4 all-business class airlines launched service to Europe in the past 3 years, and now all 4 are gone:  British Airways’ Openskies will purchase L’Avion for about $100 million or so, though that number includes about $50 million in cash L’Avion has on hand.  Openskies gets leases for a couple of 757s (which are difficult [...]

I’m back from my quick trip on OpenSkies and I thought I’d post a very quick review:
The airline, which is a corporate cousin to British Airways (so you can get BA miles), flies 757s outfitted with 82 seats from New York to Paris (Orly). The plane is divided into Economy (nothing special there), Prem+ [...]

If you’re already registered with FlyerTalk (it’s too late if you’re not), they are giving away 2 round trip business class tickets on OpenSkies, the new mostly-business-class airline from British Airways.  The details are here, but the basics are you leave from New York on their inaugural flight on June 19 and return June 22.  [...]

A man who was part of a gang that hijacked an Afghani airplane in 2000 is now working as a janitor at Heathrow airport.  Nazamuddin Mohammidy was one of 9 people who hijacked an Ariana Airlines 727 in Afghanistan and demanded to be flown to England, which they were.  Long story short, the hijackers were [...]

British Airways CEO Willie Walsh told Parliament that, perhaps, just perhaps in hindsight BA wasn’t actually ready to open Terminal 5 last month.  It may have been the thousands and thousands of lost bags that led to that conclusion.  Or the 28 elevators that weren’t working.  Or whatever.  (In case you were wondering, 125 bags [...]

Continental Airlines gets all the credit in the world for their announcement yesterday that they will not continue their merger talks with United Airlines, instead they will persue some sort of vague alliance involving American Airlines and British Airways.  Until that’s a done deal, it’s not really worth speculating about (you can find that elsewhere), [...]

Eos Airlines announced that they’ve secured another $50 million in funding meaning:
a) They’ve blown through about $200 million
b) They won’t be going out of business this summer as I had previously thought
Their press release says that they’ll be profitable next year, but every financial press release they’ve ever put out suggests they’ll be profitable the [...]

A report in the Daily Mail says that British Airways will burn the roughly 5,000 pieces of luggage it has not been able to return to its owners.  While BA denies this, the company sorting through the baggage says that incineration is definitely an option.  BA says they will compensate anyone who does not receive [...]

Two dead passenger stories to share:
Several Canadians are accusing Air Canada of bumping a family member’s coffin (which held the aforementioned family member at the time) from a Montreal flight to make room to get additional luggage onto the plane.  Air Canada denies the charge (though doesn’t explain what happened).  The coffin was not given [...]

The modern-day US airline industry, which allowed people to fly all over the country for roughly the same price as a couple of steaks at Morton’s, died last week after a long illness. It was 30 years old.
The cause of death was oil. And irrational pricing. And low fare carriers. And [...]