Business traveler Brad DeLong sleuths out some sketchy business practices on JetBlue’s Boston to West Coast flights: The planes don’t have enough gas to make it when the headwinds are strong:
Thus a six hour flight that would be turned into a six and a half hour flight by strong headwinds is instead turned into an eight hour flight by an involuntary refueling stop in Salt Lake City.
Avoid Delays takes flight arrival and departure information and turns it into something usable. It highlights information like the most-delayed flights, the airports with the longest delays, delays by date, month, just a heck of a lot of information.
They also have a place for you to file a complaint about your air travel experience, and they have some pretty generic advice about steps you can take to avoid delays.
Check out this wealth of information at http://www.avoiddelays.com/
This is cool: The Airline and Airport Duty Free Price Guide. Comparison shopping for duty-free goods.
Wired Magazine takes a look at some new ideas for getting people on to planes. Take a look at the online presentation on boarding airplanes they put together here.
What do uncertain business times do? Stimulate new ideas. And this is definitely a new idea — Ryanair is giving away tickets on a regular basis.
Michael O’Leary, Chief Executive of Ireland’s Ryanair (Research), Europe’s most profitable airline, wants to make air travel free. Not free as in free from regulation, but free as in zero cost. By the end of the decade, he promises, “more than half of our passengers will fly free.”
The remarkable thing is, few analysts think his prediction is far-fetched: Ryanair already offers free fares to a quarter of its customers.
Read the article: A radical fix for airlines: Make flying free
According to this year’s Airline Quality Rating study, that is.
Among the study’s conclusions:
• Southwest Airlines had the lowest rate of complaints, 0.18 per 100,000 passengers, while US Airways had the highest, 1.86.
• ATA had the highest rate of denied boardings, 2.75 per 10,000 passengers; JetBlue had the lowest at 0.
• AirTran had the best baggage handling rate, mishandling 3.43 bags per 1,000 passengers; and Atlantic Southeast had the worst, (mishandling 17.41 bags per 1,000 passengers.
Read the article summarizing the report: Report: Airline delays, complaints on the upswing.
From 87 Bad Predictions About The Future:
«Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.» - Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later. Newcomb was not impressed.
«Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.»
Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.«It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.»
Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895.«Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.»
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904.«There will never be a bigger plane built.»
A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
Okay okay, they don’t want to, they will. At least on their regional carrier, American Eagle. But that’s okay. It’s an experiment: If it works, they expand the program. They expand it to American Airlines, they expand it to charging for pillows, they turn flying in the states into an a la carte experience. I mean, that’s how the cheap airlines do it in Europe. And it’s good to see airlines experimenting with their revenue models. Now, about that free liquor on domestic flights …
» Read the article (registration required)
I just wrote this email to a friend, and it’s worth sharing. In the past year the online cheap flight-deal landscape has changed. Things aren’t as simple — no, but they’re better. Witness the CheapAir flexible travel search: You don’t need to enter your desired dates, just your destination. Type in where you want to go and it returns all your options, with what dates they’re available. That’s pretty sweet functionality you couldn’t find last year.
So, here are the places I go now when looking to fly:
… and find them with a cool map that pinpoints your location, and all the other places you can go for cheap (or kind-of cheap) dollars. Kayak Buzz is the best use of google maps and air fares I’ve seen yet, and I like that they took the time to put this together. I haven’t used it to book a flight yet, but I might. Here’s a link to Kayak Buzz. Now if only airfarewatchdog would put something like this together :).