Such companies as United Airlines, Air New Zealand, SAS as well as British Airways were considered to be the first airlines that offered Economy and Business classes that were introduced in the past 10 years. Later Air France and Condor joined the companies.

According to United Airlines the number of bookings for Economy Class increased by 25 percent during January and August this year if compare them with the same period in 2008.

So what do customers have to expect from new classes and how much do they have to pay for tickets?

The distance between seats is the first thing that passengers are able to notice. There will be more space, i.e. between 15.6 and 22.7 centimeters, but in fact it depends on the type of plane. As for British Airways, the company has 97 centimeters between seats it means that it is 18 centimeters more in comparison with Economy Class.

With new classes passengers get more services than in Economy but in fact it depends on airlines. For example, United and Air France offer the same drinks to passengers as they serve travelers from Economy Class.

Ticket cost varies; the additional charge of United is between 80 and 120 euros per flight as well as per person. In case you want to fly from New York to London through British Airways, you will have to spend about 648 euros that is considered to be more in comparison with Economy Class.

But it is still unknown whether other airline company will join the club.

“There are no indications to suggest other airlines are planning to follow suit,” says Martin Gaebges, general secretary of the Board of Airline Representatives in Germany.

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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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US Airways will be implementing a new surcharge that 5% the cost of the fare on all US flights on or after May 8. United, Delta and the latter’s subsidiary also introduced bigger fees, raising them on busy day in March or April from $20 to $30.

These surcharges will affect passengers that travel not only during winter, but spring as well. In March and April travelers will be charged for flying around Easter. A $50 surcharge will apply to those flying on Superbowl day – Monday, February 8.

“The number of seats they’ve cut is allowing them to do crazy things,’’ said Tom Parsons, chief executive of the discount travel site Bestfares.com. “They added bag fees and nobody blinked. They’ve got $150 [itinerary] change fees, and now the surcharges.’’

Surcharges on flights during Holidays were applied as early as September and have been extended for the 41 days between Thanksgiving and Memorial Day. United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski declared these surcharges come to match fare increase imposed by Southwest.

Do you think paying more for flying during Holidays is fair?

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On Tuesday Continental officially shifted from SkyTeam to the Star Alliance that includes United, US Airways, Air Canada (TSX:AC.B) and Lufthansa.  When Continental joins the Star Alliance, Air Canada that is considered to be the largest carrier of Canada will get new revenue from Continental and at the same time its customers will get access to new destinations. Also customers of Air Canada and Continental may collect and buy back Aeroplan (TSX:AER) miles.

Connecting to Continental, Air Canada will be able to obtain revenue from customers as a number of flights from America to Canada will increase, also it stands to receive a separate joint venture that will start working on profitable Atlantic routes in 2010.

According to Jeff Smisek, president of Continental, the integration of Delta and Northwest referred the airline company to junior-partner status for that reason it was decided to come out from SkyTeam.

Officials of Continental said that the airline was going to add flights to Frankfurt and Rio de Janeiro in order to connect to Star Alliance partners and they also underlined that new flight would add new jobs.

In July, Continental received immunity from antitrust laws that enables the airline to work with its new Star partners on setting prices and schedules for many international routes. But at the same time it will not be permitted for Continental and United to work on pricing of flights within the U.S..

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The transportation agency stated that US Airways, based in Tempe, Ariz., is subject to a fine in the size of $5.4 million dollars, referring to the fact that 1,647 flights for the time period from October 2008 to January 2009 were conducted just by eight planes which is by itself considered to be a flagrant violation either of safety measures or of internal maintenance regulations.

One more $3.8 million fine is supposed to be levied in relation to United Airlines for serving 200 flights with a Boeing 737 for the reason of applying shop towels in stead of protection covers on oil collecting tanks.

According to the regulations of The Federal Aviation Administration, there is a 30 day time period for the companies to provide the facts of alleviating circumstances before final imposing of penalties in the form of enormous fines. This is a rather common event to reduce the amount of fines in the course of negotiations.

These huge fines are directly-proportional to a number of flights, carried out with a brazen violation of safety directives and maintenance rules.

As reported by The FAA, US Airways did not perform duties on examinations of Boeing 757’s engine functioning which was engaged in 505 flights. Airbus A320 also achieved a number of 855 flights without compliance with directives of the maintenance program.

But, Southwest Airlines was recognized as a ruthless abuser of requirements and inspections because its jets had operated nearly 60,000 flights in 2006 and 2007 without obligatory check-ups for structural wholeness and 1,451 flights after receiving notification on missed examinations.

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