Is Paying For Flight Via Social Media The Future for Airlines?

Royal Dutch Airlines, also known as KLM, is lettingFacebook and Twitter users book flights, reserve seats and arrange for extra baggage, as well as pay for those services, without leaving the social networks.

“Picture the scene: you’re looking to travel somewhere nice for your vacation, and you’re using Twitter to search out good ideas from friends and contacts,” writes Frederiek Filippo, a KLM social media-focused customer service agent, in a blog post. “You find the perfect place, but you have to leave Twitter to actually book your flight, like some kind of savage.”

Here’s how the system works: a consumer posts a note—either on KLM’s Facebook timeline or on Twitter, including the airline’s @KLM Twitter handle in a tweet—that says he wants to book a flight. The airline says it has 130 social media-focused customer service agents; one then sends a link to the consumer in a private Facebook or Twitter message to pay for the airfare. A pop-up window then appears and the customer can choose his payment method and complete the transaction. A Facebook timeline is the virtual scrapbook on a brand’s page that features a graphical and chronological timeline of notable events and posts shared on the social network.

The airline developed the payment option in response to consumers https://www.facebook.com/KLM?fref=tsrequesting the feature, says a spokeswoman. “We want to find ways to make social media more useful for our customers,” she says. KLM has nearly 5.2 billion Facebook Likes and more than 804,000 Twitter followers, far more than many other airlines such as United Airlines Inc. and British Airways

Singapore Airshow: The fight for eyeballs in mid-air

Growing competition

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Free on-board internet connectivity in all classes of travel is the next level of in-flight entertainment”

Shashank NigamSimpliflying

Airlines, especially premium carriers, have realised this and are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to offer better in-flight entertainment than their rivals.

In July, Singapore Airlines announced a $400m (£243m) deal to equip its new planes with, what it calls, the "world's most advanced in-flight entertainment system to date".

Its new Boeing 777-300ER, Airbus A350 and Airbus A330-300 planes will have touchscreen handsets in all classes and larger screens.

The A350s will also offer broadband internet, mobile phone services, and live TV.

Singapore Airlines is not the only carrier improving its offerings.

Gulf-based Emirates offers Live TV on select Boeing 777 flights flying over the Middle East, Europe, Africa, parts of Asia and North America.

Australian carrier Qantas offers an iPad pre-loaded with 200 hours of entertainment content to passengers travelling on selected refurbished Boeing 767 aircraft.

In December 2012, British Airways became the first UK airline to allow customers on long-haul flights to enjoy in-flight entertainment from the moment they are seated, instead of having to wait until take-off.

"Offering the very best in-flight entertainment is a priority for us," a spokesman for BA told the BBC.

Enhancing its in-flight entertainment services is part of the airline's continuing five-year £5bn investment programme to strengthen the overall offering for customers.

Growth opportunities

With more than 11,000 planes expected to be sold over the next two decades in Asia-Pacific, demand for such systems is only likely to grow further.

Various companies, including Thales - the world's second-largest maker of such systems - are looking to woo customers at the Singapore Airshow, taking place this week.

"It is the most exciting time for firms making in-flight entertainment solutions," a Thales spokesman told the BBC.

"The demand for airplanes is growing and our industry will grow in tandem."

The firm - which also makes other aerospace products - generated overall revenues of $14.2bn (£8.6bn) in 2012, with in-flight entertainment systems being a key contributor.

According to Thales, the in-flight entertainment system is the second most costly component of a plane after the engine.

Firms are also vying to improve the quality of the systems.

"We are getting closer to offering a similar experience to what passengers would get in their living rooms," Thales said.

'The next level'

The race to attract customers is likely to heat up further as airlines look to offer wireless internet connectivity across the board.

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Passengers can experience internet connections similar to what they would in a downtown Starbucks or McDonald's”

Carl EspositoHoneywell Aerospace

Many carriers do offer this service currently, but the take-up rate among customers has not been that high. In some cases it is too costly for passengers to sign up, while sometimes the connectivity has not been that great.

But with a recent surge in the number of people using devices such as smartphones and tablets, it is a service that airlines cannot afford to ignore.

"Free on-board internet connectivity in all classes of travel is the next level of in-flight entertainment," says Mr Nigam of Simpliflying.

"Airlines can't play the wait-and-watch game on this front anymore."

Mr Nigam explains that on-board connectivity will provide carriers with an opportunity to offer more value-added services and even open up new revenue streams.

"An airline can profile its customers very well and that data is invaluable to companies looking to target a particular segment of clientele," he says.

"You can sell advertising space depending on the routes you are flying, the class of travel and even partner with hotel firms to offer deals on-board."

Companies specialising in the field are sensing an opportunity.

Honeywell Aerospace is displaying its latest technology at the Singapore Airshow which, it claims, will make in-flight connectivity 30 to 40 times faster than current levels, and also bring down costs.

"Passengers can experience internet connections similar to what they would in a downtown Starbucks or McDonald's," says Carl Esposito from Honeywell.

The firm says it is already in talks with various airlines to install the technology and has forecast revenues of nearly $2.8bn over the next 20 years for the product.

Air Travel Grows At Steady

<a href="http://www.wholinks2me.com/" title="Click here to see who's linking to my site."><img src="http://www.wholinks2me.com/images/code.png" style="border:0px;" alt="Who links to my website?"></a> Emirates is one of the Middle Eastern airlines driving growth in the region. Jim McDougall / Flickr

Air travel demand has steadily increased about 5 percent a year for the past 30 years, including 2013.

In 2013, the growth of international markets, 5.4 percent, slightly outpaced growth of domestic market at 4.9 percent, according to the International Air Transport Association’s full-year report.

The overall growth was driven by emerging markets in the Middle East and Asia Pacific that made up for relatively slow growth in mature regions like Europe and North America.

“We saw healthy demand growth in 2013 despite the very difficult economic environment. There was a clear improvement trend over the course of the year which bodes well for 2014,” IATA’s CEO Tony Tyler said in a statement.

Growing Economies Drive Air Travel Demand

Middle East airlines reported a 12.1 percent increase in international and domestic air traffic last year.

Although this was the most growth of any region, it was a drop for the Middle East which had reported growth of 15.4 increase in 2012.

Latin America reported the second strongest performance with an 8.1 percent increase in demand. The strength and growth of economies in both regions led to the significant bump in air travel demand.

Mature markets of North America and Europe reported the least growth of any region at 3 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively.

Although North American reported the slowest growth, it was an improvement over 2012 growth of 1.3 percent.

The opposite is true for European airlines which reported the second slowest growth of any region and a drop from 2012 growth of 5.3 percent.http://www.reddit.com/<a href="http://www.wholinks2me.com/" title="Click here to see who's linking to my site."><img src="http://www.wholinks2me.com/images/code.png" style="border:0px;" alt="Who links to my website?"></a> 

what's the future opportunity for Ryan air?

http://www.reddit.com/Now having read this post I was left with this question ''where is the future for Ryan air or is this the is for them'' but here's what O' Leary have to say


Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary doesn’t think there is an attractive opportunity for the low-cost airline to operate transatlantic flights in the short term largely because Gulf carriers are buying so many aircraft as they expand that it is driving up the price to buy planes from Boeing and Airbus.
Contrary to earlier reports, the loquacious O’Leary did not shy away from playing an out-front role at the airline’s third quarter earnings call today, and said any transatlantic opportunity in the future wouldn’t be carried out by Ryanair, but perhaps by “some kind of sister company or some related company, but would never ever be Ryanair.”
Still, he sees aircraft buying sprees by carriers such as Emirates and Etihad as inflating the price for new aircraft, and quashing any opportunities for now.
“But the more you look at the backlog of Boeing and Airbus deliveries in long-haul and the crazy scale of the order book they have primarily from the Middle Eastern carriers, I think for the moment, I don’t see there being an opportunity to pick up a fleet at a reasonable pricing,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary also offered up some contrarian thinking, suggesting that the rise of the Gulf carriers may be merely a temporary phenomenon.
“But then bubbles burst and bubbles explode, and there’s an opportunity cropped up because one or others of the Gulf carriers didn’t make it over the next number of years, then that might emerge,” O’Leary said, referring to the possibility of transatlantic flights.
Wi-Fi Would Require a Transformation in Roaming Charges
In other news, O’Leary said he’s been “very committed” over the last four or five years to installing Wi-Fi on Ryanair planes, but roaming charges across “24, 25, 26″ countries in Europe would make the service cost-prohibitive.
“I expect at some point in time in the next one, three, five years that somebody would invent some piece of case that transforms all those what are now high-roaming charges and will make Wi-Fi, onboard Wi-Fi at a relatively low cost — at relatively low — service that we can provide at very low cost to most of our passengers,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary added that low-cost Wi-Fi remains a “communication transformation away.”
Howard Millar, Ryanair’s CFO, said there is another obstacle to the implementation of Wi-Fi — the antenna.
“And in the kind of studies that we’ve done … is that there’s significant drag, potentially up to 2% additional drive for putting the antenna on,” Millar said.
Millar and O’Leary acknowledge that they would like to get Wi-Fi on their planes, but the expense remains an issue.
“And the way the antenna sits on top of the plane has to be made smaller so that you can reduce drag,” Millar said. “The 2% drag for us, just to put in perspective, will be potentially EUR 40 million ($54 million) a year of a hit and that’s not something we would be interested in doing.”

A storm is brewing in the cockpit of U.S. airlines: a pilot shortage.

Thousands of pilots are nearing the mandatory retirement age of 65, just as it is becoming harder to be a commercial airline pilot.

New federal pilot-rest rules and tougher qualification standards requiring new pilots to have 1,500 hours of flight experience — up from 250 — have come at the same time that throngs of senior pilots will be retiring.

The new mandates were implemented in the last six months, in response to the Colgan Air crash near Buffalo on Feb. 12, 2009, that killed all 49 aboard the plane and one man on the ground.

National Transportation Safety Board hearings focused on whether the plane’s two pilots were properly trained and whether factors such as fatigue may have affected their performance.

The reason: the cost of training and low entry-level pay — $20,000 to $25,000 a year.Although job prospects for commercial pilots are bright, and regional airlines are scooping up newly minted aviators with signing bonuses, fewer young people are choosing aviation careers.

New Jersey native Christopher Machado, 20, a junior at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., has wanted to be a pilot since he was a boy, watching the planes overhead at Newark airport, not far from his home.

At 17, he had a private pilot’s license — before he drove a car alone. Machado said the cost of his education and flight training will be about $250,000 before he can sit in the first officer’s seat of a regional airline, where commercial pilots usually start to build experience.

Machado said he’s lucky that his parents in Colonia, Woodbridge Township, support his dream, and are paying for it. “I know a lot of people who would be pilots, but for the money.”

Peter Doroba, 35, a captain for Spirit Airlines, grew up in Manayunk and after high school worked as an automobile technician while attending Montgomery County Community College at night. Along the way, he earned a private pilot’s certificate at Wings Field.

He transferred to Embry-Riddle in Florida in his senior year, graduated and stayed on as a fight instructor and then a flight team manager, before being hired by Spirit in 2008.

Doroba said he finished college with $105,000 in loan debt — more than the mortgage on his house. “For years, people have talked about pilot shortages. I hope this one is real,” he said. “They are not going to have any pilots, if they keep the wages down at poverty levels.”

In 2012, Boeing projected that 498,000 new commercial pilots would be needed over the next two decades.

“There is a pilot shortage. We’re just starting to see the effects,” said Capt. James Ray, spokesman for the US Airline Pilots Association, which represents US Airways pilots.

US Airways and American Airlines, which merged in December, combined have 14,000 to 15,000 pilots. “We’re going to lose almost half to attrition in the next 10 years — about 7,000 retirements,” Ray said.