Passengers flying across the Pacific Ocean are set for a major upgrade in inflight connectivity performance. Panasonic Avionics and Eutelsat announced this week that Eutelsat 172b is now in service, delivering a massive increase in…
Alitalia is out, Virgin Atlantic is in: TATL…
Alitalia's struggles continue. The carrier still needs a fresh infusion of cash to pay off the bridge loan from the Italian government and some sort of long-term plan. And, for the latter, Alitalia will soon…
Fiji Airways signs on as inaugural oneworld connect…
Even at 20 years old the oneworld global alliance can still grow and evolve. The group launched a new "oneworld connect" program this week at the IATA Annual General Meeting in Sydney, with Fiji Airways…
Which airline doesn’t hate its connectivity provider?
After listening to United Airlines President Scott Kirby and Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian speak at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference this week one would be forgiven for believing that there is no such…
Biometrics: Real value or gimmicky crap?
It started in late 2017 with JetBlue and Delta Air Lines. In 2018 British Airways and Lufthansa joined the fun. After years of development and integration testing behind the scenes biometric boarding gates are all…
American is "playing to win" with international route…
"We very often don't earn enough cash to cover the price of fuel on the flight." When it comes to making the tough choices about reducing routes this is the sort of obvious trigger point…
Handling the 787 Trent challenges
Last week the FAA slapped a leash on Rolls Royce Trent 1000 Package C engines used on roughly 25% of the Boeing 787 Dreamliners operating worldwide. As expected, the impact quickly spread to aircraft registered in…
Finding détente in the airline-GDS cost battle: Air…
The relationship between airlines and GDS platforms is a tenuous one. Airlines love the GDSen for the ability to sell more tickets but hate them for the higher distribution costs those tickets carry. Plus the…
Shifting gears: Gogo’s push to connect more passengers
What good is having an inflight wifi connectivity product if no one is using it? For the past few years Gogo worked to keep take rates on its platform limited. Prices were high, in part,…