May 09 2008
This should be a movie:
On February 1st a group of tourists from Ghana arrived in Barbados for a two week holiday. Their flight on Ghana International Airlines was to depart on February 15th. It did not show up. The 61 Ghanaians waiting for the flight were unable to simply take the next flight out, as there is no service between the two countries (not surprising). Though I have no idea what I would’ve done in this situation, I would likely not have done what some of the passengers did: they found jobs so they could make some money so they could stay in Barbados until a plane arrived to pick them up.
On May 8th, 2 1/2 months after their flight was supposed to depart, a chartered Miami Air plane picked them up and took them home. I’m not sure how much notice the passengers gave their new employers before departing.
Now THAT is a flight delay. Stop whining when your trip from Louisville is 45 minutes late.
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May 09 2008
Isle of Man-based airline EuroManx has announced it is shutting down its operations because of fuel, blah blah blah. Using two Dash-8 turboprops, the airline served Belfast City, Liverpool, London City and Manchester from the Isle of Man.
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May 07 2008
A Delhi consumer court has ordered Air Deccan to pay about $1,600 to a family who missed a wedding because their flight from Delhi to Bagdogra was canceled due to bad weather. The airline says that the cancellation wasn’t their fault, but the court said they did not prove the weather was bad in Bagdogra. Said the consumer court: “The complainant and her family members had suffered a lot of mental pain, agony and emotional harassment due to cancellation of flight.”
Yes, you read that correctly. In the US, the courts have decided that in the event of a long delay, airlines don’t need to provide you with food or toilet. In India, though, you can sue them if your flight is delayed. Sweet.
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May 07 2008
British Airways CEO Willie Walsh told Parliament that, perhaps, just perhaps in hindsight BA wasn’t actually ready to open Terminal 5 last month. It may have been the thousands and thousands of lost bags that led to that conclusion. Or the 28 elevators that weren’t working. Or whatever. (In case you were wondering, 125 bags are still lost).
Walsh said that because the $8 billion terminal was delayed, the airline did not train staff sufficiently nor did they test the facilities in a thorough enough manner. He takes the blame (of course), but he disputes that it was that bad: “People have spoken of T5 as a national embarrassment. If we were to be honest, Heathrow has been a national embarrassment for many years.”
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May 06 2008
Fuel cost have caused Oakland and LAX to lose existing and planned service: American is pulling out of Oakland after serving the city for more than 60 years. Oakland has also lost service from ATA, Aloha and Skybus in the past month or so.
JetBlue said that it will not launch planned service between LAX and NY/Boston. Passengers who have booked those flights will have the option of flying out of Long Beach. That sigh of relief you heard was Virgin America.
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May 05 2008
Delta is offering a $50 Amex gift card if you book a flight between JFK and LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Portland and Seattle for travel through the end of June. Take that, JetBlue.
(Reader Tom points out that JetBlue has a similar promotion - book your JetBlue ticket by May 16 for flights until June 11th anywhere they fly and you’ll get $50 off a future flight).
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May 02 2008
American Airlines recently lost a lawsuit filed by skycaps in Boston who claimed they had lost wages because of American’s $2-per-bag charge for curbside check-in. American’s subcontractor for skycaps then raised hourly rates for skycaps to about $12-14/hr, from the $5.15 per hour they used to receive (along with a hefty set of tips).
In response, the airline has forbidden skycaps in Boston for accepting tips from customers. Seems a bit petty, no?
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May 01 2008
Beleaguered South African lowfare carrier Nationwide Airlines shut down a couple of days ago for the usual reasons (fuel, no pricing power) and an unusual reason (people questioned the company’s safety record after an engine fell off a plane). Now, sources are reporting that a couple of companies are interested in stepping in purchasing the assets. This won’t help people who have been stranded or paid with debit cards, but it would save employee jobs (always a good thing).
Low fare service in Africa is still few and far between (though South Africans have a couple of options), and high fuel costs make it that much less likely that the few remaining can survive.
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May 01 2008
A heavily intoxicated male passenger died on a Moscow-to-Toronto flight yesterday, and police are treating the death as suspicious. Authorities in Toronto spent 5 hours interviewing all of the passengers and discovered (stereotypes aside) that several people on the flight were drinking large quantities of alcohol straight from large bottles. The dead passenger was one of those drinking. He was also reportedly belligerent until he lay down in the aisle, turned blue, and died. Police haven’t yet figured out what happened.
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April 30 2008
Every so often when an airline goes out of business (or nowadays, roughly every 20 minutes) the airline message boards fill up with people trying to predict the next airline to shutter. Without fail, Allegiant is mentioned. Those people are idiots.
Allegiant announced their results late Monday night and they don’t resemble any other airline in the US. Last quarter they earned 47 cents a share. Even those who don’t follow the industry will note that they didn’t lose 6 billion dollars. They earned more than $25 a passenger from ancillary (non-ticket) revenues, a 35% increase over Q1 last year. Their cost per available seat mile jumped 25% because of fuel, yet they managed to increase revenue per available seat mile by 16%. Sure their fuel costs went up (they don’t hedge), but they focused on those ancillary revenues, and it paid off.
Articles about Allegiant typically note their fuel-thirsty old MD-80s that they fly, but they’ve made the (correct, apparently) decision that the extremely low aircraft costs outweigh the increased fuel consumption. That move is completely against the conventional wisdom of buying new planes to save on fuel. And it was the right decision for them.
But their smartest decision has to do with their route map, which takes passengers a couple of times a week from tertiary cities to Vegas, Phoenix, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa (primarily) . They used to rely on Vegas more heavily, but they’ve diversified a bit to alleviate some risk. Great call. They are also very willing to drop cities that aren’t working, much to the chagrin of the small airports losing service. But most importantly, on something like 90% of their routes they have no nonstop competition. They are basically a monopoly carrier on every route they fly, allowing them to charge, perhaps, more than they would have with competition (though their fares are certainly low) and earn more on top of that with ancillary sales.
Perhaps the problem, then, with the airline industry is not fuel, it’s pricing. Allegiant needs fuel — and uses more than similarly sized airlines because of their old planes, yet they’re very profitable because they have focused on the revenue part of the equation (and their route structure) far more than any other airline out there. They get roughly zero credit for this, but that’s just fine as long as they stay the hell out of everyone’s way. Well done.
(For full disclosure, as a mention every time I write about Allegiant, I own a small number of shares in the company. I obviously can’t affect the share price, but I think it’s only fair that I disclose that…)
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Passengers Stranded in Barbados for 2 Months