British Airways plane grounded after tarantula sighting

by Scott Carmichael on

A London bound plane was grounded in Edinburgh after a passenger spotted a tarantula walking through the cabin.

The plane was filled with 100 passengers, and the sighting forced BA staff to evacuate the plane. An exterminator was flown in from London Gatwick, but the spider was nowhere to be found.

Eventually, the plane was flown back to London without any passengers. According to a British Airways spokesperson, if the spider is still on the plane, they’d need to pull the whole thing apart in order to find it. Surprisingly, this would be the second time in a week that a British plane was involved in a lost item that required things to be torn apart.

Personally, I hate spiders, and I’d gladly leave the plane if someone thought they spotted a tarantula. Tarantula bites won’t kill you, but they will cause several days of pain, something I’m no big fan of either.

Tarantulas are found all over the world, but British Airways staff are baffled how the spider made its way onto a domestic UK plane. Sadly, since passengers regularly try and smuggle all kinds of items on their flight, it could have been something as “innocent” as someone trying to bring their pet on a trip.

Hundreds of flights cancelled as Iberia workers go on strike

by Sean McLachlan on

Thousands of passengers were left stranded today as workers at Iberia Airlines walked off the job for the first day of a two-day strike.

Iberia was forced to cancel more than 400 of its 2,000 flights for this Monday and Tuesday as cabin crews protested the fact that they haven’t received a pay increase in four years. This is a tough situation for Spanish workers, who live in a country with one of Europe’s highest inflation rates, between 3.6 and 4 percent annually in the past few years. And that’s just the official rate. Living in Madrid I can say that here at least it seems to be much higher.

Spain’s national airline has been hit hard by the recession and this new blow will only worsen its situation. It couldn’t be helping Iberia’s chances of clinching a proposed merger with British Airways either.

Information on the affected flights is available here.

British Airways computer glitch posts super low cost flights to India

by Katie Hammel on

Late Friday night, an alert went out on Twitter. Fares to Mumbai, India, from locations all over the US were being offered at rock bottom prices on British Airways. Flights from Chicago to Mumbai were just $550 per person.

I quickly logged on to Orbitz, selected my dates, and clicked purchase. I received an email from Orbitz confirming my purchase and then got to work planning the trip. My husband was out with friends and had left his cell phone at home, so I was hoping he’d come home just tipsy enough to not mind that I’d just bought $1100 worth of plane tickets without discussing it with him first. Besides, he is accustomed to me buying plane tickets on a whim, just because they are on sale.

Luckily, he was just as excited as I was….until Saturday morning, when I received an email from Orbitz saying that due to “limited quantities”, our order could not be fulfilled. As it turns out, it’s because the fare never should have existed. Someone at BA obviously messed up (how’d you like to be that person come Monday morning?) and entered the wrong number. The fare should have been more like $1550 per person. The fat finger fare was corrected, but not before several people, myself included, had bought tickets at the faulty price.

Word on the web is that tickets bought before the error was discovered will be honored, if they were purchased on British Airways. So far it seems that those of us who used Orbitz will be out of luck. Christopher Elliott posted the story on his blog, along with a response from the company. They say British Airways didn’t honor the purchases made with Orbitz ,so people who tried to book that way will not receive tickets.

This isn’t the first time a technical error has crushed some budget traveler’s dreams. In February, Northwest refused to honor $0 fares that were “purchased” online in error. So next time you see a fare that seems to good to be true, watch out. It might not be.

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British Airways offers free companion fare

by Katie Hammel on

Fly on British Airways between now and January 29, 2010 and you could earn a free companion fare for your next flight.

To get the free ticket, you need to sign up for the Executive Club (which is free) and take a round-trip flight to any one of the 300 destinations to which the airline flies. Then, book another ticket January 4 to July 30, 2010 for travel January 11 to December 15, 2010. You’ll pay full price for your ticket but just taxes and fees for a friend.

Don’t count on sitting next to your companion though, at least, not unless you’re willing to pay up. British Airways now charges passengers $30 to $90 to choose their seats 24 hours before departure. After that, they get free pick of what’s left, which means they may not be able to sit with their traveling companions.

The airline has also reduced baggage allowances and instituted more fees. The charge for the first additional bag is $50 to European and UK destinations and $60 for other international locations. At those prices, the companion fare isn’t exactly “free”.

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British Airways innovates in the “new fees” department with a seat selection fee

by Scott Carmichael on

Dear readers – it is official; British Airways has lost its frikkin mind.

Starting October 7th, the UK airline will be charging pretty hefty fees for anyone who wants to make a seat selection at the time of booking (something offered for free by most civilized airlines in the world).

The fees start at $15 for a domestic UK seat selection, and go to $30 for World Traveler and World Traveler Plus, and an insulting $90 for their business class product. Those still stupid enough to pay for a First Class seat still get to pick their favorite for free.

If you don’t want to play along, then you can select your seat 24 hours in advance for free, which will be after everyone else has picked the best seats, most likely forcing you and your family to sit in the middle seat spread throughout the plane.

I’m going to say it right away – this new move is disgusting, and shows how pathetic the airlines have become. Can you imagine paying $3400 for a business class ticket, then being asked to fork over another $90 just so you can get a decent seat? It gets even better – British Airways clearly understands that the exit row seats are very popular, so they keep those blocked until 10 days before the flight, and want $75 per person, per segment.

What this means to your wallet is this; lets assume that you and your wife are flying from New York to Amsterdam, and would like to sit together with your three teenagers. Your first segment will cost $150, then $75 on the London to Amsterdam flight. Then of course that same price for the flights back. Would you pay $450 for decent seats, or would you just pick a better airline?

The only silver lining is that elite passengers can still select their favorite seat for free, and that passengers traveling with kids (2-11) or kids traveling on their own can select a seat three days before departure without paying the fee. Which in my opinion is still just as insulting, because by then, the open seat selection will be miserable. A chart showing the changes can be found here.

It is obvious that we are in a new era of air travel, and that the airlines have lost all respect for their passengers. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, and I suspect we’ll start seeing more of these stupid fees pop up every week. There is bound to be an airline HQ somewhere in the world where someone reads about these new British Airways seat fees and says “hey, we can do that too”.

(Via Consumerist.com)