Troubled waters ahead for Maxjet

by Grant Martin on

Many of you have heard about Maxjet, the international business-class-only low cost carrier flying among New York, London, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. It’s an interesting idea — offer fewer seats in a business class environment and charge only slightly more than a traditional economy seat — and I’d like to try it some time.

And most people truly are mildly interested by the notion — especially when they see the nifty cabin tour — it’s just that few people are willing to try it. Combined with the discomfort of trying a new product, many business travelers are pulled away by frequent flyer programs and the inaccessibility to London proper (Maxjet flies into Stansted). Leisure travelers, on the other hand, either don’t know about Maxjet (because their fares aren’t loaded into canonical search engines like Orbitz and Expedia) or are too cheap to pay for business class seats.

Perhaps for these reasons combined with the market and oil squeeze, Maxjet is starting to feel the heat. In October they suddenly suspended flights into Washington and as of last week they suspended trading of their stock on the London Stock Exchange.

While their corporate sources claim business as usual and their schedule remains open, one can only speculate that the airline is having issues. Keep your glock unclipped.

Via The New York Post

Overseas (bargain) shopping trips

by Jerry Guo on

Here’s a story from this week’s New York Times on the rising trend of Europeans flying to New York to bargain shop. What stands out here is not that these are posh socialites getting their fix on 5th Ave. We’re talking about average Joes (more like Janes, I suppose) who fly to the states specifically to take advantage of the depreciating dollar and holiday deals.

Several airlines are apparently offering promotions to encourage this kind of things. For instance, on Silverjet, a roundtrip, business-class ticket was marked at $2,000. Not a bad deal, but sounds like you’ll have to do a heck of a lot of shopping to recoup your startup costs.

Wild travel statistics through Facebook

by Jerry Guo on
Last week I talked about the “Where I’ve Been” application on Facebook, and how you can use it to see where your friends have been, but curiously also get some great airline deals. What I didn’t mention was that you can find some very interesting travel statistics on here.

Namely, it ranks the most and least popular places to visit, live and want to visit. What’s astounding is this could possibly be the largest travel survey ever done (not to mention a great look into the travel behavior of 20-somethings). The data are from more than 4 million Facebook users.

Here’s a preview: Most popular places to visit: Florida, New York, California; places to live: England, California, Ontario (what?); places want to visit: Australia, Italy, Brazil.

Least popular places to visit: Tonga (a whopping four people), Newfoundland, Zanzibar; places to live (Northern Territory, South Australia, Mauritania; places want to visit: Russian soil (haha), Pemba (never heard of it), and Medeira Islands.

The best Facebook travel applications


Spirit Airlines’ MILF sale kicks off

by Grant Martin on

It’s great to see that the domestic low cost carriers have finally started stooping down to the international standard. While Spirit Airlines has oft been fond of strange fare sale names and promos, I think this one takes the cake: the Many Islands Low Fares or MILF sale.

My, that’s a strategically coincidental acronym, you say. I personally don’t see any corollaries beyond the innocent M-I-L-F, but in case you’re interested in any disambiguations of the term, I’d check out urbandictionary.

Sprit sales are kind of difficult to tolerate sometimes. On one hand, they have a wealth of dirt cheap (9$ – 10$) one way fares, but they make it near impossible to find a round trip ticket under those conditions. Usually you end up making up any savings from one direction with extra expense in the other direction. But if you’re rife with free time to sift through the fares and travel on odd days of the week, give it a try.

What other sexy things are airlines doing to generate interest? For starters, RyanAir’s got a semi-nude calendar of their flight attendants, and Virgin America brought scores of hot runway models on one of their flights. What’s next?

Virgin America hosts in-flight Victoria’s Secret models

by Grant Martin on

I know I’ve been writing a lot of posts about Virgin America (VX) lately, but what can I say? They keep launching random sales and PR stunts. You’ve gotta give it to them; the legacy carriers in the US use about jack for advertising.

This time VX sponsored a Victoria’s Secret in-flight PJ party / fashion show on a flight between New York and Los Angeles. On November 28th, regularly scheduled passengers were met at the gate with a kickoff gala and supermodels Selita Ebanks and Miranda Kerr. Over the course of the runway fashion show style flight, some members were given “supermodel” makeovers while the other unfortunate passengers were only treated to hot supermodels strutting down the aisle.

Although Air New Zealand has tried this before, this is the first time that such hijinks have been pulled off domestically. And I have to say, it’s been generating a lot of positive buzz from the airline community. Hopefully, Virgin America will let Gadling know before they do this again, we can pass the news on and you can strategically book your ticket.

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Also: Ryanair Flight Attendants like you’ve never seen them before
Hey guys, ever have fantasies involving naughty stewardesses? Here’s something to add to your Christmas wish list: The flight attendants of infamous low-cost European airline Ryanair have shed their usual blue uniforms in favour of something skimpier

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