To me, this smells like a very smart promotion. The rationale is simple. Those who are social media stars are likely going to be Tweeting, posting on Facebook, and maybe even pinning things on Pinterest. If they have a wide reach, then Cathay’s lounge is going to be talked about a lot by a lot of people with influence. Not only will the airline get good, targeted exposure, but it will get some of the benefits of having a celebrity spokesperson without having to actually pay for it.

Why do companies get celebrity spokespeople? Because they think that you will have a more positive view of the offering and be more likely to buy it if someone you trust supports what they’re selling. That works to varying degrees (are you going to get a payday loan from MoneyMutal because Montel Williams says so?), but in this case, it should work wonders. There are plenty of social media stars who are hardly celebs, but they have avid followers that they can influence. If that helps keep Cathay Pacific top of mind and it gets people onboard the aircraft down the line, then it’s a success.

The threshold for success should be low because this can’t cost the airline much. The only real potential issue I can see is if so many people use it that it dilutes the experience for paying passengers.

The biggest issue, of course, is determining who should be considered a social media star. The vehicle Cathay Pacific has chosen is Klout. Klout uses a lot of voodoo and hocus-pocus to score people on their influence in social media circles. This score is on a scale of 1 to 100 with 100 being the most awesome person to have ever lived. I rank as a 51, which is apparently good enough to get me in the door for Cathay Pacific. If you have a score of 40 or higher, you can get past the velvet rope.

There’s just one problem. So far, it’s only valid for those with the Klout app on the iPhone. I’m assuming that’s just a temporary issue, because there are plenty of people with Android phones or *gasp* Blackberries who might like to take advantage of this.

The big question in my mind is . . . how many people will actually use this? I mean, the Cathay Pacific lounge is in the A concourse at SFO’s international terminal. Without going through each airline, it’s effectively the home of non-Star Alliance airlines that fly internationally out of SFO. Oh, and JetBlue is there as well for domestic flights. The lounge is open four hours before each of the airline’s two daily flights. That means you can get in there from 935a to 135p and from 910p to 110a.

People don’t just have to be flying on Cathay to take advantage of this, so there is a wider audience than you might expect. Heck, if I’m flying JetBlue to Long Beach on the noon flight (and if I had an iPhone, which I don’t), I could walk right in and relax with the Cathay passengers. That’s pretty sweet.

And you know what? I’m sure I’d tweet about it. And I’d write it up in my trip report. And then maybe some of you would start thinking about how you wish you could try out Cathay Pacific. That’s exactly why the airline is doing this. I think it’s a very smart play, as long as the response isn’t too strong that it hurts the experience for paying passengers.

[Original photo via Flickr user Ken_Mayer/CC 2.0]

One of the biggest problems these airlines face are their own governments. As much as I complain about the state of the US government’s approach to air travel, Europe is much, much worse. Some of this is on the macro level with the European Union’s much criticized carbon trading scheme. Some, however, is country-specific.

The poster-child for terrible government policy is the United Kingdom. Not only has the country levied some of the harshest taxes ever seen in aviation (the UK Air Passenger Duty is now approaching £100 on some tickets), but it fundamentally refuses to add capacity in London where it is needed most. Discussions around a new runway at Heathrow or a new airport way out in the Thames estuary remain just that – all talk and no action. We won’t see any sort of capacity increase there for decades, and the country has already begun to suffer the effects.

Bad government policy isn’t unique to the UK. Germany has begun to stab itself in the heart with airport curfews. The biggest impact is felt in Frankfurt, where night flights have stuck a dagger in the air cargo market. (In the first three months of this year, air cargo at Frankfurt dropped more than 10 percent.) There is also over-taxation there and in most other European countries.

Fighting Low Cost Carriers With Familiar Strategies
This wouldn’t be an issue if there were no competition, but of course, there is plenty. For flights within Europe, low cost carriers have only grown stronger. Though they deal with the same governmental issues, they have operating costs far lower than the legacy airlines and they can profit with much lower fares. Does this sound familiar? It should, because it’s what happened in the US.

You’ll recall that over the last decade or two, US airlines tried all sorts of things to become competitive. They opted for “airline-within-an-airline” low cost carriers that all were complete failures. They’ve looked at b-scale wages over the years. They’ve had aggressive cost cutting campaigns. In the end, it was only Chapter 11 bankruptcy that allowed them to become more competitive. European airlines don’t have such a convenient option.

Instead, they are trying the same tactics that didn’t work in the US. IAG has started a low cost carrier in Spain called Iberia Express. Nothing is different except that the wages are lower so it’s a cheaper operation to run. Iberia employees are angry and striking, but it hasn’t stopped the airline from pushing forward. In Germany, Lufthansa has started to turn over more short haul flying to its low cost subsidiary Germanwings. Most of Stuttgart flights, for example, are now flown by Germanwings instead of Lufthansa. The French are also plotting a strategy to shift short haul flights to a low cost carrier.

The shorter distances within Europe as compared to the US make this an even more pronounced problem since people on shorter flights care less about the difference in amenities. For most legacy airlines, however, they can take solace in the fact that in the long haul world, they are still king.

Trouble in the Gulf
Traditional low cost airlines have tried and failed many times on long haul routes. The most recent was Air Asia X which canceled all of its European services. That has been the saving grace for American carriers, which have made major efforts to shift the balance away from domestic flying toward long haul. This is good for European airlines because they have traditionally had more long haul flying than short haul as compared to the US carriers.

But there’s a big problem in Europe: the Gulf carriers.

A whole host of airlines in the Middle East have sprung up with luxury service combined with lower fares. The pack is led my Emirates, which still is planning on filling about 100 A380s a day in addition to its massive fleet of 777s. Etihad in Abu Dhabi along with Qatar Airways in Doha and even Turkish in Istanbul have flooded Europe with cheap capacity thanks to lower costs.

This has created major headaches for European airline flying to Asia and Africa. While Emirates and the like don’t fly the routes nonstop, they have good, fast connections that draw away a ton of traffic. Lufthansa alone has seen this erode profits to the point where it has pulled flights to Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Guanghzou. Nanjing, Chennai, and Bangkok are now on the chopping block.

While European airlines had been relying on government intervention to keep these big guys out, that won’t work forever. At the Phoenix Aviation Symposium in March, IAG chief Willie Walsh said that he was downright jealous of the Middle Eastern carriers because they have governments that believe in the importance of aviation for economic growth. They help the airlines and provide good taxation environments to help them grow.

And grow they have. Emirates has six daily flights from Heathrow to Dubai (4 on A380s) and two daily 777s out of Gatwick. But even more importantly, Emirates flies to smaller cities like Newcastle, Glasgow, and Birmingham, providing better flight options than even BA can offer to those folks.

That leaves the European airlines in a good position only to the Americas. No low cost carrier has found a way to make that work (though many more will try and fail). But in the US, they have formed joint ventures with their American counterparts. American carriers are much more likely to take on upgrades and lower fare traffic. That puts pressure on the European carriers and their often superior options when the revenues end up being shared.

Problems are Easy, Solutions are Hard
This post has been easy for me to write because I just talk about the problems and don’t have to come up with solutions. That’s the hardest part of all and it’s what the European legacy carriers struggle with every day. If I knew what to do, I’m sure I’d be a rich man.

Does that means there’s no solution? Of course not. But it’s not a simple problem to solve. These airlines see tremendous pressure in nearly all parts of their business. With the governments not interested in budging on their terrible policies and labor not seeing the reality of the cost problem, it’s going to be tough to make much progress.

The story seems to have been uncovered when a couple of business partners tried to book side by side. They each got different prices despite doing the same search. So what happened?

According to Delta spokesperson Paul Skrbec, the airline “updated our search function as part of a phased approach to improve the site.” The people who were logged in were using the glitchy new search function whereas those who weren’t logged in used the old one. That meant that you would get conflicting results depending upon whether you were logged in or not.

Despite press reports that those who were logged in were charged more than those who weren’t, Delta told me that sometimes the fares were lower, if they were different at all. This went on for somewhere between one and three weeks before Delta reverted to the old technology throughout the site. (It’s unclear to me how long Delta knew there was a problem.)

It’s not necessarily a big problem if Delta wants to try and charge different prices to different people (though charging elites more is pretty stupid because that will encourage elites to not log in when they buy). We can have that conversation another time, because I’m sure a lot of you disagree with me. The big problem in my mind here is if the airline does it without telling people it’s going to happen.

Why is that an issue? Because people aren’t stupid, and it’s way too easy to see through something like that. People would catch on when they compare using different sites or when they book side by side with someone. Long time readers will remember the first and only fire-red-with-anger Cranky Jackass award that I gave US Airways for quietly slipping in booking fees on its own website. That practice is long gone, but it was sneaky because the airlines have spent years drilling into people that they will get the lowest fare on airline websites. If that quietly changes without any sort of notice, then I consider that deceptive.

Fortunately, that’s not what we’re seeing here with Delta. We’re just seeing yet another problem with the Delta website. People already lack trust in the website’s terrible SkyMiles redemption capabilities and this could shake faith in the paid booking process as well, depending upon how big this story gets.

This is definitely a black eye for Delta since a lot of the media reports make it seem like Delta is deliberately trying to charge its frequent fliers more. What does that mean for Delta? It means people will be more likely to search other sites to verify the pricing seen on Delta.com. It also means people may try to book without logging in. Delta shouldn’t like that because it’s always better to be able to tie behavior to a specific user if you can. It helps a smart business better serve that person.

Possibly the most frustrating piece of this whole thing is that some people likely were overcharged and they really wouldn’t have any way to know it. If you do know that you were overcharged for one reason or another, Delta told me that the best way to deal with it is to contact Customer Care. But how would you even know? You probably wouldn’t.

So, conspiracy-theorists, was this really some super-secret attempt to test price discrimination across customer types? I don’t think so. I think it was just a mistake.

That being said, I won’t be surprised if we see an airline try that kind of pricing at some point in the future, but I’m hopeful that when it happens, that airline will be completely up front about it.

[Original photo via Flickr user Hugo90/CC 2.0]

This trip wouldn’t be complete, however, without a trip report. Allegiant picked up the tab for the flights, so I don’t have exact amounts. I had hoped to fly out of Long Beach both ways, but there wasn’t a flight early enough on the way out so I had to go to LAX. In fact, my talk was originally early enough that I had to do the 6a flight on Southwest. When my talk was pushed back 30 minutes, they moved me an hour later. On the way home, I could still fly back to Long Beach. Both flights were uneventful.

On the way out, I got to LAX at 6a and was thrilled to find the security line inside the terminal. Still, it took me about 20 minutes to get through. My new laptop case was TSA-friendly, as promised, so that was a nice change of pace. By the time I got through, I went over to the cramped gate 2 for the flight.

From the looks of the gate area, this flight was going to be full. It was. We boarded on time and I grabbed a window seat on the right side. This airplane unfortunately had the old seats. I was hoping to try out the new Evolve ones.

From my seat, I saw a very un-Southwest site. There was a mountain of bags outside the window, all with a pink “transfer” sticker on them. Point to point? Not quite. The flight attendants were friendly but were smart enough not to get too cutesy at this early hour. They took drink orders before we pushed back so that they would be ready to go once we were in the air on our short flight.

We took off into the shallow marine layer and you could tell these pilots were enjoying themselves. We climbed quickly and had some sharp turns in there to get us on our course to Vegas. A couple bags of peanuts and pretzels later, we were landing in Vegas. (Unfortunately, it was the lightly salted peanut’s turn instead of honey roasted.)

I was off the plane quickly and on my way to New York, New York, where the event was being held.

I stayed the night in Vegas so I could join the airport folks for dinner and a show (Ka, which is kind of awesome). The next morning, I headed to the airport for my flight back to Long Beach. The line of cars getting into the terminal area was massive. I was reminded that it was mostly cabs coming in to pick up people coming to town – Friday in Vegas. I hopped out of the car as soon as we were near the terminal.

I had checked in the day before but I didn’t have a seat and none were on the seat map except for Even More Space seats and I didn’t want to pay the $15 for the short flight. So I checked in again at the airport, and it just printed out a boarding pass with no seat, saying to go to the gate.

As usual, the security line was insane. It took probably 20 minutes to get through, however, because they move those lines pretty well. The boarding pass said gate D18, but when I walked by D16, it said Long Beach on the board so I stopped there. The agent said no, that was next door and this flight was JFK. Ok.

I went next door and asked for a seat. They had me in a middle in Even More Space. I said, “I assume there are no windows open, right?” She said there actually was one but it didn’t have the extra legroom. I was fine with that. (JetBlue’s normal generous legroom is more than enough for me.)

So I grabbed seat 21F and boarded.

This flight was packed, and it was hot when I boarded. Fortunately it cooled down. We were ready to go on time, but the captain came on and said we’d be delayed 3 or 4 minutes due to “stuff.” Seriously. Really helpful announcement. Despite what the JetBlue flight status showed, we actually didn’t push back until about 15 minutes late. With LiveTV to watch, it was only mildly annoying.

We taxied out to what for me was a rare departure off runway 1R. We bounced out along the desert until we climbed above the heat for the short flight home. JetBlue has an express service so I just had a bottle of water and I passed on the snacks.

It was a very hazy day in the LA Basin, as we descended, but I had still a great view of Lake Arrowhead. Final approach was surprisingly bouncy. I was half expecting a go-around, actually, but he ended up putting us down almost halfway down the runway. We used all of what was left before taxiing back to the gate.

One of the perks of being at the back in Long Beach is that I was able to come down the back stairs. For a dork like me, that’s a great way to end a trip.

The DOT had four slot pairs to give away at National as part of the recent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization. As a quick refresher, National has a rule that prevents any flights longer than 1,250 miles from operating at the close-in airport. About a decade ago, Congress started allowing exemptions, primarily so Congressmen could fly nonstop to get to their home district (my interpretation, at least).

As part of the reauthorization bill this year, eight more slot pairs (one takeoff and one landing) were added to the pool. Four of them were meant for the big incumbent airlines at the airport. These airlines could convert one normal slot to one long haul. Here’s what they did.

• American will start a daily flight to its Los Angeles “cornerstone”
• Delta will add a second daily flight to its Salt Lake hub
• United will start a daily flight to its San Francisco hub
• US Airways will start a daily flight to San Diego

With the stage set, there were four more to give away either to new entrants or limited incumbents. There was a lot of competition for these, so the results weren’t easy to predict. Let’s start with the losers.

• Air Canada wanted to fly to Vancouver, but it’s a small, highly seasonal market.
• Alaska wanted to fly to San Diego, but that was its second choice. Once US Airways announced it would fly the route, this became a tough sell.
• Frontier wanted to fly to Colorado Springs, but that’s a very small market and would have been hard to justify.
• JetBlue wanted to fly to Austin, but that was also a second choice and Southwest put that up as its first choice.
• Sun Country wanted to fly to Vegas, but there are already a lot of flights in that market and Sun Country couldn’t connect people anywhere from there either.

Each of those had a big flaw, especially when compared to the four that seemed to deserve the flights far more. Incredibly, those four are actually the ones that won. Here they are.

• Alaska gets one daily flight to Portland. Portland is the airline’s second hub and has a decent-sized local market. Alaska will not only bring good service to the locals, which are largely loyal to Alaska, but it also adds good connecting options for a lot of small cities. This one seemed like the most obvious winner to me.
• JetBlue gets one daily flight down to San Juan. This one is a great move since JetBlue has been building up its presence in San Juan. This gives nonstop service to a place that will benefit from it, and it also opens up new connecting opportunities into the rest of the Caribbean. I like this route and how it fits into JetBlue’s strategy quite nicely.
• Southwest gets one daily flight to Austin. Nobody flies to Austin from National today and if anyone can serve it well, it’s Southwest. That’s why Southwest was obvious for this route while JetBlue was a longshot. It’s no surprise that Southwest won this.
• Virgin America gets one daily flight to San Francisco. Even though San Francisco will already get its first nonstop to National from United, that certainly won’t be a low fare service. Besides, Virgin America was the only applicant with no service to National, so you had to figure that the airline would get a foot in the door. The airline actually wanted two pairs, but the DOT rightfully shot that down and spread the wealth. This market should do well.

So, for once, I’ll say “good work, DOT.” Something tells me this praise won’t last very long.

If you’d like, you can read the full decision at regulations.gov.

I wasn’t going to write about this, but after seeing all the misinformation out there, I figured I should chime in with what’s actually happening. Here’s the story.

I actually hate the phrase “carry on fee,” because that’s not really what it is. It’s an overhead bin space fee. You can still bring on a bag without charge on any Spirit flight as long as it fits under the seat in front of you. But if you need to put a bag in the overhead bin, then Spirit will charge you and has done so for the last 2 years. It recently announced fee changes that begin on November 6 of this year, and one of those fees is $100. Will you have to pay the $100? Only if you’re dishonest.

Spirit has created a structure that gives you incentive to sign up for bin space in advance, because it will cost you less. The cheapest way to do this is to be a member of the $9 Fare Club. That’s a club that costs $59.95 a year and gets you access to fare specials, discounts on fees, etc. If you fly Spirit more than a couple times a year or if you have a lot of bags, it probably makes a lot of sense. Members of that club pay $25 per bag for bin space in advance, and it goes up from there. Here’s the rundown on a per bag basis:

Does Spirit have way too much complexity in here? Yeah, probably. It’s hard to wrap your head around all these different prices, but the concept is easy. Do it early and do it yourself and it’ll be cheaper.

If you book online at spirit.com, then you can sign up right there during the booking process for $35. Piece of cake. If you book through an online travel agent, then you have no clue what’s happening because they don’t do a good job of incorporating fees in any way. But you can still come to spirit.com and make that purchase if you know about it.

But let’s say you don’t know about the carry on fee because the online travel agent didn’t tell you. Or let’s say you just didn’t know in advance whether you were going to have a carry on or not. Well, you can still get it during the online check-in process for $40. What if you aren’t tech savvy at all? Then you can pay $50 when you check in at the airport ticket counter. I’ll agree that it is pretty awful when you show up to check in after having booked on an online travel agent site only to find that you have to pay for bin space. The online travel agents need to do a better job with that if they’re going to sell airline tickets. But the fee still won’t be more than $50.

So who is it that’s paying that $100 fee the media has been jumping on? Crooks. That is a fee for those people who blatantly disregard the requirement to pay for a carry on with the hope that they’ll be able to sneak it on the airplane at the gate. That’s a real pain for everyone when they try to do that, because the gate agent will see it, stop that person, and have to take them out of line to process the fee. It slows down the boarding process.

In other words, this fee is completely punitive. Spirit would like nothing more than for there not to be a single person to pay this fee. That means everyone is doing it before security, and that makes boarding much quicker. I think that particular $100 fee is a pretty smart way of creating a disincentive. If you don’t like it, then don’t try to game the system.

Outrage over $100 carry-on bag fee – CNN
I was on CNN to talk about Spirit’s $100 carry on fee, a fee which is so incredibly misunderstood that I’m going to write about it next week. But they made me pull off my glasses (too much glare), and then made some interesting editing choices. Watch it here:

Let’s be honest, I was just looking for a topic that would let me post this photo. But what the heck; let your United complaints fly below …. It feels good to vent, right?