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Why, Of Course: Business School Graduates Would Like To Work for Air France
We get a lot of press releases in our inboxes and while most of them are credible, quite a few of them have nothing or very little to do with travel. Depending on our mood, the latter kind either causes us to laugh or to curse the high heavens that created spambots. But every so often there is one from a credible source that makes us go, "Seriously?"
Like this one from Air France which just announced that their airline ranks first "in the 2009 Top 50 Most Attractive Employers for Junior Executives from business schools."
Apparently, over 7,000 junior executives were polled about the most attractive firms they would like to work for, among 136 firms that were proposed. These junior executives were graduates from major French business schools and universities with one to eight years of working experience. (Note: it did not say if they still had jobs in this down economy.) However, when the IT and science engineering school graduates wee polled, they ranked Air France in 8th place.
Perhaps this special announcement was a distraction from the whole pilot insensitivity that made the news last year. And we're not so sure we'd put much faith in these results. Afterall, business class tickets are pretty pricey these days and people would do all sorts of things for a free ride.
Related Stories:
· Air France Pilots Having Trouble Focusing On Priorities After Criticism Over Safety Practices [Jaunted]
· Air France [Official Site]
Tags: Tragedies / Airline Industry / Air France / Flight 447 / Airline News / → All Tags
Air France Pilots Having Trouble Focusing On Priorities After Criticism Over Safety Practices
The blame game in that horrible crash of Air France Flight 447 is intensifying, even while everyone admits they still have no idea what caused the disaster. The latest dust up involves management taking some potshots at Air France pilots for their attention to detail, and the pilots responding with angry statements.
Now it's unseemly enough to have the parties involved publicly bickering with each other in full view of the nation and the victims' families. But it's not a real party until self-important unions get involved and start talking about the pilots' hurt feelings. And wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what's happening:
Tags: Travel Auctions / Air France / A380 / Airline News / Airlines / eBay / → All Tags
Time's Ticking To Bid On The Air France A380 Auction
Time to check the balance in your PayPal account, because there’s only a few days left until bidding ends for the inaugural flight of the A380 on Air France. Prices for the economy seats start at just $380—clever—every day and slowly begin to creep up. However, as of this morning, we were able to see a couple seats that were still $380-ish and several more between $400 and $500. Fares like that are decent deal for a transatlantic crossing on an old plane, but flying across the Atlantic on a jumbo-jumbo makes it almost a steal. Too bad the bids will likely keep on rolling on.
Bidders can choose between the Paris to New York launch on November 20 and the New York to Paris journey on November 21. All proceeds from the auctions will be donated to humanitarian organizations supported by the Air France Foundation. We’re not totally sure if that means you can use your trip as a tax deduction, but we’d definitely check with an authority a little more reliable than TurboTax.
Tags: A380 / Air France / Travel Auctions / Airline News / Airplane News / Airbus / → All Tags
Will You Bid For A Seat On Air France's Shiny New A380 From JFK?
Details are finally here for that Air France auction we gave you the heads up on in August. Starting today and going through October 21, Air France will be auctioning off tickets for the maiden voyage of their new A380.
The flights will go from NYC to Paris on November 20th and then back on November 21st, but of course the auctions are starting well in advance. Each round of bidding will last 3, 5, 7, or 10 days and all proceeds will go to Air France Foundation charities. You can go to the main auction site for more details.
Ticket winners will be eligible for an array of perks collectively described as an "itinerary of cultural activities and shopping." For the NYC-Paris flight that basically means they'll take you to all kinds of small stores where you can drop your devalued USD's, the upshot being you can tell people their Christmas presents came from "Parisian boutiques." The Paris-NYC flight will also have three "key figures in the world of art and culture," the presence of which will presumably be a boon to star-struck passengers.
Tags: A380 / Air France / Travel Auctions / Airline News / Airplane News / Airbus / → All Tags
Air France Will Auction Seats On A380 First Flights
What's the reason to buy and fly one of the giant Airbus A380s? Well, profit of course; more seats jammed into one flight means more paying passengers. Alas, this won't be the case when Air France becomes the third airline to trot out their A380.
Just like Singapore Airlines before them, Air France is using their first flight—from Paris-CDG to New York-JFK on November 21—to mainly get publicity by auctioning off 380 of the 538 seats on the flight and the return for charity. We can expect the rest of those seats to probably be press and airline officials.
Tags: Flight 447 / Air France / Tragedies / → All Tags
$24,500 For Families of Air France Victims, But Still No Black Box
With just over a week left to retrieve the black box of Air France Flight 447 before it gives up the ghost, search teams and airline authorities are beginning to wind down and instead turn their focus onto the families of the victims.
Although they've recovered approximately fifty bodies of the 228 on board and whole sections of the aircraft's galley, CNN reports that the "head of the French accident investigation board, Paul-Louis Arslanian, said this week that there is a chance the entire aircraft may never be found." Aircraft wreckage or not, Air France will begin compensating the families of the deceased, to the tune of $24,500 per victim regardless of class flown.
In addition to the money, Air France has sent counselors to the aid of some 1,800 relatives of the victims, who were of 32 different nationalities. The Wikipedia page on the tragedy has a graph of these nationalities and how many were on board, showing some from Gabon, Estonia and Lebanon even. This next week should bring the conclusion of major searches, but we're far from having questions answered.
Related Stories:
· Air France pays $24,500 to crash victims' families [CNN]
· Air France Black Box Search Borrows The Titanic's Sub [Jaunted]
· Flight 447 Coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: AP]
Tags: Train Travel / Eurostar / Air France / Deutsche Bahn / London / Chunnel / → All Tags
Beware, Ryanair: Everyone Wants A Piece of the Chunnel
It's a crazy world out there, complete with wild animals on planes and trains racing each other through tunnels; all stuff which once belonged to action films.
We recently mentioned that Europe's high speed train systems are deregulating—which should lead to more competition and cheaper train fares for zipping across Europe. Well, there's even more good news for the budget traveler now.
The High Speed One track, which links London's St Pancras Station to the Chunnel, is about to be sold off and it's expected that the new owner will open up the track to more than just Eurostar. The word is that at the least, both Air France and Germany's Deustche Bahn are keen to set up rival trains to make the crossing between Britain and continental Europe.
Tags: Flight 447 / Air France / Tragedies / Submarines / → All Tags
Air France Black Box Search Borrows The Titanic's Sub
It's been exactly a week now since the mysterious disappearance of Air France Flight 447 somewhere off the coat of Brazil. At first, it seemed as though the search parties were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, with no definite search area and not even a solid guarantee that the flight had hit the ocean.
Earlier last week, what appeared to be debris from the fatal flight had been found, but this was determined to be run-of-the-mill ocean trash on Thursday. As of this weekend, be-logoed Air France airplane pieces have been found along with the bodies of 17 passengers, therefore confirming that the plane met with a tragic fate.
Tags: Flight 447 / Air France / Tragedies / → All Tags
Bodies Found from Air France Flight; Cause of Crash Remains a Mystery
It's a small consolation, but the families of two victims of last Sunday's crash of Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris will at least have some closure, as searchers announced they had recovered two bodies from the otherwise scarce wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean. The BBC reported Saturday afternoon that two male bodies had been found, along with objects linked to passengers known to be on the flight, including a leather briefcase with a ticket for the flight inside. The bodies and objects were found several hundred kilometers off Brazil's northern coast, not far from where the flight emitted its last signals.
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: Flight 447 / Air France / Bermuda Triangle / Tragedies / → All Tags
Is Air France Flight 447 To Be Found In the Bermuda Triangle?
Naturally, after hearing reports of a passenger jet going mysteriously silent from contact over the Atlantic Ocean with electrical failure hints, one thinks of the huge enigma that is the Bermuda Triangle. Rest assured, however, that the fate of Air France Flight 447 definitely will not include an entry into the disappearances of the Triangle, since it was no where near the area.
After setting out from Rio de Janeiro, the plane encountered storms and lost contact somwhere around the equator, where now search teams are finding airplane seats floating some 350 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago.
Still the skeptics would like to heighten the drama by associating the Bermuda Triangle with this recent mystery. What's next—asserting that the Triangle is now some sort of giant trapezoid? Perhaps the mysterious area got bored with hanging out off the US coast and decided to journey to Brazil for some caipirinhas?
Although authorities haven't yet confirmed that the floating seats are indeed from the missing Air France jet, it's pretty easy to see on the map above that for once, this possible tragedy has nothing to do with aliens or electromagnetic fields or the ghost of Amelia Earhart. It does, however, have everything to do with freak accidents and airplane safety.
Related Stories:
· Plane seats found floating on Air France route [AP]
· Wreckage seen in search area for missing plane [CNN]
· Flight 447 Coverage [Jaunted]
[Air France photo: caribb]
Tags: Breaking News / Tragedies / Air France / Flight 447 / → All Tags
Air France Flight Missing Off Brazilian Coast; Search Underway
This morning's beautiful weather quickly turned sour as the world learned of the possible loss of Air France Flight 447, traveling from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris with 228 people on board.
Around 10pm EST, the twin-engine Airbus hit turbulence caused by storms over the Atlantic Ocean, causing an automatic message "signaling electrical circuit malfunction" to be sent out from the airplane. According the AP, there has been no other information regarding the fate of the plane except for the simple admittance that Brazil's air force has begun "searching near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha," an area 1,500 miles northeast of Rio.
Flight 447, which was supposed to have arrived at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport at 5:15am EST, is feared to have been hit by lightning. If lost, this possible crash would be the first for Air France since the tragedy of the Concorde's 2000 crash, which killed 113 people. Now however, we're looking at double the loss of life and a much more difficult location and recovery area.
We simply can't hold back: is anyone else thinking of Oceanic Flight 815? We'll be hoping for the best and watching the news as it rolls in, attempting to banish thoughts of Lost from our heads.
Related Stories:
· Air France Missing Plane May Be First Fatal Loss Since Concorde [Bloomberg]
· Missing French jet hit thunderstorms over Atlantic [AP]
· Tragedies Coverage [Jaunted]
[Air France photo: caribb]
