Flight Wisdom

Over a week ago, Chris Elliott pointed out a recent fee applied by ultra-low-class Spirit Airlines. Spirit had hidden a $10 Convenience Fee in their Contract of Carriage for booking anywhere but at a counter.
Now, booking online is certainly convenient, but this fee seemed somewhat dishonest. Spirit’s site is, to quote Elliott, “awash in new [...]

We’ve been very behind lately. We keep saying we’ll catch up, but life happens. We are committed to providing the best in airline news and commentary we possibly can, but we do have day jobs, of course.

Delta received preliminary approval to fly from New York’s JFK Airport to Bogota, Columbia.
Spirit Airlines announced starting May 8th, [...]

We’d like to remind our readers that the links embedded in each article go to a press release or news article with more details than our news briefs. Each week we scour the press releases and such for these articles.

Regional airline SkyWest has sued Delta Air Lines over the airline’s withholding of $25 million [...]

Lot Polish Airlines has signed a deal for 12 additional Embraer 175 jets plus two options and ten purchase rights. The layout of the aircraft will include 82 elite seats, and the plan is to use them to ‘right-size’ aircraft based on seasonal or specific time-of-day influences on routes.
Jetblue inaugurated its St. Maarten-JFK service on [...]

BMI will start London Heathrow to Tel Aviv service on March 13th. The route will be operated by an Airbus 320 with 20 seats in business and 108 in economy. Connections will be available from Dublin, Belfast, Durham Tees Valley, Leeds Bradford, Manchester, and Scotland.
VRG began daily operations from Sao Paulo to Mexico City on [...]

Here we are, the last roundup of 2007…

Discounter Zoom Airlines will be operating new service from London Gatwick to both San Diego and Ft. Lauderdale. From next May, Ft. Lauderdale service will operate Thursdays and Sundays and will be the first scheduled service from Europe to Ft. Lauderdale in ten years. Service to San Diego [...]

Air Canada will be offering nonstop service from Ottawa to Frankfurt beginning June 1st as well as nonstop service from Toronto-Dusseldorf six times weekly beginning May 1st…and a second daily nonstop from Calgary-Frankfurt on April 14th.
American Eagle began nonstop service today from Flint’s Bishop International Airport and New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Service will be six [...]

We first defended Spirit, despite some negative aspects of its record, then blasted it when it transitioned to an “ultra-low-cost carrier” the likes of Ryanair(which we frequently blast).
Buzzing around on the Internet is the tale of what happens when a CEO accidentally emails his internal comment on a customer complaint back to the customer(We’re sure [...]

Frontier Airlines announced new nonstop service from Memphis to Ft. Lauderdale on November 15th. Service from Las Vegas will increase to five days per week on September 6th. On November 15th, a third flight to Denver will begin. Finally, on December 15th, a second flight to Orlando.
San Francisco has rolled out the red carpet for [...]

Frontier Airlines is expanding its service to Puerto Vallarta with flights from San Jose and Sacramento, beginning December 15th. Service will be operated three times weekly from San Jose, and four from Sacramento, with 76-seat Embraer 170 aircraft, operated by Republic Airlines. One of the San Jose flights will be operated by Frontier’s own A319 [...]

Here’s a collection of interesting articles we’ve been sitting on for a while and haven’t yet written about.

PCWorld, in a series of articles, asks about what should a passenger do if a passenger next to you if watching pornography on his laptop? Or passengers not watching movies with headphones? (Credit to the Consumerist for referring [...]

We’re catching up on our backlog of exciting news…While we do that…why don’t you head over to our new spinoff, Infrequent Flier, for a bit of sage advice…namely Don’t Book with Cheapoair.

Cathay Pacific announced a third daily flight from New York’s JFK Airport to Hong Kong to begin November 15th. Currently, they operate one nonstop, [...]

American Eagle will add nonstop service from Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport and Raleigh-Durham beginning November 4th with six day a week service operated by 37-seat ERJ-135 jets.
American Eagle will also add service between Santa Fe, New Mexico and both Dallas/Ft. Worth and Los Angeles. Service will be operated with 44-seat Embraer 140 regional jets. Daily [...]

Qatar Airways touched down at Washington-Dulles Airport last night in its maiden flight on the route from Doha. The Airbus 340 was greeted by a water salute.
Horizon Air has slashed fares from Idaho Falls to Seattle and Portland. Fares on the routes that were $183-$364 are now $139-$189 each way. All flights to the city [...]

Well, the flight still hasn’t left…It happens sometimes….so here we are for part two of today’s roundup…Let’s see what the other flight bloggers are up to…

Upgrade, Travel Better has a response to their recent query about United-US Airways codeshares…The codeshare program includes 2000 US flight numbers on UA, and an equivalent number of UA numbers [...]

The organization that runs LAX Airport(LAWA) has lost the lawsuit brought against them by several airlines involving the increasing of maintenance and operation fees to airlines not under a long-term lease. The Cranky Flier has a great synopsis of the situation. “Sounds like they’re just trying to get the airlines in T1/T3/TBIT to cover [...]

Airtran will be the first to serve Cherry Coke and Cherry Coke Zero onboard all flights effective this month. We just love the fact that it is big news which soft drinks an airline has…probably bigger for the airlines that don’t give you any.
United raised fares on popular business routes by up to $50 each [...]

Spirit Airlines today announced nonstop service to San Pedro Sula, Honduras from its Ft. Lauderdale hub. Service will be offered three times a week from July 20th through November 15, when it will become daily.
Southwest announced four daily nonstop flights in six cities. Beginning August 26th, one new daily nonstop from Manchester to Phoenix and [...]

Investigators say that fatigued air traffic controllers contributed to four aviation mishaps in recent years…including the Comair crash. They are calling on the FAA to revise work schedules and take other action. Their union jumped on the report as validation of its own claims that air traffic controllers are overworked and understaffed. Details available here.
The [...]

Spirit today announced nonstop service from its hub in Ft. Lauderdale to Guatemala City, Guatemala once daily effective May 10th.
Commercial passenger service will be terminating in Lake Havasu City, Arizona effective May 6th. Mesa Airlines, which provides service from the airport to Phoenix and Las Vegas. A Mesa analysis on the Havasu airport showed that [...]

Spirit Airlines, along with its new bag policy, has opted to go a step further with its pay for everything platform. You can join the $9 Fare Club…which gives you…

Guaranteed Exclusive Member-Only Low Fares(at least once every six weeks)
On-site and e-mail access to deals
Automatic enrollment in the “innovative” FREE SPIRIT frequent flyer program.

Their three-month trial [...]

This morning, we found out about the Spirit policy, which is set to take effect June 20th, and we were completely shocked. No one had taken notice of it yet, so we forwarded the news, which has widepsread implications, to some of our fellow travel bloggers, to get their two cents in.
Upgrade Travel Better and [...]

Spirit has taken the first step to bringing Ryanair-like structures to the United States. In a press release entitled ‘Great News!!!’, Spirit is now offering the opportunity for passengers to ‘customize their travel experience and save’.
While we understand the idea of “liberates customers from being forced into paying for services they do not desire or [...]

Spirit announced nonstop once-daily service from Atlantic City to Las Vegas beginning May 3rd. Also, on May 1st, Spirit will resume connecting service through Detroit to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Frontier asked today: “What is better than roses or chocolates or jewelry on Valentine’s Day? Low fares and new air service!” Frontier has announced [...]

We commented last week on the Spirit Airlines plan to charge $10 for the second bag, $100 for each additional bag above that. The Coalition for Luggage Security had even more interesting things to say than we do.
The coalition is in favor of further separation of the cost of the ticket and the cost [...]