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Upgraded: Your luggage in 25 minutes or less or your pizza is free
United’s revised customer commitment (the “promise” which airlines keep revising to try to head off a passenger’s bill of rights) has been changed, with the airline pledging to get customers their checked bags within 25 minutes of arriving at the gate. Of course, there are no consequences for missing that deadline, but still, glad to hear that they’re setting a benchmark. Beats American Airlines’ technique of simply tacking 7 minutes onto every scheduled flight time, to make flights look more “on-time.” Classy!

Separately: One thing I’m happy to see survive the revision at United: the 24-hour penalty-free cancellation policy.

Upgraded: Passengers’ bravado
Speaking of luggage, a Tacoma, Washington, couple has sued British Airways for losing its luggage. And that suit could gain class action status, representing “American British Air [sic] travelers who flew internationally between Sept. 5, 2005, and Wednesday [September 5, 2007].” (via Consumerist)

Upgraded: Helicopter fares to the airport
Downgraded: Helicopter business plans
U.S. Helicopter isn’t making the fat bank that they were hoping for. Their SEC filings include the warning that they may not be able to continue as a “going concern.” So what do they do? Fare sale! New Yorkers rejoice: $99 to JFK or Newark. Faster than a cab, for (nearly) the same price.

Upgraded: Memories of Hooters Air
Remember Hooters Air, the airline that featured flight attendants AND Hooters Girls onboard? If you think I’m kidding, you’re wrong. It existed. Seriously. 23-year old student and Hooters waitress Kyla Ebbert got kicked off a Southwest plane for wearing a skirt that was too short for the flight attendant. A bit overzealous? And now she’s milking the notoriety: She was on the freakin’ Today Show. Slow news day. So she showed a bit of leg (and maybe a little more). Note that Southwest flight attendants often wear shorts, and that’s usually more leg than I want to see from my front-line airline staff. (Thanks to reader J!)

Downgraded: The letter V
CondeNast writer Sarah Kerr offers her “awards” for the best travel related movies. And she calls her awards the “Travies.” Not to be confused with the “Travvies,” the travel blog awards. One letter V makes all the difference. I hereby insist that the film awards be pronounced “TRAY-vees.” See you in court, Sarah! (I kid, I kid.)

Upgraded (or Downgraded?): Silverjet wants to fly to Heathrow
Silverjet, the all-business class airline (a la Maxjet or L’Avion) already flies Newark to London-Luton. Now they want to fly to Heathrow. But to do that, they’ll need to merge or partner with another airline. This could be interesting: It would be the first of the all-business class airlines to merge with another party — presumably a legacy airline. Might be a way for a down-on-their-luck American carrier to pick up some sassy trans-Atlantic action?

Upgraded: FlightStats
FlightStats.com, which offers the most comprehensive suite of real-time flight information on the web, has added live-updating Google maps. Now, I still think that FlightAware’s maps are a little sexier for those looking to track a flight graphically. But FlightStats’ gate-arrival information is more relevant to travelers. I’ll still keep both sites in the toolkit.

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I’ve been encountering US Airways a bit lately, and it hasn’t always been fun. A function of my recent move to North Carolina, perhaps. Hard to avoid US Airways in these parts. But having previously observed that United-US Airways codesharing and cooperation aren’t living up to their hype, I’m still convinced that these two Star Alliance partners aren’t working well together, and need to shape up their cooperation.

The breakdown of cooperation starts with the little things, right at the time of purchase: Why can’t the US Airways website allow me to enter my United frequent flyer number in the reservation? They’re both in Star Alliance, and other Star Alliance carriers let you choose from a range of different frequent flyer options.

Update: The option to add other airlines’ frequent flyer numbers is back on the US Airways site. Not sure what was missing when I booked, but it’s there now. Yay!

Admittedly, other sites have similar issues, especially third party booking sites — Orbitz, I’m looking at you. I bought a ticket on Orbitz recently when no one else would sell me that particular itinerary at a lower price. Again, no option to enter a partner airline’s frequent flyer account. I could enter a US Airways account number, or nothing at all. This limitation isn’t isolated to Star Alliance, either. If you, say, book a British Airways ticket, you can only enter a British Airways frequent flyer number, and not an American Airlines number. (Expedia is much more flexible with frequent flyer accounts.) Alliances and partnerships aren’t new, people! Give us the option!

The cooperation breakdown continues at check-in: My wife bought a United-coded ticket for an all-US Airways flight on United.com (the UA-coded ticket was cheaper) but when she got to the airport to check in, she was told that the ticket wasn’t paid for. Apparently, United hadn’t transmitted the funds to US Airways, and the ticket was still listed as reserved, not issued. Her United receipt (and credit card statement) showed that it was indeed paid, but until the ticket number was manually entered into the computer record, she wasn’t getting a boarding pass.

This is stupid. I know there are incredible complexities that arise when large organizations attempt to integrate or link their data systems, but if the increasing frequency of these kinks is any indication, the problems are getting worse with time, not better.

Related:
- Star Alliance out of alignment: Are United and US Airways fighting codeshare wars?
- Update: US Airways and United codeshare conundrums
- Confused by codeshares? Sue!

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Reader Brian G. asks:

Your recent reader mail about international stopovers provides a reasonable segue for me to ask a question I’ve been pondering: is there a resource for identifying ALL of the non-stop flights from a given airport?
I initially thought of this question a couple of years ago while living in Alaska for the summer. Anchorage claims (and I have no reason to doubt) that Ted Stevens was the first North American airport with non-stop flights to both Europe and Asia. I started wondering if there were any airports in the world with non-stop, commercial flights to five continents (Antarctica is out and I’m not counting the continent of origin).

In my experience airport websites are largely useless. Of course I can use various search engines and try origin and destination airports through educated guesses, but not all airlines are listed in all search engines, and it’s sometimes hard to tell if a flight is truly non-stop. Probably the most useful resources I found were airline route maps, but still that’s a lot of guessing and checking. (Singapore was my best guess [for an airport with flights to five continents], but I can’t find a non-stop to South America. Perhaps Johannesburg?)

Such a resource has a practical application: we’re using miles to go to (Europe? South America) next summer, but we don’t care where we fly to specifically - we just want a non-stop flight from SFO. I’d like to type in an airport code and get an alphabetical list of direct flights and their associated airlines. Any suggestions?

Suggestions, yes, but none that meet your criteria fully. But let’s back up:

First off, don’t forget that when airports claim to have X number of nonstop flights to various locations, that number can (and will) include cargo flights. Anchorage, for example, is laden with nonstop cargo flights to Asia. And even if a search picks those flights up, that’s not going to help you plan your travels.

Second, no, I haven’t found an airport that meets your 5-continent criteria. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Readers, any help here?

But back to your core question:
I don’t have a magic bullet for you. Like you’ve found, there is no single source for nonstops. The closest is OAG’s online tool for finding all direct flights from a given airport. Click it, enter the origin airport name or code, and it will list all the cities served. BUT: You need to dig deeper to find which airline services that city pair, and more importantly, you don’t see whether or not that flight is nonstop or not.

Similarly, you can try running searches on the Bureau of Transportation Statistics website. But it’s not easy. You choose your variables and download flight data into an Excel spreadsheet. Have fun!

I also tried other sites that give great information on flights — flightstats.com and flightaware.com for example — but no luck there, either.

So… any of the myriad travel webmasters out there want to take the challenge? Who will create a site that creates a searchable database of all the nonstop flights (ideally with the operating airline included in the results) from airports around the world?

A note on lingo: In your question you use “direct” and “nonstop” interchangeably, even though you acknowledge that some flights aren’t really nonstop. In airline speak, a flight can be “direct” if the same flight number serves multiple cities. Say, if the same number is used for both a flight from Houston to Newark and the onward flight from Newark to Amsterdam, then Houston to Amsterdam is considered “direct,” even though there’s a connection (and maybe even a change of planes) in Newark. Flyer beware.

UPDATE: FareCompare.com CEO Rick Seaney hits the comments to point to his site’s nonstop-search feature. One catch: You have to choose the airline. Choose your airport/city, then choose the airline, and the site gives you the nonstops. Here’s the line Rick provided in comments, for New York City, to start the ball rolling. Replace “NYC” with the airport code of your choice to try for yourself:
http://www.farecompare.com/flights/-NYC/city.html

Whom or what would they kill to get an upgrade?
Nepal Airlines mechanics sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, after they just couldn’t quite fix the problems in their Boeing 757. How many goats does it take to get a 757 to arrive on time at LAX? Slaughtering livestock isn’t limited to Himalayan aviation: Longtime readers may recall that Turkish Airlines maintenance workers killed a camel to celebrate the disposal of a regional jet last year.

$100K isn’t a good flight value
I know it was for charity. But paying $100,000 to fly on the inaugural Airbus A380 flight on Singapore Airlines seems a bit much. Most importantly, will they earn miles?

Shocker: Motel 6 really won’t leave the light on for you
To conserve energy, the ultra-budget chain doesn’t really leave lights on. So says their folksy pitchman Tom Bodett. So you know it’s true.

Delta’s apparently not afraid of the competition
Inside baseball, maybe, but still: Looking over the blogroll at Delta’s blog, I noticed that they link to their competitors: Southwest’s blog. That’s pretty gutsy for a corporate blog!

United names dates and planes for new business class rollout
The first plane to receive the long-awaited upgrade of 180-degree lie-flat seats in the business class cabin: a Boeing 767. It’s scheduled to travel between Washington and Frankfurt on October 29, 2007. Saver awards are unavailable at press time.

US Air Force tags nuclear warheads to wrong airport
Next time your luggage heads to Ketchikan, Alaska instead of Kansas City, take heart: The Air Force does it too. A B-52 bomber mistakenly carried six nuclear warheads from Minot, North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Oops. Just better hope it doesn’t end up at the Unclaimed Baggage Center.

Courts: Entering an airport means you’re subject to searches
This is old news, but I admit I just got wind of it now. If you’re at an airport in the U.S., you can’t turn around and leave the premises if you want to avoid being searched. “Citing threats of terrorism, the court ruled passengers give up all rights to be free of warrantless searches once a ‘passenger places hand luggage on a conveyor belt for inspection’ or ‘passes though a magnetometer.’ […] In 1973, the circuit court ruled that airport searches were valid ‘only if they recognize the right of a person to avoid search by electing not to board the aircraft.’” Not anymore. Offer to leave all you want, they can still search you. For the law-dogs out there, the case is United States v. Aukai, 04-10226. (via Wired’s Threat Level)

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Today, online booking megasite Orbitz.com rolled out a new feature that can best be described as really, really neat:
Passengers can log in and alert other travelers to the precise location of the longest or shortest lines, the time it takes to get through TSA screening, the degree to which the roads to the terminal are clogged with traffic, or anything else that’s useful to know about the airport that day.

The free feature just launched in beta today, but once it’s fully operational, with multiple reports from the field, it could be a great resource for travelers looking to move through airports more efficiently.

OrbitzTLC Traveler Update, as it’s being called, also pulls in more traditional flight status, traffic, and airport security information, which in itself is a nice feature. But it’s the public input (call it Web 2.0 if you absolutely must) that really makes this a great idea — one that I wish I had thought of myself. The service is accessible on mobile devices as well as via the Orbitz website.

With multiple voices posting updates, there’s sometimes contradictory information. Take these comments left by travelers in the Charlotte-Douglas Airport section. These were left within minutes of each other:

Avoid security checkpoint lines at Checkpoints B & C. The lines are shorter at A & D.

vs.

Skip the C Concourse security line. You can “fly” through the B check point!

At least they agree that you want to avoid C. The speed of B is up for debate.

Related:
- Orbitz.com (aff)

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This week, Hertz rolled out a new subsidiary named SimplyWheelz, targeted at the leisure market. Let’s get one thing right out of the way: “SimplyWheelz” is an absolutely awful brand name, repulsively stupid in its gratuitous use of the Z in lieu of the plural S. Trying to be hip? Edgy? “Urban”? It didn’t work, Hertz. Marketers, just for using that “Z,” you get an “F.”

I know it’s hard to look past the awful name. And it pains me every time I type that “Z.” But let’s move on.

SimplyWheelz (ouch!) promises to be a “low cost, low rate” brand, by automating everything possible and pushing the rental transaction online wherever they can. (Alamo/National rolled the automated rental out first. See here and here.) They’ll also keep a smaller variety of cars on their lot and rent a narrower range of car classes.

Segmenting the car rental market is nothing new, and it’s common to see one brand under a corporate umbrella go for the holiday crowd while another tries for the less price-sensitive business clients. Avis focuses on corporate contracts and business travelers, while their sister firm Budget targets the leisure traveler. National is more business travel, Alamo more leisure. On the other hand, Dollar and Thrifty, which are one company, both seem to target leisure travelers. Maybe they should start a new business travel brand… “CarRentBizzz” if you want to throw some “Z’s” into your name. ::shudder::

For now, SimplyWheelz is only live at Orlando Airport. Obviously, that’s a huge leisure market, and the car rental rates are already really, really low. I priced out a reservation for a random set of dates in October, and SimplyWheelz was indeed the lowest, by $1.26 total, for a three-day rental.

Hertz has built a reputation for solid customer service, so starting a largely self-service subsidiary is a bit of a risk to the brand name. Especially since they remind users that they’re a part of Hertz on every webpage — it’s “SimplyWheelz by Hertz” everywhere you look. Automation in itself isn’t a problem (see my defense of kiosks) but there needs to be a human “net” to catch you if the automation fails. If Hertz can pull off this tightrope trick while lowering prices, then they’ll have a winner on their hands.

Now if only they learned how to spell.