire and you can figure out what you’re going to do with your 200 or so regional jets that no one else wants. I love this stuff! SkyWest has rejected the offer. I assume they are fishing for a better deal, because there is no other way out of this in reality.

Let’s see…what else? Oh yeah, US Airways and Alaska lost money and announced that they were taking various steps to reduce the red ink. Big surprise there. US Airways also said it was going to focus on raising revenue through various fees such as a new fee to reserve aisle or window seats close to the front of the aircraft. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m probably the only person on earth who could care less about these new “add ons” as long as high fare classes and elites are exempt.

And we closed things out on Friday with the possibility that the Senate may actually pass an FAA reauthorization bill next week. Here’s a link to a Wall Street Journal article (subscription required).

I suppose that’s enough aviation news for now. I’m not even going to talk about the blurb about American being in merger talks with US Airways and alliance talks with Continental. That deserves it’s own posting, which I’ll work on.

Thanks for reading. I’m flattered that a few hundred people per week are reading my ramblings about the crazy airline world. I’ve picked up quite a bit of traffic of late. If you like what you see, you can subscribe via email or RSS feed.

Here we go folks. The House Committee on the Judiciary kicks things off with an April 24th hearing on the Delta – Northwest merger. Later that day, the Senate Judiciary Committee weighs in on the same subject.

Link to House Hearing.

Link to Senate Hearing.

Expect a lot of bloviating and grandstanding. In the end, I think this thing’s gonna fly whether it should or not.

Folks, there’s a plethora of travel-related websites out there. All of them have something to say that’s sometimes worth hearing, but I focus my reading on a select few, and in doing so, feel that I keep a good handle on what’s happening in the travel industry. My recommended reading (or bookmarking) list is as follows:

Flightstats.com. Not a blog, but a fantastic source of data on airline performance. MJ on Travel offers a flight status widget on the homepage that links directly to flightstats.com. I normally check the performance history of every flight I book on flightstats, and recommend you do the same.

Traveling Better. Traveling Better does not get the same level of traffic as FlyerTalk, but it also hasn’t attracted the same number of trolls and rabble-rousers. I find the American Airlines forum on Traveling Better to be especially informative.

Flyertalk.com. Excellent source of information on a multitude of miles and points programs.

Boardingarea.com. Like Flyertalk, a Randy Peterson creation. Boarding Area features a number of my favorite blogs including View From the Wing, Cranky Flier and Joe Sharkey at Large. Another blog I like to read is Holly Hegeman’s PlaneBuzz. I also subscribe to her newsletter, Plane Business.

Mike Boyd. You’ve gotta love Mike. He’s right more often than wrong, and reading his regular Monday posting will make you laugh, whether you agree with it or not. Did I mention that Mike is right more often than wrong?

Joe Brancatelli. I’ve been subscribing to Joe’s newsletter since the day I left the airline industry, and was reading his website before that.

The Travel Insider. I enjoy David Rowell’s weekly newsletter, and so will you.

There are a lot more out there, but only these sites have earned a place on my list of bookmarks. When you add them to your favorites list, I’d be honored if you added mjontravel.com as well!

Picked this gem up on Flyertalk.com. United has increased the domestic change fee from $100 to $150 dollars. As of now, no other carrier has matched this change. Fingers crossed that they do not. I can remember when the fee was $25 dollars. It has increased over time to $100 dollars. Some carriers charge less, and Southwest has never charged a fee to change your reservation to my knowledge.

This fee is one of the more annoying features of traveling with a “legacy” carrier. One hundred dollars is already excessive, and $150 is even more so. Fingers crossed that no one else picks this up, or it will stick.

This has been widely posted elsewhere, but just in case you haven’t seen it, American is offering double EQM’s for travel between April 16th and June 15th. Click here to register.

Gerard Arpey received $6.6 million in compensation in 2007 according to an SEC filing. You can read the details here. The company also disclosed that Arpey received stock worth $1.7 million this week as part of a controversial (at least to AMR’s unions) performance bonus plan.

I won’t pontificate on whether or not Gerard was right or wrong take the shares in light of everything that’s happened. The fact is that those shares were paid out as part of an agreed upon plan, and are based on the performance of AMR over the last three years ending 12/31/07, not last week. But I have to wonder if it was worth it given all the angst among AMR’s employees about the plan?

The metrics this plan is based on are flawed. Basically, you’ve got to be the least sucky of a bunch of sucky companies, and it pays. It’s always been that way, but it wasn’t an issue until last year because the stupid plan paid out…BIG. The unions have known about it all along, but didn’t say anything because no one thought the plan would pay out at the levels it did. But life goes on, and so does the saga of American’s seemingly always rocky relations with its unions.

Frankly, I’m a little sad about how rapidly things have fallen apart on the labor relations front at my old employer. I really thought they were on the verge of something good. Hell, they were on the verge of something good. A new paradigm, by AA labor relations standards. It didn’t have to be this way. And it still doesn’t. But I worry that the off the chart rhetoric from AA’s militant union heads coupled with management’s brain-dead handling of the situation has pushed things to a point of no return without some pain on the way. Fingers crossed that cooler heads eventually prevail.

Delta and Northwest have pulled the trigger to create the biggest airline on the planet. Will others follow? I think so. Of course, the conventional wisdom has Continental getting together with United next. Might happen, but I can’t imagine a pair of airlines being more different. Continental has a fairly well respected management team, and a young fleet of new Boeings along with a reputation for good customer service (by US airline standards). United, a not all that well respected management (whether deserved or not, I can’t say) and a hodge-podge of Airbus and Boeing narrow body jets, and if you’ve flown out of Dulles in the last decade you know where they stand on customer service. I can see it happening, but only if Continental is the surviving entity, whether they name the airline Continental or not. 

I’m not sure who is out there for American. The only airline left is US Airways, and I don’t think AA wants to touch that with a 10 foot pole. Alaska would fill a hole in AA’s network out west, but AA’s record on acquisitions isn’t that great, and I don’t know if imposing AA’s structure upon Alaska will end in a good result. It’s hard to say. American has a whole list of problems, not the least of which is its rapidly deteriorating labor situation.

American’s unions are out to get back everything they gave up in 2003 and then some. All of this as oil hits $115+ per barrel. The pilots and flight attendants have managed to elect some rabble-rousers into leadership positions in their respective unions that have bumped the rhetoric meter off the scale, so much so that I fear they are backing themselves into a corner that they can’t get out of when reality sets in and they realize that they aren’t gonna get smack as far as significantly richer contracts go.

All in all, things are dicey in the airline business right now. Stay tuned because things are going to get cute.