Before I start today’s post – my thoughts & prayers are with the victims and those others affected by yesterday’s Spanair crash.
Just a small news item today. Yesterday ATW reported that Northwest received regulatory approval to put Delta’s code on its transpacific flights – another step towards the merger! Yay! The codeshare will begin August 30.
Seriously, though, this is a good step. I always liked the Delta-Northwest merger idea as their route maps complement each other nicely, especially in Asia. Northwest has always been very strong in this area and will certainly be a good asset for the merged airline.
I always like writing about new airline service for some reason. This morning AirTran announced that it will be starting service in two new cities, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Columbus, Ohio.
First we’ll start with Harrisburg (service starts November 20) as that city is getting less service – only one nonstop Orlando a day. A quick check of the AirTran website makes it look like the route will be operated with Boeing 717 equipment. I looked at the Consumer Air Fare Report for the fourth quarter of last year, and on average 139 passengers flew between the two cities each day, so I guess AirTran is hoping for some connections in Orlando ( as well as generating some new passengers, too, I guess).
Columbus will be getting more service than Harrisburg. Service starts on November 6. There well be two daily flights to the airline’s Atlanta hub. AirTran will also have one daily flight to Orlando, competing directly with Southwest, which has three nonstops a day. Finally, there will be one daily flight to Ft. Myers. I looked into that route on the same report I citied earlier, which reported only 180 passengers flying between the cities each day, so it will interesting to see how good AirTran is at generating traffic.
Or maybe I’m just reading too much into the report. Who knows? 
Well today I overslept and had a dentist appointment, hence the very late post. Sorry!
But lucky for me an interesting item came up on FlyerTalk this morning in the United forum when a United memo detailing more cuts in service was leaked. I’m going to say what many others have been saying – United has tried to brand itself as a premium carrier so these cuts don’t make sense! So here are a couple highlights.
First, the pre-arrival snack service on United’s PS (Premium Service) flights. Why? On these flights passengers are already payng much higher fares for first class, business class, and economy plus. Why not just raise fares?
Second, but more significantly, United will be cutting complimentary meals introducing buy-on-board meals for European flights out of Dulles for passengers booked in economy. This is what was rumored around a bit a couple weeks back when United started sending out surveys. At least they’re not cutting free meals for the Asian flights though. The memo does mentioned that “economy staffing breakpoints for all aircraft will be adjusted to current North America BOB staffing guidelines.” Less flight attendants is a benefit of buy-on-board that I didn’t think of before but it makes sense.
Oh well. We’ll see how it goes for them. Changes like this stress the importance of well-researched comparison shopping when booking flights.
This is a post that I have been planning to make for awhile, and the travel advisories issued by the airlines about tropical strom Fay reminded me to finally do it.
There are many times where passengers will have to change their travel plans for reasons beyond their control. Perhaps the biggest of these is weather. Oftentimes many passengers are affected. A hurricane can shut down most of the airports in Florida, and a big snowstorm can affect most of the Northeast.
There is one nice thing about having to change travel plans to weather – travelers often don’t have to pay. Usually when a traveler has to change a reservation, he or she has to pay the difference between the fare he/she paid and the fare for the new trip, and sometime an additional change free (as a high as $150 on soem carriers). Right now due to Fay, for example, many of the airlines are temporarily suspending those policies for travelers departing from or arriving at certain airports.
Anyway I have a few tips for anyone who is stuck in this situation… Continue reading ‘Rebooking With Weather (And Other Operations Issues)’
Apologies that this coming a bit later than usual…
- I posted a few weeks ago that JetBlue wants to start some new Cancun flights. Well now they’re officially announced.
- JetBlue will also start flying between Long Beach and San Francisco.
- After some confusion and anger over American’s checked baggage policy for active duty military members, the airline changed its policy.
- Meanwhile, other airlines (Southwest, Delta, United, AirTran, Continental) issued press releases (or blog posts) about their baggage policies for active military (some have which have changed). Bonus points for United for offering space available upgrades to Economy Plus.
- American is going to retire its MD-80s and acquire more 737-800s a bit faster.
- The slot drama continues.
- The DHL-UPS deal is starting to get messy.
This is one of my more opinionated posts…
In a move that wasn’t too surprising, American, British Airways, and Iberia (along with Finnair and Royal Jordanian) applied for anti-trust immunity. They even set up a website to get support for the move (hat tip to Lucky for the link). Right now I think I like the deal. American and British have always been close and I think cooperating a bit further in terms of operations and other areas (like frequent flier programs) can help them run more efficiently.
Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic, isn’t too pleased at all. I’m not surprised – Virgin and BA have been bickering since before I was born! Yesterday an article of his appeared in the Wall Street Journal. He claims if the application is approved, it would be bad for air travelers. Continue reading ‘Branson and Oneworld’
I decided to talk about something lighter today. I absolutely love talking about aircraft liveries sometimes. I think it comes from my interest in Microsoft Flight Simulator, especially the AI Traffic that flies around in the game that users can modify, which essentially allows a user to go spotting anywhere in the world! A lot of simmers try to make their traffic as detailed as possible, which means including a load of special aircraft liveries. Anyway, back on topic. I can talk about FS for way too long… I received a press release from oneworld in my inbox yesterday Continue reading ‘Alliance Liveries’
On Monday JetBlue announced that it would allow its customers to pay for online bookings through Western Union offices. At first I thought it was brand new idea. I know many airlines allow payment through PayPal, but according to this article from USA Today, Continental has been doing Western Union for awhile (I’m not sure about the other airlines.)
Anyway…
This little news item brings up a topic that has been around for awhile but I have not blogged about yet. Here’s an important quote from the JetBlue press release:
Customers can now visit any participating Western Union Agent location following their booking to send a full payment of their JetBlue reservation and Western Union service fee in cash.
This is just another way for airlines to avoid credit card fees. The aforementioned USA Today article mentioned how the credit card fee on a fare is usually somewhere between 2% and 3%. It doesn’t seem like a lot of money that goes to the credit card company, but it can add up.
In this new arrangement with JetBlue the Western Union fee is paid in addition to the base fare, so JetBlue gets to collect all of the money. This is why when PayPal was being introduced to some airlines, some special deals emerged to encourage travelers to use it all the time, like these old offers from Southwest and JetBlue.
I’ve never used Western Union myself, but it is always nice to have another payment option.
The Aviation New Media Meet-Up that I mentioned last week was posted. You can find it here.
Here’s a full list of guests:
Roger Bishop – IndyTransponder.com aviation blog.
Rod Rakic – myTransponder.com aviation social networking site
Harry Love – jetrecord.com aviation social networking site.
Pilot Will & Daveflys – Pilot’s Flight PodLog podcast and aPilotsStory.com.
Dan Webb – danwebb.us airline and aviation business blog.
Rob Mark – jetwhine.com aviation blog.
Ted Erickson – aviationbull.com aviation articles.
Stephen Force – airspeedonline.com podcast.
Bill Williams – Studentpilotcast.com podcast.
Todd Curtis – airsafe.com and the podcast.airsafe.org podcast.
Courtney Miller & Max Flight – AirplaneGeeks.com podcast.
You can find me at about one hour and four minutes in.
It definitely was a fun evening and it was nice to learn about the other blogs/podcasts/sites out there. Max and Court are planning to do another live meet-up again in a few months. Details will be posted here.
I read an interesting post over at Today in the Sky yesterday. WestJet is leasing a couple Dash-8s from Hawkair (the lease includes crews) to maintain service at Prince George Airport in British Columbia during most September. There is some runway construction going on and the 737s won’t be able to deal with a shorter runway.
Now it’s not unheard of for an airline to hire another carrier to perform some service for them. For example, if memory serves JetBlue hired ExpressJet to fly a few E-145s for them when their E-190s needed software upgrades.
Today in the Sky also references a newspaper article, which quotes their public relations manager:
The idea of not servicing Prince George, stopping for a whole month, it just didn’t seem right to us.
Sounds kind of refreshing, doesn’t it?
The blog also linked to the official WestJet press release on the issue, and I found something interesting. WestJet refers to its customers as guests, not passengers. Maybe I just didn’t notice it before. But it does sound nice, doesn’t it?
I’m glad WestJet is continuing service. Even if it stopped the route for a month, the airport would still have service from other airlines. I’m sure its customers are appreciative. But WestJet also turned this situation into a good public relations situation and used it as a way to tout its good service. Nicely done.
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