Leaky mushrooms cause Ryanair flight diversion

by Grant Martin on

With the new onslaught of baggage check fees upon us, many people are looking to creative ways to package special items into their carry on. My friend Bruce tried to bring back a cooler full of lobster on one transcon trip a few years back. That ended up tipping over and leaking water all over the guy in front of him.

Something similar happened on Irish carrier Ryanair earlier this month. A passenger trying to transport frozen mushrooms stowed a package in the overhead compartment, but briefly after takeoff the package melted and sauce dripped all over an adjacent passenger.

In this case, however, this passenger had an allergy to the sauce and started to have an adverse reaction. Complaining of problems in his mucous membranes, the passenger became ill and the crew decided to divert into Frankfurt to offload the passenger and send him to the hospital.

Take heed, transporters of food, a little bit of vacuum sealing always helps to keep your food fresh, protected and in its place.

SilkAir Winning Asia’s Low-Cost Carrier Wars

by Josh Lew on

Despite the rise of regional airlines aimed at budget-minded travelers, SilkAir, one of Southeast Asia’s original low-cost carriers, remains at the top of the game. Even with competition coming from the likes of Bangkok Airways and AirAsia and with high fuel prices, SilkAir managed to post a profit for the last quarter.

Perhaps SilkAir’s lineage has something to do with its success. It is wholly owned by Singapore Airlines, which is consistently rated as one of the world’s best carriers. Aside from the in-flight services and amenities that come from being associated with a high quality brand, SilkAir often carriers Singapore Airlines customers on shorter, regional flights.

The main competition comes from AirAsia. It flies many of the same routes (Singapore to Phuket, for example). However, unlike SilkAir, it has no sugar daddy to feed it passengers and give it a reputation for quality. SilkAir also code-shares with Malaysia Airlines and Garuda and flies to cities in insular Southeast Asia as well as vacation hot-spots.But, the best reason to fly SilkAir: the in-flight meal of Hainanese chicken rice is nearly as good as you’d get in a Singapore hawker center.

Southwest Joins Flight-Cutting Club

by Josh Lew on

Even though they seemed to be bucking the trend by adding flights earlier this summer, Southwest is finally joining other domestic airlines in the flight cutting club. This winter, the nation’s biggest budget carrier will cut nearly 200 flights in order to combat the effect that high fuel prices have on its bottom line.

According to a Southwest spokesperson, the cuts are not permanent. Routes like Nashville to Oakland and Tampa to Philly will be halted during the slower winter months (beginning in January), but will return later in the year.

Southwest is not as severely affected as its competition by high fuel prices because it purchased option which allow it to buy fuel at cheaper prices. As a result, their cuts are a lot less severe than those of other major carriers. While 200 flights seems substantial, it is only a 6% drop in the overall number of flights. In comparison, American Airlines and United Airlines are promising cuts of 12% and 16% respectively. So, even as they trim their service, Southwest can still say that they are performing better than others in the industry.

Virgin America teams up with Entourage for inaugural and promotion

by Grant Martin on

Well, Virgin American certainly has their demographic targeted. The hip startup airline just announced that they’re teaming up with HBO’s Entourage to christen one of their their Airbus aircraft “Entourage Air” and kick off service between New York‘s JFK and Las Vegas.

Yes, this is the same group that also hosted Victoria’s Secret models on one of their transcontinental routes.

Next Thursday the airline plans to host an Entourage party at a private JFK hangar with members of the Entourage crew (no specifics on whether this is going to be some B character or some of the stars), Richard Branson and other celebs for a pre launch party with Dom Perignon Champagne, hors d’oeuvres and other themed goodies.

In flight, passengers will be treated to a special pre screening of the hit HBO show and the airline will kick off special HBO features for all passengers flying on VA for the duration of the month. Later, HBO and VA plan on collaborating in other projects on the airline’s advanced inflight entertainment system.

Naturally, the party finishes off at the Playboy Club in the Palms Casino.

Truly, a magnificent introduction to a route. But will it pay off? Virgin America bills itself as the hip, edgy airline that more often than not is slightly more expensive than the competition. Can their image and inflight amenities sway you over from a legacy carrier?

FAA systems outage causing nationwide delays this afternoon

by Scott Carmichael on

If you are heading to the airport this afternoon, then you may be in for a nasty surprise. The FAA’s “NADIN” system based out of Atlanta, is experiencing an outage. This system (National Aerospace Data Interchange Network) is the big computer responsible for processing flight plans from every flight in US aerospace. Delays are increasing all across the FAA map.

At the moment, Chicago Midway is seeing delays up to 90 minutes, O’Hare is almost at 75 minutes, and most other East Coast airports are all at 60 minutes or more.

As the delays increase, the systems outage will have a severe knock on effect for the entire country, and things are bound to get worse.

This is not the first time the FAA has had an outage in its NADIN system, last year the system grounded flights across the country for close to 6 hours, and the FAA has not been able to trace the cause of the problem. The NADIN computers were designed back in the early 80’s, and are slated for replacement later this year. Of course, none of that will be of any help if you are sitting in a departure lounge reading this.

As with all delays, I suggest heading to the airport on time as well as contacting your airline. Chances are that your plane might still leave the gate on time, but you may end up being held in a holding pattern on the tarmac for several hours while controllers manually process flights. Be sure to pack something to read!