reDesign

Wednesday marked the inaugural flights of Virgin America, a new low-cost airline based in San Francisco. Virgin America is currently flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles and New York. This fall it will add flights to Las Vegas and Washington Dulles.

From all accounts, Virgin America is setting a new standard in airline amenities. (See some of my earlier coverage on Virgin America.) Many of Virgin’s amenities are especially appealing to geeks. The geek bible, Engadget, provides detailed coverage of the maiden flight from JFK to SFO. Their coverage includes 136 pictures.

WIRED also provides detailed coverage with additional photos.

Engadget and WIRED both had reporters on the inaugural flights. Engadget flew from New York and paid for the flight; WIRED flew from Los Angeles and took a freebie.

Based on the coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, it doesn’t look like it had a reporter on either flight. It ran a piece with two staff photos and a Reuters photo from New York and an AP photo from SFO (!).

This is a huge business story for San Francisco and the Bay Area. The airline has added 500 employees (most based in the Bay Area) and expects to grow to 5,000. Yet the Chron got beat out by a gadget blog and a WIRED blog. Heck, I even considered taking the LAX flight and paying the whopping $44 out of my own pocket. (I couldn’t get the schedule to work out.)

I was at a panel discussion Thursday night sponsored by the Social Media Club featuring Kevin Rose of Digg, Evan Hansen of WIRED and Chris Tolles of Topix. The audience consisted of many in the old media who expressed worry about new-media types stealing their content. If they’re going to get beat like this, they won’t have to worry about that for too long.

Every couple of months, U.S. Airways sends out an email describing the progress on their computer systems. As with most large-scale systems projects, they’re behind. The self-effacing emails try to reassure customers that the airline really cares. Here’s an excerpt from June:

Welcome again to the latest edition of the Merger Update, where we provide the plain English scoop on issues important to you, our frequent travelers. No corporate double speak; just a rundown of details on the most pressing questions of the day.

So, first things first. You may be weary of us apologizing for the tough times we had this spring due to the migration of our reservations system, but here it is: We sincerely apologize for the numerous failures. After a pretty nice start to the merger we’ve learned some tough lessons through all this and received some very helpful advice from many of you, some of which we’re applying already and some of which is unprintable. So thank you for sticking with us as we climb back on the horse.

OK, enough groveling, here’s what we’ve got…

I hadn’t really paid much attention to the emails. But they stuck in my head last night. As I mentioned earlier, I spent seven hours at National Airport on Sunday, partly because of U.S. Airways ill-considered policy of not allowing phone agents to help with day-of-flight issues. Last night I called U.S. Airways to rebook my trip.

When I explained what I wanted to do, the agent replied “You were a no show.” This despite the fact that I twice had my boarding pass scanned and actually sat on the plane. While she offered to waive the $100 change fee, she wanted to charge an extra $100 for the difference in fare. When I said that I wanted a refund because my flight was canceled, she put me on hold while she contacted a supervisor. (Airlines try to hide the fact that you are entitled to a refund if they cancel your flight.)

Her supervisor comes on the line and tells me that she can’t find any record of my flight being canceled and that my record said that I was a no show. So she couldn’t do anything for me.

How does an airline not know that they didn’t operate a flight? That the plane sat on the tarmac for 6 hours? That they canceled a good portion of their schedule that day? Fortunately I had thought ahead about the possibility and printed the Web flight status showing the cancellation when I got home on Sunday. I faxed that to her while still on the phone.

A few minutes later she comes back on the line slurping her drink and grumpily proceeds to rebook my flight for free. No apologies.

Next week, I’ll be taking pictures every time I sit on one of their planes.

Yesterday was my travel day from hell.

I arrived at National Airport around 11 to catch a noon flight to Philadelphia. Because of a ground stop at Philadelphia they pushed back the flight to 12:45. We boarded the bus toward the commuter plane. When we arrived at the plane, I noticed that the door was still closed. Due to lightning around National, the ramp was closed and the bus headed back to the terminal.

In the terminal it was an endless string of “another 45 minutes” or no communication at all. Flights to and from cities up and down the East Coast were canceled or delayed.

While I can’t blame U.S. Airways for the weather, I can blame them for ill-considered policies that exacerbate the delays and make their ground staff work a lot harder than they need to. Unlike some other airlines, U.S. Airways phone agents can’t make changes for customers unless their flights have actually been canceled. As a result, you have 3 or 4 agents at the airport dealing with a line of 50-60 people who need to make new plans.

This is never an easy process on bad weather days because it can take 5 minutes or more per passenger to review later flights, alternate airports and rebook. This is in addition to dealing with the few airplanes that are coming and going. Under all this pressure, the agents aren’t able to look at all the options. I called my brother and was able to find other flights, but I couldn’t get anyone to book them for me. By the time I got to the front of the line, those flights had left.

On United, I’ve been able to call reservations while standing in line and get rebooked on alternate flights when it looked likely that I was going to miss my connection. Instead of concentrating all the work at one gate at the airport, United smartly distributes that work. United is now adding kiosks on their concourses that allow customers to rebook themselves. It saves United money and customers can see their options.

Around 5 p.m., we got the go ahead to re-board the Philadelphia flight. This time, we got off the bus and on the plane. A few minutes after boarding, I see the bus return and open its doors. About the same time the pilot comes out of the cockpit and says dispatch is canceling the flight, but he’s trying to talk them out of it before the bus comes back. Too late.

The one good thing about my seven hours at National was that I got to spend quality time with Facebook Mobile, updating my status, checking up on what friends were up to, and uploading pictures and my first mobile videos. It’s among the best mobile-Web integrations I’ve seen yet. More on that later.

Virgin America, a new low-cost carrier based in San Francisco, is set for an Aug. 8 takeoff. The carrier has faced some turbulent skies due in part to its partial ownership by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. Initial routes are San Francisco to New York’s JFK and LAX, with additional service from San Francisco to Las Vegas and Washington Dulles planned. Flights from LAX to Las Vegas (August) and Washington Dulles (October) are also planned.

Virgin America is an airline that any technologist will love. See my entry on the technology that Virgin America offers, including a high-end open source entertainment system, live DirecTV, a real power plug (no adapter required) at every seat and inflight Internet access. You can also chat with others on the airplane with seat-to-seat messaging. The in-flight entertainment system offers so many features, it’s the first airline I know of that publishes an acceptable use policy on its Web site.

Initial pricing is cheap with SFO-LAX priced at $44 one way and SFO-JFK at $139. (No roundtrip purchase required.) First class is also offered, at modest prices. A first class ticket from Dulles to San Francisco is $389. A comparable ticket on United is more than $800. I should say “comparable,” because Virgin America offers much more legroom with 55″ seat pitch and massaging seats.

It’s no coincidence that Virgin has chosen routes full of tech savvy travelers. This is likely to put a lot of pressure on United and jetBlue, which offer a lot of service on these routes. Ordinarily, giants like United compete by flooding the market with low-priced seats. The technological advantage may be harder to overcome.

Virgin’s biggest obstacle may be the corporate travel managers who hold back the stampede of travelers who want to fly their airline.

I recently had the chance to see the Google Maps on jetBlue that I wrote about earlier.

The maps are pretty simple; no satellite views or other cool Google features. They rotate among zoom levels. (My photostream has other examples.) There’s also a promo encouraging you to use Google Maps on the ground.

There are more interesting inflight map experiences. Here’s a YouTube video of Airshow 4200 from Air New Zealand. Most of the airlines I’ve flown use Airshow software, but I haven’t seen this version.

I do have to be a little concerned when the company’s marketing brochure incorrectly identifies Venice.

As I was taking off from SFO yesterday, I noticed the Virgin logo on three smaller airplanes. On closer inspection, the Airbuses had Virgin America’s livery. I was tempted to snap a picture, but resisted out of fear of being tackled by an air marshal.

Last month, Virgin America got the U.S. Department of Transportation’s approval to start a U.S. airline, after agreeing to concessions relating to its ownership structure.

The airline will be based in San Francisco with initial flights to JFK. Dulles is among the initial airports targeted for expansion.

Virgin Atlantic is one of my favorite airlines. Although U.S. law severely restricts the amount of influence Richard Branson can have on the company (one of DOT’s requirements was that Virgin America replace its CEO because of his ties to Branson), I hope that they can bring some of that high level of service to American aviation.

The planes seem well outfitted for people flying out of the San Francisco area. Among the features touted on Virgin’s Web site: 9″ screens, power ports, RJ-45 and USB jacks and touch-screen food ordering. And that’s in coach. Planes will have Internet access. The Web 2.0 set can use the plane’s seat-to-seat social network to interact with other passengers.

Virgin America even offers a blogger-friendly video of its Linux-based in-flight entertainment features. The video includes some technical details. Virgin says they will also be inviting Linux developers to create custom applications for the IFE.

(If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may need to click through to the post to see the video.)

Google is offering flight status information via SMS. Just send your flight number (e.g. UA 484) to GOOGLE (466453) and you get a return message with flight departure and arrival times, gate information and the airline’s phone number. (With most phones you can extract the phone number and call without having to re-enter the number.)

Flight information is a great SMS application - it requires little input and the answer can be delivered in 160 characters or less. It’s faster than trying to use the mobile Web browser to get to the airline’s Web site and navigate through the menus. And it sure beats trying to get the information through the voice-activated phone system.

Many airlines already provide the option to get mobile alerts automatically. United EasyUpdate sent me an alert two hours before my departure from Dulles last week. Unfortunately, in that two hours they moved my flight to a gate half way across the terminal.

Farecast is one of my favorite sites for checking out airfares. It’s a data junkie’s dream - Farecast does for airfares what Zillow does for real estate data.

You can slice and dice airfare data in a number of different ways. Want to go to San Diego for 3 or 4 days, but don’t care when? Farecast will show you the cheapest dates to start your trip. Want to somewhere for 4 days for under $200? Farecast will show you where you can go.

In addition to the usual information that travel sites provide, Farecast shows you a history of the lowest available fare for your trip. It also provides a forecast of whether fares will go up, down or stay the same.

TechCrunch writes about a new feature called Fare Guard that will lock in the fare that you find. They will reimburse you the difference between the fare that you lock in and the lowest fare on the day you buy your ticket. (Within 7 days.) It’s sort of like an option to buy airfare.

Although it’s not quite as bad a deal as an extended warranty, it’s unlikely to be a good deal:

• The service is only available on fares that predicted to go down. If you believe their predictions are accurate, you shouldn’t be buying anyway.
• The fare that is “guarded” is only the lowest possible fare for that date, not for specific flights. There is often a lot of variability in fares from flight to flight (even on the same airline) on the same day. Let’s say your ideal flight is at 5 p.m. and priced at $350 on the day you purchase the service, and that’s the lowest fare for the day. Five days later, the 5 p.m. flight is up to $450, but the lowest priced flight is at 9 a.m. and costs $350. You get nothing and you’re out the $10.
• Fare Guard doesn’t take into account airline preference. You find a United flight today at $350 and the lowest fare, on US Airways is $325. When you book, the United flight is $500 and the lowest fare on US Airways is still $325. Again, you get nothing.
• Fare Guard doesn’t allow for airport preference. If you’re in a market with multiple airports like New York, DC, San Francisco or Los Angeles, you have to pick an airport to lock in. Just as with specific flights, fares can vary by hundreds of dollars from one airport to another.
• The regular price for the service is $9.95 and the maximum possible payout is $200. You’re essentially betting $10 that the price of your flight will increase in the next 7 days. If the fare goes up $25, you’re up $15.05 for the hassle of buying the insurance and filing a claim.

If you care about when you fly or what airline you fly, Fare Guard is a waste of money.

As an experienced traveler who has watched the airline industry closely, I wouldn’t buy it. Would I bet against it as a business? Not a chance.

From The Washington Post:

Warranty Week, an industry publication, [in 2005] estimated that of the $15 billion in premiums charged consumers in 2004, $7.5 billion went straight into the pockets of the stores that sell warranties as their cut.

I was playing with Kayak and found a feature that’s interesting to explore - a map of where people want to travel. You enter an airport and it will show you the top 25 searched for destinations from that airport.

It’s fun to compare, say Atlanta, Ga., with Vancouver, B.C. There are even substantial differences between Washington National and Dulles.

Route lines are color-coded so that you can pick out which routes are more expensive. One nit I would pick is that the color coding is relative to the other destinations on the current map. On one map a route that is red could be $250 and on another map it could be $1,000.

If looking at the map gets you in the mood to travel, you can limit the results to those that fall in your price range or timeframe.

The travel business generates so much data; it’s great to see someone putting that data to good use. Now they just need to come up with a catchy name for it. Travelocity isn’t using Dream Maps anymore.

I got an email from United Airlines yesterday announcing a closed beta test of a new version of United.com with enhanced booking, Mileage Plus account information and better award travel booking. (Which is sorely needed.)

United offered a carrot of a 15% discount on my next flight in exchange for completing a survey about the site. The catch: only the first 20,000 respondents get the discount.

So I spent 5 minutes on the site and about 2 minutes on the survey. Bad incentive, bad data.

If they had said anyone who responds within the next week gets the discount, they would have gotten better data because I would have used the site for real needs.

It’s too bad, because I actually use all of these tools and would have real feedback to offer. They’ll just have to read my blog.