Webware

Look where I've gone at home...

(Credit: FlightMemory.com)

If you're a serious airline geek like me, you've saved every airline boarding pass you've ever used. No, it doesn't make sense but you do it anyway. But until recently, my boarding passes sat in a box with really no practical use except for the occasional bookmark. That was until I learned about a Web site that lets you put your flight history to very good use.

FlightMemory.com is a fantastic and free Web site that allows you to log your commercial flights into a database that will then give you oodles of cool statistics. You can see how long you've spent in the air, how many miles/kilometers you've flown, your total number of flights, your shortest and longest flights, a map of all your routes, and your top airlines, airports, routes, and aircraft types. FlightMemory even will tell you how how many times you've circled the Earth, and how many times you've flown to the moon and the Sun. Logging in all those flights does take a lot of time, but the results are worth it once you add everything in. Though my boarding passes only dated back to 1996, I was able to recall most of my prior flights from memory (geek alert!). For many flights I couldn't recall whether I had a window, middle, or aisle seat, but the site will track that as well.

...and abroad

(Credit: FlightMemory.com)

According to my profile, I've circumnavigated the Earth 16.47 times and I've flown to the moon 1.7 times. I've barely made it to the Sun but I doubt I'll fly 93 million miles in my lifetime. My total flying distance is 410,056 miles, which translates to 39.01 days in the air. Yet that's nothing when compared with my friend who is a flight attendant with United Airlines. He's flown 3.56 million miles (that's 14.92 trips to the moon) and has spent 10.93 months aloft. And he still has flights to record.

FlightMemory also lets you purchase a poster with a world map of all your routes. I want to make it to South America before buying mine, but I'm saving space on my wall now.

Wait for prices to come down? Or the dollar to rise?

Farecast, the site that tells you when to buy your airline tickets to get the best price, has finally added international routes to its service. This feature would have been great back before the dollar took its tumble against world currencies, and a family dinner in Paris didn't cost $300. (See: Farecast: Out of beta, but still U.S.-only.)

The data on the service appears to be filling out slowly. While there is historical pricing for the airfares of US-Europe and US-Mexico/Caribbean city pairs, the actual fare predictions are not all there. I tried to price a San Francisco-Paris flight and found that buying advice was not available for the return date I wanted based on the departure I chose.

Predictions only work for flights or round-trips originating in the U.S. You Europeans, you get a good enough deal coming here already. No Farecast for you.

Still, Farecast is a great Web 2.0 service. It's good to see it adding more useful data. If you want to really get out of town, you don't have to head all the way to Europe, use it to price tickets to Mexico.

Southwest Airlines announced Wednesday that it plans to begin trials of satellite-to-airplane broadband Internet service sometime this summer.

Spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said Wednesday morning that initially Southwest plans to test the service on four planes. But because the airline's planes fly many different routes, she did not anticipate--at least not yet--that travelers would be able to plan to fly on one of those planes.

Southwest Airlines plans to begin trials of satellite Internet service this summer.

(Credit: Southwest Airlines)

That means that in the early going at least, the service--which will allow passengers to access the Internet if they have their own Wi-Fi-enabled laptops--will be available at random.

McInnis did not say if Southwest's service would limit what kind of sites or applications passengers could access, as does JetBlue's recently added service.

But she pointed out that because the service is satellite-to-plane--whereas JetBlue's, for example, is ground-to-air--it would ensure consistent connectivity, even over water.

It's not entirely clear what benchmarks Southwest will use to determine the success or failure of the trial. McInnis said that the airline will examine whether the technology works and whether it performs according to plan.

As a frequent Southwest traveler, I guess I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it would be great to have connectivity while on the go. On the other, as many have discussed previously, bringing Internet to the few places where it's not currently available limits the places you can get away from work.

Still, I suppose I'm in favor of the advance. Now if only airlines can work on bringing power outlets to all seats--not just those in business or first class--so that those of us in coach flying long flights can power up the whole way.

If there were snakes on this plane, you could IM your friends and tell them.

Low-cost airline JetBlue has equipped one of its Airbus A320 planes with an onboard wireless network and has forged partnerships with Yahoo and BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion to give passengers access to the companies' e-mail and instant messaging functions while in the air. The airline considers the plane, nicknamed "BetaBlue," to be an early-stage test as the company explores expanding in-flight communication options.

(Credit: JetBlue)

Passengers won't be able to surf the full Web. But if they bring Wi-Fi-equipped laptops along, they can access lightweight versions of Yahoo e-mail and instant messaging services; BlackBerry owners who have Wi-Fi-enabled handsets (the BlackBerry 8820 and BlackBerry Curve 8320) will be able to access their personal and corporate e-mail. BlackBerry models that have only cellular connections rather than Wi-Fi won't be compatible--the Federal Communications Commission still has a ban on cellular service in-flight.

The plane will take its inaugural flight on Tuesday morning, making the cross-country trip from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to San Francisco International Airport. After that, "BetaBlue" will be added to JetBlue's regular flight lineup; a company representative told CNET News.com that there will be no way to specifically request the messaging-equipped plane, nor will any additional fee be charged for the service.

It's been known for well over a year that JetBlue had been planning some sort of in-flight wireless initiative. LiveTV, a division of the airline, was awarded a 1MHz air-to-ground wireless license from the FCC in June 2006, following an intense bidding war. After 120 bids, LiveTV paid $7 million for the license, which offers full coverage of the continental U.S. above 10,000 feet. Another company, AirCell, obtained a 3MHz license for $31.3 million in the same FCC auction.

Earlier this year, JetBlue representatives hinted that they were interested in exploring options for in-flight text messaging--but that would require a relaxation of the FCC's stringent regulations.

As the major players in the airline industry compete with one another in an increasingly tech-savvy world, carriers have touted in-flight tech innovations like satellite TV service and electrical power connections. JetBlue already offers DirecTV service, as well as XM satellite radio on some of its newer planes. When Virgin America first took off in August, geeks drooled over the USB and power connections, MP3 library, and a messaging service that lets lonely passengers strike up conversations with fellow travelers on the same plane.

But when it comes to communication services (Virgin America's intra-plane messaging aside), there have been some major momentum issues. Cell phone use on planes is still a contentious topic, but it's nevertheless likely imminent on some foreign carriers and some wireless companies see it as a potential source of profit.

Broadband Internet is a different story. Connexion, a paid in-flight broadband service from Boeing, was used by a number of foreign airlines, like Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines, before it was officially shut down at the end of 2006. There's been no word from Panasonic recently on a rumored plan to succeed where Connexion had failed.

And when BetaBlue takes off on Tuesday, it will make the Forest Hills, N.Y.-based JetBlue the first domestic airline carrier to offer any kind of wireless service in the air. Virgin America's planes have Ethernet ports at each seat, but they remain inactive.

JetBlue representatives said that if BetaBlue proves successful, expansions to the program will become evident over the next year. This would possibly include either installing the Yahoo and RIM services on other planes, or expanding the wireless offerings.

I'm saddened to report that Southwest Airlines has effectively shut down Pass-a-matic, the service that would act as your proxy to retrieve the coveted A-1 boarding pass. The service, which I raved about two months ago, would take your reservation number and use it to jump on the Southwest Web site precisely 24 hours before your flight's departure time to grab the good seats.

Southwest, clearly, was not amused, and recently amended the terms of service for its Web site with this proviso: "You may not use Southwest's web sites for or in connection with offering any third party product or service not authorized or approved by Southwest. For example, online check-in service providers may not use the Southwest web sites to check-in Customers online or attempt to obtain for them a boarding pass in any certain boarding group."

An email from Pass-a-matic notified users of the shutdown: "Southwest Airlines has asked us to stop the operations of our boarding pass retrieval service for their airline...We are complying with their request immediately."

I mourn the passing of Pass-a-matic. It was a civilized solution to a barbarous process.

Just in case I wasn't crystal clear in my earlier post about Southwest Airlines' new online boarding pass lottery, I despise the carrier's "cattle car" seat assignment scheme. There's at least one clever entrepreneur (and future Webware T-Shirt wearer) out there who feels the same way I do and is building Pass-a-matic. This service, still in closed beta, should do exactly what I want. First, it will act as my agent on Southwest's online check-in service, logging in at the precisely right time to "snipe" the coveted low-numbered "A" boarding passes. Second, in doing so, it undermines the whole time-based, twitchy process Southwest employs to assign boarding priority, and could eventually force Southwest to abandon the process and just allow online seat selection like a civilized carrier.

I think I can handle this UI.

The site looks very easy to use. Just enter in your Southwest confirmation number and it handles the rest.

Southwest could try to kill Pass-a-matic by requiring captchas or some other test to assure that its check-in site only interacts with real people and not bots. But since Pass-a-matic will eventually be a paid service, the company can afford to fight back by farming out captcha solving to a service bureau or to a distributed captcha technology like ReCaptcha (review).

In the future, this technology will be be applied to other services that have a similar rush-the-gate process: buying tickets to concerts, getting good seats on airlines where you're not a premier member, and so on.

See also: PlaneFast.

It's because of things like this that I love the Web.

Frequent fliers on budget Southwest Airlines are used to standing in lines. It's the only way you can guarantee yourself a good seat. Even with the coveted "A" boarding pass (which you get by checking in online before lazier people get around to it), you still have to stand in line at the airport to get a good A-class seat. No more.

Your new, more granular boarding pass.

(Credit: Southwest)

Southwest is moving the anxiety and line-jumping from the airport to your home. Now, instead of just hoping for an "A" pass when you check in online, you get a number on your pass, like "A15." That number is your position in the boarding line. New Southwest boarding lines will be segmented into groups of five. When you get to the airport, you stand next to the pylon that has the range of numbers your ticket is in, and board with the five other people in that group. As always, online check-in for your flight opens up 24 hours before your scheduled departure. If you're not going to be near a computer at that time, you can also check in via mobile at mobile.southwest.com.

The new procedure is on-line (sorry) in San Antonio, and will be rolling out in other airports soon. There's a whole "boarding school" on the site.

So set your clocks and watches to the correct atomic time, and be sure to flood the Southwest servers precisely at the appointed hour, minute, and second.

This new process will make the airport more civilized and save on standing-around time, but for control freaks like me, open seating is stressful no matter where the line is. There's a free Webware T-Shirt to the first person who shows me a Southwest Airlines boarding pass sniping service (like they have for eBay auctions) that causes the airline to finally give up this archaic practice.

Google Maps is just so hot right now, we couldn't resist giving it yet another nod this morning. On Tuesday, the low-cost U.S. airline JetBlue Airways announced that real-time flight tracking on Google Maps will be available on its in-seat TVs soon.

Plenty of airlines offer screens with in-flight tracking, but it appears that this is the first time that one has used Google Maps to do so. If you're flying on a JetBlue plane, you'll be able to watch your flight via Google Maps (along with speed and altitude) on channel 13 of the carrier's satellite TV system. (Is this a taste of things to come? Will we be seeing a "Google channel" on TV?) In addition, Google Maps features on JetBlue's Web site will allow you to track flights from the ground.

In a statement from Google on Tuesday, Google Maps & Earth director John Hanke said, "We're excited to see Google Maps in use at 35,000 feet." OK, I'm calling it now: $5 says Google Maps will have charted the ocean floor and will be in use underwater by 2010.

Because nothing is complete these days without a mashup or two, JetBlue has introduced a photo contest as part of the deal. Snap a photo out the window, tell your in-flight Google Maps where you took it, and upon landing you can send the photo to JetBlue where it'll be incorporated into a big Google Maps mashup and site visitors can vote on their favorites. It'd be cooler if you could submit your photos in-flight, but last we checked, your average non-extravagant airplane still didn't have USB hubs built into every seat.

Keep an eye on this one: JetBlue has hinted that future partnerships with the Mountain View uberdotcom are on the way.

PS: Can't believe we managed to get through this whole blog post without a Snakes on a Plane pun.

Airline price predictor Farecast is officially out of beta today. We've covered the service before and think it's great. New features that have been recently added include FareGuard, which lets you buy insurance on FareCast's predictions (the company claims "predictive accuracy of 74.5 percent"), a "flight quality" selector that lets you eliminate nasty red-eyes from your predictions, an alert feature that will e-mail you when the cost of a ticket to a destination you desire appears at or below a price you specify, and my favorite newish feature, a grid that shows you how the cost of a round trip varies depending on the length of your stay.

Webware editors have personal experience with FareCast, and we confirm that it can indeed save you money. I have an issue with the service, though: It offers fare prediction for only U.S. airports. For me, overseas vacation destinations are more desirable. And since flying to Europe or Asia is also a lot more expensive than a hop to Orlando, I'm eager for the service to go global.

Flexible travel dates? FareCast can tell you the least expensive times to fly.

(Credit: CNET Networks)