The events of American Airlines flight 1348 late December (when in bad weather passengers were kept in the aircraft on the ground for 9 hours) has led to a renewed call for improved passenger rights. A glance at the blog of Coalition for Stranded Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights suggests they are asking for more rights than those provided to passengers of EU airlines under their regulations.
I earlier posted about the doubling of UK's Air Passenger Duty (APD) tax effective 1 February 2007, and the retrospectivity of it. The airlines have now had time to consider how they will deal with the practical problem of payment of the higher taxes for those who had already ticketed when the increase was announced for flights on or after 1 February 2007.
The BBC reports on the decisions of some UK airlines:
With such diverging approaches, one thing we can count on is confusion and chaos at the UK airports come 1 February. It is not yet too late for the UK government to stop the nonsense by removing the retrospectivity of the tax increase.
Apologies for the lack of posts. I have been busier than I'd anticipated, and also had more time away from the internet (mostly travel-related).
But I'm back - happy New Year everyone.
For those readers who have been using the T and T availability tool (ie expert mode) will have noticed they have joined the increasing number of websites in dumbing down and removing functionality. Help is at hand. Flyer Talker SchmutzigMSP has provided a replacement at http://availability.publicbackup.com. Thanks SchmutzigMSP, boo to T and T.
Just a quick report on the new first and business class which I have now experienced. As I posted when the new Singapore Airlines product was launched, the key feature is width. The seats are very wide, as are the screens.
The first seat is like a supersized skysuite (747 first class seat on Singapore Airlines). I found the seat very comfortable if not a bit too slippery - I ended up using 3 pillows to wedge myself into the seat, somewhat unsuccessfully. The huge screen is a bit disappointing as the movies and programs are not in wide-screen format thus look a bit odd.
The business seat (no longer called Raffles) is also comfortable. I had good fortune to get a bulkhead seat - it looked like the others could be claustraphobic despite the width thanks the the design.
The IFE had a few bugs, as any new system does. It was a little slow to respond, but not as slow as Air New Zealand's avod for example. I thought the 2x and 3x fast forward was a nice improvement, but the Cathay Pacific and Air New Zealand 2x, 4x and 8x work better. The menu was simple and intuitive. I missed the time remaining that the older Wisemen systems showed when pausing, fast forwarding or reversing. I hope they can add this.
The bathrooms are nice and stylish. The first one is huge (for an airline bathroom) with throne facing forward. A minor design flaw is to have the cloth towels above the tissues, meaning the open tissue can get dripped on.
The food is much the same, but the cutlery, crockery and glassware have changed. I liked the new plating for satay.
Gotta dash.
Wishing all my readers a happy festive season and all the best for the new year. Travel far, travel wide and travel well.
PS. While I am taking some time off I will be continuing to post over the holidays.
Despite not being able to get any work done I decided against sleeping the few hours until my next flight - that way there is no chance I'll oversleep and miss the flight. The last of the flights for the night has long departed and most of the handful of lounge users are trying to sleep. So it came as a surprise to hear a few calls over the PA.
