There aren’t really a whole lot of details on Toronto yet, as all that Virgin has done so far is apply to the DOT for authority to fly there, and the earliest service will start is this June. Not surprisingly, there will be one nonstop each from SFO and LAX. The former has service from Air Canada and United, and the latter has service from American and Air Canada.

Orlando will be Virgin’s second Florida destination after Fort Lauderdale was launched a few months ago. Orlando is also interesting since its a pure leisure market, while Virgin has traditionally been focusing on routes with strong business traffic.

San Francisco is the smaller of the two Orlando markets (a bit more than a third of the LAX market), and I think it also has the most logical schedule. There’s only one other player in the market, United, with a daily A320 roundtrip, and Virgin completely avoids them. United’s flight from SFO leaves at 3:15 pm, and the MCO-SFO flight leaves at 6:55 am the next day. Meanwhile, Virgin’s flights are at 9:50 am and 6:00 pm, respectively. I think that’s a smart move on Virgin’s part. Its also worth noting that the two airlines probably have different objectives here – Virgin is most likely focusing more on O&D, while United probably has SFO connections in mind.

But for Los Angeles, Virgin’s schedule competes with everyone else’s, though it is a bit harder to avoid competing flights (and do well) when there are already five nonstops total from American, Delta, and United. Virgin’s LAX-MCO flight departs at 8:25 am, five minutes after American’s morning departure. Meanwhile, the MCO-LAX flight departs at 7:15 pm, 15 minutes after United, and 25 minutes after Delta. That competition should explain why Virgin’s introductory fare on the route is $50 lower than SFO’s.

I’m really interested in how Virgin will promote this service, as I really think they have a good product for traveling families. They have a very strong in-flight entertainment product, and power at every seat to keep kids’ electronic toys charged for the entire five-hour flight.

So, Virgin keeps on truckin’. I’m interested in seeing their fourth quarter numbers. The DOT releases the results for all carriers on May 10, but hopefully Virgin will give us an early peek. Meanwhile, Virgin has said many times that it’s been examining Chicago as a market, but nothing has moved there. They’ve claimed that it’s been hard to negotiate for gate space, but I wonder if there are any other factors in play.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slasher-fun/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

That promotion made me want to investigate the market by looking into T100 data – and it’s very interesting to look at. Traffic has flourished with passenger counts increasing over 150% year-over-year in December (the most recent data). And control of the market has shifted a good amount. In December 2008, AirTran had over 70% of the market with some competition from Comair. In December 2009, AirTran was still the dominant carrier, but its market share had eroded to 48%.

Fares on the route decreased over 28% to $95.65 in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year prior. That number, however, doesn’t paint a clear picture since Southwest entered in the middle of August and JetBlue launched in September. We’ll probably get some more clarity once the DOT’s fourth quarter data is released.

But this is a market that I’m very interested in and want to study further, especially in terms of connecting passengers. For example, how many of Southwest’s passengers are using Baltimore to get to the rest of their network? The same question can be asked for AirTran. Meanwhile, how many JetBlue passengers on the route are going to Boston to tap into their network? Hopefully my professors will be kind in the homework department in the near future so I can check things like that out.

While JFK-LAX service is indeed doubling with two extra flights, service to Long Beach is being reduced, meaning JFK only sees one extra LA-area flight from JetBlue. Service will be reduced from three to two dailies. JFK loses its morning LGB departure, while Long Beach loses its midday flight to JFK. Capacity between Long Beach and New York has been slowly reduced by the airline over the years after it reached its peak at eight daily roundtrips in 2005.

Service between Boston and Long Beach is being reduced as well, and on July 1 there will only be one daily roundtrip. Boston also sees some interesting schedule changes. There will now only be one morning departure to the LA-area, with a 9:30am flight to LAX. Flights to Boston are also seeing an interesting change – on July 1 the first departure from the LA-area will move from 11:25am from Long Beach to 8:30am from LAX.

So, despite JetBlue’s initial resistance to entering LAX, it seems to be working well for them in the transcon market. Perhaps LAX will become the hub for longer flights, while LGB’s focus will be shorter hauls.

You can see a comparison of the schedules before and after the changes here.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hisgett/ / CC BY 2.0

The schedule for the flight is kind of interesting. The departure leaves late Friday afternoon, arrives on Saturday morning, and then the 737-800 sits in London until Sunday afternoon for the return. Why is that? Most likely it’s due to crew rest times. If Sun Country were to have the flight turn right back around, it would need an extra crew at the ready to do the next flight, and my guess is that they just don’t want to pay for it.

So, will it work? I think this one has a fighting chance. While going transatlantic is certainly a big step, Sun Country doing leisure flights to the Carribbean on a less-than-daily schedule is pretty much standard operating procedure for them. Most of that Caribbean flying takes place during the winter, when Sun Country is busiest. So my guess is that they have some room in the schedule and they want to try something similar for the summer.

That being said, there already is service on the route. Delta has a daily 767-400 to Heathrow, and there’s plenty of other connecting service as well with fairly convenient schedules. I’d say that other airlines have a stronger economy product, too. So I guess Sun Country is hoping travelers will love their cheap fares. That being said, Sun Country’s expertise is the leisure market, so maybe they can make it work.

Interestingly, the CEO of Sun Country mentioned how service to Stansted opens up good connecting opportunities with Ryanair and EasyJet. Sun Country doesn’t have any interlining or codeshare agreements with those carriers, but nevertheless it would be interesting to know how many passengers actually do that.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carenmack/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

But then, for the shot from inside said plane, the engines magically move from the tail to under the wing!

Friends of mine noticed other things – my friend Jay noticed that a 737-700 was initially behind the rampers, and then they’re in front of a 737-300. Also, my friend Steve noticed that the rampers weren’t wearing any badges.

Really, not a big deal. But just a thing that bothers airplane geeks. Maybe Southwest could hire me to consult for future ads?

The airline was trying to advertise the heck out of that fact though  – below are two advertisements I saw when in New York this past September. My guess is that Continental came to the conclusion that free meals in coach wasn’t bringing them enough customers from other airlines to make it worth their while.

Non-alcoholic beverages and some snacks (like pretzels) will remain complimentary. The latter still puts Continental ahead of some other carriers. Free meals in economy will still be found on intercontinental flights and domestic flights that are longer than six hours. And of course meals will still be found domestically in the first class cabin.

Continental has said that the offerings will be composed of “high quality, healthy food,” though no specific menu will be announced until the airline gets closer to launch. To be honest, I think the food will be of a good quality. When meals are free, an airline is really looking at controlling costs, which means a cheap product. But when an airline starts selling buy-on-board options, making an appealing product becomes much more important. And airlines have already found that customers will pay for quality. United, for example, saw a large increase in food sales when it unveiled new food options over the summer.

So, yes, it’s a bit disappointing to find that no airlines will serve free meals domestically anymore, but the move isn’t all that surprising, and I think we’ll see a higher quality product now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Leave your answer in the comments!

One big issue with the survey is that TripAdvisor didn’t release anything about the demographics of those who took the survey. If the majority of the respondents were very frequent travelers, then airlines looking at these results should probably pay attention. But, if most of the survey takers fly maybe once a year, then not so much. And of course, there’s always a difference between what people say they will do and what they actually do. I.e. they say they might prefer an airline with a good in-flight entertainment product but end up going with the carrier that has the cheapest price or most convenient schedule. But, let’s take a look.

First, the survey found that 25% of travelers found legroom to be one of their least favorite things about traveling. So that’s good for airline’s like JetBlue, United, Frontier, and Midwest because they all offer economy seating with more legroom for an additional fee. And now Continental’s announcement that they will start selling exit row seating makes even more sense.

Next up is baggage fees, and none of us should be shocked that travelers aren’t exactly fans. That’s certainly good for Southwest (two free bags) and JetBlue (one free bag). Basically, the debate about bag fees continues. The airlines that charge them have fallen in love with the ancillary revenue they provide, while Southwest has been thinking of late that its “Bags Fly Free” campaign is winning new customers, though I think it’s fair to say that’s more attractive to non-frequent leisure travelers than the business travelers Southwest has been trying to get (I think that group cares more about the lack of a change fee at Southwest).

There were a couple of interesting statistics when it comes to inflight Wi-Fi, especially because we can only guess about how popular and profitable it’s been. 30% of respondents said they would pick one airline over another due to Wi-Fi, so that’s good news for Virgin America and AirTran, who have their entire fleets equipped with Gogo. But then 61% of all respondents aid they aren’t interested in paying for inflight Wi-Fi, which makes me wonder what usage rates have been.

Anyway, those are the numbers I found the most interesting.

Click here to view the embedded video.