3 Links I Love: The Transat Scramble, Qatar Keeps Flying, Better Boarding

American, Links I Love, Qatar Airways, Westjet

This Week’s Featured Link

Flyer beware: Canada closed to competitionWestJet Blog
I haven’t talked much about the Air Canada/Transat acquisition here, but it is getting really interesting up there. The Canadian government recently approved the deal with concessions that do not impress WestJet. In fact, WestJet has some suggestions to make it better, but I don’t imagine things will change now. WestJet’s best hope is the European Union which said it wouldn’t meet the deadline of Feb 15 and needed more time. Now, Air Canada and Transat are back in negotiations and it could all fall apart.

Video of the Week: I don’t speak Portuguese, but I can certainly understand what this is. And I have no idea how I didn’t see this sooner. Great simple idea for boarding in a humane way. For more info in English.

Two for the Road

Interview: Qatar Airways, the Airline That Never Stopped FlyingAirways
The subhead on this should read “Also, the airline that never started making money.”

Exclusive: American CEO Doug Parker talks about alliances, travel reboundTPG
TPG had a little sit-down with American execs last week. Here is a summary of what they learned.

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6 comments on “3 Links I Love: The Transat Scramble, Qatar Keeps Flying, Better Boarding

  1. This boarding system is amazing. I especially like how the flow is to alternate back of the plane with front of the plane since it takes a while to cram your stuff up top. I wonder what the cost is per gate, and if what the learning curve is for people to figure this out

    (I can’t imagine my elderly mother taking to this immediately — “What is this some type of disco lighting? The lights are moving too fast!” etc).

  2. The Azul boarding system feels like the next logical step from Southwest’s boarding pillars. It solves the problem of trying to find your exact spot within the group of 5, which is compounded by the problem that they are too close together for 5 people to line up between each pillar, even before social distancing was a thing.

  3. The problem with this boarding system is that it still does not address the issue of elite passengers and card holders.

    These people are sold that if you do this you get to board first…but then the system dumps a bunch of passengers in the back ahead of them to balance the line. Doesn’t make sense and will cost the airlines money.

    If airlines really wanted to speed up boarding they would install a second jetway and load from the back and the front simultaneously. That would be a lot faster than some fancy lighted floor system.

    1. There actually was a second jetway used during some of the early trials and experiments with jetways (great article on Airport History about the development of the jetway that covers it), but it was abandoned for being too costly and too much of a ramp obstacle relative to the savings in time.

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