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If Ryanair is the self-proclaimed Wal-Mart of the skies, can United be the Nordstrom?

The airline has partnered with Valtera, a Chicago-based customer service consulting firm, to help it hire 4,000 workers capable of brightening travelers’ experience on board. Valtera has worked with famously customer-friendly companies such as Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton and Nordstrom. It has helped United design interview questions based on those used by Nordstrom and Ritz-Carlton.

I’m happy to see the airline moving toward a higher-quality inflight experience, to go with their promised upgrades in seats and onboard amenities. It’s a far cry from the race to the bottom of many other carriers. (Northwest, I’m looking at you…)

While they’re at it, if United is looking to add perks, they might also want to consider JetBlue’s latest move: spa amenities inflight for overnight flights, in partnership with Bliss. It’s no onboard massage a la Virgin Atlantic longhaul flights, but it’s a nice touch.

The onboard experience is not the only area that needs sprucing up, though. A more stable website, plus greater consistency at the calling centers, would be big steps forward, too. I’ve heard dozens of complaints about United’s outsourced calling centers, the front line of many customers’ experience. If they can’t get past the phone agents, will they ever enjoy the improved onboard customer service?

tags: travel | air travel | United Airlines | JetBlue

Update: It looks like MiMa isn’t an airline, or a club, any longer. We hardly knew ye. The original post remains below, for posterity.

Leave it to the Italians to find a way to make business class travel seem more exclusive…

Forget MaxJet and Eos, which offer scheduled all-business service and actually publish their fares. (the gall!) MiMa, partly owned by Alitalia, will operate an Airbus 319 6 days a week from Milan to New York. But MiMa, short for Milano-Manhattan, is not an airline, it’s a club. Yes, a club. You have to apply and be approved in order to join, which gives you the privilege of paying (reportedly) $4000 per round trip.

I say “reportedly,” because the MiMa website doesn’t say how much a flight would cost. You’re not buying a flight, after all, you’re buying a club membership. And membership is not open: Check the association bylaws! (pdf)

This is just silly. I understand that the company is trying to position itself between a private jet and a commercial business class ticket, but the pretensions of the club are downright laughable.

Plus, you don’t earn miles…

(geneology of a post: Departures, via BrandNoise, via Gridskipper)

The Geeky Traveller points to a neat map of world tourism. Country size on the map is modified to proportionally represent the number of tourists traveling there: More tourists, bigger image on the map, making France look larger than Australia. It’s a visually interesting representation.

The original source for the maps, Worldmapper, offers some other equally interesting travel-related maps. Tourist origins, gross cash receipts from tourism, tourism profit, aircraft passengers, and rail passengers are all pretty interesting. But there are plenty more. Geek out.

tags: travel | air travel | tourism | maps

Perhaps unsurprisingly, inflight internet access is popular. According to a survey of 3200 high-frequency travelers commissioned by Boeing, 83% of respondents would consider online access to be a key factor in deciding which airline to fly. (Currently, ANA, Asiana, China Airlines, El Al, Etihad Airways, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, Lufthansa, SAS, and Singapore Airlines offer Boeing’s Connexion service. United is rolling out a Verizon-powered service over North America in the near future.)

94% of respondents who had used the service reported that they would use it again.

tags: travel | air travel | inflight internet | Connexion

Business 2.0’s profile of Ryanair offers this prediction: By 2010, half its customers would fly for free.

Free? FREE??? Nothing on Ryanair is free. Break out the legalese: If, by “free,” you mean “no base airfare,” then yes, it may indeed be possible for travelers to embark on a plane without providing the airline with upfront revenue. Already, the carrier sells thousands of tickets for free, or at ridiculously low prices like 89 pence. The real cost to the traveler is much higher, once the taxes and fees are added in.

It’s enough to drive Chuck Schumer bonkers. Take a flight from London to Hamburg, April 21 to 22. First off, the flight leaves London’s Stansted Airport for Lübeck airport — not Hamburg itself. Check the map, and the taxi rates, before you buy. Plus, the ticket is not free, once fees/taxes are included. These raise the cost of the ticket from free to £27 (or US$47 at the time of this writing). Still really, really cheap. But not free.

But putting this legal mumbo jumbo aside, Ryanair will make sure your “free” ticket isn’t free with all their add-ons. Plus, they take “no frills” to the absurd. There are no windowshades. No seatback pockets. They print the safety information on the back of the seat, so there’s no card. Tighter pitch than any North American carrier. These guys make Southwest look like Singapore Airlines.

The Irish discount carrier charges money for everything. Any checked luggage? A fee. Bags weigh more than 20kg? Another fee, based on weight. Carry-ons must be below 10kg, or there’s a fee. Inflight coffee or Coca-Cola? A fee. There are no seat assignments, so they can’t charge you for that.

But my favorite forthcoming revenue stream for the airline: inflight gambling, starting in 2007. (”Ryanair: The loosest slots in the sky!”)

Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary says he wants the airline to be known as “the Wal-Mart of flying.” (Does that make Southwest the Target of flying?) Indeed, the company is wildly successful, just like Wal-Mart. But even Wal-Mart doesn’t charge for parking, plastic bags at checkout, use of shopping carts, or public toilets.

(image)
tags: travel | air travel | Ryanair | inflight gambling

The New York Times raises the issue of “passengers of size” again. Charging larger customers more money is all the rage, after all.

This particular paragraph caught my attention, though:

Understandably, some “oversize” people feel that they are normal, and have a right to the space they need. Leland Stuart in El Paso writes: “I am 6 feet 7 inches and weigh 260 pounds with a 50-inch chest; I’m not fat, only large. To say that I should have to purchase an extra seat seems unfair and discriminatory. Airlines could accommodate large people by making six or eight seats in coach with a little extra room available only to them.”

I’m all for a clearly defined policy toward passengers of size. I’m not sure a “big-boned” section of the plane would work, though. Passengers might be embarrassed to be seen there, or might be insulted if the airline required them to sit there. Further, more space comes at a price, so there should be additional cost to the flyer, much as intra-European business class seats are simply wider coach seats, but cost more. Would folks like Leland want to pay it, or claim discrimination?

The bigger problem is the combination of oversize passengers and fully-booked flights. To riff off Oliver Wendell Holmes’ observation that one person’s right to swing their fists ends “at the tip of my nose”: Another passenger’s right to sit comfortably ends at my armrest.

If you are stuck next to a person whose corpulence intrudes on your personal space, ask to be reseated BEFORE the plane door is shut. If no empty seats are available, then it is both your problem and the airline’s problem. In the worst case, consider requesting that you or someone else be bumped from the flight.

tags: travel | air travel | passengers of size

At this point, this is rumor, not fact, but this discussion thread at FlyerTalk suggests that 8 Paris-based United flight attendants stopped working mid-flight on a Paris to Chicago flight. Presumably, these employees are upset that their local base is being closed.

According to posters on the thread, who have some credibility, the offending employees were fired upon arrival at O’Hare. Whether the firing will stick will be an issue for courts to decide. And which courts have jurisdiction is another matter. French law is rather strict regarding the conditions under which companies can fire workers, but if the stories are true, then the employees were clearly derelict in their duties. And it’s not clear if this was technically a strike, since they were at their work “site.” And was it limited to these particular employees, or an official union action?

Thankfully there was apparently no passenger crisis or equipment trouble which required flight attendant intervention. But this must have been an unpleasant flight for a great number of passengers — and for the two flight attendants who did not stop working.

tags: travel | air travel | United Airlines | France

Air France joins its American counterparts in lowering summer business class fares to Europe. (Link may require you to scroll down to “65% off business class” link.) The prices are approximately 80-100% higher than the corresponding economy class fare, which is not as much of a discount as usual, but still a substantial discount to the usual business class fare.

Worth looking into nonetheless, especially if you can be assured of a new flat bed seat.

tags: travel | air travel | Air France | business class