The iPads enable cabin crew to have prior awareness of customer preferences and a greater understanding of each customer’s previous travel arrangements, allowing them to offer a truly bespoke, personalised service.

The iPad lets crew quickly identify where each customer is seated, who they are travelling with, their Executive Club status and any special meal requests. It gives cabin crew a whole library of information at their fingertips including timetables, safety manuals and customer service updates. It also means any issues can be logged with ground-based colleagues around the network prior to departure so solutions can be delivered while the flight is airborne.

When all the passengers have boarded and just before the doors are shut, cabin crew are currently handed a long scroll of paper, listing up to 337 customers. With the new iPads cabin crew will simply refresh their screen when the doors have closed through wireless 3G networks and they will have a complete list of passengers on board.

Bill Francis, British Airways’ head of inflight customer experience, said: “The iPad is already allowing us to offer a more personalised onboard service, but the possibilities for future development are endless. We’re receiving great feedback from cabin crew and customers already.  It allows the crew to offer the thoughtful service they want to deliver and customers are treated as valued guests.”

The iPad is currently being trialled with 100 cabin crew with the aim to roll it out to all senior crew members across the airline in the coming months.
Don’t steal them

Hat Tip @airlinetrends

Seven years of intensive work, calculations and tests by a team of 70 people and 80 partners have contributed to producing this revolutionary carbon fibre aeroplane, with a wingspan as wide as that of an Airbus A340 (63.4m) and a weight equivalent to that of an average family car (1 600kg).

It is the largest aeroplane of its weight ever to have been built. The 12,000 solar cells integrated into the wing supply four electric motors (maximum power 10CV each) with renewable energy and charge the 400kg lithium polymer batteries during the day, enabling the aircraft to fly at night.

The Solar Impulse project is supported, among others, by: Solvay, Omega, Deutsche Bank and Schindler as Principal Partners; Bayer Material Science and Altran as Official Partners; EPFL (Lausanne Federal Institute of Technology) as Official Scientific Consultant and Dassault-Aviation as Aviation Consultant.

The solar aeroplane Solar Impulse, Bertrand Piccard, André Borschberg and their team will be in Paris next week as the Paris Air show‘s « Special Guests ».

This will be the first air show appearance made by the revolutionary aeroplane, culmination of a genuine human and technological adventure, which made a historic 26-hour day and night flight without fuel, powered only by solar energy, in July 2010.

From 20 to 26 June, visitors to the show will be able look closely at Solar Impulse on the ground, and each morning, so long as weather conditions are favourable, admire its majestic flying displays whilst marvelling at the silence of its electric motors.

With the participation of Solar Impulse, the Paris Air Show continues its tradition of presenting the most innovative prototypes, which have marked the history of the show for more than 100 years, thereby sharing its passion and dreams with visitors.

Given its 64 metre wingspan (as wide as an Airbus A340), light weight and extremely slow speed, organising flying displays by the Solar Impulse HB-SIA at the Paris Air Show is also a real aviation challenge, which will be faced jointly on a daily basis by teams from both the Show and Solar Impulse.

We’ll be there too!

Kudos to Troy Thompson for these stats.

Over 1100 installations on

• AirTran Airways
• Alaska Airlines
• American Airlines
• Delta Air Lines
• United Airlines
• US Airways
• Virgin America

The company, which says Facebook is its most visited site,  is trying to promote in-flight WiFi because only a small percentage of passengers are logging on. While some flights see more WiFi connections than others (Virgin’s Boston – San Francisco has apparently been nicknamed the ‘nerd bird’ by crew),  TomGuides cites analyst Amy Cravens who estimates that passengers connecting to the Internet while flying are between 7 and 10 percent.

Now you just have to select the Gogo wireless network on your mobile device or laptop, open your browser and click on the Ford/Facebook banner.

Please take your seat, fasten your seatbelts, there’s no turbulence in the cloud, have a great poke!

Now Boarding

Discover what you can do with Boarding with facts, numbers and case studies in the following Slideshare presentation.

For any information, feel free to contact Damien Guinet, damien@boarding.fr.

« It became clear to KLM very quickly that the idea of a direct flight to Miami is a popular one among the Dutch Dance Scene. « It’s why we took on the bet! » said Martijn van der Zee, VP E-Commerce at KLM. « We can rightly call it a first – the first time KLM will deploy an aircraft following a request on Twitter. Social media are becoming more and more important to KLM to offer information and service to our customers. »

via
Hat tip @cdeniaud

The use of RFID will not only help speed baggage check-in and loading, but staff will also be able to use hand-held RFID readers locate baggage quickly in the hold of an airplane if an item has to be offloaded.

« The Qantas Q Bag Tag represents a revolutionary approach to utilizing RFID in airline applications, » says Alain Fanet, CEO of TAGSYS. « By expanding the value proposition of RFID from the point the customer checks their baggage and throughout the handling and sortation process, Qantas has positioned itself on the leading edge of RFID utilization. »

The deployment of a permanent, RFID-based baggage tag is unique in the airline industry. Previous RFID-based baggage tracking solutions relied on wasteful, disposable tags, and focused exclusively on improving the efficiency and accuracy of baggage sortation after the check-in process. The Qantas solution, offers an environmentally friendly reusable tag, which improves the accuracy and speed of after check-in processes, while offering new customer service benefits at the front-end of the process as well.

The baggage tags have been being distributed to Qantas premium frequent flyers. Once the solution is fully deployed, Qantas hopes to eliminate paper baggage tags for all its frequent flyers.

Statistically, you’d therefore 20 times more likely to be struck by lightning, than to be in an airplane victim of a terrorist attack.

Via Now Boarding.fr

They embark immediately after the match against South Africa this afternoon, without returning to their hotel or to Pezula Knysna. Adieu, now just go?

The French team arrived in South Africa via a Blue Line A310-300ER .

Great contrast with the Boeing 737  configuration they should take … soon!

Every two months, Olivier Poussier, World’s Best Sommelier in 2000 and wine advisor for Air France, offers a new wine list on board Air France flights. His choice of wines is based on quality criteria as well as factors linked to the special environment in an aircraft cabin.

Photo via

The wines are chosen for their ability to adapt to air transport. As older vintages need time to breathe before drinking, they are not compatible with flight conditions. Younger wines are chosen as they are better adapted to the dry cabin conditions and air pressure. They are recognized as being the best wines from the various French wine-producing regions.

Every year on board its flights, Air France serves its passengers over one million bottles of Champagne. Air France is the only airline to offer all its passengers free Champagne on board its international long-haul flights, even in the Voyageur cabin.

Since June 2009, passengers travelling in the La Première cabin have been enjoying the choice of wines from the Air France collection in new wine glasses. Designed especially for Air France together with Olivier Poussier, they provide a wide surface area for the wine to aerate and enable the flavours to reach their full potential.

Air France cabin crew are given special instructions about wine and how to serve it. They learn how to present the bottle, how to open it, show it to the passenger and the difference between serving wine and Champagne, … essential for optimum wine-tasting.

Enjoy!

The package « Your choice«   from $9 to $19 each way, depending on length of the flight, also includes other services, such as a $75 discount on changes to your itinerary or « standby » for an earlier flight on the day of  departure.

Note: Travelers with special needs or young children will still board early without a fee. Nice from AA.

Isn’t it a neat way to announce “We’ve found of another way to extract money from you.”

The ticket price increases will see Lufthansa pass on some of its investment costs to customers, a Lufthansa spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires. Prices will be increased in many markets but not worldwide.

For round-trip tickets within Europe, prices will rise between 10 and 20€, while the increase for long-distance flights will be around 30€ (37 USD), the spokesman said.

Lower fuel costs will also be passed on to customers through a lower fuel surcharge, he said. The surcharge will fall to 21€ a flight within Germany and Europe, down by around 3€. For long-distance hauls, the surcharge will decrease around 5€ to between 77€ and 92€, according to the length of the flight.

Photographie: Caribb

The new service is the first nonstop route from France to Las Vegas and provides greater access to one of Las Vegas’ top sources of overseas visitors. The airline is expected to bring more than 10,000 visitors to Las Vegas this summer.

Operating twice weekly on Sundays and Thursdays, the 354-seat passenger plane will depart from Paris at 3:30 p.m., and arrive in Las Vegas at 6:05 p.m. local time.

The return flight departs Las Vegas at approximately 8:20 p.m. and arrives in Paris the following day at 3:15 p.m.



Due for completion in 2012, the new terminal will feature heated marble floors, fountains, greenery and high-end furniture intended to showcase French design, the 62-year-old Graff, chairman and CEO since 2003, said today.

The company will have spent 1.3 billion euros in more than a decade upgrading terminal 2E, used predominantly by Air France and its SkyTeam alliance partners, and adding the two so-called satellites. EasyJet’s adjacent terminal 2B base, part of the original 1981 building, isn’t due for a revamp until 2015.

No additional construction will be needed for 10 years, Graff said. “In terms of pure capacity needs we could have postponed the new terminal,” he said.

The decision to press ahead reflected tougher competition for stopover passengers from London Heathrow’s two-year-old Terminal 5 and a revamped Madrid airport, the CEO added. “We didn’t really have a choice — even with less traffic we need Satellite 4 to boost our service quality and improve as a hub.”

More at Bloomberg Business Week

Asiana Airlines was named winner of the Airline of the Year 2010 title, ahead of Singapore Airlines (2nd) and Qatar Airways in 3rd place.

Some 40 different airlines from around the world assembled to receive their accolades, which were handed out by Mr Edward Plaisted, Chairman of Skytrax. The award winners are selected by the airline industry’s most important audience, it’s customers.

More than 17.9 million air travellers from over 100 different nationalities took part in the 10 month survey, between July 2009 and April 2010. The awards are respected and recognised around the world for being the only truly global, independent passenger survey of airline standards, and are known as « the Passenger’s Choice ».

Commenting on the Airline of the Year 2010 award received by Asiana Airlines, Mr Plaisted said: « this is a fantastic achievement for Asiana Airlines to be named winner of this top Airline of the Year Award, and Asiana Airlines are clearly meeting and exceeding their customer’s expectations. This award represents a true recognition of the front-line product and service that Asiana Airlines is delivering to it’s customers, and the award slogan of ‘The Passenger’s Choice’ underlines the fact that Asiana Airlines are succeeding in satisfying the hardest critics – their users. »

Asiana Airlines President and CEO, Mr Young-Doo Yoon, said : « We would like to express our most heartfelt appreciation to our customers who voted us for Skytrax 2010 Airline of the Year Award. Asiana Airlines is extremely honored to be recognized as the world’s top airline by our customers and to be awarded our industry’s highly esteemed accolade from Skytrax. To be the winner of the 2010 Airline of the Year Award is even more special and holds greater meaning, as it is ‘The Passenger’s Choice’. »

The final top 10 places in the Airline of the Year were:

1.  Asiana Airlines
2.  Singapore Airlines
3.  Qatar Airways
4.  Cathay Pacific
5.  Air New Zealand
6.  Etihad Airways
7.  Qantas Airways
8.  Emirates
9.  Thai Airways
10. Malaysia Airlines

THE 2010 AWARDS SUMMARY IS LISTED BELOW:

Airline of the Year
WINNER: Asiana Airlines

Best Low-Cost Airline Worldwide
WINNER: Air Asia

Most Improved Airline
WINNER: Garuda Indonesia

Best Regional Airline
WINNER: Dragonair

Best Leisure / Charter Airline
WINNER: Thomson Airways

Best Cabin Staff
WINNER: Singapore Airlines

Best Inflight Entertainment
WINNER: Emirates

Best Airport Services
WINNER: Thai Airways

Best Economy Class
WINNER: Malaysia Airlines

Best Premium Economy Class
WINNER: Qantas

Best Business Class
WINNER: Qatar Airways

Best First Class
WINNER: Etihad Airways

Best Airline : Transatlantic
WINNER: Virgin Atlantic

Best Airline : Transpacific
WINNER: Cathay Pacific

Best Airline : Africa
WINNER: South African Airways

Best Airline : Asia
WINNER: Asiana Airlines

Best Airline : Australia/Pacific
WINNER: Air New Zealand

Best Airline : C America/Caribbean
WINNER: TACA Airlines

Best Airline : China
WINNER: Hainan Airlines

Best Airline : Eastern Europe
WINNER: Malev Hiungarian Airlines

Best Airline : Europe
WINNER: Lufthansa

Best Airline : India/Central Asia
WINNER: Kingfisher Airlines

Best Airline : Middle East
WINNER: Qatar Airways

Best Airline : North America
WINNER: Air Canada

Best Airline : Northern Europe
WINNER: Finnair

Best Airline : South America
WINNER: LAN Airlines

Best Airline : South East Asia
WINNER: Singapore Airlines

Best Airline : Southern Europe
WINNER: Turkish Airlines

Best Airline : Western Europe
WINNER: Lufthansa

Best Airline Alliance
WINNER: Oneworld Alliance

Best Airline Lounge – Business Class
WINNER: Virgin Atlantic

Best Airline Lounge – First Class
WINNER: Thai Airways

Best Airline Seat – Business Class
WINNER: Singapore Airlines

Best Airline Seat – Economy Class
WINNER: Kingfisher Airlines

Best Airline Seat – First Class
WINNER: Etihad Airways

Best Airline Seat – Premium Economy Class
WINNER: Qantas Airways

Best Low-Cost Airline Africa
WINNER: Kulula

Best Low-Cost Airline Asia
WINNER: Air Asia

Best Low-Cost Airline Australia/Pacific
WINNER: Virgin Blue

Best Low-Cost Airline Europe
WINNER: Air Berlin

Best Low-Cost Airline India
WINNER: IndiGo

Best Low-Cost Airline Middle East
WINNER: Air Arabia

Best Low-Cost Airline North America
WINNER: Virgin America

Best Low-Cost Airline South America
WINNER: GOL

Best Onboard Catering – Business Class
WINNER: Qatar Airways

Best Onboard Catering – Economy Class
WINNER: Turkish Airlines

Best Onboard Catering – First Class
WINNER: Etihad Airways

Staff Service Excellence Award – Africa
WINNER: South African Airways

Staff Service Excellence Award – Asia
WINNER: Malaysia Airlines

Staff Service Excellence Award – Australia/Pacific
WINNER: Air New Zealand

Staff Service Excellence Award – C America/Caribbean
WINNER: TACA Airlines

Staff Service Excellence Award – China
WINNER: Hainan Airlines

Staff Service Excellence Award – Europe
WINNER: Swiss Int’l Airlines

Staff Service Excellence Award – India/Central Asia
WINNER: Kingfisher Airlines

Staff Service Excellence Award – Middle East
WINNER: Qatar Airways

Staff Service Excellence Award – North America
WINNER: WestJet

Staff Service Excellence Award – South America
WINNER: LAN Airlines

Via Skytrax WorldAirlineAwards

The move is part of a fleet renewal program at the company’s charter airline division Air Transat, under which it is replacing older Airbus A310s.

Air Transat currently operates five of A330s, three more will be in operation by the end of 2010 and another in 2011, bringing the total of A330s to nine.

Terms of the lease were not disclosed.

Today I understood what it really costs to pay cheap. EasyJet is a perfect example of what happens when you go to cheap and cut any key aspect of the user experience when you mostly need it: in case of problem.

EasyJet yesterday cancelled a flight. Last minute. I discovered that on site. No notification although the knew it 2h before and had my email.

The worst part is coming

There was 2 personns to handle 100+ travellers at a rate of 1 per 10 min. No explanations. No dilligence. Silence until you get to the counter

Once you get there you are told that the next available flight is in 4 days. And that they are not arranging any accomodation or new flight with other companies.

Meaning you are in deep shit and they know it (and they don’t care).

They then explain they may refund your ticket if you want (really? *if* ?). But you have to go through a process online.

I checked this site this morning. Except the fact it s hard to find it is full of bugs and long to fill in addition to the stupid fact you have to create a new account in addition to your EasyJet account.

Very efficient

EasyJet made me loose money but mostly time and energy in a critical period of my business life.

They handled stupidly and cheap (like their to ticket price ) the situation.

I had to find my solution alone. The airport had no wifi in the cheap terminal they were in (they need to save on that too).

So all I had was my iPhone. My brother helped me book a ticket for next day (everything is packed in Barcelona because ofthe mobile congress) and finding a hotel is a nightmare.

What saved my life was Twitter. Twitter is EasyJet unexpected best customer support. I literrally received 10 proposals of help and finally spent a great evening. Problem solved in 10 minutes.

Wow !!

EasyJet makes you pay every dollar you save with them. Now I am going to make them pay for this.

This is just the beginning of a long fight. Starting with this post. Twits and more to come.

I will avoid them always from now.

They just felt on the wrong customer.

When booking my tickets to go back to France for the holidays, I saw that I could make a stop to JFK and take the brand new, and at the time of booking not even in service, Air France Airbus A380. It’s very easy to make the decision if you’re as passionate as me about planes. The A380 is also very special for me, because I followed that fantastic project from the beginning, the construction of the factory in Toulouse, my hometown, to the first flight, and the first inauguration. I just wanted to share my experience on board of this fantastic aircraft, round-trip from New-York JFK and Paris CDG.

Of course, the first thing that is impressive, is the size of the airplane. The tail is just gigantic and the surface of the wings as big as a football field. The engines diameter is the same as the diameter of an A320 fuselage itself! (hard to believe but it’s true!) It’s nowhere near the size of any other airplane, which make the A380 very noticeable. Boarding didn’t took much longer than my previous flights on a Boeing 747 or 777, especially from Paris where the Charles De Gaulle airport has 3 steps connected to the plane, while JFK only had 2, one for each deck.

What is different in Economy class than other airplanes? Well, quite a lot. First, you enjoy 1 inch of more legroom, a much bigger screen in each seat, and a compartment on the side of the window seats both on the main and upper deck. Windows are bigger than other airplanes, which is enjoyable. I was now seated, mood lighting was blinking and changing colors gently and we were ready to go and enjoy the show!

The plane started, and we were aligned to start taxiing to the runway. Everyone was really surprised to see the plane live on their screen, thanks for the “tail cam”. It’s a camera that is located at the top of the tail of the plane, and that gives you a live view of pretty much the whole plane, during the whole flight. It’s a really nice touch, and it’s available on all A380. Now we could see the runway, and we were ready to take off. Full power… and we could barely ear the engines! Believe it or not, as soon as the tires are not touching the ground anymore, we could barely ear a small noise, that were the engines. It’s is very impressive, and it was the first flight in a while where I didn’t had to put on my in-ear earbuds. Also, something impressive during the takeoff is that you really feel that it’s an Heavy plane (notice the capital H). It’s fairly slow to take off and get some altitude at takeoff, something I never felt in any other airplane. There’s that “huh” moment at takeoff where you ask yourself if you’re actually going to make it.

We were now at our cruising altitude, it was time for me to discover the brand new video on demand system that Air France specially redesigned for the A380. There was about a hundred movies, old or new to enjoy, definitely the biggest selection I ever got in an airplane. The screens have a much better resolution than the ones you’re used to, you can create chat rooms or use pre-defined rooms and chat live with the passengers thanks to the keyboard located at the back of the remote, you can watch one of the 3 live cameras located at the tail, under or in the nose of the plane. Something that is really nice are the new upgraded high quality maps displayed during the flight, they even added history fact on them like where the Titanic sinked, or where some historical battles took place. Definitely a nice touch. Just like the USB plug available next to your screen. While you cannot watch your own movie you could have stored on it, you can download content from the plane to your key. Content include some desktop widgets (Windows only), metro maps and other tourist documents from your destination, videos about Air France, the construction of the A380.

During the flight, I couldn’t resist to walk a bit in the plane, especially in the bar area at the back of the plane, next to the stairs that brings you upper deck, which is about 70% reserved for Business class seats, and the rest were Economy class. As Premiere or Business passengers you can also access a “Gallery” area in front of the plane, that display art from museums all around the world. I cannot say more about it since I was in Economy and could not access this part of the place.

7 hours after it was time to enjoy the sunrise while starting our descent to Paris. The flight was super smooth, super quiet and enjoyable. Definitely better than on board of old planes, which makes you want to only fly A380s after. We just have to patient for the A380 to be available in more airlines, and more routes. With 25 deliveries since it’s commercial launch, and as many planned for 2010, that’s mores chances to fly a A380 in the next year!

More photos are available on my Flickr.