October 29 2008
(Thanks so OTR Swedish correspondent Marcus for the heads up)
Iceland-owned Danish airline Sterling has gone bankrupt, stranding thousands of passengers across Europe (I feel like it’s actually been a couple of weeks since we’ve seen a bankruptcy. Well done.) The carrier had flown to 40 destinations across Europe but struggled with higher costs, etc. The financial meltdown in Iceland certainly didn’t help, as it had been trying to raise additional capital over the past couple of months.
Unfortunately, if you’ve purchased tickets with them, they’re not refunding the cash - call your credit card company. SAS says they’ll help get travelers who are stranded back home.
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October 28 2008
Someone over at Airliners has posted the copy of an internal memo from the head OpenSkies that sounds very, very, very much like the type of memos we used to see at Eos right when it was getting bad: They’re not taking delivery of their 5th airplane thereby cutting out any expansion in the near future, they’re eliminating flights on slow days through the holiday season, they’re moving their headquarters to Paris, and they’ll have full codeshare on both the OpenSkies and L’Avion flights (even though the products are pretty different).
Much like Eos, it’s a great product at a fantastic price. Unfortunately, given the cost structure and economic environment, that’s not nearly enough to succeed.
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October 27 2008
Princess Victoria of Sweden was delayed boarding a Jet Airways flight in Delhi and was booed by fellow passengers when she finally boarded the aircraft, causing a bit of an international incident between Sweden and Jet Airways. Jet Airways admits that it did not follow correct protocols when dealing with the Princess, and that led to her delay in boarding the plane. Then for some reason they made an announcement on the plane that the delay was caused by the delayed arrival of a VIP which, as you may imagine, didn’t make the passengers very happy. Jet Airways has apologized profusely.
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October 27 2008
This is not something you hear every day: A Jet Airways flight attendant fell out of a 737 at Delhi’s airport while she was trying to close the door to the plane. She suffered only minor injuries when she fell and landed on her head after she slipped while closing the door. The airline claims she did not follow correct procedures for closing the door.
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October 24 2008
American is in some sort of pissing match with Continental, because they have a $35 each way fare from Newark to Belize (not good during X-Mas). Round trip comes to about $145 including taxes. Crazy!
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October 23 2008
A bit of a departure today for the OTR…
As some of you know, most of my time is spent running Tripmela.com, India’s only publisher of travel deals (if you know Travelzoo, we are Travelzoo for India - we publish a weekly email newsletter and website with airfare, hotel and package deals for India). We also run Searchmela.com, which is basically Bookingbuddy for India (airfare and hotel comparison). We’ve been running for nearly 3 years, but it’s been a fulltime endeavor for about a year since we raised a bit of cash.
Long story short: we need some help in three areas, and I’m using Online Travel Review to hit my readers up for ideas with the following (I thank you in advance for indulging me):
- We have not seen the growth in Tripmela newsletter subscribers that we had hoped. We can acquire customers cheaply, but we’ve struggled to drive free traffic to the website. If anyone has any thoughts about how we can do a better job driving traffic, I’d love to hear them.
- Searchmela actually works pretty well - we’ve launched paid search campaigns driving cheap traffic to the site. Our issue is getting more people to do searches (which is how we get paid). Feel free to check out Searchmela.com and any suggestions you have about how to increase the number of people actually doing searches on us would be very helpful.
- Last, and most importantly, we have been trying to raise about $700,000 to take the business to the next level. We feel we have all the pieces in place (nearly 100,000 newsletter subscribers; paying clients, etc), but we have, as yet, been unable to find an angel investor (or investors) for the business. If you know anyone who might be interested in hearing a bit more about Tripmela, I’d be extremely thrilled to chat. We’ve found that people who understand the travel business and people in the Indian American community are the most receptive, as they understand the potential. We think there’s a great opportunity here, and we know that the right investor will help make it possible. We just need some help meeting that person.
I can be reached at jared (at) tripmela.com
Thanks for your indulgence, and I promise I’ll be back on Monday with the usual ridiculousness.
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October 23 2008
(Thanks to Upgrade Travel Better)
I’m basically including this info solely for my friend Doug, who would be interested (for some reason) in learning how to crash your plane’s in-flight entertainment system. You can read the geek-heavy answer here.
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October 23 2008
Delta will launch once weekly 757 service between Atlanta and Monrovia, Liberia (with a refueling stop in Cape Verde) beginning next June. Bravo to Delta for expanding their African operations, especially to Monrovia, which hasn’t seen a US airline fly there since Pan Am.
For the airline nerd details: It appears from the announcement that you won’t be able to get out in Cape Verde - it will just be a refueling stop. The plane turns around after an hour in Liberia and heads back home, leading to a discussion here about where the crew gets on and off. The consensus seems to be that Delta will launch additional Africa service on 757s stopping in Cape Verde, and the crews will cycle through there. If so, building a decent sized African presence using 757s through Cape Verde would be a really interesting tactic. It didn’t work for North American Airlines, but with Delta’s feeder network, it may work for them.
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October 23 2008
Just a few months ago there appeared to be a large number of newspaper articles discussing how brilliant Southwest was for hedging fuel prices and then suggesting (at least hinting) that every other airline were fools for not hedging their fuel prices. Well, it turns out we now know why other carriers didn’t hedge: because it can be risky.
Northwest, United and Southwest have all announced large non-cash charges related to a decrease in the value of the hedges because of the price of fuel. (Gary from View from the Wing explains it all far better than I can here).
It’s just amazing how quickly fuel prices have turned around and how airlines get burned when fuel prices go up and burned when they come back down.
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October 22 2008
An Edmonton woman has filed an $85,000 lawsuit against Air Canada after a flight attendant spilled an unspecified hot beverage on her (by accident) during a flight from Vancouver to London. The plaintiff claims that her “inner thighs and pubic area” were burned when the flight attendant spilled the aforementioned drink. She also says her vacation was ruined because of the emotional stress she suffered after spilling her drink.
I believe this speaks for itself.
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Danish Lowfare Airline Sterling Goes Bankrupt