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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: 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: Ryanair / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Airline News / Airline Fees / Checked Baggage Fees / Travel Deals / → All Tags
Ryanair Throws Huge Hissy Fit In Response To BBC Expose
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.
Tags: Spirit Airlines / Airline News / Low Cost Carriers / LCCs / → All Tags
Spirit Airlines Gets Busted For Bullying Its Customers
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.
Tags: Air Asia X / OAK / Oakland Raiders / Low Cost Carriers / Airline News / → All Tags
Air Asia X To Debut Raiders Plane In California Today
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.
Tags: Kingfisher Airlines / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / New Routes / Airline News / → All Tags
Kingfisher Goes International, And Not Just Around Asia
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: [Photo: BangaloreAviation]
· Kingfisher Launches Flights on 8 International Routes [Times of India]
· Flying Getting Way Cheaper. In India. [Jaunted]
· Low Cost Carriers coverage [Jaunted]
Tags: New Routes / Flybe / Low Cost Carriers / LCCs / → All Tags
Flybe Launches New Route, Except It Appears To Be Totally Useless
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]
Tags: Wizz Air / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Europe Travel / Publicity Stunts / → All Tags
Wizz Air's Balloons Pop Prematurely
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.
Tags: Airfare Sales / Allegiant Air / Low Cost Carriers / Airfare Deals / Florida Travel / → All Tags
Allegiant Makes A Good Case For Florida In The Summer
Florida gets pretty hot and humid during the summer, but the state has great beaches, the best theme parks, and the snowbirds won’t be back for many months. If you can stand the heat, make a plan to visit the Sunshine State and take advantage of The Florida Perfect Excuse Sale. Starting at just $29 each way, Allegiant Air will be happy to whisk you away for some fun in the sun.
Columbia, South Carolina is the only location offering the dirt-cheap rate, but there are many other cities with decent deals. Toledo residents can snag $49 rates if they missed out on the Jet America deals. The same price is available from Roanoke, Virginia and Knoxville, Tennessee.
Tags: FlyDubai / Low Cost Carriers / LCCs / Middle East Travel / → All Tags
FlyDubai Takes Off, Wants to Reach Out to Africa and Eastern Europe Next
While we're not really so sure that fading Dubai needs another airline flying in, LCC FlyDubai has gone ahead and launched itself anyway. A few months back the new government-owned airline was promising a June 1 start, and they've surprisingly delivered right on time with flights to Beirut and Amman.
Special offers on the FlyDubai website at the moment include Dubai to Alexandria flights for 350 AED ($95) and Dubai to Damascus for a bit less than that even. And while the website is pleasant enough, we're not sure about the company slogan we found there: "How will you flydubai?" Yes, how will we? Isn't the answer to that an anticlimactic "on flydubai?"
FlyDubai is just two planes-strong at the moment, but they've got grand plans. With 52 more planes on order, it'll be interesting to see which additional destinations they pick up along the way—assuming they actually create a market for themselves. They're talking about "India and beyond", which apparently includes eastern Europe and northern Africa, and boy, what we'd give to see these materialize. Our next trip around Eastern Europe could include a weekend in Dubai; what a nice dream.
Related Stories:
· FlyDubai [Official Site]
· Dubai's First Low Cost Carrier Lands in Amman [Zawya]
· FlyDubai Is Finally Ready To Go Starting June 1 [Jaunted]
[Photo: Drewski2112]
Tags: Train Travel / Europe Travel / Air France / Low Cost Carriers / → All Tags
The Coming of Europe's Trains-Versus-Airlines Deathmatch
To Eurail around Europe has always been the standard, backpacked-approved way to see the continent in modern times, until the last decade when low cost airlines began undercutting train fares and stealing passengers. But with transportation, as with life, everything has its cycle and it looks like things could be returning to favor the humble train.
Or the not-so-humble train, rather. With market deregulation on its way—for example, EU rules will change in December to allow rail operators to compete against each other on international routes—many European countries are going crazy with high-speed rail networks. In many cases, if you include the boarding time and waiting around for planes, taking the train is quicker—and with deregulation, possibly cheaper.
Key countries in this rebirth of train travel will be France and Spain, which both have huge expansion plans for their high-speed rail. Air France is so worried they're even considering getting into the rail industry themselves. We're not worried at all, since passengers will only win on this as plenty-of-leg-room trains meet budget airline prices.
Related Stories:
· European Train Travel: Working on the Railroad [Time]
· Speeding Train Crosses Europe Faster [Jaunted]
[Photo: Terry Wha]
Tags: Airline Fees / Ryanair / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Boarding Passes / → All Tags
Ryanair Now Charging $60 For The Boarding Pass Alone
Our whining about extra fees on Ryanair may be nothing new, but the ways that this airline can take the low cost out of low cost carrier is nothing short of extraordinary.
The move to make passengers pay for online check-in was despicable enough—we always thought that the online check-in saved the airline all that money in staff costs and thereby should remain free.
Nonetheless, Wednesday begins the deal to pay £5 ($7.50) to check in online (which will soon be the only way to check in), and Ryanair flyers will also have to print out our own boarding passes or add a £40 ($60) fee.
That's right, there's no fancy stuff like cell phone boarding passes for Ryanair. They want to see the good old paper ticket, and they want us to print it at home. When you're on the road, that's not always convenient, but a $60 charge otherwise is sure going to have us scrambling to find a printer if we are ever crazy enough to book a Ryanair flight again.
Related Stories:
· Ryanair Earns Worst Airline Ever Award With New Online Check-In Fee [Jaunted]
· What It Really Costs To Fly on Ryanair [Jaunted]
· Anti-Christ update; Ryanair launches home printed boarding pass fee plus a hefty fine [Plane Talking]
[Photo: bigpresh]
