Airline Fanatic

Now of course luck and the fates would have it that the day after I book my first trip on Virgin America they come out with a great promo code that could have saved me lots of money. Sigh. Well luckily you are now better informed than I was. Any eleVAte member can plug in the promo code dfLOoxRC03kgw to get 30% off any main cabin fair.  So what are you waiting for?  Check out some Virgin America flights on Kayak and get going with that code!

Happy travels.

UPDATE: Unfortunately it seems this coupon code was unique to my eleVAte account! Well, I wasn’t going to use it anyway so its no great loss to me, but you might be out of luck if you try this same code. For those of you with an eleVAte account though, check your inbox and spam blockers for the promotional email. And for those of you who aren’t eleVAte members, joining up (its free) may grant you access to this code. Sorry folks!

Virgin America continued its growth today with the announcement of new service to Seattle, WA (SEA) from its dual West coast focus cities of San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX).  Service from SFO starts March 18th, with follow on service from Los Angeles starting April 8th, 2008.  Fares on the route seem to be very competitve with flight between SFO and SEA starting at $77, and flights between LAX and SEA going from $99.  Even better, First Class seats on the two routes start at $177 and $199 each way, respectively.  For a three hour flight from LAX to SEA that is not too shabby a deal at all.

Sadly, this service starts after both of Virgin America’s promotion codes expire, so you will have pony up the full retail price in order to get on board.  I’m sure VA will come up with something new to give away before then though, and when they do I’ll be sure to let you know.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that JetBlue is about to start testing their inflight wifi services with parterns Yahoo! and RIM.  For now at least the service will be completely free, and offer access to customized Yahoo Mail and instant messaging services.  People with wifi enabled Blackberries will also be able to access their corporate email and instant messages while inflight.    Best of all this service is starting almost immediately – with the first flight on December 11th.  The project, called BetaBlue, is only hooked up on one plane right now.  The first flight to get this feature will be flight 641 from JFK to SFO next Tuesday, but will shift thereafter depending on the normal schedule of the aircraft.  This is still a very limited test, so users will only be able to access the services mentioned above.

This test news puts JetBlue way ahead of other domestic carriers who are also in the market to install WiFi across their fleet.  Virgin America announced earlier this year they intend to use wifi on their entire fleet (though that is considerably easier than equipping JetBlue’s fleet).  JetBlue also said this testing will go on for months, so don’t get your hopes up too much for catching this first of a kind plane.  Either way, sooner or later JetBlue will be forced to open up BetaBlue to the entire internet.  The days of liveblogging my flights are upon us!

Virgin America delivered an early Holiday present to my inbox earlier this evening in the form of a promotion code for unlimited 25% off flights from November 26th through March 19th, 2008. It’s simple to use, and anyone is eligible as long as they have the code. Go and search for your flight, any flight at virginamerica.com and then enter the promotion code ELEVATE25 when prompted. 25% off the fare will then be deducted for all fairs even as you search the website. This code was sent out to at least all of eleVAte’s founding members, of which I am one, but was encouraged to be shared with as many people as we wanted, so here you go!

UPDATE: Virgin America just sent me another email this morning letting me know that they have extended this promotion through December 21st. This is good news since it was originally going to expire this Friday the 7th. This means you now have a few more weeks to take advantage of this great offer. If you liked this one though, keep Virgin’s free companion ticket offer in mind as well. That one still expires this Friday, so book it soon! The free companion ticket offer has no expired, but the one listed above is still good through 12/21/07!
[ad#box]

Well news from JetBlue hasn’t been so great of late, what with their stock hitting all time lows, and the departure of long time CFO John Harvey.  But all is not lost thankfully as today they’ve put out a press release announcing new service between Orlando and Santo Domingo, DR.

This newest route is the latest in a slew of new service announcements from Florida.  It seems that with the delicate political situation around schedules at JFK, JetBlue doesn’t want to add any more fuel to the fire.  The beneficiaries of this have been Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando, which will see six other routes added as well in the coming months.

Also of note in this announcement is the fact the route will be operated using the E190, the first time that aircraft will be used outside the US by JetBlue.  It certainly makes sense to use a smaller aircraft for what will probably be a low volume route for JetBlue, but also indicates they are now more confident in their new aircraft.

Here are the nitty gritty details: service starts on March 6th of next year, with introductory fares starting at $79 each way, then raising to between $99 and $349 each way under normal operation.  For now the flight will operate once daily between MCO and SDQ.

Virgin America came out with a new destination announcement today – they will fly three daily non stops from San Francisco to San Diego starting on February 18th of next year (increasing to five flights on March 9th). [Via Jaunted] While its great to see a new airline expanding to new cities, one has to wonder about the wisdom of VA’s decision to pick some of the busiest airports in the country.

Serving primary airports in each city they serve is actually a stated priority for VA CEO Fred Reid, as he discussed in his interview with Fast Company magazine. This is both good and bad for travelers. Its good for the obvious reason that you will actually fly to the airport you want to go to, unlike Skybus Airlines which sells tickets to “New York” while it actually flies to Newburgh, NY. On the other hand, Skybus wont have to worry about any delays coming out of Newburgh, whereas JFK is one of the most delayed airports in the country. In fact, Virgin operates out of several of the most delayed airports, including its home hub of San Francisco, Washington Dulles and New York JFK (though they aren’t as bad as JetBlue, which flies to 10 of the top 14 delayed airports).

Now when you handle only a handful of flights every day, this may not be such a big deal. As Virgin America grows however they will have to think more and more about the utilization of their aircraft on more than one route per day, and in the low cost carrier world that means quick turn around times at some of these busy airports. Every time a VA plane touches one of these delayed airports, there is a 30% chance (roughly) they wont get back off the ground again in time to make their next scheduled connection. Over time, this will continue to add up. And when your entire network consists of these heavily delayed airports, as Fred Reid would have us believe, the chance of massive delays across the airline increase with every flight.

In theory it’s nice to say you fly to each city’s primary airport, but when you consider the delays and additional headaches that come along with these big boys, you may want to think twice. Virgin has plenty of time to consider their growth strategy, and avoiding delays on their network should be on their list of top priorities.

Southwest Airlines has announced and will continue to announce a slew of new routes in Denver.  They are currently the number three airline there, behind Frontier Airlines, and United.  I’m actually interested to see how they might fare against hometown favorite Frontier.  After the new routes are in place, Southwest will have 56 daily departures and serve 16 cities from the mile high city.

Via The Airline Hub