Like most airlines, Iberia Airlines hasn’t been doing that well. They’ve been in talks to shack up with British Airways for a bigger and brighter future, but for now they’re doing their best to shuttle travelers to and from Spain as best as they can. To make more cash the airline plans to focus on more long-haul routes, and will change up the way they deal with shorter flights: they plan to launch their own low cost carrier.

The cheap carrier Vueling already is owned in part by Iberia, but apparently this isn’t good enough for the suits in Madrid. According to officials within the airline a new carrier focused on domestic and European routes will allow them to change the operating model for these types of flights. ]]> kjb 2009-10-26T13:29:16-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/10/15/132514/16

Ryanair is in a very public, very heated, very crazy delicious feud with the BBC. The low cost carrier has taken exception to a BBC Panorama expose unpacking the airline's complex nickle and dime strategy for extracting airline fees. In response, Ryanair's the-customer-is-always-wrong CEO Michael O'Leary has blasted the program and unveiled a 1.1 million seat giveaway.

We were surprised Ryanair reacted so negatively to a discussion of their opaque fees. Usually they're so much more confident. Just a few weeks ago they were blustering about how their customers were free to explore other options if they had problems with the airline.

This is a company that's made a business model of brazenly abusing passengers, the implicit justification being that any alienated customers could always be replaced by other bargain seekers. "You'll take our abuse because you value your wallet more than your self-esteem" is practically the company's sneering motto.]]> Omri 2009-10-15T14:08:37-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/21/8652/57338

The latest news from Spirit Airlines doesn’t involve a risqué ad campaign or other semi-clever marketing gimmick. This time the news is pretty serious, and they are going to have to break out the checkbook to make it go away because we don’t think the US government takes plastic.

The low cost carrier was fined $375,000 late last week for allegedly violating consumer protection rules. Specifically, they didn’t do such a good job about following guidelines regarding bumping passengers from their flights. ]]> kjb 2009-09-21T09:13:56-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/14/71630/2039

Despite the return of professional football, we did not have a good weekend. Our favorite team blew it, and apparently fantasy football is not our forte. There’s always next weekend, so we’ll get over it, and for now we’ll focus our football attention towards Air Asia X and their snazzy Oakland Raiders plane. Seeing a big airplane in NFL livery is pretty cool, especially since we’re still secretly hoping that the low cost carrier will announce a plan to serve the US.

We saw the new plane sticking its tail out from the hangar over the summer, but today it’s flying into Oakland to celebrate the start of the season. After all, the Raiders are playing tonight, so the timing is perfect. However, if you head to the team’s website, you’ll see that tonight’s game is being promoted side by side with ads for Hawaiian Airlines. Maybe team officials didn’t get the memo that another airline has honored them with a custom plane. ]]> kjb 2009-09-14T13:24:14-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/7/16/7524/38107

Last year Kingfisher Airlines out of Bangalore, India wasn’t doing too swell with their international routes, so they scaled things back and focused again on service in India. Well things must be on the up and up, because they are back to work announcing new routes:

There are eight new international routes planned for later this year, and Mumbai to Singapore and Mumbai to Hong Kong are scheduled to start up in September. Most of their other new plans include flights from New Delhi, which will be the first international routes out of that city. London, Bangkok, and Dubai are now all options for those looking to get out of India for a bit.

Despite all the good news, the airline did axe two routes. Bangalore lost its flights to London and Colombo, Sri Lanka. For now, their ambitious plans to expand to the US market are still on hold. If Vijay Mallya starts mouthing off about any plans to serve our west coast, we’ll let you know.

Related Stories:
· Kingfisher Launches Flights on 8 International Routes [Times of India]
· Flying Getting Way Cheaper. In India. [Jaunted]
· Low Cost Carriers coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: BangaloreAviation] ]]> kjb 2009-07-16T08:39:16-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/6/30/13615/8342

There’s nothing like a time when we’re all trying to watch our carbon footprints and up our train travel to launch a completely unnecessary flight route. But that’s exactly what Flybe has done this week. Yesterday, it launched its London to Leeds route with "red carpet celebrations" and a special appearance by a soap star (Matthew Bose from Emmerdale – no, we don’t know either, but we’re guessing he’s the fox in the middle of the photo here).

The only thing that we’re wondering is – why the hell have they done this? London to Leeds takes about two hours 20 minutes tops on the train. According to Flybe, the flight takes an hour and 10 minutes (actually it takes about 30 minutes, because we had the misfortune to be diverted to Leeds on a connecting flight to Manchester last year, and we’d barely cracked open the gin before we were landing). And it flies from Gatwick (30 minutes from central London, and that's if you take the expensive fast train) and into Leeds Bradford, 10 miles out of town.

Once you add on check-in time, wouldn’t it have been way better just to take the train? We’re confused. Obviously it’s nice to see one airline that’s doing well enough to launch a new route, but this route is just baffling. And the eco aspect means it’s just not cool.

Related Stories:
· Flybe Coverage [Jaunted]
· New Leeds-Bradford service to London starts [Telegraph & Argus]
· Flybe [Official Site] ]]> juliab 2009-06-30T13:58:48-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/6/29/44845/7471

Poor Wizz Air. What started out as a sweet little marketing idea to celebrate the Eastern European low-cost carrier's fifth anniversary turned nasty this week, and we feel bad for them.

The airline set up a press conference and speaking event in Budapest, and the final act of the day was going to be the release of 1,000 balloons, each with a 10,000 forint ($50) coupon attached which the lucky finder could redeem on a Wizz Air flight.]]> amandak 2009-06-29T08:47:19-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/