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Ryanair Taunts British Airways: 'We're (About To Be) #1!'

November 5, 2009 at 4:15 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

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:

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Jetblue's Revamped TrueBlue Program Begins Monday; Get To Know It Now

November 5, 2009 at 9:14 AM | by JetSetCD | 0 Comments

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.

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JetBlue Retaliates To Southwest's Latest Boston Escalation

November 4, 2009 at 10:29 AM | by Omri | 0 Comments

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.

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Airfares Plummeting, Airlines Sinking Faster Than Ever

October 30, 2009 at 10:24 AM | by Omri | 0 Comments

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.

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WestJet Figures Out Way To Monetize Empty Seats

Where: Canada
October 26, 2009 at 4:29 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

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.

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Iberia Airlines Wants To Liven Up Its Brand With a New LCC

Where: Spain
October 26, 2009 at 1:29 PM | by kjb | 0 Comments

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.

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Baby Born On Air Asia Plane Gets Free Flights For Life

October 23, 2009 at 2:09 PM | by JetSetCD | 2 Comments

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]

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Air Asia's Big Sale Makes Us Want To Book Some $17 Flights

October 19, 2009 at 9:13 AM | by amandak | 0 Comments

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]

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Southwest Intensifies Boston Turf War With JetBlue And AirTran

Where: Boston-Logan Airport [map], Boston , MA, United States
October 15, 2009 at 5:33 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

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:

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Ryanair Throws Huge Hissy Fit In Response To BBC Expose

October 15, 2009 at 2:08 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

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.

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Baggage Fees Don't Pay For Airlines Who Bleed Money Anyway

October 15, 2009 at 9:04 AM | by JetSetCD | 1 Comment

First it was checked baggage fees, and then it was peak holiday travel fees, and now it's airlines making no money from such fees. Even though carriers took in a total of over 1 billion dollars in 2008 for baggage fees, it's not helping things out much as the airlines who lost the most money last quarter were those with most fees.

Topping the list of the losers is United with a 21% drop. They changed their checked bag fee policies a few times last year, finally ending with $15 for your first checked bag and $25 for your second. Other losers include Continental and Delta and American, who each dropped between 18.8 and 15% of revenue and have the same baggage fee structure as United. Reasons for the drop in revenue run the gamut of the usual airline excuses, but our guess is that higher fees are driving travelers to book away from these airlines and onto ones with fewer or lower fees. For instance, flying Jetblue versus United to United's home base of Chicago saves you a first checked bag fee, not to mention some dough with the original ticket price.

And here there airlines all thought baggage fees were so great that they'd be able to get away with raising them every few months.

Related Stories:
· Airlines that charge fees lost more money than airlines that didn't [BoingBoing]
· Airlines Rake In Over A Billion Dollars In Baggage Fees [Jaunted]
· Airline Fees coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: ]

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Sarkozy Approves Air Asia X's Low-Cost Flights To Paris

Where: Malaysia
October 12, 2009 at 9:18 AM | by amandak | 0 Comments

Go get 'em low-cost carrier Air Asia X is taking another step towards world domination—well, their words were "global expansion"—with the big announcement that they have now received approval to start up cheap long-haul flights from Kuala Lumpur to Paris.

None other than French president Nicolas Sarkozy himself informed Malaysian Prime Minister Razak this week that Air Asia X would be allowed to land at the Orly Airport in Paris. Air Asia X hasn't yet made more details public; we're in the dark on how soon this service will start, and what it will cost, but they launched their Kuala Lumpur to London service earlier this year, and you can grab those flights for around $250 one way.

We figure it's only reasonable to guess that the Paris version won't be too different. These low-cost long-hauls are certainly giving us ideas for some amazing budget around-the-world trips—we might go start loading up our backpacks while Air Asia decides on Paris airfares.

Related Stories:
· Air Asia To Start Paris Flights [AFP]
· Air Asia X Wants to Long-Haul You From New York and California [Jaunted]
· Air Asia X Launches Low-Cost, Long-Haul Service [Jaunted]

[Photo: Deanster1983]