Both American and United have expanded their paperless boarding pass programs within the United States in the past week. If mobile boarding basses are your cup of tea, you’ll be able to check in wirelessly and receive an e-mail containing your boarding pass, which is scanned right off your phone at the gate.

American’s announcement brings their count of cities to 27 airports. United’s count is thirteen. Continental is still the leader, with 48 airports (including 2 overseas, in London and Frankfurt.) The TSA’s website lags reality, it seems, listing 43 airports in the US currently participate, across all airlines.

The expanded service is being pitched as a convenience to customers. And it is convenient, if you’re not able to print your passes. But be sure to save that e-mail or text message on the phone: If your miles don’t post, you’ll need to find a way to print that message to prove you actually took the flight.

This is only available at those airports where both the airlines and the TSA are linked up and able to scan the boarding pass. That’s what’s really holding this up from more widespread adoption nationwide.

Taking the convenience equation out of the picture for a moment: For you to move through security with one of those mobile boarding passes, you need to have it scanned by TSA first. What bugs me about this is the TSA’s involvement in the equation makes “revenue protection” the U.S. government agency’s job, in the name of security. (As I’ve argued ad nauseam, checking ID’s and passes does nothing to make you safer; true airport security does not hinge on holding a boarding pass or having an ID.)

This will be more and more widespread, going forward. But it’s still not truly widespread in its adoption — yet. In a reader poll back in November, 38% of readers had used a paperless boarding pass. That’s pretty high, but let’s face it, the readers of this site are highly travel-savvy, frequent-fliers. The general flying public is far less likely to have gone paperless. But not to worry, that will change.

It’s a good-news/bad-news scenario. American Airlines’ regional carrier American Eagle is upgrading the interiors of its Canadair CRJ-700 regional jets, to include 9 first-class seats. 25 existing planes will be converted; 22 new planes are on order. All are expected to be online by July 2.

Putting a first-class cabin on regional jets puts them more in line with the “exPlus” product United has been offering on its larger regional jets for a few years now. (No Economy Plus, though.)

It’s a good thing for upgraders. And the economy seats on the newly-delivered planes will eke out an additional inch of legroom, due to slimline seats.

That means new upgrade opportunities, yes, but… American is removing mainline aircraft — the ones with real first-class cabins — and replacing them with CRJs.

And some of those routes, especially from Chicago, are high-density:

American Eagle will offer First Class service from its Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) hubs. From Chicago, customers will experience First Class service on flights to Atlanta, Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., Newark, N.J., George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Oklahoma City, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and Salt Lake City. From DFW, customers can fly First Class to Cleveland, Milwaukee, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Bentonville/Springdale, Ark., and Little Rock, Ark.

Atlanta? DC? Newark? Yikes. It’s getting harder and harder to avoid regional jets.

I’ve got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it’s great that the CRJ product is being improved, and this sounds like a meaningful improvement. On the other hand, CRJs are inferior to mainline: more likely to be canceled, more prone to turbulence, smaller overhead bins, no ovens (for the first class peeps)… the list goes on.

At least there will be hot nuts!

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Japan’s most famous (and, recently, most beleaguered) airline, JAL, has apparently opted to leave the oneWorld alliance for SkyTeam. Viewed through an USA-based frequent flyer lens, that’s a win for Delta (and potentially those who hold Delta miles), and a definite blow for American Airlines and their mileage addicts.

Delta and its SkyTeam partners didn’t just win this on their good looks and winning personality. They are offering a bailout package of nearly $1 billion. (American and Texas Pacific Group offered to invest $1.1B; I’m not familiar with the details of the deals, and that’s not my concern here. And nothing is signed yet — AA says they’re still negotiating.)

The combination of JAL and Delta would be a formidable force, if traffic remains at current levels. One report estimates the JAL-enhanced Skyteam market share at 62% of traffic between the US and Japan. Star Alliance (United, ANA, and Singapore) hold 31%, leaving a mere 9% in oneworld (entirely AA).

But JAL has signaled that it would drop 30 (or even all) of its international routes, ceding that traffic to alliance partners and codesharing instead. And Japan’s other major airline, ANA, is looking to snap up routes and landing rights which JAL gives up. So those market share percentages are far from set in stone.

In the long run, the decrease in competition is bound to exert upward pressure on trans-Pacific fares. The deal will need to undergo antitrust scrutiny, of course.

Intermediate-term losers here are American Airlines’ loyal customers who use their miles to fly to Asia. A major mileage redemption opportunity for AAdvantage mileage holders is about to disappear, either through JAL’s switch to SkyTeam, or their erosion/implosion. If you’ve got American miles, your currency is about to lose value, as you’re about to lose some redemption opportunities.

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Downgraded: Checked bags on international American Airlines flights
British Airways was the first to do this, but American Airlines wasn’t far behind: Many AA economy-class ticket-holders will no longer have an allowance of two checked bags on international flights. For those who buy tickets to Belgium, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Spain, or Switzerland on or after September 14, 2009, the first bag remains free (or, perhaps more accurately, included in the cost of the ticket). However, the second bag, which used to be included free, will now cost $50, up to 50 lbs. A list of exceptions applies, including full-fare tickets, elite AAdvantage and oneworld members, military personnel and dependents, and, interestingly, those traveling on codeshare-issued tickets.

Upgraded: Biofuel at airports
It’s not quite biofuel in the jets, but it’s a great start: Eight airlines will start using biofuels to power their ground equipment at LAX.

Downgraded: All-you-can-fly fares
JetBlue, which rolled out a $599 all-you-can-fly ticket two weeks ago, ended sales early. “While supplies last” meant they didn’t last.

Downgraded: United Breaks Guitars, episode 2
The original “United Breaks Guitars” video was a delight, a catchy tune that lambasted the airline for treating a customer poorly. The sequel, while cute, lacks the magic. It does, however, feature tubas.

Upgraded, I guess: Squeezing a couple bucks out of Hotwire
Hotwire has settled a class action lawsuit that charged that the company didn’t properly notify consumers of the fees and taxes charged for hotel reservations. If you made a hotel reservation on Hotwire between January 10, 2001 and May 2, 2005, you are likely entitled to either cash refunds or Hotwire credits. The Hotwire credit is significantly more lucrative, if you’re a Hotwire user anyway. See here for details, if you didn’t get an e-mail from the plaintiff’s attorneys (if you’re wondering, they got customer e-mail addresses from Hotwire…)

Downgraded, as if it was possible: Ryanair
Just when you think the airline couldn’t go any lower, Ryanair charges a fee to collect your lost-and-found. Even if you’re a nine-year old girl who lost her purse. It’s comical really: Ryanair will take candy from a baby, literally.

“I’m on a plane!” Oh thank God this is the internet, and not a cellphone call… but consider this my obligatory first-time-using-inflight-wireless-internet post.

I’m on an American Airlines MD-80, which happens to have Gogo wireless access. (I saved $9.95 by using code AAWiFi76194A1, valid thru August 23. You can use it too.)

Here’s my current location, for those keeping score:

The speed is impressive:

In any case, it’s time to put this sucker to the test and see if streaming video can work. More reports when I’m back on terra firma.

While other airlines are dissuading customers from transacting business at the airport, by imposing penalty fees, American Airlines is looking to smoothe things for passengers at the counter. At Boston Logan Airport, the airline is testing a new set of mobile check-in devices.

The machines, called “Your Assistance Delivered Anywhere,” or YADA — insert Seinfeld joke here — won’t be tied to a specific spot. Instead, AA staff will be able to rove around, checking bags, printing boarding passes, clearing upgrades (!), and providing flight and gate information. The program is designed to reduce wait-times. It sounds like they’ll need a skycap tailing them, to carry the bags off.

It’s a six-week test, so it will be interesting to see how the new procedure plays out in the real world.

Boston AA travelers: Please post your experiences with the YADA in the comments!

American Airlines is revising their AAdvantage frequent flier program and is now allowing one-way bookings at half the cost in miles of a roundtrip.

There are some benefits. The obvious one is that you can book one-way award tickets, should that need arise. And it would now be possible to mix and match between booking classes, e.g., first class one way, coach class returning.

Another benefit might be on hard-to-book routes: Let’s say you can find availability on the outbound, but not the return. You can then go ahead and book the outbound, to lock that in, and keep checking back to see if/when the return opens up. (If this strategy fails, of course, you’d have some fees to cancel that one-way ticket, or you might end up buying a cash fare for the return… but it’s another tool in your arsenal.)

The one-way ticket also means you can string together a series of tickets that criss-cross the country, or the globe — say, New York to Albuquerque on one ticket, Albuquerque to Portland on another, Portland to Tampa on another, and Tampa to New York again on a final ticket. Of course, each city pair is its own ticket, but you could create some pretty complex itineraries that weren’t possible earlier.

But…

After seeing a post by lucky that pointed to a message board discussion of the policy changes, I knew there was a downside coming. What WAS possible before, and what’s been dampened alongside this change, was the free stopover when flying American Airlines or its partners on an roundtrip ticket.

The revised mileage chart shows only one-way fares, and reference to stopovers has disappeared. In the FAQ’s for the new One Way Flex Awards, there is this: “Awards between North America and Europe, India, Asia, and Central / South America allow a stopover at the North American gateway. However, other one-way awards do not allow stopovers.” That’s a function of the change from roundtrips to one-ways, but it’s lame.

The old rules (found via a quick search that yielded the original stopover rule text on a thread at Flyertalk) permitted stopovers at either the US or the international gateway. (International stopovers on oneworld alliance tickets, which are calculated on the basis of miles flown, are still possible, since you can string up to 16 flight segments together for one mileage fare.)

Savvy travelers have long made good use of free stopovers to make their miles go further. This has especially been true internationally, where one could add a few days’ jetlag recovery in one city before catching a flight to the intended final destination. Those stopovers will still be possible under the new policy, but they’ll cost you an additional flight segment’s miles. That’s a downgrade.

A shame, really. American Airlines’ one-way awards would otherwise have been praised as a nice upgrade. Too bad they giveth, and they taketh away.

American Airlines’ CEO Gerard Arpey dared to dream. He slipped a comment into their recent earnings call which seemed rather off the wall, until Delta CEO Richard Anderson effectively repeated the idea. The proposal? Instead of paying commissions to agencies and websites that sell their fares, airlines would charge those agencies a fee for the right to display and sell their fares.

AA’s Arpey:

“I can see a day, and maybe I’m dreaming here, where those folks who are the intermediary between us and our customer have to pay for access to our product rather than us paying them to distribute our product.”

DL’s Anderson:

“Over time, the industry will evolve,” Anderson told analysts on Tuesday during a conference call to report first-quarter financial results. “People will pay us for our content.”

There’s an odd disjuncture here in the understanding of what it is airlines are selling, and who their customers are. Travelers see airlines as selling transportation services, and that passengers are the customers. But these airlines apparently seem to think they’re selling “content” — their schedule data — and that the agents who sell tickets on the airline’s behalf are the customers. No wonder the airline industry is such a mess.

On the one hand, airline execs are right to be looking for ways to reduce their costs. And when an agency or website besides their own sells a ticket, they’re giving up a cut, largely to the global distribution systems like Amadeus, Galileo, and Sabre that distribute their information to agencies large and small. (Granted, the agent themselves may or may not get a cut, depending on the contract they’re on, with most small agents getting $0.00. That’s why independent travel agents typically charge a “service fee.” The big guys like Orbitz and Expedia get a piece of each sale.)

But charging their sales team — the agencies — for the privilege of even offering fares sounds like a multi-level marketing scam or a 19th century company town. Paging the Pullman Company!

What airlines are missing here is that the bulk of higher-priced tickets aren’t sold via the airlines’ own websites. They’re sold through big agencies, often through corporate travel sites. And even if the US market has moved away from independent shops, the rest of the world is still heavily dependent on agencies. Cutting out other means of distributing their fares could be cutting off their nose to spite their face.

If this really were to happen, it wouldn’t be great for consumers, despite the ostensible cost savings. The problem is transparency. If some airlines would be available for sale through one system but others wouldn’t, it would make meta-search all the more important to find lower fares. (That is, if the airlines allow aggregators to search their sites…)

But honestly, none of this is likely to happen. There’s the fact that the high-revenue sales come through the higher-cost distribution channels, and for all the complaining, the money is too good to just sacrifice.

Plus, even if this happened, and even if we assumed that sales would just revert to the airline’s call centers and website, implementing this would require a ramp-up of airlines’ customer service infrastructure (call centers, web support, etc.), just to do the work that agencies are doing now. Will the commission savings outweigh increased personnel and customer service costs?

Either way, at the very least, American and Delta have ticked off a host of agents. The comments on the TravelWeekly article already number in the hundreds. (419 to be precise, and comments appear to have been closed.) Threats of boycotting AA abound, and there’s ever more bad blood between agents and the legacy airlines who proposed this.

Great move, guys.

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