Lastminute.com have been running top secret hotels for a while now, but on Monday they extended the offer to flights too.

In the case of top secret flight bookings, Lastminute.com “give you the departure and arrival city and tell you if your flight is direct or indirect. You won’t know the actual airports or the time but that’s the fun!”

So as an example I decided to look for flights from London to Reykjavik because I know that for direct flights to Reykjavik this could be one of two airlines, Icelandair or Iceland Express. This search didn’t bring up any top secret flights so I had another look  for return flights direct to Los Angeles instead. Still nothing. . .  OK last chance, I tried a search for flights to Dubai. Jackpot – I am offered direct flights from a top secret airline for only £189pp return including tax. Very nice thank you.

Looking further into the booking, I was offered carbon offsetting (£25), and travel insurance each of which could be removed from the booking. It wasn’t possible at the next stage to get any more details about the flights other than the departure date so if I booked I would have to be prepared to fly from any London airport and at any time – but I would be told this as soon as I booked so at least I could plan. From the booking form it was good to see I could still let them know a preference for aisle / window seat order a special meal or order special assistance.

I went to the checkout and was surprised to see I was now being told my flight was from Heathrow so this narrowed down the possible airlines to and took a lot of the “risk” out of the booking. I’m not sure whether this always shows up and whether Lastminute plan to remove this information but at the moment it’s there !

Comparing the results with a search on other flight websites I could see that the lastminute price was excellent and I think it would also be fairly easy to guess which airline it would be flying with. In this case I think it was Royal Brunei, depending on the route it could be easier or harder to work out which airline was involved.

My Verdict : A good way for airlines to seperate leisure passengers (price sensitive) from business passengers (departure time sensitive). The price was good, and it wasn’t hard to figure out which airline you would fly with (if you care).

Interested, as ever, to get your comments on this. Would you book a “top secret” flight ?, or a “top secret” hotel ?

Having a snooze in a Qantas suite

Qantas have been operating the A380 since October 2008 and are the third airline to operate the super jumbo after Singapore airlines and Emirates airline. Qantas offers the fewest seats of the three A380 operators with 450 total capacity and has a total firm order commitment for 20 Airbus A380.

The first routes that Qantas used the A380 on was flights to Los Angeles from both Melbourne and Sydney but now the Qantas A380 is operating from London Heathrow also.

Full List of Virgin Atlantic Aircraft names.

• African Queen
• Barbarella
• Bubbles
• Cosmic Girl
• Cover Girl
• Dancing Queen
• Diana
• Emmeline Heaney
• English Rose
• Hot Lips
• Indian Princess
• Jersey Girl
• Jetstreamer
• Lady Luck
• Lady Penelope
• Ladybird
• Madame Butterfly
• Maiden Tokyo
• Miss Behavin
• Miss Kitty
• Mustang Sally
• Mystic Maiden
• Plane Sailing
• Pretty Woman
• Queen Of The Skies
• Ruby Tuesday
• Scarlet Lady
• Silver Lady
• Sleeping Beauty
• Soul Sister
• Surfer Girl
• Sweet Dreamer
• Tinker Belle
• Tubular Belle
• Varga Girl
• Virginia Plain

Virgin Atlantic News

Jet2 launch frequent flyer scheme

More evidence that there is less and less distinction between low cost airlines and full service airlines. . . Jet2 have launched a frequent flyer scheme.

Below I have listed the key features of the MyJet2 reward scheme and given my own analysis on each.

• Customers earn 1% of everything they spend on flights back in “points”.

Not very generous considering they are not ever giving back the cash but just free flights (excluding taxes etc). I expect they will end up increasing this or offering special offers with increased points.

• Two flight zones for redemption, the lowest = 1200 points for a return flight.

Makes sense but I would have gone for three zones or just had a system where anything earned can be redeemed on any flight – this respects the work of the revenue managers who have priced each seat. If sticking with the zone system seems non-optimal business-wise to have Dusseldorf lumped in with Malaga which must have an average selling price way above Dusseldorf and I’m sure better load factor too. See the zones

• Points valid for 2 years.

Fair enough. Pretty standard, should encourage fairly swift redemption (which under the Jet2 scheme should be revenue enhancing for them as they are still charging for fuel supp, etc and there may be other passengers and ancillart revenue)

• Points pay for the base fare only.

This is crafty, it actually says in the FAQ that you will have to pay for any fuel supplements, baggage charges or other supplements on the free flight. The only consolation is you will earn points for these charges.

• No online redemption – call centre only.

This has got to change and I’m sure there are some IT geeks working on this now.

• No specific black out dates for free flights but availability is restricted

Makes sense they just have to make sure they balance off the customer satisfaction goal of members actually being able to redeem their rewards with the revenue management goal of not giving away seats that they could have got some revenue for.

For many of the flag carriers reward schemes, including e.g. flybmi who also fly from Leeds Bradford which is the main base for Jet2, there is an emphasis on “status” giving e.g. bronze, silver and gold status each giving different non-cash benefits such as access to airport lounges and priority baggage tags. MyJet2 is a cash / free flights only reward scheme so won’t perhaps encourage many business customers to choose Jet2.

No we are not talking about the Aer Lingus style €5 business class bargains we saw last year.

Virgin Atlantic and British Airways are expected to fight it out for business class passengers by lowering prices in the face of large reductions in demand seen as a result of businesses cutting back on costs in 2009.

BA reported a 12% fall in business class passenger numbers for December compared to only a 3% reduction in capacity. In the past airlines have been reluctant to reduce business class fares seeing the passengers as less price sensitive than economy passengers.

Virgin Atlantic’s business class product is known as Virgin upper class. With the price cuts a return trip to New York will fall by 40 percent to £1,099 and a return to Boston by 38 percent to £1,199.

See the Virgin special offer page with all the routes and prices here

Currency fluctuations influencing web searches for flights
Post Christmas booking week compared year on year shows sharp fall in flight searches.

UK internet searches for flights have plunged by 42% over the last 12 months, according to figures from Hitwise. The economic downturn means that consumers are being more cautious when booking flights abroad this year, acording to the organisation.

As a result of the weak pound, people are switching from holidays in the eurozone or US and considering cheaper destinations such as Turkey and North Africa, or considering taking their holidays at home.

Flights to the US suffered the biggest annual fall in searches of 52.2%.
Searches for flights to countries that use the euro fell by 44.8%.

There have been big falls in searches for flights to all of the most popular European holiday destinations over the last 12 months: France is down 45.4%, Spain 42.8%, Portugal 41.7% and Italy 41.2%.

Australia remains the most popular non-euro/dollar destination, accounting for almost 25% of all searches for flights to destinations outside of the UK, US and eurozone.

Searches for flights to Australia have fallen by 32.85% over the last 12 months, but this is at a lower rate than for many other destinations.

Only five destinations saw an increase in flight searches over the last 12 months: Norway, Denmark, Brazil, Morocco and Cuba.

Hitwise head of research Robin Goad said: “It looks like the weak pound is putting people off flying to the Eurozone and the USA, and they are looking at destinations with more favourable exchange rates instead.”

Turkey saw the smallest decline in flight searches over the last 12 months – a fall of 24.6% compared with an average of 42.4% for all destinations.

Turkey also overtook Canada and Thailand to become the second most popular non-euro/dollar destination for British tourists.

Goad added: “UK internet users are becoming more sophisticated in the way they search for Turkish holidays. “Increasingly they are searching for particular towns and resorts, such as Dalaman, Bodrum and Antalya, rather than generic terms like ‘flights to Turkey’ or ‘Turkish holidays’.

“This is similar to the way people search for Spanish or Portuguese holidays, and illustrates how Turkey has become a mainstream destination for British holiday makers“.

He said: “The two areas that have benefitted most from the pound falling against the euro are Scandinavia and the cheaper sunshine destinations.

“The Scandinavian countries may still be expensive by global standards, but in relative terms their cost for UK consumers has fallen compared with other European countries.

“In terms of warmer destinations, the weak pound is encouraging people to look further afield for bargains, with places such as Brazil, Morocco, Cuba, Kenya and India all moving up the rankings over the last 12 months.”

Year on Year change in UK Internet searches for flights to top ten destinations between the post Christmas weeks in 2008 and 2009

i.e December 27 2007 – January 3 2008
compared with December 29 2008 – January 5 2009

• Turkey: -24.6%
• Dubai: -27.1%
• Thailand: -32.2%
• Australia: -32.8%
• South Africa: -32.9%
• Caribbean: -34.6%
• Italy: -41.2%
• Portugal: -41.7%
• Spain: -42.8%
• France: -45.4%

Destinations that have actually improved or have had the smallest decline between years.
1. Norway +30.9%
2. Denmark +20.3%
3. Brazil +19.5%
4. Morocco +2.1%
5. Cuba +1.2%
6. Kenya -7.8%
7. India -12.7%
8. China -12.8%
9. Hungary -13.7%
10. Singapore -14.6%

Happy New Year

Here are the most read stories published here in 2008

Jan
BA to start up new trans-Atlantic airline
BA 777 crash lands at Heathrow

Feb
A2 plane – day trip to Australia
Ryanair plans for Euro recesssion

Mar
Mileage runs
A380 landing at Heathrow

Apr
Brussels airlines flies slower to save fuel
Aer Lingus revenue management blunder

May
Jet2 to New York
jetBlue seats passenger in toilet on overbooked flight

Jun
Emirates launch FlyDubai low cost airline
Never drive close to a jet aircraft

Jul
Thomas Cook Expansion
Air France plans rail services

Aug
747 used as a hostel at Stockholm airport
Virgin Galactic

Sep
Condor out of tuifly and germanwings merger
Gatwick airport for sale

Oct
Lufthansa to takeover bmi
BA to add South Africa flights in 2009

Nov
Airlines lost in 2008
Jet2 rebrand

Dec
Virgin – Qantas+BA merger bad for passengers
Air New Zealand completes bio-fuel test flight

European airline load factors November 2008 :

Aer Lingus – 72%
Air Berlin – 73%
Air France/KLM – 78%
easyJet – 84%
Finnair – 74%
Lufthansa – 76%
Monarch – 81%
Ryanair – 79%
SAS – 64%
SkyEurope – 73%
Swiss – 77%

US airline load factors for November 2008 :

American 77%
Continental 77%
Southwest 63%
United 77%

A full list of airlines that have bankrupted or been disestablished in the year 2008 :

A
ATA Airlines
Adam Air
Aero Airlines
Aero California
African Safari Airways
Air Bee
Air Corridor
Air Midwest
AirClass Airways
Airlines Tonga
Aladia
Aloha Airlines
Alpi Eagles
Angkor Airways
Ankair
B
Big Sky Airlines
Boston-Maine Airways
BritishJET
C
Cameroon Airlines
Carib Aviation
Champion Air
City Star Airlines
Club Air
Coast Air
D
Dalavia
DayJet
E
Eos Airlines
EuroManx
F
Far Eastern Air Transport
FlyNordic
FlySur
Focus Air Cargo
Freedom Air
Futura Gael
Futura International Airways
G
GB Airways
Galaxy Airlines (Japan)
Gemini Air Cargo
Girjet
H
Hansung Airlines
I
Interavia Airlines
J
Japan Asia Airways
K
Kato Airline
L
LTE International Airways
LagunAir
Landsflug
M
Mihin Lanka
MyTravel Airways
N
Nationwide Airlines
Nova Air
O
Oasis Hong Kong Airlines
Ocean Airlines
Omskavia
P
Peau Vava?u
S
Silverjet
Skybus Airlines
Skyway Airlines
Sterling Airlines
Swazi Express Airways
T
TESIS Aviation Enterprise
V
Vintage Props and Jets
X
XL Airways
Z
Zoom Airlines
Zoom Airlines Limited

European airline load factors October 2008 :

Aer Lingus – 75%
Air Berlin – 80%
Air France/KLM – 81%
BA – 77%
easyJet – 84%
Finnair – 78%
flynordic – 75%
Lufthansa – 78%
Monarch – 81%
Norwegian – 80%
Ryanair – 85%
SAS – 69%
SkyEurope – 68%
Swiss – 82%

US airline load factors for October 2008 :

American 79%
Continental 79%
Delta 82%
JetBlue 81%,
Northwest 84%
Southwest 70%
United 81%
US Airways 82%

Airline Load Factors September 2008

Airline load factors for August 2008