Here are more of the promised "consumer benefits" from the merger of AirTran and Southwest Airlines. AirTran is canceling service to Bloomington, Ill., Charleston, W.Va., Knoxville, Tenn., Miami and Washington Dulles.

Of those, reports USA Today, only Dulles is also served by Southwest. So the combo carrier is abandoning four markets, three of them not exactly enjoying an overabundance of air service. For Baltimore, if you want to fly to Miami via the Southwest/AirTran combo, you now have to take the Southwest flight to Fort Lauderdale. The AirTran flight to MIA will be eliminated.

Says AirTran:

AirTran Airways says it can no longer support service to these particular markets in light of the realities of the challenging economic environment and sustained high fuel prices. The airline has a keen focus on aligning its service with Customer demand and making capacity available for future opportunities without growing the current fleet.

Says USA Today:

Still, the latest count means a total of nine AirTran airports now will not see Southwest-branded flights as part of the merger. The others – all previously announced – are Asheville, N.C.; Atlantic City, N.J.; Dallas/Fort Worth; Moline/Quad Cities, Ill.; and Newport News, Va.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Who says Marshall-BWI doesn't have international destinations? (Look for this to get yanked if the Republicans regain the White House in 2012 and the Castros are still alive.) From the airport:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Approved Airport’s Application for Charter Service Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI Marshall) has received approval from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to handle passenger charter air service to and from Cuba. “We are grateful that the federal government has approved the application for direct charter service between BWI Marshall Airport and Cuba,” said Paul J. Wiedefeld, Executive Director of BWI Marshall. “The authorization can produce expanded access to Cuba for Maryland and the entire National Capital region. This service has the potential to benefit many institutions and organizations throughout our region.” BWI Marshall Airport joins a select list of U.S. airports to offer service to Cuba. Previously, only airports in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles were authorized for Cuba service. In recent days, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has opened Cuba service to several new markets, including BWI Marshall Airport. New federal regulations expand religious, academic, journalistic, and cultural travel between the United States and Cuba. Several additional regulatory and procedural steps need to be completed before the charter service between BWI Marshall and Cuba may commence.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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As today's column says, Southwest Airlines' proposed takeover of AirTran has a lot of downside for BWI Marshall airport. The deal, unless the Justice Department requests changes, would give Southwest a 70-percent market share at BWI and a local monopoly on most of its direct flights.

However, here's the possible positive news. BWI's biggest drawback is its lack of international flights. You basically have to drive to Dulles if you want to fly overseas anywhere but London and the Caribbean. Southwest has been talking about getting into international but hasn't done it. If it were to do so, BWI would be the logical place to start. With a million domestic BWI flights, Southwest could easily route flyers overseas and back through its own system through BWI.

AirTran has a few international routes, and on Monday Southwest boss Gary Kelly said Southwest hoped to take advantage of the experience to perhaps expand the combined company's international offerings, once Southwest overhauls its reservation software. Here's Kelly on the conference call:

[AirTran] fits in beautifully with where
we want to go. It brings a different opportunity for us in terms of markets
with a small international presence but we have the desire ourselves of
course to prepare for international expansion one of these days and that will
be a wonderful learning experience for us....

we've made no secret of the fact that we have been
contemplating international and this - I wouldn't say that the acquisition of
AirTran is making that international commitment for us. But I think it's
very safe to share with you today that we're committed to going
international. We'll have to prepare ourselves for that and again that's
really another topic perhaps for another day that, one of the gaining factors
for us of course is our reservation system technology but I would just
confirm with you today as well that we've made the decision to replace our
reservations technology, we've narrowed that down to two players and that
will bring us the necessary capability that we'll need at least on the
commercial side to offer international service. So, a way to start here
obviously is to acquire AirTran, keep their international service in effect
learn from it, build the capability within Southwest over the next several
years so that when we fully integrate them, the target would be for us to be
ready to move that international service into Southwest Airlines several
years down the road.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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I would be quite surprised if U.S. antitrust authorities let the Southwest/Airtran merger go through unaltered. Baltimoreans might have been better off if Southwest had succeeded in its attempt last year to buy Frontier Airlines. That way Southwest and Airtran would continue competing for passengers on many important routes at BWI Marshall. Southwest seems to have grown as much as it can on its own, and now it seeks growth through acquisitions. (It made a few small buys of other airlines over the years but never anything on this scale.)

Airtran and Southwest compete directly on BWI flights to Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Orlando, San Antonio Seattle and Tampa. They compete indirectly on other routes. For example, Airtran flies from BWI to Dayton; Southwest goes to Columbus and Cleveland.

BWI broke passenger records this summer in no small part because of the great fares resulting from the competition between these two companies. A combination of the two is probably not good for Baltimore and BWI in any event, but it would be terrible news if it goes through unaltered. In all but a few cases (eg. Boston, L.A.) on the above routes, the merger would give the combined company a BWI monopoly on direct flights to those destinations. Sure, there's Reagan National, but who wants to drive down there?

The merger as envisioned would give Southwest almost 70 percent of the passengers at BWI. If that happens they'll need to take Justice Marshall's name off the airport and rename it for the big airline based in Dallas.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (33)
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And here are WBAL's Bill Vanko and me talking about it.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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As somebody who spent three hours sitting inside a jet sitting on a runway a couple weeks ago (the plane hit a bird on landing and they had to fix the dent), I'm paying extra attention to airline regulations. In theory raising the bumping penalty for air carriers should give them incentive to bump fewer folks. In practice??? Here's a report from Reuters:

(Reuters) - Maximum compensation for bumping passengers off oversold flights would rise to $1,300 under a U.S. government proposal released on Wednesday.

The Transportation Department plan would also expand its runway delay program to overseas airlines, making them comply with the same requirements as domestic counterparts for ground delays exceeding three hours.

Current bumping fees range from $400 to $800, depending on whether an alternative flight is available and whether the trip is domestic or international service.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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The Obama Justice Department ought to look very carefully at the proposed merger of United Airlines and Continental Airlines. Together they would have more than a fifth of the U.S. market -- No. 1 in the country. Delta, which combined with Northwest Airlines in 2008, has 20 percent. So the top two carriers would control 41 percent of the market. Together they overlap on 13 non-stop routes, according to Bloomberg.

But the merger would have little effect on Marshall BWI, which is dominated by discount carrier Southwest Airlines. Continental has only a 3 percent share of BWI, and has a 5 percent piece.

In the end, don't expect the administration to contest the United-Continental combo. After all, these are the guys who allowed the egregious marriage of Ticketmaster and Live Nation. And where is the heralded Justice Department assault against Google?

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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From Matt Wald at NYT:

More than a year before a twin-engine turboprop flown by Colgan Air crashed on approach to Buffalo, a Federal Aviation Administration inspector complained to his superiors about the rocky start the airline was having with that model.

Three times, he said, the pilots flew the airplane faster than the manufacturer’s specifications allowed, but they initially refused to report this and have the plane inspected for damage. They flew with a broken radio and did not want to write that up in the maintenance log, as the rules require, he said, because it might delay the next test flight. And they tried three approaches to the airport in Charleston, W. Va., and “botched” all of them, failing to get the plane at an appropriate altitude, on the right path and at the right speed for landing.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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The father of a pilot for a regional airline writes regarding Saturday's column on the Flight 3407 tragedy and the experience and working conditions for commuter-air pilots, Low standards aren't likely to give a lift to regional fliers.

My daughter is Captain on a regional jet. You are correct the starting wage is miserable considering the cost of her education. She is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. What you also have to consider is in the airlines everything is driven by seniority. You have to wait your turn. It took my daughter five years to get promoted to Captain. This doubled her wages. After five years as a First Officer, she was making about $28K. So there is no “quick increase” to the $50K mentioned in your write up. A beginning accountant starts at $40K without having to worry about million dollar equipment or people’s lives.

The recent change by the FAA allowing pilots to fly until 65 further delays upgrades to Captain for newer pilots. Then there are the reserve rules. Until a pilot can get a “line” which is a regular route, they fly reserve which is determined by where you are based and seniority. She has had to be on “hot reserve” many times. This means she has to sit at the airport in uniform for 10-12 hours uncase they need a pilot. She is basically not paid for this time believe it or not. I think she gets like $3.50/hour.

The eight hours of sleep between flights is calculated from when they get off their flight and when the next one begins. Some contract hotel facilities are 40 minutes away from the airport so at best they might get 5-6 hours sleep. All this is negotiated with the unions, however from my daughter’s perspective the union takes care of the older pilots, not the entry level members. Like many occupations it is considered doing your time. Then when and if she decides to jump from the regional airlines to the major airlines where the money is in the $100-180K range she can expect to take a 25-35% drop in pay the first year. Entry level pay for a first year First Officer is $35K for most major airlines. It does double the second year to the $70K but there is no reason for this other than “that’s the way it is.”

To conclude let your readers know that a lot of pilots are barely making a living and working long hours to do it. Will it change? I doubt it. My daughter would love to change jobs but in this economy she at least has something.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Airlines