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British Airways In-Flight Recording Incorrectly Tells Passengers The Plane Will Crash

August 27, 2010 at 2:05 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

Did you know that airplanes have automated pre-recorded warnings for when you're about to crash? And that those warnings apparently have a sick sense of humor and enjoy going off randomly? The passengers on a recent British Airways flight from LHR to Hong Kong discovered all of that the hard way, presumably to the amusement of nobody who was on board. Oops:

British Airways apologised to passengers after an emergency message warning they were about to crash into the sea was played by mistake. About 275 passengers were on the London Heathrow to Hong Kong flight on Tuesday evening when the automated message went out. The plane was flying over the North Sea at the time. Cabin crew quickly realised the error and moved to reassure the terrified passengers. 'We all thought we were going to die,' Michelle Lord, 32, of Preston, told The Sun newspaper.

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Washington, London and Cork Rake in the New Routes

July 30, 2010 at 12:01 PM | by kjb | 0 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to stay on top of all the new route announcements that come our way, so we’ve complied a little bit of a rundown below. As long as you can afford the fares, this should definitely help add to your passport stamp collection.

· Turkish Airlines:
It’s a little bit easier to get to Istanbul now because Turkish Airlines is adding nonstop flights from Washington, DC and Los Angeles. These routes from Obama’s backyard will begin on November 7, and the LAX routes will start up in March of 2011. The flights won’t operate every day, but pretty close—five times a week from DC and four times per week from LA.

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British Airways and American Airlines are Go to Collude on Prices and Routes

July 26, 2010 at 5:01 PM | by Omri | 1 Comment

Another week, another round of shakeups at British Airways. Last week it was their merger with Iberia. Before that it was their new non-union crew. Now it's the news that their 14-year quest to expand their trans-Atlantic alliance with American Airlines has finally been approved by US and EU regulators. The new American/British Airways/Iberia arrangement allows them to effectively function as a single company: setting prices, selling tickets, and scheduling routes.

Where you fall on this deal depends on where you are in the airline industry. If you're part of the oneworld alliance, you see the much-sought approval as only fair. Lufthansa/United and Air France/Delta basically have the same setup under the umbrellas of Star Alliance and SkyTeam, respectively. But if you're not part of any major alliance and/or Heathrow is part of your personal global airline empire, this is exactly the kind of decision that would ruin your weekend. Cue Richard Branson: "millions of passengers...will suffer the consequences of this monster monopoly."

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New Route News from British Airways, Lufthansa and More

July 23, 2010 at 9:33 AM | by kjb | 0 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to stay on top of all the new route announcements that come our way, so we’ve complied a little bit of a rundown below. As long as you can afford the fares, this should definitely help add to your passport stamp collection.

· British Airways:
We’ve always wanted to go to Sweden to see where Volvos and all that Ikea furniture comes from, and now it’s a little bit easier thanks to British Airways. The airline has announced plans to serve Gothenburg, and they put the tickets up for sale earlier this week. Things will get underway on November 28, and the flights will operate twice per day. Of course the flights will come and go from London-Heathrow’s Terminal 5, so be sure to stick to carryon luggage only.

· Tiger Airways:
If Taipei is on your travel bucket list, Tiger Airways is hoping to help you get there and to save you some cash doing so. The airline plans to start flying Singapore-Taipei on January 11, and it'll be the airline’s sixth destination to the greater China area. The new route will set you back about $60 each way through March, but will probably climb a little bit after that. The airline is also increasing their flight frequency to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, and Shenzhen. All the flights will head out from Singapore.

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Merger of British Airways and Iberia Gets EU Greenlight

July 20, 2010 at 2:46 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

The thing about a wave of massive labor strikes that threaten to take down your entire company, is that they really free you up to brainstorm. What've you got to lose? So in addition to creating an entirely new fleet designed to circumvent unions, British Airways has been aggressively pursuing cost-cutting in a host of other ways.

One of those, the merger with Iberia that they formally inked at the end of last month after a year of teasing, just won EU approval. The result will be Europe's third-largest airline, a market share of about $7.5 billion, and—hopefully for them—an end to the money bleeding both have been experiencing. And, in a nice change, it might not be a total disaster for consumers.

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Mobile Boarding Passes Come to British Airways' iPhone App

July 19, 2010 at 5:15 PM | by JetSetCD | 1 Comment

Can you believe that British Airways has had an iPhone app for two years? That puts them with the first of the airlines to have one, even if it was only for iPhones and didn't have many features; you could only check arrival and departure times and look at timetables.

But a few days ago, British Airways celebrated their two-year anniversary of being in the App store by releasing a seriously upgraded version, in addition to launching apps for Android and Blackberry. The app now includes the ability to check your BA Executive Club account, manage bookings, change flights, access airport and flight information, check out the British Airways Twitter and check in to your flight on the go. The most notable new feature however, is definitely mobile boarding passes.

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Inside the British Airways Terraces Lounge at San Francisco International

Where: San Francisco International Airport [map], San Francisco, CA, United States, 94128
July 12, 2010 at 10:31 AM | by EricRosen | 0 Comments

Remember when we told you about LAN’s inaugural SFO-Lima flight last week? Well, before we even went to the gate or got on the plane, we managed to pop into the British Airways Terraces Lounge in SFO’s International Terminal and bring you these exclusive photos of our experience snacking and wi-fi-ing while we waited for our flight to board.

So join us as we continue our Airport Lounges series with this inside look at Terraces and its many amenities.

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British Airways Creating Entirely New Fleet to Circumvent Union Strikes

June 24, 2010 at 3:52 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

It's been a couple of days since we've hit you over the head with British Airways airline strike news, and this morning's developments are eyebrow raising in at least a couple of ways.

The beleaguered airline, which has been known to successfully deploy replacement crews to get through employee walkouts, is now creating an entirely new crew to operate an entirely new fleet on some of their routes. The announcement came after the Unite union declared their intention to hold another strike vote next week if they don't get what they want, which they won't. The airline has already lost hundreds of millions of euros, and so was ready to try something new.

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The British Airways Strike Has Already Cost the Airline $150 Million

June 1, 2010 at 4:45 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

We're now in the third day of the second wave of the second round of 2010 British Airways cabin crew airline strikes. The airline and the Unite union are in the midst of talks but—no surprise here—no one expects them to go anywhere.

The union wants the airline to restore travel perks and withdraw employee punishment proceedings as prerequisites to negotiations. The airline says that concessions will come the way they normally do, as part of a broader agreement. So the odds of this current strike getting resolved before it runs its course are quite slim.

The conventional wisdom on the negotiations is that they long ago became a personal spat between BA CEO Willie Walsh and Unite joint General Secretary Tony Woodley. That's true as far as it goes, but it's not the whole story. As much as these two just really hate each other, each side is also dealing with fundamental life-and-death issues. The union needs to show that it can protect its members, which is why this seemingly random travel perks thing has become such a big deal. For its part, BA just posted a second straight year of record losses and is still reeling from volcanic ash problems. In the most basic terms, they simply won't survive unless they cut costs.

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British Airways Strike Begins as the Showdown Gets Even Nastier

May 24, 2010 at 10:30 AM | by Omri | 0 Comments

British Airways is running at 60% today, with London-Gatwick and London-City airports at normal but London-Heathrow in total disarray. That's because day 1 of 5 of BA summer airline strike 1 of 3 is now underway.

@British_Airways keeps repeating that travelers should continuously monitor their flight and be aware of their options, so consider those links duly passed on.

Just to give you a sense of the level of public discourse surrounding this debacle, UK media outlets are already running photos linking striking cabin crews to enraged Trotskyist mobs. Even more disturbingly, that's actually kind of fair given how a union leader kind of live-tweeted the secret negotiations which kind of incited a Socialist Workers Party melee which kind of invaded the talks and shut them down.

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Breaking: UK Court Allows British Airways to Strike; Walkouts Scheduled for Monday

May 20, 2010 at 2:35 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

Remember that second injunction that British Airways recently won, where its unionized employees were banned by a UK judge from striking? Just overturned. A London court instead sided with the Unite union, allowing BA flight cabin crews to walk off their jobs - something they now intend to do as early as Monday. The result should fall somewhere between travel chaos and cancellation apocalypse, with BA set to cancel up to 50% of LHR flights:

The airline said it expected to cancel about one third of its flights during the walkouts, with services to and from its hub at London Heathrow Airport expected to be reduced by as much as 50 percent... “B.A. must now accept that negotiation not litigation is the only way to secure the settlement we all want,” said Tony Woodley, Unite joint general secretary. “However, further strikes will be unavoidable if the company does not immediately work with us to address the outstanding issues.”

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The Latest on the British Airways, Spirit and AirTran Strikes

May 19, 2010 at 12:15 PM | by Omri | 1 Comment

Welcome to today's edition of This Week In Airline Strikes, with our regulars British Airways and Spirit Airlines being joined by AirTran.

The current scorecard reads "no" on British Airways, "yes" on Spirit Airlines, and "WTF" on AirTran, where 98% of their pilots just voted to go on what would be a devastating, company-killing strike because they're that dissatisfied with their average salary of $129,600/yr. So let's get started...

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