Economy Class & Beyond

Dealing with Call Centres – Phonetics 101

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At some time or another we have to deal with a call centre - either to secure a reservation, set a seat... or sometime to spell our names. Therefore, it's good to use a common alphabet when dealing with them - and the "gold standard" is the ICAO Spelling Alphabet.Letters become words which are pronounceable by all, and understandable by all - which makes the ICAO Spelling … [Read more...]

LH: The year of crazy deployments continues: LH to run 747’s DOMESTICLY.

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It seems the year of crazy aircraft deployments is continuing apace, this time with Lufthansa putting some of it's spare 747 capacity to use, by putting on some domestic services with 747's.The deployment takes place over a three week period, with flight from Frankfurt to Hamburg, Berlin and Munich.Why? Who knows. It could be training runs or it could be an adversing wheeze. … [Read more...]

FR/U2: Ryanair in shock action – Makes an apology.

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When you're going to put an advert out, always make sure your backside isn't going to be sued. Although Ryanair tends to "Shove 'em out, worry about it later" attitude doesn't overly help in this direction. Yesterday Michael O'Leary had apologised "unreservedly" to Easyjet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou.Ryanair decided it would be good for business to run adverts depicting … [Read more...]

Project 787.. Possibly delayed?

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And here's a clanger you don't want to drop the week before Farnborough.Boeing has issued a "cautionary note" that the first 787 delivery could slip into early 2011, citing slower than anticipated instrumentation configuration changes and inspections of the horizontal stabiliser.It seems the test programme has ran into little issues and they have stacked up, which could see … [Read more...]

JQ: What’s that Skippy? JetStar are getting 787-8’s early? Down by Renton you say?

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It seems that JetStar is getting an early gift - 8 new Boeing 787's that will be delivered from the middle of 2012 onwards.This is part of the Qantas order, that has been brought forward some two years as some delivery slots have been made available of which 25 are going to Qantas itself, whilst the 25 are going off to JetStar. The first 8 will be assigned to Jetstar which … [Read more...]

International Airlines Group: Cleared for Business!

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It's a continuing good day from British Airways it seems today with the European Commission green-lighting the proposed BA and Iberia Merger to form International Airlines Group.As usual, the deal is to cut costs, with both BA and Iberia bleeding money.The new company will be called International Airlines Group (based in Spain) with the classic British Airways& and Iberia … [Read more...]

BA/IB/AA JV Tie up – Cleared.

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Final approval has been given for British Airways, American Airlines and Iberia has been given for the upcoming Transatlantic Joint Venture from the European Union, and will allow them to work together more closely.This gives them immunity from anti-trust laws that prevent price and schedule coordination. For this plan to work, there has been one major concession - the removal … [Read more...]

FR: Ryanair gets slapped with another Advertising Standards Authority complaint, FR moans about EasyJet instead

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Well another day, another advertising complaint has been upheld against Ryanair by the UK Advertising Standards Authority.This time, Ryanair has again been reprimanded for misleading customers with low fare offers, in particular two newspaper adverts for the airline offered £10 one-way fares to Gothenburg and Dusseldorf. The small print said that the offer was subject … [Read more...]

LX: Swiss joins the world of Bloggers….

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It seems Swiss is getting all "new media", and has set up a blog at http://blog.swiss.comAnd unlike a certain other airline within the Lufthansa group,  they seem to be making an excellent effort in delivering content, reasonable articles and managing their new media output.Worth a browse... … [Read more...]