There is no denying it - Air travel is not what it used to be. The industry has been in a steady decline for years. Long before "terrorists" were being blamed for taking your pretzels away, airlines were blaming deregulation, fuel prices, pixie dust or whatever excuse was in fashion that week. A lot has changed in recent years and, in no particular order, here are the top ten things I miss in the current world of air travel.

Concorde


Without a doubt, the number one thing I miss when I fly, is Concorde. Despite never coming close to being the most frequent passenger on her (who flew New York to London twice a week), I did have the pleasure of flying supersonic several times.

The plane was cramped, warm and smelled funny, but the experience was probably as close as you can get to air travel as it was back in the glamor days of the 50's.

The experience started at check in, where you could get your boarding pass in a separate area with none of the hustle and bustle of the economy class ticketing area, or being yelled at by an airline drone to head on over to a computerized kiosk.

Once you had your pretty Concorde boarding pass you'd usually get a snazzy Concorde aluminum bag tag. If you were lucky (like I was once), you'd then get a private escort through security to the Concorde Lounge, where the worlds best alcoholic beverages were available. Naturally none of the lounge wardens would ever dare demand drink vouchers from you, like in most North American lounges.

The whole atmosphere was very relaxed, and you'd never run into anyone yelling on their mobile phone while trying to pound down a burger.

Once on board, you settled into your plush leather seat, and three and a half hours of pampering could begin. Once the plane leveled out at 55,000 feet, a flight attendant would hand you a Concorde gift, and a certificate with a beautiful sterling silver pen from Smythsons of Bond Street. During your meal, you could request the captain, co-pilot and flight engineer to sign the certificate. If the workload was light, you could politely request a brief visit to the flight deck, as this was all long before cockpit doors had to be locked at all times.

The finest wines were served, Champagne flowed and amazing meals made from the finest ingredients were presented in multiple courses. It was heavenly.

And then disaster struck - 113 lives were lost when Air France flight 4590 crashed on Tuesday the 25th of July 2000, right after she took off from Charles de Gaulle airport. The future of Concorde was doomed and a mere three years later, she took her final flight. The fleet ended up being put on display at various aviation museums throughout the world. My first flight on Concorde was the Saturday after the crash, and was one of the most memorable flights I have ever been on.

Gradual reductions to in-flight meals have finally reached the international market. It used to be that everyone on the aircraft got a meal, wherever where you were going or in what class you were. That slowly devolved to meals in first class on some long-haul flights (exception: Continental, where all meals in domestic are still free!).

Now, spurned by cost cutting measures across the industry, United Airlines has announced that they're discontinuing meal service on some of their international flights.

From Washington DC's Dulles airport, flights to Europe will now offer food for purchase instead of the standard "chicken or pasta" choices. Nine dollars will get you a salad or sandwich while six buys a snack box. I found no mention of warm food in this Bloomberg article.

To reiterate: they aren't even charging you $9 for the soggy chicken that you used to get.

As to whether the changes will be unrolled to the rest of the international legs, the airline is still not sure. They'll be taking input from passengers after this trial period to see how poorly it's received.

And poorly received it will be. On a three or even four hour flight across the country I can see how someone can gorge up on food beforehand and make it through the itinerary. But on a nine hour flight you need to eat at some point. And unless you brought a sack lunch you're going to be forced to pay whatever prices they're charging. Yes, they only take cash.

Take this opportunity to send a note to UA protesting the changes. There's still time to reverse the tide.

The UK's British Airways, American Airlines and Spain's Iberia this morning announced that they would soon be cooperating on flights between North America and Europe while they would also start to collaborate and expand on other routes together in the Oneworld Alliance.

Are the airlines merging? No. But aren't they already all part of the Oneworld alliance? Yes, they are. What the airlines have agreed to is tighter collaboration among their operations. Ground operations, codeshares and mileage programs will be better integrated to ensure seamless operation among carriers (read: keep passengers hooked in the alliance), while costs and overlapping spending will be reduced.

It's important to note that the airlines will continue to operate independently, similar to the Continental and United collaboration announced earlier this year. What's not clear is whether they will be collaborating on pricing. As Virgin Atlantic, the main competition, sulks about the conglomerate having over 50% of the landing slots at Heathrow, many have noted the potential for monopolistic pricing among the new bedfellows.

So will prices actually go through the roof? Technically, less competition in the market suggests that prices may have the potential to rise -- but there are still plenty of carriers and entry points into the EU. American, British and Iberia may soon have a good handhold on Heathrow (Sorry, Virgin), but Amsterdam, Gatwick and Frankfurt are still wide open, so with a little bit of creative routing you don't have to call of your summer vacation.

Several Oneworld airlines are filing for antitrust immunity to get the ball rolling on the cooperation agreement -- should this get approved, expect to see small changes in operations over the course of the year.

United Airlines just fired up a tool on their website called Award Accelerator, a tool that essentially lets you pay to double or triple earned miles on any of your flights. Basically, you pay a sliding fee on check-in that effectively equates to three cents per mile, then at the end of your flight the airline dumps the bonus into your account.

So say you're flying 500 miles from Detroit to New York City. Pay fifteen bucks and you can earn 1000 miles for the trip, or pay thirty and you can earn 1500.

So when is this useful?

Well, if you divide the cost of a regular domestic award ticket, 25,000 miles, by 0.03 cents/mile, you get a total of 750$ spent for those miles. In other words, if you bought all of your miles for an award ticket this way you would be paying 750$ for that ticket -- too much for any old domestic ticket. So it doesn't make sense to double or triple your miles on every flight.

The instance in which this tool might be handy, however, is when you need just a few extra miles to reach that award tier from which you can book. You're at 24,000 miles, you'll earn 500 on your next trip and want to push that to 25,000, for example. In this case, it makes sense.

Just try not to make a habit out of it.

You don't hear about this everyday: A United Airlines flight taking off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and bound for San Francisco this past Sunday had to turn back suddenly after a row of seats became loose, slid backwards and slammed into a full row of passengers.

Maintenance workers confirmed that there was a loose bolt on three occupied seats in the third row of that flight. At takeoff, the seats simply came undone.

One woman sitting in the fourth row suffered a knee injury and was transported to the hospital after the pilot made an emergency landing.

Maintenance workers fixed the problem (though the flight was delayed more than three hours).

United says it will compensate passengers for that delay.

The injured woman flew to San Francisco this morning on a free first class ticket.

I've never put an animal in an airline's care before, but I have friends who have. Friends of ours shipped their dogs to and from Singapore. One person took a parrot and another shipped two cats. All went well in these instances.

The situation where the dog was lost by United Airlines this past week is not common, I would guess, otherwise it wouldn't have made it to the national news. Grant gave a Gadling heads up, and this article on ABCNews this past Monday outlines more specifics about the unfortunate situation when Jeddah, the beloved dog of John and Ronia Weisner went missing at Dulles International Airport after only an hour in the airline's care.

If you are wondering what the statistics are for problems when shipping pets, and the airlines involved with the mishaps, check out this PDF file to Air Travel and Consumer Report published by the Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings: Aviation Consumer Protection Division.

May 2008 was just posted this month. On page 38, you'll find the recent stats for pet troubles. Here's the summary:

No animals were lost in May.

Two were injured. (Alaska-1; Skywest-1)

Four died. (Continnental- 3; United-1)

The chart doesn't list the specifics of the incidents, but you can click on the airline name in the chart in order to get the report summaries.

In the Weisner's case, I can't imagine what it must be like to have such a significant change already in ones life such as a move to Saudi Arabia for a year only to have it start out with a missing dog.

For those of you following the story of the the solider's dog that was lost by United Airlines earlier this week, you can now get updates on the unfolding events on the website helpfindjeddah.com or via a Twitter feed that they set up.

Apparently, enough people had caught wind of the story via the web such that there's a serious movement towards finding the animal -- well over five hundred people are now following the feed, garnering enough attention to get the Washington Post to run an article this morning.

In it, we learn some new facts about the debacle, including the interesting note that the owners only fed the dog people food and are concerned about her ability to fend for her self on her own.

Judging from some of the intense comments we got on our earlier story, there seem to be two schools of thought on the attention and resources that this search is getting: either you think we should shut down DC tomorrow and form a human chain across the the metropolitan area or you think we should sack up and let things sort themselves out -- haven't you ever seen that movie Homeward Bound?

I personally am a bit divided. I do hope that we find the dog quickly and think that all of the effort that people have put into finding her is quite touching. At some point, however, we'll probably need to stop consuming resources and leave the rest up to fate.

Here's a plane delay story that I am not sure is covered under any contract of carriage.

The Denver Post is reporting that a United Airlines flight yesterday from Denver International to Des Moines was delayed more than five hours after three ticks were found in the cabin.

Let me repeat that: Three ticks. Or rather, three ticks.

Apparently passengers found the little buggers and brought them to the attention of flight crew members, who promptly evacuated the plane, had the cabin cleaned and replaced all the seat cushions on board. The airline even decided to load the passengers onto another plane for the trip to Des Moines.

That's when another delay took place...this time due to weather. Passengers were supposed to be on their way around 12:20 p.m., pre tick discovery; they did get airborne until a little before 6 p.m.

No word yet whether the movie version of this little debacle will star Samuel L. Jackson.

Continental just issued a press release saying that they're entering a cooperative agreement with United Airlines, saying the two airlines will "cooperate extensively, linking their networks and services worldwide to the benefit of customers, and creating revenue opportunities and cost savings and other efficiencies." This means that Continental will also join United in the Star Alliance.

For those of you who follow airline alliances, this means that CO will be dropping Skyteam, whose partners include Delta, KLM and Northwest, and picking up partners such as Lufthansa and US Airways.

Basically, Continental Onepass members won't be able to accrue or spend miles on Skyteam anymore (similarly, partner airlines can't spend miles on CO), but they can on Star.

It does not, however, mean that the airlines are merging -- only that they'll be collaborating on many routes, codeshares and other logistics.

In the current airline industry, this change was almost inevitable. Carriers are looking at ways to collaborate on operations and cut costs, just like Northwest and Delta announced earlier this year. With the two airlines' combined routes and networks, a stronger entity will now exist that can better compete with the soon to be uber Delta Airlines.

No word yet on when exactly the alliance changes will take place and a schedule for the official divorce from Skyteam airlines. But if you were thinking about booking a ticket with your Skyteam miles on CO, now might be a good time to do it.

I've seen more than a few people flying around staring at their tiny Ipod screens, chortling along to Family Guy or The Sopranos and always wondered if it was worth it. It seems like such a small screen would be difficult to pay attention too.

Lo, this week, United Airlines announced a solution. They'll be offering free connections between their Inflight Entertainment (IFE) system and your Apple gadget of choice so that you can stream your favorite video into your seatback LCD. So rather than watching Lethal Weapon 3 (again) on your transatlantic flight you can actually pump the entire season of The Big Bang Theory through your chair.

Naturally, the feature will be only available for First and Business class passengers -- you'll still be stuck in coach paying 19$ for a stale croissant and 6 ounces of tomato juice. It's also running only on select transatlantic flights, for now.

Does anyone else see the potential abuse for this system? I'm sure airline passengers have all of the sense and grace in the world, but it only takes one joker with a raunchy hot sex video jamming on his screen to make the entire F cabin suddenly very very uncomfortable.

And is it really worth it? What does it take to pump through your video?

• An Ipod
• That plays video
• Aptitude to load and watch video
• Preference to watch your video vs. the IFE

My feeling that the intersection of all of those sets is in the 20 - 30 year old male demographic, which, incidentally is not the same demographic in which first class passengers lie.



Hey, we'll see what happens though. Maybe passengers will like it so much that they roll out the service to coach. I'm still not buying an Ipod.