I sure didn’t see this one coming… American and Jet Blue have signed and interline agreement and will cross-sell each other’s flights in and out of Boston and New York-JFK. Notably, the airlines are not codesharing, and it’s a northeast operation, with no love for California or Florida.

The relevant quotes from the release:

The partnership will focus on routes into and out of JFK and Boston Logan International Airport that extend and complement each others’ networks. For example, it would provide seamless service for customers who wish to fly nonstop from Nantucket to JFK on JetBlue and from there to London on American. Likewise, customers can board American from Paris to JFK and connect to a nonstop flight on JetBlue to Burlington, Vt. JetBlue customers will be able to effortlessly connect on flights to 12 of American’s international destinations from JFK and Boston including Barcelona, Spain; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Tokyo, Japan.
[...]
Customers of both airlines are expected to benefit from improved connections, while each airline will see additional customers fed into their networks. None of the routes on which the airlines will cooperate overlap current flights served by the other. The agreement will provide connections for more passengers at JFK and Boston to American’s international destinations in Europe, Asia, and South America. It also will generate more traffic and support for American’s planned joint business with oneworld partners British Airways and Iberia between North America and Europe, and with Japan Airlines between North America and Asia.

What makes this especially unexpected is JetBlue’s recent moves toward Lufthansa (which is a part-owner of JetBlue) and AerLingus.

It appears that my early thinking — that JetBlue would start moving toward bigger partnerships and perhaps even alliance membership — may be wrong. It looks like JetBlue is willing to make ad hoc agreements with anyone, but it’s clear that they’re branching out to create more of a global network.

Will JetBlue flights count toward AAdvantage? Vice versa? If so, it will be an interesting question how the programs, which function very differently, reconcile.

Stay tuned.

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One of the criticisms of opaque booking sites like Priceline and Hotwire (and, as of last week, “Top Secret” hotels by Travelocity), which don’t reveal the name of the hotel until after purchase, is that you can’t choose your bed type up front. You’re typically left asking for your preferred room type at check-in. (I sometimes remember to call the hotel in advance and ask for my preferred room type.) If you’re accustomed to sharing a bed with a fellow traveler, it likely isn’t a big deal to have a king vs. two queens. But if you’re not that intimate, you might not like the king room.

Now, Hotwire partially overcomes this problem by letting you choose your room type. It’s not available for every hotel in every city. But it’s still an interesting twist on the opaque model. (It’s been available since late November. Somehow I missed this.)

Here’s a screenshot of the initial search results, indicating bed choice as a possibility:

And here are the options, on the next page. The price was the same for either option (though I am left wondering if hotels that feature this option charge a premium for it):

I haven’t seen the option on many search results pages, so it’s seemingly limited in its rollout, but it’s an interesting improvement on the opaque model.

Downgraded: Hare Krishnas
It’s the end of an era for American airports: Hare Krishnas are banned from soliciting for donations at LAX. There’s one more scene in the movie “Airplane!” that just won’t make as much sense to future generations.

Downgraded: Smoking in hotels
I didn’t realize that twelve states already had laws on the books banning smoking in hotels. Wisconsin is the latest, with the law taking effect this summer. Should be welcome news to the folks at FreshStay, the directory of smoke-free hotels.

Downgraded: Body scanner checkers
Well, it had to happen: An airport worker at Heathrow has had his wrists slapped for taking a picture of a colleague as she passed through the full-body scanner. Start the countdown for someone’s clandestinely-taken body scanner image appearing on the internet…

Upgraded, or is it Downgraded?: United Airlines 777s
United’s seating configuration in economy onboard its Boeing 777s has long been rather unusual. Instead of the usual 3-3-3 seat arrangement, they’ve had seats in a 2-5-2 setup. The logic of the 2-5-2 was that it minimized the number of passengers who had to climb over two people to get to the aisle — just the one person in the middle of the 5. But now they’re shifting to the more common 3-3-3 after all. (Personally, while it’s been a couple years since I’ve sat on a UA 777, I always liked the pair of seats on the windows. 17A or 21J, baby.) If you’re flying on a UA 777, be sure to check your seatmap as you get closer to flight date: your aisle seat might now be a middle.

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Imitation: the sincerest form of flattery. This week, Travelocity rolled out an opaque price search for hotels: “Top Secret” hotels.

The pitch: Travelocity says they’re “the first major online travel site to offer unpublished (or “opaque”) hotel deals and regular hotel rates all in one search window, without the hassle of bidding.”

Priceline and Hotwire have been doing opaque bookings for over a decade. And other, smaller sites, such as EasyClickTravel, have been offering opaque bookings within a list of search results for some time. So Travelocity isn’t doing anything new here — and if you parse their proclamation, you’ll see that they’re not even saying they’re innovating.

I’m thinking that Hotwire and Priceline might actually be winners here. By adopting opaque this way, Travelocity may be validating the model for customers who might otherwise have avoided it in the past. Which would make Hotwire and Priceline “safe” for those who feared it before…

But that success would depend on Travelocity’s “Top Secret” hotel deals actually being a deal. Or bookable. I’ve got a potential trip to Chicago in the cards, and I checked for a deal using the “Top Secret” engine, but nothing came up for either set of dates. Nothing! That struck me as odd. Hotwire and EasyClickTravel have several opaque options for the same dates. I realize my test is hardly comprehensive, but it’s Chicago! Still, maybe this is just a “soft opening” for Travelocity.

(Perhaps coincidentally, Hotwire has started incorporating selected rates from their sister company hotels.com into their opaque rates.)

If anyone books a Travelocity Top Secret hotel, post your results in the comments!

Airline fees! As Jared Blank points out, it’s not just travelers (and bloggers) who are annoyed by the fees. It’s also travel agents large and small, whose jobs are made more complicated by the constantly-changing fee structures.

As Jared suggests, fees seem here to stay, but why do they have to be so user-unfriendly? And ironically, bundling can be more profitable than a-la-carte pricing. So why don’t more airlines engage in the bundling/packaging of fees, a la Air Canada, like the automakers have learned to do for options on new cars? Jared’s post on the subject is worth reading in full.

Making fees more palatable would be a smart choice in the face of challenge by populist legislators, too. Take the Menendez Amendment, for example.

The stated purpose for the Menendez amendment to the FAA authorization bill, sponsored by Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, is to “ensure that all customers are able to easily and fairly compare airfares and other costs applicable to tickets for air transportation, including all taxes and fees.” And the text of the amendment requires the disclosure of fees related to baggage, seating assignments, and other “operational services.” This disclosure requirement could potentially push airlines to move toward a more simplified, bundled approach.

That nudge toward disclosure is good — thought it’s not clear whether fees paid after the moment of initial ticket purchase are even subject to the rule in the amendment’s current form.

The original draft of the amendment was worded more strongly, but a marked-up draft of the amendment obtained by Chris Elliott shows that the text has been revised to limit the disclosure to fees “paid at the time of purchase.” (I am not a lawyer, but it appears that there may a conflict between the time-of-purchase limitations and the disclosure of baggage fees as a whole. The law-dogs out there are invited to review the text and hit the comments with their interpretations…)

The bottom line: No one likes being nicked-and-dimed. It’s a pain the butt for everyone involved. And the practice paints a giant legislative target on the airlines. So why haven’t we seen more bundling?

Google appears prepared to dive into the hotel booking business, which has to be freaking out the hoteliers and online travel agencies of the world.

On a limited test basis, searches on Google Maps may include hotels, with rates.

Here’s a screenshot from Google’s LatLong blog (click to enlarge):

Notably, during this test phase, a “limited number of advertisers” will be included in the searches. You’ll see Priceline and Expedia explicitly mentioned in the screenshot. But what this means is that your searches on Google will not necessarily be comprehensive; this isn’t necessarily an improvement over existing hotel metasearches like Kayak or HotelsCombined. Rather, it’s an extension of the Google advertising empire, incorporated into their maps. This isn’t necessarily a problem, as long as it’s understood by searchers.

The big agencies who can afford to be included in these searches are the likely winners, but it’ll cost them. But will individual hoteliers be able to keep up? For consumers, it remains to be seen how competitive the rates are, or whether there will be a significant Google premium for rooms booked via this route.

(hat tip to Tnooz)