The Wandering Aramean

More benefits reinstated

2008-11-20T08:28:00.001-05:00

US Air has actually made a move that doesn’t suck for its frequent fliers. They’ve reinstated bonus miles for elite passengers and also put back 500-mile minimums on short flights for their elites. Much like United they will be going back and issuing these credits retroactively to their loyal members so as to make it appear as if the benefit never was cancelled.

I’m glad to see that the airlines are occasionally acting rationally, even if it does take losing a ton of business in the process, as US Air seems to have done. It will be very interesting to see if this is enough for many of the defectors to return to the program.

Southwest bids on LaGuardia

2008-11-19T10:53:00.001-05:00

Southwest seems to be the only domestic carrier having any fun these days. Between their new code-share agreements, expansion into Minneapolis and general profitability (though not so much last quarter), they appear to be avoiding the difficulties that other carriers have been experiencing of late. Yes, they are cutting capacity overall, but they seem to be doing so with much more surgical precision than other carriers who are leaving markets completely and otherwise flailing about.

And now, Southwest has gone and made a bid to serve NYC’s LaGuardia airport. They’re bidding on the 7 slot pairs that ATA still owns in their bankrupt state. They are pretty much the only asset ATA still has and they are a huge asset. Southwest wants them, and they have the resources to bid on them, so things look pretty positive for their chances. It is not a done deal yet – the bids still need to be reviewed and a decision made by the bankruptcy judge – but things look pretty good on that front.

Where will Southwest fly with their 7 flights/day? It is hard to know for certain, though Chicago-Midway seems likely as one destination. And there will certainly be struggles for Southwest to operate in the LaGuardia structure, with the frequent delays, troubles in bad weather and slot details all affecting their operations. But 7 flights is certainly enough to have a significant impact on the other carriers in NYC, and that is a good thing for passengers. It also means that I might have the opportunity to consider Southwest now for some flights, which would be a big change for me.

Being met at the airport

2008-11-19T09:57:00.000-05:00

I have to admit that one of the little luxuries I will treat myself to on occasion is to have a car waiting for me at the airport upon arrival. Especially in a foreign country where negotiating the taxi ranks and negotiating a fare is traditional I just don’t want to have to deal with that sort of situation, especially after a long flight. Plus, there is really something quite wonderful about showing up and having someone waiting there with your name on a sign, even if it is a driver that you’ve paid to do that.

In Bangkok the cold towels and water bottles in the car were a very nice touch. In India I still fondly remember my mother-in-law’s company driver knowing my name and handing me a note with a phone number to call for further instructions. Slightly surreal and very entertaining in retrospect. In Vietnam it was a shoddy van that barely had benches inside, much less seat belts or a decent suspension. I paid $2 extra for that “luxury” but it meant not fighting the taxi driver on the fare or having to explain directions and that was well worth my money.

And then there is the joy of actually being met by someone who you know at the airport. The opening and closing scenes of Love Actually capture the emotion rather well, and I have fond memories of similar events in my life.

But I’ve never gone to an airport to welcome random strangers to their destination. These folks did.

They actually went to the airport with signs, gifts, flowers and balloons and “welcomed home” a bunch of random strangers. They leveraged the NYC black car drivers to get names and then staged impromptu welcome parties for complete strangers. Sure, it is a little creepy to have a group of 20 random strangers welcome you home, especially in NYC, but it also seems like a much better welcome than a grumpy driver. And it makes for a pretty entertaining story to share.

Nifty travel fact from today in history

2008-11-18T15:03:00.001-05:00

One hundred twenty five years ago today, November 18, 1883, the United States finally decided to adopt a single source for telling time – Railroad Time. Wired has a fantastic article about it, with some great bits of history mixed in to the overall development of a coordinated time schedule.

Railroad timetables used about a hundred different standards. A single railroad that traveled east to west would use multiple noons: The Union Pacific, for example, had six different settings in what are today the Central and Mountain zones. The Union Station that served multiple railroads in a big city might have five or six different clocks, one for each railroad in the station, each running on is own time.

It took a full 35 years for the United States government to catch up with the industry and declare an official Standard Time for the country. In the interim the country simply followed the lead of the dominant industry of the time, the railroads.

TSA wasting passenger time for no results

2008-11-18T11:20:00.002-05:00

Hardly a surprise, really, as I don’t think anyone with critical thinking skills expected that a bunch of TSA employees could suddenly become behavior detection specialists overnight, but now there are some real statistics proving the point.

Over the past 16 months the TSA’s SPOT program has led to 160,000 additional screenings (that’s ~350/day for a staff of ~2,500 people). Those screenings have led to a whopping 1,266 people actually being arrested, mostly for drug possession or having a fake ID. That’s a conversion rate of fewer than 1%. Even worse than that, in my mind, is that about 10% of the people confronted under this program (~15,000) faced questioning by the police and still only 10% of those actually were arrested.

The TSA is doing their best to spin the results, reminding us that some people were actually doing illegal things. They seem to forget, however, that their mission is about protecting the airspace from terrorists, not from kids with fake IDs or drug dealers.

TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said the program has been "incredibly effective" at catching criminals at airports. "It definitely gets at things that other layers of security might miss," Howe said.

The other great thing that the TSA continues to tout is that possession of a fake ID is a terrorist act. They take pride in the fact that they are catching all these fake IDs since ID = security in their minds and since anyone with a fake ID must be out scouting an airport for a possible attack. Better let all those bars in college towns know that they are targets and that they need to up their security. What a joke.

There is no real reason to believe that the ~1% number is statistically any different than if the TSA just randomly picking a group of 160,000 passengers and subjecting them to an invasive and over-reaching search. But we can continue to spend money on it and grow the program because we haven't had any more attacks on the airspace so it must be working.

This program is simply the worst functioning and most misguided bit in an organization bent on suppressing privacy rights while returning zero value in actual security. So sad.

Backing off of (some) unpopular changes

2008-11-17T20:52:00.002-05:00

Many airlines have made some very unpopular decisions over the past few months. From selling bottled water in their lounges to charging elites for premium seats, the changes are enough to get many frequent fliers up in arms, or at least threatening to do so if any of the other programs out there weren’t similarly bad. It also seems in some ways that these changes are being set up as low-hanging fruit for the vocal frequent travelers to attack, distracting from substantive reductions in benefits that really do matter.

Delta decided that they wanted to adopt Northwest’s “Coach Choice” program, where some of the better seats were held back to be sold to any customer rather than being given to elites for free. That didn’t go over so well, so they backed off (effective 11.18; I just got the email alert). But they haven’t backed off from their three-tier reward structure, huge additional fees for itineraries that originate outside of North America, partner ticketing fees, getting rid of the Delta Shuttle fleet configuration and many other things that have substantively detract from the value of the program.

US Air has apparently decided not to sell bottled water any more (as reported yesterday), but just about everything else they’ve done to their airline has been another step in the rapid drive to the absolute bottom. They haven’t quite made it there yet, but removing in-flight entertainment systems, cutting bonus miles for elites and charging for drinks on the planes are all pretty ridiculous moves.

Continental announced on the same day that they would be removing the 500-mile minimum earned by folks flying on short flights that they would also be increasing the change fees on reward tickets from $35 to $150 in many cases, and that only their top tier elites would be exempt from such fees. The 500-mile minimum affects far fewer passengers, but they apparently drew enough pressure on that decision that they backed down, agreeing to reinstate the 500-mile minimum earning for folks who are already elite.

What is the common theme in all of these changes? The airlines are throwing out a bunch of bad things and then backing off on one or two less significant ones. They get to go on about how they are “listening to their best customers” and changing their minds because of the feedback. That’s actually exactly what tonight’s email from Delta said:

…[W]e've received substantial feedback from Medallion members like you, and your dissatisfaction was crystal clear …

Retaining your long-term loyalty is of paramount importance to us, and we're not afraid to change course when we need to.

Yeah. So crystal clear that they’re willing to forego a tiny bit of incremental revenue to distract their customers from the emaciation of the program in other areas. Awesome. Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad that there are some small give backs happening. But things still aren’t all rosy for the frequent flier. It is harder and harder to find value in the programs, but I’m still trying and mostly finding it, at least thus far.

Getting paid to fly, part 2

2008-11-17T08:26:00.000-05:00

There is a drug company that has a drug that has been approved for treating a number of sleep disorders, including narcolepsy and helping folks stay awake working the graveyard shift. So now that company wants to use the same drug to “treat” jetlag. I say put the word treat in quotes because it really isn’t a medical condition, much like “erectile dysfunction” but the drug companies don’t really care about things like that as long as they get to sell their wares.

In order to be able to market the drug as effective against jetlag the company has to test it against jet lag. And that means human trials against people who actually are suffering from jetlag at that moment in time. To do so in a controlled manner they’ve set up a clinical trial that involves a sleep test in the United States followed by a flight to Europe to induce jet lag and more tests over a three day period in France.

So participants in the study get to fly in a private jet from New York to France (technically the plane lands in Switzerland but the Basel airport has exits on both sides of the border) and then undergo sleep testing in their facility there. The flights and everything associated with the stay in France are free, though apparently the food leaves something to be desired. And it pays $2500 for a few days’ efforts. Not a bad gig. I’ve enrolled in the study and am scheduled to fly in a couple weeks, assuming I pass the first sleep test in the NYC facilities. Apparently they’ve been having trouble getting enough people who can pass the initial sleep test in NYC (only something like 25% of folks have made it to the flight stage). I’m hopeful I make the cut.

If you want more info, check out their site here or read some of the discussion about the program here. Oh, and no frequent flier miles since it is a private jet and you don’t actually get to do anything but look out the window in France. Plus no alcohol or caffeine during the testing period. So clearly some drawbacks. But it makes for an interesting story.

Reasonable justification for a delay

2008-11-16T12:07:00.004-05:00

And a slightly scary one, too.

A US Express turboprop ~~had its nose gear collapse while it was on the runway~~ landed with no nose gear in Philadelphia this morning. I’m really not sure what else is going on, but I woke up on final approach and we were on a different approach path than normal. My seat mate mentioned that one runway was closed and then I saw this out the window. Yikes! Sorry that the pictures suck a bit, but its the best I could do under the circumstances.

Looks like the nose gear never deployed so the plane landed without it this morning. That certainly explains the crazy flight path map.

Odds and ends

2008-11-16T09:47:00.001-05:00

I’m off on another, albeit much more reasonable, trip this weekend just for the miles, heading out to Sacramento for about an hour tonight and turning around to head straight back home. This trip will be enough to qualify me for elite status for next year, so that’s nice, but it doesn’t really have the same excitement as last week’s 72 hour, 9,600 mile ordeal, so not much useful in writing about on that front. But there were some interesting happenings on the ground through the week that I thought I’d mention here.

First, on the refreshment front, announcements from Delta and US Air. Delta has decided to eliminate ginger ale, tomato juice and apple juice from their in flight beverage offerings. Apparently there are cost savings to be had in making such a change, though they must be on the logistics side of things as odds are they will be stocking just as many cans of soda on flights going forward so the total weight is the same. Perhaps this is a move to consolidate all beverages to being supplied by Coca Cola (Seagram’s Ginger Ale is a Pepsi product) but I really have no idea. US Air, continuing their efforts to charge for just about everything they can, has decided that bottled water in their lounges will now cost money as well. There is still free water available, so it isn’t completely the end of the world, but it is an interesting move nonetheless.

Next up, some bad news out of Washington, DC. Passengers yet again find themselves getting screwed by the federal government thanks to an impressive lobbying effort by the airline industry. There was some movement towards defining a set of standards under which passengers would receive benefits due to flight delays and other irregularities in their trips. This effort was stymied by a most ridiculous problem – the inability of those negotiating to agree on what a “long” delay meant. I certainly have my ideas on what the threshold could be set at but that’s not actually the point of such a rule. Pick a number. Any number. And give the passengers SOMETHING. Go back later and adjust the number if necessary. And in case anyone is curious what my number would be, I’d take the massive dataset that the Bureau of Transportation Statistics has, find the average performance of all domestic flights over the past 12 months and then got out 1, 2 and 3 standard deviations on the delayed end of things to set the thresholds for levels of accommodation. At least I’d start there and see what the numbers were. It can’t be too much worse a plan than what anyone else has, and that’s about all I remember how to calculate from a stats class 12 years ago.

Some good news for passengers, too, with the announcement that US-bound passengers will now clear all immigration and customs checks in either Dublin or Shannon prior to departing for the USA. Such pre-clearance is already the norm for many airports in Canada as well as the Bahamas and Aruba. For at least the past 8 years passengers traveling from Ireland the the USA were able to clear immigration in Ireland but still had to pass through Customs inspection in the USA. For the vast majority of passengers this consists of walking past the Customs officials and saying hi, resulting in the passengers being left outside the terminal at their arrival airport. For passengers connecting onwards this meant re-checking any bags that were checked and, more annoyingly, re-clearing security with the TSA. Now passengers will arrive into a gate just like any other flight and if they are connecting onward to another flight they’ll be able to just head to the next gate. Actually, the pre-clearance was incredibly helpful in the case of a lost passport as it allowed us to get past the airline agents and know before setting out on a flight back to New York if we’d both actually be admitted upon arrival (and we were).

Finally, it is really, really cold in seat 14F on Continental’s 737-300. Sure, I’ve got virtually unlimited legroom thanks to no seat in front of me, but my toes are going numb thanks to the cold of the window exit plug I’m sitting next to. I’m putting on extra socks in hopes of warming them up. And this is the first flight in a long time that I haven’t been annoyed by the heat that my laptop gives off.

So there you have it….some odds and ends, some good and some bad.

Easing the reward ticket search

2008-11-15T19:46:00.002-05:00

Earning all the miles is just the first part of the process in fulfilling the great dream of free air travel. Finding a flight that the airline will actually let you use the points on is a whole different mess, one that includes highly guarded algorithms and pricing structures in the revenue management offices of airlines the world over. There are services and companies that can (supposedly) help find such awards and now there is another player in the market: Yapata.com.

Yapta started off as a service that monitored fares and would send you an email if the fare on your particular flight went down. Since some airlines will give you a credit for such an event it was a pretty nice service to have available. Starting Tuesday Yapta will be adding notifications for reward seats to their program, alerting customers of such availability to help ease the booking process. They are launching the service with access to the inventory of five airlines, Alaska, Continental, Delta, United and US Airways and details for both reward tickets and upgrades.

This is a great service, assuming that it works. I’m particularly intrigued by the inclusion of Continental in the group of airlines that Yapta will have access to as Continental has historically exercised incredibly tight control over access to their reward inventory availability. Up until now there has not been access to the inventory via any public GDS system that I know of, and those GDSes are what this type of system is generally based on.

One limitation of this service is that it does not appear that it will be able to leverage the additional reward inventory that airlines make available to their most frequent fliers, those holding elite status in the programs.

The program also does not search the partners of the airlines that are covered. Each of the airlines in question has partners around the globe that can also be used to piece together a reward ticket. And foreign partners often seem to have more reward inventory available than their US counterparts, at least in my searches. This service will likely be more useful for domestic travel than international ones, while the best value from mileage redemption remains in long-haul, premium cabin international travel.

There is an interesting quote from one of the airlines in the article:

“The technology that Yapta brings to the table, whether award tracker or flight tracker, really provides what we view as purposeful innovation,” said Mark Guerette, director of e-commerce with Alaska Airlines. “It helps the customer look for the proverbial needle in the haystack.”

I agree that it is useful information. Clearly it is of value to the passengers. And yet the airlines continue to make it ridiculously difficult to find the seats. If they really think it is such a good idea why don’t they offer it to their customers directly? If they really wanted to encourage loyalty and help the customers in that way they could.

I also find it interesting that the idea of “loyalty” that Yapta’s CEO seems to think is important is spending on a credit card:

Alerting travelers to fresh award inventory, he added, can both help airlines alleviate some of their liability for unredeemed awards and encourage loyalty among travelers.“You are more likely to continue to use your airline credit card to earn more miles,” he said, if you’re able to redeem those miles.

That’s not a bad thing for the airlines, and they sell those points to the credit card companies in transactions valued in hundreds of millions of dollars. But that isn’t really the loyalty that the airlines want. They want people paying to fly.

I’m also completely confused by the reporting of this by the NYTimes.com article that I linked to above. They provide hyperlinks to some of the websites mentioned but not others, to some of the airlines but not others and sometimes link to their internal coverage and other times to third party sites. Very strange.

JetBlue pilots looking at union representation

2008-11-12T21:35:00.001-05:00

It looks like unions might be coming to JetBlue, at least for their pilots. Up until now the carrier has had wonderful relations (for the most part) with their crew across pretty much their entire operation. Actually the pilots acknowledge that in their statement. Still, they are looking to unionize to protect themselves according to the letter sent to all pilots today.

Reading the notice sent is somewhat entertaining for the contradictions that seem to be included:

Consistent with our stated goal of setting a new standard for employee labor relations, these actions were taken prior to the final submission of our petition. It was imperative for our leaders to receive this important information directly from the source, rather than from the media or from any third party. We feel very strongly in this regard not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it indicates the type of relationship we have today and the relationship we wish to continue in the future.

and

Without support under the rule of law, providing for our pilots in a manner appropriate to their status as career employees often is not legally possible. This underscores our need to have a relationship based not on the benevolence of a leadership team that could transition at any time, but on a relationship where there exists a means to resolve our private discourses under the support of legal process. It is our processes that are flawed, not our people.

In other words, they really like the relationship they have and want to continue it, so they are pursuing a change in that relationship through the affiliation with a union. I’m also intrigued by the claims that “the rule of law” is necessary to ensure that the relationship continues. The suggestion that the relationship exists only because of a benevolent leader is entertaining to me.

Don’t get me wrong; I understand the value of unions and their ability to negotiate better than any single member can. I just question the timing and value of pursuing union affiliation at this point in time. The airline is one of the best out there in terms of keeping employees on the books (they have a strict “no furlough” policy), so even in the current economic climate the pilots are not really suffering too much. From my perspective the decision to unionize right now seems rather aggressive and antagonistic. The whole concept that they need this just in case seems more like an instigation than a protection.

I hope things work out OK for everyone involved, but this seems to be a very strange move at this particular point in time.

Southwest expands alliance

2008-11-11T09:35:00.001-05:00

OK, maybe calling it an alliance is a stretch, but Southwest is definitely making a push to add more options for their customers these days. First it was the WestJet partnership announced earlier this summer and now a similar deal has been signed with Mexico’s Volaris.

Volaris has their primary hub at Mexico City’s Toluca airport (TLC) rather than Benito Juárez (MEX) which is where most flights to the region operate out of. This would seem to be consistent with Southwest’s approach of operating out of smaller airports in major metropolitan areas (Oakland and Chicago-Midway come to mind).

The deal will depend on Volaris starting operations across the border into the United States, where they will be able to meet up with Southwest’s routes and passengers. It does not appear that Southwest has any intention of flying to Mexico, just like they will not be flying to Canada as part of the WestJet deal. Looking at the distances involved, it seems that getting from the current Volaris hub up to any city where Southwest has a decent feed would be a pretty long flight (2+ hours), much longer than what Volaris operates these days. That will add some interesting factors to the route planning and operational issues of such an arrangement. There’s also a chance that Volaris will open another hub closer to the USA from where they can link to more cities in the USA, but it is hard to know at this point.

One major issue the partnership faces is that they will need to operate from airports that offer immigration and customs facilities. Those are somewhat limited, particularly at airports that Southwest has high-frequency operations.

Volaris is expected to begin operations to the USA in Spring ‘09 with code-shares established in ‘10, so there is still plenty of time for everything to work out. In the mean time, I would expect to hear much more from Southwest as they continue to expand their reach and partnerships.

Photos from above

2008-11-10T14:07:00.001-05:00

One of the many, many things I love about flying is the view from above. It is hard not to enjoy scenes like these.

Some freebies on the road

2008-11-09T09:28:00.001-05:00

Thanks to United’s liberal airplane swapping policy we ended up without our first class seats on our flights to and from Oklahoma City this weekend. The tickets we bought were instant upgrade seats that technically were coach fares, but we bought them for the first class cabin, not for coach. A bit of prodding this morning at the counter, along with explaining that we really did need to fly OKC – DEN - PDX – SFO – SNA instead of a more direct routing (“business” in Portland), resulted in getting a CR-1 upgrade voucher each. This is my first United upgrade voucher and I’m still not sure exactly how to use it, but I’m looking forward to trying.

The other freebie of the weekend came courtesy of National Car Rental. A few weeks back they loaded a coupon code into their systems that was supposed to be something like a free day – up to $50 – with a three day weekend rental. The problem is that they didn’t actually load the details correctly. The result was that it was just a $50 coupon with no minimums. Once they realized their mistake they went back and cancelled out a lot of the reservations that were made with the code that shouldn’t have been there. For some reason, however, my reservations never got tossed out.

When we showed up at the counter yesterday to pick up the car they guy actually thought it was a mistake and was trying to figure out what was broken in my reservation because it came up as a $0 rental. No taxes, no surcharges, no fees. Just $0. He saw that there was a coupon and eventually handed me the car keys, still somewhat in disbelief. Nineteen miles and about three hours later we returned the car and headed off to the hotel. And it was still $0 for the rental.

Ridiculous Travel Weekend – Day 2

2008-11-08T23:32:00.001-05:00

Today was the first day of the truly ridiculous travel schedule. We were up at 5:15 and on our way not too long after that. United has tried to throw off our schedule a couple times so far, but they have yet to succeed.

Incident number one arose when the pilot announced that our arrival into San Francisco this morning would be into the international terminal. That’s great if you’re making an outbound international connection or terminating the trip in San Francisco, but for domestic connections it means a walk to the domestic terminal and going through security again. Not a big deal with a sufficiently padded schedule, but with a 33 minute connection things looked dicey. They didn’t get any better when the agent there decided that my wanting to watch my bag enter the x-ray machine deserved a thorough search of my bag. Still, we arrived in the gate area before they had started boarding so no troubles there.

Incident number two came as we were settling in on the plane. For some reason United decided that we both wanted to change our flights to a more direct routing. They actually came on to the plane to ask us why we were not still going to switch our flights. Suffice it to say that we stuck with the longer routing and are quite happy with that plan.

Flight number four was swapped out for a TED plane, which meant no first class seats. Not really a big deal, as I was pretty much ready to sleep anywhere. But we paid for first class on this trip and they didn’t deliver. Compensation will be coming soon. And it is the same flight tomorrow morning so we’ll have to deal with it again then.

The flying was all pretty good and it reminded me, once again, that earth really is best viewed from 35,000 feet.

We did get to see Oklahoma City a bit, thanks to a free rental car that should never have been. I saw the memorial for the bombing of the federal building. I can only hope that NYC manages something as classy and beautiful when they get around to building the one at the WTC site.

Food was a problem in Oklahoma City. We walked into a few places in the Bricktown district downtown and they all looked pretty bad. A bunch of places were closed, too, which doesn’t bode well for the area. Me eventually found somewhere to eat, but back out by the airport. We really tried, but it just wasn’t happening downtown.

A buffalo art thing in downtown Oklahoma City

Ridiculous Travel Weekend – Day 1

2008-11-07T21:43:00.001-05:00

Today was day one of my ridiculous weekend of travel. So far, so good, though there is still time for things to go wrong as I’m only on flight number one. But overall things are good.

I started in NYC this morning and hopped on a bus for the ride down to Philadelphia. It turns out that many flights are much less expensive out of Philly than NYC, so even with a ride to Philly I save money on the flying. Plus, in theory, the chances for upgrades on Continental flights out of Philly are pretty good. But more on that later.

I planned on going to Philly early to meet up with a friend down there and finally have my first real Philly Cheese Steak. I previously wrote about the BoltBus service and this time I took MegaBus, just to compare. They are basically the same and pick up/drop off about the same places at both ends of the trip. On this trip the WiFi did not work, which was annoying, but hardly the end of the world on the quick ride.

So I got to Philly and we headed over to Tony Luke’s for an authentic cheese steak. My order was the same as I’d get anywhere else – provolone with – and, well, it was a good cheese steak. It was not an earth shattering or life changing experience. I actually thought that the meat was a bit dry and bland. But it was pretty good.

After cheese steaks we had a bit of time to kill so we drove down to the end of the Philadelphia runway under the approach path and hung out for an hour or so, snapping shots of the planes coming in to the airport. It was a little too early for the big planes to be coming in from Europe and the grey skies made exposing the shots a bit harder, but I still got a couple decent pictures out of it. Plus, I didn’t get arrested while wandering among the light stanchions that are used to guide the planes in, so that was a bonus.

I thought that I had a decent chance for an upgrade on this flight as my previous flights out of Philly have been easy to upgrade on. Today’s flight, however, could not be farther from that experience. There were about 40 people on the waitlist, and I was in the high teens or low twenties; I stopped checking as it was depressing me. So I’m sitting in my exit row seat and planning my next move.

The layover in Houston gives me about 2.5 hours of time to hit up the Presidents Club with a couple buddies and do what I can to make up for the lack of drinking on thin flight before heading off to my onward connection, where I will also be sitting in coach.

More to come tomorrow as I zigzag my way across the west coast, from The Cowboy (John Wayne Airport) to actual cowboys (Oklahoma City).

My most ridiculous trip ever (at least so far)

2008-11-07T19:43:00.001-05:00

Early November is a strange time of year for the frequent flyer mileage obsessed. With just a few weeks remaining in the year the number of points earned so far and the number remaining to reach the next elite status become crystal clear. And when the numbers align correctly, the truly obsessed set out on trips for no particular purpose other than to fly those few miles and make the next level. Plus fares from early November through early December seem conducive to these sorts of run, with routes selling somewhat cheaper (even this year) as business travel ebbs heading into the holidays.

Yes, it seems strange to pay to fly just for elite status. But depending on the program, expected future travel and just how close you are, the value of the benefits of elite status can be paid back with a quick trip. Especially now that pretty much every airline charges fees for checked baggage, but exempts their elites (and people traveling with them) from such fees, the value of status is actually a calculable number. And then there are bonus miles (unless you fly US Air) and upgrade opportunities, so the elite status can have real value.

This is at least the third time I’ve made such a trip. My first was on US Air a few years back. I flew NYC – Boston – NYC – Washington, DC – NYC one Saturday morning. The same flight crew worked the Washington, DC turn and one flight attendant recognized me getting back on the plane. I tried to explain that I really just wanted a lunch of chowder from the Legal Sea Foods in DCA but she wasn’t buying that. I finally explained the elite status benefits and the trivial costs and she understood and agreed that it made sense.

My second run was last year around this time. I flew from JFK to Anchorage, via Houston and Seattle in both directions, over a 36 hour period. We were on the ground in Anchorage for about 45 minutes, just long enough to brush my teeth and get back on the plane for a cat nap to Seattle. And that got me to platinum status with Continental, meaning no change fees on reward flights. I took full advantage of that benefit (and still will into early next year), more than recouping the cost of the flights.

For me this year I’ve actually flown about the same number of miles as last year (~100,000) but I have split them among a couple programs and I’ve had virtually zero business travel. This leaves me a bit short of qualifying for the lowest level of elite status on my primary program (Continental). My other main program (bmi) has seen a lot of points crediting in thanks to some flights on United, but they have a rolling 12 month qualification program, so I just reset to zero there on November first. With those two stats staring me in the face, and some pretty reasonable flight prices, I’m setting off this weekend on a pretty ridiculous sequence of 12 flights in about 66 hours.

The overall trip is NYC to Philly on the bus, followed by Philly to Orange County, California on Continental. That is today’s flights. Tomorrow I’ll wake up ridiculously early and head to the airport to fly Orange County – San Francisco – Los Angeles – Denver – Oklahoma City on United in first class, thanks to a small pricing error on their part. Sunday sees me flying Oklahoma City – Denver – Portland – San Francisco – Orange County on United and then finishing off the evening with a redeye flight from Orange County to Newark on Continental. Flight number twelve comes on Monday morning from Newark to Philadelphia. I’m planning on lunch with a friend before heading back up to New York later on Monday afternoon.

Like I said, pretty ridiculous. But I’ve already put a pretty big dent in my “to read” pile, I get to meet up with friends in lounges and on flights along the way, and it really is relaxing for me to be flying. And the points are fun to use, too.

Delta growing across the Atlantic

2008-11-06T10:14:00.001-05:00

With the distractions of their merger with Northwest behind them, Delta is now moving forward in actually operating the airline. They are announcing two new routes from Paris planned to start next spring. Service will run between Paris and Pittsburgh and Raleigh-Durham, operating on 757 aircraft. The flight to Raleigh-Durham is pretty much at the edge of the operating range of a 757-200, so that will be interesting to watch over the winter to see if they are forced to block seats to reduce weight or divert for fuel stops.

Happy flying!

bmi leaving the Americas

2008-11-05T19:29:00.001-05:00

bmi, the British carrier that has been in the news a lot lately thanks to their recent sale to Lufthansa, made more news today, announcing that they will be pulling out of the Americas effective in the Spring of ‘09. The carrier currently operates flights from Manchester, UK to Chicago, Las Vegas and Barbados. Chicago flights will end in mid-January and the Las Vegas and Barbados flights will end in late April, after the Easter holidays.

The planes are coming up on a heavy maintenance check period and the carrier doesn’t have spares to sub in. Plus long-haul flying got pretty expensive when fuel prices spiked over the summer. And with the current/impending implosion of the US economy I’m really not all that surprised that the carrier has decided to reallocate the planes to routes in the Middle East, where it seems there is still plenty of money to spend.

I’m saddened mostly because I never got to fly them while they were here, and now it seems that I never will. Then again, I’ve been looking at visits to Egypt and Jordan, and the planes will be moving to those routes, so maybe I will get to fly on them after all. Hope springs eternal.

The new Delta cuts some fees

2008-11-05T12:58:00.001-05:00

They cut a very significant one, in fact – the fuel surcharge on many reward flights.

As part of aligning the various policies between Northwest and Delta changes to a variety of fees have been announced. Some have gone down (calling to book a ticket costs $20 now) or been removed completely (no more paying $3 for each bag checked with a skycap). Checked baggage fees have come down for Delta customers, going to $15 for the first and $50 for the second across the board for the carrier. Some fees have gone up or been added, with Delta adopting the “SkyChoice” program that charges an incremental ($5-25) amount for the “good seats” on a flight.

And then there is the fuel surcharge on reward flights.

Effective immediately, Delta will eliminate the $25-$100 fuel surcharges assessed for SkyMiles and WorldPerks award ticket travel originating from the U.S. and Canada. The surcharges were instituted earlier this year by both airlines in response to unprecedented fuel costs.

This fuel surcharge was also causing taxes to be applied to tickets, so this change will likely save passengers much, much more than the $25-100 that they were seeing. This is a HUGE improvement for the SkyMiles program. Kudos to Delta for taking this step.

Updated info on LiveTV for Continental

2008-11-04T08:39:00.001-05:00

At the beginning of the year Continental announced that they would be fitting out their entire domestic fleet with LiveTV, the system that JetBlue uses to provide their in-flight TV service. Things are move forward rapidly at this point with the service and one lucky guy recently got to visit the LiveTV facilities in Florida and see just what the new system will offer. I’m ridiculously jealous that he got to see the new system, but happy to share some of the information he discovered.

The new system will include 80 channels, an on-screen programming guide and an 8” 16:9 ratio wide-screen monitor. So the system installed on the Continental planes will actually be better than that running on the JetBlue planes. Of course, watching the TV on Continental will cost $6 while it will remain free on JetBlue, so everything isn’t rosy in Continental-land. Still, it is nice to see things getting better for in-flight entertainment.

The system is still scheduled to go live in early 2009, with the first plane installed shortly after new years and then a couple months vetting process from the FAA before the rest of the fleet will be converted. The conversion process takes 2-3 days per plane. There are ~180 planes to be fitted out and it is possible that more than one will happen at a time, so things should be pretty much completed by the end of 2009.

United announces changes to Mileage Plus program

2008-11-03T20:47:00.001-05:00

I haven’t yet figured out just how bad the changes are, but United seems to have pissed quite a few folks off today by announcing their changes to the 2009 version of the Mileage Plus program. I have a membership, but only so that I can book flights online; I credit all those flights elsewhere. Ultimately that means this has absolutely zero effect on me personally. But it will affect others, so it is worth noting.

The changes include a significant jump in some reward costs (US-Asia in Biz goes from 90K to 125K points, for example) and a change to the cost structure for mileage upgrades. They have instituted a cash + miles structure for upgrades now, rather than a straight miles approach. This is very similar to the Continental OnePass program in its implementation, and it certainly means upgrades are going to cost more for just about everyone over at United. I can see how this will incense many, many folks there.

The only positive thing that they did was to restore the 500-mile minimum credit benefit for their elite members, following Continental’s path there. Even better, they are doing it retroactively to July 1, 2008, and adjusting bonuses, elite status and earned upgrades retroactively too. That is actually a very nice thing for them to have done. But it doesn’t make up for the gutting of the program on the other fronts.

I guess I should be used to this sort of thing by now, but it still hurts every time it happens. I’m in for the long haul, however, and the programs seem to be cyclical. Here’s hoping for brighter days ahead.

Welcome to Lanzarote; the beach is just off the right side of the plane

2008-11-03T17:04:00.001-05:00

And they really meant it on this flight. An Air Europa plane, operating as a charter for Thomas Cook, ran off the end of the runway in the Canaries, resulting in damage to the plane and forcing the closure of the airport for several hours while emergency crews cleaned things up. Fortunately no one was injured in the accident.

I do have to admire the ability of the Air Europa corporate spokesman to put the best spin possible on the event.

There was a problem on landing. All the passengers left the plane and are fine. The plane came to a halt on the runway past the spot where it should have stopped.

Sure, it is only Monday, but that line is in the running for understatement of the week at this point.

Fuel surcharges dropping

2008-11-02T14:03:00.001-05:00

It seems that the recent retreat of fuel prices is allowing more airlines to cut their fuel surcharges. It is not across the board by any sense, but more and more airlines seem to be getting in the spirit, though none of them are US-based carriers.

This week’s airline announcing a cut in fuel surcharges is bmi. They’ve removed all fuel surcharges for flights within the UK and Europe. Of course, the fuel surcharge on those flights was minimal – generally around £5 – so it isn’t that great a cut. The long-haul routes continue to have ridiculously high fuel surcharges – as high as £271 between Las Vegas and Manchester – so that will still take a pretty big bite out of the travel budget.

But each step in that direction is a good one.

End of an era in Germany

2008-10-30T13:16:00.001-04:00

Berlin’s Templehof airport is closing today after 85 years of operations. The airport has many claims to fame, including its 3,000,000 square foot (286,000 square meter) terminal building which was the largest building in the world when it was constructed and remains in the top 20 today. It is also the facility that was used in 1948-1949 during the Berlin Airlift.

With a history like that it is hard to believe that it is closing, but it seems that function has finally trumped nostalgia. The airport’s runways are too short to handle most modern jets and so it sees very little service in general, fewer than 1,000 passengers a day.

And so a piece of history becomes a piece of history.