Airline broadens its flight itinerary

BARBADOS has emerged as the largest gateway for Caribbean Sun and Caribbean Star airlines.

This was disclosed last week by the airlines’ public relations officer, Steve Bennett.

The airlines now have a total of 150 flights arriving and departing Barbados each week, and travel to some 20 destinations.

The company operating the airlines announced the launch of its first flights between Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and Curaçao for travel starting July 13.

With the addition of Curaçao, the combined route system operated by Caribbean Star and its sister airline Caribbean Sun now totals 20 Caribbean destinations – the most of any carrier serving the region.

William E. “Skip” Barnette, president and CEO of both Caribbean Star and Caribbean Sun, stated: “As we continue to work towards further expanding our route system, we feel strongly that Trinidad will continue to grow in importance for us. This new Curaçao service is a nice start, but we see the potential for broadening our presence in Trinidad in the near future to serve a larger portion of the southern Caribbean and perhaps beyond.”

Both Caribbean Star and Caribbean Sun offer daily service to and from Trinidad. Caribbean Star also offers daily flights between Port-of-Spain and Tobago. Caribbean Star inaugurated service to Trinidad in October 2000, while its flights to Tobago started October 2002. Caribbean Sun began flights to Trinidad in February 2006.

The airlines will use 50-seat DeHavilland Dash-8 series 300 aircraft for the new Curaçao service.

Privately held Caribbean Star Airlines Limited was incorporated in Antigua in January 2000. Its sister airline Caribbean Sun Airlines Inc., based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, launched its maiden flight in January 2003.

With a total of 19 Dash-8 aircraft, the most recent of which was commissioned into service in January 2006, the combined Caribbean Star/Caribbean Sun fleet is the largest and most modern in the Caribbean. The two airlines transport some 80 000 people each month. (CH)

Original Article

Amazing odyssey of airline passenger in French farce

An exhausted airline passenger was yesterday recovering from a nightmare journey from France that lasted more than 30 hours and took in two coaches, two aircraft and a taxi.

Andy Parson, 43, a teacher from Eccles, near Manchester, also passed through five airports by the time he completed a trip that should have taken only two hours.

A man’s flight from France graphic

His problems began the evening before he was due to catch an Aer Arann flight from Angers when the airline rang him to say that due to difficulties with air traffic control its whole service had been switched to Nantes.

Staff promised to get him to the new airport free of charge, and arranged a coach which took 90 minutes to arrive.

At Nantes, Mr Parson checked in, but due to a mistake by handling agents he was sent to the wrong gate. By the time the error was noticed the aircraft had taken off with a single passenger on board.

Mr Parson, who was in France for a school exchange visit, had been at Nantes for five hours before Aer Arann flew him to Cork, where he stayed overnight in a hotel.

The following morning he was taken on a two-hour, 75-mile taxi ride to Waterford. But there he learnt that his planned flight home had been cancelled due to bad weather.

He was next put on a coach to Dublin. This leg of the journey took three hours to complete, but at least he arrived in time to catch an Aer Lingus flight back to Manchester.

Mr Parson, who teaches French at St Mary’s RC High School in Astley, near Wigan, said: “People I met on the way kept asking me how I was managing to stay calm.

“It was just so unreal. I normally take children to Angers by coach, taking 16 hours. I feel I should be compensated, though if Aer Arann offers free flights I might ask for a pencil or key ring instead.”

A spokesman for Aer Arann said that although Mr Parson had booked a return flight to Angers, by the time he was due to fly home the operation had been switched to Nantes.

Handling agents in Nantes had been responsible for the “mis-communication” which caused him to miss his flight.

Thereafter the airline had done all in its power to get Mr Parson home quickly. He said Mr Parson would be offered a full refund, but declined to say whether he would also receive compensation.

Original Article

A Cleaner World launches airline mile reward program

A Cleaner World has partnered with both Delta Airlines and Continental Airlines to offer customers the opportunity to earn airline miles.

Customers of the dry cleaners can register up to five credit or debit cards in the program at no cost. Once members register, they will earn one mile for each dollar spent at A Cleaner World when they pay with the registered card.

This reward is in addition to any miles that may be earned through the credit card company.

In addition, Delta SkyMiles members can earn a one-time bonus of 100 miles for the first $100 spent and 200 miles for every $200 spent during a consecutive two-month period.

A Cleaner World plans to add American Airlines to the program in early June and United Airlines to the program in the third quarter.

Delta SkyMiles members can register at www.skymilesclothingcare.com; Continental OnePass members can register at signaturemiles.com/onepass.

Original Article

Venezuelan airline suspends some internatinal flights due to volcanic ash

Some international flights were suspended due to a huge cloud of ash billowing from a volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, airlines official said on Sunday.

Aeropostal, a Venezuelan carrier, has “decided to suspend flight from Venezuelan to the United States…due to clouds of volcanic ash in the region,” Aeropostal Vice President Juan Carlos Blanco told Venezuelan television station Globovision.

Ash will start moving away from the region on early Monday morning, he said.

The U.S.-based company, American Airlines, also announced its suspension of flights between the United States and Venezuela.

Delta Air Lines and Continental Air Lines, another two U.S. companies that also operate flights to Venezuela, have not made statements about their flight plans.

A dome atop a volcano on Montserrat island collapsed on Saturday,emitting debris and ashes about 16 km into the sky. No injures have been reported.

Original Article

Calame reports on the standing-room airline seat debacle

New York Times Public Editor Byron “Barney” Calame, a recent target of unflattering stories and columns, weighed in on the recent erroneous NYT page one story about standing-room only airline seats. It resulted in a (delayed) correction and an Editor’s Note. Here are the first three paragraphs from the April 25 story:

The airlines have come up with a new answer to an old question: How many passengers can be squeezed into economy class?
A lot more, it turns out, especially if an idea still in the early stage should catch on: standing-room-only “seats.”
Airbus has been quietly pitching the standing-room-only option to Asian carriers, though none have agreed to it yet. Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal.

After the story ran, it was (according to a Nexis search) picked up by at least over 50 other media outlets. It spawned editorial cartoons and editorials. It was, as Calame writes in his column, “a story that’s likely to make readers go ‘Wow!’” Yet just hours after it hit the streets, the story was vigorously denied by the company. The truth was that Airbus had abandoned the idea a couple of years ago. Writes Calame:

…Airbus had abandoned the idea no later than 2004. There was no proof that the idea had been pitched to any Asian airlines. And the 853 passengers the stand-up concept supposedly would fit into an Airbus A380 was the same number that could be carried using regular coach seats. (The bulk of the article, it should be noted, was a solid assessment of seat technology.)
The problems didn’t stop there. Despite an immediate public denial by Airbus, the stand-up seat idea stood uncorrected for a week. And so, as often happens with nearly unbelievable stories, this one took on a life of its own. The concept grabbed headlines in scores of publications around the world and was even incorporated into illustrations on the cover of The New Yorker and on The Times’s Op-Ed page.
What caused this mess? My questioning of most of the key players suggests that numerous factors converged to create an almost perfect storm. But I think a major gaffe was that editors at various levels got caught with their skepticism down, fascinated by the story’s Wow! factor. The seat was an idea that they apparently found bizarre yet believable in light of the airlines’ continual efforts to jam more passengers into planes.

Calame gets the back story on how the erroneous material made it into the story, how editors failed to do proper checks, why it made it onto page one, and why the Times took so long to correct the mistakes. Simply put, the story was a tragedy of errors at every level, a study in how best intentions and best practices can go awry. One would expect the public editor to come down hard on the paper, yet Calame’s attempt at being “blunt” comes off as rather toothless:

That this mess could splatter across the newsroom of such a fine newspaper moves me to be blunt. Times editors at all levels — especially on the news desk, where front-page and other important articles get a final review — need to pick up each story with the assumption that the most fascinating anecdote, or even the central premise, could be wrong. Readers deserve no less.

Calame is proving his critics right by doing the legwork on a serious failure by the paper but then failing to offer any meaningful condemnation or — more importantly — recommendations to ensure it doesn’t happen again. The back story is an interesting read, but an ombudsman is supposed to be more than a chronicler/explainer of the newsroom. Calame’s concluding graph should have been more blunt, and it should have offered some concrete suggestions to ensure this incident isn’t repeated. Unfortunately, he continues to prove his critics right.

Original Article 

Malaysian Airline May Eliminate as Many as 5,000 Jobs

May 22 (Bloomberg) — Malaysian Airline System Bhd., the nation’s largest carrier, said it expects to eliminate as many as 22 percent of its workforce in the biggest round of job cuts in Malaysia, as part of plans to turn around the company.

The airline, based in the state of Selangor, will trim between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs, it said in a statement today. The cuts will cost the carrier up to 850 million ringgit ($234 million) and won’t hurt its earnings targets, Managing Director Idris Jala said in a briefing today.

“It’s a generous offer,” Gan Kim Khoon, head of research at AmSecurities Sdn., which has a “hold” recommendation on Malaysian Airline shares. The airline’s statement that the plan won’t hurt its earnings target is “implying it’s making some operating profit already,” Gan said.

Malaysian Airline, which has posted losses for the last three quarters, is trimming jobs for the first time and planning to sell assets and cut costs to return to profit by 2007 as part of a three-year business plan. The job cuts follow the take over by AirAsia Bhd., Southeast Asia’s biggest low-fare airline, of 96 of Malaysian Air’s domestic routes, most of them unprofitable, including services to small towns and rural areas.

Malaysian Airline is in talks with Qatar Airways for the state-owned airline of the Persian Gulf country to absorb 1,000 of its workers, Jala said. Malaysian Airline, which expects to complete the job cuts by July 31, has 22,835 workers on its payroll, according to its 2005 annual report.

Workers’ Package

Workers, who have until June 7 to decide, were offered one to three months salary for every year of service, with no limit on the years served, the airline said. They were also each offered a one-off payment of 2,000 ringgit in medical benefits, it said.

That’s better than banks in Malaysia which typically offer 1.75 months salary for every year of service and limit the number of years covered, Gan said.

The plan to cut jobs “fast-tracks the organization’s intention to right-size its workforce a year ahead of schedule,” Jala told reporters.

About 70 staff out of the 1,700 working overseas will also be reduced, he said.

Under the turnaround plan unveiled in February, Malaysian Airline aims to narrow its losses to 620 million ringgit this year, post a net income of 50 million ringgit by 2007 and a record 500 million ringgit profit in 2008. The carrier reported a loss of 616.4 million ringgit in the quarter ended Dec. 31.

Earnings Target

“We will strive to meet the target,” Jala said. “It means we have to push for more sales and rejig stations,” he said. The carrier seeks to halve its 32 stations, or key branches, after reducing its routes, he said.

Asia’s airlines are seeking to cut costs on rising prices of jet fuel, their single-biggest expense. Malaysian Airline’s announcement comes a week after Qantas Airways Ltd., Australia’s biggest carrier, said it will eliminate 1,000 management and administration jobs by the end of the year.

Malaysian Airline, which will cut domestic flight frequencies by 58 percent and seats by 28 percent, will fund the job cuts partly with government compensation from giving up domestic routes to AirAsia, Jala said, without disclosing how much it will get from the state, which controls the airline.

Malyasian Airline is also seeking government loans of 4 billion ringgit to fund operations. The airline will reduce its fleet for domestic routes to 21 aircraft from 40, the government said in March.

AirAsia and Malaysian Airline will still compete on 19 main domestic trunk routes, or primary routes, the companies said on March 28.

Shares of Malaysian Airline fell 0.34 percent to close at 2.90 ringgit in Kuala Lumpur today. The stock has risen 2 percent this year. AirAsia shares, which have gained 3.1 percent this year, rose 0.6 percent to 1.64 ringgit.

To contact the reporter on this story: Soraya Permatasari in Kuala Lumpur at soraya@bloomberg.net ; Chan Tien Hin in Kuala Lumpur at thchan@bloomberg.net
Original Article

Unruly airline passenger gets seven months in prison

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A man whose behavior caused a flight from Orlando, Fla., to be diverted to Charlotte last year has been sentenced to seven months in prison for intimidating a flight attendant.

Mark McGovern was accused of urinating in an airplane aisle and lighting a cigarette during a November flight from Orlando, Fla., to Dulles International Airport outside Washington. Because of McGovern’s unruly behavior, the pilot of the United Airlines flight landed the plane in Charlotte so McGovern could be removed.

The flight, with 117 passengers aboard, later continued to Dulles.

McGovern, a Florida resident, pleaded guilty in January and was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Conrad, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Gretchen C.F. Shappert.

Conrad said McGovern should be released directly into an alcohol rehabilitation program when he finishes his sentence and ordered that he pay $7,339 in restitution to United.

Original Article

Airline industry group sees heavy traffic

The Air Transport Association said Monday it expects more than 21 million passengers to travel globally on U.S. airlines over the 2006 Memorial Day holiday.

“We are seeing continued growth in the number of people planning to fly this year,” said association President James May. “It is imperative that we act now to increase system capacity and efficiency.”

The nation’s airlines are expecting to transport 2.1 million passengers per day between Monday, May 22 and Wednesday, May 31. Systemwide, passenger volumes during this period are projected to rise 1.9 percent from a year ago, principally due to 9 percent growth in international air travel.

Earlier in the day, Priceline said it expected higher travel volume, too, based on 30,000 hotel bookings, and said Waikiki would be a top 20 travel destination even after giving 10 slots to different districts of four cities, New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Chicago.

Original Article

Alitalia’s acquisition of Volare airline suspended by state council

MILAN (AFX) – Alitalia SpA’s acquisition of Italy’s Volare low-cost airline has been suspended by the state council, the country’s top administrative court, the council said in an order.

The state council has supported an appeal by Italian airline Air One against a lower court ruling clearing the acquisition, it said.

Air One argued that Alitalia should not acquire Volare because of Alitalia’s weak financial position and for antitrust reasons.

Volare is being sold by the company’s administrator under a deal approved by the industry ministry.

In further details, the state council said there were ‘violations’ in the way that the auction for Volare was conducted.

Italy’s antitrust authority had been looking at the deal and had until May 28 to decide whether to clear the acquisition or whether to open a more detailed examination of the case.

The industry ministry previously said that if the antitrust authority objects to Alitalia acquiring Volare, then AirOne would be judged the winner, since it filed the next highest bid.

This evening, the antitrust authority declined to comment.

nigel.tutt@afxnews.com
Original Article

Amazing odyssey of airline passenger in French farce

An exhausted airline passenger was yesterday recovering from a nightmare journey from France that lasted more than 30 hours and took in two coaches, two aircraft and a taxi.

Andy Parson, 43, a teacher from Eccles, near Manchester, also passed through five airports by the time he completed a trip that should have taken only two hours.

A man’s flight from France graphic

His problems began the evening before he was due to catch an Aer Arann flight from Angers when the airline rang him to say that due to difficulties with air traffic control its whole service had been switched to Nantes.

Staff promised to get him to the new airport free of charge, and arranged a coach which took 90 minutes to arrive.

At Nantes, Mr Parson checked in, but due to a mistake by handling agents he was sent to the wrong gate. By the time the error was noticed the aircraft had taken off with a single passenger on board.

Mr Parson, who was in France for a school exchange visit, had been at Nantes for five hours before Aer Arann flew him to Cork, where he stayed overnight in a hotel.

The following morning he was taken on a two-hour, 75-mile taxi ride to Waterford. But there he learnt that his planned flight home had been cancelled due to bad weather.

He was next put on a coach to Dublin. This leg of the journey took three hours to complete, but at least he arrived in time to catch an Aer Lingus flight back to Manchester.

Mr Parson, who teaches French at St Mary’s RC High School in Astley, near Wigan, said: “People I met on the way kept asking me how I was managing to stay calm.

“It was just so unreal. I normally take children to Angers by coach, taking 16 hours. I feel I should be compensated, though if Aer Arann offers free flights I might ask for a pencil or key ring instead.”

A spokesman for Aer Arann said that although Mr Parson had booked a return flight to Angers, by the time he was due to fly home the operation had been switched to Nantes.

Handling agents in Nantes had been responsible for the “mis-communication” which caused him to miss his flight.

Thereafter the airline had done all in its power to get Mr Parson home quickly. He said Mr Parson would be offered a full refund, but declined to say whether he would also receive compensation.

Original Article