CNN is reporting that the Transportation Security Administration is having to investigate a “Jeopardy Board” at an Air Marshal field office in Florida which ridicules gays, women and other minorities. Read the story HERE.
Once again, another huge slice of evidence that the TSA has no professional conduct ingrained in its organization. What is worse, not only is this evidence of a lack of professional conduct, it is evidence that, at least at one office, there is a complete lack of regard for treating people within their own organization without prejudice. And if they cannot treat people within their organization with fairness, how can we expect them to treat the public with fairness.
Furthermore, if their own agents and guards are engaged in childish, unprofessional behaviour, it is a sure sign they are also not engaged in doing their job. In a way, this should elevate security concerns far more than any unspecified threat offered by the government.
According to USA Today / AP in this story HERE, a resident of Brooklyn, NY recently photographed a TSA agent sleeping on the job at New York City’s La Guardia Airport and posted it online. You can see the photo at this LINK.
A spokesperson for the TSA said the guard was put on desk duty while the TSA investigated and speculated that she might have been on “break”. And judging from the photo, that chance exists . . . barely.
This is what I mean about the TSA having no appearance at all of being professional. It doesn’t matter if that woman sleeping was innocent or not, it does not come off as professional conduct. Furthermore, if she really is that sleepy, how good is she doing her job being on the alert for suspicious items and people? Probably not good.
It takes a long time to repair an image in the public’s eye. With this latest story as well as the antics I wrote about HERE as well as the poorly organized reaction to events on Christmas and afterwards, this leads to no confidence on the part of passengers. A lack of confidence makes the passengers rebellious and less willing to cooperate with security needs.
You know who is professional? The National Park Service. The FBI is professional.
The TSA is no more impressive than a knock knock joke.
Several airline journalists and bloggers have posted their reactions to Air New Zealand’s new coach seating that has the possiblity of becoming a kind of 2 or 2.5 person “couch”.
I have to say that unlike all the other reactions I’ve read (very positive), I’m wholly unimpressed. Granted, I wasn’t there to “experience” it but from the photos the seat cushions themselves look awfully thin for true comfort. Despite the models looking like they’re luxuriating in comfort, that does not look like a comfortable way to relax even on an airplane.
Yea! Premium seating got even better for customers of New Zealand. (I’m being sarcastic) Economy customers got introduced to 10 across seating on their 777s. Bleagh. Economy purchasers can now spend even more money to lounge on something that, frankly, isn’t lie flat and doesn’t really look comfortable at least for taller, bigger or older people. I’d rather have more seat pitch and, yes, the real economy seating on the 777s will have 33 inches seat pitch (and let’s not get carried away celebrating) but I just don’t see the real advantage to the couch seating. I wish I did but I don’t.
What this airline world needs is a better seat for domestic 1 to 4 hour travel with a bit more than 31″ of pitch. Let’s celebrate and dance when we see that from a mainline carrier in the United States. Heck, Airtran has a comfortable en0ugh seat that with just 2 more inches of seat pitch, I’d be dancing in celebration of them. Same for Southwest.
I want to see some seating innovations for the typical customer actually get implemented.
I received an email pointing me to this video about the US Airways A320 recovery in the Hudson river. It’s a time lapse film of the A320 being pulled up from the river and it’s both well done and even a bit dramatic. Here it is:
CNN is reporting that an Ethiopian airliner carrying 92 people has been reported “down” after disappearing from radar screens about 30 minutes after departure from Beirut.
These three alliances have been forming, growing and shifting for some time now and it is almost fair to say that they’ve reached a certain maturity that lets us take a look at what the future might hold.
There will always be shifts between alliances as time goes by but the major structures are now in place and let’s be honest in that airlines are not equal partners in these alliances. There are bedrock airlines and there are airlines who are really more associate partners.
In the Star Alliance, US Airways has definitely been more of an associate member than, say, United, Lufthansa or Singapore Airlines and with the recent addition of Continental and the close partnership its formed with United, US Airways is even more the redheaded step-child in this organization.
SkyTeam really has the strongest core though. Formed, in part, from the original Northwest / KLM alliance that began in the 90’s, it now has an extremely strong network that spans both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. If it has a weakness, it is in South America among South American carriers and I’m not sure if that is really a weakness right now.
The Star Alliance and SkyTeam have both managed to work among themselves in pretty close partnership and develop strong networks playing on each others’ strengths. Schedules between those partnership airlines are pretty rational and they do tend to treat affiliate partners as having value in the organizations.
Then there is Oneworld. Oneworld isn’t so much a partnership alliance as it is a looser affiliation of airlines. To be sure, at one time Oneworld’s members represented a very strong core of airlines who were profitable and very strong on a global level. To a degree, they still are but this has definitely become the weak alliance over time and with the fight over JAL taking place, its now fighting for its life.
Oneworld doesn’t know how to work well with each other. Partners American Airlines and British Airways have dominated that relationship and because of their obstinance over trans-Atlantic routes and slots at Heathrow, they haven’t been able to work closely together over time and develop those relationships that have been grown in other alliances. Because of their dominance, other potential strengths in their network, QANTAS, JAL and Cathay Pacific for instance, haven’t really been exploited fully either.
Oneworld is, for most intents and purposes, an old style Anglo-American relationship with AA, BA, QANTAS and Cathay Pacific dominating that alliance. (If you don’t think Cathay Pacific is Anglo, look up its history and its executive team.)
If Oneworld loses JAL, I’m not sure this alliance survives in the long run. It cannot afford to be an alliance with two dominant partners (AA and BA) and it cannot afford to lose even one trans-Pacific partner. If JAL moves over to SkyTeam, then I suspect over the next few years we’ll see one or more “majors” in that relationship find homes elsewhere.
No matter what Oneworld does, they lose a major network in Japan if JAL leaves the alliance and they have no hope of luring ANA over to their alliance either. The best they can hope to do is build their routes systems into Japan with more direct flights from outside Japan. That isn’t very satisfactory.
They already lack a major partner in China itself (Cathay Pacific isn’t quite that kind of partner) and lack a major partner centered in Korea and Southeast Asia/India.
I suspect we’ll see one or more core partners in Oneworld slip away to one of the other alliances. It wouldn’t be too hard to attract LAN away from Oneworld, for instance. Nor would it be difficult to perhaps walk Cathay Pacific away from Oneworld. That would leave three basic Anglo American core partners who have no harmonized strategy and not much to offer smaller affiliate partners either.
What’s more, JAL doesn’t need their money now that they’ve gone into bankruptcy. The Japanese government is financing them and will provide all the capital they need at this point since they have little choice to do anything else. That means JAL is free to consider a long term strategy and if it can get some real signal that anti-trust immunity would be granted to a partnership between Delta and JAL and the rest of SkyTeam, that’s their best deal.
It has occurred to me that the reason there hasn’t been more worry about the dominance such an anti-trust immunity would grant is that, maybe, Delta has signaled its willingness to draw down its legacy network to and inside of Japan that it gained in its Northwest Airlines purchase. Northwest Airlines not only had a strong system to Japan, it also had a strong network system of flights originating from Japan to regional Asian destinations.
If Delta is willing to let JAL fly that system on its behalf, that may well satisfy regulators in the United States.
So, the Dallas Morning News Aviation Blog has THIS entry about the United States telling Japan to slow down on their assumptions that all alliances applying for antitrust immunity in anticipation of a new Open Skies treaty between our two fine country will receive approval. Apparently the Japanese government has been presuming that any and all applications are a done deal and approval is just pro forma. So the United States went to Japan and essentially said “Yeah. Not so fast. Not only do we not choose the alliance for our companies, but we actually don’t just rubber stamp things either.”
With all the talk over the past two weeks about how it was all but announced that JAL would switch to an alliance with Delta and SkyTeam, I could not understand how everyone could regard that as a done deal. Such an alliance meant that 50% or more of the trans-Pacific traffic between the US and Japan would be owned by a cooperating alliance. In the airline world, that’s market power.
To put my puzzlement in perspective, the trans-Pacific BA/AA/Iberia alliance wouldn’t come to close to controlling that much of the UK/US traffic and, yet, the DoJ and DoT have *not* given blanket approval to that application. The DoJ asked for modifications and the DoT (which actually gives the approval and which is more friendly in general to airlines) is waiting for more comments.
So, as I’ve already written a couple of times, I didn’t see an anti-trust immunity agreement between JAL and Delta as necessarily anything genuinely possible. Frankly, I don’t know why Delta thinks it so doable either but from their perspective, there is no harm in trying to form the alliance.
This is the cultural difference that exists between Japan and the United States. In Japan, government still very much has a hand in the direction of businesses and, in particular, the airline industry. Japan, despite its size, remains essentially a two airline country where one of those airline (JAL) has been a government arm for its entire existence. From Japan’s point of view, if the US wants an Open Skies agreement and knows that granting immunity is essential to that agreement, then surely the US will make that happen regardless. Obviously, our government doesn’t work that way.
I suspect that was a rather stunning reveal for the Japanese government and the executives at JAL. I also suspect that the CEO of American Airlines, Gerard Arpey, smiled yesterday despite everything else slamming into AA this week. Now that I understand what was going on on this subject, I reaffirm my belief that, ultimately, JAL will stay with Oneworld if only because of anti-trust issues and the extreme difficulties and logistics of getting such an agreement to pass in Washington, DC.
No, seriously, they do. This column by Daniel Rubin on Philly.Com HERE has all the details but I’ll summarize.
It would seem that some TSA guard decided to search a woman’s luggage and then pulled out a small, clear plastic white baggie filled with white powder and then asked “OK, where did you get it?” He kept her going for a bit of time and then confessed it was a joke. The woman, a young college student, was, in the meantime, picturing her entire life crumbling around here and wondering just how someone got to her luggage. She was, quite literally, in tears as she walked away.
Yeah, the TSA investigated and then fired the guard. So what.
Seriously, so what. Firing that employee isn’t going to fix an endemic problem. It isn’t going to send the right message to the other poorly trained guards. So, so what? It doesn’t fix a thing.
This kind of behaviour, this lack of professional conduct is seen by travelers every day of the year. I have watched TSA guards verbally abuse passengers, shout at kids, act with retribution towards passengers who had the courage to question an behaviour and even attempt to steal from people. Yeah, that last item is something I personally experienced several years ago in the airport in Atlanta.
That’s the problem. We don’t have a well trained, professional group of agents capable of protecting us. We have an extremely irregular set of people who apparently are more interested in money, jokes or abuse than doing their job which is, quite literally, to prevent an air catastrophe.
And people wonder why we don’t feel safe in the air.
Southwest’s 4th quarter financials have been released and contrary to analysts expectations, Southwest not only made a profit in the 4th quarter, they’ve made a profit now for 37 years in a row. For details on the numbers, click HERE.
I’m sure many will attribute this entirely to Southwest’s “no baggage fees” campaign but I think that is doing a disservice to Southwest. I’m quite sure this has more to do with having an excellent service product, excellent staff and a new CEO who appears to have come into his own and really is a new SWA leader. Congratulations Southwest.
Southwest Airlines’ blog, Nuts About Southwest, had a post about their cabin interiors which you can view HERE.
If you think aircraft seat pitch hasn’t changed over the years, take a look at their photos. Particularly the first two photos of interiors. The seat pitch is dramatically more generous than the last two photos. The seat pitch shown in the first photo would, at a guess, exceed that of United’s Economy Plus on most aircraft.
And that isn’t exactly breaking news, is it? Everyone knew it was coming and now it has happened. Japan Air Lines must now face the music, reorganize and find a way to survive.
It isn’t as if they were a shining example of profitability over the years. Indeed, it was yet another airline formed as a national flag carrier that was ultimately privatized and which ultimately went into deeper and deeper debt. Its cousins are airlines like Alitalia and Olympic, not British Airways and American Airlines.
The blame lies in the company culture and by that I mean it went too long in a regulated and semi-regulated environment and then got set free into the competitive winds of the world with a crew of executives that never knew any real competition. Its one positive attribute was its service level which by most accounts was impeccable.
There has been a lot of criticism for the CEO, Haruka Nishimatsu, over the past few weeks. Particularly when it was announced that he was ultimately going to be replaced by Kazuo Inamori, founder of the Kyocera Group. I wrote about that announcement HERE. Tonight I remembered a video that was passed around among many airline enthusiasts as a kind of great example of what an airline CEO should be. Mr. Nishimatsu is shown riding a bus, eating in the general cafeteria of the company and generally being one of the people. I remember many people posting on other blogs about him earning just $90,000 in salary after cutting all his perks when he had to slash budgets and staff at JAL. (See below)
Let’s remember that this guy at least tried to do the right thing which is quite unlike many in this business at times.
So, what’s next? Well, JAL has to layoff thousands of employees, reduce costs at every level, probably purchase some new aircraft and find a way to claw itself back into profitability. That’s a tough thing to do even in good times.
I’ve some doubt about their choice of CEO to do it with. This is a man who plans to work for no salary and put in “3 or 4 days” a week as well as choose a second-in-command from the current airline ranks. Huh? Really?
What JAL needs is a seasoned airline executive who has extensive experience in competitive environments and who understands what it means to run both a national and international airline. There are plenty of those around in this world but, yes, it does potentially mean hiring someone who isn’t Japanese to run the airline. Or at least to lead the airline out of its current problems.
There is some precedent for this. Nissan’s CEO is Carlos Ghosn, a Lebanese-Brazilian man who came to Nissan from, of all places, Renault. He made enemies until he surprised everyone by bringing Nissan back to profitability. If they can’t stand to hire outside of Japan, then they would do well to find someone at ANA to take over.
If the Japanese government and JAL’s board want to be serious about recovery, they need someone who is the best, not someone who is politically safe.
JAL will likely rid itself of its 747 fleet in favor of a 777 / 787 fleet for its international operations. It is time for those Airbus A300 aircraft to go too. It will have to eliminate stupid routes like flying from New York City to Rio de Janeiro. Their focus on First Class and Business Class will have to be realigned. (An amazing portion of some of their international aircraft is dedicated to these two classes leaving only a small portion for Economy Class.)
But I have to say that I think this is going to turn much uglier before it gets better. I think JAL will flounder and I think the Japanese government will continue to pump money into it (and, in a way, they kind of have to since they provide the only competition to speak of for ANA.)
“We believe it is important to secure customer convenience by the injection of public funding. However, we are also highly concerned that the fair and competitive environment would not be secured under the financial support and injection of public funding.”
That kind of criticism is rare in Japan but ANA has had to fight for its success since its inception. They have a point but strangely even I find such a statement a bit tacky on this day.
Everyone says it is Delta and SkyTeam who will lure JAL away from the Oneworld alliance. I must say, given all the talk, I’m beginning to be swayed. However, I remain skeptical that they can enter into the SkyTeam alliance, particularly with Delta, without their being some anti-trust issues on the part of both governments. If they are leaning that way, I believe it is because someone in the Japanese government is leading them to believe there will be no issues. I do not think that that will be the case in the United States, however. One look at the criticisms of the AA/BA/Iberia anti-trust case and you’ll see what I mean.
Azul turns 1 year old and has posted some pretty impressive numbers. According to THIS Wall Street Journal story, Azul has managed to carry over 2 million people in its first year of operation.
Flying with a fleet of 14 Embraer E190/E195 jets with a 106 and 118 seats respectively, Azul plans to grow their fleet considerably ending up with a fleet of 33 aircraft by 2011. Azul was, to date, the best financed airline venture yet at $200 million in start up capital and is an excellent example of how to start an airline properly.
Owned and controlled by David Neeleman, former founder of Morris Air and jetBlue (and who also assisted in the founding of WestJet in Canada), Azul shows great promise for stimulating air travel demand in Brazil.
Ordinarily, I’m not too keen to talk about completely foreign airlines but this is one I like to watch because I have a feeling that Mr. Neeleman will come back to the US again one day and start yet another airline. I presume he presently has a non-compete clause in force between himself and jetBlue but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s already looking at a map of the United States and making plans with himself for the future.
According to the Wall Street Journal Middle Seat blog, American Airlines has decided to match the bag fees recently implemented by Delta and Continental. You can read more HERE.
So, at present, Delta (including Northwest), American Airlines, Continental, United and US Airways are now all charging $25 for the first bag and $35 for the second bag with some of the airlines offering “discounts” if you perform your “bag fee purchase” online. That would imply that they each see this price for checked bags being a bit more elastic than one would have thought. Or, at the least, they see it as elastic as long as they all go for the same increases much as the case is with air fare increases.
So far, no low cost carrier has adopted this pricing model or even raised their checked bag fees. I suspect they won’t either as it gives them an opportunity to show themselves as the good guy while gaining some incremental revenue.
If this rise in fees sticks for the next 1 or 2 quarters, I do think it will put tremendous pressure on Southwest Airlines to institute their own version of bag fees, at least by institutional investors and analysts. So far, Southwest and its CEO Gary Kelly have resisted these calls to add checked bag fees and, so far, they believe it is resulting in incremental revenue from passengers switching to Southwest to avoid fees. Since CEO Kelly (and Southwest as a whole) is not one to shade the truth, I’ll continue to believe these claims.
However, with other LCC carriers such as Airtran and Virgin America and even jetBlue (on the 2nd bag) have added fees and do report significantly improved revenues from that, I would imagine that the call for Southwest to add these fees will be defeaning particularly when Southwest could implement a jetBlue or Airtran style program and see improvements to their quarterly results which haven’t been too impressive in the last year.
It is sad but I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of these increases. I do think that some airline will probe the upper limits of these fees just a bit more yet. I do think that Southwest will resist the call to add these fees for at least another 6 months but if there hasn’t been some kind of collapse in the price of these fees by then, I would not be surprised to learn that Southwest has begun to make changes to their infrastucture to implement them. I think the first sign will be the withdrawal of their “no fees for checked bags” advertising.
In light of the latest travel “scares” over the past 3 weeks, it seemed like a good time to talk about looking after yourself when making a reservation. Before anything else, please remember that to an airline, the most ideal situation is one where you pay money and don’t actually fly. What I really mean is that airlines are not your friend. They are not particularly accomodating and they are focused on extracting as much money from you as possible.
When you are flying, names are important. The security we have in place today is largely predicated on matching an ID with a name to your ticket. Airlines have discovered that if you have the wrong name on the ticket, it’s a revenue opportunity as opposed to a honest mistake to be fixed. With the recent travel worries, names are being scrutinized even closer than they have been in some time. What you don’t want is to have a ticket that has a name that does not match your ID.
First, make your reservations and ticket purchases with patience and care. If you are booking not only for yourself, take the time to find out exactly how someone’s name reads on the ID they plan to use. Get their birthdates right too. Before you “confirm” the reservation and make that purchase, confirm each person’s information including their name.
In my family, it is tricky business. My wife uses her middle name as the name she goes by. My daughter (step-daughter), has a different last name from both mine and my wife’s. Now, you would expect family to get this stuff right but they have a mother/grandmother who has incorrectly booked tickets with the wrong name for them more than once. Their brother/uncle has done the same thing at least once. What’s worse (and I don’t know how you plan to ensure avoiding this), they’ve done it after I ensured that my wife reminded them of her full name as shown on her driver’s license. Since my daughter is now 14 years old, she’s now going through security on her own when traveling to see her family. It’s become doubly important to ensure her name is correct because she uses her passport as her ID.
What can happen? A lot. Remember that the ticket you buy determines your “class” with the airline. If you’ve bought a non-refundanble, no changes ticket, most often the airline will require you to pay fees to change the ticket or even cancel it. Those fees can add up to hundreds of dollars too.
You have to get the name right and you must triple check the information you’ve giving the airline (or travel website or travel agency) matches your ID. If you do make a mistake, you are now at the mercy of the airline.
If you do make a mistake, go to work instantly on trying to get it resolved. If you purchased through an online or traditional travel agency, work through them. If you bought it directly from the airline, start calling them. The quicker you try to fix it, the more likely they are to treat it as an honest mistake. Calling the night before your trip just gives them leverage.
If you do run into trouble with an airline when speaking to them by phone, consider another strategy. Go to the airport and speak to an agent directly. Yeah, it’s gonna cost you a trip to the airport but that probably is going to cost a lot less than the potential fees you’ll be charged. By going to the airport, you’re placing a human being located here in the United States in direct face to face contact with you and that’s a more difficult position for that person than phone or email contact. Second, you can ask to speak to a manager. But be smart. Don’t go at the busiest time of the day. You want to find an agent who is slow or completely unbusy. Take your ID with you as well as a printed copy of your purchase (you did remember to print out your transaction, right?)
If this is for someone else, that person needs to be with you or they’re the one who needs to go. Preferably, you want to have whoever bought the ticket and whoever is traveling on the ticket at the same place at the same time. Granted, that’s not always possible.
Don’t assume that just because “family” is making your reservation, they’re paying attention. Be pro-active and write down the exact spelling of your name and your birthdate for them.
Don’t assume that the airline will just change it at the airport the day you’re leaving. If you’ve waited that long, you’ve given them all the power. Take action as soon as you realize your mistake.
Do review the reservation and purchase one more time after you’ve made the transaction.
Do make sure your ID is current and, if possible, carry back up with you.
Don’t check in online until you’re certain that your name is correct. Once you do, the ball game is over.
There have been a few attempts to create long haul, low cost carriers over the past several decades. Laker Airways and People Express were two examples of that from years past. Neither succeeded in the long run due to competition but also because long haul flights are a different creature.
Now I’m beginning to think someone could do it. It would require a few very special adjustments to make it successful and those adjustments would be a real challenge to accomodate but, yes, I think someone could do it.
Michael O’Leary of Ryanair has talked of doing this but his concept, at least how he has laid it out, is fraught with peril since it is based on a Ryanair strategy.
Long haul flights really only work between two large population centers because they do depend a lot on airport infrastructure and originating traffic in those areas. They are international and that requires airports that can accomodate customs and immigration facilities and airports that have runways that are long enough for long haul aircraft.
They also can’t depart and arrive at just any time. Not to be attractive anyway. So schedules are much more important and frequency isn’t necessarily the key as much as finding routes that offer high aircraft utilization.
Until recently, they also required really large aircraft such as the 747 or DC-10/MD-11 to lower the costs per available seat. Filling those aircraft day in and day out is difficult on a point to point basis if you don’t have really large population centers to feed those aircraft.
Things have kind of changed though. For one, there are aircraft that might be suited to such operations which offer very low CASM (cost available seat mile) but which aren’t so big that they become difficult to fill. I’m thinking of the Boeing 787 and 777 and the Airbus A330 and A350.
These aircraft are capable of long haul flight, offer enough capacity and the kind of operating costs that might just make such a venture possible. In particular, the 787-8 and A330 make this look real attractive.
The one twist that I think you would need is partnerships to feed these flights at major cities that would serve as the departure points for such flights. In the past, I would be skeptical of this being possible. Now, not so much. Southwest Airlines is forging partnerships with LCC carriers in Canada and Mexico (WestJet and Volaris) and its just the kind of partnership that a long haul LCC venture could use.
Imagine an LCC carrier using the A330 or 787-8 flying routes such as DFW-London or Chicago-London or NYC-London. Or even Portland, OR to Amsterdam or Denver to Germany. Maybe even Salt Lake City to Japan.
The best aircraft would be the 787-8. It would accomodate medium to long haul flights perfectly with low enough CASMs for virtually any city pair. Its expected to be more low maintenance than any other aircraft of its kind. It could become the 737 of long haul quite easily.
If you had partnerships with LCC carriers on both sides to feed connecting traffic (something else that Southwest has done a time or two with its relationships with ATA and Icelandair (which was actually an interline agreement), you might be able to do it.
Imagine Southwest Airlines feeding such an LCC in places such as Denver, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Portland or Seattle and Ryanair feeding such a venture at airports such as Dublin, London-Standsted or Frankfurt-Hahn. Or, perhaps, Airtran feeding such an airline from Atlanta to Rio de Janeiro with Azul providing the feed in Brazil.
This new LCC would have to be the “codeshare” on the domestic/regional flights and its own entity on the long haul international portion. Domestic/regional partners would benefit from the additional regional traffic but really should not be selling tickets from Kansas City to Rio de Janeiro via Atlanta. It goes against their models. These partnerships should be about each sticking to their models but providing some interlining between the two.
Oddly enough, I see airlines in two parts of the world being able to do this. The United States would be ideal because a US based long haul LCC carrier can reach around the world from the US borders. The other area would be one based in the Middle East such as Dubai which could also reach around the world.
With Open Skies agreements falling into place left and right, the right aircraft being available now and LCC IT infrastructures becoming flexible enough to enter into this kind of partnership, it might just be possible in the near future.
Sean Menke, largely the architect of Frontier Airlines’ success over the past several years and who was the innovator who brought a la carte pricing to both Frontier and Air Canada is leaving Republic Airways according to this Dallas Morning News Aviation Blog report HERE.
I don’t see this departure as a condemnation of Republic so much as Menke is probably wanting to move on to bigger and better things. With long ties to the Denver community, moving to Indianapolis probably wasn’t high on his list of things to do. With his track record in this industry, Menke represents the kind of talent other airlines need and I’m sure his list of offers is already growing rapidly. There are several airlines who could stand to have someone of his caliber. And let’s face it, with Brian Bedford in the top position at Republic, there was nowhere for Menke to go. In his mind, it was probably better to leave now than to stay in a position with no upward mobility and a narrowed scope.
However, Republic is going to miss this key executive in a bad way, I think. Menke was just the kind of person you need to merge brands together while preserving the image necessary to succeed in the airline industry. While Midwest is only a brand now, it is an important brand in that portfolio. Managing brands is something Republic has almost no experience in doing and this is a critical time for them.
I think Republic will find someone to do this but I also think this development does spell the end of the Midwest brand in the near future. It is just too difficult to manage to brands that, while both are good service products, both are not entirely in harmony with each other either. Frontier is ultimately the stronger brand nationally and has the service product that fits closest with with industry trends now. I think sometime in the next 12 to 18 months, we’ll see one brand (Frontier) and Milwaukee’s status as a “hub” will draw down to that of a focus city at best.
The key question is will Republic find someone who “gets” what they’re trying to do and can brand and market to that approach? And can they get him/her in time to keep the whole enterprise from stumbling. That’s where I worry because Republic isn’t in the habit of having to find such talent for a branded enterprise and it takes a while to figure out what you need and who you need. If CEO Bedford has strong industry contacts among the branded airlines, he would be wise to get work making those calls asap. An executive search for 9 months won’t fly for this.
Yesterday on my post about flights between Dallas / Fort Worth and Milwaukee, the surprise of that investigation was that Southwest Airlines was most probably the best choice based on cost (price + baggage fees + convenience from doorway to doorway) and service (mainline aircraft and service product).
Well, that got me to wondering about other routes out of the DFW area that I’m generally interested in. So, I checked on flights between Dallas and Portland, Oregon, another city I have an interest in. Southwest offers a number of two stop connections between the two destinations at competitive prices but your travel duration on those would be excruciating.
However, Southwest *does* offer a couple of flights each day that are one stop – no plane change flights. And guess what? They’re pretty reasonable in flight duration. Again, I cannot tell where that one stop is but it must be mostly right along the flight path. Best of all, their price is about as good as I’ve seen in a long time at an advance purchase fare of $129 each way. Again, considering that Southwest doesn’t charge for baggage and is more convenient in the Dallas area, this is the best deal all in all.
American Airlines offers 5 non-stop flights a day (all 4 hour long flights using MD-82 aircraft) for the same nominal price and charges for baggage.
And I have to tell you, I think I’d rather fly Southwest even with one stop. AA’s MD-80 aircraft are woefully worn out, uncomfortable and their crews are surly at best. Southwest offers me a more comfortable seat, most likely a newer aircraft and certainly a better maintained cabin and a service staff that was happy to get out of bed that day and go to work.
So, what does this mean? Well, it’s hard for me to research every route that SW and AA might compete on but it looks as if Southwest might be getting aggressive with American on a lot of routes that AA has been dominating with almost zero competition for a long time. Southwest is doing it by offering direct, one stop, no plane change flights and they look pretty good to me.
If you live in an area served by Southwest, it may very well pay dividends to take the extra moment to see what they’re offering on your chosen route. Just remember that you won’t pay baggage (or non-alcohoic beverage) fees and you will fly on mainline aircraft with friendly service staff. That has a value in and of itself.
In way, it is a shame that Southwest continues to refuse to list itself with online travel agencies like Expedia and Travelocity as I think they would compare so favorably against legacy airlines that it might well be worth it.
I follow this city pair pretty closely because Milwaukee is my birthplace and I continue to have a lot family there and because I’ve never really understood why this route has so often been the ugly step-child given the demand between the two cities.
I took a look at what service airlines were offering (non-stop) between the two cities and thought I would give a summary since its so reflective of what is going on in Milwaukee in general. Just to keep things interesting, I looked at flights in mid-April.
American Airlines will have 5 flights spanning each day starting early in the morning and ending each evening. Every one of those flights is an Embraer ERJ-140/145 aircraft flown by American Eagle. American is competitive on price and even currently the low fare leader this far out but only by quite literally a few dollars.
Airtran has its flights for April now. They have 2 flights a day with one morning and one evening departure and both are very convenient to both business and leisure travelers. These flights will be on CRJ-200 equipment flown by Skywest Airlines. I still expect that these will quickly transition to Boeing 717 aircraft if Airtran finds this a popular route segment. Oddly enough, Airtran’s offerings are just over $100 more than what AA is offering.
Midwest Airlines has 4 flights spread over the day and all at convenient times ranging from early in the morning to the evenings. These flights are competitive with AA and are currently flown on Republic Airways E-170/190 aircraft, certainly the best equipment on that route presently.
Frontier Airlines now has codeshares on every Midwest Airlines flights and at the same prices. So, if you want to fly Frontier, uh, I guess you can. At the end of the day, it is neither Frontier nor Midwest Airlines (although the aircraft are painted in Midwest colors), it’s really Republic Airways.
That makes 11 physical flights and 15 flight offerings on 4 airlines between the cities for non-stop flights.
Now, here is the interesting development. Southwest Airlines will be offering direct flights (one stop, no plane change) between Milwaukee and Dallas come April. So far, I cannot discern where that aircraft stops along the way but it has to be on the way. Perhaps Kansas City or St. Louis because the duration of those direct flights is only 3.5 hours which is nominally one hour longer than the non-stop offerings but if you allow 40 minutes to land, disembark passengers, embark passengers and take off again, it cannot be a long or bothersome stop.
An hour longer seems like a lot, maybe, but you get to fly it on a mainline aircraft (Boeing 737) and on airline that does *not* charge luggage fees. You also fly into Love Field airport instead of DFW which means (for many) a much more convenient airport to fly to and from.
Best of all, Southwest is highly competitive on price. AA remains slightly cheaper but advance purchase fares mean that Southwest is nominally a few dollars more, potentially as quick (doorway to doorway) and on a more comfortable airline with friendlier service and no baggage fees. This may be the best deal offered if their flight times work for you.
Delta Airlines chose to announce they are increasing their checked baggage fees. If you pay online, your fee goes from $15 for the first bag to $23 for the first bag. The second bag checked rises from $25 to $32 (paid online). Continental matched those fees almost immediately. While it seems exorbitant to me, I wonder if anyone will really notice right now.
I suspect Delta did this simply because they have pricing power at most of their hubs (ATL, MSP, DTW, SLC, CVG, MEM) and because they don’t think it is going to affect the consumer’s decision about which airline to fly in most cases. Delta doesn’t get a lot of LCC competition at its hubs except for ATL and there seems to be a unspoken agreement with Airtran not to get too ugly there. Besides, Airtran has checked baggage fees too.
The thing is, most online sites that offer booking for airlines in the US do not mention baggage fees when displaying prices for routes. Delta will continue to appear to be very competitive on routes while likely adding additional incremental revenue through the “gotcha” approach. Quite honestly, I suspect they’ll get away with it. At least until there is a healthy recovery in the airline industry and that is likely 18 to 24 months away still. Maybe more.
Will others match it? I suspect that American Airlines might. There is no precise harmony among airlines on these fees, not yet anyway. Continental already had pretty high fees at $18 and $27 for online checked fees (with a $2 and $3 surcharge at the airport). AA is at $20 and $30 respectively whether you check online or at the airport. US Airways is at $20 / $30 for online (with a $5 surcharge for checking at the airport.) United is $15 and $25 for online checking.
By contrast, Southwest Airlines has no fees up to the 3rd bag, jetBlue offers the first bag free and $30 fee for the second while Airtran charges $15 for the first and $25 for the second. In other words, these fees are all over the place. The truth is, as competitive as airfares are on many routes, these fees can change the equation pretty dramatically in some cases since those fees are for each way on a round trip flight.
These fees have added dramatic amounts of revenue to airlines’ bottom line and I don’t see them going away at all. I don’t think the fees among legacy airlines will harmonize much at all until and if online travel sites begin showing an “all in” pricing when comparing fares. Even with such comparisons, I don’t think the fees go away so much as they just begin to merge together among the airlines.
Will anyone else raise their fees? Well, maybe. I’m sure it will be tempting to do so among all the legacy airlines. One or two may even try to raise the ante some. I kind of think both United and American Airlines will try some kind of new mix in the future. I don’t see the LCC carriers playing around with their fees much if at all. They have the revenue and now this may be their chance to follow Southwest’s strategy in a modified form by advertising lower checked baggage fees.
I don’t think Southwest will change its attitude on these fees based on this new development. Their strategy appears to be working for them and they don’t have a history of following the pack when something works. That said, I’m sure it is something they’ll re-examine from time to time and it doesn’t mean they won’t add fees at some point in the future. Right now, they appear to be capturing customers with their ‘no fees” approach and their aggressive advertising seems to have caught some attention.
As much as I hate these fees for the 1st bag checked, I hate that airlines and travel websites have done really little to truly show the “all in” price for these trips. It makes things just that much more murky for the consumer and that is a bad thing. However, the best thing you can do is learn the fees for the airlines you may be shopping for a trip and do the math yourself. You’ll be frustrated by it and no doubt resent it but there isn’t a ready made solution at this time.
Frankly, these developments are just one more reason why I wonder about Southwest re-joining the travel agency world. The world has changed since they left it and, quite honestly, I think they could re-structure their IT infrastructure and re-join those agencies with little incremental costs involved. At that point, they become the no brainer for many consumers from my view. Even as aware as I am of airline options and even being located in the DFW area, even I tend to forget about Southwest as an option sometimes.
One strategy for learning these fees is to visit LuggageLimits.Com (also linked in my sidebar).
Reuters is reporting HERE that JAL has announced a new CEO. The founder of Kyocera probably most known here for cell phones, Kazuo Inamori, has been named as the new CEO in place of Haruka Nishimatsu who agreed to step down as part of a restructuring by a Japanese government fund.
I see a few potential problems here. First, Mr. Inamori is 77 years old and in his statement regarding this new position, he said:
“I am old and a full-time job is hard for me, so I would like to work three or four days a week and I will work for free.”
That doesn’t inspire my confidence. The airline business is punishing and requires constant care and attention. Anyone who will guide a successful restructuring really needs to be making a comittment to long hours for the next 3 to 5 years.
Second, Mr. Inamori doesn’t have any prior airine or even transportation and/or hospitality experience. His background is in electronics. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the airline business is a service industry. One of the things that often confounds outsiders to the business is just how much cash it takes to run an airline even on a *daily* basis. The amount of money flowing through an airline is staggering and newcomers often believe that simple “tweaks” will yield profit. They don’t.
Yes, there have been outsiders that have come into the airline industry and succeeded nominally. United Airlines is rather famous of seeking its CEOs from outside the business and most recently with its current CEO Glenn Tilton. However, many would argue that Glenn Tilton is the perfect example of why it should NOT be done and I would tend to agree.
JAL needs a dynamic leader with excellent ties to the Japanese financial world but who is also capable of leading JAL’s staff through what will be a very painful restructuring. Jobs will have to be cut. Routes will have to be restructured and new alliances found. Japan is in need of an LCC carrier and someone who could identify how to start one would be an excellent candidate for JAL. Sadly, LCC business models are outside the knowledge of most Japanese airline executives. (If you think JAL Express is an LCC, read THIS and you’ll find it really isn’t.)
JAL also have to figure out its international routes which just boggle my mind at times. For instance, JAL flies Tokyo-NYC-Rio de Janeiro and offers flights with 5th freedom rights between NYC and Rio. Now, flying JAL between those two cities might sound attractive but it strikes me as silly. JAL would be far better off flying to NYC and allowing AA (via the Oneworld alliance) carry their follow on traffic to Rio.
JAL just announced a closer partnership with Oneworld member, Mexicana, for carrying traffic from the US to Mexico. While there are strong ties between Japan and Mexico, this makes sense for JAL.
At one point, JAL was flying to destinations such as DFW, Cairo, Beirut and Copenhagen. That kind of flying reflects someone acting as a national flag carrier but not an airline acting in its own best interest. The new leadership will have to rationlize the routes, rationalize the fleet and figure out which of two major airline alliances to participate in.
The fleet is comprised of a mix ranging from Boeing 737s to Boeing 747Ds and capacity will have to be reduced and aircraft interiors reconfigured to reflect the accomodation of more coach class traffic. JAL is in the enviable position of having 2 airline alliances, Oneworld and Skyteam, court their membership and offering generous financial packages in return. But choosing the right alliance isn’t just about how much financial rescue packages offer, it is about identifying who can offer the best revenue improvements over the long term. I still believe that JAL will ultimately remain with Oneworld if only because fighting anti-trust issues by joining Skyteam is not what an airline should be doing during the fight of its life.
