Well after yesterdays announcement that Abbey and Travelex are abandoning Visa Electron, Ryanair is taking advantage of this, and abandoning the Electron platform too.

However, to preserve customer choice and wider acceptability, instead of lowering fees for other debit or credit cards, they’ll now accept PrePaid MasterCards only as a fee-free form of payment.

Avalible as gift cards, PrePaid things and all sorts of promos, granted- they’re easier to get hold of. The Fees however will add up – including

• Purchase of card fee
• Loading fees
• Non useage fees
• etc

MasterCard UK has a list of card issuers.

Is this a good move? Probably in some respects as it opens lower reoccuring fees (of up to a £5 a time).

The fact you have to acquire the card (£5-£10) and then pay a load fee (2.5%-5%) means you really have to do a LOT more research.

Visa Electron users will suffer a £5/€5 fee from 1st January 2010. PrePaid MasterCard will accepted fee-free from 1st December 2009.

Note this is just for the booking fee that Ryanair levies on its users. Any other fees (air, toilet, luggage, checkin, etc) are still chargeable.

As sad as it sounds – expect other LCC’s to follow.

GhettoIFE.com towers would like to apologise this week – I’m down with a cold… the joy of work. Things could be more odder than normal…

It’s been reported that Abbey (Santander) and Travelex will be stopping issuing Visa Electron cards.

Why is this remotely important?

For those who buy tickets on Aer Lingus, BMIbaby, Easyjet, Flybe Jet2, Ryanair and a lot of the LCC’s, it’s another blow as a way of buying cheap tickets has vanished as they you will need to buy with with your normal Plastic

One of the few remaining issuers of Electron cards in the UK now is [b]HBOS[/b] – or Halifax.

Now, a lot of people haven’t heard of Visa Electron – with good cause – 8% of the population have these cards, with the target of these as “starter” bank accounts.

So yes – we know how much a card costs to process (30p upwards for Visa Debit Card) – and we know they’re adding this as a process markup, whilst its dressed up as “a clear pricing policy”

So airlines: KINDLY STOP MILKING IT PLEASE

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8384034.stm

It’s Sunday, so it’s time for some Airplane p0rn. This week its a US Airways A320 with Las Vegas as its backdrop

More next week!

It’s winter cleaning time here at GhettoIFE.com towers – so over the next few weeks you might find that certain keywords are being enhanced to increase visibility and user friendliness.

Ok. That’s the airline spin version – now for the translation

I’m cleaning up the blog a bit as the labels/keywords list is getting a bit unmanageable.  It should hopefully slim down a bit, with duplicates, variations and bad spelling errors being wiped out along the way – however it is taking time and will be done in a couple of weeks.

Thank you for flying GhettoIFE.com!

… or maybe some of the industry is run by a load of muppets…

But here for your IFE value.. is … the Rap.

Happy Thanksgiving Day to all American readers.

In the spirit of Turkey day… have some.. umm.. Diced Turkey!

Well even though I go a new Diamond Club Pack, it seems BMI is downsizing itself…

With the PR Spin distilled – it’s bad news.

• AMS (Amsterdam) to be suspended from 27 March 2010
• TLV (Tel Aviv) suspended from London on 9 January 2010, and the last flight departing Tel Aviv on 10 January 2010
• KPB (Kiev) suspended on 10 January 2010
• ALP – (Aleppo), with the last departure from London being 9 January 2010 and the last departure from Aleppo being 10 January 2010.
• BRU (Brussels) is transferred from BMI to Brussels Airlines.

Also:

• 2 x A330′s are approaching end of lease, and are to be returned to lessor – ending the long haul BMI Dream
• 2 x ERJ aircraft are now up for sale
• and most sad of all – 600 posts affected – and leading to redundancies.

Links to the BMI Route Announcement and the Major Restructure at Flyertalk

Good luck to those involved.

Additional Coverage: 

• Flight Global
• Sky News
• BBC News
• Business Traveller

So a nice black package arrvied in the post for me today… but what’s in it?

Ah. BMI wishes to communicate with me.

Oooh… Airport codes… and subtle bit of BMI Advertising.

Oh bugger. Eco credentials down the pan with lots of little advertising things.  Nice idea, but a booklet would had been cuter, and no doubt easier to print. Still – that’s our BMI.

Also notice the lack of BMI on a lot of the paperwork and the advertising of “Diamond Club” as a brand.

So where is the advertising that it’s a BMI Card?

Ah. Of course – the back of the Card – and on the luggage tags – where they all go obviously.

The good news is thankfully, there are reports of the new cards being accepted without a problem in most Star Alliance lounges, except AMS who have only recently seen the new card.

That’s our BMI…

The Europa Terminal – or what is these days known as London Heathrow Terminal 2 has sent its last passenger off into the night and has closed down, with the strip-out, demolition and rebuild

Flight AF1881 was the last to push back from the Europa Building (An hour late – that’s our Heathrow Airport) and thus closed 54 years of history of that low celinged check-in (as that floor was converted from a Car Park), drips and random coldness that was T2.

So what’s happening on the site? Well the building is being demolished (along with the Queens building – the admin block) in favour of the new T2, which will form the major hub for Star Alliance airlines, allowing T1 to be demolished in 2013, with completion in 2019.

In operations terms, the Star Alliance airlines have moved over to T1, whilst the remaining SkyTeam and non-aligned airlines (that’s Air France, Air Seychelles, Air Transat, CSA Czech Airlines, Libyan Airlines, Rossiya, Syrianair and Tunis Air) move over to T4.

Let it never be said that things never stand still at Heathrow… apart from when you’re waiting for a short haul push-back….

Big news from our newest members of the Star Alliance -  Continental

It seems to have issues with their the delivered LiveTV (LTV3) system installed in their Boeing 737-900ERs and 737-800′s, after discovery there is an out of specification problem on the units.

It looks like fix is simple – however – it will take time to do the fleet. Of course Continental have declined to state what the actual fix is.

My advice: Pack your GhettoIFE systems whilst Continental get this fixed…

Hattip: FlightGlobal

Well it’s taken long enough for the Greater London Assembly and Transport to London to get their heads around the rail companies and knock sense into them and FINALLY delivered Full Oyster for All Transport for London Network services.

If you’re a visitor to London (or an Oyster PAYG user), you have 3 options at the moment:

• Buy an Oyster Card any pay up for train services excluded by Oyster or
• Buy Paper Travelcards and get stung for the cost of them
• Buy a Weekly ticket and get stung majorly for it.

From the 2nd Jan 2010, this is abolished finally, with the Rail companies getting on board and new London map now available (with the exclusion of Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect between Heathrow Stations and Hayes and Harlington) .

All I can say is this: IT’S TAKEN LONG ENOUGH!  It’s going to make travelling in the capital on all forms of transport (Rail, Tube, Bus, Water – even Riverboats are going Oyster) a lot simpler.

PR: Transport for London