The best way to load people into planes

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 11 Comments

Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

As an astrophysicist at the prestigious Fermilab near Chicago, Jason Steffen probes dark matter and, on a contract for NASA, searches for distant planets. But for years, a less esoteric question has occupied his brain: what’s the fastest way to get passengers onto an airplane? Steffen was on his way to a conference five years ago when he hit a series of delays before he could take his seat. There was a line at the gate, another in the tunnel and a final, awkward, push-past-or-wait period on the plane.

Frustrated, he thought: “There has to be a better way to do this.” The answer, Steffen believes, is a complex system cooked up on his own time in the lab, home to the second-largest particle accelerator in the world. The key for an efficient board is to minimize aisle congestion and maximize passenger speed. To do that, he thinks passengers should line up outside the plane, then board, window seats first, in staggered rows one side at a time from back to the front. Steffen first published his theory in the Journal of Air Transport Management in 2008.

Now he has real-time proof that it works. In June, a TV producer in California rented a sound stage, brought in a fake plane, and tested Steffen’s theory against other methods of loading. Toting carry-on luggage and even some children, 72 volunteers walked on and off the plane, stowing bags and taking assigned seats. Along with Steffen’s approach, the passengers were loaded in four ways: randomly, back to front, in three blocks of seats, and from the window seats in—the so-called window-middle-aisle method, or “Wilma.”

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Air Canada's plan to shake things up by launching yet another discount airline

By Chris Sorensen - Monday, April 25, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 13 Comments

Air Canada

The late 1990s were heady days for penny-pinching North American air travellers. Southwest Airlines, Frontier and WestJet were shaking up the industry with rock-bottom airfares and an army of fresh-faced employees in golf shirts prone to making jokes over the cabin public-address system. Suddenly finding themselves under attack, big, bloated network carriers attempted to respond by rolling out their own discount outfits, splashed with spirited names like Ted (United Airlines), Song (Delta Air Lines), MetroJet (U.S. Airways) and Tango and Zip (Air Canada). The idea was to not only mimic their new rivals’ low prices (although not necessarily their low cost structures), but also the look and feel of a fresh upstart—sometimes with amusing results.

“Somebody at United determined that one of the reasons Southwest was so successful was because they wore shorts,” says Marc-David Seidel, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, recalling a visit to the California operations of Shuttle by United, another big carrier discount attempt. “So, you know the classic pseudo-military United uniforms that are made out of polyester? They basically just took those and cut off the legs.” It gets worse. “One day management decided employees were supposed to have more ‘fun,’ so all these poor people were running around San Francisco airport wearing those little beanies with a propeller on top.” Needless to say, the strategy didn’t work, and Shuttle was scuttled in 2001. Most of the other “airline-within-an-airline” efforts met a similar fate.

Now, a full decade later, Air Canada is once again toying with the idea. It’s trying to convince its unionized workers to support the creation of a new discount airline that would fly all-economy-class planes to various vacation destinations. But can Air Canada really make money on the cheap seats this time around? Though it’s far from clear whether the project will come to fruition after a key agreement with the airline’s pilots got bogged down last week, the reality is that Air Canada, which has seen its stock plunge nearly 90 per cent to around $2.40 since its post-restructuring IPO in late 2006, is steadily losing market share to younger, cheaper competitors such as WestJet, Transat and Toronto’s Porter Airlines. All this at a time when fuel prices, typically the second-biggest expense for an airline after labour, threaten to eat into already thin profit margins. It has no choice but to attempt a little shaking up of its own.

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A case of tunnel vision in Calgary

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:26 PM - 7 Comments

When it comes to municipal headaches, airports rank right up there with potholes and property taxes. The complaints usually stem from expansion efforts, and the aircraft noise and car traffic that inevitably comes along with it. In Toronto, for example, waterfront condo owners are vowing to shut down five-year-old Porter Airlines, which has turned the once-sleepy island airport into a bustling regional hub.

In Calgary, the problem is road access. The local airport authority is building a new runway at Calgary International Airport that will require the closure of a key artery leading to the terminal from the city’s northeast. The solution that’s been on the books for years is to build a traffic underpass below the proposed runway, but it was only last month that city council, after much coaxing from new Mayor Naheed Nenshi, finally approved the controversial $295-million project. In general, opposition to the proposal has focused on cost and the fact the tunnel will serve a relatively small, albeit growing, part of the city.

Now the airlines are complaining. The tunnel is scheduled to open at the same time as the new runway in 2014, but WestJet CEO Gregg Saretsky has said he’s concerned the underpass may raise unforeseen safety and security issues, bogging down the airport’s badly needed expansion, which WestJet is depending on to accommodate its own growth. While other airports have roadways that pass underneath runways and taxiways, most were built prior to 9/11. Saretsky has also cited potential safety risks, including the threat that planes landing in icy conditions will be in close proximity to traffic. It sounds alarmist, but airline spokesperson Robert Palmer said WestJet can’t afford any delays. The airport is operating at capacity and WestJet continues to grow, he said. “The runway is critical to both organizations.”

This week's travel news

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, June 7, 2010 at 10:29 AM - 1 Comment

The Volcano Is Resting…Here Come The Hurricanes
Now that the Iceland volcano has quit smoking – at least for now – travel industry fears are focusing on the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, and the news isn’t good. According to Reuters, leading U.S. forecasters are now predicting 18 named tropical storms and 10 hurricanes, five of them major, with a 76% likelihood that a major hurricane will hit the U.S. coastline during the season that extends from June 1 through November 30. Travelling during hurricane season has risks and rewards. The vast majority of visitors won’t even have a sniff of a major storm. Prices are lower too, so it comes down to a personal risk/benefit analysis. But even in a very active hurricane season, you shouldn’t write off the region when planning a winter holiday after November. By then, most storms are just memories discussed over dominoes in the rum shop.

Canadian Passports Going Digital
As of 2012, Canadian passports will have an invisible microchip embedded in the back cover. The chip will store the same personal information now found on page 2 of our passports, along with a digital copy of the passport photo suitable for use by facial recognition software. As reported on TakeOffeh, the proposed new ePassport will have a shelf life of 10 years as opposed to the current five, though children’s passports will have an earlier expiry date. Canada isn’t on the leading edge of this effort — 70 countries, including the EU, are already issuing their own versions of ePassports, with some featuring fingerprints and iris scans as well as digital photos. According to the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies, which recently attended a Passport Canada event, one of the major reasons we’re lagging behind on this effort is a lack of funding for Passport Canada. While it is a government agency, Passport Canada operates on a cost-recovery model and receives no funding from the government. Some of the benefits of an ePassport include increased security, less risk of identity theft and a lower chance of forgery or alteration.

Where Is WestJet Going Next?
Since the appointment of Gregg Saretsky as WestJet CEO, speculation has grown about whether the airline has greater ambitions than sticking to its low-cost, North America-focused roots. Their declared intention of becoming one of the world’s top five airlines by 2016 feeds rumours of planned expansion beyond North America. The once-underdog airline with the positive public image has set its sights on taking on Air Canada. It’s doing a good job of that in the Canadian domestic market, but wants to take the challenge a step further, with plans to double its share of the trans-border market to over 25% within six years. WestJet also recently announced a codeshare deal with Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways and said a partnership with a U.S. carrier is imminent – which is rumoured to be Delta. Airline consultant Rick Erickson believes this aggressive alliance strategy could be a case of testing the waters before operating its own overseas flights. That’s how it got into packaged holidays: in 2003, it entered into a partnership with Transat that saw WestJet fly charter flights to destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean. But, after realizing how profitable selling packaged holidays can be, it launched its own WestJet Vacations business. “I think they’re going to do the same thing in the international arena,” Erickson told Macleans.

But Saretsky poured some cold water on those views this week. Speaking at an annual investor’s day, the CEO pledged to retain the airline’s low-cost, one-type aircraft business model. “We are very much getting back to our focus on costs,” Saretsky said, part of which is continuing to fly a fleet of only Boeing 737 aircraft that keeps costs down but limits how far it can fly. While WestJet’s future plans remain unclear, one thing is for sure: they definitely include becoming a bigger thorn in AC’s side, at least at home and in the competitive U.S./Canada transborder market.

Down In Front: Researcher Says Airlines Need A New Financial Model
Henry Harteveldt of Forrester Research says aging boomers and the growing use of global communications as a replacement for some corporate travel will dramatically alter the airline landscape. Harteveldt told Canadian Press reporter Russ Marowits that legacy carriers like Air Canada need to rethink their heavy reliance on high-paying premium passengers, because there simply won’t be as many of them in future. Evolving communications technology, high-definition video conferencing and corporate restrictions on premium travel could alter the destinations serviced by airlines and the size of the premium cabins, Harteveldt says. He points out that several European carriers have already eliminated first class on some routes. “The airlines really have to figure out who is their core customer and they haven’t been very good at this,” Harteveldt says. In the future, the researcher believes leisure travel will drive aviation growth, as retiring boomers set off to explore the world. Not everyone agrees with Harteveldt’s take, including a spokesperson for Air Canada. “Our own experience is that people like and need to travel for business and, as the world economy continues to globalize, we expect this will not change,” said Peter Fitzpatrick. That may be true, but the question remains as to whether employers (and shareholders) will be willing to pay premium fares as much as 10 times as high as economy prices.

By: Bruce Parkinson
Bruce Parkinson is a travel industry journalist and regular contributor to Takeoffeh.com as well as sister company, OpenJaw.com

Photo Credits: ppt.gc.ca, westjet.com

WestJet's big plans to conquer Air Canada and then the world

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 6:51 AM - 35 Comments

LARRY MACDOUGAL / CP

For most big airlines, having a chief executive with a long and accomplished history in the business would be considered a no-brainer. Not at WestJet. Since its launch nearly 15 years ago, the remarkably successful low-cost carrier has made a point of ditching industry conventions whenever possible. Economy-class only. No connecting flights. Friendly staff. And, until recently, chief executives who generally came from outside the industry.

So eyebrows were naturally raised earlier this year when WestJet, based in Calgary, named industry veteran Gregg Saretsky as a replacement for outgoing CEO Sean Durfy, who was formerly the head of Enmax, a utility company. Durfy, in turn, had replaced WestJet co-founder and chairman Clive Beddoe, who, although a hobby pilot, was in the real estate business prior to launching the airline in 1996.

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This week’s travel news

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 10:23 AM - 0 Comments

This Week’s Take offers you a capsule summary of the high and low lights of TakeOffeh.com’s Daily Dispatches from the past seven days.

Car Rental Crunch Sends Prices Skyward
It seems counter-intuitive: car manufacturers can’t seem to give away their vehicles, but car rental companies can’t get enough vehicles to meet demand. Bill McNeice, president of the Associated Canadian Car Rental Operators told the Globe and Mail this week that the past summer was particularly challenging. “A lot of markets in Canada (were) sold out; you couldn’t get a car. That’s a new phenomenon.” McNeice says something else that’s new is rental cars with 30-, 40- or even 50,000 kilometres on the clock. You just wouldn’t see that in the past, especially from the major rental companies. This sea change in the industry is a complex but fascinating story. When the market for both new and used vehicles was hot, car rental companies were the carmakers’ largest customers, purchasing over 100,000 vehicles per year in Canada alone. The rental companies kept the vehicles for six months or so and then sold them back at depreciated prices to the manufacturers, which sold them on again as low-mileage used cars. But when demand softened, carmakers started increasing depreciation rates, making big rental fleets too expensive. Today, most rental cars are purchased outright by rental companies and then rented for much longer than the previous norm. With rental car demand in Canada being highly seasonal, smaller fleets mean higher prices year-round, coupled with restricted availability at peak times. Looking into the future, McNeice sees little hope of a return to big fleets and low rental prices. His advice: “Book early and pay more.”

Don’t Swing The Cat
If you’re not familiar with cruising, inside cabins are usually the cheapest accommodations on the ship. Therefore, when you see a low advertised price for a cruise, nine times out of ten it’s for an inside cabin. The traditional definition is a cabin without a window, porthole or balcony, but that’s changing, with some inside cabins now featuring windows – they just look towards the inside of the ship rather than out. But as UPS reported this week, Norwegian Cruise Line is aiming to make a splash with a new concept in inside cabins with the 2010 launch of Epic, its largest-ever ship. Norwegian is calling a group of inside cabins ‘studios,’ and at 100 square feet, they’re small even by inside cabin standards. 128 of the tiny cabins, many of them connecting, will be grouped around a two-storey, 1,000 square foot ‘living room,’ featuring a bar, big-screen TV, room service and a concierge. Inside the cabins themselves, cruisers will find a king-size bed that doubles as lounging space, a 32-inch flat-screen TV, adjustable mood lighting and a big round window looking on to an interior corridor. There’s also a shower, toilet and a sink that slips behind a sliding door. NCL is aiming its studio cabins at first-time cruisers, especially young people and large family groups. It’s a bit like the ‘micro-hotel’ concept, just on the water. The cabins will be priced for budget travellers, who will also have access to the rest of Epic’s facilities and entertainment including daily shows by the Blue Man Group.

WestJet Website Woes
When you see a news story about a major company about to undergo a computer system upgrade, migration or cutover, it’s not hard to guess what will happen next: a news story about the series of glitches following the changes. It happened again this week with WestJet as the Calgary Herald reported. The airline’s website went down for a few hours after the cutover on Friday, October 16, and it crashed again the following Monday for about three hours. This time the culprit was the web component of the Sabre-Sonic Customer Sales and Service Solution, WestJet’s new online home. With the site down, prospective customers were forced to let their fingers do the walking. But that’s not easy these days, as call centres aren’t staffed the way they used to be, and lines were quickly jammed. There were struggles at airports on the weekend too, as gremlins invaded some baggage tag printers and some advance seat selection records disappeared. However, with problems fully expected in a move of this size — close to a million records were transferred from one system to another — it was a pretty successful transition. Now comes the good part: for WestJet and its guests, the much-anticipated new reservations system will open up major opportunities for cooperation with other airlines.

There Goes The Neighbourhood
There have been several well-publicized incidents of bad behaviour on cruise ships lately, or in the high-profile case of a group of Americans in Antigua, on shore excursions from cruise ships. With cruise prices at record lows, some pundits have speculated that ‘the wrong crowd’ can now afford to take to the water. To their credit, cruise executives are rejecting this classist assumption. Carnival Corp. CEO Micky Arison, for example, told the BBC: “Fighting isn’t just something that happens to people on low incomes. Whether you earn 10p or £100,000 a week, it often comes down to how much beer you’ve drunk or the circumstances you’re in.” Cruise passengers, however, aren’t convinced. A poll with over 500 responses on cruise website CruiseCritic saw nearly half of respondents agree that “low fares are definitely attracting different or untraditional types of travellers to cruising.” That said, nearly 45% agreed that “most outlandish conduct is the result of excessive drinking or carrying on.” Others simply put the blame on media hype or the growth of the industry. With more people choosing to spend their vacations cruising; the odds increase for more troublemakers aboard. In the comments posted on CruiseCritic, a recurring theme is that civility and manners are on the decline throughout society, so there’s no surprise that it’s happening on cruise ships too. With a seemingly endless media preoccupation with what happens on cruise ships, you can expect to hear a lot more on this issue, especially with more massive megaships launching over the next year

Make Way For Oasis
Nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall — and 18 decks high to boot — the soon-to-be-launched 5,400-passenger cruise ship Oasis of the Seas brings with it a long list of superlatives and firsts. As Royal Caribbean International CEO Adam Goldstein told Forbes Magazine: “It’s in the DNA of our company, about every 10 years, to take more or less a fresh sheet of paper and create the greatest cruise ship in the world.” Not a humble statement perhaps, but it’s hard to be humble when you’ve just spent $1.4 billion on a marvel of modern marine engineering. Unfortunately, that $1.4 billion is just slightly more than the year-over-year decline in revenue experienced by RCI as the global recession took a huge bite out of cruise revenues. Of course, the economic downturn was not foreseen years ago, when plans for Oasis began to take shape. It’s not just Royal Caribbean that is gambling on the success of this floating behemoth. The ports that will welcome Oasis have invested millions too. Jamaica, for example, is spending $121 million on a new port at Falmouth, built specifically for Oasis and upcoming sister vessel Allure of the Seas. The Oasis homeport at Port Everglades, Florida has spent $75 million on a state-of-the-art terminal, while other ports in Mexico and the Eastern and Western Caribbean have also spent millions on pier lengthening or dredging projects to accommodate the ship. Each of the ports is hoping that the publicity around the ship and the economic impact of the weekly arrival of thousands of passengers and crew will justify the investment.

Photo Credits: ncl.com, westjet.com, ncl.com

The brewing fight for pet-free flights

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 15 Comments

When Air Canada banned pets from aircraft cabins in 2006, pet owners were furious. But many say the airline’s recent decision to reverse that ban was a bigger mistake, as it puts pets ahead of people—and may even put lives at risk.

As of Canada Day, dogs and cats can travel with their owners on executive or economy Air Canada flights, as long as they’re in pet carriers that fit under the airplane seats. The plan, which was recently announced as part of Air Canada’s “renewed commitment to the customer” initiative, allows pet owners to register their pets 24 hours before the flight, as long as they pay a $50 or $100 fee. Continue…

Dogs and cats in cabins? Oh my!

By Kate Lunau - Friday, June 19, 2009 at 3:56 PM - 145 Comments

Before leaving his home in Smithers, B.C. for Northern Ontario in 2004, Dr. Darren Jakubec felt nervous about taking his dog on the flight with him, “for reasons I can’t entirely explain.” A family doctor, Jakubec was travelling to Wawa, Ont., with his wife, a nurse, to start a six-month work contract. Leaving their black dog Sila behind wasn’t an option, he says. Sila, a black lab mix, was kenneled and placed in the plane’s cargo hold. After deplaning in Winnipeg for a connecting flight, the couple waited anxiously for their dog. When she was finally taken off the plane, they were devastated by what they saw: “Sila was brought out onto the carousel,” he says, “dead.”

Jakubec paid for an autopsy “that showed carbon monoxide poisoning as the probable cause of death,” he says. After a two-year legal battle, the case was settled out of court. Jakubec and his wife eventually made it to Wawa, where they adopted another stray dog, Beck, also a black lab mix. Though he won’t fly with a pet again, Jakubec says “if you absolutely have to, insist they’re in the cabin with you.” Continue…

Real competition is back!

By Chris Rivers, Takeoffeh.com - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 12:03 PM - 1 Comment

Let’s not jump for joy yet but the green shoots of airline competition in Canada may finally be ready to bloom into a crop that could be a bonanza for the Canadian consumer.

Since the demise of Canadian Airlines and its absorption into Air Canada, there have been several attempts by the likes of Jetsgo, Harmony, Roots Air and Canjet to take on the scheduled air dominance of Air Canada. Sadly, none of them succeeded. WestJet, on the other hand, has not only survived but seems to be emerging as a bonafide challenger to Air Canada. Continue…

WestJet’s plan to crush Air Canada

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 104 Comments

On March 31, WestJet announced a promotion that tapped into the uncertainty many struggling consumers feel today. Tickets bought over the ensuing week came with an innovative price guarantee. If the same seat later went on sale, customers could get a credit for the difference. It was a remarkable promise in an industry that constantly tweaks its prices, driving customers mad, and it was made all the more remarkable by its timing. A day earlier, Air Canada had fired its CEO and the papers were full of speculation that the national carrier would soon have to file for bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than five years. WestJet’s ad wasn’t just marketing. It was a message, part of a long-term strategy that’s quickly coming into focus. It said, none too subtly: WestJet is out to crush Air Canada.

The price guarantee was just one front in an expanding battlefield between these two companies, whose rivalry is as long as it is ferocious. WestJet has already seized a large swath of the Canadian airline business since its launch 13 years ago. By 2013 WestJet aims to control as much as half of the domestic market, up from 36 per cent today. Recently, it has taken aim at Air Canada’s lucrative transborder and international business, signing deals with Southwest, Air France and others to sell international tickets under its own name.

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Friendl(ier) skies

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 6:08 PM - 0 Comments

Finally. With oil prices hovering around $93 a barrel, well off their punishing high of $145, airlines have started to axe some of the extra fees they’ve tacked on to travelers’ tickets in recent months. Air Canada’s second checked-in bag surcharge: gone. WestJet’s fuel surcharge: gone. Air Canada’s fuel surcharge: um, well, that’s still there actually, though the airline is at least being upfront about it. In a rather bizarre upbeat statement to customers, it said: “Great news. The fuel surcharge is now included in all our North America fares.” Clearly Air Canada’s concept of good news isn’t the same as mine. But these days I’ll take it where I can get it.

Biz Fix

By Jason Kirby - Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 1:25 PM - 0 Comments

In the money: Airline crisis? What airline crisis? WestJet inked a deal today with Southwest Airlines to share passengers on cross border flights. So at a time when Air Canada and other legacy carriers are dramatically scaling back their flights, Westjet will shortly be able to sell tickets to any of Southwest’s 64 U.S. destinations, and vice versa. (Like old faithful, the Dallas-based airline announced the agreement by trucking out that most Canadian of clichés: “Want to Get Away – Eh?) This is a huge deal for the Calgary carrier, which modeled itself on Southwest’s low fare structure. It’s kind of like getting a call from your mentor to come and be his partner.

Trading down: BC’s beleaguered forestry sector gets far, far, far (I could go on) less attention than Ontario’s struggling auto industry, but the two have a lot in common, namely they are both bathed in layoff notices. In some northern communities, like Mackenzie, every single mill has gone under. Today another mill near Campbell River closed and another 440 people lost their jobs, bringing the total number for the province’s forestry sector to 10,000.

Number cruncher: We’re a glum lot in Canada. Almost as glum as the Americans, if the latest consumer confidence data is any indication. According to the Conference Board of Canada, consumer confidence has Continue…