I have flown 90 airlines to all continents of the world (except for Antarctica) and one airline continues to dismay me: Ryanair. People keep flying Ryanair for one reason: cheap fares. I avoid them because of their seats, customer disdain, staff attitude, ethical concerns and their flying to random secondary airports nowhere near the city I am flying to. My experience of Ryanair is that they are like a bus. If you like bus travel, its fine. If something goes wrong, then you are on your own. The airline has made a concerted effort to improve…
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Malaysia’s Marketing Fail
Poor Malaysia Airlines, they cannot put a foot right it seems. “We are committed to regaining the confidence of our customers and sending them on memorable holiday experiences as a trusted five-star carrier.” Lee Poh Kait, Malaysia Airlines regional senior vice president, Australia, New Zealand & South West Pacific. After a horror year, Malaysia Airlines have started to rebuild. Apart from lowering fares to ridiculous levels, its major shareholder has announced a complete transformation of the loss making carrier. In addition, the airline is looking for ways to market itself. Its latest campaign has been pulled,…
Royal Jordanian Welcomes First 787
Middle Eastern carrier Royal Jordanian received their first Boeing 787 last Wednesday evening. Named “Crown Prince Hussein Bin Abdullah II“, the plane flew non stop from Seattle to Amman, a 13 hour flight. It is pictured below at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman. Royal Jordanian is the second Middle Eastern airline to operate the 787, after Qatar. RJ will receive four more of the Dreamliners thus year giving them five by the end of the year. They will replace the airline’s currently A340 and A330 planes. With 24 business class seats and 246 seats in economy, the carrier will introduce the plane into regular service…
Will I keep flying?
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,…
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…
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