Economy Class & Beyond

Want your APD back if you don’t fly? Good luck…

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Which has gone again on the attack by claiming most airlines are charging too much in administration fees when attempting to reclaim tax elements of the fare.Or to put it blunt from Which?'s Rochelle Turner.:"In some cases it costs at least twice as much to reclaim the tax as the tax itself," Ouch.If you miss a flight from the United Kingdom, you unless you've booked the … [Read more...]

OS: Where Mother Lufthansa goes, it’s children follow – Austrian to install slimline seats too.

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Well it seems Austrian are treading in Lufthansa's footsteps with the installation of slimline seats, in the blind direction of increasing seat capactiy on their planes.The change to the fleet will be made at the same time as Lufthansa reconfigures their planes, and will be reconfigured for the European fleet.The quote that Austrian are throwing around is:"The most important … [Read more...]

Section 44 – Suspended.

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One of my bugbears has been the awful implementation of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act within the United Kingdom.This has been used to chase and hound people, and photographers in particular have felt the long arm of the law when taking pictures, and then being searched and questioned under Section 44. Here are a few classic examples:- City Police still using Terror Act to … [Read more...]

EK: Emirates to do anohter short A380 deployment to Delhi…

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The other master of the publicity stunt, Emirates is going to deploy an A380 for a day to Delhi's Indira Gandhi International airport as part of the launch of the airports Terminal 3. The service will be EK516 on July 15, leaving Dubai at 1010 and arriving at 1450, returning as EK517, departing at 1750.India is one of the few places where an A380 has yet to touch down on a … [Read more...]

FR/EI: EU to Ryanair. Hands off the Aer Lingus!

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Well sometimes Ryanair can't have everything it wants. The European Court of Justice has ruled that Ryanair's bid for  Aer Lingus should be blocked on the grounds it would create a monopoly for flights from Dublin airport - both of which have dominant positions in the airport.On Tuesday the court ruled that Ryanair could keep its 29.9% stake, however  Aer Lingus … [Read more...]

LH: Lufthansa Euro Seating. Or.. it’s going to get tighter….

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Lufthansa has revealed the "upgrade" of it A320 fleet, and it's named it 'Neue Europa Kabine' - Or in English - New European Cabin. (Slight definition matter - A320 fleet refers to family aircraft based on the A320 model, inculding the A319, A320 and A321)  And the bad news is - more seats are going in the aircraft. The semi good news is howeverm these will be slimline … [Read more...]

SU: Aeroflot to buy 11 A330’s, Yakov Smirnoff without Joke*

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Aeroflot is gearing up to purchase 11 new A330-300 frames, all to be delivered in 2011-13.This will increase their A330 series fleet to 20 (a mix of A330-200 and A330-300 series aircraft), which will hopefully tide them over until the A350XWB's begin delivery. For those who are still asleep, the A330 is a twin-engined widebody aircraft capable of 335 seats (2-class) or 295 … [Read more...]

AZ: Alitalia join SkyTeam TATL Combined Service Alliance.

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It seems Alitalia is slowly getting back into gear after ceeding into new ownership, with it joining the Air France, KLM and Delta Transatlantic Joint Venutre programme where airlines share transatlantic revenues and costs to run Trans Atlantic flights (or TATL flights)Alitalia being late to the party of course will have it's membership of this Joint Venture backdated to 1st … [Read more...]

Horrendously geeky: How to build a plane engine

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Whilst the BBC laughably calls this "How to build a Jumbo Jet Engine" (and they feature no 747's - the traditional jumbo jet), it actually gives a very geeky insight and the sheer work that goes into the construction of a Rolls Royce Trent Engine, some peeks at the 787 and some of the first engine parts of the A350XWB.Worth the 60 minutes it's on for.UK Users can access it from … [Read more...]

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