Sir Richard Branson gives that little personal touch to Tony Fernandes from Air Asia – Photo: Adam Lee, Air Asia
In 2010 two Formula 1 Race team owners made a bet between each other over who would finishing higher in the Constructors’ Championship. The two owners were Sir Richard Branson, owner of the Virgin Formula One Racing Team and Tony Fernandes, owner of the Lotus Racing Team. The two friends (Fernandez worked for Sir Richard as a financial controller in the 80s) both own and run airlines and they made a bet that would go to benefit charity. Unfortunately Sir Richard Lost.
What was the bet? The loser would need to work as a flight attendant on the others airline. Sir Richard’s airlines span the globe with Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America and Virgin Australia, while Tony Fernandez’s Asian Powerhouse, in the low cost market, Air Asia & Air Asia X.
The bet went a little bit further than that, they would have to do it in full uniform and not just any uniform. It would be in drag.
An Air Koryo Ilyushin IL-62 in Beijing, ready for boarding. Photo by Bernie Leighton.
To fly on an Ilyushin IL-62 in 2012 is not something many people would think of doing, let alone going to the lengths I did to enjoy the privilege.
On October 20, 2012 after months of planning, amounts of Euro cash that had bank-tellers convinced I was a spy; a lovely jaunt to Beijing on Air Macau and a visit to Datangshan, I was standing at the check in counter for Air Koryo in Terminal 2 at Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK). Oddly, and unfortunately for collectors of rare boarding passes, flights to Pyongyang are issued on Air China stock.
Chinese police, and politeness didn’t really allow me to capture the sight of the sheer amount of cargo the North Korean people were taking back but it was the contents I found more curious than the volume. A cursory search of the bindles and exposed boxes showed mostly flat-screen TVs and other completely civilian commercial goods.
So you need to book some flights and you hit the usual suspects online to find the best prices: Kayak, Orbitz, Travelocity or even Fare Compare. But when you look at the results, it is all about the price and you are not told the whole story. The other sites don’t tell you what seats are like, what snacks or drinks you may expect or what fees you might be charged for who knows what. Things are now changing with RouteHappy.com, which puts Passenger Experience (#PaxEx) into the equation.
Routehappy takes what the old Metasearch websites (like Kayak) did by aggregating all the flight prices into the one site, but it takes it one step further. For some flyers, price is everything. But for many of us, we are willing to pay for some of the nicer things. Routehappy calls these ’œHappiness Factors’.
Image from PlaneFinder.net via NYCAviation.com.
Watching airline activity live via social media can have interesting consequences. Last week, I happened to see the #7700 tweet [which are tweets that are auto generated that go out any time an aircraft in coverage squawks 7700] from Planefinder.net as soon as it was posted and went to check out what was happening. Normally when you catch these emergencies, not much happens immediately, and the aircraft either continues on to its destination, or diverts to another airport.
This time I noticed that the aircraft immediately entered a very rapid descent [see an image of normal descent]. In my experience, something like that is usually caused by a loss of cabin pressure, where the pilots level off at 10,000 feet to asses the situation. However, this aircraft passed 10,000 and continued to rapidly descent, which was worrying. Was this a huge emergency, website error or just standard procedure for some issue on the flight?
Flying Qantas First Class – Photo: Mal Muir | AirlineReporter.com
I was beginning my day off the way any premium cabin passenger should; spending time in the lounge prior to my flight. But this wasn’t just any lounge and this wasn’t just any flight. For two and a half years I had dreamed and worked towards this day. I had been earning Qantas points purely for this reason: First Class flight on a Qantas Airbus A380.
Arriving at Melbourne Airport I was dropped off in front of the dedicated First Class check-in area, which can be easily missed if you don’t know where to look. Thankfully my driver did know as the check in was hiding behind a line of trees. I was a little too early to check in for my flight, but was able to sit down in the lobby area (which looks almost identical to the First Class lounge).
