Returning to Dallas on Southwest from Chicago was a different experience. First, we neglected to insist on avoiding Lakeshore Drive from downtown Chicago to Midway. This found us sitting in stop and go traffic with our margin of safety time eroding quickly. A quick tip and some encouragement to the taxi driver found us suddenly surging ahead when a hole opened and he got us there with time to spare.
Again, I paid for Early Bird check-in on my flight. This found me with a seat number of A group, position 37. This is unsatisfying and I don’t believe the old “A” group went to 37. What I’m saying is that A37 really translates into roughly B10 when you consider the number of people ahead of you and the fact that virtually every flight departing MDW originated somewhere else and already has passengers on it. I obtained a seat in the back on the aisle and that’s OK.
My security experience at MDW was unpleasant and I would say it was about average for a lot of busy airports. In this case, I put the blame squarely on the staffers. They were certainly moving in the Chicago Way. One thing that found me objecting vocally were the wheelchairs. While I stood in line with my belt and shoes in my hands, I saw 3 wheelchair bound people go to the front of the line where all three people got up, walked able bodied through the process and then sat down again.
Sorry but being in a wheelchair does not entitle you to get in front of two dozen people waiting to move through. I objected and the TSA offered that I was being unreasonable. I offered that fair is fair and able bodied people in wheelchairs don’t get to go in front of me. Based on the reaction of passengers around me, public opinion was on my side.
Again, this airport is crowded and I walked the full lengths of both A and B concourses where I did not witness an empty Southwest gate. I witnessed empty Delta gates and empty Porter Airlines gates but not one Southwest gate. They are bursting at the seems and the gate areas don’t quite have enough space for full flights in my opinion.
On this flight (via STL again), I witnessed person after person trying to stuff grossly overpacked and slightly oversized rollaboard cases into overhead bins. This causes many delays when boarding the aircraft. People move through the aisles slower, they put their things away slower and they fight for overhead bin space near their seat. Flight attendants numbering just 3 per aircraft are not enough to keep this kind of herd flowing smoothly. Even a few off duty Southwest staff pitched in to help and made little difference.
One staffer attempted to move my modest briefcase and light fleece jacket all the way to the back. Uh, no, you aren’t going to penalize me for being efficient in favor of people who are apparently clueless about checking oversized bags. My stuff took up, at best, 1/5 of the overhead bin. I’m comfortable with that and it’s notable that just 2 fat bags were able to fit into the bin next to my stuff and the bin lid was only closed after a SWA FA essentially beat the bags down with the lid until it latched.
The flight departure was significantly delayed and I would attribute all of that to people boarding slowly, sitting down slowly, arguing for bin space instead of accepting a gate check of their bag and, last but not least, a 100% full flight. These 100% full flights are exactly why SWA needs the Boeing 737-800 in its fleet.
Once every got seated, we did depart the gate fairly rapidly and experienced about a 10 minute taxi delay as well. Once we took off, things settled down and the trip into STL was quick. Taxiing into STL was efficient and deplaning went quickly. However, once again, it was 100% full and, once again, we played baggage and seat games far longer than necessary. This found the plane departing even later.
Ultimately, I arrived in DAL about 40 minutes late. That was unsatisfying because it wasn’t weather and it wasn’t the aircraft. It was the sheer mass of people attempting to occupy too much space on that aircraft. Southwest needs bigger gate areas to get people organized onto the aircraft and it might be time to consider some variation of assigned seating. Too many people are jockeying for position on full aircraft and that delays things quite a bit. Assigned seating would eliminate the jockeying and, I think, speed seating. Unassigned seating on aircraft that are seeing 70% load factors is one thing but on aircraft that are as much as 89% load factor average, it becomes almost untenable.
All of that said, I still think the experience on both flights was as good or better than what was available to me via American Airlines, DFW and ORD airports. And about $300 cheaper as well. I still recommend Southwest but I also recommend that you use flights that are “no plane change” flights into and out of MDW or you may well risk making a connection. That recommendation stands until Southwest improves its ontime rate at Midway.
One more hint: Southwest doesn’t charge for checking your bags. It has an excellent record when it comes to lost or misplaced baggage and it delivers checked bags to its carousels pretty quickly. Save yourself trouble and just check your rollaboard. You’ll find yourself able to maneuver on and off the airplane quicker. You won’t have to fight for overhead bin space near you (and if you don’t get it near you, you’re going to be massively delayed in getting off that aircraft anyway.) Don’t be vain and insist on taking it onboard when it is completely unnecessary on this airline.
Here is Associated Press video of the tsunami resulting from the 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan. The airport is Sendai Airport. You can see where Sendai is located in Japan on the Great Circle Mapper image below the video.
Last Saturday, I wrote about a trip I was taking from Dallas to Chicago on Southwest. This was my first opportunity to fly Southwest between the two cities and I’ve long believed that even though the flight was a one stop flight, it was actually as efficient or more efficient than taking a legacy carrier such as American Airlines from DFW to ORD.
Yes, it was. Entry into Love Field and moving to the gate was simple and quick. I don’t know why but they appear to be able to move more people through security at Love Field in shorter time than anything I’ve ever seen at DFW. I also don’t know why the TSA staffers at Love Field are coherent and focused and polite in stark contrast with the typical TSA staffers I’ve seen at DFW. The experience at Love Field is better in every way that counts.
The flight departed on time and arrived in St. Louis on time. I paid for Early Bird check-in and got an excellent window seat in the front of the aircraft. The flight was about 80% full to STL but I managed to not have someone sit next to me on that segment.
Departing STL for Chicago, we were delayed a brief while and the Captain announced that they were holding at the gate due to traffic congestion in Chicago. The weather in Chicago was overcast with extremely light snow falling and temperatures at about 36 degrees. When we did take off, there was light to moderate turbulence for the first 45 minutes or so but it wasn’t really uncomfortable with a seatbelt on. As we neared Chicago, the pilot performed a series of “S” turns and I would presume he was asked to do so to fit into the traffic pattern.
Landing at MDW was uneventful and the taxi to the gate was short and quick. But now we get to the downsides. It’s clear that Southwest is overtaxed at MDW. It’s clear by the fact that virtually every gate had an aircraft and when I deplaned, I found every gate area I passed full to overflowing with people awaiting a departure. The walk from the gate areas to the baggage claims is long(ish) but no more so than at many other older airports. Certainly not really more than one experiences at Love Field.
By the time I claimed my baggage, the person I was to meet there arrived and I waited another 15 minutes for him to claim his luggage as well. Travel into downtown Chicago was efficient and quick but probably only because we insisted on taking the interestate northwards instead of being lead to Lakeshore Drive. Make a note of this: You’ll generally always be better off if you insist on the taxi driver not taking Lakeshore Drive to downtown. They’ll insist that it is quicker, it isn’t. It’s slightly shorter but much more congested as a rule.
My Southwest service excellent in all respects on that flight but I do understand why MDW is having delay problems. I don’t think it is the airport so much as it is the fact that virtually every Southwest flight into and out of this airport is full. By full, I mean full to the brim.
What makes those full flights worse is the fact that a great many people are business travelers carrying quite a bit of carry-on luggage. By quite a bit, I mean an obscene amount. With unassigned seating, these travelers jockey for position, jockey for overhead bin space and jockey to avoid sitting in a middle seat. I’ll have more on that in my next post on this trip.
Overall, the experience was pleasant and everything Southwest is praised for. But that said, you’ll find that I see some growing pains in the Southwest model that I think Southwest is going to have to figure out if it expects to continue to profit in the future.
Last week, Delta announced that it had agreed to buy 9 Boeing (McDonnell Douglas) MD-90 aircraft from JAL. After these aircraft are refurbished, they’ll start entering Delta’s fleet next January. Delta’s President, Ed Bastian, refers to these aircraft as “capital efficient” for Delta and it does simply add to Delta’s existing fleet of 19 aircraft. In fact, Delta now plans to add a total of 39 MD-90 aircraft going forward. These will primarily replace aging and inefficient DC-9-50 aircraft.
Capital efficient means that the cost to acquire these aircraft combined with the remaining lifecycle costs including fuel makes them worth operating for Delta. In addition, these aren’t your grandfather’s DC-9s. These aircraft have current generation IAE V2500 engines that are fairly fuel efficient compared to brand new aircraft presently. They also replace fuel guzzlers and represent a net gain going forward as long as fuel prices remain somewhat stable (and by stable I mean out of the $4/gallon territory.)
Delta has so far pursued a strategy of making do with what it has and employing older aircraft longer and this is somewhat in conflict with most other airlines’ strategies. As fuel has climbed in price over the past 4 years, airlines have, if anything, accelerated their purchases of newer, more efficient aircraft.
Is this the right strategy for Delta? Well, as an interim strategy, it works. These aircraft are good for a variety of routes that can largely transit 3 timezones out of 4 in the continental United States. There are a finite number of them available (only a bit over 100 were ever built) and in the near future I suspect that many won’t be worth buying when considered against a new Boeing or Airbus aircraft. From a financial standpoint, these are good buys for Delta and should work for them well over the next 4 to 8 years.
Delta’s fleet is pretty varied since its merger with Northwest Airlines a few years ago and while they have made an excellent show of managing this fleet, there are a number of types that could be pared down over time. Reducing the number of fleet types would allow Delta to be even more flexible with its crew resources and more cost efficient when it comes to maintenance needs. Remember that every fleet type requires an inventory of parts and employees trained to service that fleet type.
This doesn’t mean that I advocate that Delta buy Boeing only or any other manufacturer exclusively either. With its fleet size, it could quite rationally settle on both the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 aircraft and operate them simultaneously. The same is true for long haul aircraft. It could probably employ both Embraer and Bombardier regional jets as well. However, for each category (regional jets / single aisle / medium to long haul aircraft), there should be at most two basic fleet types.
In fact, by working with multiple manufacturers, it can speed deliveries, fit the most perfect aircraft to a variety of routes and maintain efficiencies in maintenance and repair at the same time. What I don’t see happening is Delta operating Boeing and Bombardier CSeries as mainline aircraft. I think Delta will play it smart and use the manufacturers that have proven products in each category.
I think that over time, we’ll see Delta order Airbus A320NEO aircraft to replace existing aging Airbus A320s. I think we’ll see an order for Boeing 737 replacement when and if Boeing offers a replacement officially. I think we’ll see Bombardier CRJ900/1000 aircraft come online to replace older CRJ700/900 aircraft and I think we may well see Embraer E170/190 jets for other areas of the country such as shuttle-like operations. In the long haul category, it’s not inconceivable to see 787 orders pulled forward again but for a mix of both 787-8 and -9 aircraft. I think we’ll see them pick either Airbus A350s or 777s for their larger trunk and long haul routes. I might give the 777 an advantage here to become a single type for that category as Delta could very efficiently operate both 777-200LRs and 777-300ERs in a nice mix. They’ve already got very new 777-200LRs (and ERs) that are using the same GE engines the -300ER would use. I’m not sure the Airbus A350 quite fits in as well as one would like it to when it comes to the trunk route / long haul category. I do believe firmly that the 747s will ultimately go away and not be replaced.
Look for Delta to be making more and more announcements about its fleet over the next 2 years. I believe its strategy will be incremental rather than huge orders for a particular family of aircraft and it will be done with strong emphasis on preserving its capital going forward into the next few years.
When traveling through airports, I often notice just how sub-par many airport concessions are for the traveler. Frequently, the kiosks are full of rather generic items priced at rather extraordinary prices to fit rare needs. The newsshops are often the most useful but offer rather high prices and, sometimes, impratically packaged food items. Restaurants of all kinds are often staffed by rather surly people and run by large companies such as ARAmark with not enough attention paid to the standards of the brand.
Before going further, let’s concede that operating on airport real estate is an expensive proposition. Let’s also concede that supplying an operation and staffing it for what are often odd retail hours is also a challenge. In short, let’s be understanding of the need for a higher price for many goods, food and services.
It’s my observation that what often drivese this sub-par service is the exceptionally lengthy leases and concessions granted by airport management to these businesses. Once you’ve got your space, you’ve got a very captive audience. Once you’ve leased all these concessions to one large corporation, you’ve got no real competition either. This is a real problem at many airports.
I am an admitted coffee addict and even an admitted Starbucks fan. I’ve yet to have purchased a Starbucks beverage at an airport that was anywhere close to the product I can get at a regular retail Starbucks store. The service is almost invariably slow and the training of the service staff is invariably bad. I’ve even had to tell a so called airport barista what a “dry” cappucino was. You may not know but in the Starbucks world, this is a basic thing. And that kind of experience for a beverage costing around $5 is really unacceptable. I don’t care if I’m standing in an airport or at my local Starbucks: For $5, I deserve a properly made beverage.
Not all airports are like this. I have always found Portland International to be a great airport to visit. I also really enjoy Milwaukee’s airport when I’ve passed through. Both have the distinction of being willing to reflect their locality with food, retail items and even books. (It’s notable that both these airports have excellent book stores.) I honestly don’t know what their concessions contracts and leases are like but since they do have exceptional representation from local businesses, I can only believe they are doing an excellent job of balancing their offerings as well as ensuring some competition.
It’s time to see other, larger airports engage in more competition inside their terminals. It’s time to see competing newstands, restaurants and retail shops. And it’s time to ensure that new competition has an open and transparent opportunity to enter into that marketplace on a more regular basis than every 15 years.
Today, the way many airports seem to operate in this area reminds me of cable companies in many cities. There is always mediocre to lackluster service until it gets close to the time to renew these contracts. As these businesses near their renewal, there is a suddenly a fresh burst of service and quality. When that time comes, there is often a push to retain the incumbent and to do so under cover rather than through an open bid. The incumbent makes grandiose promises of raising standards in every category and offers what are often large sums of profit sharing to the airport management to ensure their participation in the airport business. Once the incumbent wins his next 10 to 15 year contract, service plummets again and consumers are faced with more expensive and generic offerings with surly service.
I have no doubt that airports could be offering a much better service product with much more competition between businesses. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to buy an airplane practical meal? Or to be able to find a USB charger for your cellphone that you forgot to bring? Are you really going to shop for a $1200 suit while waiting for a flight?
The only way this happens is if your community lets its wishes be known. An active community voice does drive this process.
Hey Southwest! No one likes a snotty busy body off duty, in uniform flight attendant trying to be all things to all people at the expense of the customer who has paid your fees and checked his bags. Like the one (FA) in 16C today.
And make the people carrying on board grossly overpacked and slightly oversized luggage gate check their bags. You’ll turn those flights faster.
Frontier Airlines has announced new services to Knoxville, Provo and Sioux Falls using the A319 for the former and the E170/190 jets for the latter cities last week. Each will receive service from its Denver hub. In addition, Frontier is adding additional service to Minneapolis / St. Paul and San Antonion from Kansas City which are both cities it already serves from Denver.
I genuinely like the Embraer E170/190 jets for service to smaller cities as it offers a mainline type service to cities that traditionally would be served by cramped 50 seat regional jets used by other airlines. It’s a nice service product and Frontier’s owner, Republic, gets to remain flexibile in how it deploys its fleet of those jets.
I do wonder if Frontier isn’t kind of dancing out of the way of real competition though. Its newest routes don’t strike me as something the airline is doing to fight against its LCC competition out there. Nor do these new routes strike me as low hangling fruit for an airline like Frontier as well. For instance, while I can understand flights from Provo and Sioux Falls to Denver, I struggle with the idea that there is a great deal of demand in Knoxville for a route that goes to Denver even if traffic can flow ownwards to other destinations.
As much as Frontier is a western states airline, it does seem to somewhat ignore opportunities on the west coast where it would seem its service product ought to thrive against the competition. Mostly I’m struggling to see the strategy here. 2010 was definitely a “rebuilding” year for Frontier and perhaps its plans will become more clear as 2011 unravels.
A new airline of sorts is planning to begin flights to and from Las Vegas. The airline, LV Air, is planning to use 767 aircraft on charter flights and they’ve got some big plans. They plan to refit these 767 with a Las Vegas-like interior including luxury seating, mood lighting, etc. They also promise inflight texting and video as well as iPads for entertainment.
But here is the one that I kind of balk at happening: Holograms of celebrities for safety briefings.
Initially, these flights will be between New York City and Las Vegas and the business model calls for casinos to buy seats on these flights for their high rollers. What’s left over will be sold as charter space.
I don’t believe this will succeed, however. It’s almost a certainty that the promised 767 aircraft are going to be very old models that will likely be expensive to refit with these luxuries and even more expensive to maintain afterwards. Reducing the seat count to offer luxury seating to these high rollers will raise costs per available seat mile considerably and require higher and higher load factors for each flight.
More importantly, if you’re a high roller who enjoys private flights to Las Vegas, why would you want to fly on this aircraft? And what do you really get that you can’t enjoy in first class seating on an airline providing better frequency and schedule?
Holograms and iPads might attract the curious but they’re unlike to attract the customers long term.
So far, I cannot find information on the aircraft or what airport(s) they plan to fly into and out of. There is a nifty video on their website but that’s it: it’s a nifty video. Interestingly, the video appears to show a 767-300 painted in LV Air colors rather than a -200 model.
This strikes me as something like the trans-Atlantic all business class airlines from a few years ago. It’s likely the wrong aircraft for such services and too many people have too many different options. Even if it does experience some success initially, that will only cause major airlines to attack it on price and schedule.
This airline says it will start service in 2011 (again, I cannot find a certain date for starting) which would imply work on these aircraft has already started. They also project they can move more than 2 million passengers in the first 2 years. I’m skeptical to say the least. All of this is predicated on the idea that seat capacity to Las Vegas has been dramatically reduced over the past few years and it appears that they haven’t paid attention to the reason for that, namely that demand is down as well.
I’ll be mildly surprised if they even start flying and I will be exceptionally surprised if they enjoy any success at all.
Later today, I’m flying from Dallas to Chicago and this time I’m trying out Southwest Airlines’ service from Love Field to Midway Airport. Both airports are the quintessential second airports for their respective cities and both have a strong Southwest history.
Why this airline and these airports? I’ve long advocated that you can enjoy a better, less expensive flight on Southwest that is essentially the same time elapsed “door to door” as a flight on a carrier such as American Airlines.
So, I’ll be making a much quicker drive to Love Field airport where I’ll make a much quicker transit through security to my gate. I did pay the $10 Southwest Fee to early check in to improve my seating options (and it’s a fee that, for Southwest customers, does provide extra value). My flight, however, is not non-stop. I’ll be on a one-stop Southwest flight that pauses briefly in St. Louis. Total programmed flight time? 2 hours, 55 minutes.
I paid $408 for this trip last Saturday compared to American Airlines fare for similar departure times on the same days of $659 and that does not include the fees for one checked bag that I’ll have to take with me. All in, AA would have cost me (or, rather, my client) over $700.
If I had taken AA, I would have had a much longer drive to DFW airport and a much more expensive one as well. (One takes a tollway to DFW if one expects to get to DFW in a reasonable amount of time from where I live.) The difference in time to get to each airport for me on a day where there are no traffic jams? About 20 minutes less to access Love Field.
My Southwest flight time will be 2 hours, 55 minutes (if they’re on time) and a similar choice with American Airlines would be 2 hours, 30 minutes. With the difference in drive time alone, I’ve just made up 20 minutes of a 25 minute difference. When you account for the fact that I can arrive at Love Field with a bare minimum amount of time for passing through vs DFW airport where I would arrive about 15 minutes before my one hour deadline prior to flight time (because checking bags and passing through security at DFW can be easy or it can be real lengthy), I’ve just gained another 10 minutes.
Since I”m arriving at Chicago Midway Airport, I’ll have a drive to my hotel in downtown Chicago that is nominally 6 miles shorter in distance and about 20 minutes quicker than if I arrived at Chicago O’Hare. I’m now up by 30 minutes using Southwest.
At least in theory.
But let’s take a look at the contrasts in experiences I’m liable to enjoy between the two airlines. On Southwest, I paid the $10 Early Bird Check-In fee so I’ll have a very high likelihood of obtaining a good, front of cabin seat on a 737-700. It will be a fairly new aircraft and possibly a brand new aircraft. It won’t be old and it won’t have old, worn out seats either. I’ll enjoy 32″ to 33″ of seat pitch, most likely a friend flight attendant and no charge for a beverage. Because of the nature of my trip, I have to check a bag and that comes free and on an airline with a good reputation for baggage handling and security.
If I had taken American Airlines on similar flight time, I would have enjoyed a 20+ year old MD-82. Since I would have bought AA’s best economy price, I would have likely been at the back of the aircraft and sitting in old, worn out seating with 31″ of seat pitch. My flight attendants would have most likely been cranky, older crew who have a reputation of taking out their job dissatisfaction on their customers. (AA flight attendants can be good but in my experience the DFW and Chicago based crews are frequently hostile to customers.)
My bag would be handled by an airline who had a less than positive reputation for baggage handling (and strangely I’ve had many bags delayed over the years on the DFW-ORD route) and only for a $25 fee each way. If I had paid AA’s fee for priority boarding, I’d get earlier access to overhead bins but no options to sit in a preferred seat up front and an economy passenger on an AA MD-80 flight is going to have the options of “bad” and “worse” when it comes to seat assignments.
Savings in dollars: About $300
Savings in time: About 30 minutes door to door (if this works out as I expect).
What do I give up? I don’t get frequent flier points on American Airlines. Let me point out that my dollar savings alone just bought me a “free trip” if I wanted it. Which would you rather have? about 1600 frequent flier point or $300 in savings? Which would you rather fly on? An old MD-80 with old seats and a hostile flight crew or on a fairly new 737 with new seats and a friendly flight crew?
Once I complete this trip, I’ll write up what actually happened.
Well, in a way it is. The Pan Am name is already in the process of becoming airline again as I posted HERE back in November. However, what I’m talking about today is a television show.
A pilot episode of a new TV show based on Pan American Airlines has been ordered by ABC. The concept around the show is the romantic glory years of jet travel for Pan Am: the 1960’s. Executive producer Nancy Hult Ganis worked as a fligth attendant herself starting in 1968 after walking past a Pan Am office in Detroit.
This is the kind of show that would thrill airline enthusiasts if done right. However, I firmly believe that this kind of show doesn’t have the kind of audience that ABC can view as a success. This is a show better done by one of the cable TV channels a la Mad Men.
But we can always hope that I’m wrong and it does succeed.
WestJet of Canada and American Airlines have announced a codeshare deal where AA will put their flight numbers on up to 20 WestJet destinations in Canada not currently served by American Airlines. This is in addition to WestJet’s brand new relationship with Delta which is an interline agreement.
WestJet was originally supposed to enter into a rather unique codeshare agreement with Southwest Airlines and Volaris (of Mexico) but chose to abandon the deal about 1 year ago when it decided that Southwest was taking too long to implement this and thought its fortunes were better served with another airline.
In many ways, WestJet is pursuing the Alaska Airlines model in being fairly agnostic as far as what airlines it will do a deal with. The airline believes its future is better served with doing one-off deals with a variety of airlines rather than aligning itself with just one. It isn’t an accident that WestJet’s CEO, Gregg Saretsky, is a former Alaska Airlines executive.
Curiously, WestJet is a Canadian low cost carrier that has based its operations on the 737-700 (with some -600 abnd -800 aircraft as well) and works much in the same model as Southwest. It has two hubs, Toronto and Calgary, and pursues frequency on its trunk routes and serves a variety of small destinations throughout Canada as well. They already fly to international destinations in the United States, the Caribbean and Mexico. Also curious, this airline was founded with the help of David Neeleman while he waited out his non-compete clause with Southwest Airlines.
WestJet has existing codeshare agreements with Cathay Pacific as well and interline agreements with British Airways, Air France, China Airlines and KLM.
I can’t help but think that WestJet is the Canadian version of the airline that Southwest seeks to become and it would appear that WestJet is doing this with more agility and quicker execution than Southwest seems to be able to muster.
In a previous post, I made mention of Virgin being courted by a few airlines as a result of their decision to investigate sale and merger possibilities. I wondered what would happen to the other Virgin branded airlines: Virgin Blue and Virgin America most especially.
It’s been announced that V Australia / Virgin Blue , the hybrid named airline has done a deal with Etihad Airways which will see both airlines offering seemless codeshare between their airlines. Etihad customers will have the opportunity to fly Virgin Blue to their final destination in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands. V Australia / Virgin Blue customers will be able to access Etihad flights from Australia to global destinations offered by Etihad.
Just writing that awkward V Australia / Virgin Blue moniker makes me wonder what happends to the Virgin brand in Australia in the future. Is it really worth having two different brands of which one is restricted by agreements with airlines such as Singapore? In the long run, I think not.
If Virgin Atlantic is merged or purchased by someone, I suspect we’ll be seeing the other brands seeking their own identities. Virgin Blue has great identity in Australia but virtually no where else and it isn’t exactly easy to connect it to V Australia (which is a name that I find weird at the least).
As for Virgin America? Who knows. It’s a brand that is starting to gain some cachet in the US and perhaps it will stick around. The potential for growing Virgin America as a brand in the US domestic market is huge. Virgin America can fly to Canada and Mexico under that brand and I see no reason why they’ll want to be starting trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific routes in the next 2 decades. They may well keep it but I think they’ll also start looking for international partnerships after they’ve got a robust enough network.
I do think we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the Virgin brand as a global name if Virgin agrees to be purchased or finds a merger partner. I doubt that we’ll see Virgin Atlantic purchase a partner and, frankly, I’m not sure there are any left in Europe that would be any kind of fit. BMI was their last, best opportunity to stand alone.
Continental’s flight attendants have voted on a new 20 month agreement on pay and no furloughs as they prepare to merge into United Airlines. The agreement gives the flight attendants the highest pay among legacy airline flight attendants.
When this merger began, United flight attendants attempted to co-op Continental flight attendants into their dissatisfaction with United and the Continental crews resisted expressing a desire to have a voice in their destiny. This new agreement displays, once more, Continental management’s ability to work with their staff.
But can they work with United staff? This is a bigger challenge than meets the eye. United unions have no reason to trust Continental management as they have no real experience with them. They do, however, have a long history with being shoved around by former and current United management. These conflicts don’t evaporate because a few good guys take over. It takes time to win that trust.
I think the crew integration going on with United has several more painful chapters ahead before things settle down and all parties do better. Continental pilots are liable to continue to resist relaxing their current scope agreement (no more than 50 seat jets) and add in the fact that United pilots are generally a more “senior” bunch, I suspect they’ll be playing the spoiler for some time to come.
This merger isn’t as easy or as logical as the Delta/Northwest merger and doesn’t have the benefit of forward thinking union leaders like Lee Moak to help set a tone that lets things get worked out.
