Posted by Seth on July 18, 2008 under Uncategorized | 
New York City is a great place for bicycling, as long as you don’t actually want to be on the streets. Whether it is a quick ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, a loop around Central or Prospect Parks or even a ride out to Coney Island along Ocean Parkway, there are some great rides. Riding on the actual streets, however is a risky move, requiring nerves of steel and a rather aggressive outlook. Also, a helmet is a good idea for when you bounce off the fender of a car (twice, in my case) or fly over your handlebars trying to avoid a pedestrian crossing against the light (only once for me).
Fortunately, folks looking for a calmer ride on the city streets will get a great opportunity this August, when the City shuts down vehicular traffic on a route from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park on three consecutive Sundays Saturdays in a program they are calling Summer Streets.
“We anticipate that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors will take advantage of streets temporarily opened for recreation,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “We hope the Summer Streets experiment will become as much a part of the New York experience as strolling the Coney Island boardwalk, participating in the 5-borough bike tour, or listening to the Philharmonic in the park.”
“In Bogotá, they call it Ciclovia, or bikeway. In Paris, it’s the Plage, or beach. Here in New York, Summer Streets will literally turn the streets of our city into a pedestrian park,” said Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “The streets themselves are among the most valuable public space that the City has to offer, and finding the room within our existing street space for those on two feet or two wheels is a true application of our goals for a sustainable future under the Mayor’s PlaNYC initiatives and the DOT’s strategic plan.”
I can’t wait for this to happen. I’m looking forward to getting my bike out and riding the length of the path.
Also, as a bit of a public service announcement, if you are considering taking advantage of the 5-borough bike tour as an opportunity to say DON”T DO IT. The crowds are ridiculous, and while riding on the BQE is fun, the overall experience is not one I can recommend.
Update: It is on Saturdays, not Sundays. And I missed the first one today. 
Posted by Seth on July 17, 2008 under Uncategorized |
With all the airlines announcing new or increased fees in the past couple months in an effort to generate a bit of incremental revenue it is not much of a surprise that Continental pre-announced some new fees today that will go in to effect on August 17th.
The most significant change in the fees is that for changing or canceling a reward ticket. This used to cost $35-50 and in a month that fee will jump up to $150. It will still be free for Platinum Elite members, which I’ll do my best to take advantage of while I still have that status.
Fees are also increasing for the issuing of reward tickets within 3 weeks of travel (formerly 2 weeks). I’m a bit torn on this one as it will still likely be less expensive than buying the tickets outright, but it doesn’t actually cost the airline any additional money to issue the ticket today or in three months, and generally availability starts to open up again closer to the date of travel if seats aren’t selling, so this cuts both ways a bit.
If you like to buy a coach ticket and use miles to upgrade to BusinessFirst the cost will be increasing there as well, between $50 and $100 each direction. I actually think that this increase is completely fair, but I also never use this benefit (once, 4 or 5 years ago), so I’m probably not a good bellwether for it. Overall it seems that the costs would be about $2000-2500 (including the value of the miles) for the cash+miles ticket, which seems reasonable. It was better when it was only $1700-2200, but it happens.
Continental is also now removing the ability to hold tickets. All tickets will need to be purchased at the time of making the reservation. The good news is that here will be a 24-hour window for free changes/cancellations, but the no hold rule is a bit tough, especially if you’re trying to put together a round-trip itinerary and only one direction is available. If you don’t have enough miles they’ll give you 3 days to get them, which is good. And if you want to pay via Western Union you’ll still have the opportunity to hold the ticket until you can get to the Western Union facility or change your mind and pay with a credit card (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
And finally, in a separate announcement Continental indicated that the in-cabin fee will be increasing from $100 to $125 effective this past Tuesday. This fee used to be $95 only a few weeks ago, so the increase is pretty significant. Even worse, the payment of the fee doesn’t actually get the passenger or the pet any particularly great benefits. They actually have to substitute the pet for their carry-on bag, and pay $125 for the luxury of doing so. They also cannot sit in a bulkhead or exit row or in the BusinessFirst cabin on any planes. And Continental charges them a lot of money for that luxury. Not good, though I don’t have a pet so again not directly affected.
On the plus side, Continental is getting newer life vests that are lighter and more durable to help reduce weight on the planes, so that should help mitigate future fee increases, or something like that.
Posted by Seth on July 17, 2008 under Uncategorized |
And it isn’t like they can really cut any of their services, as that would basically mean no more seats or no more flights.
In this case Ryanair has chosen to reduce the number of flights they are offering over the winter and also shifting their market to warmer destinations where they expect to see more traffic. The carrier will be grounding 15 planes at London’s Stansted over the winter as well as four planes in Dublin. They will likely be reducing frequencies on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturday mornings – traditional slow travel periods – and also shuttering 7 destinations from early November to mid-December, opening them back up in time for the holiday season. The locations that are closing up are Basel, Budapest, Krakow, Palma, Rzeszow, Salzburg and Valencia. At the same time beach routes will be added to Ibiza, Tenerife and Malaga.
Posted by Seth on July 17, 2008 under News |
This past week the Farnborough Air Show has been going on. This is one of the major shows, where the airlines and the vendors all show up to announce deals, developments and other fun stuff. I’m sure I’ll make it to a show like this eventually, but in the mean time I have to live vicariously through the other reporters/bloggers/fans there. Some of my favorite bits from the week…
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was a big topic of conversation. In their update to the press Boeing reiterated that things are looking pretty good on the most recent timetable. There is a small chance that the software that controls the braking system will have delays, but those delays are based on issues with traceability in the code and getting it certified, not in the brakes actually working. I guess that’s a good thing, though it’d be nice if the brakes word AND we can prove it. There also is a delay in some fuselage components in South Carolina, but thus far that delay can be handled with slack time built in to the schedule. Boeing still is pretty confident in their Q4 target for first flight. Boeing is also considering adding a second assembly line to help deal with the backlog.
“Going Green” is always a good way to get press, and for airliners it is pretty hard to claim to be going green when your product burns a lot of fuel. Bombardier, a Canadian airplane manufacturer, announced their CSeries, the “greenest” passenger jet ever at the show. The CSeries is designed to seat 110-130 passengers and use 20% less fuel than comparable sized planes. That being said, there are very few comparable sized planes in the market today. Some older 737 models (the –300 and –500) both qualify, but Boeing hasn’t been selling those new for a while now, preferring to focus on the slightly larger 150-180 seat 737NG models. On the plus side, there is a good chance that these CSeries and the similar Embrear 190s (100 seats) will start to replace the smallest regional jets that are particularly cramped and uncomfortable to ride in.
Planes are pretty. This guy took some great pictures during the show. So did this guy.
And, as I mentioned above, lots of deals announced as well. Embraer announced 22 planes sold. Etihad announced a huge purchase sheet: 35 Boeing 787-9 and 10 777-300ER aircraft, 20 Airbus A320s, 25 A350 XWBs and 10 A380s. That’s more capacity than a LOT of airlines out there these days, and they’re just up the Gulf from Dubai where Emirates has a ton of planes and more coming.
Lots more happened, but these are some of the highlights that I thought were useful.
Posted by Seth on July 16, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The American Express Membership Rewards program has been around for a long, long time, allowing the accrual of points for redemption on a variety of airlines, hotels, stores and even casino chips at one point. The participating airlines seem to vary at any given point in time depending on whether AmEx is willing to pay and whether the airline is willing to sell the points. In the past week or so AmEx has quietly added a new airline transfer partner to the US-based Membership Rewards program – the Spanish carrier Iberia. Iberia is the second Membership Rewards partner to participate in the OneWorld alliance, bringing another means of accessing redemptions within that alliance to the Membership Rewards program. That’s the good news.
American Express will transfer your points to Iberia at a ratio of 1,400:100. The reward charts are pretty granular, with flights within Spain or to the Balearics or Gibraltar only 900 points for a round-trip ticket (so only 12,600 AmEx MR points) in “Tourist Full” class, which seems to have no inventory controls. Flights are 1/3 cheaper for “Blue Class” which is limited inventory from what I can tell. Flights from Spain to the USA, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America are only 4,750 points (or ~66,000 MR points), again in the “Tourist Full” class which seems to not be inventory restricted. They also offer one way rewards, with some fares just being 1/2 of a round trip and some (the transatlantics) having a premium attached. But these are only on Iberia-operated flights. When you start getting into partners the numbers go up pretty quickly, which is the bad news.
The redemptions are based on total miles traveled and class of service, with the breakdown looking like this:
| |
Miles Required
|
| Total miles traveled |
Coach |
Business |
First |
| 0 – 600 |
18,200 |
35,000 |
53,200 |
| 601 – 1,000 |
22,400 |
44,800 |
65,800 |
| 1,001 – 2,000 |
28,000 |
54,600 |
82,600 |
| 2,001 – 4,000 |
33,600 |
75,600 |
99,400 |
| 4,001 – 5,000 |
39,200 |
82,600 |
116,200 |
| 5,001 – 8,000 |
44,800 |
88,200 |
133,000 |
| 8,001 – 12,400 |
56,000 |
112,000 |
168,000 |
| 12,401 – 18,000 |
77,000 |
154,000 |
232,400 |
| 18,001 – 25,000 |
105,000 |
210,000 |
315,000 |
| 25,001 – 30,000 |
110,600 |
221,200 |
331,800 |
| 30,001 – 35,000 |
133,000 |
266,000 |
399,000 |
| 35,001 – 40,000 |
154,000 |
308,000 |
462,000 |
| 40,001 – 50,000 |
176,400 |
352,800 |
529,200 |
The numbers at the top of the chart aren’t terrible, but when you start getting into ‘Round The World ticket distances, particularly in the premium cabins, the numbers are pretty bad.
So if you’re looking to get around within Spain or between Spain and something nearby, this looks like a decent option. For longer flights or partner flights the numbers aren’t so great. Then again, the rates of redemption in Mexicana, the other OneWorld partner don’t seem to be all that great either (70K in coach between N. America and Europe versus 44,800-77,000 on Iberia), so this might not be so bad.
More options is always good, even if not all the redemption values are terrific.
Happy Flying!
Posted by Seth on July 15, 2008 under News |
As other carriers are cutting back on their schedules, grounding airplanes and otherwise reducing capacity JetBlue is going about their business with a “sure and steady” approach, including adding flights in some markets. They have an incredibly aggressive airplane acquisition schedule and they’re going to have the planes anyway so it becomes a matter of finding places to put them where they can make a bit of money.
In two announcements today (1, 2) and one yesterday (link) JetBlue announced service to connect existing stations with additional flights starting this fall/winter. These additions include four additional flights from White Plains and a new route (White Plains – Tampa), three new routes from Washington – Dulles (Palm Beach, Ft. Myers and San Juan, PR) and a flight between Orlando and Richmond, VA. The White Plains increases will begin in November the Dulles increases in December and the Richmond flight in September. JetBlue is poised to become the largest carrier at White Plains, with 11 daily flights to Florida for the snow bird season.
The Dulles and Richmond additions are a pretty direct response to United, Delta and American pulling out of Palm Beach, Richmond and San Juan, respectively. And the White Plains additions seem to be a pretty strong attack on AirTran and their service from White Plains and Stewart. JetBlue has been able to maintain their flight loads thus far this year and creep their revenue per passenger up, meaning that they aren’t losing too much money. And the introductory fares on the new routes are all over $100 each way rather than the $49/69/89 we’ve seen in the past, so the carrier is definitely going after these routes to make money right away rather than just to gain market share.
Oh, and Portland, OR – Long Beach, CA seems to be in the works starting in October, but I didn’t see a press release about that one. The line has been removed from their route map now.
Also, it seems that if you book a Air+Hotel deal on the JetBlue web site you can get free EML seating, though it seems to be more of a bug than a feature so it may disappear at any point.
Update (7.15.08 8:55pm EDT): It looks like there are a bunch of new Portland, OR routes coming in, though there hasn’t been an official announcement yet. But there are some indications from error messages on the web site that a few new routes are coming in October:
We’re planning the following new service:
- Austin, TX (AUS) and Portland, OR (PDX) starts October 9, 2008.*
- Long Beach, CA (LGB) and Portland, OR (PDX) starts October 9, 2008.*
- Las Vegas, NV (LAS) and Portland, OR (PDX) starts October 9, 2008.*
- Chicago, IL/O’Hare (ORD) and Portland, OR (PDX) starts October 9, 2008.*
Good news for folks in Portland.
Posted by Seth on July 15, 2008 under TSA |
It is no surprise that airlines are looking for ways to increase revenue, and selling advertising space is one of the ways they are doing that these days. You can buy an infomercial on the in-flight entertainment system, ad space on the tray table or even a special card included in the meal advertising your credit card or on US Air just have the flight attendants hawking the cards in aisle. Today the six legacy airlines in the USA announced that they have all partnered with a company to add advertising to boarding passes that are printed at home.
I’m interested to see how the TSA reacts to ads invading the boarding passes, but that doesn’t really worry me so much as the comments by the airline executives do. Apparently they are all convinced that their passengers are actually desperate for more advertising in their lives, when just about any other person you ask would say that advertising is in an overloaded state and that it is increasingly more difficult to actually get through to a customer. Here are some choice quotes:
“With nearly 40% of our customers using nwa.com to check-in, Northwest is pleased to extend customized offers and deals tailored to customers depending on their destination and other characteristics,” said Al Lenza, VP, Distribution and E-commerce. “We are excited to work with Sojern on this multi-airline venture.”
“At US Airways we are always seeking solutions that provide both unique customer benefits as well as new revenue opportunities,” said Travis Christ, US Airways’ Vice President, Sales and Marketing. “Sojern has found the right formula and we’re looking forward to adding another great feature to usairways.com.”
“This agreement is consistent with the work that we are doing to offer our customers a more customized travel experience, and we look forward to this exciting opportunity with Sojern,” said Dennis Cary, senior vice president, Marketing, United Airlines.
“Continental is pleased to be working with Sojern to provide valuable content and offers to our customers via our online boarding passes. This relationship will provide our customers with a new product they will appreciate and value, and will generate ancillary revenue for Continental,” said Mark Bergsrud, Continental’s senior vice president marketing programs and distribution. “The Sojern team has a great deal of expertise in the advertising space and is the right partner for our industry-leading online check-in products.”
This might actually drive me away from printing my boarding pass at home. Then again, I don’t have a printer at home so I guess that isn’t really a big deal for me. I just do the online check-in and then print the BP at the airport, where I am guessing the targeted ads will be a bit slower to come through based on the smaller paper size. At least this revenue enhancement attempt doesn’t involve a ridiculous fee of some sort, so that is good.
Posted by Seth on July 15, 2008 under Uncategorized |
When you spend enough time in hotels, they start to become more of your home than your actual home does. For me it was first the Embassy Suites in Minneapolis, then Georgetown Suites in Washington, DC and then the W City Center in Chicago. It was at the W in Chicago that I realized I’d really rather have the same bedding all the time rather than something different at home and on the road. Fortunately the W Hotels will sell you anything you want, so getting a set of pillows was a piece of cake, and I slept much better because of it. Sadly, the W Hotels store is ridiculously expensive for most of the products they offer. The good news is that they offer discounts pretty regularly, so you can bring the prices down to a more reasonable level. They’ve got another discount out right now – the code is XT9W4 and that’ll get you 30% off anything not already on sale through the end of July. I recommend the pillows and towels.
Posted by Seth on July 14, 2008 under Uncategorized |
United has announced that they will be closing four of their Red Carpet Club lounges in the coming months, a decision “based on a number of factors, including high fuel costs…” Apparently the amount of Jet A used to operate the lounges was burning a hole in the UA budget this year. The airports affected are Minneapolis, Baltimore, Atlanta and Dallas-Ft. Worth, all of which are hubs of other airlines. That is too much of a coincidence to not have been a contributing factor, either to the actual decision or the low usage of the lounges based on fewer passengers using United from those cities.
This isn’t quite as bad as Delta’s cuts – United is keeping their dedicated first class lounges open and cutting fewer locations – but it is also a far cry from Continental’s opening of a new Presidents Club this past weekend.
I’ve been in the RCCs in a few airports (though none of the ones closing) and other than help from an agent if I need to change a ticket or there are flight problems, I can’t say that I really find them all that great. Depending on how you get in you might have to pay for internet access and unless you are flying internationally you have to pay for drinks. Overall it just isn’t that great of an environment. Then again, they can be quieter than the terminal, which isn’t a bad thing.
Posted by Seth on July 11, 2008 under Uncategorized |
In a move that seems to be bucking the trend of reducing services, Continental is actually adding something this weekend – a new Presidents Club lounge at the Vegas airport. They had hoped to have it open last weekend for the July 4th crowd, but building permits got in the way. Everything was sorted out this afternoon it seems and the lounge will be open for business starting at 5:30am Vegas time on Saturday morning. The hours are daily 5:30am-12:30am, covering the entire flight schedule quite nicely. Also, they are in the same terminal as Delta and Northwest, so those club members will get to benefit for a bit, until Continental bails on SkyTeam for Star Alliance, at which time the lounge reciprocity will almost certainly end.
Overall, a very nice new benefit for folks, and proof that it isn’t all bad news in the industry these days.
