Posted by Seth on October 28, 2008 under Uncategorized | 
Delta and Northwest took a pretty big step forward in the integration of the carriers’ frequent flyer programs today, offering upgrades to elites traveling on the other carrier’s flights. The program works very similar to the current system that Northwest and Continental have, where being a Continental elite on a Northwest flight effectively give you the same status in their system as a Northwest elite of the same tier would have.
Delta has posted a few details about the new plan on their website. I can’t find anything authoritative on the NWA site yet. And the implementation seems to be a bit kludgey on the customer-facing systems, but it does seem that the systems are processing the upgrades correctly.
With Northwest elites getting upgrades on three carriers now it seems to be the best program in the USA, though it will very soon be subsumed into Delta’s SkyMiles program, which should do a pretty good job of knocking that claim down a couple rungs.
Posted by Seth on October 1, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Southwest has announced plans to start service to Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport (MSP) in March ‘09. The only route that has been announced so far is to Chicago Midway, but this is clearly an attack on Northwest and a pretty big bet on Delta scaling back MSP service in the coming months after the Delta/Northwest merger closes.
Considering the success Southwest has had in Denver going after United and Frontier, I am going to bet on them succeeding rather well on this bet. The biggest risk they face is Northwest/Delta getting into a pricing war and trying to undercut the fares and beat them out of the market. Prior to the merger Northwest would have never let it happen without a serious fight. But with Delta taking over this will just be a good excuse to show “lower demand for flights” and make “appropriate adjustments in the service frequencies” in Minneapolis.
This will be great for passengers there as long as Southwest ramps up service commensurate with demand, which I think they will do. They certainly have the fleet and route network available to do so.
Posted by Seth on July 22, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Love it or hate it, overbooking of flights is a staple of the airline revenue management scheme. And when the airline bets wrong and has too many folks for their flight, someone isn’t going to actually fly on their preferred flight. If there are no volunteers the rules for compensation are actually pretty clear, as they are defined by the federal government (and recently the values all increased).
But when the airline goes looking for volunteers the rules are rather flexible. The airline can offer anything they want, and if they get a taker, that’s what the price is. For some folks it might be a meal voucher and an upgrade on the next flight out. For others, a “free” ticket. Still others go for a travel voucher as their preferred compensation (this is the only one I’ll take, for many reasons). Northwest has recently taken the bump compensation process to another level, soliciting bids from passengers for how much it would take for them to not fly. Passengers are reporting that they are being prompted during the check-in process if they are interested in a bump and how much it would cost for them to fly at a later time. And instead of going with the first volunteers the airline can go with the cheapest option. The reverse auction style approach is likely to save the carrier a few dollars over time, and every little bit helps these days. It also means that it’ll be harder to fund travel habits with the “bump” game.
As an aside, my best sequence of bumps was one ticket that got me to Alaska, Ireland and half-way to India on a sequence of consecutive bumps. Very nice for us.
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 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.
Posted by Seth on July 9, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Wow, is it depressing to keep reading about the cuts that are being made…
US Air is removing the in-flight entertainment systems from almost all their planes. Only the planes that cross oceans will keep them. Apparently no one is buying the headphones anymore (shocking!), likely in large part because they don’t actually show movies on the system anyway. They figure to save a lot of money on fuel with the cuts by removing the weight from their planes. At this point the only thing they have left to remove from their planes are the passengers, who may be leaving of their own volition at this point as US Air continues the race to the bottom. In a strange coincidence the Wall Street Journal actually lauds US Air in a column this week for their stellar 65% on-time performance. The sad thing is that 65% is actually second best of the airlines.
Also in the news is that Northwest is moving to align their WorldPerks program with their soon to be buyer, Delta. In this case it means more fees for passengers redeeming miles for tickets ($25-100) and checking a first bag ($15). Some exemptions on some of the new fees for the folks who fly the most, but it does reduce the value of the frequent flier program and increase the overall cost of travel for many folks.
Bad news all around.
Posted by Seth on June 19, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The idea of Continental teaming up with United and the rest of the Star Alliance collection of airlines has been talked about off and on for the past couple years. When Continental walked away from the merger opportunity with United things got even more interesting, as there were some very high level conversations between Continental and the OneWorld alliance as well. After reviewing their options Continental has chosen to move from the SkyTeam alliance to the Star Alliance.
This is still contingent on a number of contractual issues, not the least of which is actually getting out of all the direct agreements with all their SkyTeam partners, in terms of code-share flights, lounge access and various other arrangements. Their contracts require a minimum of 9 months following the completion of the DL/NW merger before it can really go through, so it will probably be late 2009 or more likely 1/1/2010 before this actually goes in to effect.
I generally like the partner options for Star Alliance better than those for SkyTeam. And Star has much more complete coverage of some key areas, including Oceania and SE Asia. I’m very much looking forward to some new redemption options in the coming years.
Cue the rampant speculation of benefits, partner earnings, etc.
Posted by Seth on June 12, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Continental Airlines announced a couple weeks ago that they intended to cut about 11% of their capacity this September versus fall ’07. Today the specific routes and airports were announced. While many of them make sense as they are serving smaller cities that probably cannot support the service at the higher fare levels necessary, there are a few surprises.
Houston George Bush Intercontinental:
- Cali, Colombia
- Chatanooga, Tenn.
- Guayaquil, Ecuador
- Hartford, Conn.
- Monclova, Mexico
- Montgomery, Ala.
- Oakland, Calif.
- Palm Springs, Calif.
- Reno, Nevada
- Sarasota, Fla.
- Tallahassee, Fla.
- Washington – Dulles
Newark Liberty:
- Albuquerque, N.M.
- Cologne, Germany
- Santiago, Dominican Republic
- Sarasota, Fla.
- Salt Lake City, Utah
- San Jose, Calif.
- Tucson, Ariz.
Cleveland Hopkins: Austin, Texas
- Birmingham, Ala.
- Charleston, S.C.
- Charleston, W. Va.
- Cincinnati, Ohio
- Des Moines, Iowa
- Detroit, Mich.
- Green Bay, Wis.
- Greensboro, N.C.
- Lexington, Ky.
- Little Rock, Ark.
- Memphis, Tenn.
- Nashville, Tenn.
- Norfolk, Va.
- Oklahoma City, Okla.
- Omaha, Neb.
- Ottawa, Canada
- San Antonio, Texas
- San Diego, Calif.
- Sarasota, Fla.
- Savannah, Ga.
- Toledo, Ohio
- Tulsa, Okla.
- Washington-Dulles.
Guam A.B. Won Pat:
- Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia.
As a result of the discontinued service, the following stations will close:
- Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia
- Cali, Colombia
- Cologne, Germany
- Santiago, Dominican Republic
- Guayaquil, Ecuador
- Monclova, Mexico
- Oakland, Calif.
- Palm Springs, Calif.
- Chattanooga, Tenn.
- Reno, Nev.
- Green Bay, Wis.
- Sarasota, Fla.
- Tallahassee, Fla.
- Toledo, Ohio
- Montgomery, Ala.
Cleveland will bear the brunt of the cuts, though Newark and Houston aren’t getting off too lightly. Of the most concern for Cleveland is the cutting of flights to Detroit and Memphis, reducing the connectivity options for getting to two of NorthWest’s hubs and connecting onwards on reward flights. Of course, NW appears to be keeping their flights for now, but who knows.
I’ve only flown on one of these routes (Newark-Cologne) and that one has suffered for a while now in terms of loads, and I only paid $268 r/t for my ticket, so I can imagine that they aren’t making much money there. Sad to see some of these go, but I’m not really all that broken up by it; I don’t lose much personally and I’d rather the airline stay in business – I’ve got a lot of miles to burn!
Posted by Seth on May 20, 2008 under Uncategorized |
I’m actually not sure that there was a delayed flight, but considering that the flight attendant and pilot were both in jail instead of at the airport, I think the odds are pretty good. Bad things to have written about you:
Just as the helicopter joined the search, police found Bradford hiding behind a shed wearing nothing but a wristwatch and flip-flops, the documents state.
At least they weren’t trying to crash the plane by setting it on fire.
Posted by Seth on May 16, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Though chances are that he won’t have much chance to hate it going forward. The emergency landing of a plane last week in North Dakota was originally blamed on an electrical fire in the lavatory. Now news has come out that a flight attendant on the flight has now been charged in federal court with setting a fire in the bathroom, forcing the landing. Apparently he was upset at the airline for assigning that route to him.
I’ve often not wanted to go to a particular client on a given day, but I never tried to burn down the building to get out of it. I foresee some time in a small room for this guy to consider his actions.
