Service Roundup

Spirit Airlines today announced nonstop service to San Pedro Sula, Honduras from its Ft. Lauderdale hub. Service will be offered three times a week from July 20th through November 15, when it will become daily. Southwest announced four daily nonstop flights in six cities. Beginning August 26th, one new daily nonstop from Manchester to Phoenix…

Ryanair to the United States

We’ve spent some time contemplating this issue…trying to come up with something to say on it. On April 12th, Flight International magazine announced that in an interview with Ryanair head Michael O’Leary plans to launch a new transatlantic serving the East Coast. He expects to serve secondary airports such as Baltimore, Providence, and Long Island…

Customer Service Stories

Ff you are a reader and want us to feature one of your stories, we are eager to. Here’s our rundown and synopsis of some of the recent ones we gleaned from other blogs…most from the Consumerist. Virgin Atlantic charged one passenger $110 for a seat upgrade, and gave the same seat to another passenger…

Roundup – 4/24

American Airlines will be upgrading Boeing 757 aircraft, of which it has 124 in its fleet, over the next two years. The enhancements will include new economy cabin suits, new sidewalls, new LCD monitors to replace the CRTs for inflight entertainment, and new digital media file servers for better in-flight audio and video entertainment quality.…

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

Skybus began to sell tickets this morning. As their press release mentions, at least 10 seats on every flight will be offered at $10(excluding taxes and fees). All flights will be operated by Airbus 319 aircraft and all destinations…for now, will be served nonstop from Columbus, OH…their hub. On May 22nd, service will begin to…

Roundup – Eticketing, Inflight Wi-Fi…

Continental Airlines announced Friday it now has interline eticketing capabilties with all Alliance partners now that it has implemented them with Air Europa. All codeshare, Skyteam, planned Skyteam associates, and frequent flyer partners are now complete. They expect to eliminate issuing and accepting paper tickets by the end of the year, in accordance with IATA’s…

Roundup 4/18

Airtran Airways will be expanding service from Las Vegas to Dayton(three times weekly), Canton/Akron(three times weekly), Flint(four times weekly), and Rochester(three times weekly) effective August 15th. Delta will be returning to service from JFK to Tel Aviv effective March 10th, complementing its Atlanta service. The new service will be operated with 767-300ER aircraft. We were…

Jetblue Struggles to Improve

We recently read a fascinating article dated April 5th on the subject of Jetblue and its service issues from the perspective of the recently hired CIO, who went through it. We heartily recommend it. It attributes the bulk of Jetblue’s problems to issues with its information infrastructure…systems that had not previously been tested under these…

Service Updates

Jetblue is adding Saturday service from Boston to Aruba to complement its JFK service effective June 30th. It will also add service from Boston to San Diego once daily effective June 28th. Connections will be available to its partner, Cape Air. Southwest Airlines will be adding one additional daily nonstop flight between Albuquerque and Dallas…

Israeli Air Force Intercept Continental Flight

Four fighter jets, two F-15s and two F-16s, were dispatched to inspect a Continental Airlines Boeing 777 today from Newark to Tel Aviv which failed to make contact with Air Traffic Control and comply with international regulations as it approached Israeli airspace. The fighters incepted the Flight 90, carrying 251 passengers, once it reached the…

Roundup

United will add a $10 surcharge for all passengers out of LAX to offset a $10 million rent increase imposed by the Los Angeles World Airports effective immediately. United is one of several airlines suing LAWA, which runs LAX, over the increase and has decided to encourage public outrage by making the passenger pay the…

Roundup

ATA announced last week that it would acquire World Air Holdings, which owns charter carriers World Airways and North American Airlines. North American, based at JFK, offers some regularly scheduled service. World Air Holdings did not acquire North American that long ago itself. The airlines would be operated as three separate airlines under one corporate…

Northwest Airlink Expands and Contracts

Northwest regional affiliate Pinnacle is suspending flights from Kalamazoo to Minneapolis until May 2nd to give the airline time to hire and train additional pilots. Apparently 20 of their pilots took jobs with larger, mainline carriers and they are trying to find replacements. Meanwhile, Northwest has also been cleared to begin operations at Compass, its…

Flight Cancelled Due to Captain’s Obscenities

Northwest cancelled flight 1190 from Las Vegas to Detroit yesterday over the behavior of its captain. The captain was on a cell phone, and at some point during the boarding process, left the cockpit and went into the lavatory, locked the door, and continued his conversation. The conversation could be heard through the door by…

Our Entry for Bruce Schneier’s Movie Plot Threat Contest

Bruce Schneier has announced his Second Annual Movie Plot Threat Contest…and we’re aiming to win the prize…one of his books autographed… Our goal: invent a terrorist plot to hijack or blow up an airplane with a commonly carried item as a key component. The component should be so critical to the plot that the TSA…

Across the Aisle from MAXjet

The Cranky Flier has a featured interview between him and Josh Marks, the Senior Vice-Preisdent of Planning and Development for MAXjet. MAXjet is a business-class only airline that started service between New York-JFK and London-Stansted airport in 2005. They offer the “perks of international Business Class (fast check-in and security clearance, spacious departure lounges, deep-recline…

Involuntary Reroute in the Modern Age

The Consumerist, of which we are an avid reader, posted on the subject of Rule 240…however, we felt their post was somewhat brief on what Rule 240 meant, and decided to revisit the issue. We approached it in a post in September. To reiterate, Rule 240 has no power post-deregulation. Deregulation occurred in 1978. Many…

Skymall

When we are on a plane, we enjoy reading through the Skymall catalog, which is full of interesting things we have to admit we’ve drooled over, but never gotten around to purchasing. Try this coupon for them… SkyMall – Save $5 no minimum. Some restrictions apply. We’ve placed a Skymall button on the site for…

Southwest Airlines and Coca-Cola Sign Three-Year Extension

Southwest Airlines has reupped for another three years of serving Coca-Cola company products, which will extend their offering through 2011. Under the terms of the agreement, Coca-Cola North America will continue to be the beverage provider for Southwest, supplying soft drinks including Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and Sprite Zero, Seagram’s mixers, and Minute Maid juices…

United and BMI apply to Combine Transatlantic Operations

United Airlines and bmi have applied to the United States Department of Transportation to combine their transatlantic operations. The two carriers have no overlapping nonstop service and would take advantage of the open skies pact. Both carriers are members of the Star Alliance. The agreement would only merge their transatlantic operations. Other operations would remain…