Posted by Seth on March 18, 2010 under News | 
Virgin America announced today that they will be increasing transcon service from their west coast hubs in Los Angeles and San Francisco, adding service to Orlando and Toronto. The service will start this summer (August 19 for Orlando, as early as June for Toronto) and will coincide with the closure of the carrier’s operations at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, effective May 26, 2010. On the change in service, CEO and President David Cush noted:
With strong financial performance, a new ownership structure and growth in fleet size, we’re pleased to be able to expand to world-class destinations like Orlando and Toronto this year. Both cities are major travel destinations from the West Coast, and we’re looking forward to introducing our service to travelers in these and other new markets in 2010 and beyond.
Despite the strong downward pressure on transcon fares, Virgin America believes there is value in these routes and will be operating once daily service each from Los Angeles and San Francisco to the new destinations. The introductory price on the Orlando service from Los Angeles is not a huge discount over the existing non-stop service that United Airlines, Delta and American Airlines all provide. The San Francisco market is a bit more significant due in large part to the route only being served by United currently. For passengers willing to make one stop there are fares below the introductory sale prices. And there are Virgin America fares for less than the initial sale prices on some days. Go figure.
Still, Virgin America thinks they can make money on these routes and they’re committed to them. We’ll see how it works out for them.
Posted by Seth on March 18, 2010 under News |
jetBlue has made some waves in the transcon market with announcements this past week. The carrier is moving service around in the Los Angeles market to better reflect consumer demand. The main shift comes in the form of transcon service moving out of Long Beach, the carrier’s west coast hub, and into Los Angeles International Airport where they introduced service last year.
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| A view inside the Long Beach terminal |
The crux of the change is an increase in service on between LAX and the hub at New York City’s JFK airport. Starting July 1 service will increase from two flights daily to four. At the same time, transcon service from Long Beach will shrink by two flights, one each to Boston and JFK (hat tip to Dan for figuring out where the cuts came from). Considering the peak of eight daily flights between JFK and Long Beach this drawdown to only two daily is rather significant.
It appears that the market demand for transcon service in the Los Angeles area is heavily focused on LAX. That makes sense in many regards. But the overall number of flights at Long Beach don’t seem to be decreasing too much. Takeoff slots at Long Beach are highly coveted and jetBlue holds a lot of them. So cutting transcon flights does not necessarily mean a decrease in the total number of flights from Long Beach. More likely those slots will be leveraged by regional service on the west coast.
In this way the carrier is segmenting the service on the west coast between transcon customers and regional passengers, reducing the number of connection opportunities. But given the relatively low number of decent connections that existed previously the overall impact of that cut should be low. And the increased revenue from the new transcon operations should make up for it. LAX is still the premiere airport for the longer service options while the convenience of Long Beach is great for passengers making quick hops up and down the coast. Everyone wins.
Posted by Seth on February 5, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Fly enough and strange things are bound to happen. I haven’t had to evacuate a plane or deal with oxygen mask deployment yet but I’ve had my share of aborted take-offs and “go around” missed landings. Those are unsettling but I actually understand what is going on in those cases and it doesn’t really seem all that bad when it is happening. Flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles today on my way to Hawaii I got to experience a final approach that was unlike any other. And I got a bit spooked by it.
The pilot had the Channel 9 audio feed on so I was able to listen to the cockpit communications throughout the flight. I heard the discussions of the weather with the controllers and our pilots’ requests to deviate around the worst of it. That was all good stuff. But having access to that audio also probably contributed to me freaking out a bit when we made a strange left turn about 30 seconds before touchdown. What I heard was something to the effect of:
Tower, this is United 817. We’re seeing wide variations on the localizer for runway 6R. It is all over the place.
The localizer is the radio beacon that broadcasts out the location of the runway so that the plane’s autopilot functionality can glide it it to a safe landing. If the plane is off course the autopilot will hone in on the localizer and correct the course. But if the localizer goes wobbly bonkers then the plane will change course to “correct” even if that means actually heading away from the runway.
And that’s exactly what our plane did this morning. The good news is that the pilots reacted quickly and professionally. They disengaged the autopilot, corrected the course of the plane and brought us in for a completely normal landing. Except the part where we briefly were headed in the wrong direction.
The pilot and ATC folks had a brief conversation about the incident while we were still flying. They checked with the plane behind us on the approach path to see if they saw the same issues with the localizer (they did) and then things continued on normally. Once we were finally on the ground the pilot gave the tower another tongue lashing about the localizer and clarified that it was the runway localizer and not the glide slope indicator (another piece of the autopilot system) that was having problems. And that was pretty much the end of it.
As we were deplaning I mentioned the event to the pilot and we chatted briefly about it. It was only after that conversation that I fully grasped the severity of what had happened. Probably a good thing as we were safely on the ground at that point and freaking out a bit wasn’t as significant an issue. But I was definitely feeling spooked by the event.
No real reason to freak out, I know. The pilots knew exactly what they were doing the whole time and they fixed the issue quickly and perfectly. In fact, had I not been listening to Channel 9 I’m not entirely certain I would have even known something went amiss during the approach. But it was still a bit freaky. Certainly not enough to prevent me from getting on the next flight, but a bit freaky.
Sadly the LiveATC.net feed of KLAX is offline right now so I don’t have access to the actual tower communications to get the verbatim conversation that happened with our pilot, the pilot behind us and ATC. I may have to dig a bit more to see if I can find it.
Posted by Seth on January 15, 2010 under News |
Continental loves their hubs. They have historically had an incredibly intense focus on offering only hub-and-spoke service, to the point that non-hub routes could be counted on your fingers, sometimes only requiring one hand. Things are changing, however, and the non-hub route map is growing.
Late last year Continental announced several non-hub routes serving Hawaii from Los Angeles and Orange County. Today they’ve announced service between Portland, Oregon and Anchorage. The service will be seasonal for the peak summer months and not particularly well timed for connections from Newark but it will serve the local market and other west-coast feed (from United , I suppose) reasonably well. From the release:
The flight from Portland International Airport (PDX) will depart at 6:10 p.m. and arrive at Ted Stevens International Airport (ANC) in Anchorage at 8:55 p.m. The return flight will depart Anchorage at 1:25 a.m. and arrive in Portland at 6:15 a.m. Continental will operate the flight with a Boeing 737-800 with 160 seats.
I might need to start using my toes to count the non-hub routes soon. Nice to see some growth in the industry.
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Posted by Seth on August 11, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Sure, airlines are mostly still cutting capacity, but every now and then a new route crops up on the schedules. This week it seems that Ft. Lauderdale is the winner of two such announcements in a big way. The first announcement came from Virgin America, indicating their plans to offer up four daily flights to California (two each to San Francisco and Los Angeles). Not to be outdone, jetBlue announced a couple hours later their intention to offer the “first nonstop service” between San Francisco and Ft. Lauderdale. And, while they are first, they are really only alone in the market for a day; the Virgin America service starts the day after jetBlue launches theirs.
The moves are certainly interesting and for several reasons. First, who knew that there was such a pent up demand for travel between South Florida and California? Right now there are seven daily flights between Miami and Los Angeles and another three from San Francisco to Miami, all operated by American Airlines. The represent a lift of some 1500 seats across the country. The introduction of these five flights will increase that capacity by about 35%, albeit from Ft. Lauderdale, not Miami. That is a huge increase in a market that has long been seen as questionable in terms of revenue. Oh, and jetBlue flies Ft. Lauderdale – Long Beach daily, too.
Beyond that, why Ft. Lauderdale? For jetBlue it makes a lot of sense. The New York-based carrier already has significant operations in Ft. Lauderdale and this is actually sortof bringing back a route they used to operate (Ft. Lauderdale – Oakland) that disappeared a few years ago when it wasn’t making any money. jetBlue can offer onward connections to the Caribbean and the rest of their network. For Virgin America, however, it is a strange choice. Operating out of Ft. Lauderdale is cheaper, and it also means they don’t really have to compete against American. After the heavy duty fare and bonus points wars in the Boston market earlier this year I’m sure that they’re pretty happy about that. But the smaller carriers are rarely too concerned about going for the jugular against incumbents. Is it possible that Virgin America sees the Ft. Lauderdale area as able to deliver better yields than Miami can? Lots of things have left downtown, including a lot of the wealthier residents, heading north along I-95. It seems that Virgin America is gambling that the business travel market is desperate to make a similar move.
The new schedule from jetBlue also has them removing their one-stop service via Austin, Texas. The good news there is that the San Francisco – Austin flights will now be at much better times for the locals on those routes.
Adding this much capacity to any market seems like revenue suicide for those involved; seeing it happen on transcons (more expensive to operate) in a market that has historically been very much focused on leisure travel is even stranger. Still, look for plenty of promotions and bonuses to be coming out in the weeks ahead as these new routes look to build up loads.
Posted by Seth on December 29, 2008 under Uncategorized |
There has been plenty of hype about the quality of the premium cabin in-flight product that Asian and Middle-East carriers are bringing to the skies. Singapore Air and Emirates have invested significantly in their A380 First Class experience. Singapore offers a double bed option for couples traveling together and Emirates offers a shower, among other benefits. But getting in to those seats is going to cost you a lot of cash; they cannot be booked using all those points you’ve been saving.
Singapore Air started limiting seats in their Suites by designating them a different booking class, and therefore making them ineligible for reward bookings, even for their own KrisFlyer members. Things got worse when they changed the rules on their new business class product, allowing redemption only using KrisFlyer points and then only at the unrestricted/double points level. Among other things this took the NYC and Los Angeles to Singapore non-stop flights away from partner award bookings, as they are configured in an all business class setup using the new product.
Emirates was actually letting folks still redeem for their premium cabin seats following the launch of their A380s earlier this year, but that well seems to have dried up, too. As of December 1, however, they apparently are no longer permitting any redemptions in either the business or first class cabins on those planes.
Qantas is in a similar position, blocking out their A380 first class cabin from reward redemption. A number of enterprising folks booked reward seats on flights that were operated by the 747-400 when the reward was booked, expecting that the aircraft would be swapped to the A380. As far as I know they have been successful in keeping their reward seats, but no new reward bookings are being taken on those flights.
Ten years ago the most luxurious way to travel was arguably the Concorde. Sure, the seats were small, as was the fuselage itself, but you were wined and dined and among the elite of air travel. And all the while it was bookable with reward points. I’m not saying that there were free seats out there every day for anyone who wanted one, but at least the option (or the dream) was there.
And then, just like that, poof. The option is gone.
Premium cabin long haul flights are still, by far, the best value for redeeming points, but it certainly is disheartening to see the greatest of the options disappearing. Hopefully the allure of the A380 will wear off and those seats will come back into reward inventory, but I’m not holding my breath.
Posted by Seth on August 2, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The BA subsidiary OpenSkies announced last week that they will launch their second route, New York – Amsterdam on October 15, 2008. And they’ll be doing so with 18 fewer seats on their planes. When they launched their service earlier this year they had Business, Premium Economy and Economy seating. They’ve decided that the demand for the Premium Economy product is high enough that they will be pulling out the regular Economy seats and replacing them with more Premium seats.
So apparently now the all premium cabin airline is back again, this time with two classes of service that are both premium, just one more premium than the other.
Also, this move means that OpenSkies will be operating from both of the main European hubs for the Air France/KLM conglomerate. I guess it is payback for Air France going after the London – Los Angeles route.
Posted by Seth on July 19, 2008 under TSA |
This includes not attempting to open any of the doors while the airplane is in flight. While this seems like a pretty reasonable and logical approach to air travel, a couple guys managed to mess it up this week. In both cases jailarilty ensued.
First up is a Brit on his way to frolic in sunny Cuba. Apparently he got drunk and decided that he was no longer interested in remaining on the plane. Sadly, he was still at 36,000 feet, meaning that he didn’t have much of a choice. The flight diverted to Bermuda where it had to remain overnight because the crew timed out. The flight continued on to Cuba the next day. (Link 1, Link 2)
Next on the blotter is another drunk (shocking!) on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles. This guy decided that he wanted to fly naked. That plan was derailed by the General Manager of the New England Revolution MLS team. The guy put his clothes back on but decided that the clothing requirement of the flight was just too much so he decided to depart as well, again at altitude. The flight diverted to Oklahoma City to drop the guy off with the FBI before continuing on to LA about an hour and a half late. Of interest in this particular case is that the flight in question included the MLS team on their way to a match in California. Well, that might be of interest to someone if they actually cared about MLS, I guess. On the plus side, it should be easy to get this guy to the appropriate trial location since Oklahoma City is the home of the US Marshall’s service Con Air transport service, delivering 175,000 “passengers” a year safely to their destination. Interestingly the TSA didn’t notice that this guy was a danger to our air travel network, presumably because his toothpaste tube was the appropriate size and that seems to be all that matters these days.
Finally, a note for anyone who is considering trying to open the door in-flight. You can’t. It actually just won’t work. The pressure differential between the cabin and the air outside actually presses the door into place, preventing it from “popping out.” So even if you make it to the door and aren’t subdued and zip-tied back into your seat, you’re not getting it open.
Posted by Seth on June 16, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Qantas has decided that they needed a bit of extra publicity around their launching of their A380 service later this year. And apparently selling seats at ridiculously cheap prices is their means for getting that publicity. Flights from Los Angeles or London to Sydney or Melbourne are on super sales, as low as GBP380 or USD470 for a round trip ticket. These fares are good for flights in November and December it seems.
It is VERY tempting, even though it would mean 15 hours in a 31″ of seat pitch. Plus I don’t know that I really have the time to spare. But it sure is tempting.
Posted by Seth on May 26, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Looks like a new Hawaii fare war has cropped up. This time the combatants are Continental and United, with each offering sub-$300 fares from the other’s hub(s) to Hawaii. This time around there are some nicer options than the last time.
On Continental the deal is for flights from Los Angeles to Honolulu. On United, however, the fare sale is available from Continental’s Newark and Houston hubs to both Honolulu and Lihue. For those who look to get away when heading to Hawaii, the availability of the fare to LIH is a great option. Plus the United routings are way longer than the Continental option, making the cost per mile somewhat reasonable.
Fares are available through to February ‘09, with some blackout dates here and there. I’m booked in for one, and may try for another to top off my bmi account with some UA flying before October rolls around and my count resets for next year.
Update (10:04pm EDT 5.26): Looks like CO has added Philly and Pittsburgh as options, so this is looking better and better.
Posted by Seth on May 19, 2008 under Uncategorized |
A squirrel hopped on to the high voltage power lines that feed Los Angeles International Airport this morning, disrupting the electrical supply to the airport and causing all the air conditioning to shut off. Three hours later the airport maintenance guys were only able to get two of the terminals back up and running. That shouldn’t be a problem on a day where record heat is expected, right??
And the article actually reports that, “The squirrel’s condition was not immediately available.”
Top notch writing. There’s another very badly written sentence in the story as well, but I won’t give them the benefit of reproducing the crap.
