news: May 2011 Archives

 To get a flight search listing, all you have to do is searching for "Flights from (city) to (city) " and Google will display the flight schedule data on top of your search page.

 The flight duration displayed is an average of all flights and can sometimes display a longer duration than normal. The listings also list flights from LCCs and provide with a link to the airline's online homepage, thus probably benefiting the airlines. This should especially help airlines like Ryanair which has been fighting to get all online sales to be routed via its own website.

 The new feature is an achievement from Google's acquisition of ITA last year. The acquisition was met with strong opposition from most existing flight search engines and online travel agencies. And that opposition now seems to be proving true, given that Google's display of flights schedules at the top of its result page will stop anyone from scrolling down further along the search results page for a third party flight search site.

 It will be interesting to see how Google's entry into the flight search space will affect the incumbents and the industry in the future.

 SriLankan Airlines has long been planning to operate flights into Toronto, Canada. The airline wanted to operate these flights via London, and they recently received fifth freedom approval from the UK authorities for flights between UK and Canada. However, there has been no official indication on this route from the airline so far. The Sri Lankan Minister of Civil Aviation has today commented that SriLankan, which is state owned, would be launching daily flights to Toronto via London Heathrow In October. And for a different reason altogether, now it seems that this comment in fact is true.

a temporary licence to operate, through code sharing, an international air service on a scheduled basis, using large aircraft, between Canada and Sri Lanka.

 This would mean that Air Canada would be operating a code-share flight to Sri Lanka on board another carrier. And this other carrier could only mean SriLankan as no other Sri Lanka based carrier is presently contemplating flying to Canada.

 The new LCC will commence flights from next March, initially operating to Fukuoka and Sapporo out of Osaka Kansai Airport. Yes, it closely resembles Wizz Air, but let's think that it's pink, ok ? ;-)

 The approach this time around is for airlines to cancel their flights based on their own safety risk assessments, rather than a blanket closure, like was the case last time.

 Here is a handy dandy list of various airlines' operational updates list to keep you up-to-date with the flight cancellations. Always contact your airline before you fly, as delays and extra cancellations are inevitable.

 The airline which presently flies twice daily to Frankfurt, will be adding the third daily flight to the German metropolis from next Winter. The operational schedule has not yet been published on the GDS.

 The Airbus A380 service to Munich will begin from 1st January 2012, on its present morning rotation. Schedule is below:

EK49 DXB 0910 - 1245 MUC D 388

EK50 MUC 1425 - 2305 DXB D 388

 The United Arab Emirates is limited to just six weekly flights to Canada, of which three is utilized by Etihad, leaving Emirates with just three weekly flights. The airline has been battling to get more rights into Canada, a market for which it has great demand from the Indian sub-continent, however has been refused any extra rights by Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper's government. Emirates' expansion plans have also been opposed by Air Canada, reportedly over the threat Emirates poses to the former's long-haul revenue, although AC does not serve the Middle East or the Indian sub-continent.

 The battle for landing rights has gone as far as the UAE asking a Canadian army camp to leave the UAE and Canada awarding new landing rights to Emirates' prime competitor Qatar Airways. With the Harper government re-elected for another four years, Emirates must have thought of getting a short break with hopes of entering into a fresh round of talks, sooner than later.

 Emirates was also refused by the German authorities from getting rights to serve Berlin and Stuttgart in Germany, last week.

 The carrier expects to cut capacity on some routes, which should reveal how the airline will be bringing in the aircraft capacity needed for this route. Mr. Hartman has stated that KLM will be using more smaller aircraft on routes to North America, possibly signalling the deployment of more A330 capacity to North America.

 It is expected that the airline will launch a daylight service to Rio, initially operating thrice weekly.

Photo by AirSpace user ilpavone2004

 KLM ceased operations to Rio in 2000. The airline first began services to Rio in 1946, at the time operating as Amsterdam - Lisbon - Dakar - Natal - Rio De Janeiro and continuing into Montevideo.

 Rio De Janeiro has recently seen a surge in capacity with Lufthansa launching a new service and British Airways doubling capacity.

 The Sao Paulo - Mexico market is presently dominated by AeroMexico. It is believed that the route will be operated out of Sao Paulo ( GRU ), using an Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

 The airline will also be adding the second seasonal daily flight to Orlando ( MCO ) between July 5th and 2nd August. The new flight, JJ9398 will be operating with an Airbus A330-200.

Schedule:

JJ9398 GRU 0100 - 0905 MCO D 330

JJ8086 GRU 1110 - 1915 MCO D 330

JJ9399 MCO 1230 - 2200 GRU D 330

JJ8087 MCO 2110 - 0645+1 GRU D 330

 The two airlines will be connecting each others domestic points with ANZ operating 70% of the trans-Tasman flights and Virgin Australia ( under Pacific Blue ) the remaining 30%.

 The two airlines will adjust flight times on some sectors while there will be transferring of capacity between the two airlines where necessary.

Wellington - Brisbane : Pacific Blue will increase its servces to twice daily from the present four-weekly

Christchurch - Brisbane : Combined twice daily flights

Queenstown - Sydney : Combined five-times weekly service. Previously both airlines operated twice weekly, on same days of the week.

Wellington - Sydney : ANZ will operate twice daily services.

Pacific Blue will be taking over ANZ's services connecting Dunedin with Sydney and Melbourne.

ANZ will be taking over the Auckland - Cairns route.

Total capacity out of Wellington will increase by 3.5% while Christchurch will see a reduction of about 14% to match the reduced demand following the recent earthquake.

 There are also numerous other capacity adjustmnets.

 A350-800 - 36 Envoy Class / 234 Economy Class

 A350-900 - 36 Envoy Class / 294 Economy Class

 The airline has 18 A350-800 aircraft and 4 A350-900 aircraft on order for delivery from 2017 onwards.

The US Airways present A330-200 has 20 Envoy Class seats and 238 Economy Class seats.

 The A350 will have 16 extra Envoy Class seats while the A350-800, with 234 Economy Class seats will have just four Economy Class seats less than the A332. The A350-800's cabin length is almost identical to the A330-200. The A350-900, which is about two metres longer than the A330-300 in cabin length will seat 6 more Envoy and 31 more Economy passengers over the airline's present A330-300 configuration ( 30 J / 263 Y ).