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Tags: Travel Advertising / Airlines / Airline News / AirTran / LCCs / Travel Ads / → All Tags
AirTran Brings Insanely Obnoxious Seat-Back Advertising To The US
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...
Tags: Spirit Airlines / Airline News / Low Cost Carriers / LCCs / → All Tags
Spirit Airlines Apologizes Two Years Too Late
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.
Tags: Frequent Flyer Programs / LCCs / Airline News / TrueBlue / Jetblue / → All Tags
Three Ways To Get Value From Your Old Jetblue TrueBlue Points
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...
Tags: Airline News / Britain Travel / Ryanair / British Airways / Airlines / LCCs / → All Tags
Ryanair Taunts British Airways: 'We're (About To Be) #1!'
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:
Tags: TrueBlue / Jetblue / Frequent Flyer Programs / LCCs / Airline News / → All Tags
Jetblue's Revamped TrueBlue Program Begins Monday; Get To Know It Now
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.
Tags: Airfare Wars / Southwest / JetBlue / Boston / BOS / Airline News / LCCs / → All Tags
JetBlue Retaliates To Southwest's Latest Boston Escalation
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.
Tags: Airline News / Airfares / Recession Travel / Travel News / AIrlines / LCCs / → All Tags
Airfares Plummeting, Airlines Sinking Faster Than Ever
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.
Tags: Airline News / Airlines / LCCs / Canada / WestJet / Hawaii / → All Tags
WestJet Figures Out Way To Monetize Empty Seats
For one reason or another, Canadian low cost carrier WestJet flies planes to Hawaii at less than full capacity. Being an airline, and an LCC at that, they've naturally come up with a way to use that reality to charge passengers. Customers who prefer to have an empty seat next to them - and who doesn't - will now be able to pay to lock in that privilege:
WestJet’s simple solution is to leave the middle seat empty in the first eight to ten rows of its Boeing 737-700s flying between Calgary and Hawaii. The company says there will be a small price increase for passengers wanting the extra elbow room... The empty seats are actually necessary to make the flight to Hawaii... The company’s 737-700s have been flying the shorter non-stop route between Vancouver and Hawaii for several years now. But the airplane... can’t make the longer flight from Calgary to Hawaii with a full passenger load because of range limitations based on the fuel it can carry.
Tags: Iberia / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / New Airlines / Airline News / Airlines / → All Tags
Iberia Airlines Wants To Liven Up Its Brand With a New LCC
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.
Tags: Airplane News / Airline News / Air Asia / Air Asia X / LCCs / Budget Travel / Travel With Children / → All Tags
Baby Born On Air Asia Plane Gets Free Flights For Life
In our next life, we'd like to return as a baby born aboard an Air Asia flight. Talk about lucky—a pregnant woman on a flight between Penang and Kuching on Borneo went into surprise labor while in the air, prompting the plane to try for an emergency landing in Kuala Lumpur, but the baby popped out before they could get on the ground.
After the successful delivery, the mother and child were transported to a KL hospital, where they were visited by the higher-ups at Air Asia, who presented them with the rights to free flights for life. Assuming that Air Asia will be around until the kid hits retirement in something like sixty years, he could really make a name for himself traveling around Asia—or beyond, since Air Asia now also flies to both London and is busily signing paperwork to come to both Paris and Los Angeles. Boy oh boy are we jealous of this little boy. The question now is...did he kinda join the mile high club just being born up there?
Related Stories:
· Lifetime free flights for baby born on plane [AFP]
· Talking With Air Asia's CEO Tony Fernandes About US Plans [Jaunted]
· Air Asia coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: jetalone]
Tags: Airfare Sales / Air Asia / LCCs / Budget Travel / Asia Travel / Travel Deals / → All Tags
Air Asia's Big Sale Makes Us Want To Book Some $17 Flights
One of our favorite low cost carriers, Air Asia, is not just cool because it keeps adding more routes—like Kuala Lumpur to Paris on the cheap and the Indian destinations like Thiruvananthapuram just to name a couple of last week's highlights—but it's also giving us ideas for our 2010 travel plans by holding a big airfare sale at the moment.
For bookings made between now and Sunday, you can get bargain tickets for travel between January 11 and April 30, 2010 for a bunch of Asian routes. The cheapest flights get as low as 19 Ringgit ($5.50) but they're mostly internal Malaysian flights; to get from Kuala Lumpur to further afield, there are deals like KL to pretty much anywhere in Indonesia or Thailand for 59 Ringgit ($17) and KL to Australian destinations for 199 Ringgit ($58). Get booking fast or we might snap up all the seats first.
Related Stories:
· Air Asia [Official Site]
· Let's Go Thiruvananthapuram! [Jaunted]
· Sarkozy Approves Air Asia X's Low-Cost Flights to Paris [Jaunted]
[Photo: Auswandern Malaysia]
Tags: Airfare Wars / Southwest / JetBlue / Boston / BOS / AirTran / BWI / Airline News / LCCs / → All Tags
Southwest Intensifies Boston Turf War With JetBlue And AirTran
The outlook for the 2010 airline industry is unremittingly bleak, but you wouldn't know it from the way that Southwest is acting. The low cost carrier is adding 104 flights to its spring schedule. In the process they're turning the Boston turf war they started with JetBlue and AirTran into a full-blown bloodbath:
