Archive for October, 2006
October 18 2006
The airline seat wars will take another step up as Singapore Airlines has announced that they will upgrade seats on their 777-300ERs (these upgrades were scheduled for the A380, but since Singapore is now rumored to be considering dropping the A380, here are the seats). First class flyers will enjoy a 23 inch LCD screen and 35 inch wide seats. This is just ridiculous. Business class has a 15 inch screen and 30 inch wide seats, while even economy will enjoy a 10 inch screen and wider seats. British Airways and Delta have also announced significant seat upgrades in the past weeks.
Interesting that as US airlines have boosted their international schedules to take advantage of higher fares, they’re running into stiffer competition on the product side. Delta’s learned pretty quickly that you have to invest in product to compete internationally. More competition and better product can only be good for business travelers.
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October 18 2006
SkyEurope, a central European airline, will pay you to fly. Yes, the European budget airline wars are getting slightly nutty, with SkyEurope charging -1 Euro for flights. With taxes and whatnot, it won’t be -1 Euro, but you get the point.
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October 17 2006
Go-Today is offering a cheap 4 night air/hotel package to Beijing from the west coast (LA, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland) for just $699 for travel in January and early February. This price is several hundred dollars cheaper than air alone. Departures from New York are just $110 more. Sure it’s cold there in January, but it’s cold here too…
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October 16 2006
(Thanks to View from the Wing for the heads up):
The NY Times (reg req’d, sorry) has an interesting article about the Essential Air Service program, which provides subsidies for airlines to fly to remote airports across the country. Lewiston, Montana, is one of these remote airports, and the airline serving it received, get this, $472 each way per passenger flying on the route. How many passengers is this? Fewer than 3 each day, on average. While the total dollars spent on the program is small, the article points out that many of the airports benefitting from these subsidies are not that far from major airports (such as Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is less than 70 miles from Philly). Makes for a good read…
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October 16 2006
British Airways has suspended an employee because, gasp!, she was wearing a small cross on a chain while she was working. BA has said that its policy is that all employees must wear jewelry, including religious symbols, under their uniforms. OK fine. As you might imagine, there is a bit of an uproar over this and we can likely expect the staff member to be reinstated. At least I hope so…
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October 13 2006
Via Travelzoo:
Emirates Airlines has a great deal on airfare to Hamburg on its new nonstop flights from JFK: for $346 round trip, you get a ticket PLUS either a night at the Hamburg Marriott, or 3 days car rental. The Marriott is usually $200, so this is a steal.
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October 13 2006
This is an odd one: An Indian Airlines flight attendant was approached by company officials prior to boarding a flight she was working. They asked her to step aside and get on a scale. They believed she was over the company’s 63kg (138 pounds, or so) weight limit. Turns out she was, and they fired her. Now that flight attendant is suing Indian Airlines for their discriminatory policy. The airline has grounded 140 staff members for weight-related issues. The airline basically admits that it wants younger (thinner) flight attendants and is weeding out the older (less thinner) ones through this policy. How progressive!
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October 12 2006
Delta and Northwest have both announced major international expansion plans yesterday, with Delta, especially, continuing to shift its strategy toward higher yield, lower competition routes.
Delta will begin service next summer from Atlanta to Prague, Vienna, Seoul and Dubai, while they’ll begin service from JFK to Pisa and Bucharest around the same time. Delta briefly (very briefly) served Dubai just before 9/11. The carrier hopes to achieve 40% of its revenue from its international operations. They’re trying a very different approach for a US airline, for the most part avoiding competition and opening new routes where they can command a premium. Assuming they can get their costs in line, monopoly routes + lie flat beds could mean success for them. Finally.
Northwest, meanwhile, is introducing new service to Brussels and Dusseldorf from their Detroit hub, as well as nonstop service from Hartford (????) to Amsterdam. Northwest has had meagre service to Europe compared to its other SkyTeam partners, so this should make people in the midwest quite happy. Even better, they’re adding about 4 inches of legroom in coach. Things are finally getting better in the back of the plane.
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October 11 2006
Good news for Delta flyers: The airline announced that it will be the first US carrier to offer fully lie-flat seats beginning in 2008. Expect to see all of the airline’s 777s and 767s equiped with the new product by 2010 (yes, that’s a while from now). Assuming they are still in business, you’ll enjoy fully flat beds and, also nice, a seating arrangement where you don’t need to climb over the person next to you to get out of the window seat. This makes American’s new seat look like a workbench. Expect Continental and/or United to match sometime soon…
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October 10 2006
Go-Today has a pretty good package from New York to Prague this fall and winter. For $549 you get a flight and 4 nights hotel good for travel November 1 through March 25th, excluding Christmastime. The price is about the same as the flight alone — what a deal.
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Singapore Airlines to Upgrade Seating