Flights Direct

Low-cost airline Ryanair has announced it will start providing airport transfers on several European destinations.

As Ryanair airports are often located some distance away from the actual destination, the new airport transfer service will be a welcomed by customers. Ryanair will use ShuttleDirect on more than 50 airports to provide the new service.

The airline is starting the service to generate more ancillary revenue.

Head of ancillary revenue Santina Doherty said: “Ryanair’s partnership with ShuttleDirect will make it even easier for our passengers to avoid those airport queues.

“Not only can passengers dodge check-in queues with our web check-in service, now they can pre-book private car, minibus, coach and shuttle services.”

Last year 42.2 million pieces of checked baggage were mishandled or delayed at airports around the world – the problems ended up costing the air transport industry a massive $3.8 billion.

 “Once again, the past year has seen an increase in the amount of baggage mishandled worldwide. It also brings fresh hope, however, in the shape of new initiatives such as IATA’s Baggage Improvement Programme,” said Francesco Violante from SITA, who published the new figures in the annual Baggage Report.

Baggage handling is facing more problems each year as air travel becomes more and more popular. More demand, stricter security and very short turnaround times put pressure on handling 2.25 billion pieces of checked baggage every year.

The Baggage Report says that in 2007 the reasons for baggage delays were:

• transfer baggage mishandling, 49%;
•  ticketing error/ passenger bag switch/ security/ other, 14%;
•  failure to load, 16%; space-weight restriction, 5%;
•  loading/offloading error, 5%;
•  tagging errors, 3%;
•  arrival station mishandling, 8%

In just four days American Airlines has had to cancel almost 3,000 flights, as its MD-80 fleet had to be inspected for emergency security measures.

On the fourth day after starting the inspections to ensure the MD-80 complies with the  Federal Aviation Administration directive related to the bundling of wires in the wheel well of the MD-80 aircraft, 170 of the fleet were expected to be providing full service.

Wednesday April 9 AA had to cancel 1,094 flights, 930 on Thursday and today more than 500 flights were cancelled.

AA says it will give full refunds to all passengers on cancelled flights, or the possibility to use the value of their ticket towards future travel with airline.

The airline has apologized to all its customers for the inconvenience caused by the cancellations.

The British Airways has announced it will delay the full move to Terminal 5 until June. The airline was supposed to move all its long-haul flights and remaining short-haul flights to T5 on April 30.

The spaces BA was supposed to vacate on April 30 were to go to 54 other airlines, which are now facing major problems due to BA’s delay. Some airlines may seek compensation for costs they expect to have.

The ripple-effect from the BA delay has angered the airlines which have already been running campaign informing their passengers of the changes they were expecting to have. Many airlines have been planning to move to spaces vacated by BA for years.

Nigel Turner, bmi chief executive officer said: “The programme and timescale of changes was agreed in joint consultation with all airlines that are now geared up to undertake the moves as agreed.

“BAA and BA have shown a total disregard for all other airlines and their passengers at Heathrow in coming to this decision because of their own shortcomings and their inability to implement an agreed plan.”

The BA/BAA statement said: “BAA regrets this postponement, and we recognize the impact it has on other airlines, but we believe it is a wise precaution to ensure that passengers can have the maximum confidence once the move does take place.

Virgin Atlantic has called a meeting with its 280 beauty therapists – but says no decisions have been made about its future.

For the past 18 years Virgin has offered manicures, massages and other beauty services for the Upper Class passengers. The meeting has caused suspicion that the whole service might be scrapped.

With 38 aircrafts Virgin Atlantic has a considerably smaller fleet than its main competitors, and special services such as the beauty therapists is one of the ways it tries to attract passengers.

“We are calling our in-flight beauty therapists in to get their input into the product and service review of our Upper Class cabin,” a spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic said.

“We constantly look to review our Upper Class service to make sure that our investment is where it should be and that it is meeting the expectations of our customers,” the spokeswoman added.

The opening day of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was a complete disaster – the state-of-the-art baggage handling system didn’t allow staff to login, and the staff was unable to find their car park spaces, among other problems.

BA has had to cancel hundreds of flights, and a week after opening says there are 20,000 bags without owners. The airport authority BAA says the number of misplaced bags is closer to 28,000.

The BA spokeswoman said: “We are throwing resources at this. But as soon as you have bags without their owners there are security issues and it becomes time-consuming.”

BA announced earlier this week that it’s sending thousands of bags to Milan to be sorted out, and the rest to Gatwick, Manchester and Scotland.

Today BA promised that 90% of flights departing from Terminal 5 will be running, and is aiming to get higher during the weekend and early next week.

Flight cancellations are focused on routes with high frequency, so people can be offered alternative flights. There is also the option to re-book a flight or get a refund.

An apology issued by BA said: “Problems developed that were not encountered during the extensive trials. There were problems in car parks, airport areas, computer glitches and the baggage system.”

Ofcom has given its approval for using mobile phones during flights, on condition that European aviation authorities also give permission.

The decision came soon after the first phone call was made from a mobile phone on an Emirates flights, and Australian airline Qantas announced it’s installing mobile technology on all planes on domestic routes.

Mobile phones could be used once the plane reaches the altitude of 3,000 metres. Mobile phones would be connected to a base unit, which will be switched on and off by cabin crew in the correct altitude.
 
Airlines can decide whether or not to use the technology, which still has to be approved by the European Aviation Safety Agency.

The Airport hotel group Arora is about to buy a new portfolio of commercial properties from the UK airport operator BAA for £265 million.

Arora hotels was started by the hotel tycoon Surinder Arora, who arrived in the UK at the age of 13, and began his working life a customer service agent for British Airways.

In 2006 alone, Arora bought nine airport hotels from BAA in a exchange worth around £300 million. Arora Holdings is now thought to be the largest family-owned hotel group within the UK, and they are in the process of building a hotel for Heathrow’s new terminal 5.

BAA’s own properties include airport offices and warehouses, was last year valued at £1.1 billion last year. The down-side to these financial markets is that they have been hit just as hard as house prices, which has made it difficult for BAA to find a buyer.

Arora is now buying 33 of the 58 property sites that are owned by Airport Property Partnership (APP), which is the process of a joint cohesion between BAA and Morley Fund Management. The majority of these properties are within Heathrow Airport.

BAA is continually looking for buyers for its airport properties, which mostly consists of industrial buildings such as land and warehouses. This is in an attempt by BAA to gain more money from its airports, as they struggle for cash. Earlier this month BAA sold over is World Duty Free shops to the Italian group Autogrill for £546 million.

Wales is not a huge international destination, and as its stands, business people will travel internationally via another airport such as Heathrow or Gatwick. Although, this may change, as Patrick Duffy who is the new managing director of Cardiff Airport states that this will not be the case for much longer.

Duffy who was speaking to the Western Mail, recently commented that ‘Cardiff Airport has an opportunity to enhance its contribution to the economic and social well-being of the nation. There are ways we can look to do that – for example do we define ourselves as a regional airport in the UK, or a national airport in Wales? Can we be better connected with other capital cities in the world? Of course we can. In strict classification terms, we are just one of many regional airports around the UK. But spiritually we need to adopt more of a national outlook.’

However, this type of expansion to Cardiff will be determined by their new marketing campaign, which has been launched online at www.youwouldifyoucould.co.uk, which will attempt to find out how high the demand for an International Airport in Cardiff actually is.

The Australian airline Qantas is currently installing the latest technology within all of its domestic planes. This technology will mean that all passengers will be able to send and receive emails and SMS messages via a mobile phone or other electronic devices.

This news has been released shortly after the first mobile phone call was made on an Emirates flight last week. Qantas will be using the same technology as Emirates, which has been developed by AeroMobile.

Qantas first trialed this new mobile technology in Boeing 767-300 plane, between April 2007 and January 2008. “The evaluation of this new technology was a great success. An overwhelming majority of passengers involved in the evaluation indicated they wanted access to inflight connectivity on an ongoing basis,” states the Qantas executive general manager, John Borghetti.

AeroMobile has been able to develop this new technology, which means that passengers can use mobile phones and other electronic devices can be used safely during flight without interfering with the aircraft systems or with the communication network on the ground.

“Customers wanting to send or receive an SMS will require only a GSM phone and a global roaming account, while customers wanting to send or receive emails will need a GPRS enabled device like a Blackberry or an appropriately equipped laptop,” Borghetti added.

Qantas will not initially be allowing passengers to make voice calls on their mobiles. “Voice connectivity is a feature of the technology but will not be activated as part of the new service,” the airline said in part of its statement.

The AeroMobile technology will initially be installed on the Boeing 767-300 and Airbus A330-200 aircraft that are operated within Australia.