The Detroit Free Press reports that the Northwest Airlines logos have been disappearing throughout Detroit Metro Airport this week.  Monday, employees began wearing the Delta Airlines uniform as well. 

The change at the Detroit hub for Northwest signals that Delta is proceeding according to plan in its merger with Northwest Airlines which was consummated just 5 months ago.  There are now 33 Northwest airplanes painted in Delta colors and Delta expects to have more than 250 repainted by the end of 2010.

For the time being, Northwest Airlines remains a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Airlines until the two airlines’ Certificates of Operations are merged.  This typically can take from 1 to 2 years to accomplish at it involves harmonizing a vast amount of policy and procedure when it comes to flight operations and maintenance.  So far, Delta has made quick progress with bringing the two operations together on a pace that is notably quicker than that of America West and US Airways.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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The CrankyFlier and the Delta blog have both alerted me to some new features coming on board with Delta.  Delta has added the ability to see status on upgrades and standby lists for flights to their main website and they intend to add these features very shortly to their mobile website for PDA Phone users.

Adding the ability to make these checks via cell phone or phone/PDA is a huge advancement for airlines and I suspect we’ll see more of these feature additions to most mainline airlines over the next year. 

For those of you interested in accessing Delta’s mobile site, you can go HERE for instructions.  I’ve already blogged about Continental Airlines’ system HERE.

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service, Travel Hints by ajax
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The Dallas Morning News is reporting that American Airlines has decided to close its operations at Dallas’ Love Field airport . . . again.   American has tried a number of different strategies at the airport including the most recent exercise of flying EMB-145 jets from DAL to ORD (Chicago).   By all reports, this latest strategy actually was successful but in a case of winning the battle and losing the war, those flights will now go away.

Why did they go away if successful?  Because they were only successful in a very small way.  AA never had much luck in operating any other flights from Dallas to other destinations including Austin, Kansas City or St. Louis.  They needed more than 6 successful round trip flights a day to make operating at Love Field a worthwhile enterprise.

Notably, AA has apparently signed a new long term lease that keeps keeps their 2 gates at Love Field in their hands.  Why sign a long term lease and then leave?  Because the brokered dissolution of the Wright Amendment gives 16 gates to Southwest and 2 each to American Airlines and Continental.  If AA were to give up those 2 gates, they would likely be snatched up by another low fare carrier to be used to further infiltrate AA’s routes.  My guess is that it is a blocking exercise.  Besides, they are valuable property and may offer AA the opportunity to sub-lease them to other airlines if they don’t use them.

Why didn’t AA stick with the Chicago flights?  Because while those flights were successful, they could only be flown with aircraft that have 56 seats or less (for now.)  That means that the only growth available was more frequency.  Airlines such as AA really can make much more profit by flying more capacity on such a route.  In other words, they could do much better if they were able to use MD-82 or Boeing 737-800 aircraft on the route.  They won’t be able to until 2014.

I would, however, speculate that AA could have made more money on this route using reconfigured CRJ-700 aircraft from American Eagle.  These aircraft could have been reconfigured with a business class and economy section down to 56 seats and probably flown much more profitably.  However, these aircraft probably don’t lend themselves to being reconfigured in such a way.  How do you efficiently place business class seating in an aircraft that is already limited to 2+2 seating in economy?

American is doing what is good for American.  However, what would be better for Dallas is another airline taking over and using those gates for a good purpose.  Yes, even Southwest Airlines could use a little competition these days.  Imagine jetBlue offering Austin / Dallas flights that connect back to the East coast through Austin.  Or how about Airtran connecting through Little Rock or Houston?

In the end, Love Field will not see much if any real competition develop.  Not while 3 very successful and very large airlines control all the gates there.

Filed under: Airline News, Airports by ajax
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Southwest Airlines started service between Minneapolis / St. Paul and Chicago today according to the Minneapolis / St. Paul StarTribune.  The newspaper reports that Southwest managed to kick off the new service with their trademark attention to customers.  Passenger Service Agents even managed to get their first customers to sing a song before boarding.

This marks Southwest’s first of several new routes for this year into new markets.  New York City (La Guardia) and Boston Logan are the next to receive Southwest routes. 

For now, Southwest will be linking MSP to Chicago only but I do foresee them adding routes to other Southwest focus cities such as Denver, St. Louis, Indianapolis or Detroit.  Typically, Northwest Airlines fights back against intruders on their mainstay routes but with the takeover by Delta, one wonders if their is enough attention being paid to the new competition versus integrating the operations.  Other airlines have entered the Chicago / MSP route and left it months later badly bruised from fare wars instituted by the dominant three legacy carriers at the two airports, Northwest Airlines, United and American Airlines.

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service by ajax
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Delta has now made it possible to link your Delta SkyMiles account to your Northwest WorldPerks account and use your miles in a combined fashion.  What’s more, they’re offering you 500 miles to do it right now.  Their message reads:

Link Your SkyMiles and WorldPerks Accounts

When you link your Northwest WorldPerks account with your Delta
SkyMiles account you can combine your miles immediately to redeem for
mileage upgrades, Award Travel, and even shopping. Enjoy the benefits
of both programs, even before they’re fully integrated.  Plus, linking
accounts now will enable automatic consolidation of your account
history, including Elite qualification balances, when the programs
merge later this year.

Two simple steps to faster rewards:
1. Validate account numbers and PINs.
You’ll enter both your WorldPerks and your SkyMiles account numbers
and PINs for authentication.
2. Link accounts, transfer miles.
After linking your accounts, you can begin to transfer miles from one
account to the other. You may transfer as many miles as you want in
either direction–as many times as you want–as long as the miles are
there to transfer.

Or you may choose to only link your accounts and not transfer your
miles at this time. You can return at any time to transfer miles
between accounts.

Link your accounts and transfer your miles before April 15, 2009 and
earn 500 bonus miles in your SkyMiles account. Refer to the terms and
conditions for complete details.

 

One thing does occur to me:  There is probably very little overlap between the two customer bases relatively speaking.  Their networks serve different hubs in pretty different geographic locations.  No doubt there is some overlap but probably not as much as we might imagine between an AA / United linkup.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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It’s still slow in the news of airlines but I have some ideas for articles to come soon.

In the meantime, I thought I would post THIS link to a Boeing 707.  The aircraft is in a park in Ho Chi Minh (ex-Saigon) and somewhat near the airport.  It’s supposed to be an aircraft originally owned and operated by South African Airways that was later sold to Vietnam Airlines.

The view from Google is just entertaining. 

Filed under: Trivia by ajax
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