Archive for the 'News from Other Airlines Not Listed Here' Category
March 01 2006
(Thanks to the View from the Wing blog for the heads up):
Thanks to Hertz, you can get 10% off any Midwest Airlines flight over $200 by entering the coupon code HGMIDWEST when buying at Midwest’s website. Flights must be purchased by May 15th and are good for travel through June 16 (a handful of blackout dates apply). Always nice to see airline coupons out there.
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February 28 2006
The Ryan family, which founded Ryanair, announced that is has joined forces with one of Mexico’s largest bus companies to launch a low cost carrier aimed at Mexicans with family in the US. The new carrier, reportedly named AeroBus, will launch in September and will likely target US cities with large Mexican populations, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Houston.
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February 28 2006
Are you an out of work pilot looking for a new airline to join? I may have something for you. SriLankan Airlines has lost 30 of its 200 pilots since late 2005, a situation that has gotten so dire that it actually cancelled 2 London-bound flights last week because of a pilot shortage. You should know that these pilots have left because they were offered better deals elsewhere. Even so, if you’re willing to bear the indescribable traffic in Colombo, this may be a job for you.
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February 24 2006
Venezuela’s government has announced (sorry, Spanish only…too lazy to translate) that they have cancelled all of Delta’s and Continental’s flights from the US to Caracas beginning March 1. Most of American Airlines’ flights are affected as well (though not the flights from Puerto Rico). As you may know, the US is in a bit of a pissing match with the Venezuelan government over oh-so-many issues. This probably stems from the US refusing to allow Venezuelan airlines to fly to the US on safety grounds. The affected airlines are still showing the flights as available after March 1st, so the governments may be negotiating.
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February 21 2006
Did an airline lose your bags last year? You’re not exactly alone. US carriers lost 10,000 bags a day in 2005, the highest number since 1990. The rate of lost bags increased 23% over 2004.
The worst offender? US Airways, which lost 9.62 bags per 1,000 passengers. Well done. Incredibly, this is 30% higher than the next airline (Delta). Gee, and why do people go insane trying to stuff their bags into overhead compartments?
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February 21 2006
No matter how bad your flight delays are this week, they’re nothing compared to passengers who were scheduled to fly on Biman Bangladesh this past week. Bangladesh’s flag carrier faced mechanical difficulties on 3 of the 5 DC-10s it uses for international service, forcing it to strand passengers around the globe. In the past week alone, the carrier has changed its international schedule 17 times. I’m sure Dhaka has its lovely parts, but being forced to spend an extra week there cannot be a happy experience.
An airline spokesman says that they are trying to lease additional aircraft to clear the backlog of passengers.
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February 17 2006
The always-great Ask the Pilot column at Salon.com takes a look at the state of pilot pay. It ain’t pretty. You can read all the details in the piece, but suffice it to say, pilots aren’t getting rich. Salaries for regional jet pilots begin at an unbelievable $16,000 a year. Roughly what the dude behind the counter at Starbucks makes. And at least Starbucks isn’t going bankrupt. Top pay is 40-50% below where it was before everything went to hell a couple of years ago. And while you may snicker at the tales of pilots making $300,000 a year for a handful of work days each month, those days are over. Well worth a read…
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February 16 2006
As you may know, El Al doesn’t screw around when it comes to security. To that end, El Al has installed anti-missle systems in all of its aircraft, becoming the first carrier to do so. The Israeli-built system, called Flight Guard, releases diversionary flares if its sensors detect an incoming missle.
Development of the systems, which cost about $1 million a piece, was put on the fast track after al Qaeda attempted to shoot down an El Al aircraft in Kenya back in 2002.
According to the linked article, we shouldn’t expect many other airlines to jump on board with this. On the other hand, the chance of an aircraft going down because of a missle attack is incredibly remote — a DHL A300 cargo plane was struck by a missle in Baghdad in 2004 and landed without incident (well, getting hit with the missle was an incident, but the landing was not).
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February 13 2006
A Turkish Airlines A340 skidded off the runway while landing at JFK airport last night. No one was injured, but it took workers about an hour to get passengers off the plane. New York City received about 27 inches of snow yesterday, so investigators are (obviously) looking into whether weather played a role.
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February 10 2006
Sir Freddie Laker, the aviation pioneer responsible for introducing cheap fares across the Atlantic, died Thursday at the age of 83. Laker ran Laker Airways, a British carrier, that flew the Laker Skytrain from London to New York. The airline offered $100 fares in 1977, 2/3 below what competitors were charging, making it possible for people to travel across the Atlantic on a whim for the first time (yes, Icelandair also had cheap fares at that point, but they required a stop in Keflavik—Laker was nonstop). Who needed a hot meal when the fare was so cheap?
Pan Am matched their fares in 1981 (after colluding with other airlines), and knocked the budget airline out of business.
Laker is the reason you can fly to London for $100 today, and his vision—stuff ‘em in, and take out the frills—has been adopted by most US airlines today. We can thank (and blame) him for the way industry looks, but without his idea, we’d all be paying $1000 to fly to London. And who would want that?
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