Flights Direct

Two new routes are taking off from East Midlands airport; bmi will fly to Cologne starting Febryary 11 and easyJet has already started flying people to Palma.

The route to Mallorca operates three times a week at the moment, but starting in April easyJet will fly there and back daily. “Palma is a favourite destination for families looking to explore the island of Mallorca, as well as a popular city break destination,” David Osborne, easyJet UK General Manager said.

The bmi flights to Cologne can be expected to be popular with both business travellers and holidaymakers. “It will provide the quickest link between the Midlands and Germany”, said commercial director Peter Kenworthy.

British Airways will start a new service for business-class passengers only. Flights will run from London City airport to New York. It’s a part of BA’s nine month plan, and flights are due to start next year.

BA has bought an Airbus A318 for the service, and the plane will be equipped with 31 business class seats with lie down beds.

“This niche service will fly passengers between the heart of the two largest financial centres in the world,” said Robin Hayes, BA executive vice president of the Americas, in a statement.

“London City airport is located minutes away from some of our key corporate customers and is in one of the fastest growing areas of the British capital.”

Those planning a trip to space can now see what the Virgin Galactic mother ship and spaceship look like. Virgin Galactic unveiled the SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo designs to the public, and the new environmentally kind launch system.

Virgin has announced it’s very close to completing the two spaceships, and is expecting to do the first test flights next summer. Virgin Galactic is the first company to offer individuals the chance to buy tickets to a flight to space. Over 200 have already signed up, and 85,000 have registered their interested in a flight to space.

Astronaut training has been started with 80 future passengers for SpaceShipTwo – medical checks and centrifuge training have been completed.

Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Galactic, says: “The designs of both the mothership and the new spaceship are absolutely beautiful and surpass any expectations for the future of commercial spaceflight that we had when first registering the name Virgin Galactic in 1999.”

Budget airline Ryanair has announced a raise in the charges for checking-in luggage and using check-in desks at airports.

For all new bookings, passengers have to pay £6 for checked bags, up from £5 per bag. And the use of the check-in desk now costs £3 instead of £2.

Ryanair’s Peter Sherrard says: “These will not be the last increases in Ryanair’s checked in baggage or airport check in fees.” He says Ryanair will increase its charges until half of its passengers use the online check-in service, and only take hand luggage onboard their planes.

If more people use the airport services, Ryanair can reduce the number of check-in desks and staff, and so continue to offer low fares, Mr Sherrard explains.

Scandinavian Airlines will add a new daily flight from Heathrow to Copenhagen for next summer. This will bring the number of daily flights to seven from March 30 to October 24.

SAS also operates two daily flights from London City to Copenhagen.

UK and Ireland general manager Lars-Ove Filipson said: “We are delighted that SAS has been able to secure an additional slot from London Heathrow Airport.

“In recent years it has become increasingly difficult for airlines to add additional Heathrow routes to their networks, and so typically service expansion depends on the introduction of larger aircraft which SAS has also implemented on its services to Scandinavia.

“The addition of the new service now also takes the number of SAS flights out of London airports to Copenhagen to 50% more than our competitor BA.”

KLM Airlines made a pricing mistake on its website, offering people flights from Helsinki to Singapore for as little as 59 Euros (£44), when the normal price is 610 Euros (£457).

Dozens of people took advantage of the super cheap tickets to Singapore. A similar mistake was done on the Helsinki-Manila route, offering tickets for as little as 67 Euros (£50).

Information about the mistake was spread over the internet on travel discussion forums. The mistake happened only on the Finnish KLM site. Oliver Hours from KLM admitted that a programming mistake had been done when entering prices to the system.

The mistake was noticed in less than two days after it was made and corrected immediately. Hours says KLM will not ask for more money from people who purchased the cheap flights, as it was their mistake.

New flight routes are announced almost weekly. Here is a quick roundup of the new flights so far to be expected for 2008:

Easyjet will start 25 new routes this year, most from Gatwick and some from Manchester.
From Gatwick to: Ajaccio, Bastia, Biarritz, Crete, Corfu, Cyprus, Dalaman, Gibraltar, Gran Canaria, Hurghada, Innsbruck, Lanzarote, Madeira, Malta, Montpellier, Mykonos, Nantes, Rhodes, Sharm El Sheikh, Tenerife and Thessaloniki.
From Manchester to: Crete, Cyprus, Malta and Tenerife

BMI will start a twice-daily service from Heathrow to Moscow on March 30.
 
Ryanair is offering 19 new routes in 2008.
From Birmingham to: Girona, Marseille and Pisa
From Durham Tees Valley to: Alicante
From Edinburgh to: Alicante, Bremen, Frankfurt, Marseilles and Pisa
From Liverpool to: Malaga and Nantes;
From Manchester to: Girona, Bremen, Marseilles and Milan
From Newquay to: Alicante and Barcelona
And from Stansted to: Angoulême and Faro

SAS will fly from Bristol to Oslo starting in April and will re-open Bristol-Stockholm route in June.

Zoom Airlines will take you to Fort Lauderdale and San Diego from Gatwick. The Fort Lauderdale route will open in May and run twice a week.

BA is opening routes from Paris and Brussels to New York in June, after the Open Skies agreement takes force at the end March, allowing US and EU planes to fly from anywhere and to anywhere in EU and US.

Many more flights have been announced and are expected for 2008.

Budget airlines are charging up to £32 extra from passengers for checking-in luggage or using check-in desks, a survey by Which? found.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) says airlines ticket prices must include all compulsory charges in the advertised prices. The prices are not allowed to be misleading.

Ryanair defended itself by saying the extra charges are easily avoidable, and Easyjet said that Which? did not understand the business model of the budget airlines.

Ryanair has the highest extra charges, with a £4 cost of using a check-in desk and £20 for luggage check-in. The airline says this is to get people to travel with just hand luggage and use the online check-in facility.

Considering all possible extra costs, Ryanair can charge £32 (including credit card charges) after final ticket price. Easyjet can charge almost £30 and BMIbaby almost £25.

Monarch and Flybe can charge up to £23 from customers.