Tuesday Ten-Pack

The quickest of takes on Alaska flying overseas, United flight attendants signing a deal, DEN getting (passenger) tunnels, and much more.

Every year, as the school year winds to a close and the temperatures warm, many of you will shift your focus to the pool or the lake or camp. Here at Al on the Airlines, we shift our focus to airport chaos, merger speculation, and passengers behaving badly.

Basically what we do the rest of the year.

Let’s get through the latest news backlog.

1. Alaska is Officially in Europe

   Alaska 787’s with Chester, errrr, the borealis livery are now making their way to Heathrow and Rome.¹ While it’s one thing to fill a plane to Italy in the summer, it’s another to fill one to London in the winter, especially with only one flight a day. Most corporate customers like the ability to get an earlier (or later) flight home when necessary. We’ll see if Alaska’s notorious hometown loyalty supersedes that.

2. United Flight Attendants Finally Have a Deal They Like

   The multi-year saga that was the negotiation between UA and its flight attendants has come to an end. We spent a lot of time working with UA FA’s back in the day, and we have seen the best and worst when it comes to both sides of this battle.² US carriers can install as many lie-flat seats as they want, but their number one barrier to a superior customer experience will always be inconsistent service … and decades of labor turmoil have never helped that cause.

   

   The sun finally rises on a new flight attendant deal for United — it’s actually setting in this picture, but only SNA nerds would know this

3. New Tunnels Under Denver for the Rest of Us

   While the illuminati has long had access to the bowels of Denver International Airport, us regular folks have only been able to use the infamous bingy-bingy-bong train to transfer between terminals.³ Now, a plan has been unveiled to re-purpose some of the old automated baggage system tunnels to provide pedestrian access between concourses. We had to chuckle because we’re pretty sure our friends at DEN would rather have you asking questions about the New World Order than bringing up that original baggage system.

4. Airline Rankings Still Make Us Chuckle
   We’ve made it very clear what we think of airline rankings. The latest YouGov airline report was no different. While it’s not a surprise to see Delta at the top, we’re sure that the AA folks at Skyview in DFW may have sent a copy or two up to the UA folks in Chicago for funsies. Seriously, though, the VP in charge of American Eagle better be getting in everybody’s face about how a regional carrier is apparently a better airline than Emirates, Qatar, AND Air New Zealand.

   

   If we worked at American Eagle, this would be up on every bulletin board in the office. (Image Credit: YouGov)

5. Passengers Wanting Free Upgrades Still Make Us Chuckle

   Speaking of AA, CEO Robert Isom got some press attention for recent remarks where he happily noted the success AA has had with paid upgrades versus complimentary ones. In other news, passengers also dislike middle seats.
   

   We love a free upgrade as much as all the other frequent flyers in the world, but airline revenue management teams have one goal: squeeze as much money as possible out of every seat. We remember a time when that was actually pretty difficult — maybe an intrepid gate agent could make a few deals before departure. Now, these very smart pricing employees and their robots can push dynamic offers to everyone’s phone at the exact right time. Free upgrades don’t stand a chance against that combo.

6. Sorry to Pry, but are Your Late Aunt’s LaGuardia Slots Going on the Market? (And So Sorry for Your Loss)

   Just like Manhattan residents circle a soon-to-be-available co-op apartment upon the death of an elderly owner, so are the nation’s airlines angling for Spirit’s highly coveted slots at LGA.⁴ The slots are set to go on auction next month, and the bidding will be fierce, but also somewhat irrelevant because there’s no way the FAA lets the bigger carriers buy all of them. We think.

7. We Always Thought Southwest Planes at ORD Looked Weird Anyway

   On Thursday, Southwest will officially end service at O’Hare and Dulles. As we have noted before, the sight of a Southwest plane at ORD always gave us the heebie-jeebies. It’s not because we dislike Southwest — we love Southwest! It’s also not because we don’t think Southwest should be allowed to fly out of ORD — we definitely think they should! It’s because we always loved it when Southwest didn’t need to fly to ORD because they were the South Side airline. No one trusts someone who roots for both the White Sox and the Cubs. That being said, we still think WN’s best bet would have been a flight from O’Hare to Midway, given what Chicagoland residents face on 294 and adjacent highways each day.⁵

8. Robots Demand a Living Wage

   While so many are talking about the AI takeover, this moderately-popular blog has already noted the relentless surge of vending machines at airports around our nation. The machines are getting bolder! One of them asked us for a tip yesterday morning at the automated coffee stand at the normally genteel Lexington Bluegrass Airport. In a moment of resentment, we declined to tip, but we now worry that machine will be eyeing us every time we walk down that concourse (which is a lot).

   

   Even the airport robots think 15% is too small a tip these days.

9. PE Shop Looking at EasyJet, What Could Go Wrong?
   US firm Castlelake is apparently eyeing an acquisition of UK low-cost stalwart EasyJet. We’re sure this will go over just as well as when iconic English Premier League teams were also acquired by Americans.

10. Big Bets, Big Explosion

    Luckily no one was hurt as a result of the dramatic explosion of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket last Thursday. However, what may have been hurt were Delta and JetBlue’s ambitious plans to adopt Amazon’s LEO connectivity solution versus the current juggernaut of the wifi wars: Starlink. Both airlines are getting their fair share of criticism, particularly in light of the competitive disadvantage both will face as United, American, Alaska, and Southwest all adopt the Starlink solution in the coming years.⁶ But, we also know that airlines hate sole-provider solutions enough that the risk was deemed worth taking — we’re sure the commercials weren’t bad, either.

Notes

1. Best wishes to the Alaska crews that now get to layover in London and Rome after years of Pasco and Redmond

2. Our interactions with flight attendants in meeting rooms usually started with some version of this question: “How old are you?”

3. Someone very close to this Substack had to endure a DEN train breakdown last week — the bingy-bingy-bong jingle can only buy you so much goodwill

4. RIP, Mrs. Hudwalker

5. Our absolute favorite airline promotion of all time was JetBlue’s “Carmageddon” flight sale between Burbank and Long Beach back in 2011 when the 405 was closed in LA

6. Also worth noting our friends at Viasat will have their new bird up and running shortly —despite hogging the headlines, there’s still more out there than just Starlink