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Upgraded: Coach Seats on Cathay Pacific
You don’t hear much about economy class seats improving much. Sure, there’s lots of talk about upgrading business and first class. But it’s good to see the back of the bus being considered for upgrades. Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, considered by many to be one of the best rides in the sky, is installing new seats that function much like business class pods: hard-shell seats that recline within the shell, not by pushing back into the space behind you. The tinkering extends the legroom without technically increasing the seat pitch. Sounds great! (via RoadGladiator)

Upgraded: Economy Snacks on American Airlines, at a Price
American Airlines will start testing a new program this week — and ONLY this week — to sell snacks in flight. Flights between Dallas and LAX, Dallas and Miami, and JFK and San Francisco are included in the test. Klondike Movie Bites ice cream, Otis Spunkmeyer Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Lay’s Stax Crisps or Twix ‘4 To Go’ candy bars will run you $3. Dannon bottled water (how many ounces??) will be $2 per bottle. Cookies, etc., fine. I wonder if the $2 bottle of water was devised before the latest airport security rules were relaxed. Not sure how many people will bite. Can’t you just get a cup or two poured for you for free?

Downgraded even more: The Ryanair Experience
Sensory overload! Ryanair is adding advertisements on the underside of the tray tables, so you’ll be staring at the ad for the duration of the flight. Yay. It just keeps getting classier. (via The Cranky Flier)

Upgraded: Continental’s Reputation
Boston’s Logan Airport wanted to make a buck by providing wi-fi access and charging everyone for it. Problem was, Continental’s clubs already provided wi-fi for free. The airport tried to shut down the free connection, but Continental resisted, took it to the FCC, and won. Hats off to Continental for defending the interests of their customers. (And if you want free wi-fi, hang out near the Continental Presidents Club and try to pick up a signal…)

tags: travel | airlines

“Can you hear me? I’m on a plane! A plane!!!”
It’s official: Ryanair is allowing inflight use of mobile phones, with service provided via OnAir. The airline takes a cut of the roaming charge. For the notoriously no-frills airline, does this count as a frill?

Be productive, or be a tourist, in airports
Passing several hours at the airport? Not entering a lounge? Here’s a short guide to time-killing diversions at the busiest airports in the world. (If this had been in European media, I’d wager they’d be listing the Beate Uhse shop at Frankfurt Airport, and providing a list of smoking areas.) What I’d like to see more of at airports: Napping stations like they have in Vancouver.

Private travel gets faster
Lockheed Martin is developing a supersonic private jet that should be able to cross the United States in two hours, without the loud sonic booms that gave the Concorde a bad name. Though the QSST (quiet supersonic transport) will be fast, sales will probably lag microjets, which are rapidly gaining popularity (despite some models lacking a bathroom).

What happens onboard Maxjet stays onboard Maxjet
All-business-class discounter Maxjet is starting a new route: Las Vegas to London-Stansted. But will they offer inflight gambling, as Ryanair has proposed? Who will claim The Loosest Slots in the Sky??

Door Wars: The New York Times’ Joe Sharkey heeds the call
Welcome to the revolution, Joe. Like many travelers, Joe often can’t get enough sleep in hotels. Noise, especially hallway noise, is the enemy. I sympathize. But I’m glad to see that AmericInn is promoting quieter rooms. I’ve never stayed in one of their hotels, but this certainly sounds appealing.

Britain sees security improvements, while the U.S. languishes. Or worse?:

Granted, they’re just rumors, but if they’re even close to true, look out: A FlyerTalk message board offers a frightening glimpse into the thinking of TSA supervisors on the future of airport safety. Some of the proposals supposedly under discussion — and again, this is rumor, not fact — include:

1) A relaxation of carry-on liquid rules (yay!) BUT a prohibition on liquids in checked baggage. Why? Terrorists could allegedly construct containers that mix explosives automatically in the cargo hold, causing fire or worse.
2) A limit of one checked bag per passenger. TSA is having a hard time keeping up with the increase in checked bags, so they’d like to lighten their load. (Airlines might not object to this…)
3) A prohibition on entering security more than two hours before your flight. (I don’t see this happening.)
4) A ban on printing boarding passes more than three hours before your flight, or a ban on printing connecting boarding passes at the time of check-in. Online check-in would be nixed. (What would this solve?? Airlines would have a fit.)

Again, these are rumored proposals, not policy, and they’re worth what you just paid for them.

Over in the UK, the Times of London reports that Britain’s restrictions on carry-on bags will be changed soon, allowing for “normal” sized carry-ons instead of just the small briefcase-sized bags. (Yay.) Liquids will still be banned. (Boo.) Still, full-size carry-ons are good news for travelers.

However, kicking passengers while they’re down, discount carriers EasyJet and Ryanair are raising their fees for checked luggage.:

EasyJet is to start charging passengers booking from September 1 if they check in more than one bag. The fee will be £5 if paid online or £10 at the airport. The airline said the charge was to relieve pressure on check-in staff and to encourage people to travel light. The allowance for checked-in baggage remains 20kg, as does the excess charge of £5 per kilo, regardless of the number of bags checked in. Ryanair is to raise charges from September 1. Currently, every item checked in is charged at £2.50 for those who book and £5 if passengers pay at the airport. These fees will rise to £3.50 and £7 respectively. The airline has an excess baggage charge of £5.50 per kilo and, from November 1, the allowance per person will drop from 20kg to 15kg.

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tags: travel | airport security | Easyjet | Ryanair | TSA

There may be waiting lines in airports, but you can blame the line at the courthouse on air travel, too:

Threats made, now delivered: Ryanair filed suit against the British government over the security restrictions on carry-on luggage. As they had promised, the airline is suing for £3 million in lost revenue. Who will win? That’s a question for the barristers: “The Dublin-based carrier is suing under the Transport Act 2000, but government officials say the security directives are covered by the Aviation Security Act 1982.”

Separately, the New Zealand government is prosecuting Malaysian Airlines for knowingly and illegally transporting asylum seekers into the country. More than half of all asylum seekers who reach New Zealand’s shores apparently get there via Malaysian Airlines. Sounds like a slogan in the making.

Back in the United States: Remember Rima Qayyum, the woman who was held at Huntington Tri-State Airport in West Virginia after she was found to have liquids, and TSA singled her out for explosives testing? (It was a false positive, and she was released after 14 hours.) According to lawyers for the family, US Airways refused to let her on a plane the next day, despite her having been cleared by the FBI. So the family is considering suing the airline, and possibly airport security, for discrimination. (Some more detail here.)

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tags: travel | airlines | lawsuits

Last week, I briefly referenced Irish discount carrier Ryanair’s threat to sue the British government if security procedures were not normalized at UK airports within a week. Now, Ryanair is coming under fire for “profiting from fear.”

Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary, who has made frequent TV appearances attacking the Government’s security clampdown at airports, allegedly told an official at the Transport Department: “Every time I appear on TV I get a spike in sales.”
But Mr O’Leary, who has clashed with Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander, denounced the claim as ‘preposterous’ and denied having made the remark.
And he stepped up his war of words with the Government by claiming there was no proof that any plot to blow up airliners had ever existed.

A few points:

- That latter claim of O’Leary’s — that there was *never* a threat — is certainly kicking things up a notch with a conspiratorial flavor. I personally still believe a plot of some kind existed, but if it’s the plot that was publicly reported, it would have been ineffective, as noted earlier.

- If Ryanair is making money off of fear, it’s pretty impressive. Considering that the incentives to travel are so low right now, if someone is actually making a buck in this climate, then wow. (The airline is running ads featuring Winston Churchill making the V for Victory sign.)

- Ryanair and O’Leary need to be careful not to overstate their case: The company doesn’t have a lot of credibility when it comes to safety. (or service, for that matter)

- They lose more credibility when they’re grandstanding on television, instead of simply filing dockets in court. Don’t threaten to sue. Just sue.

Despite the holes being poked in O’Leary’s motivations, I think it’s healthy to see some corporate resistance to governments in matters of security incompetence and fearmongering. Clearly they’re running a risk of backlash from the government. But what would the consequences be? Oh, the drama…

UPDATE: UK files official charges against 10 suspects in the London plot. Looks like the UK government is trying to prove O’Leary wrong…

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tags: travel | Ryanair

Ryanair, Europe’s “Walmart of the Sky” and semi-official airline of the stag party, keeps finding new and exciting ways to irritate its passengers. Sure, there are the classics: Universal wheelchair fees, checked baggage charges, no windowshades, tight seats, questionable safety training, and a wacky CEO (pictured) who seems a bit too intimate with the seatback and the tray table.

But with the days of the 1-cent fare seemingly numbered, somehow Ryanair still manages to come through with new and exciting features:

The Sleeping Flight Attendant
Flight attendant Virginia Redmond allegedly blocked a row of seats for herself to lay down and nap during the flight, after reading a “fiction type book.” (I believe the word they’re looking for is “novel.”) Her co-workers say she didn’t participate in the safety checks, either. Ryanair is coming under fire, not only for the attendant’s performance, but for not disciplining her sooner. She was even allowed to work beyond the date of her termination letter.

Three-Airport Monty
Travelers on Ryanair flight 233 from Alergho, Sicily to London-Stansted were shipped off to a different airport — London-Luton — but weren’t told about the change until they were already midair. The crew knew that Stansted was closed to them, but didn’t inform the customers. Very nice. Would a short announcement over the PA system have used too much precious electricity?

Cellphone Hell
Ryanair will test cellphones in flight. It’s a love-it-or-hate-it issue, and the airline is going for it. Since passenger comfort is really not an issue for the airline, it’s all about revenue streams: Ryanair naturally gets a cut of the roaming fee, or other charges. Both voice and text-messaging will be available.

Gluttons for punishment, people still fly Ryanair. So much so that they showed record profits last quarter.

tags: travel | Ryanair

The days of the 1-cent Ryanair fares may soon be over. And consumers will be better off.

If approved by 25 European governments and the EU parliament, the legislation proposed by the European Commission would force airlines to list the total price of a ticket up front. This means that all fees, fuel surcharges, taxes, etc., would need to be stated on websites and in newspaper advertising.

The legislation would also require that airlines charge European travelers the same fare, regardless of which country they call home. Sale fares could no longer be isolated to one country within the EU.

It’s about time. U.S. ticket sales are bad enough, with fares often advertised pre-tax, but the European airfare shell game takes the cake. Carriers like Ryanair falsely advertise ludicrously low base fares, which come with mandatory add-on fees that passengers may not even use — like the wheelchair charge that every passenger pays. The fuel surcharges on international flights are hardly any better. None of these fees are optional, and they go to the airline, not to any government. They’re really part of the fare, and should be treated as such. Period.

While many online travel agencies, and even some airlines, are working around this by giving the “total price” when you run a search, it’s still up to individual providers to decide whether they want to be honest with their customers or deceive them. The EC is right to be cracking down on this. I hope other governments follow suit.

See also:
- Senator slams surcharges
- Weakening airfare advertising regulation, redux
- U.S. regulators to weaken airfare advertisement rules?

tags: travel | false advertising | airfare

It’s no surprise that European discount carriers advertise ludicrously low fares and then start tacking on the fees. But what ARE some of those fees? The Guardian takes on Ryanair:

Customers seeking a 79p fare on Ryanair end up paying far more. A traveller paying by credit card and needing to check in a single bag will end up with a bill of £20.22 - after tax, an airport charge, a baggage charge, a payment fee and a 33p “wheelchair levy” to cover the cost of carrying disabled passengers.

But it is the insurance surcharge, amounting to more than 10% of Ryanair’s average fare, which is coming under the greatest scrutiny. In common with other airlines, Ryanair introduced it in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 to cover a spike in the cost of insuring planes.

Yes, yes, Ryanair is still dirt cheap. It’s also really nasty to their employees and treats them to some questionable training practices. My favorite revelation in the Guardian piece: “On one occasion, [Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary] banned head office staff from charging their mobile phones at work on the grounds that it was costing Ryanair too much money.” (And you thought finding an outlet at the airport was bad!)

Such fees, plus the fuel surcharges that airlines are continually tacking on, are one area where I’d really like to see stronger regulation. As I’ve suggested earlier, just giving a base fare and then tacking on endless fees is false advertising. In the case of Ryanair, collecting fees for charges they don’t incur is not just unethical: It’s their business model.

tags: travel | air travel | Ryanair

Last week, readers of the New Yorker were treated to a paean to Irish airline of the year (that’s a pretty small field to choose from…) Ryanair, the king of ultra-no-frills flying. (Read the Gridskipper summary, since the article isn’t online.)

But Ryanair was also recently treated to an undercover investigation by the UK’s Channel 4. This is old news (the show aired in February), but the video is available online now. Click below to watch — it’s about 45 minutes long. (I admit I haven’t seen it all, yet, but some of the video is downright scary. My early favorite: The trainer asserting that passengers seated in 1A aboard Boeing 737-200s are definitely going to perish in case of a crash, because of the placement of the stair handles. Flight attendants should therefore not ask these people to assist in case of emergency, because they’re goners… none of which is true.)

The company responded to the network with a series of correspondence, disputing some of the charges, which you can read (series of pdf’s) on the Ryanair website.

The video is a disturbing insight into the training and life of Ryanair flight attendants. Even more disturbing than Hochschild’s book on Delta’s flight attendant training in the early 1980s, The Managed Heart, because passenger safety, and not “only” the well-being of airline employees, is in play.

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.

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tags: travel | air travel | Ryanair | inflight gambling

The founders of Ryanair (the Ryan family, of course) inked a deal with the Mexican bus company IAMSA to start a new discount airline. The Ryans took a 49% stake in the new company, allegedly named… (wait for it…)

AeroBus.

With that name, they’re ironically not using Airbus planes. Rather, they’re starting off with two Boeing 737-300s.

Besides intra-Mexican flights, AeroBus is considering flights to San Diego, LA, Las Vegas, Houston, and Chicago.

We can assume that the airline will be aggressive on price, certainly to start. Let’s just hope they offer more legroom than Ryanair. Windowshades and seats that recline even just a smidgen would be nice, too.

tags: travel | air travel | Ryanair | Mexican travel