Americas: April 2008 Archives

At a time when US airlines are dropping like flies into the ointment of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a sun-tanned (perhaps a little too sun-tanned) Sir Richard Branson has graced the pages of Time magazine to tell the Americans that Virgin America will "shake up the market".

In an article spawned from an interview with the "rebel billionaire" at the Sunset Marquis hotel in Hollywood (where else?), Time describes how Branson has "hope for air travel in the US, where poor service and perpetual bankruptcies have turned the industry into a sick national joke".

The article goes on to say that to order food on a Virgin America flight, passengers just have to select what they want on a touch screen and pay for it using their credit card, and then the food is brought to their seat.

I've got to hand it to him, this is a great idea and hopefully other carriers will follow suit.

No more impatient waits for the cumbersome food trolley to slowly make its way down to the back of the plane, where I always seem to get stuck and where, with stomach growling, I'm often told that "we've run out of sandwiches".

Time will tell whether Virgin America does live up to Branson's high hopes for it, but innovations like that certainly seem to be a step in the right direction.

Well that's the website address for the new Delta - which is after all going to absorb Northwest Airlines creating a second mega-carrier. The first being Air France-KLM. Both will have similar revenues, of some $30 billion annually.

Since the turn of the year it's been on, off, on, off for the proposed merger between Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines. Getting those pesky pilots to agree on a merged seniority contract appeared to be the toughest part. Now they've sorted their differences out the deal is on.

And, if the effort that's gone into the website is any demonstration of the conviction in Atlanta and Minneapolis that the deal would eventually be done - and there are plenty of obstacles still to be cleared - then it's as clear a sign as any of their confidence.

Over at The Arrow - Classic Rock 93.7FM in Houston they are having a little dig at the recent woes of American Airlines via the medium of music.

Take a listen to this ditty from the station's rather famous Dean and Rog, who seem to like getting up to all sorts of capers and pranks. Here are the morning show hosts.

A new book entitled "Terminal chaos: Why US air travel is broken and how to fix it" is about to hit the shelves.

Penned by two transport analysts, George Donohue and Russell Shaver, the book aims to "arm the flying public with the truth about flight delays" and suggest solutions to air transport woes in the USA, according to a press release that landed in my inbox today.

The book comes out in May, but if you can't wait that long you can read Chapter One here.

Call me pedantic but I couldn't help noticing on the first page that the authors refer to Delta Airlines instead of Delta Air Lines and Jet Blue Airlines instead of JetBlue Airways. Surely when writing a book about airlines, you'd make the effort to get their names right!

I haven't got beyond page one yet but if you spot any further errors - or if you just want to tell me to stop being so pedantic - feel free to leave a comment below.