Recently in fun Category

Update 17 November: the e-mail in question was sent to one million members

Last Friday--13 November--Southwest Airlines cheekily wrote a blog post saying travel figures for the day had not dropped and thus passengers were not superstitious of the legendary "Friday the 13th".

Virgin Blue, unfortunately, did not fare so well.

A processing error accidentally upgraded "many" (the airline won't say how many) of its Velocity frequent flyers, including yours truly, to its top-tier gold elite status for one year. Normally gold status is obtained after accumulating 50,000 status credits. Gold has the perks of complimentary lounge access (which otherwise costs $369 a year), priority boarding and checking, and free checked luggage.


Two and a half hours later Virgin Blue sent a message saying "Friday the 13th strikes!" The carrier apologised and informed passengers that no, they were not elites.


While the carrier's mistake is easily forgivable, there were naturally were some displeased passengers venting on Twitter. The ACCC, Australia's consumer watchdog, said it would investigate any complaints but was unlikely to take action.

Stuck on a layover with nothing to do?

No worries. Travel + Leisure has compiled a list of the strangest activities at airports around the world, from 4D movies in Hong Kong to teeth cleaning in Sao Paulo.

Read about it here.

Last month Air NZ turned one of its LA-Auckland flights into a special "matchmaking" flight. Passengers who sign up have in-flight mingling activities, a special ball in Auckland, as well as general time to socialise--and hopefully find Mr/Miss Right.

Did it work?

Well apparently so. One passenger wrote about her experience and at the end said as a result of the flight she's now in a relationship--with one of the pilots who was on board the matchmaking flight.

Who knew you could fine love at 35,000 feet?

Hi Stefan here.

FlairJet recently took delivery of its Phenom 100 which took off from Orlando. I was lucky enough to be invited to travel on the first UK 'G' registered Embraer Phenom 100 (G-SRBN).

We touched down at its new home at London Oxford Airport,  at 15.28 (GMT) on 29 October. At the controls were Oxford-based FlairJet CEO and Capt David Fletcher and Capt Graham Rose.

We were met by the FlairJet team at the Oxfordjet FBO with champagne at the ready. I might have had more than my fair share.

The journey back began from Orlando where FlairJet attended the 62nd NBAA show and picked up the aircraft.

Last minute changes meant we needed to fly from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale in the Phenom 100, then from Miami to Sao Paulo by a scheduled TAM flight. 

FlairJet formally accepted the aircraft from Embraer in Sao Jose dos Campos following the certification of airworthiness issued by the UK CAA. The delivery was completed in two stages with the Phenom 100 originally leaving Embraer's Brazilian facility for delivery to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

See the rest of our route  below and click on the images of me.

 

It was truly a Phenom-enal journey(!) and although it wasn't the most direct route, it meant I got acquainted with FlairJet and its new aircraft.

Capt Fletcher said: "The aircraft handled brilliantly. It was a joy to fly, especially the spectacular approaches into the Caribbean, the Dutch Antilles of St Maarten and the fjords of Narsarsuaq, Greenland."

Total 'delivery' flying mileage was 7,730nm. Capt Fletcher, former pilot on Monarch Airlines' Airbus A320, compared flying the two aircraft: "In many ways, the Phenom is similar to the A320 with its intelligent flight management system and ease of operation, but it is much more fun to fly."

• Flightglobal Business & General Aviation Editor Kate Sarsfield reports on the Phenom 100 delivery to FlairJet...  

The London Times has a great collection of tales from cabin crew.

"A lady boarded with the biggest hair and became quite on edge when she saw she had a window seat. She told me: 'I can't sit there, I've just had my hair done and have an important meeting when we get there. If anyone opens the window, it'll be ruined.'"

You can read the rest here. If you have stories of your own, please share in the comments section.

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.

 

In 1909 Louis Blériot made history when he flew over the English Channel on Shell fuel. 100 years later Swedish pilot Mikael Carlson marked the event in a restored Blériot XI plane, also fuelled by Shell.

This video captures that flight, which was recreated to mark Shell Aviation's Centenary Year.

AirAsia X CEO Azran Osman-Rani just Tweeted that a passenger wanting a return ticket from Melbourne to Perth in Australia booked a ticket that goes via Kuala Lumpur--some 4800 miles out of the way.

Melbourne to Perth direct: 1,681 miles (one way)
Melbourne to Perth via Kuala Lumpur: 6,481 miles (one way)
Why do this? Certainly not as a "mileage run" since AirAsia X has no frequent flyer programme. The answer, Azran says, appears that flying on his airline via KL--despite adding nine hours flying time each way--is cheaper than going direct on an Australian airline.

Tickets to Perth must have been really expensive, or the seats on AirAsia X must have been on a super sale, because we can't find dates and flights that make it cheaper to fly through KL. Or maybe the person wanted to fly a widebody or had a friend flying AirAsia X on some of the segments?

We love aviation. We really do. But I think I found someone who loves aviation more than we do.

Tommy and Kimi (no surname supplied) had their pre-wedding photos taken at the airport. But we're not talking about the luxurious Dubai or Singapore airports. The couple had their photos taken at AirAsia's low-cost terminal in Kuala Lumpur.

Photographer Dennis Yap (who does freelance photography in addition to his day job at AirAsia) wrote this to us:

Kimi had worked in AirAsia for many years in the finance department and so she spent her time working in AirAsia while in a relationship with Tommy. She had made many friends in AirAsia and most people stayed in AirAsia because of good friendship. She is leaving to Dubai with her husband and so this portrait is her remembrance of her time spent in the company.

This cool video visualisation uses Twitter to plot the journey of travellers over a certain period of time.

The video plots on a map tweets that contain the phrases 'just landed in...' or 'just arrived in...'. A location tool then locates where that Tweet was sent from and matches it to the location that the Tweeter has on his/her profile.

Just Landed - 61 Hours from blprnt on Vimeo.

Find out more about how such a video was created and see different time periods on blprnt on Vimeo.