April 2007

Good news for Frequent Fliers of Delta Airlines. The formerly beleaguered carrier officially emerged from bankruptcy today after nearly a year and a half in Chapter 11.

The airline not only dealt with bankrupty but a potential employee strike and an attempted hostile takeover, prompting many people, such as myself and my father, to unload their Skymiles for fear that Delta may not have been long for this world. Today’s news indicates that the airline is in fact healthy, and not going anywhere.

OAG’s 2007 Best Low Cost Carrier Award went to JetBlue for the second straight year. Among JetBlue’s top qualities:

JetBlue has the most legroom in coach, based on average fleet-wide seat pitch for U.S. airlines.

JetBlue is the first airline to offer a passenger’s Bill of Rights.

Fox InFlight(tm) is offered complimentary on most flights.

The OAG Airline of the Year Awards are based on votes from a world-wide base of business travelers.

Skybus, a new budget airline, is planning on launching new low fares of only $10 a flight. There will only be a select number of reserved $10 tickets, but Skybus says it plans on keeping all fares at very low prices.

Skybus says it can afford to offer such low prices by fully automated their ticketting, and charging for things such as luggage and carry-on. It also is planning on selling ad-space on the inside and outside of its planes. Nationwide ads have been painted on the outside of some planes and on the backs of seats.

Boeing just announced that it sold 15 of its 787 jumbo jets to Virgin Atlantic. Not only are the new planes 27% percent more fuel efficient than the Airbus A340-300 aircraft it will replace, but Boeing has also announced plans to try to run their plans on bio-fuel. These would be the first major jets to run on bio-fuel, and mark a very serious step towards reducing carbon emissions from flying.

Several US online booking tools are intergrating themselves with the European rails in order to provide a much easier travel experience.

GetThere and Concur Technologies Cliqbook, two of the top US selfbooking tools, are hoping to do what no one else has been able to successfully do; allow you to book your entire trip, flying out of the US and riding all over the rails in Europe.

While there are several European companies such as Amadeus and KDS trying to provide this, there still is no single tool which is superior in all markets, and it is recommended that you may try more than one of these booking tools to get the best deal and the most information.

I’ll skip the obvious things; cash, travelers checks, bottled water, and always making sure your luggage has wheels. I’ve done a lot traveling in the past two years, and at some point, you have to start getting seriously prepared for the toll it takes on your body, or you will crash.

So for those of you who are “extreme travelers” (meaning you fly an average of over 5,000 miles per month), follow this advice or you will burn out. I know I did.

First of all, follow the Argonne Anti-Jet-Lag-Diet. It instructs you on what to eat to minimize jet-lag, and coupled with five minutes of exercise every hour, can help you avoid deep developing deep vein thrombosis.

Get a SAD Alarm Clock. Period.

Purchase No-Jet Lag tablets, head and foot cushions and rests, support hose, and micro fiber clothing. Magellans is a great place to do. And while you are there, purchase anything and everything else that even looks like it might help your extreme commute.

I recently posted on American Airlines attempt to attract more female business travelers with their new website, www.aa.com/women. Apparently, they botched a few things. The New York Times recently blasted the website with quotes from high-powered female executives calling the site “stereotyped and occasional downright insulting content.”

It seems some of the advice the site offered was about 60 years out of date. For example, “Always bring a little black dress to wear with these heels,” which many high-powered business women did not feel belonged in the ‘Tips From Our Road Warriors’ section.

AA.com/women also offered advice on social networking, which was ironically blasted on the top flying social networking site for women, Flyertalk.com, whose users called the site a “condescending marketing ploy.” The lavender-coloring of the site was also viewed as old-school sexism.

However, even with all this bad press, American Airlines may not have dropped the ball on this one. They are paying attention to what’s being said about them, and have already changed the color of their site and some of the content. Additionally, some of their ideas, such as lie-flat seats and privacy screens, have been very well received.

Just discovered this one about 3/4 down the page at the Internet Travel Tips page. Before you leave for your trip, use an online travel service like Kayak or Expedia to show flights on all airlines for the same travel day and destination(s) you have booked. Sort the results in ‘departure order’ and print it out. Now you can tell the airlines the flight you want to take when your ticketed flights are delayed/canceled.

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This is a new one. On Friday, the Captain of Northwest Flight 1190 from Las Vegas to Detroit stepped onto the plane talking into his cellphone and cursing loudly. Some passengers complained to him and asked him to stop. His response was to curse at them.

Police and the FAA were notified, and the pilot was removed from the flight. Northwest Airlines canceled the flight and apologized to its customers. It is unclear at this point if he was intoxicated, or if charges will be pressed.

A lot of criticism has been levied at the major online travel engines, Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity, for doing a great job of providing travel assistance and software for major companies, but ignoring the smaller companies.

Robert Kost of TripSynch is planning on launching a new tool for small business travel with a lot of very cool features. For example:

An Admin user can book flights for multiple employees, hold them free for 24 hours, and allows employees to update a central calendar. It also has excellent tools for itemizing expenses during that trip and billing for them.

Is flying all that different for females? Particulary, for female business travelers?

American Airlines hopes the answer to that question is yes, as it launches a new program to cater to women. It has recently started a website dedicated to female fliers, and is looking for ways to make their airline more desirable for women. For example, AA plans on offering lower storage bins (average height for women is five inches below that of men). Its website asks fliers to offer other suggestions that it may implement.

American hopes to see a bump in sales from this venture. If they do, except to see many other airlines launching similar programs.

Last August I had my luggage lost. I was grateful. Because I was flying back from a 3-day vacation and only packed a few changes of clothing. Had this happened when I flew in June, I would have lost all my worldly possesions including my birth certificate, passport, college photos, a few Cashiers Checks, and every article clothing I owned.

So, if you’re about to travel with some very important things, it may not be a bad idea to know what your airline’s track record is when it comes to luggage. The US average for bags lost or stolen was 6.5 out of 1000. However, there were some airlines who were well below this, and some way above it.

The worst happens to be British Airways, with an average of 23 bags out of 1000. Other airlines that score poorly are Lufthansa and Air France. The average for European airlines is estimated to be around 15.7 bags out of 1000, and that’s not including budget airlines such as RyanAir, whose statistics were not released to the Association of European Airlines.

The best in terms of baggage handling is Hawaiin. Southwest was also near the top. Southwest also holds the honor of receiving the fewest complaints, with only 0.18 per 100,000 passengers, compared to 1.36 for United and US Airways (the worst domestically).

The next time you fly, I recommend only bringing valuable luggage if you’re flying on Southwest or Hawaiian. Unless you’re a risktaker.

I posted a while back on how Emirates Airlines was going to allow cellphones on planes, and that the FCC was considering allowing flights on US planes. Well, they said no.

The FCC has determined that widespread cellphone usage in the air might jam cellphone use on the ground. They cited “insufficient technical information”, as their main reason for blocking the phones. Airphones, the ones in the seatbacks, use a different frequency than cellphones, and therefore don’t have this problem.

Additionally, the FCC cited a significant number of complaints about the idea of the person next to them chatting for 3 hours. Although, if wi-fi is accessiblity on flights, they may still have to deal with their neighbor talking on Skype for a few hours.

The FCC has said their decision is not permanent, and they are still gathering technical information on the situation.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

After years of discussion and delay, U.S. airlines will start offering in-flight Internet connections, instant messaging and wireless email within 12 months, turning the cabin into a WiFi “hotspot.” Carriers are expected to start making announcements around the end of the summer, with service beginning early next year.

AeroMobile, AirCell,, and OnAir will all offer technologies that airlines can purchase to enable airborne hotspots.