News and notes from around the interweb:
- Etihad’s quest to build its own fourth global alliance buy buying stakes in money-losing airlines that will continue to lose money, but can be used to redirect traffic through Abu Dhabi, continues with Alitalia. Cranky Flier dissects the Alitalia turnaround plan and finds it strangely like all the past failed turnaround plans. Etihad is just the latest (and possibly last) deep pocket.
- If you have an award on Etihad, check your flight schedules. They’ve just re-timed a bunch of flights for March 29-onward. That’ll create better connectivity to some destinations, but may be highly inconvenient for folks who already have travel plans.
- Speaking of bailouts, Thai Airways will get one instead of being allowed to file bankruptcy. According to the Prime Minister who installed himself in last year’s military coup,
The national airline would have to cut expenses, increase revenue, drop unprofitable routes, restructure its assets and sell some aircraft. The airline would also have to make changes to management, personnel and staff benefits, and travel agents who take up ticket quotas would be fined for unsold, returned tickets
They say they’ll be selling parked aircraft ‘direct to consumer’ without a middle man, which may or may not be wise but I take to be signaling ‘without graft or personal profit.’
- AirAsia abolishes fuel surcharges on all its airlines
- Ask the Pilot hates how US airports are set up for international transfers. The is partially driven by the US not have departing immigration controls, though both the UK and Canada handle this better than we do. I’d rather transfer international-to-international with a change of carriers at Heathrow than at LAX, and I can imagine a non-US citizen would feel doubly so.
- Iberia will resume summer flights to Cuba.
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Not that I endorse the airport situation, but in many cases the US can do whatever it pleases and many have no real choice but to comply. It may backfire in the long run but as the current world leader, they can get away with it in the short term.
What are the chances Etihad will let me change my direct flight ORD-AUH into one with a stopover at MAN/CDG/DUB via AA codeshare? My flight moved up 8 hours which conflicts with my positioning flight… Don’t know which one I should fight to change
Ditto on Walkers issue of Chicago time change causing positioning flight issues. I would just want to switch to Etihad flight out of SFO or LAX though. Would they allow that?
@ Walker — if you have a flight to ORD booked separately, there’s almost no chance Etihad will allow you to add a stopover. They’ve been changing people’s US-Europe-AUH flights to nonstops (but reinstating them when people would call to complain). if you booked both flights with the same site perhaps that may work though.
I also hate the International to International transfer situation in US airports, but the reality is that the US is an origin/destination, not an international hub. With the exception of Latin America to Asia traffic (which just isn’t that significant), North America is simply not well positioned to be a global connecting hub.
@Doug it would certainly improve NZ AKL-LAX-LHR and TN PPT-LAX-CDG!
@Gary – Let’s be honest. The only way to significantly improve LAX would be to burn it to the ground and build a whole new airport.