Southern Nevada tourism received some good news and some bad news on international air service last week.

First, the bad.

In late April, British Midland - better known as BMI - will pull the plug on its nonstop route between Manchester, England, and McCarran International Airport.

Since Halloween 2004 BMI flew an Airbus A330 jumbo jet three times a week to Las Vegas. But the company says the route has underperformed and high fuel costs make it impossible to continue.

“The decision to with�draw long-haul services from Manchester was a very tough one, since we have operated (some of) these routes since 2001,” the airline said on its Web site. “However, sadly, the routes have never performed to the revenue levels we hoped to achieve, which combined with 2008 fuel price increases means we still see little prospect of improvement.”

BMI was the 12th busiest international carrier at McCarran in 2007, serving more than 55,000 passengers.

A sales representative said the company could reconsider the route when BMI’s acquisition by German airline giant Lufthansa is completed early next year.

Not to seem overly pessimistic, but I doubt that’s going to happen. When a carrier exits a market, it usually does so with sound economic reasons, so I doubt Lufthansa’s deeper pockets would finance a route that ultimately disappoints for the long haul.

BMI management apparently was disappointed with the amount of traffic generated from Las Vegas to Manchester - an argument I’ve never completely understood since it’s the traffic

Las Vegas that is going to generate the most interest and most of those coming here have to go back. Why not just reduce the number of flights from three to two a week? That’s a question I would have asked had BMI managers returned my calls and e-mails.

When BMI leaves the market, it will trim the number of carriers offering nonstop trans-Atlantic flights to two, with Virgin Atlantic - an airline that our governor may have recently ticked off by writing a letter of support for a cause supported by its biggest competitor, British Airways - from London to Las Vegas and Lufthansa-owned Condor, which flies nonstop from Frankfurt, Germany.

Despite that bad news for the local tourism industry, which is banking on increased international traffic to help boost sagging visitor numbers, there was some good news. It came from the busiest carrier at McCarran, Southwest Airlines, which isn’t an international flier.

Southwest announced it will work with Mexican carrier Volaris to develop a code-share agreement to link Mexican travelers to the United States and vice versa.

Southwest gave customers a view of how it would develop its code shares when the company had a deal with ATA - a deal that ended in March when ATA abruptly declared bankruptcy and quit flying.

Under Southwest’s ATA agreement, the airline offered flights on its Web site to places like New York LaGuardia Airport via Chicago Midway Airport. Las Vegans making that trip would fly Southwest to Midway and transfer to an ATA flight from Chicago to New York. The baggage transfer was seamless and passengers could earn frequent-flier points partially delivered by ATA.

Free trips earned on Southwest also could be used on ATA - which flew to Hawaii from Las Vegas.

Southwest said it hopes to announce more details about its partnership with Volaris next year and begin offering the connections by 2010.

Volaris, founded in 2006, is new enough to the market that a lot of people don’t know much about it. It has 39 routes connecting 23 cities south of the border. But, like Southwest’s planned code-share partner north of the border, Canada’s WestJet, Volaris has many similarities to Southwest.

It’s known as a discounter. It flies to some alternative airports (the center of its operations is in Toluca, outside Mexico City). It has a primary aircraft type, the Airbus A319 and A320 series, both twin-engine jets similar to Southwest’s Boeing 737s.

But where would Southwest and Volaris connect?

Right now, Volaris doesn’t fly into the United States, and Southwest has said it has no desire to begin flying south of the border. The closest Volaris flies to the U.S. is to Tijuana, Mexico, one of the airline’s busiest destinations.

Southwest has numerous routes and destinations near the Mexican border: San Diego, Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, among them. But would Southwest instead try to connect at some of its busiest stations to serve a maximum number of passengers - such as Houston, Los Angeles or even Las Vegas?

McCarran officials acknowledged Volaris made an initial contact last week about flying into Las Vegas. It’s still too early to know whether that means Las Vegas would be the transfer point in the Southwest-Volaris code share, but at least it’s a possibility.

Meanwhile, in an interesting side note to the Volaris deal, several people have begun weighing in on Southwest’s blog, Nuts About Southwest (www.blogsouthwest.com) with their opinions.

Although a number of blog posters identifying themselves as Southwest employees are cheering the deal, many others are bitter about why the airline isn’t simply flying to Mexican destinations.

Some go as far to say that the company is “outsourcing” their jobs to Mexico.

Of the more than 300 comments to a blog called “Viva Mexico,” many were like this one:

“Southwest Airlines should be flying these new routes. Period. They should be flown in Southwest Airlines aircraft that are crewed by Southwest Airlines flight pilots and flight attendants, handled by Southwest Airlines ramp and customer service agents, and maintained by Southwest Airlines mechanics.

“Grow OUR airline!!!”

Although the internal debate is interesting, it may be just as interesting that Southwest enables the criticism with its own strategies on a company-branded Web site.

Obama and aviation

Colorado-based aviation consultant Mike Boyd isn’t too impressed with some of the early signs coming from President-elect Barack Obama and his policies on transportation and aviation.

Boyd says for a person who got elected on a platform of change, Obama has nothing new on the horizon for the industry.

A frequent critic of government aviation policy, Boyd posted this on his Web site:

“Whether you like the guy or not, face it: Obama’s a neophyte with near-zero exposure and zero experience in any major area of national importance. Only 11 weeks until he gets sworn in, so he’s on a rapid learning curve.

“That means he’s going to do two things. One is drag in advisers to get him up to speed, some of whom will almost certainly be has-beens and political retreads from past administrations. The second is that he’ll have to prioritize. The most important areas, like national security, Russians threatening a U.S. military facility in Poland, the financial meltdown and the economy will, appropriately, get his time.

“Everything else - make book on it - he’s going to delegate to somebody else. That includes transportation and aviation policy. The first reports are not good. Really, really troubling, in fact.”

Boyd isn’t happy with reports that former Transportation Secretary Federico Pena, who served in the Clinton administration, is part of Obama’s transition team.

“For an administration that’s supposed to be postured as a 90-degree shift from the past, toward openness and integrity, this is like a day-care center hiring Michael Jackson as playground monitor. Pena’s tenure as DOT secretary was riddled with sleaze.”

He also cited reports that former Federal Aviation Administrator Jane Garvey is going to be invited to head the Transportation Department.

“You remember Jane. She’s the former FAA administrator that ignored Security Red Team warnings about major security lapses at airports before 9/11. The same Jane Garvey under whose leadership the air traffic control system sank further into bureaucratic deterioration. The same Jane Garvey whose stumbling and bumbling testimony at the 9/11 Commission proved beyond doubt she was totally clueless.

“That the Obama team would be even considering Garvey for anything more than a crossing guard tends to indicate that ‘change’ isn’t really in play here - at least not yet. It’s political hackism as usual.

“But, again, it’s only been a week and these may be not indicative of what’s to come.

“But if they are, aviation, the airline industry, and the flying public are in for four more years of complete continuity with the last eight - and the eight before that.

“In other words, no change.”

Mobile boarding passes

American Airlines has rolled out the technology that some airlines have been promising for some time.

Beginning last week at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, fliers with Internet-enabled mobile devices can have a 2-D bar code sent to their devices that serves as a boarding pass. The technology works on some cellular telephones.

When passengers check in on American’s AA.com, they are given the option of receiving their boarding passes on cell phones and BlackBerries. If they choose the mobile option, they can receive an e-mail with a link to their boarding pass and by activating that link, the bar code is produced for scanning at the airport. The Transportation Security Administration has monitored the program’s development.

Continental and Delta have tested the technology. American planned to make it available for flights at Los Angeles International and Orange County’s John Wayne Airport earlier this week.

Source