Air NZ has been experimenting with travel insurance being opt-out instead of the more customer-friendly opt-in.  Ie travel insurance is automatically included (for extra $) unless you take a step to unselect it.  This is a practice I detest.  I’m not alone in hating this – US travel consumer advocate Christopher Elliott calls insurance opt-out reprehensible. 

You come to expect it as a money grab from low cost airlines, but it isn’t a practice I’d associated with Air NZ … until recently.

Air New Zealand claims insurance opt-out is an industry norm.  However, that wasn’t my experience with dummy bookings for their main competitors and a few other sites.  A quick browse reveals the following airlines and online travel agents have insurance opt-out (please let me know if I’ve missed some):

• Air NZ
• Frontier
• Jetstar
• Orbitz
• Pacific Blue
• Spirit
• Travelocity
• Yahoo Travel

Spot the odd one out!  For those surprised not to see Ryanair (or EasyJet or …) in the list above, that is only thanks to EU regulations banning the practice.

If you find you have purchased travel insurance by accident, almost everyone will allow it to be cancelled if you call within 24 hours (and some have longer cooling off periods).  However, it is still annoying to do so and doesn’t help those who don’t want insurance and didn’t notice they have bought it. 

Air New Zealand please change insurance to being opt-in – you’ll annoy a lot less customers and potential customers, as well as saving a lot of time and effort in dealing with cancellations and customer complaints.

One of my peeves are websites that don’t hold a fare when you select flights and only after you’ve entered your details let you know the fare is not available.

Low cost airline Jetstar does this whenever there is a super sale, which is why I no longer bother.  Air New Zealand grab-a-seat also does this meaning getting $1 (or $20 or whatever) fares is a lottery even after you’ve selected the flights.

Yesterday I encountered similar on a normal, non-sale fare with Emirates.  No matter which flights I selected from the many options available, when I hit the button for purchase now (after entering all my details) I was advised the fare wasn’t available and to use search by schedule function instead.  The search by schedule consistently returned fares about $2000 more than the search by price function, for the exact same flights and dates.

This website flaws are annoying and not limited to the 3 airlines I’ve mentioned.  What airline/online TA website issues do you find annoying?  What do you do about it?

I’m not referring to the no fly list or the TSA watchlist.  Instead there is another, trouble-maker, list being kept by the TSA.  Apparently people causing “trouble” at security checkpoints in USA, or even those who witness incidents are being logged and monitored in this list (source USA Today). 

This, well, troubling for the great potential for abuse of power and loss of rights. So far, if the report of 240 logged incidents are correct, this potential abuse by screeners/officers probably hasn’t occurred.

What isn’t (yet) obvious is what is done with the information. Do people on the list get added to the no fly list or watchlist? Do they get SSSS’ed for extra screening every time they try to fly?

The British Airways cabin crew union Bassa has won their appeal against the recent injunction and their strike is back on again.  The planned strike days are

24-28 May
30 May-3 June
5-9 June

BA has a webpage with information for affected travellers.

Parts of Europe continue to have intermittent airspace closures due to ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcanic eruption. 

The UK met office has handy 5 day forecast maps of ash density over Europe and northern Atlantic Ocean which is helpful for travel planning. 

Note the forecasts do not allow for future changes in eruption intensity (which are unknown) and do not forecast airspace closures since those decisions are made by aviation authorities.

The first part of the planned 20-day BA cabin crew strike is cancelled by court injunction (source BBC).  BASSA, the cabin crew union, is appealing the decision. If they win an appeal then the strike will be back on again 19 May to 9 June.

This is the second time in this dispute that British Airways has managed to halt a strike before it commenced on technicalities – the planned Christmas 2009 strike was also cancelled by court injunction.

The long running dispute between British Airways and BASSA, a cabin crew union, continues.  New strike dates have been announced for:

18-22 May
24-28 May
30 May-3 June
5-9 June

(source BBC)

For those keeping track, there have been strikes and attempted strikes in December & March (twice). In the March round of strikes, British Airways operated a significant proportion of flights (almost all longhaul flights and most shorthaul) and I’d expect the same again this time.

Between strikes, threat of strikes and Icelandic volcanoes it has been a rough time to be flying BA.

British Airways will post information on flight cancellations & rebookings on their website here.

The notice period for the US passenger bill of rights is now up and the regulations have been in force since Thursday 29 April 2010.

For USA domestic flights, airlines now have certain obligations once an on-ground onboard wait reaches 3 hours (ie 3 hours since boarding completed and not yet taken off, or 3 hours since landing and not yet disembarked).  For international flights departing from USA (or on US-based airlines), obligations are less specified but every airline must have their own published policies dealing with significant delays.  Note small aircraft (under 30 seats) are exempt.

Link to the US regulation here.

As each day of massive disruption to travel to, from and across much of Europe passes and the economic burden keeps climbing (now in billions of euros), there has been mounting pressure on politicians and regulators to reopen skies.

One example is the UK authorities apparently were forced to allow overflights over UK above 20,000 feet despite their own concerns about safety (they ruled UK airlines could not overfly closed UK airspace, only non-UK airlines).  This opening up of higher altitude airspace obviously helps continental airlines whose own regulators have opened up (or partially opened) their own airspace.  But if the ash concentrations are high enough at lower levels in UK and neighbouring countries, there may be a risk of engine damage to aircraft that then subsequently overfly UK.   This isn’t just a theoretical risk – there have been reports of at least 3 incidents of some ash damage in aircraft over Europe in the past few days even with such limited flights as there have been.

If that aircraft then had difficulties (perhaps unrelated), how can it safely land if it has to descend through airspace that is closed due to the ash cloud? There is an inconsistency here in the approach taken by UK authorities and some of those based in continental EU.

The last few days have seen a number of European airlines undertake publicity stunts – so called test flights.  The flights undertaken provide limited data because there is evidence that ash concentrations vary considerably over even short distances, and winds mean a “clear” path flown by one aircraft may not be clear if flown by other aircraft at a later time.

Why this is a big problem is that unlike thunderstorms which can be detected by radar, ash cannot be seen except in high concentrations in daylight – by the time an unseen ash clump damages engines it may be too late to do anything about it.

Today British Airways went one step further by flying about a dozen longhaul flights to London despite the authorities having advised the airspace is closed until (at least) several hours after the flights were due to arrive. With most other nearby countries also having closed airspace and airports not accepting diversions this approach seems reckless to my naive view. Indeed some of these aircraft spent considerable time flying circles at high altitude at various places around UK as if waiting for clearance to land.

The latest news is that Lord Adonis, Transport Secretary, has just announced that UK airports will reopen at 10pm tonight local time (source BBC).

If it is a case of politicians, or regulators, being encouraged to weigh economic factors instead of safety ones, that is very concerning. I hope that is not the case here, and I also hope there is no trajedy.

Much of Northern and Western Europe airspace is again closed, for the fourth day running, as the ash cloud slowly drifts south and east.  Current eruptions are not lifting ash high enough to affect continental European airspace, so these effects are from material ejected a few days ago.  Assuming the Eyjafjallajokull volcano continues to slowly quieten, flights are anticipated to resume in a few days time.

In the meantime, millions of people have had their travel disrupted. Airlines, land transport and accommodation are being affected worldwide. Once the ash clears it will take several days at least to clear the backlog of passengers.

As posted previously, a volcanic eruption is an “act of god” and thus airlines are not liable to provide compensation. However in some jurisdications (such as EU regulation 261/2004 for EU-based airlines and all flights from EU), airlines may be responsible for duty of care (ie providing accommodation for stranded passengers).  Travel insurance should also help out, as long as it was purchased before 14 April 2010.