Author: Shawon Hannan
Virgin Australia has become the latest to introduce a scheme that will reward pets through frequent flier programmes. The airlines will offer pet cats and dogs travelling on its domestic flights to collect points for their owners, and will also offer discounts on future flights. The animals travel in hold, but will have the benefit of earning participating Virgin Australia club members a minimum of 300 points. ‘Virgin Australia flies almost 30,000 pets each year around Australia,’ said Neil Thompson, chief of Virgin Australia’s Velocity club, ‘and a large proportion is owned by Velocity members, so we know how important…
British holidaymakers are set to cancel their trips to Egypt after advice from the Foreign Office urging them to avoid all but essential travel to major parts of the country. The travel advice comes amid the continuing conflict between supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi, who is currently under house arrest. In the latest violence, several deaths were reported on Tuesday in Cairo, along with the death of a US citizen in Alexandria last week. ‘In view of the continued unrest in Egypt, the Foreign Office recommends against all but essential travel to Egypt except for resorts on the…
SWISS, Switzerland’s national airline, is set to offer reduced fares for passengers flying to or from Geneva with no checked baggage. The move, which is in line with the offers by KLM and British Airways at Gatwick, will be effective from September 1, 2013. Starting September 1, SWISS will also be expanding its direct flights network from Geneva Airport to 24 destinations within Europe. The two actions are expected to align SWISS’ Geneva-based product more closely to the needs of customers in Western Switzerland and adjacent French border areas. SWISS will offer a new two-tier tariff structure for its Geneva…
Thai Airways has confirmed that it will postpone its A380 service on the Bangkok to London route. The airline was scheduled to debut the aircraft on the London route from December 1, 2013 following the arrival of its fifth and sixth A380s. However, on July 2 the carrier said that it will not be operating the A380 on the London route until October 30, 2014 – a delay of almost one year. Thai regretted the change of plan, which it said was due to ‘important technical modifications’. The carrier needs two aircraft to execute a daily service and had planned…
Cambridge Airport is set to launch new flights to four European destinations, including Amsterdam and Paris. Under the plan, fifty new flights will be operational every week and all services will be run by Swiss carrier Darwin Airline. Amsterdam will be the key destination, with 24 weekly flights to and from Schiphol. In addition, there will also be 12 flights a week to and from Paris Charles de Gaulle, eight weekly flights to and from Milan’s Malpensa air hub and six weekly services to and from Geneva. Established in 1937, Cambridge Airport has not operated international services much except offering…
British Airways, one of Britain’s leading airlines, has celebrated the launch of a brand new flight from Gatwick airport to the southern Cypriot city of Larnaca, the country’s third largest. Larnaca has a large number of beaches catering to tourism, although it is well located for much of the southern coastline. The city itself boasts a fort, the Church of Saint Lazarus, and the Catacomb of Phaneromeni Church, along with the many tombs that give the city its name. Over 3,000 tombs date back to the 13th century BC, along with numerous other archaeological discoveries and historical sites, and a…
Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, is full of praise for a complaint letter by a frustrated LIAT traveller, and flashed it across to his social media followers. ‘How to write a complaint letter-read this hilarious note from a frustrated airline passenger,’ tweeted Branson. ‘Having once received what many regard as the world’s best complaint letter, I was tickled to see another brilliant note to a different airline,’ Branson said on his blog post. In 2009, Oli Beale, a British advertising executive, censured Branson over the quality of his airline’s in-flight cuisine, calling it a ‘culinary journey of…
British holidaymakers have voted taxi drivers in Paris and Rome as the rudest in the world. According to the survey by airporttransfers.co.uk, cab drivers in the capital cities of France and Italy are seen as the most unhelpful. Their counterparts in holiday destinations such as San Antonio on the Spanish island of Ibiza, Dubai and Magaluf on the island of Majorca are also not polite with their customers, it said. The survey ranked taxi drivers in Pefkos on the Greek island of Rhodes and the Turkish resort of Marmaris as some of the friendliest in the world. Cabbies in Playa…
The fall of the Indian rupee, which has touched unprecedented lows, has affected tourism to and from India. Tourism officials said that travel to South East Asia and domestic destinations had received a boost as the weak rupee has made Indians choose them over dollar destinations for holidays. The value of the rupee, which has fallen below the psychological resistance level of 59.52/dollar, has affected the travel plans of many groups. From students who were planning to settle down in foreign nations to those who had plans to vacation abroad, all have been affected by the weak value of the…
Airlines cutting costs by limiting factors that increase fuel consumption is nothing new, but Indian low-cost airline GoAir looks to be going the extra mile here, announcing plans for a controversial policy of only taking on female cabin crew from now on. The carrier announced that such a move could save it up to £330,000 a year on fuel (30 million rupees), as female staff weigh in around 33lb to 44lb lighter than male staff would on average. It did however clarify that its existing 132 male staff would not be sacked – simply that no new male staff would…