Aviation News

United Airlines

United Airlines battled service problems including flight delays, faulty kiosks and jammed phone lines this weekend as it worked through technical problems in its efforts to combine the United and Continental Airlines reservation systems.

The airline on Saturday adopted the reservation platform of the former Continental Airlines after the companies merged to form the world’s largest carrier, now known as United Airlines. It is owned by United Continental Holdings.

But after spending months preparing for the change, including training about 15,000 employees on the new software, United said on Sunday that technical issues had flared up at airports across the system, causing delays.

In particular, problems with airport check-in kiosks meant customers instead had to line up to see service agents, Megan McCarthy, a spokeswoman, said.

“We did have some issues with our kiosks, and at times that slowed the check-in process,” Ms. McCarthy said, adding that the airline’s performance had improved by Sunday afternoon.

By 3:30 p.m., 83.1 percent of domestic mainline flights were arriving on time, in line with the company’s 80 percent monthly goal, Ms. McCarthy said.

Earlier on Sunday, only 75.5 percent of United’s mainline flights were on time — arriving within 14 minutes of their scheduled slot — as were about 87.1 percent of its Express flights. On Saturday, 75 percent of flights were departing within 30 minutes of their scheduled time.

The company’s Web site said that its call centers were “currently experiencing extraordinarily high call volumes” and that in some cases, hold times were more than an hour. Customers might be advised to call back another time, it said.

Other issues that irked some customers included a delay in the merging of the airlines’ air-miles programs. The airline said it had put up a notice on Saturday morning saying air miles could take up to 72 hours to be updated.

Michael Boyd, an airline consultant at Boyd Group International in Evergreen, Colo., said his wife was waiting for her air miles to be transferred but added that two of his colleagues had traveled through United without incident on Sunday.

“It doesn’t look like it’s a major meltdown; it looks like a glitch,” said Mr. Boyd, who added that he had not done consulting work with United and was not working with any of its competitors.

Mr. Boyd said that arrival times seemed normal but added that kiosk problems could make travelers anxious, particularly because airlines tended to have many fewer counters open and relied more on kiosks.

Migration to a single reservation system comes with risks, as the US Airways Group learned in 2007 when it tried to combine the reservation systems of the former America West Airlines and US Airways. The two airlines merged in 2005.

A flaw in combining those systems caused self-service kiosks to fail and forced passengers to stand in extraordinarily long lines.

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Emirates Airline

Emirates launched the first direct air bridge between the Middle East and America’s Northwest today, as its inaugural Boeing 777 service from Dubai departed for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

“Emirates has looked forward to the day when we would connect Seattle to our home hub in Dubai, on flights operated by state-of-the-art, Seattle-built aircraft,” said His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of Emirates Group, who travelled on the inaugural flight, along with Her Excellency Sheikha Lubna Al Qassimi (UAE Minister of Foreign Trade), Tim Clark (Emirates Airline president), and His Excellency Major General Mohamed Abdulrahim Al Ali (UAE Ministry of Defence deputy minister), amongst others.

“This new service is the latest step in Emirates’ strategic programme of expansion across the United States, and we are confident that it will support the burgeoning trade relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the Seattle metropolitan region,” continued His Highness. “Emirates highly values its partnerships with American business and industry, and we look forward to strengthening these links as we invest in growing our presence across the country.”

The U.A.E. was the 19th largest export destination worldwide for American goods in 2011, with total exports valued at a record high of almost US$16 billion. Topping the list was transport equipment, which included almost $3.5 billion in aircraft deliveries, $163 million in aircraft parts and $26 million in aircraft engines. Other leading exports included computer and electronic products, non-electrical machinery, chemicals and fabricated metal products.

“Emirates’ non-stop flights will support Seattle’s thriving export trade through a 15-tonne freight capacity that will serve one of the largest cargo hubs in the world at Dubai International Airport,” said Ram Menen, divisional senior vice president of Emirates SkyCargo. “Emirates will carry goods including software, technology and telecommunications equipment to markets across the Middle and Far East”.

Emirates currently employs over 700 Americans at operations throughout the world, and anticipates hiring more than 4000 cabin crew and 500 pilots globally this year. So far in 2012 alone, the airline has recruited cabin crew talent in Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington D.C and will be holding an open day in Seattle in March. Emirates will be holding pilot recruitment drives in Atlanta and New York over the coming months.

EK 229 leaves Dubai daily at 0950hrs and arrives at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 1310hrs. EK 230 departs Seattle at 1710hrs, arriving in Dubai at 1940hrs the following day.

Source: http://www.arabiansupplychain.com

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Airline Lets You Choose Seats Next to 'Friends'

Air travel is full of anxieties. The rushing. The waiting. The discomfort. The safety concerns. The security theatre.

So I was initially delighted when I saw this New York Times article about a Dutch airline allowing people to choose the people they sit next to on a flight, using social media.

KLM has recently introduced Meet and Seat — a system that allows you to choose a good seatmate by looking at information from other passengers’ LinkedIn or Facebook profiles.

At first, this struck me as fantastic. I generally dislike sitting next to strangers on airplanes. After I take my seat on an airplane, I try to mentally will passengers walking down the aisle to have seat assignments far away from me. This doesn’t always work.

As an alternative, then, I figured I could use a feature such as KLM’s to scour the profiles and photos of my fellow passengers for clues as to their person, so that I might avoid sitting next to “problem seatmates.” Armrest hoggers. Sick people. People with offensive hygiene. Noisy children. Noisy adults.

But then I realized that if I could use such a feature, the people I’d rather avoid could use such a feature too.

In the words of one KLM executive, the point of Meet and Seat is to allow for people to sit next to more “interesting” seatmates. “More interesting,” of course, is not necessarily synonymous with (and, indeed, is often contrary to) “less annoying.” As journalist Jeff Jarvis succinctly put it, “Pity the poor venture capitalist who gets seated with the start-up guy who talks his ear off for four hours.” Ditto, one might imagine, for the attractive people who find themselves surrounded by Facebook stalkers shamelessly flirting with them.

Because KLM allows unilateral seat choice with Meet and Seat, all you can do to protect yourself (short of deleting your profile) from an undesirable seat suitor choosing to sit next to you is to change your seat assignment after the fact and hope that s/he — or someone worse — does not follow you to your new seat.

Meet and Seat’s unilateralism differs from similar social programs. Planely, a startup self-billed as the “social flying revolution,” connects you with other Planely users on your flight and encourages you to reach out to them. With Planely, the choice of sitting together is mutual.

Another, Satisfly, uses an automatic system it calls “Intelligent Seating,” autocratically optimizing the flight experience of Satisfly users by assigning them seats based upon their profile compatibility. Both Planely and Satisfly work with multiple airlines.

Still, even if you successfully use one of these social tools to avoid being seated next to a nightmare, a nightmare might nonetheless form near you thanks to the same tool. Want to try to rest on the six-hour redeye from LAX to Logan before that big meeting in the morning? Good luck falling asleep to the dulcet conversational shouts of the two half-deaf rock musicians sitting behind you who found each other online!

The idea of optimizing seatmate selection is alluring, but frankly, it needs work to protect those who prefer quiet travels. Hence, I hereby propose a new social startup for airplane seating: Mulletfly.

Mulletfly would put all of the people who want to enjoy a quiet flight in the first several rows of the plane, all of the people who occasionally enjoy restrained airplane conversation in the middle rows, and all of the chatty and loud people in the rear of the aircraft.

Mulletfly’s motto: “Business in the front, party in the back.”

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Kingfisher

New Delhi: A section of financially-battered Kingfisher Airlines staff on Thursday boycotted work to protest alleged non-payment of salaries since November last, but flights were not affected.

The employees, mainly technicians, began boycotting work late on Wednesday night alleging they had not been paid salaries for the past four months, as the airline’s Aircraft Maintenance Engineers took over the entire operations which ensured maintenance of its flight schedules, airport sources said.

Confirming that some of the technicians had boycotted work, an airline official said, “The matter has been sorted out and they have returned to work from 12 noon today and no flights have been affected due to this.”

The Vijay Mallya-owned airlines has a total debt of about Rs 7,057 crore and accumulated losses of about Rs 6,000 crore. The airline has not paid salary to its employees since November and company CEO had promised to the Director General of Civil Aviation that the due salaries of November and December would be paid by February end and all dues would be cleared by March end.

The technicians perform routine and scheduled maintenance on aircraft engines, air conditioning systems, brakes, cockpit instruments, valves and other components.

Apart from replacing worn-out or defective parts and rebuilding engines, they also maintain service records and perform aircraft inspections.

Kingfisher Airlines is reportedly in talks with two foreign carriers including International Airlines Group (IAG), the owner of British Airways and Iberia, for a potential rescue package.

State Bank of India (SBI), the lead lender to Kingfisher Airlines, said it would not consider any fresh loans for the debt-laden carrier until it raises new equity itself.

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