Flybe becomes first budget airline to drop £9 debit card fees: Independent

[Independent] Change comes as the Office of Fair Trading is considering legal action against travel firms that refuse to scrap debit-card charges.

The airline has abandoned its £9 flat fee for paying with debit cards

Flybe, Europe’s largest regional carrier, says it has removed the charge as part of “A fair, open and transparent approach to sales and service policies”.

Until its removal today, the fee earned Flybe an average of £4.50 for each passenger flown. But the airline’s UK managing director, Andrew Strong, told The Independent: “I’m not looking to put up fares to offset the removal. People will choose us because we offer a better product.”

Passengers should therefore find fares slightly lower.

Flybe introduced baggage fees six years ago. Initially the charge stood at £2; today, the fee for a small 15kg bag on a short flight is six times as much.

The change comes as the Office of Fair Trading is considering legal action against travel firms that refuse to scrap debit-card charges. After a “super-complaint” by Which? about surcharges, the OFT said it might take traders to court: “If individual traders do not make changes we consider sufficient in a timely manner, we will consider enforcement action to ensure compliance”.

Europe’s two biggest low-cost airlines, easyJet and Ryanair, have no plans to drop their charges. Ryanair collects £6 per passenger, per flight, for debit and credit card payments; the fee can be avoided by paying with the airline’s own-brand Cash Passport pre-paid card.

The airline describes the charge as an…..

Read the rest of Simon Calder’s article at The Indepedent….

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Simon Calder
Independent 26 April 2012

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Low-cost carriers face test in Japan: FT.com

The enthusiasm among passengers was palpable on Peach Aviation’s Flight MM153, as the low-cost carrier made its way from Osaka’s Kansai International Airport (KIX) to Fukuoka early last month.

Peach, which began operations on March 1, is the first of three low-cost carriers to arrive this year in Japan

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After the cabin attendant thanked the passengers on one of the first flights for the fledgling airline, spontaneous applause erupted, with one excited customer even calling out, “ganbatte-ya”, or “Good luck,” in the Osaka dialect.

Peach, which began operations on March 1, is the first of three low-cost carriers to arrive this year in Japan, the third-largest domestic air market in the world but virtually virgin territory for budget airlines. High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article.

n July it will be joined by Jetstar Japan and in August by AirAsia Japan, providing domestic travellers with greater choice and lower prices in flights between some of the country’s busiest destinations, such as Tokyo and Sapporo in the north. All three airlines are joint ventures between foreign investors and Japanese airlines, since foreigners can only own up to one-third of a Japanese domestic airline.

The simultaneous arrival of the three low-cost carriers is a direct result of the government’s policy to stimulate the domestic air travel market.

Competition in Japan’s air travel market has long been restricted by a lack of landing slots at major airports, high landing fees and, until deregulation in 2008, restrictions on the amount of discounting allowed….. cont…

Read the full story at The Financial Times…..

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By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo
Financial Times

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Pay your way, airport boss tells Ryanair

THE boss of Edinburgh Airport said Ryanair has “to pay its way” as he hit back in the row with the budget airline over its plans to axe eight routes from the Scottish capital.

Michael O`Leary, chief executive of Ryanair. Picture: Reuters

THE boss of Edinburgh Airport said Ryanair has “to pay its way” as he hit back in the row with the budget airline over its plans to axe eight routes from the Scottish capital.

Jim O’Sullivan said he would not have the no-frills airline “flying here for free” as he dismissed suggestions from the Dublin-based firm that Edinburgh airport had failed to offer a competitive deal.

The attack on Ryanair came after the airline’s deputy chief executive, Michael Cawley, flew into Edinburgh yesterday to announce “devastating reductions” to the carrier’s winter routes, with the scrapping of the destinations of Bratislava, Bremen, Frankfurt, Fuerteventura, Gothenburg, Kaunas, Lodz and Poznan.

Mr Cawley issued a stark warning about “substantial further reductions” to Ryanair’s Edinburgh operations which he said would be “much smaller” unless airport bosses handed the Irish carrier a better deal.

However, Mr O’Sullivan insisted that he was “not in a position to negotiate” an extension to Ryanair’s five-year base agreement, which expires in October 2012, due to the British Airports Authority (BAA) seeking a buyer for Edinburgh Airport.

He also dismissed claims by Ryanair that 200 jobs had been shed during a previous round of cutbacks by the airline this year that saw the firm end its flight routes to Berlin, as well as scrapping plans for services to Malmo in Sweden, Murcia and Ibiza in Spain, and Tallinn in Estonia.

Mr O’Sullivan said: “We’re not in a position to negotiate because of the sale process, but in the long term, we’re confident we’ll be able to go to them with a proposition. We can’t have them flying here for free and they’ve got to pay their way. We have 40 airlines and have to be fair and we can’t have 39 airlines subsidising the other.”…..

Read the full story at The Scotsman….

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The Scotsman – scotsman.com
Published Friday 13 April 2012

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‘Ryanair welcomes you to Paris-Disney’: Airline’s bizarre claim about airport 70 miles from Disney…and 90 miles from Paris

It might be 90 miles from Paris and 70 miles from Disneyland but that has not stopped budget airline Ryanair naming its latest operating airport – ‘Paris-Vatry-Disney’.

Speaking to The Independent, Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's chief executive, said: 'We are generating very significant demand on our three Vatry routes. 'I have myself driven from Vatry to Paris in just over an hour.'

The no-frills group, which is no stranger to controversy, has just launched services from an airfield in the Champagne region of France.

But despite Ryanair marketing it as the ideal gateway to the French capital and Disneyland Paris, it is in fact closer to the Belgian border than the Eiffel Tower and the quaint streets of Montmartre. Speaking to The Independent, Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, said: ‘We are generating very significant demand on our three Vatry routes.’I have myself driven from Vatry to Paris in just over an hour.’

When booking flights online, customers are told that Disneyland Paris is with ‘within easy reach’ from Vatry Airport – but it is about 70 miles away. t the moment flights operate between the Champagne airfield and Marseille, Porto and Stockholm.

If the route proves successful, then flights from Britain could follow. It is not the first time, the company has ‘renamed’ airports despite their location. Ryanair has marketed Frankfurt Hahn, an ex-US Air Force base in the west of Germany, as being near to Frankfurt when it is in fact closer to Luxembourg.

But the creative naming of airports has angered airline rivals including Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet, who described the carrier as flying from ‘nowhere to nowhere’.

In 1999, British Airways took legal action against Ryanair over an advert which it said was written and presented in terms which were ‘materially false and misleading.’ The High Court chucked out the case.

Over the years Ryanair has also hit the headlines following controversial cost-saving ideas

Read the full story at The Daily Mail, (dailymail.co.uk)

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By TARA BRADY
PUBLISHED: 10:42, 7 April 2012 | UPDATED: 10:47, 7 April 2012

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Passengers’ fury as US airline launches $35 fee for carry-on bags

A second airline has announced plans to charge passengers an extra fee, just to take their handbag on a plane.

Charges: Free items must be small enough to go under the seat in front. Anything that needs to go in the over-head locker will have to be paid for

Allegiant Air said it will be charging flyers $35 for carry-on luggage from Wednesday, which matches the charge for checked bags. The fee, which has not yet been publicly announced, will go live on the airline’s website at midnight on Tuesday.

Each passenger will be allowed one free personal item – a laptop, purse or briefcase – provided it is small enough to fit underneath the seat in front. Anything larger that needs to be stored in the over-head locker will incur the charge. Like cabin baggage, paying online can soften the blow, lowering the cost to $14.99-29.99 depending on the destination.

It is the second carrier to announce the fee – Spirit Airlines launched a charge in April 2010, but while successful, it wasn’t hugely popular. Television journalist Matt Lauer told CEO Ben Baldanza that the policy would go down ‘like a fart in a church’.

Allegiant, based in Las Vegas, is a small-time aircraft carrier that ferries travelers from smaller cities to vacation spots such as Orlando, Florida and Las Vagas.

It carries less than 4 percent of the traffic of United or Delta.

Read the full Daily Mail story here….

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By LAURA COX
PUBLISHED: 3 April 2012

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Easyjet to test allocated seating for up to £12 for premium places

Low-cost airline to let 40,000 passengers choose seats for a fee, which chief executive Carolyn McCall said was ‘revenue-neutral’ which chief executive Carolyn McCall said was ‘revenue-neutral’

Easyjet is to trial fee-based passenger allocated seating. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA

Low-cost airlines’ signature scramble for seats may soon be a thing of the past after easyJet announced it is to test allocated seating for passengers.

But as the airline told the City that it had reduced its losses thanks to higher baggage charges, it said the plan to allow 40,000 passengers to pre-book their seats from today on a range of routes this summer was not motivated by squeezing more money out of customers but by a desire to reduce their stress.

When the first easyJet plane took to the skies in 1995, the dash for the prime positions was as much a feature of low-cost flying as a garish onboard colour scheme and an often obscure destination airport.

Now, as the boundaries between traditional airlines and low-cost carriers has become increasingly blurred, passengers can pay to choose their own seat or be allocated one free of charge.

While the service will cost £12 for premium places in the front or exit rows, or £3 for any other chosen seat, the chief executive, Carolyn McCall, said the plan was not a money-spinner but “revenue-neutral”.

“We’ve done a lot of research and found unreserved seating can stress people out a little bit, if they’re not used to boarding that way,” she said. “Our surveys showed that it can be a barrier to people travelling with us.”

Unreserved seating was a founding feature of the low-cost airline revolution primarily because it was seen to be a faster, more efficient way to board aircraft. A fast turnaround at airports has been a key element of the low-cost business model……

More on this story at The Guardian here……

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Gwyn Topham, transport correspondent and agencies
The Guardian, Tuesday 27 March 2012

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Bloomberg News: Air France-KLM Considering New Low-Cost Operation

Air France-KLM Group, Europe’s biggest airline, may start a new low-cost service as the carrier seeks ways to stem losses, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Two possibilities are being considered, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. One would see the development of Transavia, a Dutch subsidiary which has low-cost and charter services. The other would involve the creation of a new service under a new brand alongside Air France for flights shorter than two hours, the person said.

Air France could set up its own low-cost airline.

“No option is excluded in the framework of our transformation plan,” Jean-Charles Trehan, head of Air France- KLM’s press office, said by phone. “Regarding the restructuring of our long- and medium-hauls, different options are being examined. A dedicated working group will release its conclusions in the coming weeks.”

Air France-KLM reported a net loss of 809 million euros ($1.08 billion) for 2011 and is struggling with……..

By Mathieu Rosemain on March 26, 2012

Full story from Business Week & Bloomberg News here….