If you were a a member of Spanair’s Frequent flyer programme, and were Gold or Silver, there is some good news. Some Star Alliance Carriers will now match your status.

BUT… and here’s the big BUT – No miles transferred. In other words, all your earned Spainair miles have gone in smoke.

Star Alliance will be contacting you, but if you’ve heard nothing by February 23rd… you’ll need to contact Star. On the Star Alliance Web site the following is displayed

“Star Alliance offers Status Match to SpanairStar Gold and Silver Card Holders

With Spanair having ceased operations since 27 January this year, the airline’s Frequent Flyer Programme (FFP), SpanairStar, has also been discontinued.

In appreciation of Spanair’s FFP members’ loyalty, all SpanairStar Gold and Silver card holders are being contacted with a status match offer from several Star Alliance member carrier’s FFP. Please note however, that the accumulated miles can unfortunately not be transferred into other Star Alliance member airline FFPs.

If you are SpanairStar Gold or Silver member and still haven’t received the email from Spanair about the SpanairStar Status Match by 23 February, please contact us at status.match@staralliance.com and we will direct your concern to Spanair. Please include your name, your SpanairStar status and your SpanairStar FFP number”

Now which airlines are offering a match? Well… here is the list:

• Aegean Miles & Bonus
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Air China PhoenixMiles
• Air New Zealand Airpoints
• SAS EuroBonus
• TAP Victoria
• Thai Royal Orchid Plus
• United Mileage Plus
• US Airways Dividend Miles

Now I can’t advise you what will be best for you (as to be honest, all the programmes have their up and downs. But you’ll notice one small airline is missing from that list: Lufthansa with it’s Miles and More programme…

Ok. I couldn’t resist. It’s Wednesday here, and it’s time for some Airplane Art EXTRA! And for those of you who couldn’t guess… it’s the ANA 787 at Frankfurt (Blue Sky) and Toyko Haneda

At Frankfurt

Tokyo Haneda

There’s a LOT more to come. Well I have a 16gb card is full of images. I’ll let you work out what I’m doing later on

And こんにちは!

Well I’ve flown with ANA’s Boeing 787 long haul. And I have a few thoughts already.

Highlights:

• The impeccable service

LowLights:

• Those electronic blinds. I’m not a fan.

That’s all I’m going to say on this for now – keep your eyes open for some pics on the Twitter feed and on Photoblog over the next couple of days….

Tease? Me? No. I haven’t even left the airport yet

Well it seems ANA are still waiting for another internationally configured Boeing 787 to arrive, and so is re-balancing the 787 timetable for March

Dates the 787 will operate in March 2012

• March 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 24th, 26th, 28th, 30th, 2012
• All other dates will be operated with an ANA Boeing 777-200ER

What is slightly more worrying is that the schedudle for Apirl has not been confirmed until the delivery schedulde for aircaft is confirmed

If you’ve booked at ticket with ANA specifically to fly on the 787, there are rebooking options - visit https://www.ana.co.jp/topics/notice120206/index_e_int.html to see the favourible changes you can make.

And you can swear a certain Japanese airline is getting rather annoyed at Boeing now.

Oh yes, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Frankfurt ground staff are still on strike. The news gets worse as it’s due to continue until at least Friday according to Lufthansa.

Here’s the hit list http://www.lufthansa.com/online/portal/lh/de/info_and_services/irregularities/canceled_flights?nodeid=3526064&l=en&cid=18002

Bottom line: Short Haul Domestic programme is a mess in Germany, whilst the European. Long haul appears unaffected, but to be honest I’d expect knock on effects. And yours truely is stuck in this.

Why?

Some of us have a long haul flight today

As Live from a Lounge has covered, the good times of Kingfisher may be drawing to a close according to The Hindu Times.

Kingfishers bank accounts are in a very precarious state – that of being frozen. Only 16 planes out of a 64 fleet strong aircraft are serviceable.

It also seems the lack of pay has forced employees to jump ship with 35 commanders jumping to IndiGo and crew and ground staff resigning en-mass.

Around 100 captains are left at Kingfisher to operate its Airbus A320 fleet, and has forced the closure of Kolkata based operations after most of the ground staff quit.

As has been written about before, Kingfisher has missed payments to oil companies and airports, and has failed to make a profit since it commenced operations in 2005, and has had its OneWorld membership suspended until it can sort its fiances out.

With a walkout like that, there’s less chances of that each day.

Kingfisher are pulling every last string with them blaming tax departments (who Kingfisher have failed to pay), the press for the constant bad reports, and no doubt the staff who are abandoning ship.

But as Spanair, Malev and Air Australia, if you don’t operate the routes, and have the income along with the cashflow, you can’t operate. And I’ve got this feeling with everything collapsing, the cash flow is pretty much dry by now.

And I’m sorry Kingfisher – that point of no return is coming awful fast unless they find a sugar-daddy to put them back in the air in the very near future.

I’ll let you guess the likelihood of that happening.

All is not good in Russia it seems as British Airways ramps up its planned Russia Expansion.

As it’s been reported, British Airways will be ramping up it’s flights to Moscow with a Boeing 747-400 from the WorldWide Fleet, upgrading it from a 767-300/A320 Operation.

An Application which British Airways has sent seems to have been lost to run the service. Oops. Others say foul play is at work with BAA refusing TransAero to run a 747 to London.

The uprated service is due to operate from the 25th March.

An agreement exists with Rosaviatsia, due to governance issues with the London<>Moscow/Russia routes,  are based on parity: designated carriers on both sides (British Airways and bmi – from Britain, Aeroflot and Transaero – from Russia) should conduct an equal number of flights with an equal volume of traffic.

However its important to note that, British Airways and Aeroflot are entitled to 21 flights each per week on the Moscow-London route and can “use any type of aircraft, including wide-body, such as the Boeing 747,” according to British Airways.

You’ll notice that Transaero is missing from the volume note.

British Airways insists:

“British Airways is in the process of applying for changes to flights between London and Moscow, as announced in September 2011, during the visit of a British trade delegation to Russia,”

“At the end of last year we applied for permission to switch to the new summer schedule in 2012, allowing daily flights using the Boeing 747 and two daily flights on the Boeing-767, more than 45 days prior to the start of summer schedule,” airline officials said. “It follows all the set time-frames.”

However it seems Rosaviatsia say they did not receive it, with then stating  that British Airways “did not send any applications.” and “If the request arrives, we will consider it.”

Transaero, however, has already applied for a similar increase (using Boeing-777 and Boeing-747) with the British authorities and Heathrow airport, but did not receive approval.

And Transero are.. annoyed.

“In the light of this, we consider the decision by Russian aviation authorities not to grant a similar permission to British Airways right,”  a Transaero representative said.

Expect this to run….

And that nod for Great Service goes to BMI who conducted a great service today on the Birmingham>Frankfurt run for Lufthansa.

Talkative, friendly, engaging, even whilst delayed for an hour twenty on the ground.

Let me put it like this: The food service was edible, the drinks were freeflowing, and the crews actually looked like they wanted to be there.

And it’s a cry shame it’s happened to late after the crapshoot that was modularisation, and the sale of BMI to IAG.

There will be in a lot more in the trip report, but BMI once again exceeded my expectations.

Well you read my post about the German ground staff action earlier.

Well it looks like my plane is on the ground for an hour plus, with an ETA into FRA at 11:20.

Good thing I’m not on a schedule….

Yup. The open road begins again. And this morning, it’s at Birmingham Airport (what laughably used to be called “Birmingham International Airport).

So far so good. Put it like this: I’m glad I checked in at the desk so I got a fasttrack sticker. The queues for security were… awful. Just awful

Anyway. Good morning from that ServisAir Lounge. And yes, it’s still an (What I still call an RCC) United Club wannabe. Without the charm.

Next stop once boarding completes  – strikeland itself – Frankfurt…..

It seems the GdF union has placed Frankfurt airport under strike action, and it will be hitting today (20th Feb). The strike will from Monday, 20 Feb 2012 from 05:00 CET to till Tuesday, 21 Feb 2012, 05:00 CET

The Lufthansa cancellation list is up – and it’s.. hefty. See http://www.lufthansa.com/online/portal/lh/de/info_and_services/irregularities/canceled_flights?nodeid=3526064&l=en&cid=18002

A lot of the killed programme is Domestic, but there are some European flights affected too.

If you’re heading to Frankfurt to day, check before you fly – there’s a good chance that you’ll hit a delay or a cancellation on the way