How is Heathrow’s new terminal like your girlfriend? It can’t deal with all your baggage.

by Aaron Hotfelder on

What does $9 billion dollars get you these days? For British Airways shareholders, it’s a shiny, state-of-the-art new terminal at London’s Heathrow Airport. (Note: Price does not include your checked luggage.)

Terminal 5, British Airways’ new $9 billion dollar megastructure at Heathrow Airport, opened earlier today to passengers, but the airline is experiencing some “technical glitches” in the process of returning passengers’ checked luggage to them. Some had to wait for as much as four hours for their bags, and passengers are being asked not to bring checked luggage on their flights– or to call the airline and rebook.

BA has already cancelled 34 flights because of “technical problems” with the new terminal.

Gareth Kirkwood, BA’s delightfully British-named director of operations, said: “We sincerely apologise to those customers who have suffered disrupted journeys or baggage delays.” Wow, he even spoke using British spelling. That’s impressive.

[Hat tip to Moody75 for the link.]

Will a pretty face help save your life? Delta hopes so

by Catherine Bodry on

What makes you pay attention to the safety instructions at the beginning of a flight? For me, it’s having a flight attendant right in front of me — I feel rude if I put my head down and dig in to the Sky Mall while someone is giving a presentation. But if it’s a video presentation, I’m all my over in-flight shopping.

Evidently, I’m not alone in my blatant disregard for the safety demonstration: airlines have begun creating what they hope are attention-grabbing videos in the hopes that passengers might start paying attention. Delta Airlines is the most recent airline to do so, joining Virgin Airlines in addition to others. While Virgin took the animated approach, Delta’s strategy is a bit different: put a pretty woman on screen.

Already, the flight attendant Katherine Lee, or “Deltalina” (nicknamed so by viewers because of her similarity to Angelina Jolie), is making headlines with her finger-wagging and pretty smile. Will she make you a safer flier? Watch the video and let us know.


Wild women on planes:

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More flights canceled as the MD-80 goes in for inspection

by Grant Martin on

Yesterday, the FAA raised some concerns about the maintenance and operations of the Mcdonell-Douglas 80 aircraft and American Airlines, their largest US customer was forced to cancel nearly 320 (up from the original 200 they had reported) flights for immediate inspections. Their thought was that they would be finished with analysis by the end of the day and back to normal operations soon, but it now appears that the issue is more widespread than originally thought.

American is still hunting down MD-80’s today, with another 132 flights canceled, while Delta Airlines has suddenly acknowledged the problem and is starting inspections of their own aviary; they expect to cancel just over three hundred flights as well.

One is forced to wonder if the root cause of the problem is now in the inspection procedures of the airlines or in the aircraft itself. Are wiring bundles aging prematurely and failing on all MD-80 aircraft? It will be interesting to see if other airlines start to follow suit and take their own MD-80’s out of commission. Midwest and several other airlines globally run the same aircraft — will they make the same cancellations?

In the mean time, keep an eye on your short-haul flights over the next couple of days to make sure your schedule hasn’t been messed with. This problem could definitely ripple outward for a few days.

Use a cell phone to secure your Southwest Airlines boarding pass

by Justin Glow on

Over a year ago, I wrote about how you can print your Southwest Airlines boarding pass without a printer, but since then I got a Blackberry and have adapted the same concept to a cell phone.

Two weekends ago, I was in Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day, and instead of leaving the party mid-day Saturday to find a computer to check in and get my “A” boarding pass for our Sunday flight back home, I used my cell phone’s Internet browser to login to Southwest Airline’s website. Once I entered in my information, it took me to the screen where I could select the passengers to check in and hit “print boarding pass.”

Obviously I didn’t have a printer attached to my cell phone, but with Southwest’s system it doesn’t matter. I was able to see on-screen that I had secured an “A” boarding pass, so I closed out of it and continued on my marry way. Come Sunday, hungover and ready for the flight back home, we arrived at Midway and found a SWA check-in kiosk. There I swiped my credit card, and instead of selecting “print boarding pass,” I selected “re-print boarding pass.”

Southwest does this in case you lose your boarding pass or run out of printer ink mid-print, but it’s perfect for checking in using your cell phone or printing your boarding pass if you don’t have a printer at home, but still want that coveted “A” position. Give it a try.

Ryanair freezes executive salaries in response to high oil prices

by Anna Brones on

The popular European budget airline is preparing for tough times. High oil prices and a weak UK economy are threatening Ryanair’s overall income; Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary says that in the next year, net-profit could in fact fall by 50%.

But O’Leary doesn’t want to see high oil prices translated into increases of airline fares. “I think our fares will be flat and that will be a good result I think,” O’Leary said. To keep those fares flat, he plans on freezing the salaries of 36 senior managers of Ryanair for a period of a year. This, along with an increase in baggage and credit card fees, is expected to save the airline 400 million euros over the next 12 months.

All of this is mostly because up until now, Ryanair has enjoyed hedging contracts of oil at around $68 a barrel. Those contracts run out April 1, 2008 meaning that Ryanair’s fuel costs will only go up; every $1 increase in oil above $65 accounts for 14 million euros in annual costs.

Yet even in a dreary looking economy, Ryanair is still managing to add a few more flights. In May 2008, passengers will be able to enjoy the first domestic routes in France (Paris to Marseille) and Germany (Frankfurt to Berlin).