TSA Trusted Traveler Program: Finally, Something the TSA does RIGHT

I'm not usually a big fan of the TSA. In fact, quite the opposite. As a heavy business (and leisure!) traveler, I've found many of the TSA's tactics silly or simply pure theater over the years.

However, today, upon leaving Las Vegas, I got sent to the Trusted Traveler line after the agent up front scanned my boarding pass. I'm an Elite flyer with both Delta and American, the two pilot airlines for the program but hadn't yet seen anything special. The last place I expected anything was certainly Las Vegas.

But, get this! First, there was NO line. Next, I didnt take off my shoes. Really. I didnt have to yank my computer out of the laptop (I did buy one of those Tumi bags that allows you just to unzip awhile back but I didn't even have to do that!) And, I may jacket stayed on. So did my belt. And I didn't have the nudie scan - just walked through the metal detector old school - like clearing security in 1972.

Finally, something done right by the TSA! Bravo. Now lets just get it to more airports.

Look Beyond Orbitz/AA: Delta Pulls Inventory Off Three Other OTAs

The current fight between American Airlines (AA) and Orbitz Worldwide (OWW) and Travelport by default has been well publicized. In a nutshell, after winning a hearing in court yesterday, AA canceled Orbitz' ability to sell tickets on the Orbitz family of websites including Orbitz.com, Cheaptickets.com and ebookers.com. The dispute revolves around how AA distributes inventory to Orbitz, both financially and technically.

To date, AA has been a lone wolf in this area with scant public support from any other airlines. Unlike in many other airline moves where one moves on Tuesday and the rest of the industry follows by Friday (think commission caps, bag fees, change fees etc) AA has stood alone.

Until yesterday.

In an amazing coincidence, Delta Air Lines (DL) yesterday announced that they would pull their inventory off of three smaller OTAs: cheapoair.com, onetravel.com and bookit.com.

Delta has made it clear that they value some distribution points more than others. These three websites generate a significant amount of traffic from meta and click-off search sites such as fly.com, bookingbuddy.com and tripadvisor.com - we can imagine that Delta probably tired of seeing these smaller, less relevant websites listed alongside Delta.com (and other, larger OTAs) as a booking option.

By flexing their distribution muscle and removing inventory from these sites, Delta is making a calculated move that they will be able to continue to sell the inventory currently sold through these websites elsewhere, and in particular, Delta.com.

We would bet doughnuts to dollars (just by the URL names alone) that the vast majority of tickets sold through these sites are low-yield tickets. As anyone in the airline business knows, airlines don't need help selling more $39 tickets to Orlando. There is nearly insatiable demand for low-fare tickets and consumers visit multiple websites in the hunt for these fares - Delta is banking that consumers will still find their low fares elsewhere, and hopefully that will be Delta.com.

And, if those same consumers don't visit Delta.com (or another OTA) there are plenty of other consumers who will those same cheap fares - airlines can fill planes all day long with $39 fares without any help from an OTA.

American Fires Back First Salvo Against Impending Virgin America DFW Invasion

American Airlines announced a new program squarely aimed at Virgin America's impending launch of flights from SFO and LAX to DFW.

The usual bag of tricks includes double AAdvantage miles and double elite qualifying miles. Somewhat unusual is the relatively long earning period - from tomorrow all the way until the end of February.

Slightly more original is the "15 Days of Giveaways" in which American is offering prizes on "mystery flights" between DFW and SFO/LAX free stuff such as 5K AAdvantage miles, Admirals Club Passes and AA Vacations discounts and AAvis car rental coupons.

A more original giveaway by American would have been a week on Necker Island...

Of course, Virgin still offers WiFi on every flight (free right now thanks to Google) and brand spanking new planes - two things, alas, AA can't come close to offering.

That said, penetrating a fortress hub like DFW is difficult for any upstart carrier, Richard Branson or not. American has already announced increased frequency on the LAX-DFW route and these programs will help ensure that AAdvanatge loyalists stay with Something Special in the Air.

Glassdoor: Employee Satisfaction (or lack thereof) in the Travel Industry

Glassdoor.com, a cool website where "anyone can find and anonymously share an inside look at jobs and companies" has provided an interesting peek at job satisfaction inside the travel industry.

Travel is probably an industry Glassdoor knows something about given the site's founders which include such industry notables as Bob Hohman (Hotwire, Expedia) Tim Besse (Expedia) Ryan Aylward (EzRez, Hotwire) along with a few others who serve on the board who've spent a bit of time in travel: Rich Barton, Erik Blachford and Stephen Kaufer.

And what has Glassdoor, which garners its information from current and former employees, come up with? Might as well start with the OTAs since Glassdoor practically grew up in the OTA world:

The chart above details the approval ratings of the companies themselves and their CEOs as reported by the employees who came to Glassdoor and left feedback. (Hugh Jones isn't rated because of a limited number of responses - probably because he is still new in the role.) Looks like Hotwire is a pretty good place to work - we'll leave it to you to decide if that is because all of these guys left to start Glassdoor or not. (Just kidding, Ryan et al)

Glassdoor's info gets more interesting looking at hoteliers:
The highest rated CEO, Issy Sharp, has just announced that he is stepping down - a real shame according to this report. Bill Marriott and Hyatt's Hoplamazian are just a hair behind Sharp, however.

Not surprisingly, airlines show by far the greatest variability from one to another:

Things appear pretty bleak over at American and American Eagle - with labor strife a way of life at AA, clearly Something isn't Special in the Air. Even US Airways pulls better rankings. Southwest and JetBlue, as usual, prove that they are run more like hoteliers than airlines with ratings like these. (oh, they make money like hoteliers, too)

But the big takeaway? Continental and United - look a the difference in internal company ratings. Glassdoor doesn't have a rating for Jeff, but boy do they have one for Glenn. This is going to be one interesting merger, don't you think?

United Matches American With One-Way Mileage Awards

United has announced that Mileage Plus members may now redeem awards on a one-way basis rather than the previous round-trip requirement. Best of all, there is no premium for a one-way redemption - it is a simple 50% of the miles required for a round-trip award. This new structure matches that of American, Alaska and British Airways, among others.

For members, it greatly simplifies award redemption. Now consumers can make an informed choice about to earn vs. burn based on the price in miles or money based on each direction of their travels. In addition, given the scarcity of frequent-flyer award seats these days, consumers can redeem the higher peak level one direction while taking advantage of the lower off-peak award in the other direction - previously, the higher mileage level applied round trip, even if the low mileage level was actually available.

One possible downside for consumers is that if they are booking these awards separately on the phone, they may get nailed with more phone booking fees - one for each direction of the trip.

And, alas, the new structure only works for United/United Express flights - no one-ways on Star Alliance partners. At least yet anyway - one Star carrier, BMI does allow one-way awards on all Star Alliance partners - we only hope United will do the same in time. And American and BA already allow one-ways on their partners.

United also announced that users can now combine "miles and money" if they are short on miles. While I like the flexibility this offers, I've never found combining miles and money to be in anyone's interest except the airlines....

Overall, however, greater flexibility is always a plus. Or a Mileage Plus in this case.

Haiti Needs YOUR Help

A somber moment from our usual glib. The pictures and news reports coming from Haiti are shocking to say the least. North America's poorest country (indeed, one of the world's poorest countries) has been rocked by a brutal earthquake of epic proportions.

I encourage all of our readers to take a brief moment to assess their position in life and consider donating to the Red Cross in order to help the relief efforts in Haiti.

American Airlines has announced a mileage bonus tomorrow for all donations to the Red Cross tomorrow at AA.com. If that makes the difference, go for it.

I hope that all of us in the travel industry will take a moment to help. Haiti is hardly a glamorous destination of 5 star hotels and private jets - far from it. But the people of Haiti are in their darkest hour - now is our time to shine.

AA Drops SFO-SNA Route - Score One for Virgin America!

Waaaay back when we started this little blog, we predicted that the likely loser in the Bay to LA war heating up between American, Virgin America, Southwest and United was going to be American. Over the weekend, our prediction came true. Without fanfare (closing routes is never as exciting as opening them!) American pulled their San Francisco-Orange County flights effective November 18th.

To be sure, it will still be a tough, tough market with 3 carriers battling it out (particularly when one of them is Southwest.) Who will blink next?

New York Air Market Continues to Heat Up: American Offering Double Miles

The highly competitive market in New York continues to just get hotter. Today, American launched a new promotion offering New Yorkers double AAdvantage frequent flyer miles for the rest of the year. On all routes, all fares, worldwide.

This is clearly a response to a similar offer that Delta made a few weeks ago for which was broader in some respects (you don't have to live in NY) but also more targeted because you need to be a Delta American Express card holder.

What is interesting is that American felt the only place they needed to match the offer was the NYC market. The New York area has increasingly become a battle ground between Delta, Continental and American. AA and DL (especially DL) have added extensive new flights from JFK, AA has opened a new terminal at JFK. Continental continues to operate the largest operation of any of the carriers, albeit over at Newark - NY's third airport even though it is in New Jersey. (Which simply allows Delta to claim more flights from New York meaning the state rather than the metropolitan area - funny, they dont make the same claim in Cincinnati where the airport (CVG) is actually in Kentucky!) But we digress.

Complicating the story is Continental's impending move from the Skyteam Alliance (of which Delta is part of) to the Star Alliance which has not had a strong New York presence. Many NY travelers split their loyalty between Delta and Continental and credit their miles on both into one program. This is about to change as consumers will no longer be able to credit CO flights to DL and vice-versa. This change, set to happen this fall, raises the stakes for both carriers to hold on to the other's travelers.

Oh, and if you want those double miles on AA, go here and register....

Delta joins AA in Suggesting that OTAs and Travel Agents Should Pay for Content

If you listened to Delta's Q1 earnings call this morning, you heard some interesting commentary on the future of distribution according to Delta.

DL management echoed American's CEO's suggestion on their call last week that the time would come when OTAs and agents would pay the airlines for their content. Interesting how the airlines can have these "open" discussions in their earnings calls, isn't it? We've been following the commentary over on Dennis Schaal's blog but this was too rich to pass up without a few thoughts of our own!

Of note, DL stated that "TMCs have an important role to play" and seemed to imply that their main target was the OTAs particularly when DL described the "value we provide vs. others" online. Maybe so, Orbitz's Price Assurance which offers consumers a refund when fares decline seems like a pretty good value. The same can be said for the multitude of air+hotel packaging options that the OTAs provide to consumers. And many consumers would also vote Orbitz's TLC in-route support to be far superior to many airline's offerings. And multiple airlines? Try booking a multi-carrier trip on Delta.com or Continental.com. OTAs are all about offering consumers choices and comparison opportunities - things they do quite well.

More interesting, however, was the suggestion that "OTAs should pay for [airline] content the way they do for hotels" Hmmmm. Obviously, someone at Delta has not taken a quick look at hotel distribution costs - nor drivers of OTA profitability. Newsflash: OTAs don't make any money selling airline tickets! They make it selling hotels. And they don't pay hotels - quite the opposite. Can you imagine the horror if someone at Delta knew that many chains are paying Expedia/Travelocity/Orbitz in the mid-teens for distribution? And what of independent hotels? Considerably more.

And finally, DL mentioned that Delta.com was driving ~ 37-38% of Delta's revenues - great news indeed. But they also estimated that the OTAs were providing in the area of 30% of Delta's revenues - wow is all we can say on that one.

JetBlue coming to LAX - lookout Virgin America

JetBlue has just launched the latest salvo in the trans-con wars. Following on the heels of Virgin America's announcement of two daily Boston-LAX nonstops set to begin in February, JetBlue just announced similar service launching on June 17th.

Not to be outdone, American Airlines has also announced an additional Boston-LAX flight to the the three they already operate.

Suddenly, Boston will go from 5 daily nonstops to LA (two on United and 3 on American) to 10 - a near doubling of capacity will create a capacity bloodbath - get ready for great deals Bostonians and Angelenos....... and to Virgin America, good luck.