Recently in Quirky Category

Poor Qantas Group. Someone, PR or reviewer, tries to make a joke but only ends up praising Virgin Australia. First there was Jetstar and seat colours and now it is espresso.

The Sun-Herald review of Qantas' (over-hyped) 747 service to Perth concludes:

Sky Report's only black mark was our flight attendant's (albeit gentle) mocking when we put in our coffee order as "a long black".

"A long black. Would you like a twist with that?" he quipped with a friendly smile.

It took us a while to puzzle it out. Then we realised: there was no espresso on board, as many international services do have in business class these days.

This might be a largely international configuration. But there are still some things you can't get when you're not leaving Australian airspace.

Clearly Virgin Australia has not flown the Sun-Herald's reporter in its trans-con business class. In that cabin there would be no "albeit gentle mocking" from the cabin crew if asked for a long black.

The cabin crew would bring it out.

After all, Virgin Australia's A330s flying between Sydney and Perth have an espresso machine on board:
It is too easy to further pick apart that review.

The Sun-Herald reviewer champions the 747 being "substantially faster than the Airbus Qantas has most commonly used on the route". The 747 is so faster, the writer says, that despite an hour delay at Sydney, the flight arrived only 15 minutes late. But ah the wonders of schedule padding in which airlines include extra time in the block time so a minor disruption will still allow an aircraft to arrive on time.

For normal operations, Qantas's schedule shows the 747 Sydney-Perth flight is 15 minutes faster than on an A330-200 (the 747-400 typically cruises around 913 km/h while the A330-200 cruises at 880 km/h). But in the scheme of a 5 hour block flight, 15 minutes does not seem that substantial.

This edition of quirky news is courtesy of Jetstar's press release today announcing its new a la carte fare structure. Commenting on the ability to pick an assortment of offerings, the release quotes Jetstar chief executive Bruce Buchanan saying: "You can choose almost everything but the seat colour."

It was a spin on Henry Ford's classic statement about offering cars in any colour as long as it's black, but the joke is on Jetstar.

Virgin Australia's new economy cabin (above on the 737, below on the A330) offers passengers three seat colour choices--gray, purple, and red. It was a decision that was very intentional, the airline's creative director Hans Hulsbosch told me at the start of the month.

"The reason why I did is that with most airlines, economy class is economy class, is cattle class," Hulsbosch says. "If you go on the aircraft of our competitor's, it's the same chairs all the way around. I wanted to make every customer feel special. I did that through colour and design. I wanted to give a feeling of 'Hey, I'm special. They're treating me special because they've given me a special colour.'"

Although Virgin Atlantic's economy cabin features sets of seats in different colours, no airline to Virgin's knowledge has given each seat a random colour. "It's the first time in the world that anyone has ever addressed to make that economy passenger feel special. No one has ever bothered."

Jetstar may end up swallowing Buchanan's quote if Hulsbosch's prediction on individuality in economy class comes true: "You wait. They're all going to follow."

This edition of quirky news is brought to you by Virgin Australia, whose new sixty-second television advertisement features music by Les Gock Sound Thinking and cameos from uniform designer Juli Grbac, creative director Hans Hulsbosch, and a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft.

For April Fools' tomorrow Virgin Blue is expected to launch a campaign that it will pass off as a joke, as a fun, laid-back Virgin carrier might do. But it is believed an element of that campaign will actually be true.

Let the guessing begin.

For some weekend fun I thought I would transcribe funny complaint letters Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe received and shared during an address at the National Aviation Press Club in Sydney last year.

Fyfe preceded the tales by noting he generally receives four compliments for every complaint and that he personally responds to ever letter and e-mail he receives.

As Fyfe says, his responses to these letters "give you a sense things are little different at Air New Zealand."

A lounge worse than McDonald's
The first letter came from Simon in Hong Kong in 2010.

Sir,
I'd like to know how such incompetence occurs in the so-called airline of the year. I have a ticket in front of me on the same itinerary. How can you grant Airpoints on the way down to Christchurch from Hong Kong but not on the way back to Hong Kong?

How does this occur in the computer system?????????? [With ten question marks after it.]

What do I need to check? I never have this problem with a real airline.

Fyfe: "The thing goes on to say, and I'm about to censor this,"

The eff'ing lounge you use in Hong Kong is a joke and embarrassment to Air New Zealand and the people of New Zealand. You share with domestic airlines of mainland eff'ing China and third world countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Why do I pay for this? McDonald's in Hong Kong airport is nicer downstairs. Why not use that you tight ass mother eff'ers? Eff'ing joke. Never again.

I will switch back to Cathay if the airline of my country is an eff'ing joke.

Fyfe read us his response:

Dear Simon,
I'm in receipt of your note and wholeheartedly support your proposal. I far rather someone so offensive fly on the competition than Air New Zealand. If there's any chance you could change your citizenship at the same time, that would also be an excellent idea as it embarrasses me someone purporting to be a fellow New Zealander would engage with anyone in such an offensive and derogatory manner.

"It turns out he had gone to the wrong lounge," Fyfe told us.

"The story goes on through several emails and he responded...saying he was offended by my response and was seeking legal advice. The end of that particular story was Simon apologising for what he termed 'mis-communication' in his first e-mail and he still flies with us today."

(Fyfe never addressed the Airpoints issue, which I agree with Simon is a thorny issue.)

'Service lower than a snake's scrotum'
Fyfe next told us of a:

chap that wrote to me describing to me how he was incredibly pissed off his flight had been delayed because of a problem with a heater and he was heading down to Dunedin from Auckland and said even though it was quite cold, I'm sure we could get by without a heather. His last line in his e-mail was that Air New Zealand's services were lower than a snake's scrotum.

"I've got an aversion to snakes. I've never studied them that closely but I got the hunt it was quite low," Fyfe recalled to us.

Fyfe investigated the problem and found the heater problem was with a pitot tube that measures aircraft speed and is a critical component. Fyfe relayed this to the writer, Grant, and noted Air New Zealand had good on-time performance.

So he challenged me that, "I bet you one bottle of fine French wine that my next two flights won't be on time." So I happily took up this challenge.
...
I duly went into the system to see when his next few flights were and we had several hundred people making sure his flights were on time. In fact, we had a spare aircraft on standby.

Grant's next two flights were on-time and, as promised, he sent Fyfe the bottle of wine.

"He sent me an e-mail two weeks later saying 'Have you drunk it yet? What do you think?" Fyfe recalled. "I said I haven't and in fact if I had to share it with all the people involved in looking after your flight it would be a bit like communion."

Fyfe was participating in a charity auction in which the winner got spend a day with him. He threw in the bottle of wine, and Simon donated some more, and Fyfe ended up raising NZ$17,000. The winner did not drink wine so she re-auctioned it and raised another NZ$1,000--an amount all together that is surely higher than a snake's scrotum.

As for Grant, Fyfe says Grant "goes down to the Koru lounge at Dunedin saying I'm his best friend."

While most of New Zealand is taking today easy on account of it being Labour Day, two pilots were working to extricate themselves from a sewage pond after their C172 overran the runway during a touch-and-go at Thames airport in NZ's North Island (see map below).

The duo were injured--physically, at least--and there was no structural damage to aircraft, owned by South Auckland's Ardmore Flying School. But the C172's engine was completely submerged, making it likely the aircraft will be a write-off, according to an account told to Waikato Times by a chief flying flying instructor based at airfield and who witnessed the accident.

This morning Christchurch-based Pacific Blue was unwittingly promoting flights from Australia to NZ with the tag line "What's ours is yours", which in light of this recent incident, is awfully generous.


View Larger Map

AirAsia X has no qualms using bloodless prose when it comes to the Malaysian government blocking the carrier's application to fly to Sydney and other key routes, which the government interprets as a threat to AirAsia X competitor and national carrier Malaysia Airlines. "Minister of Transport says public will welcome having choice between LCC and full service airlines, will government really allow choice on routes?" AirAsia X chief executive Azran Osman-Rani Tweeted last month.
Here's one last photo of XXG, this one showing the A330's name:

In this installment of quirky news, the queen of daytime TV in America may have given away cars to her audience, but for the start of her 25th and final season, Oprah Winfrey teamed up with Qantas to fly "over 300 of Oprah's most loyal viewers" to Australia in December for an eight-day, all expenses paid trip, Qantas says.

It is easy to be ingratiated by the news with Oprah's proclamation, "We're going to Australia! We are going to Australia! You and you and you and you, are going to Australia!"

The announcement however shows just how high the stakes are between Qantas and V Australia to promote their trans-Pacific services. With this announcement, Qantas has now overtaken the high-rolling junket title from V Australia, who announced last week it would fly 180 travel agents from America to Hamilton Island for the Corroboree 2010 trade event. The agents are due to fly V Australia across the Pacific and then take a specially chartered 737 to Hamilton Island.

For added dramatic effect, Oprah's announcement was accompanied with a guest appearance by Qantas ambassador John Travolta and an aircraft mock-up. But the real drama may unfold when audience members realise they may not be able to go. When Oprah gave away Pontiac G6s in 2004, many audience members had to refuse the cars because of the taxes they would have had to pay on the car's $20,000 price tag (unlike Australia, America levies taxes on prize winnings). There is no word yet how many, if any, winners will have to pass up a vacation on the Flying Kangaroo for a so-called staycation.

Had Tiger chosen to write a press release regarding the overnight incident of a man breaking into its Gold Coast terminal and proceeding to break windows and upend furniture, one suspects they would have given in to their tendency to use the pun "pounce".

Alas, there was no press release, so I'll make the Tiger-rific quip for them in this installment of quirky news.

To see the damage caused by the eye of the tiger, head over to the Gold Coast Carrier's 22-picture slide show. The terminal was shut down for the day and flights operated out of the main terminal. Tiger expects its terminal to open again tomorrow. Police are still investigating.

On the positive side, being an ultra-low-cost carrier, Tiger designed an ultra-low-cost terminal where there wasn't much to damage to begin with. But still, next time you read their in-flight magazine Tiger Tales, don't expect to see this Tiger tale.

In this installment of quirky aviation news, the Royal Australian Air Force has issued a statement that a RAAF PC9 conducting a training mission over Heyfield in eastern Victoria  today "had two landing gear doors separate from the aircraft during flight".

For the uninitiated, the RAAF is kind enough to explain that "the loss of parts from aircraft during flight is unusual".

The aircraft safely landed at  RAAF Base East Sale. More fortunate, the PC9, a small single engine turboprop, has correspondingly small landing gear doors unlikely to cause major damage. Should you find them (on the street or in the middle of your now-smashed kitchen table), please contact the RAAF. They'd like to know why the doors fell off. "Finders keepers" need not apply here.