Cheap Airline Tickets / Airline News

Budget airline Ryanair has been rapped over an advert headlined “Robbed by lastminute.com?”.

The airline used a picture of a burglar dragging a bag of money with “online agent” written on his top.

Its advert accused online agents of ripping off customers and overcharging them by “100% or more”.

It drew an angry complaint from lastminute.com which has been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority.

The watchdog has told Ryanair not to re-use it “in its current form”.

Ryanair had provided no evidence that lastminute.com overcharged customers, the ASA said.

It added: “We concluded that the claim in conjunction with the image of a robber misleadingly and unfairly discredited Lastminute’s business.”

Lastminute also objected to the advert’s claims that online agents: “Don’t provide correct terms and conditions” and “Don’t notify schedule changes”.

The ASA upheld both of these complaints, saying they were misleading.

In response, Ryanair said Lastminute was not authorised to sell its flights and that the firm inflated its prices without its consent.

Last week’s investigation into airline customer service prompted a flurry of responses. Here is a selection.

Last week Telegraph Travel tested how travellers are treated by our leading airlines. In examining the response times of the airlines’ customer service departments to some simple questions, we found that it was often not the no-frills carriers that failed our tests.

Thomsonfly and Flybe were the best performers, while charter and scheduled airlines often performed badly - XL Airways, for example, has still failed to answer our emails after more than four weeks, while on three occasions we were unable even to get through on the phone to British Airways.

When we asked readers whether they felt they had been getting a fair deal from airlines, we were inundated with responses.

Original Article

BY KEITH BENMAN
kbenman@nwitimes.com
219.933.3326

This story ran on nwitimes.com on Monday, November 27, 2006 12:34 AM CST

SkyValue USA will be flying into Gary with high hopes of soaring where previous airlines have stalled.

It won’t be easy, according to air industry observers and local travel agents.

“I think the problem they will have is they are going after the greater Chicago market, which I would throw Gary into, so they’re competing with the bigger airlines out of Midway and O’Hare,” said Roger King, senior analyst for transportation with CreditSights, a provider of independent credit research.

SkyValue flights from Gary/Chicago International Airport to five leisure destinations, including Las Vegas and Orlando, start Dec. 15. (more…)

Michael John Allgood, the young man shot by police at McCarran Airport on Tuesday remains on life support.

Police say Allgood took a young child hostage and ran through an airport security checkpoint. Three Metro officers shot at Allgood. They say he was trying to get police to kill him.

Allgood has a history of mental illness.

After police shot Michael Allgood and he finally let go of the child, an airline reached out and offered support to the boy’s family after the frightening incident. (more…)

(UPI Top Stories Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The U.S. aviation security agency reportedly wants the airline ban on lighters lifted because screeners are spending too much time looking for them.

Kip Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration, was quoted as telling USA Today the ban on passengers carrying lighters aboard airplanes does not add to security any more.

Hawley told the newspaper requiring screeners to confiscate lighters at checkpoints is a distraction from the serious nature of finding (bomb) components. (more…)

Flavour and presentation, once sacrificed in the name of convenience, will be surrendered no more thanks to quick-freeze technology and onboard processing ovens. Trans-Canada Airlines is abandoning the old style of serving pre-cooked food preserved in warming ovens. Instead, travelers will be served frozen meals reheated minutes before consumption. It’s just like a fine meal prepared at home. “I defy you to tell the difference,” challenges a TCA stewardess in this CBC Radio interview.

HIGH POINT — Josephine Tyburski spent 44 years working for Alitalia SpA — the Italian national airline — in New York. After receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer in 2004, she came to High Point to be with her daughter and to get medical treatment here.

She and her family expected that the airline would help take care of her. It had promised to do so by paying for extra medical bills, said Tyburski’s daughter Georgina Bell, 35.

It didn’t end up that way. (more…)

Air Canada Jazz has suspended four mechanics a day after they publicly raised concerns about safety at the airline.

Dave Avella, Gianni Ballestrin, Grant Anastas and Ron Anstey, all mechanics at Jazz’s Toronto facility, were suspended with pay pending an investigation by the airline into comments they made to the Star, including allegations they are pressured to release planes with defects that could compromise public safety.

Meanwhile, Transport Canada yesterday said it was launching an audit into Jazz’s mechanical operations in the next three months. (more…)

Geneva.– Nearly one out of two airline tickets issued to travellers is currently in electronic form and paper tickets are on track to disappear completely by 2007, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced recently.

The association, which represents 265 airlines accounting for 94 percent of international air traffic, indicated that it would begin penalising members that failed to introduce electronic tickets by the end of next year. (more…)

US Airways Group Inc. is stepping up its Philadelphia operations this fall with more flights to and from three cities.

The company said Monday there will be one more flight per day to and from New Orleans and Wilmington, N.C. There will be two flights added per day to and from Buffalo, N.Y.

The change starts Sept. 6. US Airways (NYSE: LCC) said it is adding flights to meet demand for the markets. (more…)