Europe: November 2007 Archives

Monarch Airlines is in the doghouse for axing its popular Granada-London Gatwick route.
A group of more than 630 angry passengers has teamed together to petition Monarch to save the Granada to Gatwick flights.
Monarch proffers the explanation that “demand has not met expectations” for ending the route.
But Jo Chipchase, who has taken up the mantle on behalf of the aggrieved passengers, believes the flights can’t have just suffered from low passenger demand.

Ya gotta have some gumption to go to a foreign capital and spend your time there publicly criticising your host nation, but when the gumptionist is IATA’s Giovanni Bisignani, people will listen. Bisignani, known to most as simply GB or Giovanni, was in Washington, telling industry groups that President Bush’s “headline” moves to step in and cut red tape to aid holiday flyers was “a political placebo for a serious long-term illness.” The chief executive and director general of the world association, Bisignani told an industry group that Congress shared the Bush blame because “Short-sighted politicians, particularly the Congress, did not give the FAA the means to improve air-traffic management.” In New York, “neglect has left one of the biggest international gateways to the USA with an airport and air-traffic management infrastructure that cannot cope and where the slow pace of improvement is an embarrassment,” he told the Aero Club of Washington.

Luckily I'm just out of range in terms of age for this novel (or horrifying depending on your point of view) speed-date outing that SkyEurope is pioneering. I'll let you guess which end of the age range (25-42) I am.

The headline of the release reads: Speed Dating on board of a SkyEurope 737 from London to Prague.

The release is self-explanatory:

"On 28 November 2007, SkyEurope Airlines will organise a speeddating event for singles between 25 and 42 on a flight from London Luton to Prague. This UK SkyDate is one of the speed dating events that are organised from different European countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal and UK)."

Ryanair's trademark "in your face" advertising has often been brash, controversial and rule-bending.

For some, seeing adverts that say that airports like Beauvais, Hahn and Skavsta are in Paris, Frankfurt and Stockholm respectively is stretching the point just a tad far.

But Ryanair appears to have outbent even itself with this advert snapped by Adrian Wynne-Morgan at Farranfore Airport in County Kerry, Ireland this summer.

"Frankfurt appears to have been ceded to France! ..and low-budget now encompasses maps," said Adrian.

“Okay, folksies, let’s quiet down. This is serious,” Mr. Faraday used to say to us in school. And so let’s get serious for moment: this 11th of November is a day to note. Even though many Americans think of this as just a day off from school or a great day for sales at the department store, it marks a serious occasion: the end of the War to End All Wars, World War I. In Anglo-American culture, it becomes a day to honour the veterans who fell in that and other wars and who continue to serve us. Even when a war or ‘military action’ is unpopular, it is important to remember this history. It is also moving, as would be attested to by pretty much everyone who has seen the Remembrance Day ceremonies and their poppy theme. In Canada, a nation that suffered grievously disproportional losses in that 1914-1918 slaughter, the national airline has stood up and gone out of its way to remember, and we note their efforts here.

Bags are a big item for Willie Walsh, the genial chief of British Airways. They are after all major issue at BA’s biggest base, London Heathrow, where the authorities have limited departing passengers to one-carry on bag. This has (a) infuriated flyers, (b) frustrated airlines, and (c) led to a dramatic increase in checked bags. Of these (c) has presented itself as ideal opportunity for the airport and its airlines to (a) lose bags, (b) lose more bags, and (c) lose record numbers of bags. This in turn has made Willie the target of considerable wrath. He reflected on this the other day in a visit to Washington where he told the International Aviation Club that "some of you maybe have found Heathrow a challenge." But Walsh is confident that the authorities will soon lift that "senseless" restriction. He’s got a real sensitivity to bags, he said, recalling with a blush the time he tried to lift the morale of BA's beleaguered staff by urging them to embrace change and “lose the baggage of the past.” Whoops.

Lauren is the code name for the British Airways project that chief executive Willie Walsh says will be the airline’s first response to the first stage of US/EU opening skies, or semi-open skies. Using Boeing 757s, the BA project will link New York with secondary key European business destinations, Walsh said. But Walsh said that Lauren is only the project name and that “we haven’t decided yet on these every serious issues of branding, or naming.” It may be a product that flies under the BA name or, a name such as (fill in the blank) by BA. The flights will be targeted at US-originating, European bound flyers, the business flyers that BA wants. So why, we asked, was it called Lauren?

It has taken a couple of years of tough talking, but easyJet has finally found a way to work with the Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) to sell its tickets.

The UK-based low-cost carrier has signed deals with Amadeus and Travelport, becoming the largest low-cost player outside the USA to go the GDS route.

In the past low-costers have kept away from the distribution costs GDSs impose, but in easyJet's case the rise of business travellers amongst its clientele (around 20%) meant it had to find a way to work with them sooner rather than later.