Victory for the Lowest Common Denominator

It turns out that UA has "matched" AA's $15 fee for the first checked bag. This to us was a matter of when, not if. We have to assume this charge will become the norm in the market (except for Southwest - who will really start to ramp up the PR machine on this fee now).

If so, then consumers don't really need to worry about cross-shopping confusion. The bag fee is just another necessary expense of travel, like airport parking, little tiny in-flight liquor bottles (hold the ice), and cigars at the duty-free shop...

Some Economy Seats are More Economy Than Others

Since FMV moved it’s headquarters to Chicago late last year – we find ourselves flying United a lot. You may think it’s because of their weird faux-cartoon ads that they plaster everywhere – but it’s really because of their “EconomyPlus” seating with extra legroom. After earlier hints, JetBlue has officially jumped on that bandwagon:

JetBlue will reconfigure its Airbus A320 fleet to offer seats with more legroom, and will charge more for those seats. JetBlue is calling the product Even More Legroom, which will offer 38 inches of pitch in the second to fifth rows plus emergency exit rows 10 and 11... The airline will charge $10 each way for short-haul flights (under 600 miles), $15 for medium-haul flights (601 to 1,500 miles) and $20 for long-haul flights (over 1,500 miles).

That’s actually great – but there is also another kicker:

The airline won't be selling Even More Legroom in the GDSs because of "technological limitations," JetBlue said. But the airline added that clients who book via a GDS can go to the Manage Your Flight link on JetBlue's Web site to purchase the extra legroom.

A few FMV points:

1) OK, we just assumed that JetBlue’s marketing department had a down day when they branded their new refundable fare product “Refundable Fares”. But seriously, “Even More Legroom”? Please try a little harder to imply that the old coach seats don't have crappy legroom. You know who will REALLY hate this name?? The call center agents who face this scenario happening 100 times a day:

JetBlue Agent: “Hello, You have reached JetBlue – how may I help you”

Customer: “Uhh, Hi – I bought a seat for my upcoming trip, and I know I get a roomy seat, but I’d now like to purchase EVEN MORE LEGROOM!! Ha Ha Ha”

2) This also has “Ancillary Revenue” written all over it and kind of goes against the Jetblue vein. Fine – you don’t have a “business class” – but you now have the beginnings of tiered system…

3) Finally – and most importantly - we love the fact that this purchase option is not available in the GDS. It’s the mythical “Fourth Cabin” limitation of GDSs; they cannot inventory control this type of stuff, and therefore can’t sell it. But FMV will bet you $10 (Even More Legroom for a short-haul flight) that the GDSs come out and blame the airline as not being “buyer focused” for doing this to them. It's classic GDS victim-hood at it's best (see Air Canada).

So while you won't catch us flying JetBlue just yet (simply not enough flights from ORD), we applaud them for providing meaningful product differentiation (i.e. not just a seatback TV and faux-hipster vibe). We also applaud mother nature, for dumping a (late) winter storm on Chicago today, giving us the perfect excuse to duck out early to watch the NCAA tournament. For those stuck on a cot at ORD - sorry, but these things happen for a reason.

Ouch Redux: Northern Exposure Edition

What goes on here? Just last month we wrote about Ryanair shutting down their reservations for 3 days to upgrade their systems.

Now comes word that Alaska Airlines will shut down access to their mileage plan systems in April for a week! No redemption, no mile-based upgrades, no signing up for the program, etc.

We suppose the business impact is relatively small. They gave loyal customers a month notice, and most passengers will be able to figure it out and work around the outage. But you can rest assured that some know-it-all customers will be pretty hacked off to find out that they can't redeem their miles right-then-and-there for that all-important dream trip to Anchorage.

It just seems hard to believe that system migrations like these can't happen a little quicker. A few days we get - but a week?? A $3.5-Billion bank like Bear Stearns can teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, get bailed out by the Fed, nearly fail again, then get liquidated by a quasi-partership of the government and an opportunistic white knight in just two days -- and an airline can't migrate a few customer profiles in less than a week? What kind of a world do we live in?

Booking Bonus Days AAre Gone

Well it is official. Mileage bonuses for booking direct on a cAArrier website are just not happening anymore. If any carrier is still doing it, it's probably due to a technical error or a staffing restriction (i.e., the guy that was supposed to pull the promo got laid off). Cue the Little River Band classic, "Reminiscing".

The latest sorrowful news came to us courtesy of the American Airlines DealFinder tool. No more booking bonus at AA.com after AApril.

Sigh. Now how are we going to earn our reward tickets to Tulsa? Hmmm. What to do? Note to self: Pitch ncAA "tournament pool for miles" idea to AA.

Baggage Fees Save Airlines Money

You didn't need Nostradamus' skills to predict that there would be followers to United's fees to check a second bag. Sure enough, US Airways will begin charging passengers if they check a second bag.

What is interesting about the news, is that US states that 8% of their passengers check a second bag. As we noted in our post about United's policy, we estimated that it would take well over 16% of passengers checking a second bag to generate United's targeted benefit. We consider this proof that a big portion (maybe half) of the benefit of the fee is cost savings, not ancillary revenue. Carriers claim the savings deals with fuel, we suspect it's as much about the labor associated with handling the bags.

The ultimate source of the savings is fairly irrelevant. The multi-million dollar question is in fact, will a $25 fee really persuade the general travelling public to pack lighter? It probably depends. Imelda Marcos type shoe fiends? Probably no. Family of four going to Disney World? Probably yes. We'll just have to stay tuned, and see if they dial the fee up to $50 to know for sure.

New AA.com (Old Alaska and Air Canada)

AA.com looks like they re-designed their website with some nifty new features – including a "Price and Schedule Search" functionality shown here. The new display is solid and a distinct improvement.

FMV also thinks it adds flavors from two other airlines.

The first one is the Alaska Airlines search results layout – where you can see different fare levels side by side. Not that big of a deal since it’s a fairly intuitive layout, but nice none-the less. We guess Alaska shouldn't be that upset – "Sincerest form of flattery" and all that….

But the most interesting thing about this system in FMV’s eyes is that American appears to be taking a page out of Air Canada’s playbook of offering different amenities for different classes.

For instance, the example shown, the difference between the “Economy Saver” and the “Economy Flexible” is that you can use 500-mile upgrades with the Flexible fares. In addition, they have introduced a “Instant Upgrade” fare that is supposed to be "a business- or first-class seat sold at the same price as a coach fare. Sometimes those tickets are cheaper than the most expensive coach seat." However, buyers of this fare will also get Priority Boarding, Priority Check-In, Lounge Access for International Flights, and even bonus miles.

In many of the conferences FMV have attended, several airlines have been saying they wanted to mirror Air Canada's ability to tie more benefits to higher fare classes. True, AA's fare names are much more uptight than Air Canada's “Tango” and “Latitude” fares - but it's clear they are making progress along these lines.