Recently in Air Transport Category

What is it with all these people (and not Tom Hanks in The Terminal) living in airports?

The Financial Times reports:

Mr Feng has been haunting the halls of Japan's Narita airport since being turned away from his own country by Shanghai police on November 4.
...
Mr Feng's presence in the airport no-man's-land stems from his outrage at his treatment by Chinese authorities and Japanese airline All Nippon Airways.

Mr Feng, a Chinese human rights activist on behalf of individual Chinese complaining of illegal mistreatment at official hands, says Shanghai police, assisted by an ANA employee, physically forced him on to a flight back to Japan after he was barred from returning home for the eighth time.

"I refuse to enter Japan. For a Chinese to be kidnapped and taken to Japan like this is a humiliation for me and a humiliation for China," he told the Financial Times during an interview in a Narita corridor.

...

ANA said its staff had needed to use "just a little bit" of force to ensure Mr Feng was on the flight, since it was already an hour late and Shanghai authorities had made clear it could not depart until he was on board.

From the third-quarter results of SAS Group today:

 

 

Germanwings CEO Thomas Winkelmann recently predicted Ryanair's demise, saying, "I think the Ryanair model is coming to an end. The more Ryanair flies to a destination, the more losses taken by the airport and the local tax payers wont stand for that."

Ryanair responded by saying, "We only reply to airlines that have a significant market share. Germanwings is the fly on the arse of the airline industry, so we're not going to bother."

Another day in the world of European LCCs.

For an assignment at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley,  frequent flyer miler hoarder Gabriel Leigh decided to make a documentary about his fellow frequent flyer mile accumulators.

His result is a 20 minute look into the fascinating--or bewildering, depending on your point of view--world of frequent flyer programmes. As the occasional mileage runner, I could easily relate to the video. The highlight for me was hearing how one mileage runner found an $8 fare between two cities in Thailand and hired local Thais to fly the route multiple times a day for 6 weeks. The organizer (who I presume took control of his workforce's accounts) ended up with over a million frequent flyer miles--and an inquiry from the Drug Enforcement Agency about if he was actually flying drug mules around Thailand.

This is 20 minutes but exceptionally well put together and worth your time.

Frequent Flyer from Gabriel Leigh on Vimeo.

The Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators (GAPAN) has awarded the Master's Medal to the crew of US Airways Flight 1549, for an exemplary exercise in ditching their Airbus A320 in the Hudson River near New York with no injury or loss of life.

The detailed citation on the crew's work that day, 15 January 2009, includes this statement: "The crew quickly cleared all the passengers: parents with children, an elderly woman, and dozens of people travelling on business. Capt Sullenberger then walked up and down the cabin, twice, to make sure everyone was out. He then took a final look at his sinking aircraft, grabbed the maintenance logbook and jumped onto a life-raft that was then filled with passengers."

The presentation took place at the Guildhall in the City of London on 29 October, and the medal was received on behalf of the crew by the aircraft commander, Capt Chesley Sullenberger, and two of his cabin crew, Donna Dent and Sheila Dail.

 

 

Not present for the ceremony were the flight's First Officer Jeff Skiles and Flight Attendant Doreen Welsh.

The awards were presented by the Guild's Master, Rear Admiral C Cooke-Priest, and the immediate Past Master Air Commodore R Peacock-Edwards.

GAPAN also presented Flight International with its Award for Aviation Journalism. The citation noted Flight's work in "charting the major events and developments in aviation and making sense of them to both the general public and to the professionals since its first issue was published 100 years ago on 2 January 1909, weeks after Cody's 'hop' at Farnborough."

It added: "Flight International's team of committed and knowledgeable journalists under the current editorship of Murdo Morrison, are trusted by the people they interview and in turn trusted by their readers to deliver factually accurate and balanced information and well-informed insights. They provide a valuable service to the general media of providing expert comment to explain the complexities of aviation to a public audience."

The Award was accepted on behalf of the Flight International team by Operations and Safety Editor David Learmount.

The Guild presented more than 20 Awards for outstanding services to aviation that evening. A list of the Award winners can be found on the GAPAN website.

Related blog:

LEARMOUNT: Opening doors onto the Hudson River

LEARMOUNT: Why Sully succeeds

Related stories:

Hudson crash: A320's engines lost power simultaneously - including CNN video news report

Archive:

The Cody Flyer

 

Out of London this morning is Michael O'Leary's proclamation (no, not about needing a better deal from Boeing on more 737s, and no, not the BBC documentary was biased) that Ryanair could overtake British Airways as the largest domestic British carrier.

(It was at this point O'Leary qualified his statement, saying that would occur only if the carrier could obtain more favorable rates on new 737s.)

Ryanair's headline-grabbing tactics aside, Ryanair will very likely overtake BA. This decade has seen the shift of low-cost and secondary carriers overtake their legacy counterparts. In Australia, Virgin Blue (which is a "new world airline", not a LCC) offers more domestic flights than Qantas, the country's dearly-held carrier.

In America, LCCs like Southwest and jetBlue have become traveler's carrier of choice. In the next decade, we'll likely see this trend continue.

For once, Michael O'Leary wasn't all about hot air.

No, it's not The Terminal, but a former airline pilot lived for two weeks in a Brazil airport until authorities removed the German man.

There are conflicting reports if the man was waiting for his girlfriend or had been broken up with. Either way, the man was apparently out of money and decided to stay at the airport.

While the man was no longer a pilot, this is a reminder of increasing public awareness that being a pilot--and working for an airline in general--is far, far gone from its golden days.

Our very own David Learmount recently said why you shouldn't marry a pilot. For further evidence, consider the cohort of airline pilots that live in a parking lot at LAX.

Captain Chesley B (Sully) Sullenberger and some of his crew, (Donna Dent, Sheila Dail) who ensured the safety of all 150 passengers after the US Airways A320 Flight 1549, crash-landed in the Hudson River west of New York City after a departure from LaGuardia Airport. 

Sully accepted the Master's Medal for "an outstanding aviation achievement" from Air Cdr Rick Peacock-Edwards , Immediate Past Master (GAPAN) last night at The Guild's Annual Trophies & Awards Banquet in London's Guildhall for his and his crew's actions back in January following a bird strike and double engine failure.   

Related content:

VIDEO: US Airways A320 crew showed the world how ditching should be done

US Airways A320 Flight 1549 coverage on Flightglobal and the rest of the web

Air New Zealand's announcement that it is looking at having economy class "seat beds" is not surprising.

The grapevine has been chatting for a while there would be major innovation in the on-board economy product on the carrier's new B777-300ERs, due to be delivered next year. Most rumours favoured the idea of sleeping bunks, but the seat bed idea is close enough.

Under the plan, Air NZ will offer economy customers the ability to purchase the seat next to them if it is not occupied. The two seats will then be able to form a bed.

What to do with empty seats is a potential revenue stream that has been overlooked in an industry that constantly tries to ensure every seat is filled but never (understandably) achieves that.

Last year Air NZ started a programme where on flights to the US passengers could pay an extra $75 and guarantee the seat next to them would be empty. According to one report, up to 10 passengers on each flight would select the option. (There are approximately 240 seats on an Air NZ B777-200.)

I would be curious to know what the cost is of flying an empty seat in Air NZ's case. With no meal to feed it and no fuel to carry the person and his/her luggage, could Air NZ make a greater profit with a passenger in that seat or with someone paying $75 for the seat to be empty?

Any bean counters willing to crunch some numbers?

Update
Air NZ has released this statement from General Manager International Airline Ed Sims.

The current speculation about Air New Zealand launching a lie flat economy class bed is misleading. While improving personal space and allowing our Economy passengers to sleep flat remains our Holy Grail we are still in the middle of a research and development process to deliver the world's best long-haul travel.  Our design and prototyping that involves more than 20 options has some months to go and only five or six of these options might fly.

Our break through thinking will not be limited to seat design. We've had some of the best technical, engineering, research and customer service brains in Air New Zealand, and from around the world, working on a range of ground breaking products.  We're also redesigning our aircraft livery, our uniform and a whole range of other products that will change the way our customers fly.

The most significant innovations will be revealed with the launch of our new long-haul product for our new Boeing 777-300ERs, which start arriving in late 2010.

When you hear that an aircraft has lost an engine, best to check what that means before committing to press, and before it turns up (as this one did) embarrassingly intact.