These are your five choices. Click on the image to go to the voting page.
JetBlue is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary on February 11, 2010. To get the party started, they asked employees to design a new tail fin livery that will be unveiled during the celebration. JetBlue has the same livery on the body of all their Airbus A320’s, but each one has a unique tail design.
JetBlue had to go through a lot of great submissions, but narrowed it down to the top five shown on this blog. Now you can vote and the highest ranked one will start flying sometime in 2010.
Alaska Airline's Boeing 737-900 (N318AS) with Spirit Of Disneyland II livery
Last Saturday, Alaska Airlines showed off its newest livery, “Spirit of Disneyland II.” Back in 2002 Alaska announced their “Spirit of Disneyland I” livery, which was retired about two weeks ago. Can you tell which one of Mickey’s friends was missing on the first livery?
Because they used a Boeing 737-400 on the first livery, it wasn’t long enough to include Pluto, but since the newest livery is on a Boeing 737-900 (which is about 20′ longer), Alaska was able to include Pluto, re-uniting Mickey and his closest four friends.
The new livery took over 300 gallons of paint, 120 gallons of paint remover (before painting the new livery), and 32,400 feet of tape (which is 108 football fields).
Not only did Alaska show off their new plane, they also flew three “Make a Wish” children from Portland, down to LAX to go to Disneyland.
“When a child with a life-threatening medical condition wishes to meet a Disney character or visit a Disney park, we know that Alaska Airlines and Disneyland Resort are there to make it a dream-come-true,” said Andrew Asato, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon executive director. “With donated tickets and passes, as well as extra-special treatment for wish families, these partners have each provided an unduplicated resource to the Make-A-Wish Foundation for more than 20 years.”
Alaska Airlines has supported the Make-A-Wish Foundation since 1985 and provides air transportation allowing about 80 children’s wishes to be granted each year. The airline invites members of the Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan to donate frequent-flier miles to the Make-A-Wish Foundation through the Charity Miles program. To make a donation of miles, visit alaskaair.com and click on the “Mileage Plan” and “Charity Miles” links.
Boeing takes Simpliflying on a special tour of the Boeing 787 gallery and a sneak peak of what the 787 will look like on the inside. Check out Simpliflying’s blog for additional information and pictures.
CEO Michael O'Leary really loves those Boeing 737's
Ryanair has announced they are breaking off negotiations with Boeing over purchasing 200 737-800’s. In early November I talked about how Ryanair was threatening to stop growth from not being able to reach an agreement with Boeing. The CEO of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary said the airline did come to an agreement, but Boeing is “unwilling to incorporate some other terms and conditions from our existing agreement into this new aircraft order,” O’Leary says. Of course O’Leary won’t elaborate what those details were.
Is this a real threat? I don’t think so. First off Ryanair already has a fleet of over 200 Boeing 737-800’s and is still planning on receiving over 100 more over the next three years. There is no way they are going to add another aircraft type or convert their entire fleet to Airbus. O’Leary also said he might be willing to re-open negotiations next year. Well, next year starts in about two weeks.
Ryanair is one of the fastest growing airlines in the world and it wants to continue its growth. Going after Aer Lingus isn’t working out so hot for them, so they need more planes. I am sure Boeing knows this and isn’t going to let Ryanair bully them around. Boeing already has 152 orders for the Boeing 737 and has delivered 336 so far this year. Yes, another 200 would surely be a good thing but it is not like Boeing needs the orders to keep the 737 rolling.
Photo of the AirTran ads taken for me just a few days ago.
On my recent flight on Virgin America I noticed they had a short ad for their Virgin America Credit Card on their in-flight entertainment system after the safety video. I thought, this was a good idea. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am no fan of watching commercials or flipping through a million ads to read a magazine. However, this concept just seemed to make business sense and I wondered why airlines do not make better use of ads to make additional revenue.
We all know the creative ways airlines are looking to make additional revenue. From charging for bags, to having to pay a little more to actually pick a seat. I doubt these fees will go away and I imagine airlines will only come up with new ways to make additional revenue to stay competitive and profitable.
Having ads in planes can work. The biggest benefit is there is no additional cost to the customer. All the fees you pay for everything else is money coming out of your pocket and into the pocket of the airline. But ads cost passengers nothing (except for some annoyance) and make the airline additional money.
While I have been researching about this concept, AirTran announced that they will start placing ads on the back of their seats. They already had ads sticking out of the seat back pocket, ads on their napkins, and even ads on their pre-flight announcements. But they will be the first airline in the US to put ads on the backs of all their seats (even Business Class). Of course the initial reaction I have seen on the web is “OMG the world is coming to an end and AirTran is going to a new low,” (I am just paraphrasing) But really, is this all that bad?
Each seat will have 2.5″ x 9″ place to put different advertiser’s messages and “unlike other in-cabin advertisements, these messages will be fully visible to passengers throughout the boarding, taxi, takeoff, landing, and deplaning phases, offering companies a unique opportunity to reach consumers for periods ranging from a minimum of approximately 40 minutes to several hours depending on the length of the flight,” AirTran noted.
The press release said every seat should be outfitted by December 3rd, but I’ve heard from fliers there are still some empty seat backs. Luckily someone was able to send me a photo of the ad (which is the blog’s main picture).
I recently talked to Christopher White at AirTran to figure how much they plan to make off these ads. White told me they expect to “gain seven figures annually in ancillary revenue related to seat back advertisements.” Right now they just have a contract with one company, Mother Nature Network, but they have several other companies express interest.
With AirTran having Wi Fi on their entire fleet, I think this could make for some interesting ads. A company could advertise something and point people to check them out right on the web. “Looking for a hotel when you land? Go online now, book a room, and we will pay for your Wi Fi on AirTran,” or something along those lines.
I would rather have to look at an ad for a few hours and saving a few dollars on my flight. Heck, the ads might even be entertaining if someone got creative with them and had passengers interact with the advertiser on the web somehow. Would you change your travel plans based on there being ads on the plane?
