Finnair launches mobile phone boarding passes and text message check in

I have flown with Finnair many a time, and find them to be absolutely fantastic, with great cabin staff, food, the works. And Helsinki Airport is a clean, pleasant place – lovely for buying seasonal gifts if you are heading home for Christmas. Anyway, it’s interesting to hear that Finnair have now launched mobile phone boarding passes and text message check in. Not bad, eh?

So how does this work? Well, the mobile phone boarding pass consists of a 2D bar code which gets scanned at the airport. This boarding pass will apparently work on all mobile phones, though I do wonder about some of those really old ones that some Luddites insist on carrying about.

Finnair’s Sales Director for the UK, Tomi Hänninen, says: “The mobile boarding pass system cuts passengers’ carbon footprint by removing the need for passengers to print out and keep track of a paper boarding pass, thus eliminating waste paper. Customers will also see a tangible benefit through using the mobile boarding pass system as it will speed up the check in process, affording Finnair flyers even greater stress free travel.”

As for the text message check-in, this is available to members of the frequent flyer programme Finnair Plus. If you have luggage then you need to go to the baggage drop desk where it can be checked in. No luggage? In that case you can get going straight to the gate with no faffing around standing in those interminable queues so typical of airports.

For morning departures Finnair sends out a check-in text message the previous evening between 17:00 and 19:00, and for afternoon departures the message is sent about three hours before departure time.

It’s good to see that the handy and ubiquitous mobile can be used to make life simpler at airports, and no doubt other airlines will be keen to follow this trend.

Air Canada try out in-flight internet access

If you are one of those who can’t bear to parted from the internet even for a minute, and dread passing the time of long haul flight with little to do, then the recent innovation of some airlines to provide internet access in the air will no doubt have come as a welcome development. In-flight internet access using the quaintly named Gogo network is now available on some U.S. airlines, including Virgin America, Delta, AirTran and American Airlines.

The latest airline to get in on the act is Air Canada who have just launched a ten week trial period during which certain flights on the Montreal-Los Angeles and Toronto-Los Angeles routes will offer web access. The price isn’t too bad either, with access costing US$9.95 for laptops and US$7.95 for phones and PDA’s. However, for the time being the service will only be available when flying over the USA.

The whole concept of web access in the air is certainly an exciting development because simply going online must be the perfect way to while away those boring hours of long haul. And who can resist the idea of sending emails to friends and family telling them how good it is to be above the clouds?

No doubt competitors will be carefully watching this move as the opportunity to use the internet while flying will give any airline a serious edge and attract passengers. So how long will we have to wait before this trend makes its way across the Atlantic?

Meeting Santa in the Land of the Midnight Sun

Christmas is well on its way, a sure sign being that I walked into my local supermarket to see glittery decorations and a life size model of Santa, as well as hearing jingly music. Some love it, and some hate it. But if you are one of the people that just can’t get enough of Christmas, then you may consider a trip to see Santa.

It’s quite funny that the original Saint Nicholas was from Myra in Turkey, but in the nineteenth century he suddenly morphed into the fat red-coated gentleman who lives in the north, and it seems that now Lapland is thought to be his traditional home. It could have something to do with the wonderfully snowy environment of the north that people so associate with Christmas.

If you want to see Santa Claus Village, this is just outside the town of Rovaniemi which has its own airport. Santa Claus Village at Rovaniemi is actually open all year round, and here you can meet Santa and his elves. Rovaniemi Post Office receives letters to Santa from children all across the globe, and they even send out replies on colourful, Christmassy notepaper!

Rovaniemi is not just about Santa though, it is also good for shopping with designer stores stocking various top Finnish brands such as Marimekko and Arabia. There are also Santa outlets of course.

But if you feel like a more rural and slightly less commercialised environment, then other airports to head for are Ivalo, Kittila and Kuusamo.

And, in case you are wondering, what or where exactly is Lapland? It is home to the Sami people who were originally a nomadic group roaming the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. They lived in tents that were similar to native American tepees, and by the 16th century their economy was largely based on agriculture and reindeer. Obviously today the Sami live in modern houses.

They refer to their land as Sapmi, and this northern area has beautiful fjords, lakes and wilderness. The winters are dark with little sunlight but what little light there is gets reflected from the bright, white snow, and there is also a chance of seeing the aurora borealis. In the summer the place becomes the Land of the Midnight Sun with wonderfully light nights.

The area offers some great opportunities for enjoying winter sports and the great outdoors, and makes a great place to visit summer and winter, Santa or no Santa.

Brits looking for winter sun, despite recession

The nights are getting darker, summer is well and truly over, it’s still moderately warm, but no doubt soon the British weather will be turning to the rain and cold that we expect of the winter in these parts. And I don’t even want to talk about the clocks going back, which will make nightfall seem even earlier. So, what with the recession you might expect that people will be tightening their belts, gritting their teeth, and facing the long cold winter months without selfishly splashing out on a winter break. Wrong! Well, wrong that is according to some travel agents.

The word among the travel agencies seems to be that people are still on the look out for their winter holiday abroad. As has been true to form since the recession kicked in, many people are now looking for their holidays outside Euroland, with destinations such as Turkey, Tunisia or Morocco proving popular.

These predictions are despite the fact that significant numbers of Brits chose to holiday in the UK this year, which has been charmingly called "staycation".

So is this a case of the travel agents trying to talk up a storm of people heading out of Blighty over the winter? Are they hoping for good holiday sales this winter after what may have been a poor showing over the summer?

Time will tell. Meanwhile, if over the dark, cold months ahead you yearn for some winter sun, there are plenty of cheap flights available to get you where you want to be.

Privatised JAL after public money

I have only ever flown with JAL once and that was not by choice. But I had to get from Kansai to Hong Kong on an Air France endorsed ticket, and they had booked me with JAL. The JAL flight turned out to be an experience I could well have done without. When the surly stewardess came round with the free newspapers she glared at my non-Japanese face and said, “I haven’t got one for you!”, (despite the fact that I lived in Japan and could read some Japanese, not that she bothered to find out). I think in all my years of frequent flying I had never, and have never since, experienced such downright rudeness. JAL was an airline that I then proceeded to forget all about, until recently, when I heard that Japan’s transport minister, Seiji Maehara, has just said that he will not force the struggling JAL to go bankrupt.

So it turns out that the Japanese government has appointed a team of corporate experts to create a restructuring plan for the airline, because JAL’s own draft reconstruction plan has been described as “insufficient”. This crack team will be making recommendations by late October or early November.

So what has forced JAL to come to this pretty pass? Well, the airline has just notched up its biggest-ever quarterly net loss of 99 billion yen ($1 billion) in the quarter up to June, and it is forecast that there will be a net loss of 63 billion yen ($701 million) for the current fiscal year up to March 2010.

JAL was privatised back in 1987, but the company has had to turn to public funds, with 60 billion yen ($668 million) in loans from the government-owned Development Bank of Japan in June, and apparently further requests for cash. So much for the free market economy.

It will be interesting to see how the airline copes in the months ahead.

Newspapers, anyone?

Are the budget airlines abandoning the regional airports?

So Gordon Brown has uttered the dreadful word "cuts" to the TUC in Liverpool, but he is not the only one thinking of this four letter word. In fact British holidaymakers may find themselves having to make longer journeys to airports, as airlines start to cut the number of regional departures in an attempt to keep costs down.

Budget airline Easyjet recently announced the cancellation of all its routes from East Midlands airport, which is going to be quite a loss to residents of the Nottingham area and thereabouts. Similarly Ryanair has cancelled nine of its 10 routes out of Manchester, which will be quite a blow to people of the north-west on the look out for cheap flights. Ryanair is also cancelling two of its flights out of the little up-and-coming airport of Doncaster, saying that the modest passenger charges of £3 a head are not sustainable.

Add to this the fact that last November Thomson pulled out of Coventry Airport, and Liverpool Airport has experienced a drop in passenger numbers of 20% this year. In fact, during the first six months of 2009, passenger numbers have fallen by a staggering 11% at British regional airports compared with 2008. All this may be gratifying to pressure groups such as Plane Stupid, who have been campaigning for an overall reduction in flying due to green considerations, but it is bad news for those hankering after affordable flights out of their local airport.

Heavy demand for South African domestic flights predicted, come World Cup 2010

England’s victory over Croatia on Wednesday means that England fans will now be eager to get hold of not just match tickets, but also flights and hotels, to follow England to the World Cup finals in South Africa.

England fans hoping to do this will find they face a tough time as there will only be a limited number of seats for the actual matches themselves, and not just that, but the tickets will be expensive too. However on top of expensive match tickets, they will also find that accommodation is a bit scarce, and there may well be problems securing flights between the different destinations where matches will be played.

Kevin Miles, international affairs spokesman for the Football Supporters Federation who will operate Fan Embassies in South Africa, says “Initial estimates show that up to 20,000 fans could travel if, as expected, we secure qualification”.

The matches are going to be played in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Mangaung, Nelson Mandela Bay, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Rustenburg, and Tshwane between 11 June and 11 July 2010.

To follow all the matches is going to involve a lot of domestic flights, and the demand for these will be huge. South Africa has a fair number of airlines operating between the major cities, and some of the smaller ones too, with fares ranging from first-class to budget. Flights can be booked online from anywhere in the world, which will be handy for fans making arrangements in advance.

It looks set to be a difficult though potentially rewarding time for football fans, and a profitable period for the airlines of South Africa.