Virgin America moves in on Boston

by Grant Martin on

Remember yesterday when we told you that Virgin America was throwing in the towel at making Chicago their next destination? Not a couple hours after our post went live the ladies at over at VX issued the formal press release: BOSTON will be the next city that the airline opens service to.

Commencing on February 12th of next year, flights will serve Los Angeles three times daily, San Francisco twice and cities in the Midwest zero times.

Boston‘s Logan airport, which appears to be more interested in generating competition than Chicago’s O’hare, is a main hub for American Airlines, US Airways, Jetblue and Delta, so you can imagine that routes on those carrier to the west coast will now super competitive and yes, cheaper. And that’s great news for east and west coasters alike.

We hope to see you in the Midwest soon, Virgin America.

Virgin America bids farewell to Chicago

by Grant Martin on

The nation’s primo hipster carrier that has been rapidly spreading through the country just pulled back on its bid to make Chicago its next destination city.

The outlooked looked great for a first flight in Q1 ’09 not too long ago, but everything hinged on the airline securing landing slots at the airport, most of which are rabidly guarded by American and United, both of which control 85% of the gates in O’Hare. Their biggest chance on getting in was via Delta Airlines, who with their merger with Northwest may now need fewer slots, but as of late last week, those plans hadn’t come through.

Why isn’t Midway an option? Well, according to Abby Lunardini, one of their spokeswomen, Chicago’s smaller airport doesn’t have the urban and international connection appeals that O’Hare has. So they’re focusing their efforts on lower hanging fruit, Atlanta, Miami and Boston, one of which I’m told will be chosen “very soon.”

Not all hope is lost, however, and work with Chicago hasn’t ceased, but as David Cush, the airline’s CEO puts it, it wont be the first new city that the airline flies to. In the meantime, those of us in the Midwest are going to have to sack up and make do with our dumpy, legacy carriers. It’s alright. We really weren’t that cool anyway.

Tell us: Do you have bizarre air rage stories?

by Abha Malpani on

Unfortunately, these are true headlines, mostly resulting from incidences of air rage.

Apparently, altitudes and changes in air pressure can temporarily cause psychological changes in a person. If the passenger is drinking alcohol, the effects can be enhanced for the same reason. As a result, there have been other terrible and embarrassing air rage cases like:

You can read lots of such bizarre stories narrated here and on Air Rage.org.

A recent study by the Civil Aviation Authority and the Department for Transport (UK) was published in the Daily Mail, and says that cases of air rage have increased four-fold over the past four years. Some startling facts from the report:

  • From 2007-2008, there were 2,702 cases of air rage.
  • 63% of incidents were caused by drunk passengers smoking.
  • 78% of the cases involved male passengers.
  • Incidents have increased by 20% in the past 12 months.
  • The number of reported incidents of violence towards cabin crew nearly doubled from 2006/07 to 2007/08.

But the best (and most surprising) news? During 2007-08, no case was reported in which disruptive behavior contributed to an aviation accident.

Any sort of aggression and violence on air crafts is unacceptable, but how can they be controlled? Limit the service of alcohol? Re-introduce a smoker area on board? Hand out nicotine patches to smokers?

Luckily, other than the odd grumpy complaining passenger, I have never experienced a case of air rage. Have you? What happened? How was it handled? Tell us in the comments section!


These women all went crazy on planes. Click the pictures to find out what they did.


The Dutch by numbers

by Jamie Rhein on

This month’s issue of Holland Herald, KLM’s in-flight magazine is devoted to a numbers theme. For example, California’s Highway 1 is touted as being one of the world’s most scenic drives in an article devoted to pointing out the highway’s finer points.

Another article was perfect for in-flight reading. By browsing two pages filled with random statistics, I found out several interesting facts about the Dutch that might be useful to toss out at parties if there is absolutely nothing left to talk about.

Here are five of them:

  • In 2008, Sophie has been the most popular name for a girl, and Daan the most popular for a boy.
  • On average, women don’t marry in the Netherlands until age 32.7, and men don’t marry until 35.8.
  • When the Dutch want to go on a vacation, France is their number one destination.
  • The average Dutch person eats 16.7 kilos of cheese per year.
  • On average, a person in the Netherlands drinks 77.4 liters of beer per year. This is a considerable drop from the 300 liters the same person would have downed during the Middle Ages.

Here’s one more fact about the Dutch I found out. Each year, they produce 3 million pairs of clogs.

The art of reticketing flights

by Grant Martin on

One of the world’s great mysteries is when exactly the best time is to buy airplane tickets. You want to wait just long enough so that the price hits its lowest point — but you can’t wait too long, or else it’ll skyrocket again. Is it four weeks out? Four months?

You can never know. Even with the help of tools like Farecast, Kayak and Farecompare, there is always the risk that two days after you purchase your family trip to Europe, the price of your itinerary is going to plummet.

What most people don’t know, however, is that many tickets can be repriced. In the same way that you can take a television back to Best Buy if you find out it went on sale the day after and get the difference, you can also exchange tickets weeks after you book them.

Airlines, of course, are a little more criminal stingy about the process. Almost all of them charge a rebooking fee that can vary between $50 – $150 dollars. But on a high priced ticket, that can be a fraction of a price fluctuation.

The key is to keep an eye on your ticket price, even after you purchase it. If you see your exact same itinerary drop significantly in cost, call the airline up and ask to refare or rebook the ticket. They’ll dig around to see if it’s worth your time after levying the rebook fee and if you’re lucky, they’ll issue a voucher for the difference in price.

Just last week, for example, I noticed that a huge fare sale to Salt Lake City affected the ticket price for a future itinerary that I have into Reno. Calling up Delta Airlines, I got them to issue me a $54 e-cert for use in future travel. Sure, it’s not cash in hand, but I can definitely use the voucher.

What this stragety is particularly good for is repricing business travel. Many travel agents will blindly book a ticket on a preferred airline at high cost. When you, the passenger, check back in and reprice the ticket later, however, the reward is yours.