airline

Google News snafu leads to airline stock plunge

What was the unlikely culprit behind a 75 percent drop in United Airlines' stock on Monday? An erroneous Google News search, that's what.

The problem was that an investor news service, the South Florida-based Income Securities Advisors, found a Chicago Tribune article from 2002 via Google News and consequently included it in that day's news digest--which wound up on Bloomberg's news wire. The content of the story wasn't the sort you want to be publishing if it isn't true: that United Airlines had filed for bankruptcy. Considering the state of the airline industry today, it … Read more

American Airlines launches in-flight Wi-Fi

American Airlines passengers will now have Wi-Fi access on some flights.

The airline said Wednesday that it has finally launched its in-flight Internet access service via Wi-Fi on 15 of its 767-200 airplanes. The service, called Gogo, will be offered on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami. The cost is $12.95 per flight. Passengers will be able to sign up when they boot up their browsers.

The airline will be restricting the use of voice over IP services, such as Skype, and it will still restrict the … Read more

Southwest Airlines CEO crowdsources his Halloween costume

A few years ago, it was trendy and "transparent" for CEOs to have their own blogs. But typically it didn't go this far--then again, Southwest Airlines chief Gary Kelly isn't your average CEO.

Kelly posted an entry on the Southwest blog on Tuesday asking readers to contribute to an annual poll he hosts: What should he dress up as for Halloween? Kelly has been known to go all-out, and provided photo evidence of past costumes that included Hairspray drag queen Edna Turnblad, Pirates of the Caribbean's Captain Jack Sparrow, and painted-up Kiss bassist Gene Simmons.… Read more

Fly me to the moon

If you're a serious airline geek like me, you've saved every airline boarding pass you've ever used. No, it doesn't make sense but you do it anyway. But until recently, my boarding passes sat in a box with really no practical use except for the occasional bookmark. That was until I learned about a Web site that lets you put your flight history to very good use.

FlightMemory.com is a fantastic and free Web site that allows you to log your commercial flights into a database that will then give you oodles of cool statistics. … Read more

Delta testing cell phone-based airline check-in

If you're flying Delta Air Lines out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, you can now flash your cell phone to get onboard. On Tuesday, the airline rolled out a partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to test out a "paperless check-in"--passengers download a boarding pass onto their cell phones and have it scanned by the TSA at the airport's security checkpoint as well as when they board the plane.

Fellow domestic carrier Continental is already testing a similar program.

The speedier check-in is limited to cell phone customers who can access the mobile … Read more

The 404 121: Where a little Wilson goes a long way

The 404 guys are back along with their trusty sidekick "The Artist formerly known as MTI." On this good Monday morning, they wax poetic about "Crappening" movies they saw this weekend along with a little "Hulk Smash!" Apparently, the Wii Fit actually makes you less of a fat-ass. Sony Ericsson makes a N-Gage competitor. Hermione Granger got hot and 6 million dollars in a Chanel makeup deal and finally some Asian guy (not Justin Yu) is into armpit sniffing. Find out why it got him 14 years and 18 slashes in Singaporean prison. EPISODE … Read more

$15 to check a bag, but free to charge an iPod

United Airlines has been subject to some pretty bad press recently for being one of several airlines to slap a $15 fee on checked bags, but here's a perk: the commerical carrier announced on Monday that it's starting to install iPod and iPhone connectivity features in its airplanes.

More specifically, owners of Apple's media devices can hook them up to the planes' in-flight entertainment systems; they can navigate through music and video on the seat back televisions while charging the devices in the process. The connectivity technology has been manufactured by Panasonic Avionics.

United is the first … Read more

Good user experience comes from good employee experience

Creating good User Experiences (UX) over and over again means creating first good Employee Experiences (EX - I'm trademarking that!). That's the lesson from Southwest airlines according to an NY Times article about retiring co-founder Herbert Kelleher:

Over the years, whenever reporters would ask him the secret to Southwest's success, Mr. Kelleher had a stock response. "You have to treat your employees like customers," he told Fortune in 2001. "When you treat them right, then they will treat your outside customers right. That has been a powerful competitive weapon for us."...

[W]hen … Read more

Singapore Airlines offers iPod-friendly skies

Every day it seems we get little closer to being fully wired--or unwired, as the case may be--in midair. And we think it's about time.

A day after iPass said it would provide in-flight Wi-Fi roaming, Singapore Airlines announced that it is now offering connectivity for iPods and iPhones on its "KrisWorld" in-flight entertainment system on its Airbus A340-500 planes, according to iLounge. That means you can plug the devices into the system with a standard 30-pin connector and then watch your own video on a personal 15.4-inch widescreen LCD (there's one at each seat … Read more