Archives: August 2008

The Future of Advance-Purchase Fares

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 29, Categories: Airline Industry

Another airline, the trans-Atlantic budget venture Zoom Airlines, shut down this week, the latest casualty of fuel prices. In the U.S., Zoom flew between London and New York, Fort Lauderdale...

Internet calls on planes: The genie is out...

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 27, Categories: inflight Internet

When American Airlines, in partnership with Aircell, launched its in-flight Internet service recently, it created one big restriction: Passengers couldn’t use Skype or one of the other VOIP (Internet-based) phone...

You CAN make VOIP calls on airplanes. Joy.

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 25, Categories: inflight Internet

I've become pretty militant in my impatience over people talking on their cell phones when they should be, oh, you know, driving safely or paying attention to the grocery store...

Did You Really Want Airplane Food?

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 22, Categories: Business Travel

The melee over meals – ie, the lack of them – this week over at United has been a little surprising to me. Each periodic move in U.S. airlines’ race...

Parody commentary on today's skies

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 21, Categories: Now boarding

Stumbled across this hilarious video created by "Parody & Son" on the current state of air travel (or maybe I should clarify to say commercial air travel, since it appears...

A Tragic Day in Spain

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 20, Categories: Safety

It’s a sad day in aviation, with many fatalities from the crash of a Spanair flight in Madrid. The Spanish newspaper El Pais is reporting at least 45 dead after...

Frequent Flying, or Frequent Frustration?

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 18, Categories: Frequent Flier

If you are one of those millions of airline mile chasers, there’s a worthy read in The New York Times about the pursuit of said miles via credit card purchases....

Should BA-American Be Immune?

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 14, Categories: Airline Industry

The long-awaited ABI (American-British Airways-Iberia) tango became official today when the trio said it will seek antitrust immunity for its trans-Atlantic flying. My colleague Kerry Capell has a thorough...

A morning cupful of good reads from the Web

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 13, Categories: Airline Industry

A roundup of some of the most insightful posts in the blogosphere in the past 24 hours: Traveler 2.0 Blogger James Martin discusses his experience in running the security gauntlet...

Judge rules: No guns at Hartsfield, for now

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 12, Categories: Airport safety

A short follow-up to an earlier blog posting on a lawsuit filed by a Georgia state legislator that would allow the public to carry concealed weapons at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson...

A sneak peak at JetBlue's new digs at JFK

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 12, Categories:

Ernest Beck, a contributor to BusinessWeek.com, just filed a report--with video--offering a sneak peak at the $743 million JetBlue terminal that's going up at JFK International in New York....

The Pilots' War At United

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 11, Categories: Airline Industry

The war between United Airlines (UAUA) and its pilots took a new turn today with the pilots renewing their call for the resignation of CEO Glenn Tilton. It’s not the...

Airline food: How it's made

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 11, Categories: Airplanes

Ever wonder how airline meals are made? This clip from the TV show How It's Made shows. How much would you pay for this? $15? $25? $39? One airline,...

The secrets to accessing the airport lounge

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 08, Categories: Airports

Given the growing vagaries of the flying experience, I'm increasingly finding myself sitting at a gate with far more time to kill than I'd anticipated. I'd love to kill...

Grab bag of goodies for road warriors

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 07, Categories: Business Travel

Just back from two weeks' vacation, and going through my Inbox I found a number of goodies that should be of interest to fellow travelers: »»Google now has a widget...

The Money in Airline Miles

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 06, Categories: Airline Industry

No matter what you say about U.S. airlines – and plenty is said, most of it negative – you cannot say that their revenue-generation people have not been working overtime....

Alaska Air's Not-so-Secure Payments

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 06, Categories: Airline Industry

Here’s a nightmare scenario: A call-center worker diverts customer money to a personal account and no one detects the theft. That’s what Alaska Airlines is dealing with today, notifying...

The A380: A New Way to Travel?

Posted by: Justin Bachman on August 04, Categories: Airplanes

Enough about the showers, I sat thinking, waiting for my turn in the media queue to chat with Emirates’ outspoken president, Tim Clark. We were all gathered in the...