Government’s this rule will be in effect from the next month of April. This rule may create a fine worth of $4 million for an average Boeing 737. If a plane is on hold on the tarmac for more than 3 hours, then the fine amount per passengers will be $27,500. For international flight operators, the amount of fine will be much higher. For an example, Boeing 777 can run into a fine of $8.9 million just due to a single delayed flight.

American Airlines also informed that due to the ongoing construction at JFK, the company will be forced to cancel flights rather than being charged with these huge fines. It will mainly create problems for passengers in flights which available in limited number daily. The Federal Aviation Administration stated that JFK will suffer an average delay of 50 minutes during peak times and 29 minutes during normal hours during this runway construction. And this will last till 30^th June.

American Airlines also supported JetBlue and Delta only with one condition that they will request to all other carriers operating at JFK. As said by the company spokesperson, if the rule does not apply to all the carriers equally then it is definitely going to create confusion among consumers. On the other hand, Kate Hanni of flyersrights.org, a passenger rights advocate, has asked DOT to deny the request.

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Starting May 1st, American Airlines will charge you 8$ for a blanket and pillow in coach on domestic flights and some international ones that are longer than 2 hours. International flights where this fee will be applied are those going in and out of Hawaii, the Caribbean, Central America, Canada and Mexico.

American evaluates all aspects of the business to ensure that economic decisions are prudent and strategic for the long-term success of the company,” said Andrea Huguely, spokesman for the company.

A fleece blanket and an inflatable pillow will be sold in a pouch and will come with a coupon for $10 discount for a $30 purchase at Bed, Bath and Beyond. The pouch will remain free in premium-class.

Ever since 2008, when economic recession reared its ugly head, airlines have started charging passengers for things that were until then free. JetBlue and US Airways imposed a 7$ fee for a blanket-and-pillow set.

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Apparently, this was the case for an American Airlines flight. The image below depicts a violation of airline safety procedures – the passenger simply cannot fit into the seat, cannot use his seatbealt and blocks the aisle.

Here’s what American Airlines replied:

“At this time American Airlines is unable to confirm whether or not the image referred to was taken by a member of flight crew but will investigate the situation internally to determine if any of the airline’s strict policies were not correctly applied.

“American Airlines’ primary concern is for the safety and comfort of its passengers and crews and consequently passengers are advised to book two seats if they are concerned that they will require them. If a flight is not full, however, passengers’ needs would be accommodated without charge wherever possible.”

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Working for an airline company, not only offers you the chance to travel if you are keen on traveling, but it may also provide a decent living in time. As built into each contract, flight attendants receive $1,000 annual pay raises, as they grow older and gather more experience. This means that one’s salary may jump from the starting wage of $17,000 a year to over $30,000 per year in 12 years.

A junior flight attendant will usually start with a wage of $19 per hour, or in some case less, around $14 a hour. These figures may vary a little depending on every airline, but generally flight attendants are given a minimum of 75 to 80 hours per month. Like in most cases, the bigger the airline the higher the pay. So you can expect to start out a few dollars higher for getting hired at a major airline like American, United and Delta, etc. over some regional airlines such as Comair, ASA, American Eagle, and etc. Still, there is always a way to increase your income, if you choose night shifts, to work during some weekends, holidays or even fly international flights.

Very important, flight attendants are never paid this hourly rate for every hour that they work! The time spent commuting to the airport, sleeping in hotel rooms, standing around the airport between flights, and assisting passengers during boarding and deplaning is basically unpaid labor. Most airlines only pay from the time an aircraft pushes back from the gate to the time it arrives at the gate of its destination. This is commonly referred to as flight time, block time, or hard time. The major exception to this is meal expenses. Most airlines pay a nominal hourly rate to cover meal expenses, while hotel lodging is paid for by the airline.

Other bonuses include: flight discounts of up to 90% for you as an employee and even for your family. You should also know that different companies offer buddy passes, especially designed to cut flying cost for your friends.

So, if you ever wondered of becoming a flight attendant, you should know that the major requirements for becoming a flight attendant are standard: not too tall or short, friendly and only a high school diploma. Once you are selected, the airline hiring you will provide with specific training between 3 to 6 weeks. Also, job performance has virtually no impact on your pay. As a flight attendant you are expected to work at a high level and will never receive a promotion of any kind, even for exemplary service.

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One good example of an airline company using twitter is American Airlines. Its young, dynamic and rather open online approach is amazing, coming from a company who was just in the newspapers in an affray about firing its employee for his transparency. As you might recall we are talking about the situation created by Dusting Curtis, when he decided to complain to the company about their poor website. Mr. X, former employee wrote back to him and then allegedly got fired for this. So what is the airline afraid of so much to forget that people need to see the kitchen, before they start eating your food? After all, I’m guessing not all questions on twitter are about the company’s flights and schedules.

Next, I could go on with some recent examples of obvious bad customer service, in order to refresh your memory. The most popular one is for sure United Airlines versus singer/songwriter Dave Carroll. The latter tried to convince the company to pay him $1200 for damages to his guitar. Even though the owner was quick to complain and had witness supporting him, justice seemed not to be on his side. After eight months the artist desperately recorded a song called “United Breaks Guitars” and posted the video on YouTube.

What happened next? The story was soon called one of “the best online reputation attack” since the original video is still gathering views worldwide and, most importantly, made the company realize that it was mistaking and should have solved the problem before.

Also do you have anything bad to say about Ryanair? Of course they are low cost, but the real question is how low are they? Going way back, Ryanair shocked its customers at the beginning of 2009 when not only officials admitted that one employee was harassing and verbally abusing a person on his blog, but continued to add the list of insults. It may be just me, but I find it hard to imagine how I can trust in someone that has the impression of being professional and still testifies this:

Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again….Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel.

It’s quite clear that Ryanair doesn’t have much time for social media and that it doesn’t really understand how free the internet really works. Maybe next time, when purchasing a ticket, we should try and see beyond the nice and smiling faces that welcome us aboard.

If you are a victim of some sort of airline abuse or you think an airline company did something terrible wrong to you, feel free to comment here and tell us all about.

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This is the case of Dustin Curtis, an User Experience (UX) designer who happens to be traveling very often. He recently tried to book a flight at AA.com, the American Airlines website. Unfortunately he seemed very bothered by the company’s approach and layout and vowed never to request for their services ever again. Before doing so he wrote a blog post, that began with Dear American Airlines proposing a different and a more customer-friendly design for the company’s website.

To his surprise, Curtis soon received a reply from an UX architect, representing aa.com, further addressed as Mr. X. The AA employee tried to explain why in large organizations things move rather slowly and that there are regulations to obey by.

The group running AA.com consists of at least 200 people spread out amongst many different groups, including, for example, QA, product planning, business analysis, code development, site operations, project planning, and user experience. We have a lot of people touching the site, and a lot more with their own vested interests in how the site presents its content and functionality. Fortunately, much of the public-facing functionality is funneled through UX, so any new features you see on the site should have been vetted through and designed by us before going public.

However, there are large exceptions. For example, our Interactive Marketing group designs and implements fare sales and specials (and doesn’t go through us to do it), and the Publishing group pushes content without much interaction with us… Oh, and don’t forget the AAdvantage team (which for some reason, runs its own little corner of the site) or the international sites (which have a lot of autonomy in how their domains are run)… Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that AA.com is a huge corporate undertaking with a lot of tentacles that reach into a lot of interests. It’s not small, by any means.

One rule that Mr. X seemed to have forgotten is never to reveal job related information outside the workspace, thus violating a non-disclosure agreement. Some might say that X actually defended the work process of corporations as opposed to smaller shops, but by presenting how the process works and detailing how the update of the aa.com website cannot be done over night, he exposed a lot of confidential data to any third party like Dustin Curtis and after publishing, to the general public.

As he ends his letter in fear he might get fired, we wonder if this wasn’t his actual wish. Last week, Curtis announced that the employee was promptly fired after AA searched its Exchange database for the text of the anonymized email he had published and identified the employee who wrote it.

For it may be clear to some why Mr.X got fired, we should also highlight that more diplomatic measures are preferred, especially in the case of big companies like American Airlines. By shutting out from the public like this, there is always a risk of damaging the company’s connection with the people they serve. And if a company’s employees are firewalled off from the public, the company will eventually lose sight of what the public wants.

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Low wages for airline pilots aren’t a surprise to anyone, since the situation existed for years and it only got worse as the economical recession hit the airline industry. Salaries have been reduced so much that they have been the cause of strikes all over the world. But how much do pilots really earn these days? FltOps were the ones to first tackle the issue releasing a salary survey that took into account major US airlines.

Airline pilots earn considerably more if they have seniority or if we take into account overrides, overtime, special credits or per diem. Airlines taken into account are: AirTran, Alaska, American, Continental, Delta, FedEx, JetBlue, Southwest, United, UPS and US Airways.

The highest paid airline pilots work at Southwest Airlines. The company has a first-year minimum of $49,572 and hires more experienced pilots on average. US Airways pays first year pilots the lowest wage out of all surveyed airlines (a minimum $21,600 a year). The wage assumes 72 hours per month, a large part of this being flight preparations or overnights.

The lowest salary for an experienced captain is $123,480 at JetBlue Airways while the highest if found again at Southwest, at $181,270 a year. Airlines that offer higher wages in the US are UPS and FedEx, with a minimum of over $200,000 a year.

Delta Airlines, American, United and Continental pays aircraft captains a minimum between $156,000 and $167,000 per year.

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Since the summer of 2008, 2,500 jobs have gone and more are likely to follow, according to Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive. Apart from this, management is also offering their employees the chance to work part-time or to take unpaid leaves.

“BA should see some benefit from lower fuel costs in 2010 but unfortunately the global recession has hit BA hard,” said Tony Shephard, an analyst at Charles Stanley. He added that a “17.7pc decline in premium traffic in April does not bode well for the start of the new financial year.”

As we’re writing this piece of news, Unite, a representation for 14,000 of BA’s cabin crew, are planning a strike in order to prevent the company from changing their salaries and working conditions. The airline announced at the beginning of last month that they’re planning some changes for their staff, including 1,000 voluntary redundancies.

British Airways has also been negotiating a partnership with American Airlines and the Spanish carrier Iberia, which could mean a stronger grasp for the tree on routes across the Atlantic.

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According to Giovanni Bisignani, IATA chief executive, $80bn will vanish from the industry’s top line and it will take years in order to retrieve 15 per cent of lost revenue.

Airline companies try to merge but as a matter of fact they are confronted with normative barriers. For that reason the have decided to coordinate schedules and ticket prices on busy routes that can help them strengthen their businesses

One should say that during 30 years the airline industry has been unsteady. This fact can be explained by the following reason – the price of an airline seat has dropped estimably. In order airline companies do not file for bankruptcy, the new alliances were built up.

Two alliances such as Star and SkyTeam received antitrust immunity by the US Department of Transportation. At the end of this week the third alliance known as OneWorld will be given a preliminary ruling on its application for immunity.

It became known that the Star Alliance has 41 per cent of the market when at the same time SkyTeam has 29 per cent and OneWorld has 20 per cent.

Willie Walsh, BA chief executive, was sure that the alliance OneWorld would receive the permission despite the fact that it had 2 attempts to forge an alliance that was in 1996 and 2001 but were discarded as according to regulators the companies had to give up a big numbers of slots in order the carries could prosper.

The only way for BA, AA and Iberia to prove to Brussels that they have the financial benefits is that the planned alliance OneWorld will not depend on the expense of consumers.

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The first sign is the decrease of domestic seats on sale for October: less than 21%, according to OAG, one of the most important aviation-data firms. And since this is not enough, companies intend to reduce much more flights this winter. Big airline carriers are canceling their less lucrative routes and pushing the ticket prices higher, hoping that they will crowd their planes, although the economy is still weak.

Another trend noticed in the airline industry is a slowly but surely shift to the low-cost practices. Major airlines, operating international flights used to carry more than 83% of the domestic passengers in 2001. Nowadays, the same airlines take 61% of the travelers, while the regional and the low-cost companies grew to 39%. These usually operate smaller planes and this means not just traffic jams in the main airports, but also uncomfortable seats, poor customer services, smaller bathrooms and bumpy flights.

The cuts are obvious: the nation’s biggest airlines – Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines reported a 26% shrunk of their domestic capacity, since 2000. By contrary, the most important budget airline, Southwest Airlines announced increases of 70% for the passenger traffic, since the beginning of the decade.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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