Travel News

IN THE AIR

Emirates is to use the first of its long-awaited A380 superjumbos to fly to New York, London Heathrow, Sydney and Auckland. The 489-seat planes will fly to New York on 1 October, London Heathrow on 1 December and Sydney-Auckland on 1 February next year. Singapore Airlines meanwhile is to convert five Airbus aircraft into all-business class seating, for its non-stop Singapore-New York and Singapore-Los Angeles flights. “The peak demand for the non-stop flights is from our business class customers, and this change will expand business-class capacity from 64 to 100 seats on each flight,” said executive vice-president Huang Cheng Eng in a statement. Singapore Airlines said the flights on the A340-500 planes will be phased in from mid- May, replacing the current arrangement of 181 seats for economy and business classes.

American Airlines has postponed its planned second daily flight to New York JFK from London Stansted until 1 August. It says the decision has nothing to do with the general economic slowdown, rather: “An unusually high number of pilots have been retiring early, so we’ve had to adjust to our schedules.” An American Airlines business lounge is due for completion this summer, which will replace the temporary facility used since the daily New York service began last October.

Virgin Group has launched an online service as part of plans to join the burgeoning private aircraft chartering business. Virgin Charter offers a scheduling portal for 2,500 air charter services in the US, as well as customers who currently pay intermediaries or have to call a number of operators before booking a flight. Members go online, locate available aircraft and negotiate pricing. By eliminating brokers, the company hopes to reduce around 20% of the normal cost of hiring private aircraft. Virgin Charter is currently trialling with 60 charter flight operators. It plans to go live in September and have around 500 operators. Virgin will aim to optimise its resources and increase revenue by marketing flights that are returning empty from single trips, under a section called “hot deals” on the site.

CHECKING IN

Swire Properties has launched Swire Hotels, and the first of four hotels in China, The Opposite House, Beijing, which will open this summer. Swire Properties has a 75% stake in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Miami and 20% stakes in the JW Marriott, Conrad, Island Shangri-la and Novotel Citygate hotels in Hong Kong. Swire is also developing a collection of luxury boutique hotels to be launched in the UK in 2009. Properties have so far been acquired in Bristol, Cheltenham, Exeter and Brighton.