Monthly Archive for September, 2008Page 3 of 3

Venezuela Wants to Reduce Flights

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 12, 2008
in Policy
. 0 Comments

Uh-oh.

Reuters reports that Venezuela is ordering a reduction in flights to the country by US airlines. Why? Well earlier this week, the TSA issued a travel advisory (found via Sky Talk), saying how they’re unsure about the quality of security at Venezeulan airports, and that TSA agents have not been allowed to investigate. So this is Venezuela’s way of responding. If this order remains, American, Continental, and Delta will be affected.

This is certainly an awkward situation for the United States government. Should they restrict flights into the US by airlines from Venezuela as a way to respond in kind? Also, how should it be decided which flights by the US carriers should be cut?

This will be interesting to watch. As Cranky said earlier this week, aviation policy is important and should be considered in this year’s election.

Southwest on Kayak…Sort of?

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 11, 2008
in Southwest
. 0 Comments

Sometimes I just like playing around with Kayak.com (which does prove my nerdiness). It is a great website, though.

Anyway I found something interesting during my my travels through the site the other day – Southwest is kind of on Kayak!

Southwest now appears in the list of airlines, but with no fare.

The same goes for individual results. Kayak will present Southwest itinerary options, but users have to click on a link to Southwest’s website to see the price.

The only annoying thing is that after one clicks the link to head over to Southwest, he/she has to enter in the dates of travel, etc. all over again. I believe the other airlines automatically detect Southwest’s settings.

Either way this is certainly an interesting change, and I wonder how long it has been going on. It certainly does make comparison shopping a bit easier though, at least in terms of schedule.

Marriott MegaMiles

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 10, 2008
in Random
. 0 Comments

I know I usually don’t write about hotels – but Marriott has just announced a new promotion called MegaMiles. For those of you unfamiliar with the Marriott Rewards program, you can choose to earn Marriott points or frequent flyer miles with your stays. According to the press release, if you earn miles on certain airlines, you can earn double miles for the rest of the year.

Considering that with some airline programs you can already earn 2 points per dollar spent on a stay (if it’s on one of Marriotts more upscale chains), the potential to earn 4 points per dollar seems pretty good to me.

Travelers have to register, and the earning period goes from October 1 to December 31. The promotion only  kicks in after the second stay, but for some road warriors that probably won’t be an issue. You can see all the details here.

Maybe this is the response to the new SPG Flights program?

Worcester Gets Air Service Back…Again

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 9, 2008
in Random
. 0 Comments

Poor Worcester. They’ve been quite unlucky the past few years in terms air service to the point where they’ve had none for awhile. Allegiant tried service to Orlando for awhile, but dropped out. Boston (BOS), Hartford (BDL), Providence (PVD) handle most of the southern New England tafffic at this point.

But, now Direct Air is planning to offer flihgts, as Today in the Sky reports. The airline will use Virgin America A320s. Virgin crews will be operating the flights. Right now the schedule seems to be three flights a week to Orlando Sanford and three a week to Punta Gorda (which is being marketed as Ft. Myers).

My question is, why?

Southwest operates daily flights from Hartford and Providence to Orlando, and Delta, AirTran (seasonally), and JetBlue have it covered out of Boston. Both Boston and Hartford have direct service to Ft. Myers (some of it season), and there’s plenty of connecting service too.

I wonder if Virgin America’s inflight entertainment is going to be used on the flights, and if so, if any type of rebranding will occur, or if it will just be the regular Virgin America product.

Personally, it would have to take a really great fare for me to book a ticket like this. Three flights a week isn’t the most flexible, and I would probably stick with one of the carriers in the market. I always think in these situations, “What if something goes wrong?” With three flights a week and two aircraft, Direct Air has very limited options when there are delays to to weather, maintenence, etc. On the other airlines it’s much easier to get re-routed.

Upgrade: Travel Better has a post on this as well.

Frontier’s August Results

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 8, 2008
in Frontier
. 0 Comments

Frontier has been the subject of much speculation the part couple of years for good reason. Southwests rapid growth in Frontier’s main market, Denver was a good reason for concern. Anyway, here’s a graph of Frontier’s ASMs (available seat miles) and RPMs (revenue passenger miles) for the past few Augusts. It’s for the whole Frontier system, but most of the airline’s routes are out of Denver anyway.

For reference, Southwest entered Denver in January 2006. So these results aren’t exactly horrible for Frontier when one considers how much Southwest has ramped up. Frontier certainly has its share of problems, but with the recent financing offers it has received, I’m becoming more optimistic.

Saturday Links #9

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 6, 2008
in Saturday Links
. 0 Comments
  1. Continental is adding a first bag fee of $15 for some flights. The airline is also eliminating the 500-mile minimum earned miles on flights, just like United. Some premimium members will also earn less bonus miles. Lucky has a good post on it.
  2. From Today in the Sky: US Airways is cutting PIT even more, this time by eliminating Florida nonstops.
  3. Also from Today in the Sky: GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin will be on the campaign trail with a JetBlue E-190.
  4. The Middle Seat terminal follows the progress of the investigation into the Spanair crash. The flaps may not have been extended on takeoff.
  5. The Boeing machinists are on strike. Not good.
  6. United has changed its decision to remove free meals from coach on its Europe flights from Dulles. Cranky wonders if Star Alliance partner Lufthansa had anything to do with it.
  7. David Armstrong has two interesting pieces about things Barack Obama and John McCain can say about aviation policy.

WestJet’s Strong Results

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 5, 2008
in Air Canada and WestJet
. 0 Comments

The beginning of the month is a great time to look at data. Many of the airlines release their montly traffic results and he DOT releases its montly report on delays, baggage, and complaints.

Yesterday, both WestJet and Air Canada released their traffic reports for August, and both had strong results, as reported by Reuters. Air Canada reported an 85.4% load factor for mainline service in August, up one point from the same month last year. Jazz’s (Air Canada’s regional carrier) load factor went down 4.1 points from 77.3% to 73.2%. Systemwide load factor was up 0.6 points to 84.4%. WestJet’s load factor was good as well. Load factor was up by 0.4 points from 88.0% to 88.4%.

But there’s one important difference. In terms of ASMs, Air Canada cut mainline service by 2% and Jazz service by 4.1%, for a sytemwide 2.2%  decrease. WestJet, on the other hand, greatly increased capacity. Compared to August 2007, ASMs had increased by 21.9%!

For the year, WestJet’s load factor was down 0.6 points compared to the same period last year, but capacity has increased 20.3%. To increase capacity that much and have traffic grow with it that nicely in this environment is incredible, in my opinion.

We will have to see if WestJet can continue to grow, but right now it seems to be in the cards. From a recent article in Airline Business:

No order cancellations. No layoffs. In fact, says Durfy, “we plan no capacity cuts”. This sounds like the defiance of someone who is either oblivious or doesn’t care. WestJet’s capacity growth, measured in available seat miles, will be 16% this year, compared to 19% last year and a projected 8% next year. By 2010 it will be back up to 10-11%. “We plan an average annual growth of around 10%,” says Durfy. “The actual number each year depends on delivery dates.”

I look forward to watching WestJet’s moves in the future, and it will be interesting to see how their new partnership with Southwest will affect their traffic.

Midwest’s Deal With Republic

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 4, 2008
in Midwest and Republic
. 1 Comment

Yesterday, Midwest announced a deal with Republic airlines. Naturally, each company issued a press release. I happened to read Republic’s first. It announced that twelve of its E-170 aircraft would be head over to Midwest as Midwest Connect (I’m guessing these will be some of the aircraft Republic was operating for Frontier but I’m not positive). The aircraft could be leased by Midwest under their own operating certificate if they wished. The press release also stated that Midwest will pay for fuel and “will purchase all capacity at predetermined rates and will directly pay or reimburse Republic for industry standard pass-through costs.” That’s a really good deal, especially when it is considered that some regional airlines fly routes at their own risk. In addition Republic is providing an immediate $15 million loan to Midwest with an additional $10 million possible in the future. Overall, this is a great deal for Republic, I think.

After reading that press release, I was fairly opitmistic about Midwest. I thought that these additional aircraft could be used to grow the airline’s route network after it cut so many cities, primarily due to dumping the MD-80 fleet. (Cranky has a good post on that, by the way.)

But the Midwest press release goes into so much more detail. The airline has renogiated its 717 leases and is returning 16 of them to Boeing, leaving nine behind. The twelve E170s will be taking their place. Eventually Midwest plans to operate those aircraft under their own operating certificate.

In terms of seats, this move isn’t a huge change in capacity. Right now Midwest has 25 717s configured with 88 seats, a total of 2,200. It is reconfiguring the other 717s to have 99 seats, and the E170s have 76 seats, for a total of 2,100. But either way, there is a net loss of four aircraft. This isn’t counting the CRJs, of course. As far as I know, the number of those aircraft will not change.

Also, Midwest is raising its second bag fee from $20 to $25 and introducing a first bag fee of $15. I’m not sure how well that will work. My father had to fly three legs on E-Jets last week and was impressed by the number of gate checks of carry-ons that couldn’t fit in the overhead bins. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same on Midwest, but we’ll have to see.

It is sad that Midwest has had to cut so much recently. Personally I still think it should have accepted AirTran’s deal.

On a side note this is the second time Republic has offered financing recently. I wonder what else is up the company’s sleeve, if anything.

Edit: Brett Snyder also posted on this topic on his Cranky Flier and BNET blog. He suggests that the E170s could eventually fly as Delta connection once Northwest and Delta merge, which is something I wish I would have thought of before writing my post! Take a look here and here.

Southwest Goes Cashless

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 3, 2008
in Southwest
. 0 Comments

Southwest announced yesterday that they will be introducing the “cashless cabin” on September ninth. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking news as other airlines have taken this route, but they did so before I started this blog as far as I know.

Right now passengers use cash to purchase things like alcoholic beverages on Southwest. This process is slowed many times as the flight attendants often have to make change, and sometimes even ask passengers for help with making change, from what I’ve heard at FlyerTalk. So now each flight attendant will walk around with a machine that scans debit and credit cards. This FlyerTalk post says that receipts won’t have to be printed out for smaller purchases, which should help speed up the process.

Also, those who have the Southwest credit card will receive double credits on the drink purchases. Since drink purchases are fairly small they won’t earn a huge amount of points, but it’s something.

FlyerTalk also reports that if a customer wishes to pay in cash, he or she can buy a drink coupon book at the ticket counter.

Speaking of cash – one question that has come up in the past with other airlines going cashless is if it is legal. After all, dollars say on them that they are “legal tender for all debts, public and private.” The US Treasury has the answer for us:

There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing this rolled out!

The Future of Alitalia

Published
by
Dan Webb
on September 2, 2008
in Alitalia
. 1 Comment

Last week Alitalia (finally?) went into bankruptcy. Both Air France-KLM and Lufthansa are possible new investors, according to ATW Online. I certainly think is the best route and it is one that has worked in the past. When Swiss was doing poorly it was acquired by Lufthansa, who operates Swiss as an independent carrier but has made it much more successful. I did find one interesting part of the article:

According to Agence France Presse, the new legislation allows bankrupt companies to speed up the selling of shares and employee reductions while relaxing antitrust rules, which would allow Air One to be combined into the new streamlined carrier.

That’s an option I had not seen in the past. The reason I find it interesting is that Air One has a strong partnership with Lufthansa – strong enough to put the Lufthansa logo on some planes. They are also a member of Lufthansa’s Miles & More frequent flyer program. I wonder if this angle makes Lufthansa more likely or less likely to be involved in a new Alitalia.

On a side note, this news item made me think of the current debate about giving antitrust immunity to American, British Airlines, and other Oneworld airlines antitrust immunity. If anything, the reorganization of Alitalia should convince regulators to approve their application. If either Lufthansa or Air France-KLM acquires Alitalia, it gives that airline (and its alliance) some more transatlantic power. If I recall correctly, Star (Lufthansa) and SkyTeam (Air France-KLM) already have antitrust immunity. Not giving it to Oneworld isn’t the right move, I think.

Edit: I neglected to mention that Alitalia is currently a member of SkyTeam.