August 2008 Archives

...well, fairly lamented. I had a sorta-kinda good experience with Zoom and I knew deep down the whole thing was too good to be true. Anyway, the show's over. Zoom are blaming fuel costs and the US economy - but I'm sceptical as to whether they'd have made it long-term anyway.

Coincidentally the day after I mentioned Aeroflot's new European PR campaign I was on the receiving end of its opening burst. As you can see below, Ogilvy PR think I am so important that they sent me a copy of the press release that they had already exclusively offered to the travel editor of The Sun. Mind you, she has her own problems, and probably needs all the help she can get.



29th August 2008
EXCLUSIVE FOR LISA MINOT, THE SUN

AEROFLOT'S CABIN SERVICE SCORES FIRST-CLASS RESULTS IN IATA PASSENGER SURVEY

Russian airline in top five of European customer satisfaction study
Cabin crew attains first-rate marks with courtesy and responsiveness
Business traveller loyalty rate of 85 per cent boosts passenger growth
New self-check-in facilities, Russian airport rail link and Moscow airport terminal

Pity Katharina Winkler of Ogilvy PR in London (that's not her pictured left BTW). August gets off to a nice bright start for her as she gets the Aeroflot pan-European account at a time when the airline actually has some good stuff to talk about. Shiny new fleet with more to come, strong growth, reasonably serious hopes of Sheremetyevo getting sorted out.

The days tick by and then this happens. Since Aeroflot was apparently in the process of hiring an agency while the Kremlin was in the process of getting ready to go to war, it seems the airline is not quite as deep in the government's pocket as generally reckoned. Or maybe it was, in a very Western way, doing the only thing it could in the light of events.

Anyway, Katharina has got her work cut out.

After a few quiet months air safety is suddenly smack-bang back on the news agenda. The Spanair crash in Madrid and the 737 loss in Kyrgyzstan over the weekend have seen that. And so it's hard luck on Ryanair to have a depressurisation a couple of days later, and make-your-own-luck for Air Canada Jazz for going public with plans to take lifejackets out of some aircraft. Expect more of this for a while anyway.

Every once in a while things happen in aircraft that you simply couldn't make up. This email, currently doing the rounds, appears to be authentic and the pix below back it up.

Pilots may feel that there is a certain step in the sequence of events which may have been, how can I put this, more optimally executed.

Kudos to Lockheed for building them to last.

Full story below....

Way back in 1936 Flight carried a story titled Lindbergh buys British. Sub-titled: His new Miles Mohawk described: a high-performance "custom-built" tourer. Complete with evocative pic of Col Lindbergh running an eye over his new purchase.

He finally took delivery the next year and, as you do, flew to India with his wife in it, then back to the UK via, obviously, Belgrade. Suffice it to say that the aircraft had an eventful life before finally being written off in Spain in 1947.

In fact even after that its life was only a little less eventful and somewhat incredibly it has now just gone on display in its full glory at the RAF Museum at Hendon in north London. Pretty isn't it?

The full story of what happened and how it got there is below, courtesy of the museum.

I've banged on about this before, but a new accident report from Taiwan rams the point home for anyone who wasn't paying attention. If you only do one thing to keep yourself safe as an airliner passenger, just make sure it's fastening your seatbelt.

This particular accident wasn't caused by turbulence, it was due to a collision-warning alert and the ensuing events. The report makes interesting reading - but the photos and injury descriptions are the bits passengers need to pay attention to.

The fact is that in a jet airliner your soft body is being projected through space at several hundreds of miles per hour surrounded by necessarily hard stuff. Anything that happens to distub the equilibrium of your trajectory is likely to end badly for you. And such things do happen quite a bit.

Read my earlier post here.

So BA, American and Iberia have finally bitten the bullet and are are asking for anti-trust immunity for their alliance - with Finnair and Royal Jordanian thrown in for good measure. This one will run and run, but an interesting development on day one is that they are banking on public support through a new campaigning website with the provocative url www.MoreTravelChoices.com

First question now will be to see who actively opposes this. Virgin we know all about - but how will Star Alliance and SkyTeam address this? Very tricky for them I think.

In the great, and generally successful, tradition of Unusual Attitude off-the-cuff predictions here's one more: this application will be approved.

Comments very welcome.

I've been on holiday, so this is just an aviation travelogue (avialogue?), but it's a bit offbeat, so here goes. We were in Croatia, one of the places in Europe where I still get a passport stamp, though when the Croatians negotiate their way into the EU I won't anymore. We flew into Pula Airport with you know who and mixed it with the Carelesses, Cambers, and Fishbeds.