Upgraded: Republic Airlines
Downgraded, eventually: Midwest Signature Service
Republic, best known for providing regional jet services to a range of carriers, has bought Midwest and Frontier Airlines. In the case of Midwest, they’re getting rid of the Boeing 717s and replacing them with Embraer 190s. That’s a narrower tube. Translation: Expect cuts or elimination of Signature Service seats at the front of the plane.

Upgraded: Holding TSA accountable
Remember the traveler who was harassed by the TSA for carrying $4700 in cash? He refused to answer questions until the TSA agents explicitly told him he was required to respond, and caught it all on tape. Now he’s suing the TSA, with help from the ACLU.

Upgraded: Continental miles
Well, not upgraded much, but here’s a quick way to earn 100 miles for “learning about” Continental-branded credit cards.

Downgraded: Boeing
Not only is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner delayed again, but some significant redesigning is necessary in order to get it airworthy. That’s bad news for the company’s management (or shareholders), or the airlines that have to wait even longer to receive their orders. As a passenger, I’d rather have a safe plane start flying late than an unsafe plane on time. Nonetheless, some are accusing Boeing of a coverup.

Downgraded: SkyEurope
SkyEurope, the Bratislava-based discount airline perhaps most famous for paying you to fly them, has declared bankruptcy. They’re still flying while they restructure.

Upgraded: Flight tracking
Visually cool, though not completely practical: Lufthansa has commissioned a neat representation of their flight traffic. Watch a fancy demo below. Be warned, the sound has some crazy-high-pitched sounds, which detract from the experience.

(Update: The designers deleted the video. No idea why. I’ll leave the embed up in case they bring it back. In the interim, have a still/screenshot instead.)

(via Dvice)

Midwest Airlines recently went from having “Signature Service,” with wider seats on its Boeing 717s, to stuffing “normal” coach seats onto the back half the plane and charging $50 extra for the right to sit in the wider seats. The same wider seats that used to be the norm.

Good luck trying to get your company’s travel office to pay for that extra $50 upgrade, each way!

Well, friend of the blog Robert P., a longtime Midwest Airlines booster, has had it. He has written a great letter to the CEO of Midwest Airlines, in which he compares the airline to Schlitz Beer.

It’s a great letter, not because it successfully and efficiently argues for a clean resolution to a customer service problem. No, this isn’t that kind of letter. Rather, it’s a slap-in-the-face, the kind of letter that, if the CEO actually receives it, he’ll remember. He’ll have a laugh, but then he might — just might — realize that the race to the bottom isn’t a winning strategy for a small airline in a competitive market.

We’re republishing the letter here, both for your entertainment, and to make it just a little easier for the airline to take note…

Mr. Timothy E. Hoeksema
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Midwest Airlines
6744 South Howell Avenue
Oak Creek, WI 53154

Dear Mr. Hoeksema:

I frequently fly Midwest Airlines for both business and personal travel, and, as a Wisconsin resident, I have been very proud of this Milwaukee-based company. However, two recent flights to and from Washington, DC (Flight 411 on October 27, and Flight 418 on October 28) reminded me of another great Milwaukee company: the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company.

As you probably know, Schlitz was the most popular beer in the United States throughout the 1940s and ‘50s. Indeed, it probably put Milwaukee on the map of the national consciousness. Unfortunately for that great company, in the 1970s, facing an increase in commodity prices, it changed the formula for its beer, adding rice, cheaper yeast, and a different fermentation process. Customers reacted badly to the formula change, particularly noting that the beer no longer kept a proper “head.” To rectify that problem, the Schlitz managers added a seaweed extract as a foaming agent. However, after several months and under the types of temperatures common in a warehouse, the extract would solidify, resulting in “chunks” floating in the beer. Rather than recall the defective product, revert to the tried and true formula, and “weather” the increase in commodity prices, Schlitz instead decided to weather the bad publicity. As you can guess, it didn’t, and Milwaukee lost what was once a great company.

The reason my flights to and from Washington brought this story to mind is because of the new seating arrangements on your Boeing 717s. Midwest has long been known for the comfort of its seating and the quality of its service. I read some time ago that Midwest was refitting its planes to offer two types of seats, but the implication was that the smaller seats were for cheaper, discount tickets and tourist travel, not business travelers. However, you recently decided to start charging an extra $50 fee for the types of seats that were standard on your flights just last month.

Worse, you charge this fee even for full-fare tickets and Executive Miles members, even though other airlines offer their “economy plus” seats to their frequent fliers and full-fare ticket holders as a matter of course. Frankly, I think this is ridiculous. Midwest typically charges more for its tickets to begin with, which I’ve long been happy to pay to avoid being crammed into an airplane like so many sardines. However, your new seating arrangements mean Midwest is now essentially offering AirTran comfort at Singapore Airlines prices.

Furthermore, Flight 411 and 418 lead me to believe that this new policy is not exactly a rousing success. On my flight to Washington, there were 9 people in the “Signature Seating” section. On my return, exactly 3 people. The back sections of both flights were full. The difference was so obvious that I’m surprised that, while you were refitting the 717s, you didn’t add a tail-wheel to address the potential load imbalance.

In other words, it appears that your new seating charges netted you $450 in extra fees going to DC, and $150 on the return.

Paradoxically, $450 is approximately the price of the ticket I paid for this trip, and would have paid on a trip I’m likely to forego in the future. Air travel today is sufficiently annoying that the significant difference in comfort these new seats offer is enough to keep me home from many proposed trips. At the very least, where Midwest is but one of several choices to a destination, there is no longer a good reason to choose Midwest over a discount carrier.

I am confident I am not alone in making these decisions. I know these are tough times, particularly for smaller airlines, who historically have not benefitted as much from government assistance in hard times as have the larger carriers. But alienating long-time customers with poorly thought-through policies is not a recipe for success. And eliminating the very things that make you special is not a way to make yourself competitive. If Flight 418 is any indication, you now have $150 in extra fees, a half-empty flight, and a group of irate customers.

In other words, Mr. Hoeksema, you have chunks in your beer. Please fix it before it’s too late.

Thank you very much for your time.

Best regards,

Robert P…

Related:
- Schlitz beer making comeback [Galesburg Register-Mail]
- “Yours is a very bad hotel” – The art of the testy PowerPoint Presentation
- Reader rant: “Ryanair, the airline for the extremely poor or very lonely”

(image)

Hell freezes over: Southwest makes its fares more widely searchable
(corrected) It’s a bizarre reversal of their earlier strategy of keeping their fares out of the major online booking systems and travel agencies, and forcing you to go to their website to check their prices. But they’ve opened it up: Southwest Airlines has signed on for a ten-year pact with Galileo, one of the major computer networks used by travel agents and online booking companies to pull up fares. What does it mean for you? Easier comparison shopping. (Some background here, from when jetBlue similarly linked up other sites.) Until now, Southwest has never shown up in airfare searches outside of their own site, so it’s pro-consumer to see their fares head-to-head with other airlines’ offerings. But there’s a catch: They’re keeping some of their lowest fares out of Galileo. Baby steps. (Clarification: Travel agents who subscribed to the Sabre GDS were able to book Southwest flights for their clients previously. But the big online agencies — Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, etc. — couldn’t. It’s not clear if the new deal will integrate Southwest into those sites yet.)

Non-news: People aren’t happy with airlines
It should come as no surprise whatsoever that the general public is dissatisfied with the airlines in America. Only slightly more surprising is just how much some airlines’ ratings suck. United Airlines’ miserable showing is worst in the airline sector. But even more telling, the only company (in any industry) in the survey that out-awfuls UAL? Charter Communications. When you’re in a dead heat for last place with the cable guy, you know something is wrong. (As an aside, looking at the trendlines, I’m obviously not the only person who liked bankrupt United better…) Click here for the full ranking — for all companies, not just airlines.

Reason #7,619 to avoid checking luggage
The Today Show’s Peter Greenberg discovers the dark side of European low fare airlines when easyJet hits him with over $500 in excess luggage fees. Each way. He wasn’t transporting an entire apartment across the Channel, either. Flying on Air France, with those same suitcases, would have cost him less in the end. But Peter, why are you traveling low-rent on easyJet in the first place? (via Elliott)

Midwest and Northwest codeshare, but will it matter once AirTran buys Midwest?
Midwest Airlines and Northwest have started codesharing, which lets customers of both airlines earn miles on a lot more routes. Great, but considering that AirTran is launching a hostile takeover of Midwest, and already has nearly 57% of shares, will this deal survive the seemingly inevitable acquisition?

ID required, just not necessarily real ID
You may have to pull out identification in order to pass through airport security, but as a recent undercover investigation proves, the ID doesn’t need to be real. Just plausible enough to look real. That “Official Bikini Inspector” ID you got on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey in 1985 won’t cut it, tough guy.

(image)

So consolidation is afoot. Like lemmings, the airlines run off the cliff, hoping to grow bigger. My feelings on mergers like this are negative, and I’ll just repeat part of an earlier post, when Continental and United were first being bandied about as potential merger partners:

But the bottom line for travelers doesn’t look good. Planes are full, demand is there, and airlines are eking out a profit, even with high oil prices. When airlines say there’s too much capacity, it just means that they want to charge more. A merger would drive out competition and increase prices — at ALL airlines, not just United-Continental. Not to mention the mess that could arise from merging two frequent flyer programs. I’m wary of a merger, and hoping it doesn’t happen.

That said, the counterargument suggests that consolidation will breed the rise of new competitors, or the expansion of other carriers to fill the void (and higher prices) in the wake of mega-mergers.

Possible, and probable in the long run, but in the short to medium run, mergers like this aren’t pro-consumer. They’re pro-Wall Street, and pro-airline executives, and that’s about it.