So British Airways announces yesterday that they're buying L'Avion which was the last of the all-business class airlines flying the trans-Atlantic route. L'Avion was the one French entry in the snooty class airlines. BA announced that they intend on merging operations with BA's new Open Skies subsidiary airline which means that there is still an all-business class airline flying across the pond.
I don't know but I suspect that Open Skies is a pretty astute move on BA's part. They stand back and let the various start-ups establish whether or not there is a market for all-business class flights and then they wait for them to go belly up when they fail to secure enough capitalization and are impacted by high fuel costs. Then they buy the one remaining airline eliminating the last competition, well other than the upper class products from the other legacy airlines. It'll be interesting to see how this all works out. I suspect that it'll be a good play. With weakening demand because of the economy and fuel prices, I suspect that there will be a lot less demand from the economy class travelers while the business class travelers will remain unaffected, at least for a while. Or I could just be whistling
Hopefully some day soon we'll get a chance to try Open Skies.
Ok, well not mania. Perhaps some rather mild excitement. Like when Starbucks rolls out yet another new coffee drink. Anyway, American is rolling out their new wireless broadband service for domestic flights. Well, only a few domestic flights. Actually, specifically only flights between JFK and LAX.
The service is free now but when it's rolled out to the rest of the Boeing 767-200 aircraft in the American fleet they'll start charging and it's not gonna be all that cheap. Around $13 for flights or more than 3 hours and $10 for shorter flights. I'm hard pressed to think any time when I've absolutely, positively had to go on-line while airborne rather than waiting till I got on the ground so I'm probably not going to spring for the service anytime soon. Of course I don't have any plans to travel between
What can I say? I found something for Mary that got her excited enough to make a guest post. And here it is.
When Mike e-mailed me a link to MC Elemental's amazing video, "Cup of Brown Joy", he knew I would like it, but I don't think he expected me to go completely ga-ga. Well, I did. I must have played it at least ten times and I can't get it out of my head.
If you are a tea-drinking Anglophile or you have always wondered what steampunk music would sound like, I pretty much guarantee you'll adore it. If you like the Adventurer's Club at Disney World, this smooth musical brew is practically guaranteed to put a big grin on your face.
You can hear more of Elemental's music at http://www.myspace.com/mcelemental and learn more about him at http://www.elementalmc.co.uk
On our last excursion to the exotic, mysterious environs of
When we arrived, the ride was still in a soft opening. In other words, there was no assurance that it would be actually be operational, since the engineers were still working out the manifold bugs that come with any new piece of technology. When we got there the ride was running, so after a short wait we got a chance to try it out. As it turned out our ride did suffer a glitch and we got stuck for a short while in the motion simulator until the mechanics could lower us sufficiently to allow us to exit the car.
The Simpsons Ride, though similar to other motion simulator rides, definitely has a different feel to me. For one thing it really does convey the feeling that you're inserted into a cartoon. For another - it's the Simpsons, man! What more could you want? There's beer and doughnuts - virtual ones, true, but still! The ride itself replaces the Back to the Future motion simulator ride, which is one I always kind of liked, but The Simpsons Ride is so much better that I can pretty much live with the substitution.
So the ride was pretty awesome, being stranded on it notwithstanding. We hit a few other attractions, including The Mummy, which was quite cool, but we were pressed for time since we were going to check out the Universal hotels, which was Mary's primary reason for the trip.
So the third of the business class only airlines has cratered, or flamed out, or gone down, or experienced a sudden loss of cabin pressure, or whatever airline related simile you want to use. Silverjet we hardly knew you. Seriously, I always did want to do a European trip on one of these airlines (which included Eos and MaxJet) but now I've missed the boat, that ship has sailed....I think I'm going to stop right there.
When all three airlines launched in close proximity to each other we felt that there would eventually be a shake out but all three failing wasn't something even the most pessimistic of us foresaw. But then again we also didn't foresee oil rising up above $130 a barrel or we'd have been putting a lot more of our money on oil futures. It probably didn't help that the three airlines were all servicing the same market -
Ah, well, I guess we'll have to scrape together our gold chains, sell them, and fly on Virgin Atlantic in the future. We're not altogether broken up by this turn of events as one might expect. Well, except for the bit where we have to get rid of the gold chains. I keep telling the wife that the disco era will rise again someday and we'll be sad we got rid of the chains and the platform shoes and the polyester shirts.
Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal last week about the rise of travel delay insurance. Basically, you buy insurance that will pay for hotel rooms, rescheduling flights., meals, etc. if your flight becomes delayed or cancelled and you end up spending the night in some godforsaken place like Dallas.
American Express offers this service for $9.95 a trip when you buy the airline tickets using your Amex cards. We talked it over and Mary was of the opinion that since we have hardly ever get delayed overnight (though two or three hour delays are pretty common) it's probably not worth it for us. And we're rarely on a schedule that would leave us with no recourse - we can usually delay a day or two, though in that case we'd still be out of pocket. We often schedule our trips so we get to wherever we're going a day early, especially if there's something critical we need to be there for like a sibling's wedding or a nephew's arraignment. And finally we attempt, to the largest extent possible, to avoid scheduling flights that transit through a hub like
After some more thought it occurred to us (well me, Mary's still not in bed with my thesis), that many of the changes airlines are introducing recently are to charge separately for things that used to come included in the price of the ticket. Remember the old days when people in coach got a hot meal? Or if you're flight was delayed or cancelled the airline would get you on another flight as soon as possible, booking you on another carrier if nothing else was available? It's hard to believe, but once upon a time, in the dim, misty ages before airline deregulation, this was a common event. If your flight was delayed, or cancelled, the airline would rebook you quickly on another one of their flights or if that wasn't possible they would book you on another (gasp!) airline. If you look at it logically and I kind of have to as I am an engineer and such, what you're paying for, the ability to get accommodated in one form or another if a delay occurs, is just bringing the cost up a bit closer to what it was a long time ago. Airplane tickets today are a fraction of what they used to cost. People lose sight of this, they lament the long gone days of the romance of flying. But we used to pay a lot more money back then. So paying for delay insurance is just restoring the balance a little, perhaps. Maybe, it's a bit hard to find the information on what travel used to cost. I remember it as being pretty expensive and it was somewhat unusual for many people to fly. Now, everyone does.
Recommendation wise on the delay insurance? I'd say if you're one of those people that doesn't handle uncertainty well and likes the warm protective blanket that comes with paying other people to take care of you, then you might find the insurance worthwhile. If you like to save a few bucks and live free and adventurously, hang the insurance!
Oh, this is certainly looking to be one humdinger of a summer, as grandpappy used to say, if grandpappy had lived on a farm in
Anyway, digressions aside and all, from the looks of it it's shaping up to be another summer horribilis for those who have a desire or desperate need to fly somewhere. American Airlines has announced that on top of the $25 charge for a second bag they're adding a $15 charge for the first checked bag. And they're cutting domestic flight capacity by 11 percent.
This means that the conditions in the main cabin on many American flights will resemble something from one of those movies where everyone's trying to get out of the capital city of some
Well, with oil surging to over $125 a barrel something has to give. It's inevitable that the prices the airlines have to charge are going to increase, probably substantially. That's why Mrs. Foolish Questions and I are going to spend the summer hunkering down up here in the mountains and restrict our travel to road trips for the most part.
Sorry for the long hiatus. I could come up with some cleverly thought out explanation for my lack of posting, but if it didn't entail procrastination and distraction by other, probably less important issues, then I'd just be lying.
So back to the Grindstone. Thy name is Foolish Questions. Lots of travel related stuff percolating around the Intratubes lately and we've actually done some travel recently which I will generate some articles and random musings about shortly.
In the meantime, one trip we did finish as opposed to the Round the World trip, was a jaunt to Walt Disney World to check out some stuff for Mousesavers.com. I've commented on a several of the restaurants we visited and the links can be found at here.
Silverjet, an all-Business-Class airline serving the
It's also known for superior food. This month's
I had to look up colcannon and found that it's an Irish dish consisting of mashed potatoes with kale or cabbage. The British have a similar dish called bubble and squeak. Gods knows why the Irish insist on calling theirs colcannon - wouldn't you rather eat something called bubble and squeak? Along with a side order of spotted dick. I'm still not sure what the latter dish is and I really have done my best to avoid finding out. I can spend hours pondering what's in spotted dick and those lazy afternoons would be lost forever if I ever discover the truth.
Anyway, you have until April 18 to take advantage of Silverjet's special early summer $919 (one way, excluding taxes) flights to
Minutes after I finished posting the last note on airline bankruptcies, along comes Frontier Air with their bankruptcy. I really hate it when everyone jumps on the bandwagon.
One difference and this is probably major for those holding Frontier Air reservations, is that they did not discontinue operations. They just filed for Chapter 11 protection while they inevitably reorganize and secure new lines of credit and the executives hoover up their bonuses before the coffers run dry.
And in undoubtedly related news Northwest and Delta have agreed to a merger. I'm not sure where on the list of largest American airlines this will place them but it probably will be slightly ahead of Frontier.
