German low cost carrier Air Berlin has added its name to the growing list of airlines who think it's a fun idea to make passengers pay extra for stuff.
That's airline life these days, and we're getting used to it. But that doesn't mean we're going to like paying Air Berlin's €10 (more than $15) charge for booking online. We're pretty sure online booking is the cheapest way for Air Berlin to actually get customers, making this seem like one of the most unfair fees we've heard about lately.
Air Berlin also thinks that answering telephone calls is a costly affair and is increasing the surcharge added to phone bookings from €16 up to €20 ($32). With a bunch of flights going for just €29, we really feel these extra charges are a kick in the stomach... or a reason to fly another airline.
With low cost carrier Ryanair forever finding more ways to separate customers from their money, we're not sure if this newest innovation is something to help passengers or yet another commercial venture.
Ryanair has just launched a Flight Tracker service, which will send text messages to registered passengers in Britain and Ireland about arrival and departure times, and notify you "on those rare occasions when a Ryanair flight is delayed". It costs £1.50 ($3) to register your phone number for a particular flight, and after that, the updates are sent to you for free.
Cynics have suggested there are plenty of web-based services who'll send you such messages for free, but Ryanair's proud that you don't need to know your flight number for its tracker--you can call up and get registered with just your departure date and route. But can't you just look up your flight number?
Is Italy trying to compete with Austria for the next season of "Locked up Abroad," or is kidnapping family members a freaky new European pastime? Either way, the latest news out of Naples makes our skin crawl.
On Sunday it was revealed that a 47-year-old Italian woman, Maria Monaco, was held captive for 18 years in a filthy bedroom outside the southern city. As of late, filth and strange smells have become synonymous with Naples, but one neighbor reported an unusually strong stench near a room in the rural family home. That's where the carabinieri found the victim.
Monaco's relatives reportedly stashed her in the basement in 1990 after she became pregnant with an illegitimate son. Unsurprisingly, she's now being hospitalized for a psychiatric condition and her family, including the 80-year-old granny, are all under investigation.
It may cost $1.55 to buy a euro, but President Bush is still enjoying high season in Europe. The commander in chief has been on a whirlwind tour of the Continent since June 9, making stops from Slovenia to the UK.
Bush started his tour in Slovenia, which he once confused with Slovakia. After hobnobbing with European Union officials, he left for Germany to chat with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Later he flew to Italy for a two-stop meeting: After talking with Silvio Berlusconi, Bush skipped over to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Benedict XVI.
Later, after breakfast in Paris, the president crossed the Channel to the UK. His last stop was in Belfast, where he presumably changed his pounds back into dollars--and started planning his next trip to a place where the greenback is stronger.
Beer lovers who missed out on the world's biggest pub crawl in Australia last weekend can take heart: You just need a ticket to Copenhagen for September.
The European Beer Festival 2008 will take place in the Danish capital September 12-14. The PR people say it's for "discriminating beer connoisseurs" but we're sure you don't have to belong to the toffee-nosed beer-sniffing set to enjoy a beer festival.
This one sounds particularly fun because it will be held in part of the Carlsberg breweries--very recently vacated as production is moving to another site. That means beer fest visitors can see some of the more private parts of the brewery, including the horse stables. Entry tickets include your first two beers and a detailed beer guide, if you want the low down on all the ale you're swilling.
The good ship Ryanair has remained an oak among other sapling LCCs that have gotten ripped up in the whirlwind of rising oil prices and a near global recession. But a new foe for free flights emerged this week in the form of an EU mandate that will require airlines to pay for the harm they do to the environment. CEO Michael O'Leary said this could turn into a green surcharge for fliers.
With plans to double in size in the next four years, the new payments to Brussels could cost Ryanair upwards of €250 million, half its 2007 profits. O'Leary defended the airline saying its been a trailblazer, flying planes slower than average for the last 10 years specifically to save fuel, a practice most airlines are just now introducing.
The EU wants to put the mandate into effect by 2011, so there's still some time to get crunk in a random foreign city for little to no cost. But maybe it's time for the Europeans to start investigating some alternative fuels?
For a cleverly named European LCC, Smartwings doesn't get a lot of air time. That's because it's not as smart as it sounds ... or is it?
Smartwings is based largely out of Prague and if you want to fly from the Czech capital to anywhere in southern Europe (read: anywhere warmer and sunnier), you've got lots of choices. They also have a few routes out of two other Czech cities, Brno and Ostrava.
The most curious route is a new addition. Smartwings added flights from Prague and Budapest to Dubai last month. This is definitely one of the first low-cost long-haul flights to come out of central and eastern Europe, and it opens up interesting possibilities for flying from Europe to Australasia for a lot less. So maybe Smartwings really is smart.
Although we've been speculating about the possible demise of a few of Europe's budget airlines, we're actually still discovering some of them.
Sterling Airlines is owned by an Icelandic investment group but it's based in Denmark, and although they once considered merging with EasyJet, now they're happily tootling around in the Scandinavian skies on their own.
Right now Sterling is promoting some cheap deals between the UK and Scandinavia: bookings by June 9 for travel during summer come in as low as €55 ($85) for one-way flights. Pretty reasonable for getting into Sweden or Norway, and who wouldn't want to fly with an airline whose motto goes "We would fly with us"?
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by amandak
