Southwest’s profitability has been well-publicized, and they’ve had another fine quarter due to them running a fantastic operation, and their oft-discussed fuel hedges. Well done.
Allegiant, which I speak of frequently, also turned a tidy profit and got almost no credit for it. Their management team has built an impressive operation around a tight strategy: fly [...]
(Thanks for the heads up, View from the Wing)
Given that it’s almost the weekend, you’ll have time to read this rather long but quite interesting take on what’s happened to the airline industry over the past 10 years (it’s written by an airline employee trying to answer the question why flying has become miserable). There [...]
A Qantas 747 flying from Hong Kong to Melbourne made an emergency landing in Manila after a large hole appeared in the side of the plane (link has photo). Passengers heard a loud bang and heard wind swirling around the plane, but reportedly remained calm as the plane quickly lowered its altitude. No passengers or [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: Hole in Qantas 747 Forces Emergency Landing in Manila(Thanks, UpgradeTravelBetter)
I’d like to think it’s thanks to the uproar from consumers (though I’m sure it’s not), Spirit ended its ridiculous $10 “web convenience fee” - essentially a fee for buying a ticket. Whew.
This won’t affect many of you, but Malev (Hungary’s flag carrier) announced that it will focus entirely on Europe and eliminate flights to New York and Toronto this fall. The carrier noted that its 767 trans-Atlantic flights cost $49,000 more to operate now compared to last year (with about 200 seats on the flight, they’d [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: Malev to Eliminate Flights to North AmericaA drunk passenger on a First Choice 767 traveling from Gatwick to Cuba forced an unscheduled stop in Bermuda after he tried to open the plane’s door while in flight (uh, pay no attention to the part of the story where they say they were flying at 50,000 feet, an altitude typically seen only by [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: Drunk Passenger Tries to Open Airplane Door MidflightI’ve been quite supportive of Spirit’s fee-driven low fares. If they want to keep fares very low and charge passengers for everything else, go for it. But I’m going to draw the line here: the airline is now tacking on a $10 “web convenience fee” for booking a roundtrip ticket online. Of course, there are [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: Spirit’s $10 Web Convenience FeeBollywood film legend Amitabh Bachchan has learned the hard way about British Airways’ miserable record losing bags (it misplaces 23 bags for every 1000 passengers): The actor says that his bags were lost on a recent trip with his family to Toronto, marking the 18th time the airline has lost his luggage. There really isn’t [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: Bollywood Star Finds that British Airways Has Lost His Bag…for the 18th TimeGod knows how much of this story is true, but a woman is suing Continental Airlines after she claims that a flight attendant who was mad at her had authorities detain her upon her arrival in Newark. It seems she “shushed” the flight attendant while she was trying to sleep, and that all hell broke [...]
Read the Rest of the Story: Passenger Claims Flight Attendant Had Her Arrested for ComplainingJoining the ranks of just about everyone else, Continental has rolled out a few new changes for their OnePass program and you can probably guess that they won’t involve making it easier and cheaper to fly for free.
In short:
- No more holding reservations - you reserve, you purchase. On a plus note, you have 24 [...]
