The new Skycouch on Air New Zealand earn an Awesome Medal
Taking Economy Class to the next level, Air New Zealand announced their “Skycouch” for Economy Class on their Boeing 777-300 aircraft.
The new seat allows passengers to choose to extend the bottom cushion of their seats to the seats in front of them providing an amble bed to sleep on. This will work great if you are flying with a significant other, but might be a little awkward if with a complete stranger.
22 sets of the SkyCouch seats will be available and will cost about the same as two and a half non-Skycouch seats.
You might notice the window shapes in the background of the videos look very similar to the Boeing 787’s. That is because Air New Zealand was hoping to introduce the new seats on the 787, but went ahead with the 777 due to the Dreamliner’s delays.
Air New Zealand will start flying the new seats at the end of the year between Auckland and Los Angeles and hopes to expand into other markets in 2011 and 2012.
I think these seats are pretty awesome. So awesome that I am giving the seats my AWESOME MEDAL!
Other things Air New Zealand will be upgrading:
* New oven technology to cook food from scratch rather than just reheating
* Extensive new in-flight entertainment system using touch screens
* Wine tasting and destination seminars
* Slip-on pillows for headrests to remove need for neck cushions (economy)
* Flight Planner to know when meals, drinks etc will be served, lights dimmed etc.
* Shared-meal experiences such as pizza for two (Premier economy)
* On-demand food and beverage service (business class)
This Saturday I was at KPAE (where the Boeing 747-8 is built) and saw one of the jets with its strobes on, doing testing.
To most, seeing two jets sit there and only one with strobes on might not be the most exciting thing, but to me it was awesome. It is a great sign for the things to come, hopefully very shortly.
Matzelle also caught a picture of Boeing re-painting registration numbers on one of the Boeing 747-8’s. Boeing had accidentally painted the same registration number (N747EX) on both aircraft. Hey if that is the only thing that goes wrong — I am ok with that!
Flight Blogger points out the Boeing 747-8 to fly first (RC501) is the 1420th 747 that Boeing has built since 1966. Hopefully we will see RC501 completing taxi tests later this week and a having her first flight as early as January 31st.
The Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which is like India’s equivalent to the FAA, is investigating Kuwait Airways flight KU302 from Mumbai to Kuwair for flying three passengers “off record” on a flight back in October 2009.
The Times of India is reporting the three extra passengers were relatives of a Kuwait Airways employee. The flight was overbooked in economy class, where the three had tickets. The airline’s policy is to not upgrade passengers to Business Class (which had empty seats). Instead of breaking the airline’s policies, the employee severely broke security policy to get them on the flight.
Official paperwork shows the three extras were “offloaded” on paper and their boarding passes were not scanned so their presence was not recorded. ’œAfter the three passengers were handed their business class boarding passes, the airline staff was instructed not to scan their passes so that their presence in the flight was not registered in the airline’s records,” an official said. The three were cleared through Customs and allowed to board the Kuwait Airways Airbus A300. Since the three were offloaded on paper, the trim sheet for weight and fuel distribution was updated accordingly. A pilot’s calculations for takeoff speeds and flap settings are based on the trim sheet.
This incident is a serious violation of safety procedures. Even though the passengers had to clear Customs, having three people with no paper trail is a huge security issue. With the right connections people involved in human trafficking, kidnapping, and terrorism could get people to a destination with no record.
Another problem is with the weight. The three extra people added about 900lbs to the A300 (the three had 15 bags — crazy). Although being off by less than a 1000lbs probably won’t cause serious issues, the pilot should be aware of the weight change.
If you haven’t caught this video yet, it is a must see. Every airline has a few maxi-pads on board and one creative flight attendant, Heather Poole, came up with 20 interesting ways you can use one.
I talked to Poole about her inspirations for making this video. She told me that she has heard stories of her co-workers using maxi-pads to stop a passenger’s bleeding, for shoe padding and for soaking up condensation. Hearing these stories made her think, “man, we’re a pretty clever group of flight attendants. I should write something about this.” And that she did.
She started with the first ten and some of the crew asked what she was up to. When she told them about her plan, they kicked things into high gear, game up with 20 great ideas, broke out the ‘ol flip video camera and got to work! Not only is the video awesome entertainment, it can also bee seen as an educational video. Poole told me that people have emailed her saying they’ve put some of the ideas into action.
“Another person mentioned that one day at work an office coworker started bleeding, he thought of my video, and ran to the ladies room for a maxi pad! I saved the day,” Poole told me. She also had a passenger recently who was upset that red fuzz from the airline blanket got on her white shirt and she had and important meeting. Poole handled it like a pro, “I smiled, entered the lav, and said, ‘I have got an idea.’ It worked. The passenger was thrilled.”
I was curious how many maxi-pads were destroyed in the making of the video. Amazingly only three. Two for mopping the floor, and one for everything else. Now that is resourceful!
This is called “Flying 101” and shows passengers where the tail and wings are on the plane, in case you didn’t know. Although very creative, I am not sure how much passengers need to know where the “Black Box” is located at. I find it best not to remind passengers why someone might need to find the black box.
