The way things are going regional jets will soon be flying across the Atlantic.
Flyglobespan at the end of last week became the first carrier to use Boeing 737s in normal passenger configuration on a transatlantic route. The Scottish budget carrier has launched a daily Glasgow-Boston service with a Boeing 737-700 (see picture). The flight also stops at Knock in Ireland two days per week.
Three years after cementing its merger, Air France-KLM today boasted a 32.5% year-over-year increase in operating profits and increased its return on capital employed target for the next three years to 8.5% from 6.5% last year.
The group is showing signs of confidence that its merger is paying off, and says its first joint cost savings programme, 'Challenge 10', will lead to a 3% reduction in unit costs over the next three years, most of which will come from productivity improvements.
British Airways is to set up an advisory board consisting of 12 children aged eight to 14 to help target the carrier's services at younger passengers.
The 'British Airways Kids' Council' will be tasked with advising BA on how to cater to the under-14s, which the airline says is a growing segment of its market. "The children of today are the travellers of tomorrow and we take them seriously as a consumer group in their own right," says BA.
So could this mean that in the future, aircraft will be equipped with partitioned areas exclusively for kids, complete with an on-tap ice-cream service and childrens' entertainers? A welcome relief for parents, perhaps, on long-haul flights!
Stefan Vilner, the man who has been at the helm of Danish low-cost carrier Sterling Airlines for four years, has been tempted to join another player in the low-cost sector.
But this time it's not another low-cost scheduled airline, but a low-cost executive jet operator. Vilner is joining JetBird, a start-up airline backed by Irish entreprenuers (aren't they all these days?), that will offer on-demand private jet charter services across Europe.
"Alliances are here to stay", was the simple statement of Jan Albrecht, the chief executive of the Star Alliance, speaking at its 10th birthday celebration on Monday 14th May in Copenhagen.
In fact it was 10 years to the day that the then heads of Air Canada, Lufthansa, SAS, Thai Airways and United Airlines got their heads together to create Star. It was the first airline alliance, followed in short order by oneworld and SkyTeam.
KLM flight attendant Cliff Muskiet has a lot of wardrobes. He needs them to house his amazing collection of over 600 stewardess uniforms that he has amassed since 1980.
His website, which will leave you stunned, fascinated and potentially horrified, is simply a must-visit. Appropriately it is called "uniform freak".
I was lucky enough yesterday to get a guided tour of Heathrow's new Terminal 5 for an upcoming feature I'm writing for the June issue of Airline Business on the transformation taking place at the London airport.
As I donned my hard hat, safety goggles and big clompy workman boots ready to tromp around the construction site, I was struck by the thought that whoever said journalism was a glamourous career choice was lying.
Lack of glamour aside though, I couldn't help but be impressed by the sheer size of the main terminal building, particularly the height of it.
The champagne was flowing at London Luton on Friday to celebrate Monarch's partnership with UK record label Hed Kandi, to produce flykandi. The assembled media hobnobbed before boarding Monarch's Hed Kandi-liveried Boeing 757 - see the picture to believe it.
The partnership between the low-cost carrier and Hed Kandi, which includes livery, logos, brand and web space, is worth £300,000 to Hed Kandi, and it is apparently the first time in history an aircraft has been liveried by a music brand.
It appears that the two Michaels at Ryanair are singing from different hymn sheets when it comes to the prospect of launching a long-haul low-cost carrier.
As exclusively revealed by my colleagues at Flight International, Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has detailed his intention to launch a no-frills long-haul airline around the turn of the decade with a fleet of up to 50 Airbus A350s or Boeing 787s.
But speaking at this year's French Connect conference in La Baule near Nantes, Ryanair deputy chief executive Michael Cawley dismissed the plan disclosed by his boss as a "public relations stunt", adding that there is "no substance in it for Ryanair".
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