American’s Express Seats: How Not to Introduce New Fees to Customers – BNET Headwinds
American has a new fee, and while it could be relatively straightforward, the way American released it was anything but.

US Airways Positions Itself as a Takeover Target with New York Moves – BNET Headwinds
The US Airways build-up in New York seems goofy, but it could actually be a smart play to get itself bought.

Passengers shocked by new touchy-feely TSA screening – Boston Herald
I didn’t even know that the TSA was tightening its screening process until I was contacted for this article. Sounds like a cheap way to get felt up to me.

Hmm. Alaska Air Group May Be Looking to Sell Horizon Air – BNET Headwinds
Horizon Air has changed its business model, and that has me wondering if Alaska is looking to sell.

Mammoth Mountain Lures United to Bring Bay Area Folks to Ski – BNET Headwinds
Another small town getting new air service. But this one makes more sense than many.

American Mechanics Shoot Down Tentative Agreement, Move Closer to Strike – BNET Headwinds
Unsurprisingly, American’s mechanics voted against the tentative agreement that had been presented. They’re moving toward a strike, but I doubt they’ll ever get there.

So why do I say that Dallas/Ft Worth makes sense? A few reasons.

• It’s a big business market
• There is no nonstop low cost competition to LAX or SFO
• The 3-4 hour flight times means the Virgin America product is more relevant

Now, why would Dallas/Ft Worth not make sense? It’s a short list.

• American

Yep, that’s right. American has killed many a competitor who has tried to come into Dallas. In fact, instead of trying to create a better product and compete that way, American usually goes with the old school, full-on scorched earth strategy.

Remember when Vanguard came to town? No, neither does anyone else, because American destroyed it mercilessly. How about the Legend debacle at Love Field? Legend flew airplanes in executive configurations, and American got nervous. It actually refitted a fleet of airplanes just to go to Love Field and kill Legend. Once that was done, the airplanes were reconfigured and sent back into the main fleet.

We can also look at more recent events at Love. Remember when Missouri got approved for nonstop flights from Love Field? American wasted a ton of money going into the market just to compete with Southwest. Now, winning against Southwest is a hard thing to do, and American failed, but that’s one of the few times that American hasn’t won in Dallas. Is Virgin America up to the task?

It has an advantage over other failed efforts, that’s for sure. The airline has built up a nice little following in San Francisco, so it has a base to pull from. Meanwhile, American has been retrenching in San Francisco, most recently dropping Boston. In LA, it’s going to be tougher. American has called LA a key part of its strategy, but it actually hasn’t done anything new in the city for a long time. Maybe this will kick start American to finally do something there.

But competing with American is going to be virtually impossible for the serious business traveler. Virgin America will have two measly flights per day in each market. American has 16 a day to LA and 9 day to SFO. There’s just no comparison. But United has two a day in each market as well, some on tiny CRJ-700 aircraft. Virgin America should compare quite favorably there.

The real question, however, is how will American react? There’s no question that fares will be matched, if not undercut. I would assume there will be some huge frequent flier promotion and probably a bulking up of schedules. American will do anything to protect DFW. This may even push it to fight in other markets as well.

So, this puts us in a good place for seeing if Virgin America can actually make a go of things. The airline is finally entering a market that it should be serving, considering its previous strategy of big city business markets. It offers a much better product than American, which doesn’t even offer an overhead screen on half the flights in these markets. But can it survive American’s scorched earth tactics? We’ll finally find out.

JetBlue and American: Why Frequent-Flier Sharing Makes Sense – BNET
JetBlue and American have gotten one step closer to each other by starting frequent flier earning on select flights.

Delta Earnings: Outlook Weak Despite Strong Industry Premium Traffic Trends – BNET
Lots of conflicting information out this week. Huge profits but weaker outlook = confusion.

LA World Airports Smartly Reconsiders Regionalization Strategy – BNET
Interesting words from the LA airport folks – they’re thinking twice about the regionalization strategy now that traffic is so far down at LAX itself. Good.

Continental and Wired: How Not to Do a Promotional Partnership – BNET
Continental has teamed up with Wired to do a pretty awful job of promotion.

US Airways Shows Stellar Operational Improvement, but Nobody Knows It – BNET
US Airways has really done wonders for its operation and that’s great, but nobody else knows about it. They need to work on that.

How JetBlue Tends To Its Brand – BNET
There was a good interview with JetBlue SVP Marty St George about how JetBlue focuses on its brand.

A road trip is a great way to tell a person’s story, as The Cranky Flier proves -Budget Travel
Sean over at Budget Travel had a great review of my newly-released book.

Why Allegiant Shuffles Airports in Ways Most Airlines Wouldn’t Dare – BNET
Allegiant is switching its Idaho Falls flights from LAX to Long Beach. Seems strange, but there is a method to the madness.

American, oneworld Step Closer to Legitimacy with EU Approvals – BNET
The EU has approved the American and BA joint venture along with the BA and Iberia merger.

Pinnacle Acquires Mesaba — and Can’t Wait to Erase the Tarnished Colgan Brand – BNET
Delta sold off two subsidiaries last week. The first is Compass, and that’s not a surprise.

Trans States Wants to Join the Big Leagues of Regional Airlines – BNET
And here’s the other sell-off, which was a much bigger surprise. Trans States buys Compass?!

Bad News: United, Continental Merger Already Seeing Pilot Unrest – BNET
That didn’t take long. The pilots and management are already fighting at the merging airlines.

Spring Thaw: American’s Pilots Turn Toward Reconciliation with Management – BNET
More pilot fun! American’s pilots are looking to talk to management again. It’s a change for the better.

Spirit’s Pilot Strike: Management Is Winning the PR Battle – BNET
Regardless of how the strike is going, management is easily winning the PR battle, even though they probably shouldn’t be.

Continental and United: This “Merger of Equals” Isn’t a Great Plan – BNET
They keep talking about a merger of equals, but I’m not a fan of that plan. There are better ways to do this.

When Airports Should Subsidize Airlines – BNET
Usually, airport subsidies fail miserably in attracting sustainable airline service, but every so often, they work.

Good Move: American Protects Its Elite Members From the Unwashed Masses – BNET
American rolls out “Your Choice” and it’s not a bad way to approach a la carte pricing.

Summer air travel’s up, and so are fares – Marketplace
It’s summer, so it’s time for the obligatory “summer travel woes” stories. When Marketplace calls (or anything else I hear on NPR), then I know it’ll be a more interesting piece. Of course, it was.

cranky flier + anti-bride toast swiss international inaugural sfo flight – AntiBride
I went up to SFO for the inaugural Swiss flight and met up with AntiBride.

Atlantic Southeast Rebrands Despite the Fact that It’s Rarely Seen in Public – BNET
Atlantic Southeast has just finished a massive rebrand. Even though you’ll rarely see them in public, this is a good idea.

American Flees Washington-Boston Routes As JetBlue Comes In – BNET
You knew that slot swap would make American reduce flights in Washington, but did you think they’d basically hand over Boston to JetBlue?

Can you charm your way into upgrade? – CNN.com
It’s the age-old question – how can you get upgraded? It’s not easy, but it does happen on rare occasion.

Frontier vs. Expedia and Orbitz: How It Hopes to Lure Travelers Back to Direct Booking – BNET
It’s really more about Frontier setting expectations better and trying to get people to book direct.

American had been riding high with labor after narrowly averting bankruptcy post-9/11. The airline was sharing more information with the unions and the relationships seemed to be in pretty good shape. Then, it all fell apart. The biggest sticking point was when senior management accepted large bonuses based on stock price appreciation while the front line suffered. This boneheaded move cemented what has now been a contentious relationship for a few years.

While the pilots and flight attendants seem to be heading toward a strike, the Transport Workers Union (TWU)-represented groups have been knocking out tentative agreements in rapid succession this month. First, it was the mechanics on May 5 (pdf), then the “Material Logistics Specialists” on May 7 (pdf). The Maintenance Control Technicians followed on May 8 (pdf). Then, on the 28th, the Fleet and Ground Service (aka rampers, cleaners) came to an agreement (pdf).

That’s some serious progress, though it remains to be seen if the union members will actually approve these contracts or not. When it comes to the rampers, it seems certain to go down to defeat. In a statement, the TWU’s Tim Gillespie said this:

It became clear during our meetings with the National Mediation Board that our union would not be granted release from mediation unless the members of the union are first permitted to vote on the company’s offer. Members will have to carefully look at the state of the economy, look at what they gave up in 2003 and think about what this contract delivers before voting in July.

Ah, I see. In order to strike in this wacky industry, the National Mediation Board (NMB) has to declare that both sides are at an impasse and then release them from negotiations. Then a 30 day cooling-off period begins. When that’s over, the union is allowed to strike, unless the President decides to get involved. So the goal of any union that can’t get what it thinks is fair is to get to that cooling-off period. That helps ratchet up the pressure on management.

It seems clear here that the union doesn’t approve of the offer, but the NMB basically told them that unless the membership was allowed to vote on it, they weren’t going to release them into the cooling-off period. So here we are. The lack of support is very clear here.

In short, every employee group at American wants to go back to where they were before they gave up major concessions in 2003. Unfortunately for them, they are already paid better than their counterparts at competitors so they’re unlikely to get even close to what they gave up. That won’t keep them from fighting. This tentative agreement appears to be simply another step in the march toward a strike as opposed to an actual resolution.

How to Get Home When Disaster Strikes – FOX News
Stuck when disasters happen? I talk about what Cranky Concierge did to help.

Alaska’s New Flights Put Its Relationship With American to the Test – BNET
Alaska is stepping on American’s toes in California. Is this a test?

Three Years Later, American Airlines Is Still Getting the Runaround in China – BNET
American will finally start China flights, but the Chinese aren’t making it easy for them.

Airlines Filled More Seats in April, but That Can’t Continue Forever – BNET
April traffic numbers continue to see increases in loads. This just can’t continue forever.

Chris was on American flight 177 last week from New York to San Francisco, and he is not a happy man. In fact, he wrote a blog post entitled “The Broken Promises of American Airlines.” This can’t be good.

To make things worse, this is a guy who clearly doesn’t trust American in the first place. For example, he checked Flightview to see if his flight was going on time instead of relying on American to actually let him know. While he was on Flightview, he noticed that the plane had been swapped from a 767 to a 757 and that’s when it got ugly.

From Chris’ perspective, he was told he’d have a seat in First class, then he didn’t. He was told he’d leave at a certain time, then he didn’t. He just wasn’t getting the information he needed. Chris doesn’t know the airline industry, but he has an audience, and that makes him dangerous. Misinformation can be spread so quickly that American needed to step in and respond quickly. They apparently didn’t do a good enough job, so I’ll do it. (Others have tried via Twitter, but it hasn’t exactly been taken very well, so hopefully he’ll be willing to listen here.)

How can I be given a seat from one point in the system and then have it taken away in another?

He was given a new boarding pass for the 757 in First Class, but then he was pushed down to coach later. Though I obviously don’t know exactly what happened, my guess is that they hadn’t finished re-seating everyone so when he received his first boarding pass, they had yet to use whatever algorithm they use for determining who gets downgraded when there are fewer seats to be had up front. Since he was on an upgrade, he certainly was a prime target. It sucks, but it should be easily explainable.

As for bringing an old ass plane like that out to fly us across the country, well I know the economics of maintaining an older fleet and the huge cost for modernizing it so I understand why you HAVE to do it, but I don’t like it and I may leave you if I get stuck on too many more of these when I could be flying in comfort on Virgin or Jetblue instead.

It’s really not an issue of a plane being old but really just the interior. Possibly the funniest thing here is that he’s complaining that his 767 was taken away and replaced with an old 757. Well guess what? That 757 looks like it was aircraft N680AN, a 757 that had its first flight in 1999. Those 767s that usually ply the JFK-SFO route? The newest one is from 1988.

It turns out, that the woman sitting next to me, also saw there were no seats available on the seating chart last week. But instead, the smaller 757 we flew had plenty of open seats on it. Meaning the original 767 was way underbooked, else there would have been a huge problem trying to get them all in.

Oh boy. This is just not true. American’s 757s have 22 First Class seats and 166 in coach. The 767-200s that they use on this route are in a much more generous configuration so they have 10 First Class, 30 Business, and only 119 coach seats. So in fact, the 767 could have been completely full and the 757 would still end up looking relatively empty.

At this point, he delves head-on into his conspiracy theory. Though he keeps saying that he doesn’t know any of this for sure, it’s bound to stick in people’s heads.

Could the airline be presenting false information about available seats in order to get a higher price on the seats it was selling?

Huh? I don’t quite understand how that would work since most people don’t see the number of seats available anyway. So that would be a pretty strange and ineffective way to manipulate price if people don’t usually know how many seats are left.

I have seen enough flights cancelled where there were clearly not more then a dozen or two people affected by it to know that such things have been handled by airlines in similar ways before, but who knows for sure?

This is yet another common misconception. I haven’t seen an airline cancel a flight simply because it’s not full. That airplane flies a routing. If it doesn’t go, it won’t be able to make its next flight and that can impact a lot of other people. It also may need to be in maintenance that night. You just don’t mess around with schedules unless you have to.

I hope someone can look into this and I hope that American Airlines can tell us the full real story of what happened on this flight and how we all ended up in this crazy experience.

And that’s the biggest problem. It took American several days to respond, and when they did, they sent a form letter that Chris described as “quaint, but expected I guess, including this wonderful gem ‘eager to continue the beneficial relationship we have developed to date’.”

He was on Twitter blasting out 140 character missives to his 12,000 followers. He even engaged the @AAirwaves account that American uses, and they responded quickly on March 31, but then it stopped. The next public tweet on the subject came on April 2 when they said, “We’re wrkng closely w/ Customer Relations to clarify why there was an equipment change that affected your position.” Seriously? You guys couldn’t have figured it out in two full days? That’s light years in social media time.

I imagine that American swapped the plane because of a mechanical. There is no financial middle management intervention when it comes to how to handle a single airplane swap on the day of departure. That’s an operational decision, and it’s usually because there was a mechanical with the original plane. There’s no sinister plot here, but American didn’t act quickly enough with true information to counter the claim. Now this guy’s blog post is out there and his 12,000 followers on Twitter see it as well. And this isn’t an isolated case. It happens all the time and the airlines need to react more quickly.