Flight Blog
News and Tips about Air Travel, Business / Industry, Flying, Airplanes, and other fun

Here’s a good web tool provided by the people at British Airways: the Jet Lag Advisor. They call it the “ultimate jet lag advisor,” and since there doesn’t seem to be much competition they’re probably right. Check out the jet lag app here. This is what BA writes about it:

Jet lag occurs when the body clock is disrupted by crossing a number of time zones. The symptoms can include fatigue, disorientation and an inability to sleep.

Working in conjunction with the UK’s leading sleep expert, Dr. Chris Idzikowski, we have developed the ultimate jet lag advisor. By answering a few simple questions regarding your recent or planned flights, we can advise you on the best things to do to minimise your jet lag.

Check it out here: FedEx arrivals in Memphis during thunderstorms.

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.

Read the report itself

Hey, in case you didn’t know, Flight Club is an online community for air travelers. Flight Club (the parent of this blog) has online tools that help members meet other members on airplanes and in airports — basically, we’re fun people that make travel more exciting. Business travelers, recreational travelers, if you fly for fun or for work, if you fly just once a year, Flight Club has a spot for you.

Membership is booming, so if you haven’t thought about joining before, then now is a good time. Registration takes about a minute and you can do it at this page. It’s free, it’s a fun site, uh huh oh yeah.

Travel journalist and blog entrepreneur George Hobica bumps his cheap flight report up a notch. A new domain, improved interface, and easier way to find discount air fares going where you want to go. This guy and the people helping him scour the web each day looking for fares the airlines don’t advertise. It’s great stuff.

On the new site he adds features like “Today’s Top 30 fares” — which is cool, but is it worth the effort? Most people looking for fares will search by destination, and then look for deals there.

Not to knock the man or anything … part of the reason I like what he does so much is his attitude behind it. Check out the last paragraph of his recent blog post about a newsletter he’s writing for Frommers. He says, “We often refer you to links and airlines that make absolutely zero for us (because we don’t have a financial relationship with that airline) simply because that’s the best value on a given route. We’d much rather gain your trust than [your money].” That’s awesome — and a definite contrast to someone like Tom Parsons.

Hey, been away for a while … here’s a roundup of some recent off-kilter airline news, enjoy.

• British teen launches cheap-flight airline from bedroom (thanks, Jon)
• Drunken airline pilots sentenced to prison (thanks, Christopher)
• 10 unforgettable in-flight fights
• USA Today analyzes wait times at major U.S. airports

USA Today has a useful air travel web application on their site. I love news sites that realize there’s more to news than stories: there are web applications, like this one, that improve peoples lives.

» Check out the airport delay updater

Christopher Elliott knows a lot about travelling. He’s got connections in the biz. He was an ombudsman for National Geographic, and he’s covered business travel as a journalism for more than a decade.

On the internet he helps solve travel problems. He’s got a column about travel problems. These problems make for an entertaining read, and usually they have a happy ending, which is cool.

This is my favorite, a tale about a ski trip gone wrong.

Here are some flight and travel sites that are useful and informative, but now worth writing entire entries about. Enjoy!