News from New Zealand and Air New Zealand with Rob Fyfe resigning from the carrier – to leave at the end of the year.

Rob Fyfe joined the airline in 2005, and has done his best to keep the airline afloat in troubling times. He is resigning from Air New Zealand to allow the airline’s s “talented and capable” executives the room to realise their full potential  according to him.

In quotes, Rob Fyfe said:

“After almost a decade at Air New Zealand, I am an Air New Zealander to the core and I live and breathe Air New Zealand every day. At the same time I’m very conscious that I am surrounded by many very talented and capable executives and if they are to grow and realise their full potential I have to create the space to allow them to do so” 

Air New Zealand shares took a dive by 1.1% to NZ$0.90 on the news. This is a bit of bad news to the New Zealand government who are considering a partial sale of the stock it owns in the airline to reduce its holding to just over 50%.

Rob Fyfe is an interesting character, and hasn’t been afraid to do the odd publicity stunt, appear in adverts or even in the Air New Zealand own adverts – and has been through the ups and downs that is about right for the industry.

Who takes over the mantle has yet to be announced, but there’s a tiny bit of a rock star’s position that has to be filled.

From the New Zealand Herald, good news if you’re a lover of Air New Zealand on the long haul routes from London to Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Auckland – they’re safe for now, but expect seasonal cuts.

Air New Zealand seem to be struggling to make London pay, but it seems everyone is still struggling – reason enough for Air New Zealand to bang about Kiwi service, and try and get backsides on seats.  The likely outcome for Air New Zealand will be seasonally adjusted services – with less services at weaker times of the year, and maintaining services when demand exists.

Air New Zealand operates to London on a 1-stop strategy, calling at either Los Angeles International or Hong Kong International on the way – operating daily via LAX, and 5 times a week via HKG.

As everyone knows, it’s tough out there, and profits are thin on the ground thanks to rising oil prices and rising taxes.  For Air New Zealand, this is pressing as Long Haul routes were loosing the airline more than NZ$1 million a week.

For those who love the Kiwi product, the only way to keep it in London is simple: Keep flying it. Whilst I haven’t been aboard an Air New Zealand flight (little things like money and a lack of time don’t help), the product looks good all around (except for the space cramming 3-4-3 seating down the back of the plane).

Oh dear… This one completely slipped off my radar, but I still think it’s worth including…

How this is related to flying is beyond me (it might have something to do with Auckland – but that’s to be proved – and even then the campaign has been pulled
) , but this is Air New Zealand – the company that has introduced ghetto sleeping systems and a new Premium Economy product…

… that I’ll go into a bit later on today…

Sorry I haven’t had a chance to do this this past two weeks – life at Kevin Towers has been close to a living hell. Those who know the words “Exchange Server Migration” will know where I’m coming from.  As last weeks news is more or less irrelevant like any news (ask the The Daily Mail after this weeks furoiri over the death of Steven Gately commentary piece by one of their so-called columnists), this is from last Saturday to today.

Lufthansa IFE – adds a C with the return of LONG HAUL KU BAND INTERNET SERVICES

This is a BIG thing as companies develop ways of getting out their holes. LH is once again going to have a go at delivering In-Flight Internet Services.  Originally delivered as Boeing Connexition, LH has signed a Deal with Panasonic eXConnect – for rollout in late 2010 on LH only – BMI, Austrian or Swiss need not apply – yet.

Delivered over the KU band this is satellite to aircraft mobile connectivity.  Along with Row 44 (who are equiping Southwest’s 737 ENTIRE fleet) and Aircell, the battle of Internet Connectivity is starting to warm up…

Flight, Runway Girl, Cranky Flyer

Boeing 748-8F – Growing Pains. 
It seems Boeing is just not having ANY Luck with airframes with the first flight of the first 747-8F being pushed back from first flight on Dec 9th and delivery next year to Q3 2010. Delays have been placed firmly at the door of the minor engineering errors that have been missed thanks to the resource pulling to get the 787 out of the hanger.

Expect more delays here – I’m seeing nothing from Boeing to indicate this frame will be out of the barn on schedule.

Flight

Cathay Pacific – 2% traffic drop in September

Its still bad if you’re a premium carrier as CX is proving. With a few “local” events, there is a small traffic upswing, but it is extremely tough going out there

Flight

Avianca-TACA tie up to go toe-to-toe with COPA.

It seems COPA Airlines will have a challenge shortly with the tie up of Avianca and Groupo TACA pooling their resources and joining forces. COPA says their network will be strong enough to resist.

I’m not sure – with COPA’s exit from Skyteam on the 25th October, they’ll be partnerless for a fair bit before entry to the Star Alliance is considered…

Avanica-TACA  don’t want a flight it seems, as they wish to grow resources instead of going toe-to-toe with LAN or COPA.  We’ll see on that front.

Flight

Blended winglets save cash – Air New Zealand.

Apart from getting neekid and doing the bodypaint thing, Air New Zealand appear to run airline services too, with good cash and fuel savings on the 767 fleet which have blended winglets.

Improved deployment has meant 19% fuel savings – or 7 Dillon liters of fuel a year. That’s a lot of go-go juice – before you get the green crowd happy.

That and those blended winglets do look very cute on a plane. More on Winglets in a GhettoIFE.com article when I get round to finishing it.

Flight


Air India switches entirely to Boeing 777′s from it’s motley collection of aircraft. Also gets bailed out at the same time

All westbound flights from India have been switched to 777′s – as well as Toyko. As well as that, Air India has been bailed out by it’s home government to the tune of  US$1.1 Billion which is to be delivered in wages.

Alas, there are wage cut concerns  as well with this change with a previous strike the week before.  Expect further fireworks shortly…

Flight, BBC News

US Airways gets shot of its E-190′s to… Oh guess who.

The fleapit of the Star Alliance has thrown in the towel with it’s E-190 operations – and has flogged them to.. Republic (who incidednly helped US Purchase them in the first place). Initally the first four will go to Midwest Airlines.

Of course, this means more cuts and job losses at US…

Flight

Odious Little Man is at it again
See http://www.ghettoife.com/2009/10/once-again-bbc-and-odius-little-man.html

GhettoIFE.com, BBC News, TravelMole

Unions tell BA – Hold off on cuts

Unite has stomped its foot up and down telling BA to try and stave off the cuts that are needed. Further talks are upcoming on the 21/10.  However, if they don’t go well, strike action is on the horizon..

BBC News

Mesa consider more CRJ-200′s to GO! to the Hawaiian Islands.

After driving Aloha out of the market, Mesa is considering deploying a 6th CRJ-200 over to the islands, with Shuttle America E-170′s moving out, and CRJ-200′s moving in to meet size and requirments.

What a downgrade. More on the flying coffin that is the CRJ-200 in a few weeks.

717′s head south of the border to Mexicana.

Mexicana is accelerating the collection of it’s 717 fleet with the displacing of the Midwest 717s, with 10 currently in service, and the full collection in-sitiu before the end of 2010with delays down to pilot training if anything.

The 717 as readers know is basicly a warmed over MD-90 with new avionics – which although is a very good beast isn’t compatible with the previous MD series or Boeings own 737 series.

It’s good to see these birds still flying.

Air France considers PE Cabin on A380s and decides to copy other carriers. 

With the rapid introduction of Premium Voyageur shortly on 777′s, they would like to deploy them on their new A380′s… if they can actually consider the retrofit to the aircraft.

In better news, A380 traffic between Paris CDG – New York JFK is due to kick off on 23rd November.

That’s your lot for this week. Next weeks news update will be delayed as I’m back in Chicago. Hopefully there should be *something* up…

It seems Air New Zealand is once again out to cause a little mischief with music, rapping, safety videos and of course… body paint.

I’ll let the cabin crew say their words…

A safety video mashup. Oh well. Anything for a bit of fun…

So how about it then Southwest? Are you free to roam to New Zealand and play this game?

Well, someone had to try and take Deltalina’s crown.

And ladies and gentlemen – we have a winner!

Earlier on, I blogged about one of Air New Zealand’s adverts – well it seems they’ve decided it was a bit successful… and have made a safety video!

All I’m going to say is Well done!!! Excellent work all around. Beat that Deltalina!

It’s amazing how far a little bit of body paint goes.

(There’s a game here too – called “Spot the CEO”).

An excellent bit of advertising – not as viral as the Delta Safety Video, but still pretty good…

Welcome to GhettoIFE.com!

I’m your host – Kevin – and I’ll be here to guide you through the maze of modern travel, and hopefully add some insightful comment and humour.

With GhettoIFE getting on for 2 years old, I’ve had a bit of a design refresh, and tidied up, so for older viewers who make it here – yes, it’s the same content will all the usual sarcasm as always.

As well as random posts on the days events, my trip reports and a few other bits, there will be a few “regular” slots including:

• The News – Commercial aviation news in a bite size ripped to bits segments.
• Trip Reports – When I actually go swanning off to explore the world.
• The Soapbox – Where I get to rant and moan about things – Signed Annoyed of Birmingham.
• Airplane p0rn – Yes it’s my photography lovefest of air planes All clean for work. Published every Sunday.
• How to save money … so far on telephone calls and how to get money on flights back via cashback
  
• And analysis on IFE and what’s happening in the world of IFE

GhettoIFE.com is updated once or twice a day depending on what’s going on in the world when I’m at my base, and a lot less frequently when I’m away travelling.

All the posts have a slightly twisted and humours bent, and of course comments are open. Please feel free to drop your thoughts in.

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