Posted by Seth on March 10, 2010 under Trip Reports | 
When jetBlue announced their $10 fare sale for yesterday and today I figured out that there was one destination on the list I could make a day trip out of: Burlington, VT. It was a new airport for me as well as a state I’d never visited. Plus, the timing on the flights would let me get in and out with enough time to do a few things on the ground and still get a decent night’s sleep at either end of the trip.
I lined up a decent itinerary and shared it with some friends. I was laughed at. A lot. Fine; I reworked the itinerary and found some new options. The Ben & Jerry’s tour was out – too short and focused on kids rather than the actual manufacturing process – and a visit to the Vermont Pub & Brewery was in. Cabot cheese was on the list, too. Still a pretty full day up in Vermont.
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| One of my favorite views – on the AirTrain at JFK |
Then I got on the plane and ran into a whole bunch of other folks also taking advantage of the $10 10th birthday fares. There was a couple who came down to New York City for dinner last night, a business man who made some surprise visits to customers and a large group of guys on their way to a day of skiing. As we started discussing itineraries my plans changed again. VBP was sneered at for mediocre beer (in retrospect I agree) and the Cabot tour was scratched as too far out of town. Plus, there’s another event in NYC tonight at 6pm that I wanted to be home for.
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| Lots of liveries on display at JFK T5 this morning |
So the new itinerary was simple: skip the rental car and just take a cab downtown. Wander along the lakefront until the bars open for lunch. Drink beer and eat pub grub. Return to the airport two and a half hours after leaving and head home. And that’s exactly what I did.
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| Lake Champlain from the Burlington waterfront |
The waterfront area is quite beautiful and the work they’ve done on the boardwalk and ferry terminal is impressive. Downtown Burlington is quaint and quiet, except for the “Free Tibet” rally being held at City Hall. Overall, the experience fit exactly what I expected of a sleepy New England town. From the 75 year old cab driver who was 5mph below the limit the whole ride to the quiet green in front of city hall to the over-zealous TSA agents hoping that I was their “Big Catch.” It shows signs of a life that starts when the college kids wake up and are done with classes in the evening but none of those places were open at noon.
On the plane I was warned off of Vermont Pub & Brewery as just not being that great. Unfortunately, it was all that was open at 11:30am on a Wednesday, so it got my business. I had a flight of six beers, only two of which I actually enjoyed. Still, it was better than a poke in the eye. Plus, it was 40 degrees and not a cloud in the sky so I was able to enjoy my beer outside. That was a special treat.
After beer it was off to find lunch – a quick gyro at Alhi Baba’s – and back to the airport. On the standby list, through security and to the gate just in time for my standby to clear and to hear final call for passengers. Perfect timing.
I’m sure that I missed plenty in Burlington today. Gravy fries at Nectar’s, for example. I’ll have to go back and spend a day or two rather than an hour or two. It seems worth it.
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http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewanderingaramean/2010/03/crazy-10-birthday-sale-from-jetblue/
Posted by Seth on March 8, 2010 under News |
To celebrate their 10th birthday jetBlue is offering $10 fares for travel on the first 10 routes where they offered service. Flights must be booked today (Monday) and travel is only for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week so it isn’t a phenomenal deal, but it is still pretty cool. The routes are:
Between New York (JFK) and:
- Fort Lauderdale (FLL)
- Buffalo (BUF)
- Tampa (TPA)
- Orlando (MCO)
- Rochester (ROC)
- Oakland (OAK)
- Burlington (BTV)
- West Palm Beach (PBI)
- Salt Lake City (SLC)
- Fort Myers (RSW)
Flights should come out to about $42 round trip assuming you can find seats. Book now and get jetting.
Update: Upon further review, it seems that I can get in a quick day-trip to Burlington, VT, tour the Ben & Jerry’s factory, Cabot Cheese and have time for a meal in town, all for ~$75 round trip, including the car. Time to get booked on those flights!
Posted by Seth on March 2, 2010 under News, Trip Reports |
A few months back the news came out that the Department of Transportation would be issuing significant fines against airline operators when they had flights delayed more than three hours between the runway and the gate. The rule hasn’t actually done into effect yet – there are a couple weeks left until enforcement begins – but several airlines appear to be already running their operations in line with the new rules? The net effect of the change in the airlines’ behavior? Thousands of canceled flights across the country.
This should not come as much of a surprise to the traveling public but apparently it is. It seems that the airlines are choosing to cancel flights much more aggressively now when faced with a severe weather situation and they are doing so without any real obligations to their customers. It is not a good thing at all. But it is apparently what society thought they wanted so it is what we’re now faced with.
It is interesting to hear the spin that airlines are putting on their new policies. Take the line from Continental President and CEO Jeff Smisek about the company’s Operations Center policies:
During difficult weather our [Operations] team … works to pre-cancel flights in order to minimize inconvenience for our customers.… [The plan] not only allows Continental to minimize disruptions for passengers during irregular operations, it also permits us to return our operations to normal as quickly as possible after a weather event.
And there is no doubt that parts of this is actually true. It does appear that the airlines are able to get back to normal operations generally pretty quickly after a weather event, though it isn’t completely obvious that it is any better than before. There are, however, some parts that don’t seem to quite live up to the expectations being set. Things like the airlines simply canceling out all of their regional and express operations for a days at a time are not good for customers. When the ability to actually complete travel is frequently delayed two or more days from the weather event it is hard to see how that is minimizing disruptions for passengers. When airlines are unwilling to pay the cost of accommodating their customers on the airlines that are operating the situation becomes even more difficult, especially when the reasons given for the cancelations are less than wholly accurate.
And it isn’t just one or two airlines that take the wholesale cancelation approach. In the past month there have been a number of weather events in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States and many carriers have taken this approach to handling the situation. Southwest, Delta, jetBlue, United and US Airways have all done it at one more more airports for one or more days. That’s hundreds of thousands of passengers displaced because of thousands of flight cancelations.
But it could be worse. More troublesome than just canceling all the flights and telling everyone to go home is when a carrier cancels all their flights across the board and then starts putting a few back into operation. There are simply too many moving bits to keep track of to keep everyone informed. At Newark last Friday I watched as thousands of passengers, self included, were given the run-around while flights were reinstated, moved to new gates, delayed or canceled again and otherwise left with misinformation.
For my own flight a call from the lounge to the gate indicated that I was the only passenger who had not yet boarded the flight and that they were getting ready to depart without me. A quick sprint to the gate showed a much different reality. They were still trying to find a full crew to get on the plane and get us out of there. I’m not sure if the agent in the lounge just didn’t want to deal with me anymore, if the woman at the gate was less than truthful or if no one knew what was going on at all. But it truly sucked from a passenger perspective.
And I was one of the lucky ones. I actually made it on to my flight with only a 5.5 hour delay and with an upgrade. Two other friends in the airport had no reasonable choice other than to cancel their travel plans completely. Ditto for two other guys supposed to make the trip out to Las Vegas for the weekend with us. So what is good for the customer about these new policies?
There are plenty of problems in the airline industry today but this new approach doesn’t solve many of them, other than to avoid DoT fines. Thanks for looking out for the consumers there. Y’all screwed up on this one pretty good.
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Posted by Seth on March 1, 2010 under Trip Reports |
I knew that something was wrong on Sunday morning when I didn’t get the confirmation email from Continental informing me that I was checked in for my return flight to Newark on Monday morning. I figured that my reservation was messed up thanks to the chaos at Newark on Friday trying to get out after the snow there and that it wasn’t too big a deal. Most likely just out of sync and a relatively trivial task for the agent to resolve when I called in. I was out at the NASCAR race all day and didn’t have time to deal with calling until around 8pm and that’s when I received some rather disturbing news from the reservations agent I spoke with. According to her I had “requested to cancel the reservation because I would be traveling on an alternate carrier instead.”
Say what?
Yes, I spoke to a dozen or so different agents throughout the day on Friday trying to get a new reservation put into place. But at no time did I actually ask for the ticket to be canceled. And the agent I was speaking with on Sunday evening continued to insist that was the case. After a couple minutes of my explaining that there’s no reason I’d cancel the return only and that I had actually flown on my original flight to get to Las Vegas she got a supervisor to reinstate the reservation so it wasn’t too big a deal. But it was definitely a bit disturbing to hear that I was talking to agents and requesting things, especially when I knew it to be untrue.
Even more strange was the time of the supposed request I made. I made a second call in to Continental to try to get some more information about the cancelation. Specifically, I asked what time I made this supposed request since they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) give me the name of the agent who I told to cancel the trip. Apparently Continental is the first airline to offer cell phone service in-flight in the United States as I was en route to Las Vegas on a Continental flight at the time.
Eventually the second agent and I figured out what happened. For some reason I was marked as a no-show on the outbound flight and the remainder of the ticket was forfeited. This is pretty typical of most airlines (jetBlue is the only one I know of that doesn’t do this as a matter of course) though it was definitely worrisome that I was listed as a no-show for a flight I actually took. I wonder what the other 220 folks on my flight had to deal with to get home. At least the second agent was willing to actually read through the details of the reservation history and get to the bottom of the situation, unlike the first agent who really seemed more focused on blaming me for canceling the trip.
All’s well that ends well, though this past weekend was certainly not Continental’s finest moment in terms of handling irregular operations.
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Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Four flights covering 7,400 miles is not really all that much for a weekend of travel. Nothing to sneer at, to be sure, but not a ton of miles covered. The fact that I’m earning 150% credit thanks to the booking class helps to justify the trip, as does the rather great sale fare that I got the tickets at. Plus, there is the fun of flying on Copa Air, a/k/a bizarro-world Continental.
Continental and Copa share a lot of similarities in their operations. That makes sense considering that Continental used to own a decent chunk of the Panamanian carrier. And even now that Continental has divested their ownership share Copa still seems to behave a lot like Continental. They share a frequent flyer program – OnePass – and the Copa flight attendant uniforms strongly represent the last generation of Continental’s, for example. And then there is the fact that their logos are significantly similar and that the two carriers operate with immunity from the United States to Panama and connections beyond. Looking around in the galley on one of the flights I noticed that a couple of the bins are labeled as Continental rather than Copa. Yeah, they are very tight.
But not everything is exactly the same. There are just enough differences to make flying on Copa a somewhat jarring experience. Sure, the upgrades still come through generally (I got all 4 this weekend) but Copa serves real meals on all their flights and serves booze from real bottles rather than minis. As it would be described in India, “Same same, but different.”
I was conscious for three of the four flights this weekend. The first – a 5:07am departure from New York City – I slept through entirely. The others, however, were rather pleasant experiences. We had printed menus on one of the three and the meals were consistent enough that I got to try one of everything that they are serving these days, I think. There were ice cream sundaes at the end of each meal, and that goes a long way towards making a flight a success. Of course, unlike Continental Copa doesn’t serve Grand Marnier on their flights. Instead they offer a “Rum of the Month” program in Classe Ejecutiva and I took full advantage of that. Sortof.
It turns out that this month the catering folks only put the good rum in the carts in the back of the plane. So the first two times I ordered the ron especial I was actually drinking Bacardi. I knew that it wasn’t that good but I just assumed I didn’t like the special rum. It was only on my last fight, flight from Panama City back to New York, that I was able to have the conversation with the flight attendant and understand what was being served and solve that problem. Thank goodness, as the special this month – Abuelo Añejo 12 year – was much, much, much better than the Bacardi. I’m no longer wondering why I have to use so much ginger ale to cut it to provide decent flavor, for example.
Beyond the rum there are a number of other nice things about the Copa experience. Full meals on all the flights, for example. It isn’t gourmet by any stretch but the food is pretty decent. I had steak, chicken and different chicken as my three meals and all were completely tolerable. Sure, there was a strange double salad first course on one of the flights but, well, it didn’t kill me.
Oh, and they serve ice cream sundaes on all the lunch and dinner flights. Yummy!
The food service was also much slower than I’m used to. On one of the flights it was 45 minutes before the flight attendant showed up to ask what we wanted and another 30 minutes before drinks showed up. Certainly not the end of the world, but less attentive than I would expect from most airlines in the forward cabin. There’s a decent enough explanation for the slow service. There is only one flight attendant working in the front cabin, expected to serve 14-16 passengers. It simply isn’t possible for that to play out well. But that’s the way they roll. Maybe they have to since they serve a full meal in coach to the 150+ folks back there and that needs the extra body but it does diminish the service up front a bit.
Beyond the food and booze the flights were a great opportunity to meet people. I was wearing my jetBlue shirt on the outbound flights and that was enough for the guy across the aisle on the JFK-Panama segment to start up a conversation. Turns out that he used to work for jetBlue and now works for Copa in their airport operations group. He commutes between Panama and New York most weekends. We had an interesting conversation about impending expansion of the terminal in Panama City, the needs of the terminal (showers in the Presidents Club!) and how incredibly convenient it is as a connection point heading to Central or South America.
I met Tony, a guy who works in the elevator business. We talked about our shared inability to speak Spanish, random visits to various Central American cities and how to better take advantage of the miles he’s been earning all these years. I truly hope he does better than he has with them because he has never redeemed any and, quite frankly, that is a shame. On the plus side, I think I’ve started the education process for him and explained some of the better options he has with all those points.
And then, sitting in the Presidents Club in Panama City, I saw a guy who was obviously from New York (the Duane Reade bags give it away) and who looked pretty familiar. I introduced myself and it turns out that we had met a while back at a FlyerTalk event. We chatted for a bit in the lounge and then ended up sitting next to each other on the flight back to New York. He was wrapping up a weekend in Buenos Aires and me from Mexico City. Similar stories and adventures though also completely different.
Such is the life of the frequent fliers.
Posted by Seth on February 10, 2010 under News |
Although jetBlue was very early in getting in-flight internet connectivity off the ground with their Kiteline product, they have fallen well behind competitors Aircell and Row44 in the deployment race. Kiteline came into the market with quite a splash back in 2007. Unfortunately the progress since then has not lived up to the hype. Indeed, while Aircell has deployed its gogo service in hundreds of aircraft and Row44 has secured a deal with Southwest to have the service deployed in all 500+ of their planes in the coming years, the Kiteline product still exists on only one aircraft: jetBlue’s BetaBlue.
And it doesn’t look like that is going to change anytime soon.
Continental Airlines announced plans to deploy the Kiteline product in conjunction with their deployment of the LiveTV television service. The initial announcement was quite some time ago, with the expectation that the Kiteline system would be installed around the same time as the television service. Around January ‘09 the schedule was revised with the Kiteline service expected to see deployment towards October or November of that year. By June the Kiteline deployment was pushed to Q1 2010 and only on about 30 planes as a trial. Then, in December, Continental announced that the deployments of the Kiteline product on the 737-900ERs would not take place until Q2 2010, at the same time that the gogo product would be trialed on the 757-300s. While the delays have been unfortunate, at least that last delay set up a first for the industry: a true side-by-side comparison of two different products on a significant number of planes from the same company. Alas, even that seems not meant to be.
A number of unofficial sources reported over the past few weeks that the deployment of the Kiteline product will not occur by Q2 2010 as was most recently scheduled. There appear to be issues with the hardware that are preventing the system from performing as expected. This is pushing the initial install date to May 2010 at the very earliest and that date is highly unlikely to stick either, according to the reports. And now Continental is confirming the delay with the following statement from a company official:
We continue to follow the progress of LiveTV’s development of Kiteline. We don’t expect that it will be available on our flights in the second quarter of 2010.
What does this mean in the long term? Hard to say for certain. But Continental was the only major carrier committed to the new Kiteline product and they are going to be going ahead with the gogo trial in Q2. If that is the only functional option available to them for a wide-scale deployment it is hard to imagine that they will choose to continue waiting for the Kiteline product, especially with the number of delays it has seen thus far.
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Posted by Seth on February 9, 2010 under News |
There is serious snow due in the mid-Atlantic – stretching from Washington, DC to New York City – between this evening and tomorrow. Depending on which forecast you believe the accumulations will range up to 18” in various areas. And the airlines are pretty much just giving up. The realize that odds are they won’t actually be able to operate anywhere close to on schedule so they simply aren’t bothering to try. Here are some of the highlights from a couple carriers.
Continental: (details)
- LGA – All flights canceled effective 8am Wednesday, February 10
- EWR – All flights canceled for February 10 except for the three long-haul arrivals already in the air (TLV, DEL, BOM) when the decision was made this afternoon
- PHL – All flights canceled until at least Wednesday night
- PIT, BWI, DCA, IAD – All service canceled until 11am Thursday, February 11
- PVD – Likely cancelation of service to CLE on the afternoon of February 10
jetBlue:
will suspend the majority of operations to and from the following cities for Wednesday, Feb. 10 due to a forecasted severe winter snowstorm:
- John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia in New York City
- White Plains/Westchester County Airport
- Newark Liberty Airport
It seems that only one runway is expected to be in operation at Dulles and nothing at National. Newark is going to be pretty much shut down. LaGuardia and Philly, too. I’m really glad that I’m not flying during this mess. I just hope that the system is functional enough by Sunday that my flights are operating.
Posted by Seth on January 28, 2010 under News, frequent flyer |
jetBlue is making major changes to their systems this weekend, starting on Friday afternoon and scheduled to finish on Saturday, that are expected to interrupt their operations throughout their network. These upgrades are for the reservations and flight scheduling systems that run the back-office functions at the carrier, and the upgrade is nothing short of huge. The new system, SabreSonic, allows for a number of new features to be included in the booking, ticketing and operational processes that the carrier deals with on a daily basis. It means that things like interlining and codesharing with other carriers will be possible, allowing for tighter integration with partner Lufthansa, for example.
Just how significant are the interruptions to operations during this upgrade? Very is an understatement. Here are some of the details that jetBlue provided to their customers:
- Travelers will be unable to book flights or make changes to reservations. If your matter is urgent and you need to book a flight or make changes to flights during this period, you can do so only at the airport.
- Flight status will be unavailable.
- Online check-in will be unavailable.
- Reservation agents will be unable to book flights or make changes to reservations. If your matter is urgent and you need to book a flight or make changes during this period, you can do so only at the airport.
And that’s just for making new plans. At the airport things are going to be pretty bad, too. Again, from jetBlue:
- Check-in and bag-drop lines will be longer during and immediately after the transition.
- We recommend that you arrive at the airport:
- Two hours before your scheduled departure for domestic flights.
- Three hours before your scheduled departure for international flights.
It is going to be a rough weekend for customers and the fact that it is snowing in New York City right now probably isn’t helping things. Of course, the carrier will be monitoring the weather situation and can always pull the plug prior to starting the changeover. No matter what, this change needs to happen and the carrier will come out of the deal in a better situation. Here’s hoping that they can make the transition with minimal pain for their customers.
Fortunately I’ve got 6 weeks until my next jetBlue flight, plenty of time for them to work the kinks out.
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Posted by Seth on December 23, 2009 under Flying, News |
The weather last weekend from Washington, DC to Boston was pretty miserable for folks looking to fly. I had a blast watching the almost foot of snow pile up on the back deck and then wandering through Manhattan the following morning but I know that the airports, airlines and passengers didn’t fare so well. Just how badly they fared, however, is interesting to look at.
In Washington, DC, both United and Delta cancelled all of their flights in and out for the duration of the storm. They didn’t have much choice as the airports were shut down for several hours. United got back up and running pretty quickly while Delta was a bit slower to get started. It makes sense as Dulles is a major hub for United. Plus, Delta did send in a few extra planes late on Sunday to help move passengers around.
In New York City there were also a large number of flights canceled. Delta, United, jetBlue and Continental all had to cancel a number of flights. jetBlue seemed to keep operating the longest, running flights into JFK well after the others had stopped on Saturday night. Yes, it was still snowing, but the airport had their ground operations crews working hard to make sure that the runways were safe and jetBlue had just a few extra planeloads of passengers that they didn’t end up stranding. Again, it is a hub operation so it makes sense that they were focused on keeping things operating as much as possible.
JFK is also a hub for Delta, however, and they didn’t come out of the snow too well there. They canceled the vast majority of their transcontinental flights out of JFK on Sunday (only 2/11 flew) while the other carriers operated about 80% of their transcon routes. Delta didn’t send one single plane from JFK to Florida on Sunday. After the snow had stopped. They should have had crew available since those folks didn’t fly on Saturday. Ditto for aircraft. Yet they didn’t. Why not?
The icing on the cake for Delta, of course, is that with all the cancelations and the increased load factors in play right now – a function of the holiday travel season and significant capacity cuts in the industry – they aren’t able to get passengers rebooked very easily. This came to a head yesterday when police were called to handle passengers delayed 3 days trying to get back to Haiti. When the folks think that Haiti is better than the service and facilities you’re providing you know there are some serious issues. At least Delta finally stepped up and added a special flight for today to get those folks home.
Continental seemed to come out of the mess relatively unscathed. Sure, they canceled a bunch of flights just like everyone else, but they didn’t seem to have too many crises come out of the efforts. And they were able to get up and running on Sunday morning with a pretty full schedule operating.
US Airways proved true to form from a customer service perspective. They were boarding and upgrading non-revenue passengers rather than paying customers. They told standby passengers that flights were full and then sent the flights out with empty seats. Bad form.
And lest anyone think the troubles were isolated to the United States, folks over in Europe didn’t fare much better. Combining two package tour companies going out of business in the past week and some storms there and things are not good. Brussels was closed for several hours as were the London airports. Fortunately British Airways had some spare wide-body aircraft around to help cover for the cancellations but things aren’t pretty there either.
With predictions of a White Christmas in NYC this year we could be looking at a repeat performance again this weekend. I’m glad to be flying out on Thursday evening before the fun really starts.
Posted by Seth on December 16, 2009 under Internet |
Continental Airlines intends to trial both the Kiteline service provided by jetBlue’s LiveTV subsidiary and also the gogo service provided by AirCell according to recent reports. This move marks the first time that a carrier has actually set up a competitive trial of multiple vendors in an effort to best serve their customers. Previous trials have been single vendor affairs, essentially determining if the system actually worked rather than figuring out if it was the correct product.
Continental has had the Kiteline product on their announced roadmap for several months now so that service isn’t much of a surprise. The decision to try out the gogo services is a new one, though one that incoming CEO Jeff Smisek intimated was possible several months ago. Smisek has stated that the carrier wanted to see if the gogo service had demonstrable financial upside before committing to a deployment. By putting both services in play at the same time it will be possible to reasonably evaluate just how much passengers like each product and the relative value of installing them fleet-wide.
As previously planned, the Kiteline service will be installed on approximately 30 of the 737-900ER (73E) aircraft. The gogo service will be installed on Continental’s 757-300 fleet which numbers approximately the same. Both systems are expected to be in service in the second quarter of 2010.
Having already used gogo a few times I’m still much more excited about the Kiteline service but having a true face-off between the two might just be the most exciting of all.
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Posted by Seth on December 10, 2009 under points |
I’m really wondering just how much fun I could have over a few days in Europe come mid-January. Why? Because Condor, a low cost carrier based in Germany, is offering up an All You Can Fly deal (web page is in German only), rather similar to the one jetBlue had earlier this year. Maybe it is because of the relationship both carriers have with Lufthansa but it isn’t hard to see the similarities in the schemes. The best part about it for folks in Europe is that the price is truly all-inclusive – no extra taxes or fees – and it is only €299. Even at today’s exchange rates that is about 25% less than the jetBlue AYCJ deal was.
There is, of course, the usual fine print. The pass must be reserved by 18 December and all bookings (except for the first and the last) must be round-trip. Also, the pass only applies to the carrier’s short and medium haul routes, so no crossing the Atlantic. Still, access to the carrier’s route network throughout most of Europe, the Canary Islands and maybe Eastern Africa seems like a pretty good deal to me. There is a 72-hour advance booking requirement, just like the jetBlue deal. And these flights are actually eligible to earn frequent flyer points in the Miles+More program. Not too shabby.
I would truly love to take advantage of this deal. It is incredibly tempting. Alas, I think it is not meant to be. But that’s not going to stop me from looking at their route map and schedules to see what king of fun I could have. Wishful thinking never hurt anyone, right?
