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On my travels yesterday I discovered that the MTA has launched a new ten-trip Airtrain card.  Previously, one had to pay $5 every time the Airtrain station was transited. 

The new 10-trip card costs $25 thus providing a 50% discount per transit.  This is great for people who travel to and from JFK regularly.  The card I bought yesterday is good until July 2011 so there doesn't appear to be a "short" window for usability either.

Now if only the people at NJ Transit would do the same for EWR...

ETA: It appears this has been around for a while though not very commonly known.   So, I stand corrected on it being new, but it is still a neat thing for those who don't know about it.

As predicted, the battle for Haneda has commenced.   For those that don't know, Haneda is the second airport in Tokyo Japan.  Since the opening of Narita in the 70s, Hanada was limited to domestic flights and flights from neighboring countries.   Recently, a new runway was opened up at Haneda increasing the capacity and due to a recent agreement with the Japanese government, the US has a four flight authorities to give away.

The contenders:

• Continental proposing nonstop service from Newark (EWR) and Guam (GUM)
• Delta proposing nonstop service from Detroit (DTW), Honlulu (HNL), Los Angeles (LAX) and Seattle (SEA)
• United proposing service from San Francisco (SFO)
• American proposing service from Los Angeles (LAX) and New York (JFK)

Delta is proposing the largest number of flights stating that their alliance doesn't have a base at HND and thus they are at a competitive disadvantage.   Of course, this is the same carrier that has been stating for months that they are the largest carrier between the US and Japan.   While I realize the two are different airports, there is a certain twist of irony to it.  Beyond that, with out any partners at HND, Delta would need to survive exclusively on O&D (Originating and Destined) traffic on these routes.  

My crystal ball says that the ones that ones likely to get approved are:

• Continental GUM-HND
• United SFO-HND
• One Delta
• One American

This should prove to be interesting.

With our recent podcast on BMI and the growing interest, I figured i'd share a great promo.  Wyndham rewards has recently become a partner of bmi and is offering 5,000 miles per stay, up to a total of 20,000 miles.

Details can be found here.

In the states, this promo includes such fine brands as Howard Johnson, Super 8, Travelodge and Ramada. 

This is an amazing return for a small outlay of cash.

As expected, the Department of Transporation has put restrictions on the proposed slot swap between Delta and US Airlines and LaGuardia and DC National.

Both airlines were told they can engage in slot swaps if they divest some of their current slot allocations.   The DOT has requested that the airlines divest 14  pairs of slots  at National and 20  at LaGuardia.  Assuming the airlines aren't willing to divest additional slots then what they were planning, it reduces the overall appeal. 

While both airlines are disappointed, it still lets them control the larger slice of the pie.  Additionally, the biggest loser is going to be US Airways, they gain only 28 slot pairs at DCA while Delta still gains 105.   

You have to wonder about the folks at US Airways who thought such an unbalanced swap was ok from the start.  Sure US Airways would theoretically gain access to GRU and NRT, but is that worth such a sacrifice?

As most people may have read the blog back in November, an amazing event took place called the Star MegaDO.  Well, the event just got quite a bit of coverage in the February issue of Conde Nast Traveler.

Yours truly was interviewed for the article and it was a blast.  Kudos to the author for jumping in head feet and joining in on the fun!

You can find the article here.

This morning I received an email from Delta promoting its JFK-LAX/SFO premium BizElite product.  While I've received a few of these over the last few months, this one was different.  Apparently Delta wants the transcon business so bad, that it is offering double-MQMs and a dollar-amount credit.  The credit varies on the class of ticket you purchase.

This follows up on another promotion a few weeks ago where Delta was promoting a flat $1000 (before taxes) fare on these routes for BizElite. 

The fact that the offers are getting more and more lucrative is indicative that Delta isn't getting the business it wants and is desperately trying to grow market share on these routes.

You see, these routes have heavily been controlled by United and American.   Both UA and AA offer three class service on these routes with premium service similar to international services.  A few years ago Virgin America came into the mix.  While Virgin was offering a two-class service, their domestic First has a premium seat, far superior to the average domestic first class seat.   Then Delta came along offering it's signature domestic service on these routes which really didn't gain any attention, rightfully so as it was a substandard service next to it's competitors. 

In the Fall, Delta decided to realign its fleet and pull out some of the BizElite 757s off of trans-atlantic routes and repurposed them to JFK-SFO/LAX.  Additionally, Delta added the occasional international configures 767-300 into the mix.   So a few months pass by and it brings us to now.

While I've heard very good things about the BizElite transcon service, I have yet to give it a try.  Though, even given the positive reviews, it seems like Delta is losing this battle.