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June 21, 2007

Lastminute.com still sucks - I’m sorry

Filed under: Travel websites — ja @ 3:07 pm

I’ll have to admit to being caught up in the frenzy when Lastminute first came on the scene. They were pioneers of the dotcom bubble, yet somehow they managed to ride out the storm.

Back then, lots of people thought they had a good idea. They certainly had a great name - although there is still an association with booking late, and right now I’m trying to plan ahead.

Back then, lots of people said they’d been to the site, but few people said they’d bought anything from them. I have bought a couple of flights from Lastminute.com in the past, but right now I’m trying to get some concert tickets. I’ve bought a fair few of these this year, but am getting a little bit fed up with paying all these booking fees, so I thought I’d try going through a site that we theoretically have an arrangement with. I tried them last night for hotels in Antigua, and (admittedly just like 3 of the big four), they were useless at that too.

Last time I booked concert tickets through Lastminute.com was back in 2005. I remember them dragging me through several really annoying screens, and I remember getting so frustrated that I decided I would stick with them until I could confirm the booking - whatever it takes. I guess most users would have clicked away by then, but stubbornness was kicking in big time.

So I’ve just found out that Elton John is playing at the new O2 Arena - it should be a great night, but I’d still like to show my “support” to a site we work with. Lastminute doesn’t even have the event listed. Last week, they kindly informed me about new Prince tickets - 3 hours AFTER they had gone on sale.

So I hope they can pull their socks up, but in the meantime, it is back to See Tickets or Ticketmaster for concert tickets, and Expedia for hotels.

Trying out Hotel Booking Websites

Filed under: General Travel (non-flights), Travel websites, Trip reports — ja @ 2:52 pm

I guess I might be ventruing slightly off my cheap (or not so cheap) flights patch here, but I have been asked if we can push a few of the other consolidator websites, especially for hotel and flights packages.

The problem is that I am very stuck in my ways in this respect - if I am looking for hotels in the UK, I nearly always end up on either Late Rooms or Expedia, and Expedia certainly takes the crown for overseas bookings. Sometimes, I’ll give Superbreak a try - and to give them credit where it is due, they do often have some excellent deals on UK city hotels.

So last night I was looking for a hotel for one night in either Antigua or St Lucia, as I can’t find any flights that will get me from Nevis back to Barbados in the same day. When it comes to searching for hotels, I’m pretty flexible - naturally, I’d rather stay somewhere a bit fancy, but I still expect good value. This isn’t always easy to find in the Caribbean, but the starting point has to be at a hotel booking website which offers plenty of choice.

So here’s a simple league table of how many hotels each of the “big four” offered me in Antigua. I think that, for the time being, my loyalty to Expedia shall remain. They have even stopped referring to the “Royal Antiguan” as an “all-inclusive hotel” (see Hotel Snob blog) - about time!

How many hotels in Antigua does each site offer - for one night in early July 2007

 

Coventry terminal bid rejected

Filed under: Uncategorized — ja @ 7:20 am

Coventry airport’s future plans have been scuppered, after a permanent passenger terminal planning application was rejected by the government.

read more | digg story

June 20, 2007

Caribbean inter-island flights are still too expensive, too unreliable, and just too inconvenient

Filed under: Caribbean flights, Just get me there, Uncategorized — ja @ 6:18 pm

If you think you can find bargain flights to the Caribbean from the UK, then that is fine - as long as you only want to stay on the one island.

Try moving between them, and journey planning becomes a nightmare. Unfortunately, the story is one with which we are all too familiar - too little competition, inefficient airlines propped up by state subsidies, and an uncaring attitude amongst upper management when it comes to finding ways to make improvements.

Following February’s marger, the only airline offering a significant level of inter-island flights around the English speaking Caribbean is LIAT. Caribbean Airlines (formerly BWIA) connect some of the larger islands, but these services generally act as feeder flights onto their long haul services. Other connection are available with airlines such as Winair (often through St Martin), or American Eagle (usually though San Juan, Puerto Rico).

I’m looking for flights from Barbados to Nevis. This really shouldn’t be difficult, considering the distance, but I am trying to get back to Barbados on a Tuesday, the one day there are no flights to Antigua (from where the connections are made to Barbados), from Nevis.

It would be easy to say that Nevis has it quite good, considering that only around 11,000 people live on the island. But, as with any Caribbean island, when tourism is the mainstay of the economy, the levels of flights are always going to be significantly higher than the population alone might suggest - and the Four Seasons Nevis resort alone can always generate a steady flow of inbound visitors. Unfortunately, from a British perspective, most visitors to the Four Seasons are arriving on flights from the USA, meaning that Nevis always seems to maintain better connections with San Juan in Puerto Rico than it does with Antigua, even though flights to Antigua only take around 25 minutes.

So why not hop over from neighbouring St Kitts? There might be regular ferries from Nevis to St Kitts, but I still can’t find a flight connection which will get me to Barbados with enough time to spare to catch the 17:25 flight back to Gatwick. The best I can get is a boat which leaves Nevis at 7:00 am, with an expected sailing time of 45 minutes, and a 5 minute cab ride to the airport, that gets me there at 7:50, if all goes to plan. The time of the only flight connection from St Kitts to Barbados? Guess what - 8:20, check-in time 30 minutes, leeway zero.

I lilke to cut things fine, but not that fine.

June 19, 2007

Have Ryanair quietly axed Inverness flights from Liverpool?

Filed under: Aviation Economics, Ryanair, Uncategorized — ja @ 3:27 pm

It looks like Ryanair have stopped offering cheap flights from Liverpool to Inverness for the upcoming winter season.

Ryanair are quite often very happy to say which routes don’t perform well, but this seems to be one they have let go of quietly. Unfortunately, when it comes to confirming these details, Ryanair’s website is one of the most cumbersome out there. There is no quick way of checking timetable details, so users have to scroll back and forth through the dates they are interested in finding flights for.

This is, I’m afraid, yet another example of Ryanair’s needless unhelpfulness. So in the time it takes me to write this blog, I have got as far as confirming that there are no flights between Wednesdays and Saturdays in November. OK - can now confirm this route doesn’t operate on any days in November. Checking back through Ryanair’s booking form confirms that these flights do indeed end on 26th October.

So, we can expect the usual questions about why a route which appears to have been popular, both with point to point travellers, and people making their own onward connections from Liverpool, has been axed.

Our understanding is that these flights were indeed relatively full. There is certainly room for competition on this route, as passengers who have got used to Ryanair’s cheap flights to Inverness will now have to make do with Eastern’s services from an alternative airport like Manchester or Birmingham.

The clue lies in the probable reason for Ryanair offering cheap Inverness flights in the first place. Budget airlines like Ryanair do everything they can to get the best usage out of their aircraft, and this process involves carefully matching up city combinations, so that each plane can perform a maximum number of “rotations” (out and back trips) in one day. Sometimes, the schedule results in a time slot of, let’s say, 2 1/2 hours, into which they need to fit a return trip.

We have always suspected that destinations like Inverness and Aberdeen suit Ryanair’s purposes in this respect very well. In the case of Ryanair’s Aberdeen flights, the “yields” (i.e. the revenue the airline earns for each passenger) seem notably above those for Inverness, so the route seems likely to stay - for the time being at least. In the case of Inverness, it looks like even if Ryanair were making money, they can now make more money by moving their aircraft around to serve other routes.

June 18, 2007

Record visitor numbers for Flightmapping.com

Filed under: Site updates — ja @ 6:37 pm

Yesterday (Monday 18th June) was a record day for Flightmapping.com, in terms of visitor numbers. In total, 9977 people visited the site, leaving us an “unlucky 13″ short of the big 10k.

If we include the 47 visitors to our new (but fast growing, of course) blog, then the total pips just over 10,000 for the first time.

Naturally, we still want to see Flightmapping.com reach this in its own right, and you can rest assured that we will let you know when it does. In the meantime, next time we come close like this, I think it will be time for an internet cafe crawl around Coventry.

That might have brought us to 9979 - ok, maybe not such a good idea then. Cheers!

 

 

Flightmapping on the Radio

Filed under: Aviation Economics, Coventry Airport, Environmental Issues, Media issues, Routes & News, Site updates, Thomson / TUI — ja @ 6:27 pm

Flightmapping’s MD James Avery will be on BBC Radio CWR, in Annie Othen’s travel slot, from around 11:40pm tomorrow (Tuesday 19th June).

Topics set for discussion include:

As always, James promised to be on fighting form, so tune in for some interesting discussion.

 

 

Easyjet - if you want to cut your emissions, start with your email attachments

Filed under: Aviation Economics, Easyjet, Media issues — ja @ 5:58 am

My email is still downloading as I type this - all 57MB worth. Of course, there’s the usual varieties of Monday spam, but the real offender is 11MB worth of image attachments, courtesy of Easyjet, who now need to be dubbed as the web’s most un-email savvy PR office.

I’m not sure if there is a universal guideline for email attachments - I’ve previously worked on about 1MB, but there’s certainly no need to send me images this size - especially when (a) I already have them on a zip disk they gave me at the press conference, and (b) if I do use them, they will only end up as a tiny jpeg image on a news story - no more than 400 pixels wide. If I want more, I know where to find them.

Apart from this minor breach of netiquette, I think the Easyjet Ecojet is a very interesting concept, and will be back for more comment on it later. I just hope the Easyjet PR team think before sending out large attachments next time. This kind of initiative is always going to get a very welcome reception here at Flightmapping.com, but other media outlets, especially the doomsday-predicting Independent, and officially biased BBC are a lot less tolerant!

June 17, 2007

Want to expand an airport? Think about mitigation, mitigation, mitigation.

Filed under: Aviation Economics, Budget flights, Coventry Airport, Environmental Issues, Regulation, Routes & News, Uncategorized — ja @ 7:49 am

Whatever has gone wrong with Coventry Airport’s attempts to open up a new terminal, and offer flights for upto 2 million passengers each year, there is no point in trying to find a scapegoat. Considering that the airport’s current owners took over the lease from TUI on the apparent understanding that the second public inquiry would be a formality, this ruling must come as a tremendous blow to them.

Infact, Coventry Airport’s managing director, Chris Orphanou, has not exactly minced his words when commenting on the decision to the Coventry Evening Telegraph:

“I’m not from Coventry, but had I been from Coventry, I would probably have been creating World War Three today”

Well, I’m not sure if I’d say I’m from Coventry either - I happen to live here, but I’d consider myself to be “from” that other town just up the road - Leamington Spa, or Royal Leamington Spa to the snobs out there. So having seen this argument from both sides of the fence, I think that this is the crux of the problem.

Poor Coventry is surrounded by affluent Warwickshire, which will only deal on its own terms - just look at the history of Warwick University, for more details on this. Meanwhile, just up the road is Birmingham, which is still trying to cling to its claim of being Britain’s second city. Sorry Brum, but in terms of culture, sport, and of course transport, you lost that one to Manchester many moons ago. So time for a quote from my favourite band, with whom I share my name, and who also happen to eminate from Britain’s real second city:

“Stop stop talking about who’s to blame, when all that counts is how to change.” - James, Born of Frustration.

The decision has been made, and we have to live with it. For anyone directly employed at the airport, or who’s business depends on the airport, this is a hard blow to take, especially as we approach what should be a busy summer, not to mention the excitement of the new flights to Poland.

I have lived in this area for 29 of the 31 years I have spent on this planet. Prior to moving to Coventry, I lived in north Leamington. I also took a substantial interest in green issues when at university, so I think I can see this debate from most angles. 

I have repeatedly pointed out that Coventry Airport needs an intelligent surface access (ie ground transport) strategy. They need to innovate, and to turn this obvious weakness into a strength - just laying on a couple of buses doesn’t do this. They need to look at the shared taxi system used by Chiltern Trains at Bicester North (where parking constraints are a real problem), or they need to investigate whether or not Thomsonfly’s customer database can be used to offer this service as an add-on (hey, potential revenue earner here too).

I don’t buy the argument that mitigation wasn’t sufficient. If this was the case, surely the inspectorate could have imposed greater restrictions on the airport. This is to be expected anyway, as environmental concerns continue to grab more headlines. Let’s not forget that 1 million departures each year would have sent £10m to the treasury, yet nimbys tend to go strangely silent when asked if some of that income should go towards mitigation schemes.

Noise and air pollution will be a problem at any airport, but it doesn’t take a genius to glance at a map, and see that the residential areas around Birmingham Airport are a great deal more dense than those around Coventry.

I still believe that this difference in noise footprint more than equates for any alleged lack of public transport at Coventry Airport - especially as most of Coventry’s passengers are on leisure trips anyway. Let us not forget that, for all Birmingham’s talk about having a station on site, 4 out of 5 people using it still arrive there by private transport or taxi. As with many other UK airport’s, Birmingham’s proximity to the main London to Birmingham railway line can be put down to an accident of geography, rather than any deliberate foresight. However much I would like to see more people getting to and from airports by public transport, this should never be a reason for an airport to be refused the opportunity to expand.

So I think that the environmental reasons for the refusal of planning permission can and should be challenged, however much of a whipping stick the media like to beat the aviation industry with. Once those are given a fair weighting, I think that the case for moderate, controlled and mitigated expansion at Coventry - which is all anyone has ever asked for - is entirely reasonable, and consistent with the needs of the Midlands as a whole.

Coventry Airport flights expansion refused - what went wrong?

Filed under: Aviation Economics, Coventry Airport, Environmental Issues, Regulation, Routes & News, Thomson / TUI — ja @ 7:29 am

A couple of years back, I devoted a huge amount of time to defending Coventry Airport’s plans to launch more flights, and to cater for upto 2 million passengers per year.

Despite attempts by some of the anti-airport campaigners to suggest that I was doing this because I had commercial interests to protect, my reasons for getting involved boiled down to a simple belief that the airport’s plans were reasonable and moderate, and that they should be given full support.

It just happens to be that Flightmapping.com is based in Coventry, and that much of the opposition to the airport’s expansion plans was eminating from within the chattering classes of Warwick District, within which I had lived for many years. I have to give it to Warwick District Council, they are a tough bunch - much as though I completely disagree with the stance they have taken, their viewpoint has been vindicated - at least for now.

How different it might have been if the airport was in the boundaries of Coventry? I also can’t help wondering if the decision would have been the same, had TUI still maintained ownershop of the lease on the Coventry Airport site.

At some stage in the not to distant future, I will need to thoroughly digest the report, but I am still sensing that the grounds for refusal ultimately boil down to the presence of Birmingham Airport, rather than the inherent strength of local opposition. I expect that this is a combination of the pre-existence of Birmingham (for mainstream passenger purposes), the public transport provision that Birmingham offers, and its inherent political clout, rather than any individual reason - or grand conspiracy, as some commentators might suggest. I’ll leave the conspiracy theories to the government’s White Paper proposals to build a new airport near Rugby - an obvious political hoax if ever there was one!

Despite the obvious blow that the airport operators have just been dealt, this is far from over - there are appeals, and possible alternative submissions to think about. Meanwhile, the current terminal continues to operate, and to do so with planning permission.

I hope that the key political voices in Coventry will make their opinions known in the right places - shame on Jim Cunningham for caving in to the nimby arguments.

If a local shop of 70 years’ standing was refused planning permission to open a second checkout desk, on the grounds that there was a large supermarket with 12 desks, and plans to expand to 36 desks, just 120 yards away, there would be total outrage, and cries of bullying on the part of said supermarket. Yet shops also cause disturbances, albeit on a different scale. And don’t get me started on the nuisance going on outside a certain local pub last night!

I hope that people will sense a similar outrage over what has happened here, and that they will see through the political points scoring which is so easy to do these days in the name of the environment, when it is perfectly clear that there are other, far greater, vested interests at play.

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