Seat-back ads have finally arrived in the US, with low cost carrier AirTran being the first to embrace what is already beloved onboard European LCCs like Ryanair and EasyJet.

Soon, passengers on all AirTran flights will be confronted for the entire trip by a 2.5" by 9" poster, sitting a few feet from their eyes, trying to worm its way into their eyeballs. It will be present on all 138 jets, and the first advertiser is an odd one: Mother Nature Network, a "one-stop resource and an everyman's eco-guide" for environmental news, travel, lifestyle, etc. MNN will use the ads to publicize a 7-night cruise giveaway as well—how eco-friendly of them. Hmm... ]]> Omri 2009-11-20T11:43:12-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/11/18/82421/993

We guess it’s better late than never when it comes to customer service, but two years is certainly a long time. That’s the deal with one unhappy customer from Florida who complained out loud—thanks to the Internet—about an awful experience with Spirit Airlines. We’ve heard about their less than stellar service before, so we weren’t totally surprised to learn about this latest issue.

Alex Rudloff didn’t like his trip on Spirit, and titled a post on his blog “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines.” Well soon enough, if you typed in Spirit Airlines into everyone’s favorite search engine, the post appeared as first page material—ahead of even some of the company’s official pages and the Wikipedia article. Obviously this got his site a lot of attention and probably made a lot of potential travelers question whipping out the credit card to start booking. Since then things have quieted down, but something a little strange happened the other day. ]]> kjb 2009-11-18T10:29:29-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/11/9/16640/2196

Welcome to day two of what we're going to begin calling TrueBlue2, the second version of Jetblue's frequent flyer program, now based on money spent on airfare rather than miles flown.

Thus far, the transition appears smooth; the new program appeared on Jetblue's website over the weekend, slightly earlier than the Monday launch we expected. We haven't yet heard of any big snafus with it, only that the points will be harder for flyers to keep track of, since now we're talking thousands of points versus the easy-to-do-the-math tens of points of the old system.

Still, the question remains of what to do with your old points—since TrueBlue1 points cannot be carried into the new system and will continue to expire as usual. Well, there are three options for your old TrueBlue points, and you better get on it now if you've got points lingering... ]]> JetSetCD 2009-11-10T13:29:09-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/11/5/15547/0837

It's no secret that Ryanair has translated their "Customers Suck" philosophy into one quarter of breakout profits after another.

It's also no secret that we kind of loathe them and everything they stand for (excepting low airfare), which makes this particular story, about how the low cost carrier is poised to pass British Airways as the largest airline in the UK, as predictable as it is aggravating. Try to contain your shock when we tell you that they're being obnoxiously smug about the whole thing:]]> Omri 2009-11-05T16:15:14-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/11/4/233328/193

Whose ready for the "newer, truer TrueBlue" program from Jetblue? Well, ready or not, it's coming at the beginning of next week and the arrival of the new structure means no more free flights just by accumulating a few roundtrip coast-to-coasters; nope, now you've got to watch how much you spend versus how much you fly.

If you're keen to check your point balance or do some other fiddling with your TrueBlue account in the next few days, you better do it now. Accounts will be unavailable between Friday and Monday morning during the switchover. For those of you who simply can't wait for the new program to take affect, you can read up on the changes...

The details on the new TrueBlue program, after the jump. ]]> JetSetCD 2009-11-05T09:14:21-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/11/2/8378/60032

Now this is just getting silly. The dustup at Logan was already the most interesting battle in the airline industry, with Southwest turning the turf war into a bloodbath and pushing out major carriers like US Airways. JetBlue—which considers Boston home turf—isn't going to be shoved aside as easily. They're retaliating by increasing their Boston flights by a full 30 percent.

Southwest recently broadsided JetBlue and AirTran by adding two daily roundtrips, for a total of seven, between Boston and Baltimore. That bumped up the total number of BOS-BWI dailies to 20. Given that 20 is probably way more than necessary, an outside observer might guess that Southwest was just trying to spite their rivals. ]]> Omri 2009-11-04T10:29:21-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/10/30/91316/478

If you're trying to figure out why airlines like American keep reporting mindblowing revenue declines over 2008, the airfare figures for last quarter are out. How desperate were airlines to get any kind of passenger at any kind of price? Desperate enough to drop their prices to 1998 levels.

That means that airlines are more skittish about their current market position than they were after 9/11. As a reminder, that was a terrorist act which involved airplanes and therefore shook people's confidence in airplanes which are the things that airline companies fly. The price dip over the last few months has been worse than that, pointing to an industry that's out of options to get people buying tickets. ]]> Omri 2009-10-30T10:24:18-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/