End of Year wash up Airlines & Routes
Well with most airlines and Airports having reported -% drops in traffic in 2010 whats peoples thoughts on how 2011 will pan out?
The Volcano and early start to Winter in Europe haven't helped, but the underlying trend is of concern and the industry need to take a long hard look at why pax's are avoiding airports in their droves, sure the economy is a factor but for the crews amongst us we have become almost immune to the daily grind of having our bags searched and our bits felt.
Security is to a large extent outwith the control of Airlines and Airports, however everything else is and a long hard look in mirror is required
Lets start with Airports and what they got wrong
Replacing Kiss & Fly with a £1 or £2 drop of fee's and if you have no cash (common in today's cashless society) charging a card fee!!
Creating a fast track (chargeable) to speed you through security, well in theory by removing the normal security staff to create the queue in the first place.
Why have they done this? well this can be laid at the door of the LoCo airlines that have driven handling charges down to lower fares and the airport companies must get the cash from somewhere!!
Which leads nicely to the Airlines (and ATC employee's)
This years strikes and work to rules in Spain & France have caused huge delays and more than a few cancellations and ruined many a family's holidays, if you were lucky enough to be flying with an IT operator or Legacy airline then you were probably looked after, if however you were a guest of Ryanair, easyjet, bmibaby, Jet2 and the like then in varying degree's you were left in the dark and hung out to dry and are probably still awaiting a reply to your e-mails never mind a refund or compensation for your costs.
Then there is the game of will it wont it fly? not the aircraft of course but the flight you've booked on and around in terms of Hotels and hire cars only to find the dates or times have changed or the route canx altogether Jet2 & bmibaby seem worse than most.
This leads in to airlines extras all Loco's fall into this one, with luggage allowances from 15Kg 22kg and £10 -15kg for every kilo over, Jet2 win the sliver spoon on this with Ryanair picking up the wooden one!! bmibaby managed to get lots of free air time on the BBC watchdog for dodgy gate gauges and other issues.
My golden globe must go to Easyjet for its new £99.99 all in ticket including luggage, boarding and all fee's and charges which includes change of date up to (i think?) a week before and 3 weeks after booked date. If this is as easy to book as it looks on the website info then it will get my vote and money everyday, who in their right mind wants to spend 25 minutes going through a booking process that is trying to mug you at every turn. We all know its not going to £2.99 or £9.99 so how about some honesty at last.
Last edited by Facelookbovvered; 15th Jan 2011 at 17:03.