When a direct flight is not really a direct flight?

I was recently at Barcelona airport and something caught my attention: in all airport screens, and also in the airport guide, I could see announced some flights operated by Iberia to destinations in North and South America (New York, Bogota, Mexico...), nothing unusual if I did not know that Iberia does not currently operate long distance flights at Barcelona (it is opening BCN-GRU and BCN-MIA in March). Passengers on these flights need to change planes at Madrid, however, nothing in the flight information suggested that was a non-direct flight.


Can you tell which of these flights are really direct?

Many airlines do code-sharing on certain routes, so you might end up flying with a different company to that you have booked the flight with, but I haven't come across (yet) a case where an airline markets a non-direct route, involving a stopover an a plane change, as a direct flight (if you do, please let me know!).

For example, in this snapshot from Aena's website (Spain's airport operator) you can find a Barcelona-New York (JFK) flight operated by Iberia, however when looking into the details this happens to be a non-direct flight.


Aena's website shows two Iberia flights BCN-JFK, the first one is a code-shared American Airlines direct flight, the second one does not really show a direct flight, but an indirect route to the Big Apple

It turns out that Iberia has been marketing for years something called "Catalunya-America": these are, basically, some flights specially timed to provide connections, via Madrid, to some American destinations. The way these flights are marketed has sometimes led people to believe those were really direct flights and it has been a source of misunderstandings.

From what I have seen so far on this case, I found the information provided by Iberia on these flights to be a bit misleading to the uninformed passenger. Despite the fact that they might be well coordinated to enable connections, these are still non-direct flights and this should be made more clear when marketing them.

What I am wondering is why Iberia can present these non-direct flights with their own codes as proper direct flight. What prevents Lufthansa, for example, from showing a Barcelona-Beijing or Barcelona-Bangkok flight, that would in all cases involve a Frankfurt or Munich stopover, as direct flights?

If someone could clarify these points I would be grateful...

The American Airlines website design fiasco

Here is a story that I came across that should be compulsory reading, not only for everyone with an interest in airlines and web design, but also at business school courses and MBAs.

To summarize: an American Airlines customer, with an eye for web design and usability, visits AA.com and doesn't like what he sees, he posts his opinion on his blog, and here comes an AA.com webdesigner commenting on this post to let him know that if American Airlines website sucks is not because they have bad designers, but because corporate culture and internal politics and rules do not let them do their best.

The result: the American Airlines worker that posted the comment was fired (I am sure Seth Godin would be appalled to learn that someone that cares so much about his work got this sort of treatment from his employer), the story went viral on the internet, with the subsequent damage to to AA's corporate image).

At the end, AA.com got a face-lift (although not sure Dustin Curtis is now happy about it, given he had his own ideas about how it should be)

You can read an account of the story here.

The A380 and the American carriers

While Airbus is racking record orders from the Middle East for its A380 giant plane and more modest orders from European carriers, such as Air France and Lufthansa, the US market seems to be out of bounds for this model. In fact, there is nothing new with this, the next-largest Boeing 747 was also popular in Europe and Asia, but not among American carriers.

It looks like the economics of very large aircraft are not attractive enough for a bunch of network carriers that for most of the last two decades have been focused in a dire financial situation. Moreover, the American air market with its multiple hubs might be better served with smaller planes providing more frequencies, whereas European, Middle Eastern and Asian flag carriers usually serve a single mega-hub.

Here is an interesting article in the WSJ Middle Seat Terminal blog that comments on the possibility that the last wave of consolidation among US airlines, with the mergers of Delta and Northwest on one hand and United and Continental on the other, could pave the way for fresh A380 orders from across the Atlantic...a move that would be certainly welcome in Toulouse, that is becoming increasingly dependent on one single airline, Emirates, to make its A380 programme break even some day in the future.

The retro wave reaches airlines

Attention: this picture was not taken in the late 60s, it is quite recent!
American Airlines Boeing 737-800 Astrojet
Photo by randomduck, available under a Creative Commons license.

Retro design that were successful in their days are making a comeback, touching the nostalgic side of many. In recent years we have seen the car industry introduce the retro-looking, although newly designed, Chrysler PT Cruiser, the remake of the legendary Fiat 500 and plans have been unveiled to produce a redesigned East German icon, the Trabant.

The airline industry is not immune to this trend, airline retro bags are already a fashion staple, but now is the airlines themselves that are taking on the idea and adding retro livery designs to their own aircraft. My guess is that it might have something to do with the flying experience becoming increasingly unglamourous, with no-frills becoming the standard, congested airports and air travel becoming more of a routine. Retro livery designs take us back to a time where flying meant, above all, glamour and exclusivity, when people dressed up to board a plane as to highlight that they were among the select few, a time when flying was not a hassle (whenever you are in Washington DC I highly recommend visiting the exhibit about the evolution of air travel at the Smithsonian , where the shifting demographics of air travel are thoroughly explained)

It is probably impossible to evaluate the branding benefits of adding retro liveries, but this move will surely delight scores of planespotters wherever these planes fly to.


Foto: Air France A320 in retro livery, Munich Airport
Photo by spotterjohnsen, available under a Creative Commons license.


American Airlines Boeing 737-800 Astrojet
Photo by randomduck, available under a Creative Commons license.


Lufthansa A321
Photo by Chjab, available under a Creative Commons license.


Continental Boeing 737-900ER at Newark (EWR)
Photo by Slasher-Fun, available under a Creative Commons license.


Foto: Finnair A319 in retro livery, Helsinki Vantaa Airport
Photo by Aku from Helsinki, Finland, available under a Creative Commons license.