Kerry Ezard: February 2008 Archives

Singapore Airlines is using "social marketing" to drum up passenger excitement ahead of its first Airbus A380 flight from London on 18 March.

SIA has sent passengers an email inviting them to submit "creative expressions" of the A380 next to a London landmark. Squint hard at the picture to the left and you'll see an A380 in the top left corner. Every week, the submission with the highest number of votes gets the honour of being featured on the main page of the carrier's online A380 "gallery".

Passengers are also invited to submit written articles describing their own experiences on the A380. Examples of previous submissions can be seen here.

This is a good example of "user-generated content", something us journalists are only too familiar with as our profession evolves and changes to take into account the potential to reach and engage with readers in new ways through the web.

Airlines are obviously beginning to incorporate this technique into their marketing strategies, and it will be interesting to see who else jumps on this bandwagon and what methods they will adopt to communicate their message to the masses.

This fine and sunny morning (yes, I'm serious!) I headed into London to attend a presentation at the Institute of Directors (which represents 52,000 business directors) to unveil the results of a survey sponsored by UK carrier bmi entitled "High Fliers: business leaders' view on air travel". Now forgive me for not being blown away by one of the main points raised by the survey, which is that, wait for it, drum roll.....most business organisations use air travel at some point. Well blow me down with a feather! Who'd've thought it?!

However, once I'd scraped myself off the floor and recovered from the shock revelation that UK businesses actually need to do the odd bit of travelling from time to time, there were actually some interesting points in the survey. For instance, of the 500 IoD members surveyed, half agree that air fares should be higher "in order that the aviation industry pays its full environmental costs". This is not something you see very often, particularly as we head towards a possible recession when travel budgets are normally one of the first things to be cut.

The IoD is also using the survey to throw its weight behind the argument in favour of building a third runway at London Heathrow, pointing out that 70% of respondents agree that UK airport capacity should be expanded over the next 20 years. Expect more arguments in favour of the third runway as we approach the end of the government consultation into Heathrow expansion - my inbox when I returned to the office contained press releases from both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, calling for the third runway to be approved.

And in the against camp, Greenpeace made its feelings crystal clear this morning as campaigers climbed on top of a BA aircraft at Heathrow and dropped a banner saying "Climate emergency - no third runway" (see picture). Whatever your feelings on airport expansion, this stunt certainly raises serious security concerns that BAA will no doubt be facing a grilling over!

British Airways is having a tough week. Not only has the baggage system at its London Heathrow base broken down, forcing the carrier to tell long-haul passengers not to bother bringing any hold luggage with them, but its pilots have voted to go on strike for the first time in nearly 30 years.

BA's pilots are protesting the carrier's planned new OpenSkies subsidiary, which the pilots see as a "Trojan horse" which will "force down" their pay and conditions.

This is the last thing BA needs with its move into Terminal 5 just around the corner, and will no doubt dampen the optimism expressed by chief executive Willie Walsh during his recent cover interview with Airline Business.

The pilots union BALPA has not set a date for the planned strike, but it could prove catastrophic for the grand opening of the much trumpeted T5 if the two events coincide.

London's incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone and the arch-rival who's vying for his job, Boris Johnson, may be poles apart politically, but they have something in common: they both oppose further expansion at their city's biggest airport.

On a recent visit to one of the villages that would have to be demolished if proposals for a third runway at Heathrow became reality, Livingstone spelled out his fierce opposition to expansion, saying: "It is vital that all airport expansion in London and the South East, including Heathrow, is halted now as it is contrary to growing evidence on the role of aviation in contributing towards catastrophic climate change."

Boris (pictured below) has gone one step further, according to this report in The Times, and is calling for Heathrow as we know it to be demolished and moved lock, stock and barrel to a set of artificial islands in the Thames estuary.

I think Boris's plan is far-fetched and pretty unrealistic, given how long it took for Terminal 5 to be built let alone how long it would take to bulldoze Heathrow and move it eastwards. Plus I don't see how moving one of the busiest airports in the world to a different location would lessen the environmental impact in any way.

The third runway debate is reaching fever pitch here in London - what are your thoughts? Should they or shouldn't they build one? And if they don't build one, what is Heathrow's future in comparison to other global hubs?

British Airways today dropped an unexpected bombshell - it plans to launch business class only Airbus A318 flights between London City airport and New York in 2009. The move marks two major landmarks for the downtown London airport: its first scheduled transatlantic service and its first A318 flight. BA will configure the aircraft with 32 lie-flat beds, and passengers will be offered a 15-minute check-in time.

BA has already announced that it will launch a new subsidiary called OpenSkies this June, which will take advantage of the EU-US agreement from which it takes its name and operate Boeing 757 flights from points in continental Europe to New York.

The airline is clearly on a roll this year - February has only just begun and already we've had these two announcements, not to mention the fact that its long-awaited new home, Heathrow's Terminal 5, opens its doors to the public next month.