About 10 years ago Air New Zealand launched Freedom Air to offer a low fare alternative to its full-service flights. In yet another sign the airline-within-an-airline concept may not work for everyone, Air New Zealand is shutting down Freedom Air in March. The parent company said that in the past 10 years fares have dropped [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: Air New Zealand to Shut Its Low Fare Freedom AirYou may not need exact change to buy that drink on your next flight on American…
The carrier is testing cashless flights (different from the profitless flights they tested from 2001-2005) out of San Francisco for 3 weeks, accepting only credit and debit cards for in-flight purchases. I’m certain this will mark the beginning of the [...]
In 2000, a British Airways flight was nearly taken down over Kenya by a passenger who stormed the cockpit and wrestled the pilot away from the controls (oddly, my wife’s ex-boyfriend was on the flight, as was Roxy Music singer Brian Ferry, who did not date my wife.)
Two passengers wrestled the lunatic off of the [...]
You may (or may not) remember that Northwest announced nonstop flights from LaGuardia to Dallas as a way of getting back at American for launching nonstop flights from LaGuardia to Minneapolis. Well, they’ve come to their senses and have decided not to launch that flight, instead using the slots to fly nonstop to unserved markets [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: Northwest: Forget about Those LaGuardia-Dallas FlightsJetBlue wants to give you some money. Sort of.
What they really want to do is to get you to fly during the slow September and October season, so they’re giving $50 vouchers when you buy a roundtrip ticket between now and September 18th for travel through October 14th. You can use the vouchers for travel [...]
A Qantas flight attendant has been suspended after he gave his phone number to a 15 year old boy traveling alone on the airline. He also asked the teenager if he wanted to chat online. His mother found out about the exchange and complained to Qantas.
Qantas has had a few sex-related issues with flight attendants [...]
I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, this story or the fact the two separate people sent it to me (thanks, Sanj & IAHPHX):
Maintenance workers with Nepal Airlines sacrificed a goat to the Hindu sky god (Akash Bhairab) after they struggled with some technical issues with one of their 757s. Impressively, the plane is now running [...]
Mildly amusing article in the Jakarta Post about a Garuda flight that was delayed 5 hours (5 hours!). The way the article’s written you would think it was delayed for 5 days. Amazing that 5 hour delays are commonplace here, but warrant a breathless article in Indonesia.
Read the Rest of the Story: Garuda Flight Delayed – GASP! – 5 Hours!The NY Times reports that about 100 flights have been late 70% or more of the time over the last 12 months. It includes some detail on one American Airlines flight from Newark to Chicago that’s late 84% of the time, with an average delay of an impressive 87 minutes. It’s even more impressive because [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: More Than 100 Flights Are Almost Always Late