First of all it was MH370, then MH 17, then Taiwan, Iran, one in Mali and a shooting at a plane in Pakistan. Lots of people have been asking me whether I will keep flying after these horrific events. A poll, conducted for TheStreet by GfK at the end of July found that 36% of Americans feel afraid to fly internationally. Women are more fearful than men, older people are more fearful than younger people. For an Australian who flies Malaysia Airlines a lot and who has traversed the skies above the Ukraine a few times in my Europe voyages,…
Airline
Tag Archives for Airline.
Air Asia Wifi Flying Soon
120 AirAsia staff last Wednesday (August 13) undertook the first ever user acceptance testing of the airline’s newly installed Wi-Fi service. The team used three popular messaging services – LINE, WhatsApp and WeChat with reportedly positive results for all three services. The team also shared live updates on the company’s official Twitter and Instagram accounts. Instant messaging, emails and content streaming will be gradually rolled out across the entire group starting with flights with the AK code. Sixty AirAsia passengers per flight will be able to participate in a “free user test” of the system for the next two months. I am on…
Standing Room Section for Planes? Will it fly?
A paper published this week concludes that a cabin dedicated to standing only passengers “has a potential to be applied by low-cost airlines servicing short-haul flight markets.” Sounds like just the recipe for Ryanair, Spirit Airlines and Air Asia! It brings a whole new meaning to the term “cattle class“! F. I. Romli et al in the International Journal of Engineering and Technology, suggest that by installing a “standing seat“, airlines could fit 21 per cent more passengers into a cabin. The distance between seats could be reduced from the usual 30″ to a mere 23″. By removing…
Air Canada’s Luggage Toss!
On April 17, 2014, Darren Van Slyke and Dwayne Stewart were aboard one of Air Canada‘s brand new Boeing 777s traveling from Toronto to Vancouver. , on the airline’s brand new Boeing 777. They captured baggage handlers tossing gate checked bags to the ground. It became rapidly one of the most talked about news stories in North America within a very few days. Air Canada says the two employees may be fired as “Their actions clearly contravened our standard baggage-handling procedures which require gate-checked bags to be hand-carried to the ramp…We take matters involving the protection of our customers’ personal…
5* Emirates Business: Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur
Qatar, Emirates and Cathay Pacific, have been my three favourite airlines for a while now (although I have some misgivings regarding Qatar following revelations last year of their employment practices). Nonetheless, these carriers bring back the pleasure of airline travel providing me with reminders that air flights do not have to be a barren bus like experiences! Today’s flight (my 994th ever) was the epitome of how phenomenal Emirates are. Booking: 9 out of 10 I actually booked my ticket through Qantas. Despite being the same seat on the same plane, Qantas were selling it…
Ranking US airlines by complaints
US airlines get about 10, 000 complaints a year reported to the US Department of Transport. The number of complaints rose until 2012, when they fell slightly. Last year, 643 million passengers were carried by US airlines, so the number of complaints in that perspective does not seem to me to be that high. Of course few of us take our frustration with an airline to the appropriate authorities, preferring to whine about it ourselves or post our experiences on Facebook! The report “Unfriendly Skies”, an analysis of five years of airline complaints by…
Mexicana Exits (at last)
The privately-operated Mexicana flew from 1921 to 2010 making it one of the oldest airlines in the world. It kept company with Australia’s Qantas, Colombia’s Avianca and KLM of the Netherlands. The airline was grounded before it made its 90th birthday, just months after joining the One World alliance. The grounding stranded passengers in 16 countries and impacted 8,500 employees. Mexico’s Federal Judiciary Council ordered an end to efforts to revive moribund airline through bankruptcy proceedings, saying no credible new investor had expressed interest in the carrier. The decision means an administrator will be appointed…
Spirit most complained about US airline
I have never had the delight of flying Spirit Airlines in the USA. The one time, I turned up for a Spirit flight, they cancelled it! In the mould of Ryanair, Spirit combines low fares and profitability and customer complaints. Over the last five years, Spirit has consistently received three times more complaints than any other airline and the number of complaints against the airline kept rising in that period. In a report compiled by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund based on Department of Transport statistics, Spirit managed to increase its customer complaints from 6.7 per…
No Dangerous Goods on MH370
Quashing another rumour, Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said at yesterday’s Media Conference that no hazardous goods were loaded onto the missing flight. Jauhari said that the 777’s cargo was checked and scanned according to standard procedures: “We examined the cargo manifest, it contains no hazardous goods”.
Good bye DC10
On 24 February, 2014 a Biman Bangledesh DC10 flew its last commercial passenger flight from Dakka, Bangledesh to Birmingham, England. The plane was retired from regular Biman service in December, 2013 as a result of the airline taking a new 777: E9 S2-AHM (msn 40120). The new plane is named “Akashprodip” and replaces the retired DC-10 for long-range flights to destinations such as Frankfurt, Rome, London and Birmingham. The aircraft’s last flight – which was without passengers – took off from Birmingham and flew back to Dhaka to be scrapped and its parts to be sold. The…
Recent Comments