That leaves Continental alone among the legacy carriers in not signaling its intentions, at least, regarding Wi-Fi.

Aircell has already installed its Gogo-branded service on about 675 aircraft. AirTran and Virgin America now have it on their entire fleets. Delta, Aircell’s biggest customer, has been busily installing Gogo and expects to have its mainline domestic fleet completed by the end of September. Not far behind is American, with United saying it also plans to install Gogo.

US Airways said that Aircell’s Gogo — which costs about $100,000 per plane to install — will initially be installed on its A321 aircraft on “select routes.” A map showing those routes is on the airline’s Web site. [Good luck with that. I couldn't find it readily and life is too short to waste any more of a fine summer morning in the desert fiddling with the US Air Web site!]

Later next year, customers will be able to see if Wi-Fi is available on a specific flight by looking for the Wi-Fi icon while booking a flight on usairways.com, the airline said.

Pricing hasn’t been set yet. Aircell’s standard pricing ranges ranges from $5.95 to $12.95, depending on the length of flight and type of Wi-Fi-enabled device used.

Wi-Fi is the only major customer-service initiative the airlines seem to be going for these days. Now that Aircell has bagged another major airline, the big question is, what does Southwest do?

Southwest has been testing a different system in partnership with a company called Row44, which is Aircell’s only serious competitor. Southwest is testing the service on four aircraft. Alaska Air has also tested Row44 on a single aircraft.

Southwest hasn’t yet announced whether it will install Row44’s Wi-Fi system on its entire fleet of about 535 Boeing 737s. Testing will continue through the summer.

If you’re flying Southwest, there’s no way to know at booking if your plane is one of the four with the service. But 24 hours before departure, Southwest notifies you by e-mail if it is.

There’s a big difference between Aircell and Row44 technology. Aircell uses land-based cell towers, which means that Gogo is not able to provide service over oceans. Row44 is a satellite-based system, fully capable of transoceanic service.

It would seem odd that Southwest, which doesn’t fly transoceanic, would partner with a satellite Wi-Fi company, but Row44 says that satellite delivery provides a faster and more consistent-quality connection than land-based delivery in which connections are shifted from one point to another on the ground.

Row44 won’t say how much it costs to install its systems on an airplane, except to say that the cost is considerably higher than Aircell’s installation cost.

Expect an announcement by Southwest on its intentions regarding a fleet-wide rollout sometime in the early fall, if not sooner.

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Nah, just kidding about the $20 fee, though not about the scorpion.

Some poor guy got stung by a scorpion that dropped down from the overhead bin on a Southwest flight out of Phoenix. Man killed scorpion with his shoe. TSA investigating shoes as weapons potentially to be banned. Nah, just kidding about the TSA, though not the guy killing the scorpion with his shoe. In fact, that’s the recommended method.

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I could never quite figure this one out. It was hyped by credulous airline reporters when the “airline” first announced a start-up with $9 come-on fares in May, with a hodgepodge of planned routes including Toledo, South Bend, Ind., Melbourne, Fla., Minneapolis and … Newark. Something about charter flights.

At the time, I noted that a local newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, was doing what newspapers should be doing, digging out the facts and putting the story into context. Here’s a link to the Columbus Dispatch story on JetAmerica and its genealogy.

And here’s a link to JetAmerica’s jive announcement trying to hold off the inevitable last week.

[UPDATE: Here's Mike Boyd's amusing take today on this "doomed-from-the-start airline," which as he notes had some airports among its gullible believers. Says Mike: "Ray Charles could have seen the danger signs" here.]

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The move — in which agents will be required to pay United cash for the tickets themselves, even though their customers charge them on a credit card — is being called a huge fare increase by air-travel consumer advocates, who think that other airlines hope to follow United and reduce their own costs of ticket-distribution through third parties.

It isn’t clear which agencies are affected, though speculation is that United chose smaller travel agencies at first to see if the scheme will fly. United, which is considered to be the most financially weak of the network airlines, is desperately trying to cut costs amid an industry-wide plunge in passenger revenues, as air-travel demand continues to languish.

It also appears that United is hoping to reduce its exposure and potential liability to credit card companies, which typically hold back substantial sums of payments on advance ticket purchases.

Kevin Mitchell, the chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, which represents corporate travel buyers, called the move “wholly unacceptable.”

It is “not just a price increase, it appears to be a potential price increase targeted at those travelers that use the services of travel agents and travel management companies — with corporate travel programs at the front of that line,” Mitchell said.

Travelers booking directly on the United web site would not be affected, of course.

Mitchell said, “The most troubling aspect of this scheme is that this attempt to shift airline sales costs to travel agents and on to their customers would only work if the airlines act in concert with United Airlines to affect such a radical change; something in which the U.S. Department of Justice should take great interest. The way UAL pre-announced its cost-shifting scheme to an unspecified number of travel agents, with an effective date 30 or so days out, leaves it the ability to run this back down the flag pole if its competitors do not agree to match.

Thus, this scheme looks like the previous signaling behavior on airfares by airlines using the Airline Tariff Publishing Co. (ATPCO). That action caused DOJ to sue eight airlines and ATPCO in 1992 alleging that airlines used the ATPCO electronic fare submission and dissemination system to fix prices, which the Division concluded had cost consumers up to $2 billion.

If UAL’s sales cost-transfer scheme were to be matched by other airlines, the
potential impact to consumers and corporate travel programs would likewise be in the billions of dollars,” Mitchell said.

United said that the move will affect only a small portion of travel agencies, but has not discussed whether there are plans to expand the requirement for travel agencies to pay United cash for tickets.

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According to Seaney:

—Delta, Southwest, Alaska, Midwest, Frontier have increased fares $10 round-trip, $5 one-way over “the bulk of their route systems

—US Airways is doing “selective matching” on various routes.

—United Airlines is “dabbling in some limited matching.”

—American and Continental remain “on the sidelines so far.”

Seaney said, “The Southwest increase of $5 one-way was on mid/long haul routes and $2 one-way on short-haul routes (outside of sale fares).”

He added, “It is very difficult to get an exact read on this hike as there was some late week off-peak travel discounting that is mixed in with the increase activity.
Typically we will know if the hike attempt sticks by Monday afternoon.

“It appears at this point that the hike has a very good chance of surviving – I have never seen an airfare hike in 4 years fail when Southwest Airlines was in the mix.”

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