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- Virgin America Heading to the Deadpool Next?
- World’s 10 Most Dangerous Airports
- Virgin American Promotion: 30% Of All Flights
- Cell Phones on a Plane!
- Disturbed Passenger Panic Attack Caught On Tape
- Airline Stocks: Lufthansa to Buy Stake In JetBlue
- Cell Phone Boarding Passes On The Way
- Virgin America Announces Seattle Service
- Boeing: No Further 787 Production Delay
- Engadget Beta tests BetaBlue from JetBlue
Virgin America Heading to the Deadpool Next?
Published by AirlineFanatic | Filed under airline business
Last week was not exactly good news for the commercial airline industry, with three well known carriers heading into abrupt bankruptcy and ceasing operations. Three bankruptcies does a trend make, so I started wondering if/who would be next heading to airline heaven (or hell depending on your experience).
Unfortunately for Richard Branson, my thinking lead me straight to chic new startup Virgin America. If this were the beginning of the American version of Virgin Atlantic, in which Sir Richard has controlling interest, I would be pretty certain he would not be so quick to give up on a new airline. He went through some tough times getting Virgin Atlantic to where it is today, and probably wouldn’t be afraid to burn some cash doing the same for Virgin America.
The problem in this situation however is that Virgin America is controlled by American companies and uses mostly American funds. With the high publicity and rapid succession of last week’s bankruptcies, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those investors were now considering getting their money out while VA still has value.
Of course their decision hinges on whether or not VA’s situation is as bad as the airlines that have gone before them. Since VA is a private company, we really have no knowledge of its exact financials, but do know that in the first quarter of operation they lost $35 million, and even management doesn’t expect to make a profit any time soon. Investors had to have been prepared for all this when the signed up for the deal, but given how high fuel prices have gotten, how low VA’s load factor is on most routes, and recent current events, they could be forgiven for having cold feet.
Overall I think Virgin America has a great product that takes a long term approach to winning customers and, given the time, will prove profitable. The only question is whether squeamish US investors will give it the opportunity to prove it’s business plan over the long run, or if short term market conditions and recent trends will take down VA prematurely.
Read on for a closer examination of Virgin America’s current status…
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World’s 10 Most Dangerous Airports
Published by AirlineFanatic | Filed under airports
The folks over at ProTraveller have a thrill seeking post up about the Top 10 Most Dangerous Aircraft Landings. There are some unsurprising picks in there (Hong Kong’s Tai Kak for example), but there were plenty that surprised me as well. The videos are really fun to watch if you are like me and enjoy seeing every minute of an approach. In case you just want to know what the airports are, here are the Top 10:
- Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong
- Funchal Airport, Madeira
- Gustaf III Airport, St. Barts
- Courchevel Airport, France
- Princess Julianna International Airport, St. Maarten
- Wellington International Airport, New Zealand
- Paro Airport, Bhutan
- Narsarsuaq Airport, Greenland
- Saba Island Airport, Netherlands Antilles
- Lugano Airport, Switzerland
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Virgin American Promotion: 30% Of All Flights
Published by AirlineFanatic | Filed under discount airlines
Now of course luck and the fates would have it that the day after I book my first trip on Virgin America they come out with a great promo code that could have saved me lots of money. Sigh. Well luckily you are now better informed than I was. Any eleVAte member can plug in the promo code dfLOoxRC03kgw to get 30% off any main cabin fair if you book by March 9th. You don’t have to complete travel until May 21st, however, so this ain’t a bad deal to take advantage of.
Between now and then VA is going to start new service to Seattle (SEA) from both San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX), so if you haven’t been there this might be a great excuse to go.
Happy travels.
UPDATE: Unfortunately it seems this coupon code was unique to my eleVAte account! Well, I wasn’t going to use it anyway so its no great loss to me, but you might be out of luck if you try this same code. For those of you with an eleVAte account though, check your inbox and spam blockers for the promotional email. And for those of you who aren’t eleVAte members, joining up (its free) may grant you access to this code. Sorry folks!
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Cell Phones on a Plane!
Published by AirlineFanatic | Filed under airline technology
The march towards in-flight connectivity continues on at an ever faster pace. Last week JetBlue started testing their BetaBlue service, which for the time being gives its passengers access to Yahoo! Mail or corporate email via a wifi enabled Blackberry. Air France meanwhile is moving forward with their own set of tests, involving the use of cell phones (mobile phones for you European folk). Hold your horses, before you stop flying them completely, you should know this is only a test…for now.
Air France has outfitted one of their A318s with equipment that basically lets cell phones do anything in the air they can do on the ground. For the first three months of operation only data transmission will be enabled - ie text messages and Internet over the regular cell phone network. After that however voice calls will be allowed while passengers reactions are recorded via surveys at the end of every flight. Based on the results of that survey, Air France will then decide if this service should be limited to data use but no voice calls, and whether or not they will expand the service to their entire fleet.
European low cost carrier Ryanair also plans to allow mobile phone use in-flight. They are forgoing the whole “lets see how customers like it” phase and equipping all 150 aircraft in the fleet with tiny mobile phone stations. They claim customers wont mind the distractions on the shorter, busy routes Ryanair flies. I’m sure the fact that Ryanair gets a cut of the sky high (oh that was a good pun) international roaming rates customers will be charged when they use the service has nothing to do with it either.
Other airlines are getting in on the testing action as well. Qantas has been quietly testing their own in-flight data service for cellphones on a 767; with over 19,000 passengers having used the service to date. They have no plans to add voice service, but might consider going fleet wide with data service. Emirates is also equipping its entire fleet with the technology, forgoing the testing period. I think this is probably because of their desperation to have the latest and great of everything in the airline industry and less because it may actually be useful to passengers.
All the services being tested by airlines will work in the middle of the ocean, an upgrade over previous versions, because they connect via satellite, rather than via ground towers. Luckily for those of us flying in the United States, we won’t have to worry about the person next to us yelling for five hours across the country any time soon. The FTC decided earlier this year there would be no use of cellphones in flight, and we all know how fast out wonderful government can change their mind once they’ve come up with a position.
[via The Economist (subscription required)]
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Disturbed Passenger Panic Attack Caught On Tape
Published by AirlineFanatic | Filed under Uncategorized
A visibly very disturbed passenger on a flight from London to Toronto (on board Air Canada) was caught in this YouTube post from a December 6th flight. He is being restrained by two men on either side of him, but I can’t tell if they are inflight crew or just passenger unfortunate enough to be sitting next to him. They do have him handcuffed though. I wonder how long passengers had to endure this stressful stuff before he was finally subdued?
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Airline Stocks: Lufthansa to Buy Stake In JetBlue
Published by AirlineFanatic | Filed under airline stocks
The NYTimes blog DealBook is reporting that Lufthansa is in talks to buy a 20% stake in JetBlue Airways. I for one never expected JetBlue to be open to a sale, even for a portion of the company, to any airline, but it looks as if I’ve been proven wrong. An official announcement on the deal could be made as soon as the market closes on Thursday in New York.
JetBlue’s stock, which has been in the dumps as of late, was up as much as 35% on the news of the potential deal to almost $8.50. Why make this bid now? DealBook indicated it was because of the relative strength of the Euro against the Dollar, making the deal cheaper than ever before for Lufthansa. All of this still remains a rumor until an official announcement, but it seems quite possibly real to me.
Because Lufthansa is only taking a 20% stake in the company, they stay way below the foreign-ownership requirements for US airlines, something Virgin America has to battle when they started operations earlier this year. According to people familiar with the matter the investment would only be a passive one, but would not rule out some kind of partnership (read:code sharing agreement) in the future.
Via [DealBook]
UPDATE: The AP has confirmed this story. Lufthansa actually purchased a 19% stake in JetBlue for $300 million. This is based on a share price of $7.27 per share, or a 16% premium of JetBlue’s closing price Wednesday. Even more important, the two airlines said they would seek “an operation cooperation.” What this means was not elaborated upon, but more details will be forthcoming.
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Cell Phone Boarding Passes On The Way
Published by AirlineFanatic | Filed under Uncategorized
The US is definitely behind the curve in this area, as several airline in Canada already let passengers check in using their cellphone. And lets not even talk about how far ahead Asia is in the cell phone department. Still, progress marches on, and the video below demonstrates testing currently going on that would allow passengers to use their cellphone to board a plane. The technology seems very convenient, but I’m wondering how long it would be before someone enterprising hacker figures out the algorithm and can generate boarding passes at will.