There’s been union disputes for a while at Qantas, but the move to ground the international and domestic mainline fleet a day after the Qantas AGM is a surprise.

Latest Qantas updates at this link.

Affected flights (at time of writing)

Qantas operated international (and other airline codeshares on those flights)

Qantas mainline domestic

Unaffected flights (at time of writing)

Jetstar

Jetconnect (trans-Tasman flights except for A330 service between Auckland and Sydney)

Qantaslink domestic flights (numbered 1400 to 2699)

Qantas codeshare flights on other airlines

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority has grounded Tiger Airway‘s domestic flights for a minimum of one week, disrupting thousands of travellers.

Passengers who were due to fly Tiger Airways between 1 July and 9 July 2011 are being offered full refunds or credits for later travel dates.  With school holidays in some Australian states and the effects of intermittent ongoing disruptions due to ash from Chilean volcano Puyehue Cordon-Caulle, some travellers may have difficulty making alternative flights on other airlines.

Tiger Airways international flights to and from Australia, and throughout Asia, are unaffected by the grounding.

With the unrest/revolution (depending on your viewpoint) currently occurring in Egypt a number of airlines (but far from all) have ceased commercial flights.  Some governments are arranging charter flights for their citizens (and in some cases also for citizens of friendly countries).  In all cases, information is a little difficult to obtain but as best I can tell (from various sources), the following have already arranged some charter flights over upcoming days:

• Australia
• Azerbaijan
• Bahrain
• Belgium
• Canada
• China
• Greece
• India
• Iraq
• Israel
• Japan
• Kuwait
• Qatar
• South Korea
• Thailand
• Turkey
• USA
• Yemen

This list is probably incomplete as the situation is highly changeable.

If you are a visitor to Egypt and wanting to leave, best to first try to contact your embassy, secondly your government through people in your home country, and failing that enquire at the airport.

A number of the evacuation flights are to nearby countries such as Cyprus and Greece.  Accommodation in Larnaca and Athens may be tighter than normal for the next few days.

There are a lot of things you can plan or allow for in travel to make things go as smooth as possible, but controlling the weather isn’t one of them.  In the past 3 weeks I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to have near misses (by a few hours) with 3 tropical storms, each one of which had potential to cause significant inconvenience to my travel.

There are some steps you can take to reduce the risks – such as limiting travel in hurricane-prone areas in hurricane season, or have as few connections as possible in the US northeast and midwest during mid-winter.  However, some risks are unavoidable and all you can do is actively monitor the situation to make early changes to your travel plans, if it proves necessary.  I usually monitor a combination of national weather services, airport and airline websites and flightstats.

Germany has introduced an air passenger tax effective immediately for travel dates from 1 January 2011.  (Hat tip John Macilree.)

It works similar to the UK APD tax – rates based on distance to destination, German transits are exempt and certain domestic flights are also exempt (joy rides and flights to some islands).  The initial rates are (1) €8 to 2500km, (2) €25 2500-6000km, (3) €45 6000+ km.  Distances are all based on the location of the capital city and its distance from Frankfurt airport.

Thus category (1) includes all of Europe (incl Russia) plus part of northern Africa and Turkey.  Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jersey, Kosovo, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, and United Kingdom.

Category (2) includes the middle of Africa (incl Egypt), Caucasus region, Middle East region and Asia as far as the stans.  Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgzstan, Lebanon, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

Category (3) is everywhere else – ie southern Africa, North America, Central America, South America, Asia from China and India eastwards, Australia and the Pacific.

Given the stated intention to produce revenue rising to €4b by 2014, I bet the rates will increase from the initial settings.  Full text of the legislation is available here.

A while ago I asked how long is it reasonable for an airline to take to refund a fare?   Most responses suggested up to a week.

American Airlines took over 100 days to process a refundable business class ticket which unfortunately I needed to cancel due to change in circumstances.  When I commented that this was an inordinate amount of time, far in excess of their own policies published on the AA website, they weakly responded that they were busy.

Mexicana has stopped all their flights from 28 August 2010, including their domestic subsidiaries Mexicana Link and Click (source BBC).  The airline initiated bankruptcy proceedings a few weeks ago and has been operating a reduced schedule without taking any future international bookings (but continuing to sell domestic tickets). 

The previous return to leasors of a significant proportion of their fleet, and now this grounding is not a good sign for travellers with tickets to fly on Mexicana.  The Mexicana customer help website in English has not yet been updated, but the Spanish version has some information.

Mexicana Group deeply regrets the inconvenience this will mean for their clients. We ask for your understanding, continue to make every effort to minimize inconvenience to our passengers. In the case of passengers who began a stretch of their journey with Grupo Mexico, and have scheduled to fly after the date and time indicated, please visit the websites and telephone numbers at the bottom. Priority is given to unaccompanied minors, people traveling with children under 3 years and people with special needs.
For passengers who have not started your trip, we recommend carefully explore other transportation alternatives.
The application procedure is described in refunds mexicanainforma.com (Tickets purchased in the U.S. and Canada – Tickets purchased in Mexico and elsewhere), as well as in the following Helplines:
5448-8634
5998-5998
in Mexico City

01800-837-6150
01800-801-2010
from anywhere in the Republic

1-888-882-9994
1-877-801-2010
for the United States and Canada

In other countries please contact the local office of Mexicana.

One of my tickets I unfortunately needed to cancel and get a refund. Fortunately it was a refundable fare, with a small penalty. The fare was not refunded in a time I’d consider reasonable.  While I understand some airlines have a policy of taking around 4 weeks to process a refund in part to discourage speculative bookings of refundable fares, this particular case goes far beyond this timeframe. Other airlines are happy to refund instantly (funds are back on my credit card the same day) and I’ve even heard of someone getting a refund processed before the original charge was put through!

How long do you think is reasonable for a refund to take?

Strikes at BAA‘s 6 major UK airports (excluding Gatwick and Manchester) have been called off (source BBC).  If only BA’s (British Airways) never-ending cabin crew strike threats were solved as quickly.

The Unite union, following a year of disputes and strikes by cabin crew at British Airways, is set to inflict yet more significant inconvenience on UK travellers (source BBC).  Workers at the BAA airports (Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Southampton) are set to strike soon forcing the closure of those airports.  Note Gatwick and Manchester are not BAA airports.  Dates are not yet announced but anticipated to be late August (a minimum 1 week notice is required).