Author: ssegraves

WestJet’s new UltraBasic fare

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From WestJet.com:

Starting today, WestJet is introducing its newest fare offering, UltraBasic. Replacing the Basic fare offering, UltraBasic is WestJet’s lowest priced option and has been designed as a no-frills fare that gives guests the choice to add certain extras like reserving a seat in advance or adding a checked bag.

It is a basic economy fare with a different name. Seat is auto-assigned, no carry-ons allowed (personal item is allowed), and passengers will be the last to board. It is really their old Basic fare with a new name and no carry-on bag allowed.

United’s Latest App Update is a Visual Flop

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The United iPhone (and Android) app, in my opinion, has been one of the better airline apps on the market. For one, it historically has been a native application, not a web view like Delta or Alaska’s apps, making it faster to respond and return information. The United app has also been a really good case study in information design and presentation; It is extremely easy to find what you’re looking for, from flight status information to searching for new flights to looking for your account details.

Over the last few years United has started straying from the design philosophies that really set their app apart. They have started using web views in certain areas of the application and have complicated what were once simple views. However, all of those were changes that didn’t reduce a user’s ability to use the app.

But today they released a new version and it is a bit of a mess. Most of the changes are cosmetic but the impact really hits some of what made the application usable.

Take for example these two screenshots:

The first screenshot is the new version of the app while the second screenshot is the previous version. They both show the same screen, the flight status information (granted, for different days for the same flight number). The amount of wasted space in the screenshot on the left is really frustrating. The user is forced to scroll the page to see further details, when that information could be displayed in the available space.

They have also made some font and color choices that I find questionable. The overall font on the app has changed and has become smaller and harder to read.

 

This is the flight status search results screen. Again, the new app is on the left, the old one on the right. I can see that they were trying to establish some form of application flow by moving the arrow to select the flight to the right but they have again used this new font at a smaller size and it is extremely hard to read. It almost feels like the kerning is off on the text.

 

Lastly is their choice of this blue. I know it’s part of their new branding but it is really, really hard on the eyes and it is everywhere. Mixed with the new font there are some places in the app where I have to look away to let my eyes focus. And can we talk about the pointless whitespace? Even in the old app there was too much, but they added more.

Part of me wonders if this is some new template with a new font family that someone in the United design department liked and just ran with it or if they actually did any user testing of the new user interface at all.

These flight results have the new bright blue everywhere. Paired with the new font, it just isn’t great to look at. When looking at a phone screen you have to strain your eyes because of the way the font is smaller and the bright blue clashes with the white background.

I really hope United reconsiders these changes. The font could probably stay if the kerning is adjusted and the overall size is increased. I think that’s actually my biggest complaint is that it was a larger font that has seen a size decrease with the new font. The native app font size should be adequate for most users to read easily without having to zoom in via the iPhone’s accessibility features.

United has long touted their app as the industry leader for helping travelers navigate their trip and book new trips but this latest update really hinders usability and ease of use.

What is happening with United reward prices?

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From Live and Let’s Fly:

As flagged by Chazza in a comment on Live And Let’s Fly, Lufthansa redemption rates have risen from 121K to 154K one-way between the USA and Europe. Even more alarmingly, ANA redemption rates have risen from 121K to 242K one-way between the US and Japan, a devaluation of 100%. The change was effective April 24, 2024.

While initial searches Seats.Aero suggested some differences in pricing, it is now clear that all prices have risen for both transpacific and transatlantic first class awards.

The whole post is worth a read but the gist is that it seems United has made some award price changes, in some cases a 100% increase in the number of miles needed for a long haul first class award. There have also been other reports of coach award prices on partners going up as well. In addition to this, the above linked post mentions there are dates with the lower prices still available and that’s what I have been seeing as well. This leads me to think that this is actually dynamic pricing being tweaked or fully implemented for partners.

I don’t love these higher numbers but with the peddling of credit cards around every corner and every “influencer” sharing how they got a crazy expensive vacation on points these higher prices were bound to happen. If you are a frequent traveler and look for rewards you may have noticed that it’s harder to find premium space, specifically business class, on a lot of long haul routes. With so many credit cards being marketed to people and the number of points in people’s accounts going up, the airlines are sort of forced to raise reward prices to try and remove those new outstanding miles from their liability sheet.

This is as good of a time as any to remind you, spend the miles when you have them, they are not accruing interest nor are they gaining value.

In case you missed it, you can support me by buying me a coffee.

Great Read on the Anatomy of a Credit Card Rewards Program

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Anatomy of a credit card rewards program —

This is… far less incentive compatible for you, particularly if you decided that the business of manufacturing books-dollars was so lucrative that you could rebate more than the direct interchange revenue given mix effects. These users will have blended costs very close to your headline number, not to your modeled blended costs.

These users will even band into tribes, find each other on the Internet, and swap tips for exploiting poor, defenseless credit card program managers like yourself. The tribal elders will eventually run businesses, with names like The Points Guy, which eventually get quietly acquired by very sophisticated private equity firms. Those PE firms are betting that you continue paying generous per-signup affiliate commissions to Internet properties which send you new card users. You bet you will also paying tens of millions of dollars annually to Frequently Adversely Selected New Accounts Dot Com. And Redditors bet they will continue chortling that they have pulled one over on you, because haha, you’re not nearly as good as they are at fourth grade math or keeping spreadsheets.

There are some real great insights in this piece by an advisor to Stripe, a huge financial infrastructure provider and credit card processor. One that stood out to me was Chase going to Visa to create a new product to compete with American Express. We also talk about it a bit in the Patreon supporter part of the Dots, Lines, and Destinations podcast Episode 478.

One thing that is public but not well appreciated: Chase didn’t just decide to create an extremely lucrative-for-the-customer offering out of the goodness of their hearts and out of their own P&L. No, they pitched Visa on this idea. For too long, Visa, you have watched your competitor American Express outcompete every issuer in the Visa system for the best wallets in the world. They can do that because they can afford to, because American Express charges systematically higher interchange rates than Visa does even at its topmost tier. Visa, you should create a new tier where your not-exactly-chosen champions can try to spend those interchange dollars to give American Express a run for their money.

It’s definitely a long piece but well worth reading.

Renting an EV for the first time

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During a recent work trip to Florida that required a rental car, the rental agency only had EVs available and because I didn’t want to sit around waiting for another vehicle, I took it. Overall it wasn’t a bad experience, but I can see why Hertz struggles with electric vehicles.

The EV I received was a Mercedes Benz EQB. I had zero issues with the quality of the car, it’s a Mercedes, it was nice, comfortable, and well appointed. These days I mostly care about CarPlay and this Mercedes checked that box for me.

When receiving the details from the rental agent I asked bluntly, “how much do I need to charge the vehicle before returning it?” to which he replied, “it needs to be at 70% of whatever its current charge level is”. When I started the car it was 40% charged, giving me a little under 100 miles of range. That’s unacceptable in my opinion. If I had needed to drive somewhere out of that range I would’ve had to immediately make my way to a charging station (more about that later) to charge before continuing my trip.

In addition, this particular rental company, Avis, had no notation of the charge of the vehicle on the rental slip. The fuel level simply showed 8/8, which with a 40% charge, was not true.

I had never driven a EV, so I took lap around the parking lot to get a feel for it before hitting the road. The single pedal driving setup was definitely a shift in thinking and by the end of the trip it felt a little better but I certainly wasn’t an expert. Once on the road the car felt very good and the acceleration was fantastic, making getting on the freeway and performing passing maneuvers super easy.

When I made it to the hotel I asked if they had a charging station but was disappointed to learn there was nothing on-premise and actually nothing that close so I started texting friends asking how they know where to charge their EVs when they’re on the road. The answer seemed to be PlugShare or ChargeHub, both of which I downloaded and started searching. I don’t know if it’s a data problem or a Florida problem but both apps seemed to be lacking a lot of useful information when it came to any type of charger besides Tesla.

As an aside, I also tried the car’s built-in charger app and it was subpar, suggesting charging stations that were much further away (maybe they were fast chargers).

I finally found a charger near the venue I would be attending my work event and drove over the next day to get a charge. Thankfully there was no other EV there as it was the only charger. The actual charging station experience leaves a lot to be desired. This particular charger was a Blink charging station and when I first got it all setup it seemed like it required a Blink membership to even use but after circumventing some of the prompts I was able to get it to charge. The charging process was by no means fast, I dropped the car off at 8am and it did not charge to 100% from ~45% until 3:30pm. It also wasn’t particularly cheap at $19.35 for 39.49 kWh of power or $.49/kWh.

The rental companies could do a better job with explaining charging as well, especially since vehicles can be configured to only charge to a certain point, such as 80%.

The return process was also very interesting. The attendant who checks the mileage and the fuel level in standard combustion vehicles couldn’t figure out how to do either of those things in the EV. I explained where the charge level was but I never saw him find the mileage on the car and when I checked my statement the car was notated to have fewer miles than when I left the rental lot.

Overall I didn’t have too much trouble with renting an EV but rental companies need to get better at how they communicate the process and should probably update their systems to accommodate EV specific information. It would probably help if the rental companies stuck with a handful of brands of EVs rather than buying whatever they can when they can. The charging experience is also less than stellar. Again, maybe it’s a Florida thing but the data on the chargers just seems to be bad. This could be another area where the rental companies work with the EV companies to customize the built-in mapping software to help renters find the charger they need when they need it. All in all I thought it was fun to be able to try out an EV and see what they’re like to drive. Given my travel driving habits, I don’t think I’d hesitate to rent another one.

Icelandic volcanic eruption

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From CNN:

The eruption began at around 10 p.m. local time, following an earthquake at around 9 p.m.

The meteorological office reported that the eruption is visible on webcams and appears to be located close to Hagafell, about 3 kilometers north of the town of Grindavík.

Of note, the Svartsengi geothermal power plant is very close to the eruption and is being run remotely right now.

If you are traveling to Europe in the near future keep an eye on your reservations in case this situation turns out to be like the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull.

Some WordPress headaches

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You may have noticed things looking a little different around here. Over the past 3-4 weeks I noticed some serious performance issues with my website and could not pinpoint the root cause. I disabled all of my plugins and caching tools to try and get to the bottom of the problem. There seemed to be some rogue process that was making huge calls to the database and was eventually locking it up, causing the site to timeout. Unfortunately none of the fixes I tried worked and instead I opted to do a backup of text and images and essentially delete the website to start from scratch.

So far I think I have gotten things back to an acceptable state but you will probably see some weird things as I play with the theme and try to clean up old content that is not relevant or valuable. Feel free to let me know if you run into something that is causing problems or doesn’t looking right. You can reach me on Twitter or Threads or Mastodon.

Delta drops Portland-Tokyo route

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In a letter to the US Department of Transportation on Thursday, September 21 Delta informed the agency that they will not be restarting their Tokyo service from Portland. The service, which previously operated to Tokyo-Narita was set to restart on October 23, 2023 but to Tokyo-Haneda. This restart was after attempts by Delta to get more flexibility in their Haneda operations from the DOT; They were asking to operate from different US gateways but were told by the DOT that such changes would not be granted.

Pursuant to Condition No. 3 of DOT Order 2023-2-15 (“Dormancy Order”), Delta hereby notifies the Department that it will not launch Portland (PDX) to Tokyo Haneda (HND) flights by the October 29, 2023 deadline specified in the Dormancy Order and, consequently, returns the daily PDX-HND slot pair allocated to Delta by Order 2019-8-6 to the Department.1 Delta plans to resume all other U.S.-Haneda flying by October 29, 2023, consistent with its prior awards.

Historically, Delta inherited a bunch of routes from Tokyo-Narita as part of their merger with Northwest Airlines in 2009. You can see the extent of their Asia/Oceania presence from Tokyo post-merger in this map. They basically had all of their US routes serving Tokyo itself and onward connections to other places in Asia.

gcmap.com of historic Delta routes out of Tokyo-Narita

As Tokyo-Haneda slot restrictions loosened up all of the major airlines looked to fly into the much more central airport, with the caveat that slots would be limited and intra-Asia or Oceania flying wouldn’t be feasible from Tokyo-Haneda. In 2019 Delta received approval to fly to Tokyo-Haneda from Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Detroit, and Honolulu. This was the beginning of the end of the Portland service in my opinion. There is a decent amount of traffic between Portland and Tokyo but those flights relied on connections at Narita to really justify the 767-300 that Delta was operating. This was even predicted by Delta’s then-chief legal officer Ben Hirst in 2016 who stated:

It’s the loss of the connecting traffic that will kill the [Narita] flights,

Without those connecting flights the justification for some US flights to Tokyo just didn’t make financial sense anymore. Delta announced Portland-Seoul in September of 2021 in the middle of the pandemic. I even wrote about this when the Delta/Korean Air joint venture was announced in 2017. But the 2021 announcement seemed to signal Delta’s plans, they would serve the Asian destinations via connections in Seoul with their partner Korean Air and keep Portland-Tokyo-Haneda for the traffic going directly to Tokyo… Or so we thought.

This most recent letter to the DOT as well as the rumor that Delta will not start Portland-Seoul seems to hint that Delta might not have the planes for the routes they want to fly or that they don’t view the Portland market as strong enough or a mix of both. I tend to think that they don’t value the Portland market enough. Ever since British Airways started their Portland-London flight, Delta has not brought their flight on the same route back into service.

In 2021, Delta revealed in a Form 8-K filing that they would be retiring the entire fleet of 767-300s by 2025. At the time, Delta had 56 of the Boeing 767-300s but that number has significantly decreased as they have implemented their retirement plan. Essentially the only 767-300s operating now are to Hawaii, Europe, and Africa.

The news of Portland-Tokyo going away is disappointing and while Delta and the Port of Portland can claim that the demand just isn’t there, I think the reality is a bit more complicated. It’s clear that Delta was using the Portland slot as a form of leverage in hopes of getting their flight moved to a different airport.

My hope is that Alaska Airlines and the Port of Portland approach Japan Airlines to work out a deal for a flight, even if it only operates 3-4x/week. The Alaska membership in the Oneworld alliance with Japan Airlines should hold some weight and the port could show that there is still demand. This would serve connecting traffic within Asia as well as give travelers from Asia another connecting option along he west coast (not to mention the tourist traffic between Portland/Tokyo).

5,000 pilots hiding major health issues?

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From The Washington Post —

Federal authorities have been investigating nearly 5,000 pilots suspected of falsifying their medical records to conceal that they were receiving benefits for mental health disorders and other serious conditions that could make them unfit to fly, documents and interviews show.

The pilots under scrutiny are military veterans who told the Federal Aviation Administration that they are healthy enough to fly, yet failed to report — as required by law — that they were also collecting veterans benefits for disabilities that could bar them from the cockpit.

It is hard to figure out what the stats actually show. Not all of the 5,000 pilots are commercial pilots, they are simply pilots who hold a pilot’s license. It could be as simple as pilots exploiting holes in the Veterans Affairs system to receive benefits when they are not actually eligible. In any case, government bureaucracies are pretty good at matching up paperwork eventually and it seems like that’s exactly what has happened.

I am a terrible trip report writer

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In preparing to write this I came across this photo from 2017 of the amenities of a United Global First seat. The whole intention was to write a trip report, give my take on the experience, and create a little traffic on this blog. As you guessed, I never wrote that trip report. I got as far as uploading the photos and then had real work and real life get in the way. But on top of all of that, I don’t know that I am the best person to write trip reports.

I love aviation, flying, and all of the fun amenities that come with the airline experience but I am also someone who loves getting where I am going and being rested and ready to go when I get there. This typically means I may or may not eat the meal on a longhaul flight and usually spend a good chunk of the time sleeping. For example, on a recent British Airways flight in business class from Portland to London and onward to Lisbon I ate part of the dinner and slept right up until our final descent into London. I was only going to be in Europe for 5-6 days and was there for work, so being on the local time and not completely jet-lagged was priority number one.

Even on daytime flights my goal is to adjust to the destination time zone as painlessly as possible and this almost always involves some amount of sleep on the plane. On a recent Denver to Munich flight in business class I slept almost six out of the ten hours. I didn’t even eat the main meal, lunch, right after departure from Munich. Instead I put my seat down and went to bed in the hopes of jumpstarting my return to west coast time.

For me, most trip reports could be broken down into food and sleep and a few questions around those. Did I eat? Was it edible and filling? Did I sleep? Was it restful and comfortable? If the answers to most of those questions is “yes” then the whole trip report could be summarized with “It was fine”.

Most trip reports seem to focus on squeezing the maximum amount of “value” or perks out of a trip where my view of value is whether or not I was able to hit the ground running for work or was I able to return home rested and ready to spend time with family after a long or stressful work trip. I don’t think either view is necessarily wrong but I do believe my experience is very different and also not very compelling to read.

Let’s go back to that trip from 2017. Here is the main course served on that flight. It was fine. Nothing earthshattering or amazing. It was run of the mill airplane food. 
Yeah, it was better than economy but definitely wasn’t at restaurant quality. And to be honest, most airplane food is never going to be restaurant quality. Sure you might get a really nice champagne, wine or even caviar but overall most airplane food is just that.

I don’t know, maybe you all want to read about what work travel is really like. Feel free to let me know. In the meantime, there are a number of bloggers writing really in-depth trip reports. On top of that, there are vloggers creating some great trip reports on YouTube.

Let me know what you think, do I write the boring work travel reports?