Europe: December 2007 Archives

There use to be a time when the air transport industry shut down over the 10-14 days of the festive season/turn of the year.

Not any more. Just look at the happenings over the past five days since 24 December or Christmas Eve:

* It may be in pole position to take over Alitalia, but Air France-KLM has sealed another deal in the meantime, agreeing on 24 Dec to acquire Belgian regional VLM. This will make the Franco-Dutch giant the number one carrier at London City Airport, the downtown airport that serves the UK capital mostly with regional jets and turboprops.

Even luxury it would seem is far from immune. Luxury goods from Gucci to LVMH to Lamborghini are supposed to be able to survive end even thrive in the typical economic downturn, but the fuel crisis, rising competition and problems of its own making having caught up with one of the new generation of luxury airlines that have captured a growing share of North Atlantic premium travel. MAXjet, which offered all business-class flights between London Stansted and the States, shut down and went into bankruptcy a few weeks after it suspended its shares on a London exchange. MAXjet, which competed with all first-class Eos and Silverjet on the London route, began service in late 2005 with Boeing 767s outfitted with about 100 business-class reclining seats, but repeated mechanical problems with its fleet and the resulting cancellations hardly helped. MAXjet had a net loss of $49.5 mllion in the first six months of the year, as it was hit by higher maintenance and fuel prices. It lost of $79 million (net) in 2006, its first full year of operations, on revenues of $41.1 million.

‘Meta’ means beyond or after, and now two of the travel industry’s major meta-search services will merge in a $196-million deal that combines powerful Internet selling sites. The two-year-old Kayak.com is buying sidestep.com. in a deal that was expected to close Friday. These two sites search hundred of individual airline, hotel, and car-rental sites to allow consumer comparison shopping. Much like this real-life kayak, the wesbite prided itself on its transparency. When meta-search emerged at the turn of the century, some observers predicted that this type of aggregation of aggregators would shake the on-line world; it hasn’t, and the meta-search share of the on-line travel market has stayed at the same level of about 15% for the last few years.

UK low-fares giant easyJet is to offer customers who pay a little bit more to board their aircraft first a dedicated check-in desk, the latest in a string of moves demonstrating the drift of many players away from the pure low-cost model.

Whatever next? A business class? A loyalty programme?

What better advert for Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class service than the Spice Girls disembarking from their Virgin Los Angeles flight at Heathrow looking like this!

All that in-flight pampering (remember Virgin offers a personal beauty therapist) can certainly pay off as Emma (with ankle strapping), Geri, Mel B and Mel C and Posh Spice can testify.

How much use they made of Virgin’s bar I can’t say, but us mere mortals tend to roll off a 10-hour red eye looking and feeling generally pretty grotty whether or not we’d imbibed with a Bloody Mary or two.

Ryanair, which is normally the instigator when it comes to taking legal action, is facing a possible legal challenge of its own from the Spanish Women's Institute over the publication of a calendar featuring scantily clad Ryanair flight attendants.

The Women's Institute, a branch of the Spanish labour ministry, says the calendar represents the flight attendants as "sexual objects" and points out that there are no half-naked men featured, despite the fact that a significant number of men work as flight attendants. It is taking legal advice and plans to complain to Irish and EU authorities.

Ryanair has defended the calendar because it is for 'charidee' and says none of the flight attendants were forced to take their clothes off. Well that's a relief! I hope for their sake Ryanair took them somewhere warm to do the poses - imagine how cold it would be posing in a bikini on the tarmac at Dublin Airport! Brrrrr.

On a more serious note and at the risk of being branded a raging feminist - a term which has somehow become an insult, despite the fact that if it wasn't for the feminist movement and women like Emily Pankhurst we'd all be chained to the kitchen sink with no right to vote - I have to say I do find it a bit depressing. Some things just never change.

C'mon Ryanair - next time let's have a bit of equality!

Not so long ago in London you couldn’t walk to the corner store without hearing someone talk about Heathrow Express. “Fast” blah, “15 minutes to the centre of London” blah, “every 15 minutes” blah, “relaxed” blah. That is true and certainly in the almost 10 years the Heathrow Express has been running, it has been a lifeline for (mainly) business travellers using Heathrow airport.