Flying High: Southwest Airlines Posts Big February Gains – BNET
Southwest saw strong double digit revenue gains in February.

Flying Higher: United Airlines February Revenues Way Up – BNET
United beat Southwest’s numbers and showed that they’re really hitting their stride in the revenue game these days.

Fokker’s Back in the Airplane-Building Game – BNET
Those little Fokkers are looking to start building an updated version of the F70 and F100 planes that haven’t been built for more than a decade.

Massive Snow Means Less Airline Capacity in February – BNET
Feb traffic numbers are in, and what do they have in common? A lot fewer available seat miles.

Mexican’s Leading Low Fare Airline Now Owned by the Richest Man in the World – BNET
Carlos Slim is now the richest man, and he owns an airline, believe it or not.

For those who were hoping to see my CNN International piece on the looming BA strike, I’m sorry but it doesn’t seem to be online.

Cranky: So it’s back to the overscheduling issue. If that’s the case, then why do a 3 hour rule instead of slot controls?
Kate: First, some people think 3 hours is too much. Let me give you an example. Imagine if we had sat 179 minutes in San Francisco before takeoff for New York. Imagine that we sat 179 minutes in the plane and then we took off and flew for 4 hours and then we diverted to Austin. Then we took off and spent 179 minutes on taxi-in in New York and we’re still under the rule guidelines. And the airlines will have broken no law.

Cranky: Come on, that’s an incredibly rare situation where something like that would happen.
Kate: No it’s not that rare. And here’s my argument about that. I said have it your way, it’s rare. If it’s rare it will have no impact. The airlines wouldn’t be fighting this if it were so rare. The data you see doesn’t show everything.

Cranky: What is it missing?
Kate: International flights are not included at all. Also, it only includes domestic airlines that have at least 1% of the air travel revenue in the country. I would say that 300% of flights that are sitting on the tarmac are not included in the data.

Cranky: How do you know that?
Kate: There are approximately 150 air carriers in the US and only 19 report.

Cranky: Yeah, but most of the airlines that fly into slot constrained airports report. Who cares if some small airline reports in some tiny town?
Kate: I’ll give you an example. Spirit Air doesn’t report because they’re just under the threshold but they’ve had long delays recently.

Cranky: Back to the 3 hour rule. Why is this better way to handle it than just putting slots at the airports?
Kate: It would have been better if the government stepped in and regulated congestion effectively but they didn’t. The Bush Administration didn’t want to do that, so this is the only thing that can be done since the airlines have refused voluntarily to reduce capacity.

Cranky: But airlines have agreed to voluntarily reduce capacity. United and American did it in O’Hare. There are caps in place at Newark . . .
Kate: It was a failure. When the DOT asked if some airlines would reduce their schedules, they did and then other airlines grew.

Cranky: Ok, so let’s say that we have scheduled everything perfectly to match capacity. But what about when bad weather comes in and reduces capacity? You can’t schedule for that and delays can happen. What do you do?
Kate: Those types of problems are caused by extreme weather, and the GAO says that 7% of airline delays are caused by extreme weather. . .

Cranky: That’s not true. Look at San Francisco, for example. You get some fog in there and they lose half their capacity. That’s not extreme weather.
Kate: We have very few complaints from San Francisco. I’m talking about extreme weather that causes delays over 3 hours. The airlines and their station manager and operations manager have a meeting several times a day as to what’s going to be coded as weather. Occasionally you’re going to have mechanical delays and weather delays, but they can code it however they want.

Cranky: But do we really need this? I mean, haven’t things changed since you were stuck in Austin? Haven’t the airlines made changes?
Kate: They haven’t changed anything. Nothing has changed except they’re fighting us tooth and nail. Just on the last trip I was going to do a report card in Washington DC. I called Delta to make sure my flight was going to be on time and they said that there was going to be a four hour delay but they hadn’t notified me. They said they didn’t have a crew. I asked how they knew they’d have a crew in four hours? The agent said, “We should probably tell you it’ll be indefiinitely.” I think they just told me because I’m a consumer advocate.

Cranky: I know that if I was on a flight that hit the 3 hour mark, I’d rather wait 20 minutes to take off then go back to the gate and not be able to fly for days because the flight canceled.
Kate: But would you want to be there for nine hours?

Cranky: No, but come on. That’s incredibly uncommon if it happens at all.
Kate: Nine hour delays happen a lot.

Cranky: I’d like to see those numbers.
Kate: I don’t have them with me, but I’ll be back at my computer in a couple hours and I’ll send them to you.

Cranky: Great, I look forward to seeing that. Thanks for talking with me.

She did send me her data in the form of her 2009 Airline Report Card (PDF), but it didn’t look as bad as she said. Though she mentioned that nine hour delays “happen a lot,” there were only 13 delays of over 5 hours at the top 35 airports for all of 2009. In addition, for all the reporting airlines, there were 904 delays of over 3 hours. That may sound like a lot, but that was out of 6,450,285 flights. Yes, it’s a very small number.

Some of the things she mentions show a lack of understanding of how the system works. For example, when I mentioned that San Francisco fog problems can cause delays, she said that she doesn’t get many complaints from there so that’s not the problem. Of course that’s the case. The delay is usually on inbound flights because of the visibility issues, and airplanes have to be held at their departure point if it’s bad enough. That can cause congestion at some of the other airports, and if there’s weather elsewhere, it can snowball.

She acts like the airlines haven’t done anything since she was stuck on a plane, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Most airlines had some sort of policy before, but those have been strengthened with public policies and stronger chain-of-command to ensure it doesn’t happen. Is it perfect? Of course not. Airlines are incredibly complex and operate all over the world. It’s not possible to ensure that things never go wrong, but it is possible to keep working as hard as possible to reduce long delays from occurring.

Though Kate blames everything on airline scheduling practices, it’s the variability of operational capacity that makes things tougher. If the winds shift, your capacity can go down. If rain turns to ice, you have a mess on your hands. What this rule is going to do is encourage airlines to operate more conservatively to make sure they don’t face fines, and that will mean more cancellations.

It’s not like you can just magically open the door at 3 hours on the ground. Planes will now need to be called back starting around 2 hours to make sure that they can get out of line, taxi back and get doors open in time to avoid the fine. Once that door opens, the pilots are likely to time out. Without a crew, that flight is more likely to cancel and then people are stuck.

I continue to predict that we will see more cancellations and more unhappy passengers than we see today. If overscheduling really were the issue, this isn’t the way to handle it. That’s what slot controls are for, but they still will never be able to match demand with the ever-changing airport capacity during changing weather situations. It’s just the nature of the industry, and all airlines, airports, and air traffic control can do is keep working to try to make it run more smoothly. Blanket rules like this don’t help.

Regular readers of the blog know that I’m not a fan of the Passenger Bill of Rights. On the other side, we have Kate Hanni who thinks it’s absolutely necessary. When I saw this quote from Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org and stranded passenger back in 2006, I just had to talk to her.

Passenger advocates say that airlines don’t need to cancel flights to prevent tarmac delays. “This is solvable” without excess cancellations, said Kate Hanni, who founded Flyersrights.org after a flight she was on in 2006 was stranded.

Oh, really? I had to learn what her solution was here since nobody else seems to know it, so I called her up. Here’s the first part of our conversation. Part Two will go live tomorrow.

Cranky: Hello Kate. I saw you quoted as saying that this new rule shouldn’t be a big issue and that it won’t cause more cancellations, so I’m hoping you can explain how that’s the case.
Kate: They’re trying to convince the American people to be very afraid. See, they should have canceled flights already. They should have depeaked their schedules in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, and all the other airports where they schedule too many flights at one time but they haven’t done it. No measures have worked to get them to reduce their schedules. Are you aware of what the schedules look like at JFK? Are you aware that in the best of all conditions, the airlines can only have 81 flights per hour? Airlines overschedule in the morning. If they were to wait until 9 or 10am, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Cranky: Well, the problem is that people don’t want to fly at those times.
Kate: A lot of people would want to be flying at those times. The airlines drum up demand, get flights but they don’t have room. I know that if I could get a cheaper flight at 10am than 7am, I would.

Cranky: Leisure travelers yeah but business travelers not so much.
Kate: I’m a business traveler and I know. I have to fly from San Francisco to New York all the time. My husband is a business traveler as well and we would both fly at different times.

Cranky: But delays aren’t always the airlines’ fault. There are others responsible for these issues as well.
Kate: The airlines entirely control from the pushback of the plane out until the penalty box.

Cranky: But if they don’t push back, they don’t get in line for takeoff.
Kate: Trust me that I know exactly what’s going on. I have maps of the no-movement areas versus the movement areas. I’ve sat down with MIT professors and air traffic controllers and they say this is the way it is. It’s one of their own [airline] employees that’s telling that jet to push back from the gate and sit. Air traffic control has nothing to do with the movement of that jet.

Cranky: Wait, how often do you see an airplane push back but they don’t want to take off?
Kate: Approximately 10 times a day. Mostly in New York. We see it happen a lot at Reagan, even at Dallas. A lot at Chicago.

Cranky: But hold on. Why would an airline push this plane back and sit there for no reason?
Kate: Money. If they let you off the plane, if they leave you in the terminal, you have choices. You could migrate to a different airline. Migrate to a rental car, migrate to a train. You might say that I’ll try a different carrier.

Cranky: But no airline wants to push back and just sit there. Why would they push back if they weren’t trying to take off?
Kate: Because they’re clearing gates so incoming jets can clear gates. But the second reason is that they don’t want you leaving.

Cranky: Let me try to explain my question better. You say that the airlines are at fault for keeping airplanes sitting on the ground and it’s not air traffic control’s fault. Airlines want to get airplanes moving so they can pick up their next planeload of paying passengers, so why would they just push back and not take off if it’s not air traffic control causing the hold ups?
Kate: They do want to take off but they can’t because there are too many flights scheduled. Every morning at many many airports there is overscheduling in the best of all conditions and those planes are not going to take off. [The airlines] are going to grab revenue and then keep it.

Tomorrow, we’ll pick up where we left off. As you can see, Kate has basically boiled this down to, in her eyes, a simple issue of overscheduling. If the airlines would simply change their flights to go at off-peak times, everything would be solved. But there is a problem. Despite what Kate and her husband are willing to do, most business travelers, the bread and butter of most airlines, aren’t going to be that flexible. This is especially true on the short haul flights because people want to be able to do day trips. It’s even worse in New York because of all the competition.

Let’s forget that the afternoons are the worst times in New York and not the mornings and use Kate’s example. Right now, US Airways has its first flight to LaGuardia at 748a and its second at 1021a. If US Airways gets rid of that 748a flight, all those business travelers looking for a day trip will head over to Newark to take the 805a on Continental. US Airways is not going to do that.

If overscheduling truly is the biggest issue and not anything else (which is somewhat debatable), then the question should be why the government hasn’t instituted more strict slot controls instead of this rule. That would more directly address the problem instead of this rule, which will have far more unintended consequences for travelers. It will, of course, not help when weather goes bad and airport capacity gets reduced, so there’s no magic bullet.

These are the questions that I ask in Part Two, which will be posted tomorrow.

The width is a bit wider, and the header is a bit smaller. I’ve switched fonts around and made colors a bit softer. I also have some new flexibility with the sidebars that should come in handy at some point. Overall, I think it’s a good look that’s just an update on what already worked well. So why’d I change?

Well, the last version broke. Seriously. I couldn’t fix the single post pages, so I just started over with a new theme that’s been heavily modified.

The one potentially controversial move is the addition of threaded comments. Now you’ll be able to reply directly to a specific comment and have it appear directly beneath that. In fact, you can go up to 5 layers deep, so I think this will help facilitate conversation. Others may disagree.

Take a look around, press buttons, and then let me know what you like or you don’t like. If you really hate it, well, you can always become a subscriber instead.

Send the good, bad, and the broken to cf@crankyflier.com. Hope you like it.

Though I haven’t seen a copy, it’s being reported that Air Jamaica circulated the news in a memo to employees last week. Apparently the memo wasn’t meant to tell employees not that they had a new boss but rather that they were all fired. All employees will have to reapply for work under the new company. For the first year, Air Jamaica will operate its fleet under contract with Caribbean. Then it’ll be Caribbeans’ problem.

Never heard of Caribbean? You might know them under their previous name, BWIA. “B-wee” as it was known, was shut down in 2006 after more than 60 years of flying in a similar fashion to this deal. Everyone was fired and they had to reapply to work at Caribbean when it launched at the dawn of 2007. Caribbean is based in Trinidad and Tobago.

In the process, Caribbean shrank dramatically. It only has a few 737-800s and Dash 8s these days. Its long haul operation is gone, but it may eventually come back. This is probably going to be the blueprint for Air Jamaica’s future. I would expect big cuts in service in order to get the house in order. Then maybe we’ll see additional growth down the line, but it won’t be the same.

Will this actually make the airline viable? It’s possible. I imagine that they’ll be able to flow some traffic between Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. They could turn Trinidad into the hub for South American flying and Jamaica into the hub for North American flying and then flow traffic between the two. It might help, but it’s long road ahead.

So, if you have tickets on Air Jamaica’s champagne flights (are they still doing that?), you might want to be a little nervous. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen yet, but you’ll definitely want to stay on top of things.

Bye, bye Air Jamaica. Don’t cry, even if you are the saddest airline ever for just a little bit longer.

My name is Jeff Pinneo–I’m the CEO at Horizon Air and a pretty frequent reader of your blog. My compliments to you on the good work you do ‘drilling down’ on many aspects of our business that your readers are interested in and want to know more about.

The subject of regional airline safety has certainly been one of those topics in the year following the tragic accident at Colgan, and I think you’ve done a really good job of helping folks take an objective look at the matter. Your post last week was a good example–in it you bring much needed perspective to the picture without minimizing the overriding importance of safety or of the need for the industry to do everything it can to further improve it’s already strong record. Regarding the question posed in the headline, I’m in general agreement with your conclusion–that being wholly owned by a major airline is not in itself a predictor of a higher level of safety. There are many independent regionals with excellent safety records and solid underlying programs. Having said that, I’ve observed our own evolution since the acquisition of Horizon by Alaska Air Group [AAG] in 1986 (I was at Alaska from 1981-1990 and have been at Horizon ever since), and I can attest to many positive influences and outcomes that have stemmed from our being wholly owned by AAG and a sister company to Alaska Airlines. It all starts with having one board of directors and one chairman (Bill Ayer) who are responsible for the whole enterprise and their obligations for ensuring a consistently safe and dependable experience across the brands. This structure, coupled with their strong personal conviction about the importance of safety, led both board and management to a ’single standard of safety’ mindset and practices at Alaska and Horizon long before such things were legislated. As a result, both companies have moved virtually in parallel on safety programs from technology (e.g. introduction of heads-up-guidance system (HGS) low-vis technology in early ’90’s, Required Navigational Performance (RNP) and WAAS [Wide Area Augmentation System] program development, etc.) to audit and self-reporting programs such as ASAP [Aviation Safety Action Program), LOSA [Line Operations Safety Audit], FOQA [Flight Operational Quality Assurance] and IOSA [IATA Operational Safety Audit] certification. Our board formed a dedicated board safety committee a decade ago to focus on and reinforce the importance of all these safety improvements. It was the first committee of it’s kind and to this day one of the only, if not THE only, such committee of an airline board of directors.

As a further enhancement to safety oversight, the board in 2008 directed that an Alaska Air Group Vice President-Safety position–one that would be responsible for safety programs at both airlines and report directly to the AAG Chairman and the board safety committee–be established. Tom Nunn, most recently the CEO at Frontier’s Lynx subsidiary, was selected to fill that role late in 2008. Prior to that time, each company had individual safety programs and processes.

So while I agree that the ownership structure of a regional airline is not directly correlated to safety, I can say from our experience that we’ve been distinctly advantaged by our structure and relationship with Alaska Airlines over many years with respect to safety and many other matters. The fact is that many of the structural changes and investments in safety noted above emanated from having a common board and a single chairman who’ve been consistently committed to ensuring nothing less than the highest levels of safety at both operating companies, and to supporting their management teams efforts to that end.

I thought you’d be interested in this background as it relates to what is likely to be a matter of continued public interest in the months ahead. I’ve also attached a fact sheet on Horizon’s flight operations and safety programs that illustrates how our story differs substantially from the many broad-brush characterizations that have been applied–often inaccurately–to the regional airline sector. I’d be happy to discuss all of this in further detail if you wish–I can be reached at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Thanks for your time and interest in these matters.

Sincerely,

Jeff

Jeff Pinneo
President and CEO
Horizon Air

As I wrote back to Jeff, 10 years ago, Alaska Airlines was found to have serious maintenance issues after the accident of Alaska 261 shined a light on the airline’s practices. That likely negatively impacted Horizon back then, just as they are benefiting from their enhanced attention to safety now.

In short, I think Jeff offers a great perspective from inside a regional, and I thank him for sharing it with me and all of you.

The plan is for Allegiant to buy 6 757-200s. The first two are to be delivered within a couple months and will go into service by the fourth quarter. Two more will go into service in the first half of 2011. The last two will go into service in the first half of 2012. This brings up two very big questions.

1) Where are they going to fly these things?

Allegiant’s model has always been to bring people from smaller cities with little service to large sun/vacation destinations a couple times a week. I don’t expect that to change. They tell us that these 757s are going to be used for Hawai’i flying. So we know that Hawai’i is the sun destination, but where will they be bringing people from?

I have one idea that makes me particularly excited, and it marks the first time that a sun destination and a spoke city are only 20 minutes apart. Long Beach. Allegiant will start service from Long Beach in August, so the timing is only slightly off, but I’m sure they can figure that out. This makes perfect sense. You can fly any number of airlines from LAX to Hawai’i and there is service from Orange County as well. But Long Beach doesn’t have any flights to Hawai’i at all, and the beauty for Allegiant is that it’s unlikely that it will ever face competition.

JetBlue doesn’t have the airplanes to make Hawai’i, so that’s not a real threat unless they buy a new fleet which seems unlikely in the near future. The other players either don’t have the fleet for it or they wouldn’t have any interest. That gives the market to Allegiant.

It makes even more sense considering that they already serve LAX from many smaller cities throughout the country. LAX is the sun destination. They don’t want to duplicate that service to Long Beach because Long Beach is more of an origin for large pockets of Southern California than it is a destination. This is a great way for them to open up Hawai’i while tapping into the Southern California market. Oh yeah, and the costs at Long Beach are really cheap. That helps.

I’m sure Long Beach won’t be the only place with Hawai’i flights. The most obvious would be to fly loads of Canadians from Bellingham, Washington. They already siphon off a ton of Canadian traffic there to send them down to Vegas. Considering the amount of lift that already goes from Vancouver to Hawai’i, I bet this would be a slam dunk.

Other than those to markets, I could see the potential for places like Fresno, Monterey, and Eugene a couple times a week. There is really a lot of opportunity for them here, and it fits right into their model.

2) Where are these planes coming from?
I’ve heard plenty of speculation about this, so let me end it for you. Sources tell me that these planes are likely coming from AerCap, an aircraft lessor. AerCap is taking these planes back from TUI’s Thomsonfly subsidiary. If this is true, that puts the planes around an early 1990s vintage. That’s not too old, but just old enough that Allegiant could get a good deal on them.

I’m sure these planes will be stuffed with a bunch of seats to help get travelers to their vacation. The total cost for all these airplanes is expected to be $75 to $90 million to get them ready for service. At $12 to $15 million a plane, that’s cheap under regular circumstances but incredibly pricey compared to Allegiant’s cheap MD-80s.

I’m excited about the prospects here. Very cool move.

Dumbest Cities to Receive Federal Airline Service Subsidies – BNET
And here are the SCASDP grants I like the least. Wish they hadn’t been given the grants.

Finding Help Booking Travel and Managing Irregular Operations -View from the Wing
Gary Leff gives Cranky Concierge a ringing endorsement, and I couldn’t be happier.

Will a New Bill to Boost U.S. Tourism Help or Hurt? – ABC News
I tell ABC News why I’m not a fan of the Travel Promotion Act. Mainly, because it sucks.

fly early, fly happy – BNET
Why flying early in the day is better.

Airlines Shovel Out as Winter Weather Pummels Profits – BNET
Winter storms suck for passengers but they suck for airlines as well. In fact, they’re going to be draining profits, and Continental tells us just how much.

Midwest and Frontier Airlines Have Big Plans for Kansas City – BNET
Midwest and Frontier are finally moving in together in Kansas City, and it looks like the beginning of an experiment to see if they can grow the place.

Continental Airlines to charge extra for exit rows seats – Cleveland Plain-Dealer
I talk about why I think Continental is starting to charge for exit rows and why I don’t mind it.

Alaska Airlines Snubs Wi-Fi Provider Row 44 — Not to Mention Its Passengers – BNET
I waited awhile before commenting on Alaska’s choice to go with Aircell instead of Row 44 for inflight internet. I still don’t quite understand what happened.

Don’t get me wrong. This was just a dumb thing to do. It sounds like at least one of the controllers had a kid or two on a school break, so he brought them up to the tower. That’s a huge thrill for any kid (especially dorks like me), but if that’s all that happened, I don’t think this would be plastered on the nightly news. No, it’s when the kid took over and made some transmissions to airplanes that the sh*t hit the fan.

Like I said, that was a really dumb thing to do, especially since these guys will be lucky if they somehow still have a job, but I think all these people flipping out about it just need to chill out. If you listen to the kids’ transmissions, they sounded very professional to me:

Kid: Don’t be a fool, JetBlue 171, you know what a landing like this means, you more than anybody. I’m ordering you to stay up there.
JetBlue 171: No dice, New York. I’m giving the orders and we’re coming in. I guess the foot’s on the other hand now, isn’t it, kid?

See? Harmless. Ok, so maybe that wasn’t exactly what happened. It actually was far more boring than that:

Kid: JetBlue 171 contact departure
JetBlue 171: Over to departure, JetBlue 171 . . . awesome job

Oooh, scary. The world is gonna end! As Rob Mark wrote over on JetWhine, “The kid never controlled anything. He said the words his dad told him to say, nothing more.” (You can listen to the tapes here.)

That’s the reality here. If the kid wasn’t quick enough or some sort of situation developed, you know that the controller was right there ready to take over. There wasn’t any harm here, and I really don’t think there could have been. The pilots clearly weren’t concerned.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this guy loses his job and that’s a shame, but I understand it. People are going crazy over this, so somebody’s head has to roll. He screwed up, so now he’s going to have to pay. Bummer, because I thought it was pretty damn funny.