Aviation with Style

British Airways' epic meltdown over a busy holiday weekend further fanned public outrage of an industry infamous for its focus on cost cuts over customer service, leaving the U.K. carrier scrambling to explain how a local computer outage could lead to thousands of stranded passengers. Amid   United Airlines ' dragging fiasco, mass cancellations at   Delta Air Lines   and U.S. concerns about terrorists using laptops to down planes, the global aviation industry hardly needed another blow. But then on Saturday morning, a brief power surge knocked out British Airways' communications systems grounding the carrier's entire London operations, leading to days of chaos and putting the new chief executive officer in the hot seat. With nearly 600 flights canceled and luggage unable to be dispersed, images and horror stories quickly coursed through social media. Damages for rebooking and compensating customers is estimated at about $112 million, or about 3 percent of...

British Airways resumed some flights from Britain's two biggest airports on Sunday after a global computer system failure created chaos, but hundreds of passengers were still waiting for hours at London Heathrow. BA said it aimed to operate the majority of services from Heathrow and a near normal schedule from Gatwick, the capital's second busiest airport. Heathrow, however, said it expected further delays and cancellations of BA flights. At Heathrow's Terminal 5, where BA is the dominant carrier, hundreds of passengers were waiting in line on Sunday and flight arrival boards showed cancelled flights. Some passengers were curled up under blankets on the floor or sleeping slumped on luggage trolleys. Several passengers complained about a lack of information from BA representatives at the airport. Others said their luggage had been lost. " Many of our IT systems are back up today ," BA Chairman and Chief Executive Alex Cruz said in a video posted on Tw...

Without the shocking video, it's unlikely that the world would have learned or cared about the violent manhandling of a 69-year-old man on a plane last month. The outrage on social media, the mea culpa by an airline CEO, the promise to treat customers better — none of it would have happened. The passengers who shot those videos on a United Express plane in Chicago violated United's policy on photography. By the letter of the airline's law, they too could have been ordered off the plane. Under United's policy, customers can take pictures or videos with small cameras or cellphones "provided that the purpose is capturing personal events." Filming or photographing other customers or airline employees without their consent is prohibited. American, Delta and Southwest have similar policies. Passengers are accustomed to using their cellphones to take photos and videos that they can upload to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Airline rules on photography a...

Singapore Airlines (SIA) has established a “transformation office” to conduct a review of the business after reporting a near halving of full year net profit for fiscal 2017. The airline group posted net profit for the 12 months to March 31 2017 of S$441.9 million (A$427.1 million), down 48.1 per cent from S$851.8 million in the prior corresponding period. The full year result was hurt by a fourth quarter loss of S$126 million, compared with net profit of S$234 million a year earlier. “ Intense competition arising from excess capacity in major markets, alongside geopolitical and economic uncertainty, continue to exert pressure on yields ,” SIA said in its full year results released on the Singapore stock exchange on Thursday evening. Singapore Airlines, and others, have battled the rapid international expansion of Chinese airlines and the ongoing rise of Middle East carriers offering long-haul to long-haul connections through their hubs, which have bitten into previously lu...

A TIGERAIR flight narrowly avoided overrunning the runway at Cairns Airport after receiving clearance for takeoff from an intersection that was 403-metres short of where it needed to be. An Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation released today, revealed the A320’s captain was distracted by another aircraft and the cabin crew’s pre-flight preparations in the January 21 incident. As a result the Brisbane-bound flight, taxied to intersection B4 instead of B5, as it awaited clearance for takeoff. Air Traffic Controllers issued the clearance, but then quickly advised the captain the plane was at the wrong intersection. The ATSB investigation found if the A320 had left from the B4 intersection, a rejected takeoff would have resulted in a potentially disastrous runway overrun. In the US, runway overruns contributed to 680 fatalities between 1995 and 2007. After the flight the captain contacted the ATC tower to thank the controller for intervening. The...

An Asian airline that serves the UAE market is implementing some job cuts that will affect at least 600 personnel in its main headquarters .   The move, said to be the biggest staff shake-up at the Hong Kong flag carrier in nearly 20 years, followed after the company announced that it had incurred some $74 million in financial losses for 2016, the first since the global recession. “ We have had to make tough but necessary decisions for the future of our business and customers. Changes in people’s travel habits and what they expect from us, evolving competition and a challenging business outlook have created the need for significant change ,” said Rupert Hogg, chief executive officer at Cathay Pacific. The major restructuring will displace 190 employees holding managerial roles and 400 more who are holding non-managerial positions. The staff cuts represent 25 per cent of management and 18 per ccent of non-managerial positions, respectively. The airline assured, however, ...

Gold smuggling racketeers have once again commenced using Flight Attendants of   SriLankan Airlines   as mules to smuggle gold into the country. A 27 year old former Mihin Lanka Flight Steward Meewala Arachchige Chanuka, who recently joined SriLankan Airlines after the airlines merged, confessed to Custom Officers when he was apprehended a few days ago, that he was promised a sum of Rs 40, 000 for carrying the 6.5 kilo grams of gold valued at Rs 35 million. This reported apprehension is now been taken very seriously by Customs Officers as in the past certain Flight Attendants of the national carrier were used as mules to assist gold smugglers in various ways to traffic gold into the country. The smuggling syndicates had previously roped in many staff by offering then hefty sums as rewards, especially those that had access to the aircraft. Several staff including Flight Attendants, Catering staff, Cleaning staff and the ramp Bus Drivers were all part of a mafia sty...

Air Transat, Icelandair and Norwegian Air Shuttle are the least punctual airlines in Britain, research from Which? has found. The consumer group analysed landing times for 850,000 flights at 25 UK airports and found that on average only 75% of all flights arrived on time. Dutch airline KLM was the most punctual carrier, followed by Qatar Airways. Air Transat was the most tardy, with only 55% of flights landing within 15 minutes of their planned arrival time. Icelandair and Norwegian were not much better, with on-time performance rates of 56% and 60%, respectively. A spokesperson for Montreal-based Air Transat said it was not wholly responsible for its low punctuality ranking. "The statistics in this report do not take into account the delays caused by factors beyond our control such as weather and air traffic control. "When these factors are excluded, our punctuality rate is in fact 78%." Icelandair also blamed issues such as air traffic strikes as we...

A YEAR after four pilots accused Frontier Airlines of not doing enough to help pregnant or nursing employees, two flight attendants filed similar discrimination complaints accusing the Denver-based discount carrier of forbidding them from pumping breast milk while on flights. In documents filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday, flight attendants Jo Roby of Boise, Idaho and Stacy Rewitzer of Denver said they were forced to take unpaid leave after having their children so they could keep providing them with breast milk. Both women said they returned to work within about four months after giving birth because Frontier does not offer parental leave and instead requires employees to cobble together sick or vacation days, Family Medical Leave Act time or medical leave subject to company approval to care for their babies. They also said they were penalised because they had to use sick days to take time off during their pregnancies and to care ...