World Airline News

Virgin Atlantic View on BA-> BMI Takeover.

2012-01-01T20:59:00.002+00:00

Virgin Atlantic has vowed to fight BA parent company’s deal to buy British Midland International for £172.5 million.

Virgin said it will ask competition authorities to stop the transaction, saying its completion would “tilt the competitive landscape dangerously” toward British Airways.

“BA is already dominant at Heathrow and their removal of BMI just tightens their stranglehold at the world’s busiest international airport,” Branson said in a statement. “We will fight this monopoly every step of the way as we think it is bad for the consumer, bad for the industry and bad for Britain.”

IAG, which also owns Spanish airline Iberia, will gain 56 more slots at Heathrow airport and the boss of IAG has warned that there will be job losses at BMI.

Willie Walsh, IAG chief executive said jobs would have to be shed as a result of “an urgent need to restructure the business”.

“Unfortunately, this will mean some job losses but we will secure a significant number of high quality jobs here in the UK and create similar new jobs in the future. IAG’s purchase of bmi will protect more British jobs than if the airline had been closed and had its Heathrow slots sold off. There will be restructuring costs spread over three years but these will be significantly lower in total than bmi’s current annual losses,” he said.

Under the agreement Lufthansa has the option to sell bmi regional and bmibaby before the deal goes through, and there will be a “significant” price reduction if it opts to sell the low-cost carrier.

Walsh said the deal is a “unique opportunity” for IAG to grow at Heathrow and would allow it to launch new long-haul routes.

“This deal is good news for the UK as we will maintain a comprehensive domestic schedule including Belfast. Our plans to expand our longhaul network would guarantee growth by making Britain better able to compete on a global scale. It will also help maximise Heathrow’s position as a world class hub airport,” said Walsh.

He added that schedules would be more convenient for customers, who would also get “enhanced frequent flyer benefits”.

IAG and Lufthansa said they hoped the takeover would be completed in the first three months of next year.

Birmingham Reykjavik flights

2009-09-01T13:01:00.000+01:00

Iceland Express who this year switched their London airport from Stansted to Gatwick have announced a new flight route from Birmingham to Iceland.

Iceland Flights is reporting that the new service will start in summer 2010 but when we had a look the flights were only on sale for departures once a week which seems a bit of a "thin" schedule to us.

New Jet2 base

2009-08-28T12:55:00.002+01:00

New flights from East Midlands.

Seems like Jet2 has decided to branch out from the North down south a bit. Not sure whether they are scared of Ryanair coming into Leeds Bradford or if they are just up for a scrap but from Summer 2010 they will be proud to serve the people of Donnington.

Some of the new routes include flights to Corfu, flights to Heraklion and flights to Tenerife so the sunshine market is definitely in their sights. All the new flights will start operating in time for the May half term holiday.

Cheap Dubai flights from Gatwick

2009-08-01T11:54:00.002+01:00

Flights from London Gatwick to Dubai from only £210 return inc tax . . .

(price correct at time of publishing, valid until end 3rd August 2009)

In other airline news :

Emirates is worlds largest 777 operator

Sign the petition against APD rises

easyJet starts Tel Aviv flights

Virgin Atlantic Special Offers

2009-03-26T15:24:00.002+00:00

For their 25th birthday, Virgin Atlantic have a special fare each week.

Recent Airline News Stories

2009-02-19T00:01:00.002+00:00

http://airline-news.co.uk

Spanair sold for one euro

New Air Southwest route

Virgin Atlantic Redundancies

Airline news facebook application

Free airport lounge pass

Ryanair cancels Liverpool routes

http://airline-news.co.uk

New website ready

2009-02-02T08:05:00.006+00:00

Dear Readers ,

Our new platform is ready to bring you airline and aviation news and analysis.

Please go to Airline-News.co.uk

What's new :

- Related news on each article

- More powerful search function

- Add our facebook application and read airline news from facebook

Looking forward to getting your feedback on the new site.

House keeping

2009-01-29T23:27:00.004+00:00

To all our readers.

We just wanted to let you know that airline-news will be moving to a new platform over the next few days so please be patient while we set up shop at our new home.

We will be using this domain : http://airline-news.co.uk for our new airline news website.

However until further notice please use http://jetvine.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading !

Look at this Richard. Just look at it.

2009-01-27T11:07:00.001+00:00

Complaint letter about a Virgin in flight meal

Weak pound erodes cheaper fuel prices

2009-01-27T09:30:00.002+00:00

Oil price falls not enough to help UK airlines

Despite oil price falls in recent months UK airlines are seeing their costs rise thanks to fall in the value of the pound versus the US dollar. Airlines contract aircraft leases and buy fuel in the Greenback so much of the benefit of lower prices has been offset by the weak UK pound.

Oil has fallen from a high of $147 per barrel in July to under $50 yesterday.
The pound is at a seven year low versus the US dollar and has never been lower versus the Euro.

BA yesterday warned it would lose £150million ( first loss in seven years )

Virgin Atlantic said yesterday it would freeze all staff pay levels to ensure it's survival through the recession

Win a £1000 holiday of your choice

2009-01-25T19:18:00.000+00:00

Guest post from Win a Holiday blog.
At our blog we do one thing, list online entry competitions with flights or holidays as prizes.
We publish daily and include free prize draws with flights, cruises and holidays (UK, Europe and longhaul) as prizes.
Below is an example of what we publish. Airline News readers might also fancy this comp to win business class flights to Chicago.

Prize:
In this free to enter competition you can win a £1000 voucher to spend on a Thomson holiday.

How to Enter:

Go to the Win a Thomson holiday page on the Thomson website and enter your contact details. You will be registering to recieve email updates from Thomson.

Once you have registered on the site you will automatically be entered into the prize draw. No purchase is necessary.

Closing Date:

There is one prize draw for the £1000 holiday voucher every month. The winner will be selected at random by computer on the last working day of each month.

Jet2 replace Thomsonfly on Tel Aviv

2009-01-23T16:51:00.002+00:00

Low cost flights from Manchester to Tel Aviv

Jet2 will start a once weekly service from Manchester ( MAN ) to Tel Aviv ( TLV ), which will begin from Thursday 21 May 2009, the service.

Thomson currently operate the same service but haven't had any summer 2009 flights on sale for the route.

Jet2 is "so confident that the service will be such a popular addition to its Manchester schedule that from October the route is set to increase to twice weekly, departing Sunday’s and Thursdays."

Avro / Monarch launch Volos flights

2009-01-23T16:38:00.003+00:00

Volos late addition to summer 2009 flights

Volos flights from both Manchester and Gatwick have been added by Avro / Monarch for this summer, starting mid May and will be once weekly every Friday.

Volos in Northern Greece is a port city about 300 km North from Athens and 200 km from Thessaloniki. Volos airport ( VOL ) is known as International Airport Of Central Greece and used to have services from XL.

View Larger Map

bmi London Riyadh flights

2009-01-22T09:16:00.003+00:00

bmi is doubling the frequency of it's flights between Heathrow ( LHR ) and the Saudi capital of Riyadh ( RUH ).

The airline has started operating six flights a week to Riyadh.

The bmi Airbus A330 flights to Riyadh will now go onwards to Dammam on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and onwards to Jeddah on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

From prices for return flights from Heathrow to Riyadh start at £348, Jeddah from £308 and Damman from £310. Prices including tax booked online.

6 bidders for Gatwick named

2009-01-20T13:28:00.002+00:00

6 bidders for Gatwick airport

6 biffers for Gatwick have been named and are listed below. Gatwick has been for sale since September. A suprise that the soverign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi is not on the list. It is thought they join with another of the below consortiums later on. Virgin Atlantic and easyJet, which had discussed establishing their own consortium to buy LGW last year, are not involved but are understood to have spoken to all the bidders.

• The Manchester Airports Group, owner of Manchester, East Midlands, Humberside and Bournemouth airports, with Canadian infrastructure fund Borealis.

• Global Infrastructure Partners, owner of London City Airport

• Gatwick Future Partnership, led by Deutsche Bank and Babcock & Brown

• A consortium of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Canadian Pension Plan and 3i Infrastructure

• Lysander Gatwick Investment, comprising Citigroup Infrastructure, Vancouver Airport Services and John Hancock Life Insurance

• Hochtief AirPort, owner or part-owner of Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Sydney, Athens, Tirana and Budapest airports

Czech Airlines to be sold

2009-01-19T23:37:00.002+00:00

Czech Airlines for sale

The Czech Republic government has approved a plan that will see it sell it's flag carrier, CSA Czech airlines in a public tender in 2009.

The government says it approved conditions for the bidding on Monday and hopes the sale will be completed by the end of September.

The Czech state says it will sell its entire 91.51-percent stake in the airline. It also plans to privatize Ruzyne International Airport in Prague. The cabinet is to select a pool of bidders in the first phase, focussing on sale's foreign policy consequences as well as on bidders' air-traffic security track record. The new owners will have to ensure that the Czech Airlines remains a national-style carrier and bases its fleet in Prague until at least 2014.

In 2008, CSA which is a member of SkyTeam carried approx 5 million passengers.

Who do you think will be bidding for Czech Air, CSA ? Please leave a comment.

All ecomony A380

2009-01-16T10:57:00.000+00:00

No Frills A380 flights

Air Austral the airline with a hub in Reunion (Réunion) has ordered two A380 aircrfat from Airbus and aims to be the first airline to operate an all economy class on the super jumbo.

Air Austral will fly the A380 From Paris (CDG) to Saint Denis, Reunion (RUN). Delivery of the aircraft configured for 840 seats is expected to be in 2014.

By seating over 800 passengers in an A380, Airbus claims the aircraft will be the most fuel efficient and environmentally friendly ever to fly.

Air Austral also operates 737 and 777 aircraft.

Map of Hudson River Plane Crash

2009-01-16T07:44:00.002+00:00

US Airways plane ( A320 ) crash lands in New York

The Airbus 320 – Flight 1549 from New York's La Guardia airport to Charlotte, North Carolina – had 155 people on board, ( 150 passengers and five crew members ), all of whom have survived the crash. At least 78 people were injured.

It is thought the US airways aircraft had a bird strike after take off from La Guardia.

Map Courtesy LA Times :

View Larger Map

Cashback on flights

2009-01-15T18:59:00.001+00:00

Getting cashback on flight bookings

How much can you earn ?

Not that much unless you are flying longhaul or flying frequently. As an example, at the time of writing the following cashback is available from below sites. Notice there is more for hotels, and there are some amazing amounts offered on car insurance, bank accounts etc.

Opodo 1%
bmibaby £2
bmi 1.5%
Emirates 1%
Virgin Atlantic 0.5%

Hotelopia 6%

Holiday Autos £4
easycar 6%

How do Cashback schemes work ?

Some airlines offer rewards to websites (like this one) for referring new customers to them.
Cashback sites like Rpoints share this with their users-

What's the catch ?

Not much. You don't pay any extra for your flight bookings, but you do have to wait a month or two for the cashback to be available to you, and you do have to reach a minimum cashback balance before you can redeem your points. Payment can be straight to your bank or taken as vouchers for retailers including Amazon.

Will I still get frequent flyer points ?

Yes these should not be affected.

bmi Jersey Heathrow last flight 28 March

2009-01-15T17:13:00.003+00:00

bmi will cease flights from Heathrow to Jersey at the end of March this year.

Despite receiving subsidies to operate the flights, the airline said that the channel islands route had failed to achieve an "acceptable level of financial performance".

Economic Development Minister for Jersey Alan Maclean said that a combination of change in ownership of bmi, deteriorating market conditions and poor economic prospects had led to the airline’s decision to withdraw.

Third Heathrow runway
Despite the announcement, bmi welcomed the decision that Heathrow will get a third runway with this statement:

"We congratulate the Government in making this bold decision. It will ensure that Heathrow maintains its pre-eminent position as one of the world's leading international hub airports with all of the jobs and commercial benefits that go with it."

Virgin Atlantic aircraft names

2009-01-13T20:41:00.002+00:00

Full List of Virgin Atlantic Aircraft names.

African Queen
Barbarella
Bubbles
Cosmic Girl
Cover Girl
Dancing Queen
Diana
Emmeline Heaney
English Rose
Hot Lips
Indian Princess
Jersey Girl
Jetstreamer
Lady Luck
Lady Penelope
Ladybird
Madame Butterfly
Maiden Tokyo
Miss Behavin
Miss Kitty
Mustang Sally
Mystic Maiden
Plane Sailing
Pretty Woman
Queen Of The Skies
Ruby Tuesday
Scarlet Lady
Silver Lady
Sleeping Beauty
Soul Sister
Surfer Girl
Sweet Dreamer
Tinker Belle
Tubular Belle
Varga Girl
Virginia Plain

Virgin Atlantic News

Jet2 frequent flyer scheme

2009-01-11T18:27:00.003+00:00

Jet2 launch frequent flyer scheme

More evidence that there is less and less distinction between low cost airlines and full servive airlines. . . Jet2 have launched a frequent flyer scheme.

Below I have listed the key features of the MyJet2 reward scheme and given my own analysis on each.

Customers earn 1% of everything they spend on flights back in "points".

Not very generous considering they are not ever giving back the cash but just free flights (excluding taxes etc). I expect they will end up increasing this or offering special offers with increased points.

Two flight zones for redemption, the lowest = 1200 points for a return flight.

Makes sense but I would have gone for three zones or just had a system where anything earnt can be redeemed on any flight - this respects the work of the revenue managers who have priced each seat. If sticking with the zone system seems non-optimal business-wise to have Dusseldorf lumped in with Malaga which must have an average selling price way above Dusseldorf and I'm sure better load factor too. See the zones

Points valid for 2 years.

Fair enough. Pretty standard, should encourage fairly swift redemption (which under the Jet2 scheme should be revenue enhancing for them as they are still charging for fuel supp, etc and there may be other passengers and ancillart revenue)

Points pay for the base fare only.

This is crafty, it actually says in the FAQ that you will have to pay for any fuel supplements, baggage charges or other supplements on the free flight. The only consolation is you will earn points for these charges.

No online redemption - call centre only.

This has got to change and I'm sure there are some IT geeks working on this now.

No specific black out dates for free flights but availability is restricted

Makes sense they just have to make sure they balance off the customer satisfaction goal of members actually being able to redeem their rewards with the revenue management goal of not giving away seats that they could have got some revenue for.

For many of the flag carriers reward schemes, including e.g. bmi who also fly from Leeds Bradford like Jet2, there is an emphasis on "status" giving e.g. bronze, silver and gold status each giving different non-cash benefits such as access to airport lounges and priority baggage tags. MyJet2 is a cash / free flights only reward scheme so won't perhaps encourage many business customers to choose Jet2.

Virgin Atlantic Birthday

2009-01-10T23:05:00.003+00:00

In Summer 2009 Virgin Atlantic celebrates 25th birhday.

In mid summer, Virgin Atlantic will celebrate the 25th anniversary of ther inaugral flight. Virgin's maiden flight was from Gatwick to Newark on 22nd June 1984.

In a nostalga inducing television advertising campaign they are celebrating still being hot after 25 years. Well worth a look if you loved the eighties !

+ Win a Virgin Atlantic 2009 diary !

Climate Protest at Heathrow Monday

2009-01-09T18:28:00.002+00:00

A low key protest is planned for Monday at Manchester & Heathrow Terminal 1.

From the organisers website :

On Monday 12th January 2009 at 7pm the Climate Rush will hit Heathrow Terminal 1 (Domestic Departures) for a peaceful picnic.

We will arrive in Edwardian dress (under a big coat!) with hampers of food to have our 'Dinner at Domestic Departures'. It will take place on the day that the MPs return from their winter holiday.

When the string quartet plays its first note we will reveal our dress and share our food. Hundreds will join us and together we will make history. We have waited too long and been misled too many times. It is time for us to take control and to lead social change.

Manchester Airport will also have a similar protest :
Our protest will be against airport expansion and domestic flights. In a time of recession and climate crisis, government money should be spent on improvements to rail, trams, and buses, not on subsidies and infrastructure for the aviation industry.

Have a look at the faq for more info.

Bargain Business Class Flights

2009-01-09T14:17:00.003+00:00

No we are not talking about the Aer Lingus style €5 business class bargains we saw last year.

Virgin Atlantic and British Airways are expected to fight it out for business class passengers by lowering prices in the face of large reductions in demand seen as a result of businesses cutting back on costs in 2009.

BA reported a 12% fall in business class passenger numbers for December compared to only a 3% reduction in capacity. In the past airlines have been reluctant to reduce business class fares seeing the passengers as less price sensitive than economy passengers.

Virgin Atlantic's business class product is known as Virgin upper class. With the price cuts a return trip to New York will fall by 40 percent to £1,099 and a return to Boston by 38 percent to £1,199.

See the Virgin special offer page with all the routes and prices here