January 2008 Archives

Ryanair has issued a rare apology for its latest controversial advert, after incurring the wrath of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his lady friend Carla Bruni. The advert, which appeared in a French newspaper, featured a photograph of the couple with a super-imposed speech bubble over Ms Bruni's head depicting her as daydreaming that her family could use Ryanair to attend the much-publicised will they, won't they wedding between her and the Prez.

After legal action was launched by Sarkozy and Bruni, Ryanair apologised and offered to donate €5,000 to a charity of the President's choice. However, Ryanair's "sincere apologies" are tempered with its insistence that it has "no intention of giving into threats from Ms Bruni or to her ludicrous claims" and will "vigorously oppose any claim for €500,000 to this lady who had engaged in one of the most open, publicised and internationally reported relationships in the world".

I can't help thinking that no matter what the outcome Ryanair will come out on top. After all any publicity is good publicity from the airline's perspective, but when you're the President of France surely it's going to be hard to be taken seriously as a politician when embroiled in such a petty and futile legal dispute. You'd think he'd have more important things to do!

Out in the Nevada desert, the gambling resort of Las Vegas has an interesting advertising slogan: ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’ In other words, you can do anything you want there and the folks back in Des Moines need never know. Well, one fellow out in Vegas is hoping to change all that. Barry Michaels is trying to start up Family Airlines, which has applied for US DoT approval to inaugurate long-range domestic service using Boeing 747-400 aircraft packed with almost 600 seats. Family aims to fly the wide-body aircraft from Los Angeles to New York and Miami. During its first year of operation, it hopes to add flights to Orlando, Tampa, San Francisco, San Jose, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Honolulu and Phoenix.
Michaels tells Megan Kuhn, our friend at Air Transport Intelligence (ATI), that the 747 is the “least expensive aircraft to operate when it's used the way it was designed to be used,” meaning at 100% capacity. He envisions configuring the planes with 539 coach seats and 42 seats in a premium class. It’s a little difficult to see how this market niche would work out, given the overcapacity in the cross-country markets and the very chequered history of attempts to use 747-sized aircraft in domestic service.

Another day, another cheap publicity stunt from Ryanair. This time Nottingham is benefiting. Residents of this English city can, tomorrow, turn up in green and stand the chance to win one of the 100 flights being given away to Cork, Shannon, Dublin, Knock, Derry or Belfast.
And Ryanair has a bonus flight up for grabs if you bring along a homemade shamrock. Tasteful. Surely dressing as a leprechaun would qualify for two flights?

The arrival of the first of 50 Boeing 737-800s at Norwegian gives me an excuse to feature a carrier that is generally pretty low profile but by all accounts is doing some interesting things from its base in Oslo.

In the first shot, Bjorn Kjos (in the long jacket) snips the ribbon to take delivery of his first 737-800 at Boeing Field in Seattle. Alongside him are Lindsay Andersson, manager delivery center at Boeing Field and Mark Norris from Boeing PR.

The carrier handled 6.4 million passengers in 2007, up from 5.1 million the previous year, and bought Swedish budget player FlyNordic last year too.

Catfights, jealousy, rivalry, illicit affairs. Just another day for Thai flight attendants, or so a sexy new soap opera would have viewers believe.
The Air Hostess War focuses on an affair between a married pilot and one of the stewardesses on his plane.
But real Thai flight attendants are not happy about the soap, which they say demeans them.
"Even my own child looks down on me for having such a shameful career," one flight attendant with Thai Airways, Benjamas Pooklomtuan, said. "I don't know what to say to her."

No one likes aircraft noise, especially when it’s a new gift from the authorities who decide to reroute flights departing or arriving at a nearby airport. That’s happening all up and down the US East Coast, as the FAA moves to redesign the airspace there. And it’s already happened at Philadelphia, where a rerouting took effect in December. Lots of folks in the City of Brotherly Love opposed the plan, but couldn’t stop it. Now they’re protesting. One area resident, instead of letter-writing or suit-filing, has taken direct action, painting the roof of his house with a suggestion to the FAA that is very different in spirit to the one just to the left. Instead, the two-word phrase has the letters 'F' and 'U'. And the phrase is NOT 'Football Union'. The city’s Daily News says that this chap in suburban south suburban Ridley Township posted his inhospitable and anatomically unlikely suggestion in seven-foot-tall letters on his roof, hoping that pilots might see it and pass on the suggestion to the FAA. The FAA declined comment, reports the paper.

Every airliner model has a few predictable milestones in its life, from rollout first flight to ageing to winning a place in the hearts, minds and bottoms of the frequent flyers who love to complain about it. Then comes retirement and a place in the hearts and minds of frequent fliers who miss it and remember it and complains about how it should never have been retired. So now with word that Northwest is finally getting serious about retiring its vast armada of DC9s, including some of the very early DC9 variants, we wonder how soon the nostalgia will follow. After all, even a plane as disliked as the old Lockheed Tri-Star had fans when Delta got rid of theirs at the beginning of this century. Now though the pilots union at Northwest says that the airline plans to cuts its fleet from 103 of the twins down to 69 by the end of the year. The airline confirms that this is indeed the case, but stresses it will still be hiring pilots for growth.

One airliner model that may really be missed is the Dornier 328 jet, which is is about to lose its last remaining major US operator. The sprightly little twin, a jet-ified version of a turboprop developed by descendants of the original German air-framer and flying-boat maker, has a hard luck history, too small to compete with the smallest Embraers and too expensive to compete with the 50-seaters. Niche players such as Ozark and Great Plains, two failed regionals, tried it. Now comes word that Skyway, the regional subsidiary of Midwest Airlines, is being shut down. Midwest Air Group, the parent, is replacing its own subsidiary with 50-seaters operated for it under contract by SkyWest, the big and growing Utah-based regional.

Southwest Airlines has long had simple philosophy about in-flight entertainment: ‘We don’t need it. We have our flight attendants and they wise-crack often enough to keep the folks entertained.' But the airline has been talking about taking some steps toward supplementing the witty comebacks of its (usually) funny women and men in the cabin. Now it’s taken a real big step, signing up with a company called Row 44 for Internet service that it will test this summer on four planes. Wait a moment...how entertaining is e-mail? Well, when it’s Row 44’s technology, it also offers a way to get some fun on board. As Dave Ridley, the Southwest marketing vice president, said, the airline “is looking for the best solution for our customers not only for Internet email access but for additional in-flight entertainment as well”. Row 44, based in Southern California, boasts that because it is satellite-based, its stuff is lightweight and fast and able to do more than one thing at a time. And, Ridley says, "there is a limitation on air-to-ground bandwidth." We’ll find out soon.

Alaska Airlines moved toward a semi-shuttle frequency for its lucrative routes up and down the West Coast, reasserting its traditional strength in California markets as it readies itself for Virgin America’s entry into its Seattle home base in March. Alaska, which calls itself ‘Seattle’s hometown airline’, will raise its daily dozen flights to LAX to 15 in April and will offer seven daily weekday flights to San Diego, going up to eight in June, plus nine to Orange County up from eight, both by late April. Its San Francisco International frequencies from Seattle will be at eight, and its San Jose flights will total seven on weekdays.

An extremely intriguing story was revealed by English paper The Sunday Telegraph this weekend, which reported that India's Jet Airways had made an approach, via a third party, to the UK's bmi about a possible takeover.

It's all very speculative at the moment, but if true, a clear demonstration of the ambition of Jet's ebullient founder and chairman Naresh Goyal.

The first big US carriers earnings are in, and the early reporters, American and Continental, did well enough for the year just closed to give profit-sharing to their people. Although American lost money for the fourth quarter, it posted full-year earnings, and Continental made money for both periods. But there the similarities end. At American, where the profit-sharing works out to $800 a person, the Allied Pilots Association (APA) has told its members to take their cheques without comment. The union’s hotline, which calls the “token” payments a smokescreen “to divert attention from the huge payouts management has been receiving,” advises its members: “When you visit your chief pilot's office to collect your token $800 bonus check, we recommend that you refrain from engaging in conversation…. If your chief persists in attempting to engage you in conversation, remind him that APA speaks for you.”

Washington’s international gateway, Dulles airport, has grown again, stretching an international concourse with a 240,000-square-foot extension that will house 15 more domestic gates for JetBlue, AirTran, Virgin America, and others. The $137-million addition will have shopping choices such as a manicurist and a restaurant that calls itself ‘a better place to eat’. The airport is hoping that rows of flags displayed in the different parts of Concourse B will offer visual clues to keep guide overseas travellers to their section and domestic flyers to their respective gates. So, when a traveller sees a Wyoming state flag, goes the theory, he or she will figure out that the Rome flight is further along the concourse. And conversely the Qatari national banner will offer a subtle suggestion that the nonstop to Mobile is down the line a bit. However, given the generally woeful state of geographic knowledge these days, we can’t help but wonder if public knowledge of flags and banners is similarly limited. So maybe the shops could include a vexillological offering, something like “Flags R Us”?

Big Sky’s horizons are getting smaller, and the carrier, which specialises in subsidised rural air service under the EAS program, shuts down its last routes on Wednesday as it readies itself for an orderly exit from the airline business. That will take its parent, MAIR Holdings, out of business as well. MAIR sold off its major asset, Mesaba Aviation, to Northwest last year, leaving it with Big Sky's Beechcraft operations and payments due it from Northwest. MAIR executives say these payments will be distributed to investors, and then it too will cease business. After it sold Mesaba, MAIR had shifted some of its Beechcraft to Boston, where they flew on behalf of Delta Air Lines, starting in April 2007. But Big Sky president Fred DeLeeuw said “we no longer believe that we can reach sustained profitability.” He blamed high fuel prices and bad weather in the Northeast, although some sceptics would suggest that snow is well known in Boston and indeed should be no surprise to a company headquartered in Billings, Montana.

The airlines may be in one of their safest periods ever, but debate on aviation safety is bound to continue with Congress headed back to Washington and a controversial NASA database on safety drawing headlines and promises of high-profile investigation. The database suggested to some that near mid-air collisions, runway incursions and bird strikes are underreported and a greater problem than recognised. An An-12 crash last year at Moscow was likely caused by a birdstrike, and the UK CAA has just opened an on-line reporting system to improve bird-strike awareness. And the FAA has asked all US airports to perform an assessment of wildlife hazards, from deer stalking the runways to birds flying into aircraft taking off.

Sometimes silence, after all, is golden. The silence coming from Delta Air Lines this weekend, after its merger committee had met to consider possible combinations with United or Northwest, certainly gave an opportunity to scribblers everywhere to reflect on mergers and consolidation. Some of the results of their thinking reflect a more cautious approach than the ‘merger mania at any minute’ theme of the week before. Here's an example, including quotes from someone you know. At the height of the silence, organised labour injected a cautionary note when Lee Moak, head of the Air Line Pilots Association group at Delta, reminded his members that the union had opened a strike preparedness committee to ready the union for action if Delta moves toward consolidation in a direction the union dislikes or distrusts, or if the carrier keeps ALPA out of merger talks, if any.

Scottish tabloid newspaper The Daily Record has reported an alleged outburst on quite a shocking scale from Aden Murcutt, managing director of troubled UK regional carrier flyWhoosh, which was forced to suspend services in December after its Polish operator White Eagle Aviation discontinued operations.

The report claims that trainee teacher Liam Sturrock tracked Murcutt down at one of his other businesses and called to ask for a refund on behalf of his parents. Murcutt is said to have responded to Sturrock with a torrent of abuse.

When contacted afterwards by The Daily Record, Murcutt is reported to have come out with the following gems: "I'm not going to be lectured by someone whose potential earnings will amount to little more than three farthings to buy a Ford Fiesta"; "Liam Sturrock was getting out of his tree for a sum of money that wouldn't even buy you a decent dinner and a night out"; "I answer only to the Civil Aviation Authority and Trading Standards"; and "I don't regret the way I spoke even slightly. It's an old adage that those who can, do, and those who can't, teach."

On the last point, may I suggest that after leading failed transatlantic start-up FlyWho (formerly FlyBlu) and now at the helm of another failed airline, Murcutt should himself consider a career in teaching. On a more serious note, surely every responsible business person knows that you ultimately answer to the customer, without whom you would not have a business.

On its website, FlyWhoosh lays the blame for its failings firmly at the feet of White Eagle Aviation. Perhaps the airline and, in particular, its managing director should look a little closer to home.

Frontier Airlines’ wildlife theme and branding have brought it a lot of attention in its Denver home market, but some worry that the birds, bees and beasts may become an endangered species. The airline said the other day it expects an even worse profit picture this winter, citing fuel costs and increasing competition. The next day, its newest rival at Denver, Southwest Airlines, announced a major increase in service at the Mile High City. While Frontier has been able to hold its own since the discount king came in two years ago, it has recently retrenched, cutting back some of the sun-and-sand routes that it had grown in the last year or so. Instead, it will focus on 'meat-and-potatoes' business routes linking Denver with places that people have to go to (eg, Detroit) instead of the kind of places they want to go to (eg, Cancun).

The unions are ready for it. The analysts are ready for it. The media and blogosphere are ready for it, but are the airlines ready for consolidation? Rumours of merger, much as Matthew and Mark commented on rumours of war in their Gospels, are grabbing the attention of the US airline unions, Wall Street observers and journalist-speculators. Plunging share values have brought some airline stocks to near all-time lows, making a potential takeover cheaper to do, and as investors, frustrated with the sector’s inactivity, walk away from airline shares, merger and consolidation speculation has taken foot. But the unions are not to be left out, even if they have to put their feet down. Or on the picket line. The largest cabin crew union, the Association of Flight Attendants, has just concluded a two-day strategy session in Washington to set negotiating tactics if their carriers seek a merger, and the Air Line Pilots Association chapters at Delta and at United – the two most-mentioned merger movers – are flexing their muscles in preparation.

Fill the blank: you’ve seen the phrase, “it’s so simple, a ______ can do it.” Well, apologies to any primates out there who may be offended by this, but the Kansas City airport has enlisted a monkey to make the point that it’s easy to get through the airport with its self-service features. The airport has developed a one-minute advertisement featuring a chimp named Kenzie who peruses the airport’s website, drives his yellow Mini (license plate: Banana I) and parks at the airport (in the Yellow Lot), takes the shuttle bus to the terminal, and then walks to the gate and checks in for his flight. The ad blithely passes over Kenzie’s experiences at the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint, where, we hear, the screeners demand that he put on shoes so that he can take them off for scanning.

Pressure on the US government to address the impact of aviation on climate change increased this week with a letter to the US Environmental Protection Agency from Edward J. Markey, chairman of the House of Representatives' Select Committee on Energy Independence.

In the letter, Markey asks the EPA how it plans to regulate "heat-trapping global warming emissions from America's aviation sector". In a press release to highlight the letter, Markey (a Democrat) chides the Bush administration's record on addressing climate change and its threat to take legal action against the European Union over including aviation in its emissions trading scheme.

"Unfortunately, the Bush administration has taken no actions to regulate global warming emissions, and is threatening legal action if other countries move to cut heat-trapping emissions from their airplanes," says Markey.

Willie Cochrane that is, not Willie Walsh.

Pipe Major Cochrane was on hand with his bag pipes to welcome the assembled press corps to the annual British Airways New Year party at the posh central London brasserie Langhan's yesterday.

He piped in the haggis (a Scottish tradition) and then did a spirited rendition of the Ode to the Haggis, which features a finale of cutting of the said pudding and downing a tumbler of whiskey - great fun.

Seeing the pictures of bemused passengers being greeted as they disembarked the first flight to arrive at Singapore Changi's new Terminal 3 reminded me of the day the airport did exactly the same in the early 1990s when it opened Terminal 2.

Back then, my memory says 1991, a gaggle of journalists watched as a bunch of Dutchmen and Woman on a KLM service were presented with lovely garlands of flowers by the ubiquitous Singapore Airlines girls accompanied by some rather bizzare Cybermen robot types.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cybermen, there were bad robots in a BBC TV kids series and are definitely worth a look (pictured below).

Social security. Medicare. Iraq. Terrorism. And travel? The candidates for the 2008 presidential nominations, a large group likely to be winnowed further following Tuesday’s key New Hampshire primaries, have their plates full with first four of these. But pilots, air traveller advocates and the people who promote tourism and inbound US travel, from the restaurant and hotel groups to the big travel agencies, want Hillary and Barack and Rudy and Mitt to start thinking about travel – and get it on their policy stovetop if not the front burner. To cut through the competition and get some attention from the very large number of groups trying to grab that very large number of ears in the running, the travel groups did a survey of very likely visitors in two key primary states, South Carolina and Florida, about how important these issues are to voters in these two states -both of which will be key battlegrounds.

Richard Branson may have made marriage headlines in 2007, performing ceremonies on his Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America affiliates and even wining a place in Modern Bride magazine’s list of trendsetters, but this year may not hold the prospect of love for the never-shy and rarely blushing Branson. His North Atlantic premium venture may or may not get off the ground, and his major stake, Virgin Atlantic Airways, barely escaped a potentially crippling strike by its flight attendants. The 'industrial action' was called off only after Sir Dicky sent them a blunt if not positively snarky letter telling them that if they didn’t like the pay and conditions at Virgin Atlantic, they could just go work elsewhere ("For some of you, more pay than Virgin Atlantic can afford may be critical to your lifestyle, and if that is the case you should consider working elsewhere.")

The spitting match between United and its pilots continues as the Chicago-based airline continued to cancel significant numbers of flights because of significantly bad weather at its Chicago and Denver hubs. The pilots say it’s not weather but understaffing and poor planning by a management team that is more concerned with self-enrichment than running the airline. United says it’s the weather, the worst it’s had in its history. The newspaper in Chicago is in small way a beneficiary of this, as the pilots have run an open apology to the public for the airline’s performance. And the airline has apologised to its frequent flyers and others. The newspaper, the Tribune, does quote a flightstats.com official as saying, "United's cancellation rate during the holidays was off the charts compared to its rivals who serve the same general markets."

Between dead and pan lies a vast wasteland and Southwest seems to have filled it. The Texas airline’s trying viral advertising –communications that are so weird, so clever, so offbeat or so downright likable that people talk about them. But you have to wonder if Southwest’s new ‘be more productive’ campaign will generate the kind of positive buzz that the carrier wants. The airline has posted a new website it calls bemoreproductive.com with a number of videos that sort of look like television news reports, replete with “interviews” about Nick Pudder, a young employee at the generic company who has just won a productivity award – to the amazement and resentment of his colleagues. They then accuse him of using ‘productivity enhancements,’ much as a baseball player who hits too many home-runs is accused of using ‘performance-enhancing’ drugs.

The start of a new year is often a time for optimism, a fresh start and a list of well-intentioned resolutions (such as my annual resolve to do regular exercise, which normally starts well but peters out by about week three when the thought of going jogging again in sub-zero temperatures becomes too much to bear).

But in the world of aviation and the environment, there are a couple of reasons to be optimistic that 2008 could be the year in which the airline industry really starts to make progress on lessening its impact on climate change.

Towards the end of 2007, European Union ministers gave their backing to the plan to include aviation in Europe's emissions trading scheme. This may be controversial but you've got to admire the EU for sticking its neck out and actually doing something, rather than just talking and talking without achieving results. Let's hope it also finally gets its act together on the implementation of the long-awaited Single European Sky.

Most of the opposition and threats of possible legal action to EU ETS have come from the USA, but this could change with the looming US presidential elections set for later this year. With George "the jury is still out on global warming" Bush's eight-year presidency coming to an end, perhaps there will be a fresh new US approach to the threat of climate change? For more on emissions trading and what it means for the industry read here.

Gamblers are an interesting bunch; they like to spend big and live large, and they make good business for airlines. The city of Las Vegas has one of the busiest airports in the nation because of the gaming business, and the desert city’s magnetic pull on gamers has made the resort blossom. So one would think that flights to Las Vegas from almost anywhere would be profitable, as indeed they have proven to be for an airline such as Allegiant, which links Las Vegas with obscure spots such as Rapid City, SD. But when it comes to linking Las Vegas with another gamblers’ destination, things haven’t worked out that well. A non-stop route between Las Vegas, out in the Nevada desert, and Atlantic City, on the New Jersey coast, just didn’t pan out for Spirit Airlines, and the Miramar, Florida-based carrier is ending its non-stop flights between the two.