More Airline Charges

Wallow in nostalgia for a moment.
Do you remember when flying was fun and an adventure?
No, neither do I. It has always been a chore. Just as one thing improves flying, online check-in for example, something comes up to make it more difficult.
It used to be that you could take up to 2 cases per person plus carry on luggage. That used to be enough for most people who were put off by expensive charges for overweight luggage. Then came the no-frills airlines who charged for cases put into the hold. Airlines in the US followed by charging on domestic routes.
Then came charging on second bags checked in when you flew on some North American airlines across the Atlantic. Now, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have both announced plans to charge for second bags as from next month. And some of the prices aren’t cheap.
American Airlines will charge $50 per extra bag if you fly in economy class as does Continental Airlines. Business and first class passengers will face no prices. British Airways will charge £35. Virgin Atlantic were going to charge £90 for long haul routes but is backtracking. US Airways and Delta charge as do United.
We know airlines are losing money and are trying every opportunity to make some. Is this the way to go about doing it?
I for one, agree. If you can’t live out of one bag, maybe you are taking too much. Personally I don’t travel with hold baggage. If I can’t carry it on board, I’m not taking it. I realise that’s unfair on people taking surfboards or skiing equipment and it seems right they should pay.
So in the long run, this attempt to raise money may fail and people will just pack better.

An Update on Mexican Holidays

The outbreak of a flu virus in Mexico has prompted some of the strangest media coverage. On the one hand, there have been the stories of returning holidaymakers suffering from flu like symptoms and the spread of the virus to other countries and on the other, plaintive stories of people who have had their holiday plans dashed as tour operators cancel their package holidays.
It is too early to establish how severe this scare is but comments from Michael O’Leary of Ryanair claiming that it is only a tragedy for slum dwellers in Asia or Mexico and that a couple of strepsils for the rest of us will do doesn’t help.
To those going to Mexico in the next few days, the Foreign Office travel advice means that ABTA members will probably cancel the bookings. In this case, holidaymakers are entitled to alternative arrangements or a refund. For those of you seeking compensation, forget it. Just about every travel insurance policy would rate this as outside the control of the travel agent or tour operator. If you have booked flight and accommodation separately then you will need to check with both to see what their attitude is. For example, British Airways still is flying to Mexico
Thomsons, First Choice, Airtours, Virgin Holidays, Kuoni, Cosmos and Thomas Cook are amongst those tour operators who have all stopped holidays to Mexico for the next week at least.

British Airways and Concorde

What a difference a couple of days make.
Earlier this week I was congratulating BA on the calm, understated pleasant flight I had.
Yesterday The Times reported that BA was considering selling the Concorde it has at Heathrow to a group of investors in Dubai where it will be grouped with the QE2 and marketed as a joint tourist attraction..
BA seems to have a blind sport about Concorde. This was a plane that was one of the handsomest planes ever designed; this was a plane that, thirty years on, was enough to cause people still to look skywards and marvel at it and this was a plane that was full for just about every day trip that was chartered on it.
So why doesn’t BA use it as a tourist attraction in its own right? It backed the London Eye with its name yet with Concorde, a name with which it was intimately linked, it does nothing.
As The Times points out, Air France has one of its Concordes outside its HQ at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. We used to have a model as you entered Heathrow but that went a few years ago. Usually at the end of an article in “The Times you get a handful of comments. By 5.30 this morning there were 61 and most were critical of the attitude of BA.
Concorde is a plane that stirs people.
British Airways , as a brand, has been tarnished by the oddities that management over the years has done, the silliest being the painted tailfins that meant little to people and which Mrs Thatcher ridiculed by tying a handkerchief over. The Terminal 5 debacle was badly handled. So why add to things by not turning its last remaining Concorde into a tourist attraction in this country.
Or does it want a hat-trick of errors.

British Airways: Fit for Purpose

Last week I flew on BA for the first time in about six months. In that time BA has faced all the problems that airlines have had; increasing fuel prices and then hedging fuel at high prices or at high insurance rates, lower demand from its premium paying passengers and the difficulties of merging with Iberia (and before that, Qantas.)
The last time I think I wrote about BA was after the Heathrow terminal 5 opening disaster which, by anybodies view, was a public relations foul-up and brought considerably justified criticism to both BA and BAA.
I have been using Ryanair and easyJet quite a bit this year for the reason that we all do, cost.
So going back and flying BA reminded me of the differences.
And what differences!
No hard sell by the cabin crew; no trumpeting to say we had landed 30 seconds early; no knees bunched up against the seat in front; no walking across the tarmac in the rain or cold; no jostling for seats or being fleeced for carrying baggage.
In my forty minute flight to Manchester there was time for a hot breakfast which had the strange feat of tasting like food despite the fact that it had been heated up in an oven on the plane.
It was all so different and served the purpose; efficient without being hurried; polite without being persuasive and reliable with all the experience that the staff have accrued.
What a difference
Thanks

M.P.'s, Terminal 5 and "national embarrassment"

Cast you minds back. To 6 months ago. When Heathrow's Terminal 5 opened and there were all those problems. Seems a long time ago since then we have reported that. Like all new openings, there were teething problems and those may have been worse than elsewhere or may have been overblown by the media. Now it seems to be working pretty well and we don't here many complaints at all.
Within 10 days of the problem, it was pretty widely reported that the problems were due to BA/BAA issues and baggage software problems.
So all hail the Commons Select Committee on Transport who have issued their report on the problems six months after the rest of us knew. They talk about "serious failings,"and "national embarrassment." In fairness, the committee says that it waited until the problems were resolved before investigating. So it didn't really take them them six months to find out what the rest of us were pretty sure were the problems.
Why do "official" investigations take so long?
By the time this report came out BA and BAA would have fixed those problems otherwise there would be passengers screaming from the building. Journalists would have booked every room at local hotels and be standing at 5am to tell us grisly stories. So why tell us what we know? When it happens again at another opening, can whoever owns that have learnt from what went wrong at Terminal 5? Probably but not from the report, it will have come from all the other information that was around months ago.
I think its because politicians must be seen to be doing things. If they sit on their hands, us voters will think they are doing nothing even if reports like this take ages to produce. Investigation should be done quickly for it to be of much value. So if they get around to having a report on why fuel surcharges take so long to drop, we will probably be using an entirely different fuel by the time the report is published!