Sunset view looking at a Ryanair winglet over the Canary Islands
If you read the blog often you know I have a fascination with Ryanair. Well I think most people who follow the airline industry have a fascination with Ryanair. As American travelers complain about fees, yet still pay them, I think Ryanair might show a glimpse of the future if passengers keep demanding the lowest price possible. Ryanair is known for their cheap prices, tons of fees and a total lack of customer service.
Recently Ryanair showed their customer service skills by stranding passengers at the wrong destination.
Eager passengers were on a flight from the UK to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands when it was diverted to Fuerteventura (about 30 miles away) due to weather. Even though airlines have no legal obligations to pay for costs related to weather, most make accommodations for customers in this situation due to this thing called “customer service.”
Instead, Ryanair booted off the passengers, fueled up and took off, leaving passengers on their own. Since there was no staff at the airport, there was little chance to get help. Of course, they could have tried to fight it out on the phone, but Ryanair charges by the minute to talk to a customer service representative.
Do I feel bad for these travelers? A little bit, I mean they lost a day of their vacation, had to get a hotel room, but flying on Ryanair is always a gamble. The old saying “you get what you pay for,” is quite accurate with Ryanair.
UPDATE 3/18/10: I just received an email from Stephen McNamara, head of communications for Ryanair who states the airline did provide ferry service to the passengers destinations. More can be found here.
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Image: GanMed64
Delta Air Lines Flight 253
It was lucky that the bomb didn’t go off on Delta Airlines Flight 253 by the so-called Christmas bomber. However recent research shows that the Airbus A330 with 278 might have been able to land, if the bomb had detonated.
BBC News did some research with a Boeing 747 that showed that flight 253’s fuselage most likely would not have broken and it should have been able to land safely. The testing shows the bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and the passenger next to him would have most likely been killed, making it still a very horrific event. The explosion would cause injuries to passengers, smoke and chaos, but the plane would have still been able to land completely intact.
Dr John Wyatt, an international terrorism and explosives adviser to the UN, replicated the conditions on board the Detroit flight on a decommissioned Boeing 747 at an aircraft graveyard in Gloucestershire, England. The amount of explosives found on the bomber would not have been enough to break the skin of the flexible aluminum making up the aircraft’s fuselage. Even though the Boeing 747 was not the aircraft that flew on flight 253, the two planes are made similarly enough to be used in the test.
The researchers couldn’t do into great details of the damages that were caused for security reasons, but their goal is to assure passengers that airlines are safer than most people think. For the tests the plane was not pressurized since flight 253 was at about 10,000 feet and the pressure would have been similar on the inside and outside of the fuselage. The results could be much more different at a higher altitude.
If you live in the UK you can watch the full BBC show, otherwise you can check out a small clip of the show here.
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Here are the answers -- did you guess right?
Had a lot of great guesses from people on the photo livery quiz. You can see the answers above. Most people made the same mistake I did on the last one. I thought it was USAir, but if you look closely this was a bare-metal plane from American, with Southwest’s livery painted on it. You can read more about these planes and see larger photos on Southwest Airline’s blog.
Winners of being big airline livery nerds:
* TxAgFlyer
* DCSpotter
* Patrick Olave
* Unregistered user #473787 on the Seattle PI
Nice job folks. There were quite a few others that only got one wrong.
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What is the difference between customs and immigration is a great question. It is also one that a reader asked Steven Frischling over on his blog Flying With Fish.
“While many nations have merged Immigrations and Customs into one larger agency, such as US Department of Homeland Security and Canada’s Border Services Agency, their roles are quite different at the airport.
In short, here are the roles of the Customs and Immigrations” ’¦ CHECK OUT HIS BLOG TO READ MORE
Houston Airport's Food Court
Sometimes bad things happens and there is no one to blame. Some how William Ogletree, a lawyer from Texas, didn’t get that memo. Ogletree was flying from Houston to Las Vegas back last December and went to the food court in Terminal C for some food. When leaving, he accidentally left his $800 black leather jacket, which unsurprisingly, someone ended up stealing.
Yea, that sucks, but it is a fact of life. I have lost a few coats in similar fashions (not $800 ones thanks goodness), but I didn’t blame anyone but myself. Ogletree on the other hand is threatening to sue the City of Houston, Continental Airlines and the food court’s management for failing to have “collected the coat, kept it in a secure place and held it for a reasonable time” until he was able to claim the jacket. The bitter passenger claims the defendants, “breached their duty” in connection with how they “manage lost and found items for which they are responsible.”
The letter written to the defendants, obtained by The Smoking Gun, shows Oggletree gave them ten whole days to pay him the $800 or they would also be burdened with, “court costs, attorney’s fees, investigation, expert witnesses and other damages.”
I am sorry you lost your coat Mr. Ogletree, but seriously get over it. It is not the city, the food court or Continental Airlines’s fault (I don’t even get how could come close to blame Continental — for not asking every passenger if they remembered their coats?). There are only two people to blame. Oggletree and whomever stole the jacket.
No official word if Ogletree ever got his money or his jacket.
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Source: JetBlue’s B6 Blog Image: jgdillard