257
Airlines were early pioneers in communication technologies, and have been very slow to modernize. For example, today, airline IT systems still communicate extensively using TTY: Type-A for synchronous communication, and Type-B for asynchronous communications.
There is a standard for TTY, which nobody follows, a de-facto standard by SITA, which is mostly ...
206
To avoid any lingering feelings of guilt, you can call the airline and ask them what they'd like you to do with the blanket. Explain that you took it by mistake because you were not fully alert when you left the aircraft.
Most likely, they'll tell you to keep it, because it would cost more for them to receive it in the mail and return it to the blanket ...
163
Airlines have a pricing strategy known as "yield management" or "revenue management" - they charge less for some seats than others, and expect these seats to be bought a long time in advance. They know that only a certain percentage of their customers are able to buy seats well in advance, and that those customers wouldn't fly if they couldn't get ...
156
If you've been on a plane before, I'm sure you've walked past first class; nobody cares. If you want to dress up, sure, but I'd prefer to be casual and comfortable.
153
We live in a strange world where manufactured goods (like blankets) are very cheap, and people's time is very expensive. Our moral (and legal) codes haven't caught up with this: so we feel bad at taking a blanket from an airline, but we don't feel bad about taking 15 minutes of their employees' time. But the 15 minutes costs the airline much more than the ...
145
It's actually quite simple. The reason they do this is to make sure you are able to help others. What do I mean by this? During an emergency where the air in the plane is thinning, it is important that you are able to breathe. You can become light headed and if you are trying to help someone put their mask on and you are becoming dizzy, it isn't as ...
142
Or should I just forget about it, having learned my lesson?
Just forget about it. No one is going to come after you for stealing a 2-euro blanket. Keep it as a souvenir and don't steal any in the future.
119
To calculate the price of a ticket, we first need to know a little about how air pricing works.
A ticket is a single, complete contract for one journey. It can contain up to a maximum sixteen flights.
Each flight on the ticket must be paid for ("covered") by exactly one fare. A fare is a price that the airline offers on a city-pair, for example, London-New ...
115
It's less of a technical constraint and more of a practical one. The servers maintained by airlines could certainly hold another year's worth of flights. The issue is that it doesn't make much sense from a scheduling standpoint.
As it is, airlines are always adjusting capacities on routes. They add and drop frequencies, open and close routes, and change ...
110
Because it would be ridiculously expensive.
Not only would it require a massive increase in the number of planes an airline has to purchase and maintain, it would not even garantee that there would always be a spare since there are many different types of airplanes that serve different purposes. It would be impossible to have one of each on standby in every ...
110
The airline is liable.
According to the Montreal convention the airline cannot disclaim liability via their contract of carriage or other terms and conditions. As in this analysis by the US DoT (not USA specific):
We have become aware of tariff provisions filed by several carriers
that attempt, with respect to checked baggage, to exclude certain
items, ...
104
A cabin crewmember here.
The answer is: No, it is NOT allowed!
For various reasons, including:
Security: We do not know what are you heating, is it a heat-activated bomb? is it something that might make a lot of smoke? etc.
Health: We cannot contaminate the ovens, we know the source of the food that is provided by the airlines, we do not know the source of ...
86
The bigger question is how would they know?
People buy plane tickets all the time for all kinds of reasons. You are not required to tell an airline why you are flying, only when and where (so they can sell you a ticket). Airlines do vary ticket prices but they generally do so proactively and less reactively. There is lots of info out there on how they set ...
84
and just wanted to experience it at least once.
Dress up, dress as nice as you like and comfortably can for a flight and make it a whole experience. You want to enjoy it so enjoy it to the fullest.
Banter : Go ahead flag it
I would not bother about all these comments and answers trying to dampen your spirit oh business class is nothing in the US, oh this ...
83
Airlines certainly keep a passenger manifest (it looks something like this) that lists everyone on board and where they are supposed to be seated. These are either paper printouts or viewed on handheld devices carried by the cabin crew. They will not be fooled by your claim that you threw out your boarding pass. And they know you have ID with you, so they ...
83
If you check your ticket, it will say something like 'all passenger must be at the gate and ready to board x minutes before the scheduled time, or they forfeit their flight'.
I have seen times required between x=10 and x=60 minutes, but never less than 10 minutes. In other words, if you miss this limit, it's your own problem, and they don't owe you anything.
...
80
If you're travelling with someone who requires assistance, you need to remain conscious in order to assist them, especially if you have multiple people with you, say two children.
Hypoxia can hit in as little as 5-10 seconds and without special training, you can't fight it.
So, you need to keep yourself conscious first, then assist others. Even if someone ...
78
Yes, there were many, many indicators that Thomas Cook was in financial trouble, from analyst downgrades to their share price and their bond rate. But the company had been in financial trouble for years, being slow to address its competition as its bread-and-butter businesses were stagnating. They hadn't paid a dividend since 2011. In terms of operational ...
71
As part of a flight crew (I flew for middle east regional for the last 4 years with a B747), I am trained to help my passenger as best as I can. But I'm also trained to stay away from any possible hazard and to not taking extra responsibility whenever I can.
Your medication is tied to your survival. That is not something I would gladly accept to be ...
70
Credit card fraud is a considerable problem for airlines. You would think the fraud risk would be low—after all, passengers usually have to appear in person with photo ID to make use of the service—but as there are a number of types of fraud, "airlines alone lose from $2.4 billion to $4.8 billion to credit card fraud annually." In particular, fraudsters can ...
68
No, you're not entitled to any compensation. You chose to book separate flights, so the airline did not guarantee your connection and the risk is fully on you.
In addition, because your flight was delayed by less than 3 hours, you're not entitled to EU's delay compensation either.
68
Ryanair is working almost strictly point-to-point. With a very few exceptions, they simply don't do connecting tickets, which saves them all the hassle and costs with accomodating people who missed their connection and so on. I can't comment on the profitability of this approach, but the fact that most low-cost carriers work this way is an indication that it ...
67
Called AirBerlin. They're saying that at the moment they are expecting all flights within the next 3 months to operate normally and that I should check back in one week to get an update about possible refunds and cancellation policies.
67
They aren't!
You are typically going to be sitting down and getting very limited exercise. On a long haul flight of 12 hours, based on a 2000 kcal/day requirement, the average person will burn in and around 1000 calories.
A conservative estimate for the calories in that small breakfast picture would be around 300, and that's a New York to London flight, ...
66
You are looking at the aircraft scheduling at a single point of time, which won't show the full picture.
Most likely the aircraft that was planned to fly flight UA263 was delayed, or for some other reason unable to make it to ORD on time.
In order to handle this, the airline had to find another plane, and the first one they had available was the one ...
65
No, you do not have any right to stop the person in front from reclining, and yes, it's childish behaviour on your part to try to stop them. Everybody on a plane has the right to recline their own seat, and flight attendants can and will enforce this if asked.
You put "rest" in quotation marks, but maybe they really do need to recline: they might be sick, ...
64
It appears this is not possible for the Big Three US airlines. In fact, your assertion that "I know airplanes have" refrigerators on board seems to be not true in general.
United Airlines: "Our aircraft do not have refrigerators on board, so please plan accordingly."
Delta (under Special Concerns: Medicine): "Airplanes do not have refrigerators on board, ...
58
Look at a typical airline company on Wikipedia. Let's take KLM for example:
Fleet size: 117
Destinations: 138
As you can see, in order to have a spare plane on every flight, KLM would need to buy more spare planes than they have in the actual fleet, meaning their ticket prices would have to double in order to cover the expenses. Since people are not ready ...
58
As others have already said, it's precisely to ensure you are best able to help your family. And one reason they have to instruct you explicitly not to do that is that every mother's or father's first response would be to do precisely that and they know it. But it might be interesting to understand exactly why the urge to help children first is wrong:
You ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible