It’s that time of the week again – some more Airplane p0rn!

This week – A Qantas Bombardier Dash-8 400 just landing at Sydney Airport

More airplane p0rn of course – next week!

Update History:
- List Created 27/02
- Last Updated 13/10, Welcome Austrian Airlines!

I hate and love the iTunes App Store with both a single breath – least of all when I’m hunting for decent travel applications.

Even when hunting for Airline Apps, it can be a bit of a challenge – so to help things along, I’m going to try and build a list of Airlines who have iPhone apps – with links to the iTunes store. For ease of use, I’m going to split it along the lines of alliances

Now, before we go much further – This list is pretty incomplete. If you spot an airline who sneaks out an App, please let me know so I can add it to this list!

OneWorld

• Oneworld Timetable
• Aeromexico
• American Airlines 
• British Airways
• Cathay Pacific (CX Mobile)
• DragonAir
• Qantas

Star Alliance

• Air New Zealand
• Air Canada
• Air China
• Austrian Airlines
• Continental Airlines
• Asiana
• Lufthansa
• Swiss
• TAM
• Turkish Airlines 
• United *** (Not an Official App)

SkyTeam

• AeroMexico
• Air France 
• Alitalia
• Delta Airlines
• KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
• Korean Air
  

Non Aligned

• Air Berlin
• Alaksa Airlines/Horizon Airlines
• AtlasJet
• Belavia
• China Airlines
• China Eastern
• El-Al
• Etihad
• GermanWings
• GOL
• Jeju Air
• LuxAir
• Malysian Airlines
• Meridiana
• Nok Air
• Olympic Air
• Fly Pegasus
• SATA 
• Southwest Airlines
• Viva Macau
• Virgin Atlantic Flight Tracker

A few days ago, a mystery transaction appeared in my BMI Diamond Club account for 1000 miles.

Now a 1000 miles is always useful… but whyfor? Well a carefully worded apology came from Donnington Hall explains it all..

“Over the last couple of weeks you may have noticed we’ve been experiencing some problems with the Diamond Club login on our website. To protect your data and personal details we immediately disabled the login functionality.

Diamond Club login has now been reinstated. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and as a goodwill gesture have credited your Diamond Club account with 1,000 destinations miles.”

Whilst the extra miles are always appreciated, a bit more communication when the outage was occurring would had been helpful – least of all so that some of us could stop guessing when next we would know how many miles are left in our accounts…

For the masses out there who have brought 3G USB Modems (or as some call then “Dongles”), it’s time for some sobering advice regarding them.

William Harrison signed up for a 3GB/month Contract with Orange UK for a Mobile Data Plan – so he would have access to the Internet whilst on the move and during his internship in Paris.

Now if was using his dongle in the UK,& 3GB would be plenty for surfing or Skype’ing. However, the moment you pass beyond the borders of the UK – International Roaming rules apply.

This lead to one small problem – a first month bill of £6101.56.  William contacted Orange UK to block the dongle, which he did successfully – after racking up another charge of £1547.21 – taking his bill to £7648.77

I repeat in large letters:

£7648.77
that’s about 2.5GB of data!

That’s painful in ANY Currency. Orange has agreed to halve William Harrison’s bill, and has allowed two years for the debt to be repaid. That’s still a lot of dough in anyone’s book

Remember that EU roaming charges can vary, and can be expensive depending on the provider.

£3.00 – Orange UK
£3.00 – O2 UK
£1.50 – T-Mobile UK
£1.25 – Three
£5.00 – Virgin Media
£10.00 – Vodafone UK (per 50MB, charged per part)
 
These are EU Prices. Going out of the EU and you can double these prices without sneezing.

SO A WARNING: Unless your contract has provision or an agreement for out of country roaming, expect data bills to be BIG. It’ll work out cheaper to find a WiFi HotSpot than to use the dongle. An alternative (which IS viable in the EU mainly) is to pick up a dongle and a Pay-As-You-Go plan when you arrive at your destination.

Links:

The Observer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/feb/21/broadband-dongle-roaming-bill-shock
The Register: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/02/22/student_hit_with_huge_roaming_bill/

Ok – this one was completely off the radar. The New Olympic Airlines and Aegean Airlines are to merge to make a “New New” Olympic Air. 

Olympic air was built out of the remains of Olympic Airways (and the sorry saga behind that). Aegan has had a health growth over the past few years.

Alas, Greece and a lot of companies in that zone have suffered badly during the recession, so a merger of equals will have the obvious effects (Sorry, I’m going to use the S word) synergies (translation – dumping of crap parts of the two businesses and saving money), and will hopefully allow the new company to survive in the current and future environments.

The merger is of course – up for EU Competition Commission Approval

So what does that mean for Aegean’s entry into Star Alliance? This is very good question. Certainly a “Strengthened” Aegan is a good thing for Star, but this in turn begs another questions:

• Does Star wish to be associated with the damaged Olympic band?
• Is Star turning in an alliance of basket case airlines? (BMI, Austrian, SAS, Brussels, Air India to name a few…)

I’m not sure on either front – depending on approvals and the final decisions by Star Alliance management.  Suffice to say, there is thinking to be done in the weeks and months ahead as this progresses.

It seems spring is in the air for alliances as companies buddy up together. Today seems no exception with Kingfisher Airlines of India joining OneWorld.

A memorandum of understanding has been signed as a first step between the current 11 members of OneWorld and Kingfisher, and should progress into full membership – subject to Indian regulatory approval from India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation.

British Airways will be mentoring Kingfisher during this period, sponsoring the airline (who is also sponsoring S7 Airline’s entry into OneWorld)

Kingfisher is expected to join OneWorld (subject to approval) in 2011.

It’s an interesting move by OneWorld, who are needing to plug to India gap as Air India is slowly moving towards Star Alliance membership – which puts SkyTeam back in the catch-up position again – even with it’s recent admissions of TAROM and Vietnam Airlines.

The fate of Aegean airlines and Star Alliance is going to be an interesting question due to the tie up of Olympic Air and Aegean – more on this a bit later…

http://www.oneworld.com/ow/news/details?objectID=20873

It seems that going on strike is the in-vouge thing to do at the moment.

Both Paris-CDG and Paris-Orly controllers have walked out in a five day strike over job fears, with 25% running out of Paris-CDG and  50% of flights running at Paris-Orly

Staff are objecting to a six-national deal (between Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland) to improve and modernise Air Traffic Control, which it is feared jobs will be cut.

Air France long haul is allegedly unaffected, but short haul seems to be very affected. Check before you go and check http://www.airfrance.com for updates to this mad thing. If you’re heading into French Airspace, double check if your flight will or operate.

The Lufthansa/Germanwings strike has been suspended. Subject to the outcome of talks with the Union and Management, the next industrial action – if any will be 09/03. An agreement with union and management has been obtained after  a two-hour long hearing at a Frankfurt industrial court.

The strike will be officially lifted at Midnight CET, but expect serious distruption until planes are in correct posiition before services can resume as normal.

Not out of the woods yet if negotiations fail – but a long way there. Unlike BA…

In a completely unexpected move(!) British Airways staff in the Unite union have voted to strike with 81% of staff polled voting in favour of industrial action.

However British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association (BASSA) say this may not end in a strike.

Quote:

“We don’t want to strike,” said spokesperson Ken Ablard. “All we want is for BA to negotiate and not impose”.

Legally 1 weeks notice must be served before industrial action. This puts the strike to the 1st March, however Unite has promised not to strike over the Easter period in a play to the travelling public.

More updates will follow.

With the German Pilots union not willing to budge, nor Lufthansa – the strike action and emergency timetables are now in effect.

• Luftansa’s replacement timetable is here.  Lufthansa Italia routes are unaffected.
• Germanwings replacement timetable is also up here 

The action is expected to end Thursday (25) midnight.   Good luck if you’re caught in these actions….

It’s that time of the week again and time for some more airplane p0rn.

This week, to celebrate the additions to SkyTeam, it’s a KLM Fokker F70 on a CityHopper service from Birmingham Airport to Amsterdam Schipol.

More Airplane p0rn of course – next week!