If you are looking to book a longhaul flight with Qantas you had better get in quick. On 18 December 2009 prices are set to increase.

Here are the details for the airfare increases

First class fares will increase by up to 3% for the following markets: United Kingdom/Europe, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Africa

Business class fares will increase by up to 3% for the following markets: Japan, United Kingdom/Europe, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, Africa, Indonesia and Philippines

Premium Economy class fares will increase by up to 5% for the following markets: North America, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, United Kingdom/Europe

Economy class fares will increase by up to 5% for the following markets: Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Honolulu, South America, Singapore, Thailand, Africa, North America, United Kingdom/Europe

Ryanair are not happy with how an episode of the BBC’s Panorama program has portrayed them. To hit back at the allegations they have decided to give away 100 000 per false claim that was made on the show.

According to Ryanair there were 11 in total so that means over one million free seats on their flights. These will be truly free tickets as there will be now taxes or charges.

Here is the news release from Ryanair.

Ryanair, Britain’s favourite airline, today (Tue 13th Oct) released 1.1million FREE seats after BBC Panorama screened its ‘hatchet job’ on Ryanair last evening in which it uncovered – nothing, nada, rien, diddly squat. Ryanair criticised Panorama for its refusal of Ryanair’s offer of a live or uncut pre-recorded interview with Michael O’Leary, but this refusal isn’t surprising given that Panorama had no real case or valid points which would stand up to interview.

Last night Panorama made 11 false or misleading claims as follows:

1. Panorama featured check in problems at Stansted one weekend in August with no mention of the fact that on the other 32 weekends since web check-in was introduced Ryanair has seen no problems whatsoever at Stansted or the other 150 airports Ryanair operates from.

2. Panorama quoted a “Which” magazine survey which has no basis in reality whatsoever since “Which” continue to nominate British Airways as Britain’s favourite airline despite the fact that three times more passengers prefer Ryanair.

3. Panorama claimed that Ryanair charges £5 to all passengers for web check-in but omitted that more than half of Ryanair’s passengers avoid this fee by booking Ryanair’s promotional fares (which include free web check-in).

4. Panorama interviewed a ‘website usability expert’, who claimed that ryanair.com was designed to force passengers to buy Ryanair travel insurance. Panorama hid the fact that over 96% of Ryanair passengers decline travel insurance, which clearly confirms that this ‘website usability expert’ was clueless.

5. Panorama produced a ‘Professor of Corporate Reputation’ to suggest that ‘people feel cheated’ by Ryanair – which is clearly false when over 66 million passengers this year will choose to fly Ryanair because they feel cheated by BA’s and Easyjet’s high fares.

6. Panorama claimed that Ryanair’s 25 minute turnaround was a ‘record time’. This is false since Southwest Airlines in the US operates a 15 minute turnaround.

7. A Panorama actor claimed that cabin crew would not get a contract if they didn’t meet their targets at the end of the day or year. Totally false.

8. Panorama claimed that cabin crew pay £2,000 to train and qualify as cabin crew but conveniently omitted that these payments were not paid to Ryanair.

9. Another Panorama actor claimed Ryanair had ‘no respect or dignity for pilots or cabin crew’ – this is a false claim put about by the British Airways pilots’ union. Respect and dignity in Ryanair come in the form of high pay, rapid promotion and job security – unlike at BA where pilots are facing job cuts and pay cuts.

10. Panorama falsely claimed that no food or drinks are provided to cabin crew without pointing out that each pilot and cabin crew member receives a food allowance on every flight to pay for their own food and drinks.

11. Panorama claimed that “O’Leary is a bully” – this is clearly false when the whole world knows that O’Leary is a kind and gentle, caring and thoughtful, sensitive and saintly human being widely beloved by all Ryanair’s 6,500 people and its 66m passengers.

To celebrate the total failure of BBC Panorama’s hatchet job, Ryanair has today released 1.1million free seats – 100,000 for each of the 11 above lies or false claims made by Panorama last night.

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said,

“Last night’s programme was more Bananarama than Panorama. The BBC had no case, no facts and no clue. The only benefit it provided to viewers was the 1.1million free seats Ryanair will give away as a result of its false claims.

66 million passengers know that flying Ryanair guarantees the lowest fares, the best punctuality, no check-in queues and the pleasure of joining the Michael O’Leary fan club. Ryanair’s 1.1million free seats, for travel in November and December, are now available on www.ryanair.com and we urge passengers to snap them up.”

In my previous post I mentioned the American Airways frequent flyer program and how they are offering double points until mid-December.

Not to be outdone, US Airways have announced a promotion that allows their frequent flyers the fastest and easiest way to get Preferred status.

For flights between 1 October and December 25, 2009 you need just 7,500 miles or 10 segments to earn Silver Preferred status. 15,000 miles or 20 segments sees you earn Gold Preferred status. You can reach the top level with 30,000 miles or 40 segments. That will give you Chairman’s Preferred status.

In case you are wondering what the benefits are of reaching elite status here are some of the perks.

If you are Silver Preferred you could receive an upgrade to First Class if an upgrade become available. You’re able to reserve select exit-row seats and Choice Seats at no additional cost. You are also exempt from first and second checked bag fees.

Just looking at the current fee schedule for checked bags the Silver Preferred status can save you over $50 if you had two bags to check-in.

That is only a sampling of the benefits of reaching Preferred status. For further details regarding this promotion and the benefits of the different Preferred status levels visit US Airways.

If you fly American Airlines and are not in the Frequent Flyer American Airlines program they are giving you plenty of reasons to join.

The airline is offering double miles elite on all American Airlines flights.  To join just visit their website and use the code ELTRW to join.

If you do get into the American Airlines Frequent Flyer program and like flying you could look at doing some weekend flights to build up your points.

One good way to build up frequent flyer points is to add stopovers for a direct flight. For example Detroit (DTW) to Los Angeles (LAX) could pick you up a nice lot of miles at a cheap airfare. If you throw in Minneapolis-St Paul (MSP) to Memphis (MEM) you can earn some extra miles from flying north-south along the way.

You of course have to be someone who loves flying to do all that just to be building up your points, but in the long run if that is something you can afford to do it is worthwhile.

The Frequent Flyer American Airlines offer ends in December so take action now.

I just came across an interesting video. It has airline staff from Air New Zealand doing a safety presentation in the nude. The video is not quite what I was expecting when I first watched it. Go ahead and check it out.

What did you think? It is actually an Air New Zealand safety presentation video that is being shown on domestic flights in New Zealand. It is part of the airlines “Nothing to Hide” campaign for which they have setup a special promotional website.

The people in the video are actual Air New Zealand employees. They are decked out in full body paint which took several hours to apply. The above video is not the only one they made, there is also an ad that was shot for the company.

What do you think? Does it make you want to fly Air New Zealand? Love to read your comments which you can leave below.

On 19 September Qantas took delivery of their brand new Airbus A380 in the Airbus home town of Toulouse. The delivery of the plane was two years late, but that is old news. The giant of the skies flew from Toulouse to Singapore before arriving in Sydney on Sunday.

Qantas plan to put the plane into service on October 20 with a flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles. This will be followed four days later with a Sydney-Los Angeles flight.

Singapore airlines were the first to use the A380 for commercial flights and now have been flying for close to a year with the giant double-decker jumbo. The airline has six of the huge passenger planes in service.

Qantas will start flights from Sydney to Singapore on January 16, 2009 offering three flights a week and flights to London from Sydney will also commence on January 16.

As Qantas are looking to impress new travellers taking the A380 they have gone for a more conservative fitout aimed at gving more room to passengers. As a result the Qantas A380 will have 450 seats with 14 in first, 72 in business, 32 in premium economy and 332 economy. The plane will feature lounges, bars, showers and luxurious first class seats.

If you are interested in a virtual tour of the A380 you can visit the Qantas website.

Have you already flown on one of the A380 aircraft already in service. If you have I would love it if you share your experience. Leave a comment below.

Last Thursday Terminal 5 was opened at Heathrow Airport. British Airways may now wish that it never happened. Since the opening 245 flights have had to be canceled.

British Airways are the sole tenant of Terminal 5. Things are so bad that the British transport secretary has offered support from the government to help resolve the problems.

The main cause of the problems has been the baggage system. Over 15,000 bags have been stranded in the opening few days.

British Airways chief executive has said the baggage system is now working well.

David Frost, director general of British Chambers of Commerce has called the opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow a public relations disaster. Contrast this with the recent opening of the new terminal at Beijing’s Capital Airport. It seems to be all going well in China.

As British Airways are the only airline using the new terminal it would be best to avoid BA flights until the problems have been sorted out.

Video footage showing Lufthansa flight LH44 from Munich attempting to land at Hamburg tells a remarkable story about how powerful nature can be. In the video you can see that the plane is pushed off course by fierce winds as the pilot attempted to land the Airbus 320.

The dramatic footage shows the plane approaching the runway clearly affected by strong winds from hurricane Emma. Just as the plane is about to touchdown a huge gust of wind spins the plane like a toy and results in the left wing almost touching the ground.

The quick thinking by the pilot avoided disaster as he gave the engines more power to enable the plane to abort the landing.

See the video for yourself…

Today marked the return of Virgin Blue on the Canberra-Sydney air route. It has been two and a half years since Virgin Blue last flew between the two cities.

The first flight from Canberra took off on a rainy morning at 6.25 am. A keen airline buff Peter, from Canberra, said he enjoyed his flight on one of the new Embraer jets which Virgin Blue will be using on the route. Peter was so keen he booked on the re-launch flight and then flew straight back to Canberra on the next available flight. Peter said the Embraer jet was a lot more pleasant to fly on compared to the Dash 8 used by Qantas.

Virgin Blue have eight direct flights a day from Canberra to Sydney and also eight from Sydney to Canberra. Looking at the Virgin Blue website as I write there are flights available from $69 available tomorrow. If you are thinking of a weekend getaway to Canberra from Sydney there are even some seats available on Friday afternoon at this low fare.

I welcome the commencement of the new service as I must say I have not enjoyed flying on the Qantas Dash 8 planes. Also the price competition has been sorely missed as Qantas has had a recent mononpoly on this route.

I must admit that recently instead of taking a flight to Sydney from Canberra when going overseas my family and I have jumped in a hire car. The Qantas fares have just been too high to make it cheap enough to fly.