(Via Today in the Sky):

A go! flight from Honolulu to Hilo, Hawaii, overshot the airport by about 15 minutes last Wednesday leading to speculation that the pilot fell asleep during the 45 minute journey.  Mesa owns go! and has had its share of complaints by pilots of fatigue.  Falling asleep on a 45 minute flight is impressive, to say the least, considering you climb for the first 10 minutes.

Air traffic controllers tried to contact the pilot repeatedly, but received no response when the airplane passed over Hilo at 21,000 feet.  The plane later landed without incident.

Say what you will about whether it’s gotten better over in Iraq, but this is certainly a positive sign of some sort:  Iraq has agreed to purchase $5 billion worth of airplanes from Bombardier and Boeing in the coming years.  The smaller Bombardier planes will arrive next year, while the 40 Boeing aircraft will show up in 2015.  The airline hopes to launch flights to India, China and Europe with the new airplanes.

Delta announced that it will launch nonstop flights from JFK to Georgetown, Guyana, beginning in July - fares are about $600 round trip for the 4x weekly service.  Much has been made of Delta’s international expansion, and I’ll give them a ton of credit for trying some of the more obscure visiting-friends-and-relatives (ie, VFR) markets like this one.

But I haven’t really seen anyone mention that Delta has basically looked at tiny North American Airlines’ route map and copied it.  The small carrier flew from New York to Georgetown, Accra, and Lagos — all markets served (or to be served) by Delta.  It is perhaps, then, coincidence that NAA announced they are pulling out of those markets entirely and redeploying the planes on charter routes.  They blame rising fuel costs, but Delta’s appearance couldn’t have helped.

(Thanks to View from the Wing):

Continental has eliminated what has been considered their best OnePass reward:  the 135,000 first class ticket to Australia on Qantas.   (Their 105,000 mile business class ticket was also a great deal.)  These tickets now cost 285,000 and 190,000 miles, respectively.  You used to have to call 330 days before you wanted to fly to secure one of these, so they were hardly easy to get, but they were a steal.  Now, not so much.

The NY Times is reporting that Delta and Northwest are close to announcing a merger, an announcement of which will supposedly be shortly followed by Continental and United joining forces.

You’ll read plenty of commentary about these mergers elsewhere, so you don’t need me to analyze the minutia, but let me say this:  if you thought flying last summer was rough, just wait until 4 of the country’s largest airlines are trying to jam themselves together during the summer travel season.  We will be in a level of disaster that we’ve never even considered.  Ask your friends who fly US Airways how well their merger went.  Now envision that on a much larger scale.  Plus thunderstorms.

One word for your summer travel plans:  drive.

Joe Sharkey has an interesting column in the NY Times today about a couple traveling with an infant who was not permitted to bring extra formula and baby food through security because you’re only allowed “a reasonable quantity” of foodstuffs for your child.  As Sharkey points out, in an age of 9 hour delays, what constitutes “reasonable” is up for debate.

I have small children as well, and I rarely discuss traveling with them here, as nobody cares about the difficulties of traveling with kids (unless you have them yourself).  However, I’ll share this little story along the same lines:  Returning from a trip last month, we were stopped at airport security because we brought along an ice pack to keep food cold for our twin 20-month olds.  We have traveled quite a bit with the ice packs, so we were surprised when we were stopped.  We had this ridiculous conversation with the TSA person:

TSA: You can’t have the ice pack because you cannot bring liquids or gels aboard the plane.

Me: It’s not a liquid or a gel, it’s a solid.

TSA: We consider it to be a gel.

Me: (holding up a bag of cookies): Is this a liquid or a gel?

TSA: That’s a solid.

Me: How would I know that if you consider some solids to be gels.

…and on it went.  The world was kept safe from 2 small children with cold turkey.

We hardly need additional examples of the incredibly ridiculous airport security situation, but I needed to pass along given Sharkey’s column…I’d love to hear your ridiculous security stories…

An odd one…

A Singapore Airlines flight attendant is suing a passenger after the passenger slapped her during a flight from Singapore to Tokyo last September.  The passenger, who was traveling with her husband - the CEO of Venture Corp, became enraged after the flight attendant served the husband dinner.  The wife said, “Why are you talking to my husband,” then slapped her.

The flight attendant is suing for “emotional and mental stress.”

(Via Today in the Sky)

Politicians in Buffalo have been upset when Continental stopped flying nonstop flights from Buffalo to Albany, so the tried to convince another airline to fly the route.  Under the category of “be careful what you ask for,” US Airways agreed to fly between the cities once a day.  The round trip cost of the 65-minute hop?  $1170.50.  In fairness, US Airways says their partner Colgan Air sets their own fares, and I’m not one to say that you can’t charge what you want.  Good luck with that flight…

(Thanks to View from the Wing)

US Airways  is really sticking it to the man — and, in this case, you’re the man:  The airline has eliminated 500 mile frequent flyer minimums for short flights so you now only earn actual miles flown.  If you’re flying a bunch of connections on US Airways, you’ll be wasting your time, getting only the 82 miles between New York and Philadelphia.  Bleh.

Gary over at View from the Wing also adds that this does not mean that it’s all over for frequent flyer programs, and I couldn’t agree with him more.  The best pieces of advice I can give about trying to use your frequent flyer miles are to:

1) Do your homework first, then call the airline, especially for international trips.  Know which partners fly between your two cities, and know where they make connections.  I helped a friend book tickets to Hawaii recently and, using Delta miles, there are dozens and dozens of possible ways of going (nonstop on CO, from LAX on Continental, through Detroit or Minneapolis or Seattle on Northwest, a bunch of cities on Delta, Seattle on Alaska.  Plus, you need to check all of the various connections TO those departure cities.)  Yes, it’s time consuming.  But getting a free ticket to Hawaii is worth an hour of your time.  International travel is even more complex, but generally offers availability if you are willing to check the myriad connections available to you.  I won’t bore you with how I booked my free ticket to Kiev…)

2) Call back tomorrow.  Availability changes all the time — daily.  More than daily.  You have to try again tomorrow.  Keep calling.  This nearly always results in a ticket for you.  You’re not annoying them.  For international travel, these calls could take an hour.  I know, it’s annoying.  But after roughly 25 hours trying to get 2 business class tickets to Sri Lanka a few years back, I felt felt good when I actually got them (beats spending $14,000 on them).  Be patient.  And persistent.

Good luck…

JetBlue’s CEO said in a recent interview that it plans to offer an “enhanced cabin” aimed at business travelers when it receives new A320s next month.  The cabin at the front of the plane will offer additional legroom for a higher price (I believe we used to call this “first class.”)  Business passengers make up about 10-20% of JetBlue’s travelers, and the carrier is hoping to increase average fares by offering a product that would appeal more to them.  Though the current 36″ of legroom is only slightly less than you’d find on domestic first class on other carriers, so I’m not quite sure what the issue is (and on transcons, JetBlue’s new service won’t come near United’s PS, so they won’t be competing there either.)

In other news, they also announced that they’ll launch flights from LAX to New York and Boston.

A Singapore Airlines pilot was caught with child pornography on his laptop when he tried to enter Australia after working a flight to Adelaide.  He was fined about $10,000 and released, which sounds like a pathetically weak sentence considering what he had on his computer.  No word on whether he was fired.

A few years back, Indian Airlines fired a crew member for wearing a handlebar mustache (which he had been wearing since 1968, which suggests perhaps he should’ve shaved the mustache by the time he was fired in 2001).  Now, the Indian supreme court is getting involved and seems to be siding with mustache man, saying “How can somebody be removed from a job because of the size of his moustache?”

(I know this is a stupid story, but I found it amusing…)

Two pieces of bad news for SilverJet (and passengers who like the airline):

1) Eos’ announcement that it’s launching Dubai flights sent SilverJet’s stock reeling yesterday, down as much as 23% as investors believe that the struggling carrier won’t survive a drawn out fight with another airline.

2) A company that lent SilverJet GBP10 million last year has declined to convert the loan into equity (not a good sign) which, in English, means that SilverJet will be forced to continue paying interest on the loan — a rough call given their precarious financial situation.

Eos has announced that it will launch flights between Newark and London-Stansted in May and between Stansted and Dubai in July.  You may be saying to yourself, that’s funny, because doesn’t SilverJet already fly between those cities?  Yes, yes they do.  Eos received some funding from some Middle Eastern sources last year, and it wouldn’t be surprising if flights to Dubai were part of the deal.

So I’m of 2 minds here:  In general, it’s certainly better to stay out of the way of competitors.  But on the other hand, this may be a case of more competition helping to create the market.  On yet the other hand, given Emirates’ multiple nonstop flights from New York to Dubai, Eos is really just launching London-Dubai (there will be few people connecting NYC-STN-DXB).  Given that the bulk of their marketing comes out of New York, it will be very interesting to see whether they’re able to market a non-US-based route.

Oh, and what about Paris that was supposed to be launching this spring?

Despite decent yields on the route, Skybus will drop flights to Oakland this summer due to increasing fuel prices.  The airline has stopped flying to San Diego and Bellingham (WA), and cut the number of Burbank flights to 1, deciding instead to use aircraft on shorterhaul routes where less fuel is burned.  That said, their average fares on the short-haul routes hasn’t been good either.  Even so, keeping their aircraft flying more hours on short-haul is a sound strategy (assuming they can get their fares to an even moderately reasonable level).

A quick follow-up to the story about British Airways launching all-business class service between London (City) and New York:  The flights will need to make a fueling stop (likely at Shannon, Ireland) on the westbound trips because weight restrictions at London City will limit the amount of fuel the A318 can carry.  In the Trying to Turn Lemons into Lemonade Department, BA is trying to work with authorities at Shannon to allow passengers to clear US customs while at the Irish airport.  The fuel stop will add about 2 hours to the journey time.

Airline reservations systems are notoriously complex — the integration of US Airways’ with America West’s was a major issue when the two carriers merged.

But it’s still a bit of a surprise to read that Ryanair will shut its website for 3 days (Feb 22-25) as they switch to a new booking system.  The move will likely cost them about $45 million in missed bookings, as about 98% of their reservations come through their website.  Their call center (centre) also will be unavailable for reservations.  In addition - and this is important if you have a ticket - you won’t be able to make changes during that period either.

It’s just a matter of time before Michael O’Leary tells customers not to complain about the shutdown because at Ryanair’s fares, you can’t possibly expect to actually be able to book tickets.

Back from a few days R&R and I’ll have regular stuff tomorrow, but I wanted to share 2 trip-related things that may be of interest…

- I believe I flew on the world’s shortest scheduled commercial flight — a 10am flight from Ambergris Caye to Caye Caulker that is scheduled to arrive at 10:05am.  We arrived 2 minutes late.

-  I heard the most ridiculous conversation ever in the row behind me on our flight home.  A white woman in her early 60s was chatting with the African American man in his 50s sitting next to her.  Here’s the conversation.  Seriously.  This is the conversation:

Woman: So, what kind of work are you in?
Man: I’m an entertainer.
W: What kind of entertainer?
M: I’m a singer.  I’m in the Temptations* (see note below)
W: Oh.  Do I know any of your songs?
M: My Girl.  Just My Imagination…
W: You were in the original group?
M: No, everyone from the original group is dead.
W: Ah.  (Pause, noticing his watch).  You’ve got a lot of bling bling (it was even more uncomfortable when she said it.)
M: Yeah.  I guess I do.
W: (Pause.)  There are a lot of brothers in Belize.
M: (uncomfortable silence)
W: Yeah, it’s about 47% brothers. (pause).  So did you guys do a concert in Belize?
M: No.  We worked a cruise ship.
W: Oh.  I bet you can hook up with a bunch of women on a cruise ship.
M: (uncomfortable pause).  I’m a bit old for that now.
W: Did you hear about the election results? (the conversation really did jump around like this.  She was insane.)
M: Yeah, I was able to catch it on the news.
W: I bet you were excited about Obama.
M: (gives detailed and, frankly, impressive overview of the current state of electoral affairs, that did not include him screaming at her, which is what I would’ve done.)
W: So, you guys sing and dance?
M: Of course - we’re the Temptations, you gotta have dancing.
W: Do you rap?
M: Uh, no.  There’s no rap in the show.  I’m an old school guy.
W: What new music do you listen to?
M: I don’t really listen to new music - I like the old stuff.
W: You don’t like rap?
M: No, I like the old stuff.
(…and on it went)

At this point my wife was crying uncontrollably.  I’ll give the guy all the credit in the world — I was expecting her to ask how he spent MLK Day, but she didn’t.

* A note about the Temptations (and I apologize for the David Foster Wallace-esque footnote here):  He was not actually in the Temptations.  After a great deal of Googling last night, I was able to figure out that he is in a group called Tribute to the Temptations (see here, the gentleman in the row behind me is the middle one in the photo).  Like with many of the oldies acts, there is a great deal of confusion about who owns the names to these groups.  With the Temptations, it took me a while to figure out that the people on the plane were not the group that goes by “The Temptations” nor were they “Former Leads of the Temptations,” nor were they “Dennis Edwards and the Temptations Review,” nor were they “Damon Harris and the Temptations Review,” nor were they “Glenn Leonard and the Temptations Experience,” nor were they “Damon Harris and the Temptations Tribute,” nor were they “Richard Street’s Temptations,” nor were they “Legendary Lead Singers of the Temptations, ” nor, finally, “The Temptations Reunion Show.”

While he was a really nice guy (as was one of the other members of the group we had some contact with), he is not a member of the Temptations.  They are 5 guys who sing Temptations songs.  But in college I performed in a band where we played a Pearl Jam song.  I have yet to tell anyone that I am a member of Pearl Jam.  Nor have I performed on a cruise ship as Pearl Jam.  Though this is what happens every day with these oldies acts.

Oh, and this has nothing at all to do with airlines.  Carry on.

The OTR offices will be closed Monday-Wednesday so that the staff can take a much needed break in Belize.  We’ll be back on Thursday…see you then.

I’m not the first person to mention this, but Silverjet has an odd little two-for-one offer:  Buy a ticket between today and noon on February 3rd, and if the Giants win the Super Bowl, they’ll give you an additional ticket free.

British Airways will launch all-business class flights from London’s City airport to New York in 2009. No additional information about the service has been released, but you’ve got to imagine that SilverJet isn’t particularly pleased (Eos’ product is really first class, and I’ll guess here that BA’s pricing will be in the range of SilverJet’s fares. At least until SilverJet runs out of cash.)

(And a bit of a revision to this post:  BA will fly the flights with an A318 configured with 32 passengers, which is clearly aimed at Eos, not SilverJet.  Of course, there’s zero guarantee that either will be around by next year, as discussed in this post.)

Ah the good old days. Remember back in 2005 when Delta introduced SimpliFares and they were going to cap fares at $599 each way and end Saturday night stays? Those days are looooooong gone.

This article notes that a number of airlines (including Continental, American, United and Northwest) have re-introduced Saturday night stays in a handful of markets (ie, where they have no low fare carrier competition), and they’re happy with the results. Continental has also imposed 3-day advanced purchase rules where once there was no advanced purchase requirement. The airline has noted no falloff in demand, so look for these rules to grow to more markets.

Speaking of which (sort of) — A friend was recently flying between New York and Cincinnati and tickets were a very reasonable $1600 round trip (about the same cost as a business class ticket to London on SilverJet). So to combat this ridiculousness, I set him up with 2 one-way hidden city tickets which lowered the cost to about $600. Great. Except they canceled the flight home and I was terrified that instead of routing him to New York, they would route him to the final destination on the ticket, rather than to the stopover city. In the end, they did not. But I bring this up mostly as something to keep in mind should you buy a hidden city ticket — have a backup plan if your flight is canceled.

(if you’re wondering what “hidden city” means, it’s this: Let’s say a ticket from New York to Detroit was $1200, but a ticket from New York to Minneapolis with a stop in Detroit was $200, Detroit is the so-called “hidden city,” because that’s where you’re going to get off the plane. Should you try this, remember not to check any bags and to NOT give your frequent flyer number, as airlines can, theoretically, retaliate against you if they find out you did this.)

(Quick follow up:  Reader Doug asked what I meant by “retaliate.”  If an airline figures out that you’ve done a hidden city ticket — which goes against the contract of carriage –  they are not above closing down your frequent flyer account and taking away your accumulated miles.  If you’re going to do this, DO NOT give your frequent flyer number.)

I forgot to mention this 2 days ago:  JetBlue has rolled out fully refundable fares (previously, their fares required a change fee, albeit a small one).  New York to Florida is about $399 each way, while transcons are about $549.  In many cases that is more than double the lowest available fare, so you may be better off buying the cheap ticket and changing it if you only anticipate changing the ticket once.  Even so, this change will certainly appeal to business travelers looking for some flexibility (and free TV).

Good news for Continental fans: the airline will install JetBlue’s LiveTV on nearly of all its fleet beginning in early 2009 (the whole process will take about 18 months). Wi-Fi will also be available (for free) so you can use your blackberry in the sky.

First class passengers will get the television for free, while coach passengers will pay $6 (a fee I’ll gladly pay not to have to watch Two and a Half Men, which is what I generally have to watch on Continental.)

Just a day after annoying the president of France with an ad poking a bit of fun at him, Ryanair has had another advertising problem:  the British Advertising Standards Agency (ASA)  said that an ad showing a schoolgirl with the tagline promising the “hottest back to school fares” was “irresponsible and offensive.”

In  response, a Ryanair spokesperson said, “We will not be withdrawing this ad and we will not provide the ASA — Absurd Silly Asses — with any of the undertakings they seek.”  There ya go.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to sue Ryanair over an advertisement that shows him with First Girlfriend Carla Bruni and the caption, “With Ryanair, all my family can come to my wedding.”  Several other European politicians have had their photos used without permission by Ryanair, but only a former Swedish Prime Minister has actually sued the airline.

An Air Canada flight from Toronto to London was diverted to Shannon, Ireland, after the co-pilot appeared to suffer a nervous breakdown during the flight.  According to reports, he began “acting in a peculiar manner and was talking loudly to himself” (which is normal on a subway, but not so normal in a cockpit).  The captain notified authorities at the airport that a crew member was ill, but passengers had to wait for a replacement crew before continuing the flight.

For some reason a German travel agency is going to offer flights to a nudist resort where passengers do not have to wear clothing (in case you were wondering, crew have to wear clothing for safety reasons.  I’m not sure what those reasons are.)  Flights start July 5.

For the second time in as many years, a German traveler headed to Sydney, Australia, mistakenly bought a ticket to Sidney, Montana, and landed in the small outpost before realizing what was going on. How someone could end up on a prop plane from Seattle and think that they’ll continue flying 7,000 miles is a little nutty to me, but there ya go.

We’ve seen a couple of stories recently about turbulence causing injuries, but I’m including yet another:  10 passengers were hurt when a United Airlines flight from LA to Chicago hit severe turbulence over the Rockies.  If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it, uh, 4 times or so — the only real danger you face on an airplane is hitting turbulence while you’re not wearing a seatbelt.  Buckle up.

A Merpati Nusantara Airlines 737 landing on the Indonesian island of Papua hit a calf on the runway at Merauke Airport over the weekend.  The airport wasn’t fully fenced in from the nearby village from which the calf escaped.  One of the plane’s engines was damaged, but no people were injured.  The report also says that it’s not clear whether the calf was injured, but I’m guessing he ended up delicious.

Hi all,

I’m moving my blog over to a new platform (with the Boarding Area group of blogs run by the Flyertalk guys…)  The blog will basically look the same, and the address will still be Onlinetravelreview.com, but the feeds are going to change.  If you read this via a feed, please visit http://www.boardingarea.com/blogs/onlinetravelreview/feed to grab the feed you want.

Although it’s still pretty unlikely, United would consider dropping out of the Star Alliance if it was necessary to complete a merger, according to this article. 

United also would consider withdrawing from the Star Alliance, the
global marketing consortium it co-founded, if needed to close a deal.
"You can assume that absolutely everything goes into the mix of
consideration," (CEO Glenn) Tilton said.

I guess they’re serious. 

Other changes are already happening, with the airline announcing plans to sell off its Mileage Plus program, as well as a maintenance base at San Francisco.

They announced yesterday that they would cut about 4% of domestic capacity, while Delta also announced about a 5% drop in domestic capacity for 2008 (while at the same time increasing international flights, where they already do 1/3 of their flying). 

The shrinkage in the number of available seats domestically will be a (the?) big story for the year, as airlines try to figure out the correct mix of flying.  Remember — too little domestic capacity and you’re not feeding enough traffic to your hubs, which leads to fewer international passengers.  It’s an enormously tricky balance, and one that will lead to higher fares for consumers.  At least until a lowfare carrier sees an opportunity in these now thinner routes with high fares.  An AirTran (or whoever) will jump in, lower fares and increase the number of flights.  Which will, of course, be met be the incumbent with lower fares and more flights, which will cause them to lose money.  Rinse.  Repeat.

Ryanair announced an increase in the fees it charges for checking luggage to GBP 6 (about $12, $13 if you pay in Euro).  The carrier has said that it will keep increasing bag check charges until 50% of passengers only use carry ons.  They also increased the fee to check in at the airport to GBP 3.

Two quick notable route cancellations:

Air New Zealand is dropping its thrice weekly service between Nadi, Fiji, and Los Angeles in April so it can use aircraft on more profitable routes.  Codeshare partner Air Pacific will pick up 2 of those frequencies, bringing their number of weekly flights to 6.  Air Pacific isn’t as comfortable as Air New Zealand, especially when they’re packing 452 seats into the coach cabin of a 747.

And United is canceling its LAX - San Salvador flights in February, a route it has flown since the breakup of Pan Am in 1991.  TACA, a United codeshare partner, will pick up some of the slack.

For you airline distribution nuts out there (?):  Lufthansa is now charging German travel agents 30 Euro ($60) for the right to sell a Lufthansa round trip flight.  Why would you care about this?  Because if this catches on, we could start to see discriminatory fares (ie, you’ll pay up to $60 extra) when you book anywhere other than with the airline directly.  I don’t expect this to happen in the US tomorrow, but just know that it’s on the backburner, and this wouldn’t be good news for corporations, who will be sucking up most of these charges.

Someone on Airliners.net has put up an interesting post about Skybus’ average fares by market.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how their yields were terrible; now we have some detail on that.  Average fare between Columbus and Kansas City was $25.  Only the Oakland route had an average fare above $100.  Sure, they had some ancillary revenues on top of these, but this shows the extremely difficult pricing environment they’re operating in (you think they WANT $25 average fares?).  I don’t have much to add from what I said in the earlier post, but the detail on this is pretty interesting.

This will affect roughly zero of you, but Norway’s 4th largest airline (now THAT’s a tagline!) Coast Air has declared bankruptcy and canceled all flights.  The airline was founded in 1975 and flew to 8 cities in Norway and handful of international destinations (Gdansk, anyone?)

Go!, the upstart airline in Hawaii that managed to really piss off Aloha and Hawaiian, just announced that they lost $20 million in their first 16 months of operations.  In case you had been wondering how an airline could make money charging $19 to fly between Honolulu and Lihue, you were correct to wonder:  they wouldn’t make money doing that.  Oh, and Aloha & Hawaiian managed to lose more than $60 million during the same time frame, certainly in part because of the depressed fares that hurt everybody.

So, new entrant comes in, 3 companies lose $80 million in 16 months.  On the plus side, it’s really cheap to fly between the islands.  On the downside, that’s because they’re not covering costs. 

The AP is reporting that Delta Air Lines is insisting that, should it merge, the new airline will have the Delta name and be headquartered in Atlanta.

I’ve often said that there’s some truth in every rumor, so I don’t doubt that this issue has come up, but do you really think they’d kill a multi-billion dollar merger and a chance to build a successful company because it won’t be HQ’d in Atlanta?  I doubt that, even if I think it’s true that they’d prefer if it were located there.  Don’t believe everything you read.

The union representing flight attendants for Thai Airways demanded the cancellation of a Thai television show called "The Air Hostess War" that featured a plot about a Thai Airways flight attendant having an affair with a married pilot.  The union says the program showed flight attendants in "an unrealistic and immoral light…It’s all about sex and air hostesses beating each other up in the
cabin because of love and jealousy. This kind of thing never happens."  (Beating each other up in the cabin?)

This is somewhat reminiscent of when flight attendants from Icelandair protested when an episode of the Sopranos showed Tony Soprano sleeping with a flight attendant from the airline. 

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