Upgraded: Ideas for bad Hollywood movies
Downgraded: Congolese carry-on inspections
Headline: “Crocodile on plane kills 19 passengers“… I immediately had visions of a crocodile biting its way through the passenger list. But the truth is more unfortunate. A crocodile hidden in a carry-on bag gets loose, people panic, plane goes out of balance, aircraft crashes. Very sad. And preventable.

Downgraded: Cruise ship pricing
The cruise ship lines are taking a page from the airlines and going a la carte with their services, slowly but surely whittling away at the “all-inclusive” pricing plans that were the hallmark of cruising. Sure, there have been upcharges for shore excursions, but now you have to pay up for certain meals, services, and options. Looks like easyCruise‘s fully-a-la-carte model may not be so farfetched after all. (Thanks, Bill!)

Upgraded: Cross-selling of Hotwire inventory on Expedia
Expedia is now widely selling Hotwire’s hotel inventory as “unpublished rates.” Like on Hotwire, the hotels won’t be listed by name, just by star-level and city zone. Since Expedia and Hotwire are part of the same parent company, I’m surprised it’s taken this long.

Upgraded: The last frontier of domestic inflight wifi
Aircell’s Gogo service has launched inflight wifi within the state of Alaska, for those traveling on Alaska Airlines. For now, the service only exists between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and Alaska Airlines is giving it away for free. It’s slated to be complimentary until the entire state is blanketed with signal availability.

Upgraded: Traveler seat-selection stereotypes
The folks at Hunch have found significant personality and life-experience differences between those who prefer aisle seats vs. window seats. It’s based on poll data. ME, I prefer the window seat, not just because it makes napping easier, because I never tire of looking out the window and staring down from 35,000 feet. And yet, my vita reads much more like the aisle passenger’s. Call me an outlier.

The seat is designed to evoke a saddle, and the experience is meant to be gentler on your body than the fully-upright “Hannibal Class” standing seats that were floated a few years ago.

We really are regressing technologically if we’re now trying to make air travel more like the Old West. Airlines: The new wagon trains? Only instead of the wide open spaces of the West, you’re stuck with 23 inches of seat pitch (instead of the usual 31+ in coach).

The company says it’s received “expressions of interest” for the saddle seats from numerous airlines, including in the US. (Spirit, I’m looking at you.) But expressions of interest are thankfully not orders.

Whenever an asinine idea like this is floated, I immediately think of two words: “Ground stop.” Sure, the airlines and seat manufacturers will say that these seats are only meant for short flights, not longhauls across the Pacific. But what happens when a flight pulls out of the gate and then spends an hour or two waiting for takeoff?

And what about carry-on luggage? There’s no room in the seat in front of you, and overhead bin space won’t be possible as we know it today, since passengers will be sitting taller than usual. (The seats promise “a shelf for carry-on bags, and hooks to hang a jacket or purse.”) Will customers who buy the cheap semi-standing seats in the back be socked with carry-on and luggage fees?

I also enjoy the fact that they show the woman sitting in the unobstructed “front” seat. Let’s take the photo again, but fill that second row with people. Large people.

But let’s be honest: The odds are extremely slim that such an arrangement will show up on your flight anytime soon, if ever. In the US, aircraft are used for both long and medium flights, so it would be a logistical nightmare to create a “short-hop-only” subset of an airline’s fleet. (You might say that that’s exactly how regional jets were conceived, but look at the distances those sardine cans take you these days.)

And then there’s the FAA’s own skepticism. Their spokesperson offered this as a reality check: “While it’s not impossible, it’s difficult to conceive of a standing seat that would be able to meet all applicable FAA requirements and still be cost-effective.”

If by any chance you’ll be attending the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in Long Beach next week, I hope you’ll give these seats a test-drive. And, ideally, grab a group of big and/or tall people, fill the rows, and have photos taken. Let’s see how these seats might look in reality.

Giddyup.

The announced benefits:

• On-demand inflight entertainment in coach
  About time. 9″ touchscreens will be installed for the coach seats. Economy passengers will have access to “250 movie titles, hundreds of television shows, 4,000 digital music tracks, personalized music playlists, more than a dozen interactive games and a USB port to charge iPods and other personal electronic devices.”
• More room (1.5″ legroom) in economy
  The new seats in economy benefit from slimline seats — they’re also lighter, saving fuel, and offer increased under-seat storage.
• Upgraded flat beds in business class
  Each seat has aisle access. The window seats point toward the window, and the center seats point toward each other. More details: “The new seat, manufactured by Weber Aircraft LLC, will be 81.7 inches in length and 20.5 inches wide, similar to the flat-bed product currently offered on Delta’s 777-200LR fleet. It also will feature a 120-volt universal power outlet, USB port, personal LED reading lamp and Panasonic’s 15.4 inch personal video monitors with instant access to 250 new and classic movies, premium programming from HBO and Showtime, video games and more than 4,000 digital music tracks.”

This sounds like a solid improvement to the hard product in every class. It’s not a game changer — other airlines have been rolling out changes like this for years — but it’s nice to see an American airline trying to make the customer experience a little more enjoyable. A shame that we’ll have to wait a year before the rollout actually starts.

Many airlines have been selling “premium” seats in the economy cabin for years. Northwest (pre-merger with Delta) started selling selected seats at the front of the economy section back in 2006. And United has sold Economy Plus upgrades for most of the past decade. (Though those seats have extra legroom, which is a bit more “premium.”) So selling seats isn’t entirely new.

The only real twist on existing “premium” seat reservations is that paying the new AA fee bumps you up to boarding group 1. You’ll not only sit toward the front of the bus, but you’ll be assured of space in the overhead bins and can be among the first to board and exit the plane. And that’s how the airline is spinning this: It’s a speed premium, not a comfort premium.

The real losers here are the elite-level AAdvantage members who used to be able to pre-reserve these seats for free. Those passengers will have to sit a little further back now. The airline promises to leave a similar number of seats available for the frequent fliers, but they just won’t be the same seats. If you were a gold, platinum or executive platinum AA flier and a fan of bulkheads, this is definitely a downgrade.

(image)

The seatbelt airbag, designed to deploy within 90 milliseconds after a crash, will be required when the seat in front of you is rigid, and risk of a “head-strike” is high. Since most airlines don’t feature the self-contained “pod” hard-shell seats a la Cathay in economy, you won’t see this on many airlines. But it will be required:

All aircraft built in the U.S. since October must conform to standards designed to keep passengers conscious through an impact involving deceleration at 16 times the force of gravity so that they can escape any subsequent fire. The same rules will be introduced in Europe by the end of next year, European Aviation Safety Agency spokesman Jeremie Teahan said.

While many seats comply with the so-called 16g rule without needing airbags, which are installed in about 2 percent of seats, manufacturer AmSafe Inc. predicts they’ll become standard by 2020 amid heightened awareness of safety issues. The devices cost about $1,200 apiece, versus $25 for a regular seatbelt.

I haven’t encountered one of these seatbelts yet, but if anyone out there has taken them for a spin, hit the comments. Is the extra thickness noticeable? Comfortable?

For a video of the seatbelt airbags in action, see below:

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.

(image)

Downgraded: Meals on Continental
Continental Airlines has finally thrown in the towel and is giving up the free meals in coach. Instead, they’re instituting a buy-on-board program. Maybe I’m suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, and I’ve become assimilated by my airline captors, but this doesn’t bother me much. Yes, it’s the end of an era. But I’ve moved on. So have others. The problem, for me, is that Continental is taking another page from its colleagues in the industry and spinning the removal of an existing amenity as an upgrade.

Upgraded: Flight Attendants’ Demands
Flight attendants, represented by the Association of Flight Attendants, want training in hand-to-hand combat. I think they’re right. Other demands: portable communication devices for speaking to the pilots (makes sense); standardized (read: smaller) carry-on sizes, “so that flight attendants can look for suspicious passengers instead of struggling with oversized bags” (makes sense, but let’s not go Ryanair on sizing); shutting down onboard wi-fi during periods of “high threat” (this is particularly subject to abuse).

Upgraded: Airline Seat Ratings in Brazil
The Brazilian government is taking an interesting and unusual step: requiring airlines to grade their legroom for their aircraft. It’s like an officially-sanctioned SeatGuru, without the specific-seat-level unit of analysis.

Downgraded: Aircraft Air
This is not particularly comforting: 1 in 2000 flights has a “fume event,” which often involves the intrusion of contaminated air into the cabin. In a recent incident, engine oil seeped improperly, was vaporized, and spread through the cabin. Tricresyl phosphate in the oil can cause neurological damage. Awesome.

Downgraded: Continental exit row seats
Starting March 17, exit row seats will cost you extra money, unless you’re a Continental OnePass elite member. (United elites get it for free eventually, too, but not yet.) No big surprise, given the industry as a whole. But as David Jonas argues, this is actually a meaningful shift by Continental, whose management had been more resistant than other airlines’ leadership to charge fees for things that were previously free.

Downgraded: Luggage scanning at Denver
For a few days, thousands of checked bags were not scanned by TSA at Denver. No further comment.

Upgraded: All-you-can-drive toll payments for Bay Area rental cars
If you’re renting a car in the Bay Area from Dollar or Thrifty, you’ll be able to buy a “Pass 24″ add-on for $9.95 per day or $39.95 per week (5-7 days) that includes unlimited use of all tolls in the region. The service is run by Rent-a-Toll. I guess it’s a deal if you’re crossing a lot of bridges. Just be sure to use the FasTrak lanes.

(image)

Downgraded: TSA’s notion of a background check
You really can’t make this up: An applicant for a TSA job who had been convicted of robbery when he was 18 (and who omitted it from his job application) was denied a secure-access badge to the Richmond Airport in Virginia. But the TSA wanted him hired, and demanded that the airport overrule its existing security protocol to issue this man a badge. Words fail me.

Downgraded: Airline seats
Speaking of recalls, Air Canada, ANA, Continental, JAL, KLM, SAS, Singapore, and Virgin Atlantic have seats on their planes that are subject to a recall. The manufacturer, Koito, was found to have fabricated flammability tests. And when I say “fabricated,” I’m not kidding: They “manipulated computers so normal figures would appear on monitors when officials from the ministry observed the testing procedures.” But take comfort: As long as the seats aren’t set on fire, you’re fine! (Bonus: Toyota owns 20% of Koito.)

Downgraded: Sleepytime on American Airlines
American Airlines will start charging $8 to buy a pillow and blanket. Yes, yes, it’s another fee, another downgrade. But whatever. I’ll wear a sweater.

Upgraded: oneworld
Downgraded: SkyTeam
Sure enough, American Airlines and the other members of the oneworld alliance pulled it out, keeping JAL in the alliance. At first, it really looked like Delta and their SkyTeam brethren were the ones to convert the ailing Japanese carrier to their side. But no. I called this one wrong. Delta has expressed its regrets, and plans to invest in its own brand instead of other companies. Frankly, that’s probably a smart move.

Starting in November 2010, the window seats in the first eleven rows of economy class of newly-delivered Boeing 777-300s will have cushioned extensions (positioned like calf supports when in “seat” mode) which extend up to create a couch-like flat surface.

To reserve a Skycouch, you’ll need to buy three seats, obviously. If you’re traveling as a pair, you can buy your usual two seats and add on the third seat for half the price of the other two.

My first thought, when I saw the design, was that they were making the “ghetto upgrade” — laying down across a row of empty seats — an official booking class. And indeed, that’s the basis of the design, but expanded to be wide enough for two consenting adults.

No curtains, and no undressing, so don’t get any ideas.

The biggest shortcoming at this point appears to be the length of the bed. The width of three airline seats isn’t that big. Average seat width is 17″. Let’s even add a few inches for gaps between cushions, to be generous. (I know, gaps?) Let’s bump it up to 55″ — 4′ 7″ or 1.4 meters — across all three seats. That’s great if you’re short, but if you’re any taller than that, your feet will be hanging out into aisle. Look at the promo photo below. The guy’s head is angled up the wall of the plane:

There’s some romper room risk here, too. I can see families, especially large ones, buying these seats if they can afford them, and keeping the seats in couch mode for the duration. That means higher odds of noise. If traveling in a non-Skycouch economy seat, and looking for rest, try to find a location as far from the couches as possible.

The airline is also changing its premium economy seats and improving some service delivery in the business cabin. And there’s “new oven technology that will cook food from scratch rather than simply reheating,” but the big news is really (deservedly) the couch-in-coach concept.

A short promotional video to give further perspective (and showing the changes to business and premium economy), after the jump:

(Thanks to reader Michele for the early heads up on this last week!)