Virgin Atlantic celebrates 25 years in the air with low fares from Chicago!

Virgin Atlantic is celebrating their 25th anniversary with amazing fares from O’Hare to London.

How amazing? How does $221 (each way) sound? You have till midnight tonight to book for trips starting on June 15th extending into fall.

Discounted fares are being offered in economy and premium economy.

Check out their birthday deals page for the exact breakdown of dates and rules, but remember to book soon!

As part of planning your trip to the UK, be sure to visit the Virgin/Visit Britain deals page, where you can book yourself a discounted hotel or tour.

Virgin Atlantic’s 25 year anniversary sale fares starts right……NOW!

Midnight sure is a strange time to be posting deals, isn’t it? Well, there’s a reason. Virgin Atlantic is celebrating it’s 25th anniversary in a variety of ways over the course of the year, and one of them is in launching a crazy 24 hour fare sale from Newark to the United Kingdom. Starting RIGHT NOW.

According to our source inside of the company, you’ve got all day to book tickets as cheap as $186 one way from Newark. Once availability runs out, you’re out of luck. So for those of you on the west coast, start clicking. For those of you who just woke up on the east coast, you’d better hope that there’s something left.

The best part is that you can book tickets from July 1st, which means the fares are vaild for high summer season. So grab the kids, scrap the staycation and book tickets to London this summer. Combined with the falling Pound Sterling, you may not get a chance like this again for a while.

Book tickets at VirginAtlantic.com soon, the offer expires at midnight on June 10th.

Bad news for the world’s airlines – nobody is going to make any money this year

How bad is the current economic climate for airlines? Well, assuming your number one priority as an airline, is to make money, then it is pretty safe to say that things royally suck.

Virgin Atlantic chief executive Steve Ridgway says that a combination of low fares, high fuel prices and reduced passenger numbers will prevent any of the world’s major airlines from earning a single penny in 2009.

This is not the news that they’ll make a little less, or that only some airlines will suffer, apparently nobody is going to have a good year.

This bad news has already forced some airlines to ditch their first class service on some routes, and others to ground planes awaiting better times.

What this means to us travelers is probably not going to make the airlines any happier either – raising prices won’t help them, so they’ll most likely be forced to keep the low fares coming.

Some airlines (like Virgin Atlantic) are hurting, but were smart enough to see this coming, and were able to take some precautions. The airline slowed down orders for new planes, and took some profitable gambles on fuel prices. Their actions have paid off – sales at the Virgin group actually increased by 8.4%, none of which will mean much if there is no profit left. Still, it beats the $640 Million in losses British Airways suffered.

Another hilarious airline complaint letter. This time it’s the food

Back in June 2007, Justin wrote a post about a hand-written complaint letter to Continental Airlines. The letter included illustrations that were as hilarious as the text. There is a new airline complaint letter that is being touted as the funniest ever. This time the airline is Virgin Atlantic and the complaint is food–or what the airline tried to pass off as food on a flight from Mumbai to Heathrow.

The letter sent to airline owner Sir Richard Branson by a passenger is a tongue- in-cheek response to the passenger’s reactions to each dish on his tray–nothing he recognized. It all started when he couldn’t tell which item was the dessert and which was a main course. Each food complaint is accompanied by a photo.

“Look at this, Richard. Just look at it.” Is the description under the first photo of two custard like dishes. Utterly flummoxed by those two choices that looked like sponge shafts that moved every so often, the letter writer proceeded to the next item–also unrecognizable.

The third item, the one covered in foil that he opened with anticipation, similar to what one might feel opening a Christmas present, was worse. He likened it to finding his “hamster in the box and it’s not breathing.” That gem is what’s in the photo. Turns out the yellow stuff was gobs of mustard.

Attempting to watch the movie was as bad as trying to find something edible on his tray. The screen was grainy which made it difficult to see who was in the movie. The passenger thought, perhaps, Ray Liotta?

If you’ve ever had a flight that has left you exhausted, depressed, feeling like a sailboat that has lost its wind, you’ll certainly recognize the feelings expressed here. Yes, indeed. This is a funny, funny letter. Make sure you click through the photo gallery for the full effect.

As a note, the food, according to Sir Richard Branson who supposedly replied, would have made the Indian passengers happy. [Telegraph.co.uk]

Continental Airlines experiments with algae jet fuel mix

On Wednesday, Continental Airlines flew a Boeing 737 from Houston in a circle over the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing too special about that. Except that this flight was a test of a new 50/50 jet fuel/biofuel mixture, powering one of the engines.

The bio portion of the fuel was a mix of algae and jatropha oil, an alternative fuel that can be grown in poor soil, yet is able to produce more yields than soybean. The fuel was approved for aviation use last year, and meets or exceeds all requirements for a jet fuel.

The jet was not the first biofuel powered airplane. Early last year, Virgin Atlantic flew a 747 from London to Amsterdam powered partially by coconut oil.

Most experts agree that the aviation industry will have to invest heavily in finding alternative fuels, but given how much is at stake during these trials it is understandable that they take things kind of slow.

This trial was a huge success, and the test pilot called it “textbook”. Whether or not we’ll start flying in coconut and algae powered jets any time soon, will all depend on how quickly these new crops can be grown on a massive scale. The amount of biofuel required to become a really viable alternative is quite staggering.

(Via: BBC News)