Left Field

Fees fracas: there's been a lot of chatter about fees that the airlines charge and how to calculate them. But that kafuffle overlooks the fact that some on-line travel sites charge you fees to make a booking, fees that get you the right to pay more fees to the airline. So with the slump in on-line bookings as the sagging economy takes its toll, does anyone online care? Well, yes. Expedia, the on-line travel agency, eliminated its booking fee for airline tickets sold by May 31, while Travelocity waited a few days and then matched them. They must be very nice people there...or perhaps this is just a recognition of the reality that most people use these sites as a reference, cruising through to find out what an airline is charging and then going to the airline website itself to save the booking fees. Tom Botts, a travel industry veteran who blogs at Hudson Crossing, says, "This is a seismic change for the on-line travel agency industry."

You would think the nation has a limited supply of really underserved airport markets, but Allegiant Air has demonstrated that the states have plenty of Grand Forks and Billings. Now comes Air Azul, a tiny turboprop operator, and its very big plans to mimic Allegiant - up to a point.
It has arranged with Sun Country Airlines, the Minneapolis-based carrier that's trying to get out of bankruptcy, to operate public charter flights between big cities on the East Coast and a scattering of service-hungry cities in the Midwest. The carrier, which will use a Sun Country Boeing 737-800, "sees the how the Allegiant model worked. We're slightly different because we're linking underserved markets like Toledo or South Bend, Indiana, with major metropolitan areas, rather than with leisure resorts, but we're clearly inspired by the success that Allegiant has had," says Brian Burling, the vice president of Air Azul. The company announced this week that it will serve South Bend linking it with Newark Liberty, near New York, three days a week. It also announced service between Toledo, Ohio and Rockford, Ill., and Newark, three days a week, and plans thrice weekly service between Newark, and Lansing, Michigan.

We didn't believe him when Michael O'Leary came out and began moving his lips. He was yakking about how Ryanair was going to start charging people to use its on-board lavatories (oh the headlines!) and then said while it was improving customer comfort this way, his airline would get rid of airport check-in counters. Everybody would have to check in on line, O'Leary said.
Well, he was serious, at least about the airport part. Ryanair now officially plans to eliminate its airport check-in by October. You will have to check in from home, and the airport will only offer a drop desk where you can check your bags (for a fee).

So, is he kidding? Or, who (m) does he think he is kidding? He is Michael O'Leary, the head of Ryanair, Europe's largest really cheap carrier. O'Leary went onto BBC to tell a morning 'chat show' that maybe Ryanair would perhaps possibly begin charging its passengers to use the lavatories on board its Boeing 737s. O'Leary had a more or les straight face as he chatted with the a.m. show, but then again he usually does.
While few are taking his potty talk seriously, O'Leary also said the other day that Ryanair would be doing away with check-in counters at all of its airports, a statement that he is still standing by - and which he repeated in the course of the BBC interview. We spoke to a few US and Asian carriers that adhere to the same really low-cost philosophy that Ryanair champions, and we found one that did not outright dismiss the O'Leary counter-culture concept. At Spirit Airlines, the 'ultra low-cost carrier' based near Miami, "we're not laughing at them," says chief marketing officer Barry Biffle.

So is this clever or what? We're not sure if JetBlue is trying to appeal to the folks these ads are seemingly addressed to or to every else and their resentments but we think the resentments will win. Labelled as an appeal to "bigwigs, muckety-mucks, private-jetters...," the new advertising campaign by the trendy carrier appeals directly to our hatred of the former fat cats and the (and we quote) "$5,300 an hour you used to pay for your private jet. Now in exchange for these shareholder-friendly prices, you'll have to share the plane with strangers," it says, touting JetBlue's fares and "unlimited free snacks." The carrier concludes with an interesting definition of air travel: "Just think of it as jet-pooling, only we find the other people for you."

Is this new base a destination or an origin? When Allegiant finally got around to announcing its service in and out of LAX the other day, it made big news in a lot of small towns. In LaLa Land, not so much. But Medford, OR, Monterey, Calif., Wichita, Kan.; Springfield, Mo.; Sioux Falls, SD; Missoula, Mont.; McAllen, Texas; and Bellingham., WA, all celebrated. So did Billings, Mont.; Des Moines, Iowa; Fargo, ND; and Grand Junction, Colo. But after looking at the way Allegiant is growing and profiting, we wouldn't be too sure that the traffic will be entirely composed of folks from Fargo flocking to the southern California gateway.

They say that that Southwest has run out of low-hanging fruit, out of secondary airports like Oakland, Cal., or Long Island, NY's MacArthur, and that's why it's going into real big airports where they have lots of old-fashioned airlines, airports like Minneapolis/St. Paul, where it starts flights in March.

True, but only up to a point. Consider the LUVline's plan to enter Boston's Logan later this year. It hasn't chosen an exact date and it hasn't named routes yet, but Southwest is entering a very different Logan than the one it shunned back in the 1990s when it began flights to Providence, RI, (1996) and Manchester, NH, (1998), straddling Boston with two secondary airports offering easier ground access. But since then, Boston is has changed. Not only is the airport easier (or least less difficult) to get to with the finally final completion of the city's 'Big Dig' road project.