Archive for December, 2005
December 23 2005
Here’s a little tale to keep in mind when your flight home this weekend is delayed for an hour:
An Air India flight from Los Angeles to Frankfurt was delayed 45 hours (yes, 45 hours), causing a bit of pissed-offedness by (understandably) angry passengers. (Wire stories about this mention a "revolt" by passengers, but the stories don’t actually mention any revolt). The first plane they were on took off, but quickly returned to LAX because of mechanical difficulties. They then waited a day for another plane to be flown in, but after they boarded the engines on the plane wouldn’t start. However, passengers were kept on board the hot plane for five hours. Without drinks. The plane finally returned to the gate, sending passengers to a hotel at 2:30 in the morning. As you might imagine, though, a 747’s worth of passengers might overwhelm a hotel clerk a 2:30 in he morning. If you imagined that, then you can imagine the scene at the hotel. The flight, which was then re-scheduled to take off at 1pm the next day, finally left at 4:30.
Of all of that, the 5 hours on the rather hot Air India 747 would’ve done me in.
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December 22 2005
American Airlines announced that it will cancel its planned-but-not-launched service from JFK to Newcastle, England. The only reason to really care about this is that the US majors have placed a lot of their eggs in the international flight basket and the assumption was the international routes would save them. It’s now possible that they have shifted so much capacity to international routes that they, too, are becoming less profitable than hoped. This will be one of the major stories for 2006—whether the majors’ shift to international service will actually help them financially.
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December 21 2005
The story won’t mean much to you unless you are familiar with Joel Osteen, a wildly successful preacher who has been such a following that he holds Sunday services in a former basketball arena in Houston. Despite the fact that I’m Jewish, I find him mesmerizing to watch. I’ll flip by his show on Sunday morning and I can’t turn him off. I have no idea why. In any case, his wife, whom he frequently mentions in his sermons and is often portrayed in a very, very favorable light, apparently ain’t so nice. On a Continental flight from Houston to Vail, she (and the rest of the Osteen family) were kicked off the plane after Victoria Osteen found, as we Jews would say, schmutz on her tray table. She asked a flight attendant to clean it, but the woman was unable to clean it at that moment. Osteen snapped back, "find me a stewardess who can." She then pushed a flight attendant and tried to get into the cockpit. Did I mention that they were in first class? I should have. Security or police or someone came on the plane and removed the Osteens (Victoria, Joel and kids) and the flight was delayed 2 hours as their luggage was removed. Anyway, I’m not sure what the lesson here is, but I’ll be watching this Sunday to find out.
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December 20 2005
A sign of things to come? Small British carrier FlyBE will charge customers GBP2 for each bag that they check. Before you complain, they will knock GBP1 off their fare for any passenger who does not check a bag; plus, they’ve raised the weight limit to 25kg—the highest in the low fare market. This is part of the make-passengers-pay-for-what-they-use theory, which has worked well for Ryanair. Look for it on this side of the Atlantic in 2006.
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December 20 2005
All twenty passengers aboard a Chalks Ocean Airways flight from Miami to Bimini, Bahamas, were killed yesterday when their 1947 vintage seaplane crashed outside of the port of Miami. Despite that you may never have heard of Chalk’s, it is one of the world’s oldest surviving airlines, with flights dating back to 1919. The airline flies seaplanes that takeoff and land in water, something I got to experience on a Chalk’s flight about 20 years ago. This accident marks the first passenger fatalities for Chalk’s in the company’s 86 years.
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December 19 2005
Air India has told its staff that they have two months to lose weight or lose their job. The airline has had weight-related rules in place for a while, but they’re now beginning to enforce them. Spurred on by competition from a bunch of upstart airlines, Air India is trying to make its cabins–and cabin staff–more attractive to passengers. Says a spokesman, ""Imagine if crew members can’t fasten their seat belts, how can they fly?"
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December 19 2005
Wanna go to Tahiti for Christmas? Air Tahiti Nui can help you out…Tahiti’s flag carrier is offering round trip tickets from LA to Tahiti for $399 and from New York to Tahiti for $599. You’ve got to leave before December 31st. Sure it’s really, really far. But $399 is quite a steal.
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December 16 2005
The fine folks at Typepad (the software I use to write this thing) have not had a good day. Their site was down most of the day, which means that you didn’t get to hear about $599 fares to Tahiti or why Air India hates fat flight attendants. You’ll probably hear about it on Monday though. Have a great weekend.
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December 15 2005
Independence Air, which is currently on the ol’ auction block, continues to shrink itself down (or as some say, "right-size" the business). The company announced yesterday that it will discontinue service from Washington to Chicago, Jacksonville, Manchester (NH), and Buffalo. In addition, they will reduce frequencies in most markets.
(Incidentally, and this has absolutely nothing to do with anything, the people who live above us are SCREAMING at each other right now. At it’s 8 o’clock in the morning. Screaming. One of them must’ve booked tickets to Jacksonville on Independence Air or something.)
Anyway, according to the folks over at the Airliners message board, the airline told employees that it will keep flying through March. We’ll see.
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December 15 2005
A bunch of airlines are offering $49 fares from New York to Nassau, Bahamas, through March.
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Air India Flight’s 45 Hour Delay