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French air transport strikes

Editor — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:13:38 +0000

If you are flying to France this coming week be aware of a four day strike.

From Monday till Thursday (February 6-9), striking pilots, cabin crew and ground staff will be protesting about a bill the French government has introduced which would mean unions would have to give greater notice of strike action. It is just possible the strike may be extended.
If you are flying with Air France, then you can rebook your flights free of charge subject to certain restrictions. Click here for further details. They hope to be able to continue a majority of their flights but haven’t listed timetables for next week yet.
If you are flying on any other airline into or out of France, do check their websites because there may be some delays and possible cancellations due to either ground handlers or the fact that the flight crew could be members of one of the unions. easyJet don’t expect major disruptions, Ryanair, flybe and British Airways make no comment on their websites as yet.
Because the unions haven’t given the nature of the strike, disruption could be minimal or more damaging for passengers. Once again, we probably won’t find out the true extent of how we might be until Monday morning.

easyJet and credit card fees

adrian — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:26:47 +0000

Easyjet

Just before Christmas we carried the news that the government was going to ban excessive charges used by companies when you used a credit card. We know Ryanair’s reaction. Now we have easyJet’s answer as well.
As we suggested at the time, booking fees might disappear. That’s what’s happening at easyJet. The booking fee is replaced by an administration fee of £9. This will be applied to every booking procedure so at least it isn’t a charge per passenger as some other airlines charge. On top of this, if you use a credit card instead of a debit card, you will have an extra fee to pay.
So instead of a fee that included processing charges as well as a credit card charge we know have an increased price for administration (compared to the old booking fee) and everyone pays. And on top of that there is a credit card fee which is the amount that is probably charged to easyJet by the credit card processors.
The charges came up on the second page once you had fed in the details of where you wanted to fly, when and how many of you. Is this transparent enough? The airline says it is providing “a simple, transparent and consistent booking process” in the light of concerns from consumer bodies and regulators and that notice of the £9 charge will be included in all advertisements.
It looks as though, if this one airline is anything to go by, credit card charges will become closer to what the airline is charged but other or increased charges are going to start appearing. It doesn’t please me one bit to say I told you so.

The world according to low cost flights

adrian — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:40:42 +0000

Meeting in London this week were representatives from low cost airlines across the world. They converged for the 8th Annual World Low Cost Airlines Congress. The first thought that comes to mind is why is this only the eighth annual meeting? The impact of these airlines on our travelling and holiday habits has been substantial in the last twenty odd years. Ever since Southwest Airlines in the US virtually invented the concept and made it work successfully and commercially, (I remember Sir Freddie Laker’s Skytrain but you can’t say it was successfully financially) other airlines have copied and refined the idea. So much so that, the older airlines like BA, Aer Lingus, Air France, Lufthansa and the others have had to think what they offer passengers.
Gone are the days when everything was included in the price – except perhaps fuel surcharges. Now there are a host of costs to think about so that even the traditional airlines charge for credit card use and, some, for hold baggage.
But low cost airlines like Ryanair, easyJet, Air Berlin, Norwegian, Wizz, Germanwings have enabled fares to drop and, more importantly, allowed holidaymakers to travel to places they wouldn’t have considered. New destinations for short or weekend breaks cropped up like Prague, Vilnius, Tallinn, Riga and Gothenburg. All of a sudden the world had become smaller. All of a sudden traditional airlines lost money, (or even more money since many were crazily run) went bust or had to adapt. Aer Lingus has become a low cost airline some would say. Others would use a newish buzz word in the industry – hybrid. British Airways launched Go, didn’t know what to do with it and sold it off. Now Singapore Airlines has a successful low fares offshoot, Tiger Airways as does Qantas with Jet* and soon there will be ANA in Japan with Peach.
But with the growth of these low cost airlines – you can’t call them new anymore – has come customer ire as we try to understand the rules of flying as they exist today. And we have had to adapt to the new world as well, a new world where we pay for the very basic service and then pay on top for anything else we want. We may not like it but, by now we are just about used to not believing the headline price we see. Daft, publicity seeking comments from Michael O’Leary – the man who has built Ryanair into one of the largest and most successful airlines even through the economic downturn – have helped us travellers to view these airlines with some contempt. Which is unfortunate given what I wrote earlier about how the world has opened up due almost solely to them.
The next move has to be long haul. Air Asia X flies us to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia from Stansted. Carolyn McCall at easyJet says she has no pan to go into long-haul but O’Leary does harbour the idea of flying to New York albeit may not not be under the Ryanair banner. Jet* links Australia with South East Asia but that is as far as we have evolved. Will someone resurrect the ghost of Sir Freddie and his Skytrain and offer us cheap transatlantic and Caribbean flights?
Not soon if the people speaking and attending this congress are to be believed. The concentration seemd to be on playing to their strengths, keeping costs low and weathering the downturn in the economy.

Tony Fernandes, founder of Air Asia and QPR owner

Making Life Easy for Passengers

adrian — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:35:49 +0000

At the Low Cost Airline Congress being held in London, Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of easyJet said that the company was passionate about keeping it easy for passengers to book and travel with the airline. She didn’t want to take the airline anywhere near anything that made the booking process more complicated or make the flight overall more difficult for the passenger.
There might be a loyalty club in the future but only if there were no complications. More than once she said that complexity was the slippery slope. (shades of Sir Humphrey in “Yes Prime Minister” there.)
Coming from a newspaper group background only about a year ago she said that the things that mattered were the same in both industries, customer service. How easyJet manages its customers (ie passengers) she felt was key which is why there has been a change since the horrors of volcanic ash disruption and the harsh winters. Managing crises and problems before passengers arrived at any airport minimised problems so passengers would be texted in advance. One thing she said she had learnt was that disruption was a part of everyday life in the airline business. As it seems to be for passengers!
She was “incredibly proud” of easyJet being low cost and said that being low-cost had to be in the “bones of the company” to make the company work. What passengers liked about the airline was price, convenience and great value. What differentiates them from other low cost carriers (and Ryanair in particular) is that passengers also like the fact that they fly to primary cities (not forests as one person put it) as well as providing friendly service. In fact more than one airline boss wondered whether Ryanair was at all in interested in customer service.
easyJet carry 55 million passengers this year more than BA, Virgin Atlantic and BMI combined and it is the fifth largest airline in Europe. She was proud that 77% of departures and 83% of arrivals were on time in August 2011 (on time is considered to be within 15 minutes of the published time) and customer satisfaction levels have risen by eleven points during her watch. But more would be done to improve those satisfaction levels
A new flexi-fare has been brought in whereby the passenger gets a free bag allowance for the hold, no booking charges and a seat up the front of the plane. Isn’t that business class, the forthright CNN anchor and moderator, Richard Quest argued? And if an easyJet flight is late by more than fifteen minutes then McCall said that flexi-fare passengers would receive a free leisure flight to anywhere in the easyJet network.
No when will all passengers get that?
Never because it all comes down to getting what you pay for. Flexi-fare passengers will pay more, so will be promised more. Can McCall deliver when she flies to 40 of the major airports in Europe, not smaller ones like Ryanair? And where air traffic delays are not unusual.

Travelling to Estonia

Editor — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 07:07:58 +0000

Tallinn

No-frills airlines have opened up opportunities for us to visit countries we might not have otherwise thought about. Take Estonia for example. Before the no-frills airlines went there, not that many people travelled from Ireland or the UK to the country. Now they have just announced that there has been a 90% increase in visitors going there. Over 30,000 of us have already visited the country this year with many more to go.
Estonia is seen as an ideal short break destination which seems to be confirmed that those 30,000 people stayed just 35,000 nights. People are flying over on one day and coming back the next which means that the capital, Tallinn, is probably receiving most of the visitors.
Ryanair can probably claim to be the main reason why growth has been so rapid. It links Tallinn with Dublin, East Midlands, Edinburgh, and Luton and plans to add a Manchester route next year. easyJet operates from Liverpool and Stansted leaving Estonian Air, the flag carrier, to fly into Gatwick. Between them they have made Tallinn a stag destination as well. It’s certainly helped this year that Tallinn is one of this year’s European Capitals of Culture which is always enough to boost visitor numbers. (Later this year, Anthony will be writing about Estonia for us) Just one week ago, they celebrated 20 years of independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Years ago, airline people were careful about which cities they would fly to. It had to have a big enough population. No-frills airlines turned that all around by providing fares that were 1p plus taxes or not much more. So people took the opportunity to go to places like Estonia. Once they found them, if they liked it, they returned. That’s what has happened to Estonia. And why now airlines provide more routes and times to take us there.

Tenerife: Comparing Flight Costs

Editor — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 05:27:05 +0000

Tenerife

With so many add-ons to your holiday flights, we thought we would look at what is actually the total price that you might face rather than the price quoted on the headline ads. So we picked on Tenerife in the Canaries, a hugely popular destination for all of us. We decided to select the flights from Manchester because it enabled us to compare seven different airlines for a family of four.
The price ranged quite astonishingly with Iberia being double the price of the cheaper ones. They were also the only non-direct flight in that you had to change at Heathrow. Despite all the charges that are laden on you by the no-frills airlines, Ryanair, easyJet and Jet2 were all within £40 of each other. At £1,133, Ryanair was the cheapest, closely followed by Jet2 at £1,149.77 and easyJet at £1,176.24. Yet the basic fare at Jet2 was two and a quarter times higher than Ryanair. What this shows is that Ryanair charges much more for add-ons than Jet2 does.
Thomson and Thomas Cook both charged the lowest for hold baggage at just £25 and £24 per person respectively and easyjet charged £30. Travel insurance for the whole party varied by as much as £20 with Jet2 being the most expensive and easyJet being the cheapest. The conclusion we reached was that buying travel insurance elsewhere was usually a better bet than buying it via the airline. And if you travel more than twice a year, an annual policy is probably a better buy.
Total charges for Ryanair amounted to £386 or 34% of the bill. Is this wrong? Ryanair – and all airlines – would probably argue that by giving passengers the choice of what they want they give us the opportunity to fly cheaply. If we want the frills, we pay. Except that in some cases you have no choice. You can decide to take no baggage, you can decide not to designate a seat but you can’t avoid administrative fees or charges for paying by credit card..
The Office of Fair Trading has warned travel companies to change misleading credit and debit card practices. It can commence proceedings but it has limited power. It can impose an enforcement order against those that – in their opinion – continue to use misleading practices. They can also name and shame the main and persistent offenders.
They have announced a 90 day consultation period to study the situation. As Cavendish Elithorn of the OFT says, “You can’t buy online with cash and people are being frustrated about being asked to pay for nothing.” It estimates we pay £300 million just to pay for using cards. It would like debit cards to be free as Monarch has recently announced it will be on bookings with them.
But what can the OFT do against administration charges? These cover all sorts of things like volcanic ash disruption, (in the case of Ryanair) handling fees, fuel surcharges, wheelchair levies and, for all we know, the flowers in the chairman’s office! The answer is that they can still be charged but it looks as though we will have to be told about them up front and not at the end of the booking. We needn’t necessarily need to be told what’s included. But at least in this way, we can decide whether to continue or go elsewhere.
Both of the tour operators charged quite a bit more but if you compared their package holiday prices (which would include accommodation) with what deals the airlines were offering for similarly starred accommodation then they look pretty much the same. Tour operators would also have a coach taking you to your accommodation rather than you having to pay for a taxi to get you to your destination.
What this research shows is that checking for the best deals was time consuming. We think of ourselves as reasonably knowledgeable but it still took one of us the best part of four hours to get the raw facts together. We also checked the British Airways, flybe and bmi websites to make sure we hadn’t accidentally missed any flights they had. For the traveller who only flies occasionally – say once or twice a year – many airlines are making booking tedious, unnecessarily time-consuming and downright off-putting. No wonder some people give up or just opt for the first or the airline they “think” will be the cheapest. Don’t fall into that trap. It is necessary to look around.
Be prepared to take some time. Then ask yourself a series of questions. Can the four of you get away with 3 bags? Make sure you include this when you book. You’ll be charged extra at the airport Can you take sandwiches instead of buying snacks or a meal on board? Do you need to sit together? Planning will probably save you more money than deciding at the last minute. In that way you might be able to avoid some of the costs we suspect will always be hidden as administration fees regardless of whether they are shown to you on the first web page or ten pages in.

Easyjet

The Research Brief
The brief was to check the total prices for 4 people, two of whom were children (but were over 12) leaving on August 1st and returning on August 14th. If there was no flight on the 14th, we took the 13th or 15th but if there was a difference in price we took the cheaper of the two. Each person in the party would take one bag to be stored in the hold and all would require travel insurance for the trip. Where reserved seating was available, we booked it allowing the mythical family to stay together. The seven airlines were easyJet, Ryanair, jet2, Monarch, Iberia, Thomson and Thomas Cook.
We should also point out that the “bookings” were made two weeks ago so prices might have changed since then. We picked booking six weeks in advance because that is the time at which tour operators want the final part of their bills paid. We “paid” using a credit card rather than a debit card. We did not include any meal charges that were levied.

Where Forward for APD?

Editor — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 16:43:56 +0000

Last Friday saw the end of the consultation period for APD, Air Passenger Duty. Airlines, airports, industry boffins have all put in their two pennyworth so is there any consensus?
You might remember that prior to last year’s election the Conservatives were talking of making the tax based on a per plane basis rather than the current per person basis. For those who can remember back to the nineties, you might also remember that it was a carbon based tax.
These days no one really disguises the fact that this is just another tax. A new, EU carbon emissions tax is due to be introduced next year so perhaps it is no wonder that the government and nearly all politicians of whatever persuasion don’t call APD that for it seems we may have both a tax and the emissions tax.
British Airways, in its submission, called for the four APD bands to be reduced to two and distance bands and that it should be based on whether you fly economy or first and business class. They also ask for it to be phased out by 2013 when revenue from the carbon tax would start to fuel the tax coffers.
Virgin Atlantic highlighted the iniquity between flying long-haul and shorter distances. But then Virgin only flies long-haul. It also suggests the current proposals would deter people from long-haul trips. It also follows BA in suggesting that economy and premium economy passengers should be carged the same tax, as, incidentally, do most other submissions.
ABTA noted the problem that would exist in Northern Ireland. On a trip to the US for a family of four, Britons would pay £240 whilst a family flying from the Republic of Ireland would pay just €12. So why wouldn’t those in Northern Ireland not just fly from Dublin and save themselves hundreds of pounds? The travel industry in the province could be severely hit. Sammy Wilson, the Northern Irish finance minister also submitted a view that the special situation in Northern Ireland should be addressed in the final outcome. ABTA also says that scrapping the tax could boost earnings by £1 billion (but the tax this year will bring in twice that!) and create 25,000 jobs.
easyJet has already said that family holidays will be hit and that it could cause the loss of 77,000 jobs.
The Scottish Passenger Agents Association wants the tax lifted for domestic flights, and like others, wants 12 months’ notice of the changes when they are decided upon.
Finally the Association of ATOL Companies (those who are bonded) wants to link the distance bands as well so that one band is short and medium-haul and the other is long. They also pointed out that demand would be hit meaning fewer flights taken.
So now, we await the governments’ proposals

Airline Add-Ons

adrian — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:37:18 +0000

Sometimes you might be forgiven for thinking that the basic price of an airline ticket is peanuts. The add-ons are those little bits here and there that suddenly glare out at you on the final page and cause you to take a deep breath and say, “but the fare was only a tenner!” when I started. Now one of the biggest airline ticketing systems providers, Amadeus, has completed some research which shows that last year these add-ons were worth €15.11 billion.
That is an astonishing number so I’ll repeat it – €15.11 billion ($21.46 billion or about £13.25 billion.) More astonishing is that this comes from research on just 47 airlines, admittedly, the biggest, but how much money does the whole industry make from it? Three big US airlines, United, American and Delta each made over €1 billion from these add-ons which are called ancillary revenue. Ryanair made nearly €609 million and easyJet €540 million.
The amount of revenue that airlines make from these add-ons has just about doubled in two years. And what has happened is that price increases that would otherwise be stuck on a fare are hived off into an add-on. We’ve joked how Ryanair, in particular, might want to charge to use their toilets, breathe their air or sit on their seats but they are quite modest in comparison with some airlines. They only make 22% of all their revenue from add-ons. An airline called Allegiant in the US gets just over 29% of all of its revenue from add-ons. No doubt that annoys Ryanair’s their chief executive, David O’Leary, since they only came third! Jet2 was fourth earning 21% of all its revenue from add-ons and flybe, ninth, with 15.7%.
Previous research by the same team, Amadeus and IdeaWorks speculated that airlines could not generate more than 30% of their entire revenue from add-ons. Some are getting pretty close to that figure and all are gleefully jumping on the bandwagon. We passengers expect increases from time-to-time. We might moan bitterly but what we really object to is any sleight of hand in hiding them from us. If a fare is X we expect to pay X not twice X. From this report it sounds as though airlines may be getting cleverer and cleverer about hiding them. Or do I mean deceitful?

After Grimsvotn

Editor — Sat, 28 May 2011 07:41:17 +0000

Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull Volcano last year, Iceland (Image Courtesy NASA Earth Observatory)

After the Icelandic volcano, Grimsvotn, decided to make life difficult for travellers this week including scaring bank holidaymakers that they might be affected, life is back to normal. The media went to town on the first day with almost blanket coverage on the news channels. It seems there were only two stories across the two days. And Barack Obama came a poor second on them.
But have we learnt anything from it? Will disruption like 2010 occur or do we know more?
We know that the new requirements that say when planes can fly reduced the impact. We know that” those who advise” need to look at measuring the thickness and density of the ash as early as they can since the ash was thinner than anticipated and lower than the level at which most planes fly. We know that it is safer than previously thought for aircraft to fly below thick clouds of ash. These are the positives.
The negatives include knowing that if this happens again – as it inevitably will – there will be disruption but less. Just as in other eruptions in Indonesia and Japan this year, flights will be cancelled because fewer planes will be allowed to use the same airspace. We know the CAA needs to explain why its single plane wasn’t able to get into the sky and use monitoring equipment. And why we couldn’t have two planes or lease another so that there was a fallback. So far the Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond, doesn’t seem to have answered this.
We could do with an update from easyJet and Dr Fred Prata of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) on how the development of their measurement system that was announced a year ago. There wasn’t much news of it during this week just the statement in mid-April calling on airlines to work together and stating that they needed to test the system, AVOID, during ash. Did they? And what results were there?
We also know that the ridiculous EU edict that makes airlines responsible for passengers despite this being clearly defined as an Act of God, needs reform. Let airlines and airports be brought to book throughout their own inadequacies and negligence but it seems grossly unfair to blame them for anything they cannot control.
And there is one last positive. After the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull last year, visitors to Iceland to see that volcano, increased. They may do so again as the curious want to explore this sight that has caused so much trouble. So the Icelanders will be happy for the extra tourist money. I wonder whether they have cracked the formula to cause volcanoes to erupt just when a tourist boost is required?

image courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory

easyJet, the Caribbean and APD

adrian — Sun, 22 May 2011 16:38:15 +0000

Last week, Baroness Benjamin introduced a debate in the House of Lords about APD- Air Passenger Duty. Lady Benjamin, better known as Floella to most people, was concerned not so much by the tax itself but the inequity with which it is applied. There seemed complicit acceptance that it would remain despite the fact there is a chance we could be taxed twice as, next year, the EU carbon offsetting comes in as well.
The inequity which most Caribbean countries have highlighted to the British government is that the tax applies in bands. The nearest point of that country determines the band into which APD is charged. The complaint from the Caribbean is that you pay the same tax going to New York as you do to Hawaii in the USA. Countries in the Caribbean are smaller and therefore some fall into a higher band. They claim this is unfair and the government is not unsympathetic to this. My bet is that the bands will be redrawn and the Caribbean will have a fairer tax band.
The debate however stands a good chance about being highjacked by this unfairness rather than whether the tax is helpful at all to the UK economy. Last week, easyJet produced some research from Frontier Economics in response to the government’s consultation exercise on APD. It said raising the tax by £4 on flights could remove £2.6 billion from the treasury coffers by turning off visitors from coming here. Ian King, the Business Editor of the Times called the claim “risable” especially coming from a low cost airline where policy seems to be to use hidden charges wherever possible.
Frankly the government isn’t going to be concerned if it loses £2.6 billion in potentially fewer tourist numbers if the tax raises about the same. After all the tax will deter people from holidaying in the expensively taxed areas and may even persuade some to holiday at home and thus keep money in our economy rather than exporting it. So airlines and concerned bodies had better think this argument through a bit more thoroughly.