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The Latest News from Delta Will Nurse That Cinco de Mayo Hangover

It’s been quite some time since we heard about Delta and their partnership with Avión Tequila, but it sounds like all must be going well as the spirit is headed toward the in-flight beverage cart.

The two companies are hooking up to offer some tasty drinks aboard plenty of Delta flights, and the new beverages made their debut over the weekend. If you flew between JFK and LAX, you may have just been part of a little Cinco de Mayo celebration as flight attendants also passed out some complimentary chips and salsa.

If you’re flying this week however, you'll miss out as it sounds like the planes won’t be loaded up with the new drinks and mixers until later this month. Delta is promising that that the tequila and margaritas will be available on plenty of flights heading around North America, the Caribbean, and Central America for the summer months. We hope they stick around into the fall as well, because we’re pretty sure margaritas are equally tasty no matter what the calendar says.

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Plenty of New Routes This Week from Monarch, KLM and Air France

Sometimes it’s hard to stay on top of all the new route announcements that come our way, so we’ve complied a little bit of a rundown below. As long as you can afford the fares, this should definitely help add to your passport stamp collection.

· KLM:
We're pretty sure that we heard about this some time ago, but now it’s finally time for the pilots, planes, and flight attendants to start doing their thing. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is brining back some nonstop flights to Dallas-Ft. Worth, and the new flights started up just this week. Business and Economy Class are both options on the Airbus A330s that are going to head back and forth between Dallas and Amsterdam. Flights are back for the summer months—and maybe beyond—with the flights leaving the greater Dallas area on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

· Qantas:
All right this might not be a new route, but it is a chance to ride aboard some new planes on some old routes. The big planes usually have no problem heading down and over to Australia, but now they’re flying more and more domestic routes down under. Qantas is installing the big birds—747s to be specific—between Sydney and Perth, as the carrier tries to meet the demand for business travelers looking for some fancier seats. Melbourne over to Perth is also getting an airplane upgrade, as some of the routes are scheduled to get a seating—and comfort—boost thanks to the addition of some Airbus A330s.

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Atlanta Airport Wants YOU to Test Drive Their New International Terminal

Despite the lack of a brand new Chick-fil-A, we’re still pretty excited to see what the brand new international terminal at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is all about. The hard hats are coming off slowly but surely, and workers are starting to clean up the construction debris in preparation for the terminal’s grand opening. However, before the new slice of the airport can start getting passengers and planes, the airport is asking for your help to get things ready.

On Wednesday, May 2, the airport is planning a trial run of the new facility and they need like 1,500 volunteers to help test things out. We’re not sure if you’re going to need to flush all the toilets at exactly the same time, but all we know is that we’re a little jealous that we’re too far from Atlanta to easily help out.

Volunteers will get a script and an itinerary, as airport officials want fake travelers to fully act out their role in and around the airport. They’re even asking that you bring a couple pieces of luggage, so that they can test out the baggage handling system. It sounds like they promise that they’ll returned things unharmed, but we’d probably bring the Samsonite instead of the Louis Vuitton just in case.

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Delta Still Believes in LaGuardia

It seems like we’ve been following the goings on at Delta’s home at New York-LaGuardia for quite some time. First they were all like, we’re taking over with plenty of flights, and then they let everyone know that they were planning on making the airport experience great once again.

At this point Delta has plenty of nonstop flights out of LGA to destinations across the country, but they’re still busy at work completing the renovations within the terminals.

We already revealed some of their latest dining updates, shopping opportunities and free iPad usage within the airport, but the airline has just broke ground on even more fun stuff.

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Delta Puts on the Cowboy Boots and Considers Getting into the Oil Game

There’s all kinds of ways in which this might not be the most slick of ideas, but if things work out Delta might just be laughing all the way to the bank. The world’s former largest airline—United now holds that crown—is thinking about a pretty unique way to pay for all that airplane gas it needs.

They’re going about it through the purchase of their very own oil refinery. We’d imagine that airline officials know a little bit more about planes and passengers than petroleum, but they must be pretty confident that they know what they’re doing.

It sounds like everything is still very much on the drawing board at this point, but Delta is thinking about placing a bid for a ConocoPhillips refinery in Pennsylvania. Reports indicate that the airline’s board has met a couple of times to discuss this idea, and they might just be moving forward sooner than later. Obviously making your own oil—well, kind of—would be a great way to hedge fuel costs, but there’s definitely plenty of things that could go wrong or just get out of hand. The refinery is probably going to be up for sale for another month or two, and smarty-pants analysts are thinking that the place could sell for around $100 million.

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Delta's New 'Basic Economy' Fare Won't Even Let You Pick Your Seat

We really thought Delta was standing tall when compared against the competition; after all we don’t just hand out Jaunty awards to anyone and everyone. Alas, it doesn’t look like they’re going to repeat in 2012 as we’re a little concerned about one of their latest “innovations” of ticketing and fares.

Delta has introduced a new ticket option—something they’re calling Basic Economy. With this new fare class—it books into the E fare bucket for those interested—you might just save a few more bucks, but you'll also loose out on some basics usually associated with the major carriers. With a Basic Economy ticket there’s no advance seat assignment, and that’s even the case for some of the airline’s best frequent flyers.

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Glamorous Heathrow Airport: Pam Ann Proves It's Not an Oxymoron

London fever is officially heating up. The Olympics-themed commercials are out, people are freaking out about hotel capacity over the summer and airlines are spiffing up to attract all those flyers heading across the pond for various events in 2012.

At this point, we have to point out the above video from the SkyTeam airline alliance, who partnered up with comedian Pam Ann to give a little intro and tour around their terminal at London's Heathrow Airport.

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It's Art: Gymnastics Routines Using Business Class Airplane Seats

No, this isn't a story on the Olympics, but we could see how you could think that.

Art comes in many forms and is often described as subjective. A current performance exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art is no exception. This time it has caught the attention of aviation enthusiasts by blending the architecturally fluid lines of business class seats with the sheer strength and flexibility of gymnastics.

The IMA is currently exhibiting Allora & Cazadilla. The visual artist duo of American born, Jennifer Allora, and Cuban born, Guillermo Calzadilla are part of the museum's Venice Biennale. While the pair have a number of commissions at the gallery, the most intriguing for our arena would be the Body In Flight Series.

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Three Airplanes That Do Good for Charity

Airlines find many reasons to put fancy paint jobs on their airplanes. There's retro throwbacks, cartoon characters, sports teams and more, but we've spotted a few fun other ones lately—airplanes that pay tribute to charities:

Delta's Habitat for Humanity Boeing 767:
Slick blue swipes all around the plane and an unfamiliar logo on the tail? From a distance, it's hard to figure out what airline and airplane this is exactly, but a quick reach back into all that useless knowledge in the pockets of your mind, and you'll see it's actually a Habitat for Humanity logo. Delta supports the cause by arranging for their employees to build houses, but also by funding the organization via the airline's onboard recycling program. More details here.

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Delta Adds a Few 'Trip Extras' to Their Booking Pages

We’re not really big fans of upselling at the airport, but it seems that the airlines won’t quit when it comes to offering up this and that for a fee. Delta has long been charging for checked baggage—just like all the other legacy carriers—but now they’re moving some of their extras right into the airline booking page. This is hardly something new for the airline industry, but Delta is quick to advertise it as a cross between a convenience and a perk.

Things like Priority Boarding are now available to be added onto your base airline fare—kind of like an order of fries—for as low as $9 per segment. Sure it’s a nice option to have, and we guess it’s best to take care of things all it once. However, we’re usually kind of fine with pushing and shoving ourselves to the front of the boarding line, and then just tossing our carry-on up and over an elderly grandma before finding our middle seat—we’re kidding of course.

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Believe It or Not, Delta is Making LaGuardia Airport Cool Again

Excuse us for breaking out the colorful language, but the renovation of the Delta terminal at New York-LaGuardia is fan-f*cking-tastic. Simply excellent, no sarcasm here (for the time being).

We knew Delta was seriously getting down with LaGuardia lately, adding new routes and bringing in top chefs to run the terminal's eateries, but actually stepping into the renovated spaces is far different from reading the press releases. And, as former frequent flyers from this terminal when the best it could do was a Sbarro's and Starbucks (the Starbucks with a few wobbly, bar-height tables and no chairs), we're thrilled that Delta is actually making it a terminal out of which we want to fly.

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U.S. Air Travel Set to Double, Airfares to Follow

It took U.S. airlines all of eleven days to increase ticket prices in 2012, with Delta announcing on the second Wednesday of the year that it was hiking some round-trip fares $20. United,, American Airlines, and US Airways promptly followed and then Southwest increased their one-way fares by $10. Dryly opined the USA Today's Travel section in response: "Fare increases often don't last because carriers don't want to price themselves too high...a low-cost carrier matching is a good indicator that [the hike] will stick."

Airlines had spent the 2011 holiday season and the very end of the year trying and failing to make airfare increases stick (and before you think that increasing holiday airfares is just how the airline industry works, no it isn't). So it was kind of a big deal when Delta managed to get the industry to follow along last January. Unfortunately the airlines seem to have figured out this "rate hike" trick, since the FAA just announced that air fares are likely to stay high "throughout this decade." Terrific.

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