“It’s not as bad now as it was even two years ago, but you still have legacy airlines trying to compete on who’s got the nicest prison cell,” Mr. St. George said. “We’re in a different class than that and I think the whole industry is going to be better off if we all up our game a little bit.”

Plenty of downdrafts remain, of course. “How many times have Wall Street guys come in and said ‘You know, if you charge five bucks for TV, you’d make a lot of money’?” Mr. St. George said in the interview, with Joel Idelson, senior VP and creator of opportunities at Allen & Gerritsen. “You know what, you’re right, but then we wouldn’t be JetBlue.”

“It’s actually kind of liberating,” he added, “compared to other places where you’re continually in this fight of ‘What’s the next thing I can take away from my customers?’”

This story originally appeared on AdAge, a Skift content partner.

Additional links from AdAge:

• A Peek Into Starwood Hotels’ Marketer Immersion Program
• Qantas to Flyers: Ditch Your Kindles, Read Our Custom Books
• Loyalty Programs Need to Put Customers’ Needs First

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A Virgin America Airbus A-320 at the gate at Los Angeles International Airport. SWF Photography / Flickr

In an era where fliers complain air travel can feel like riding a city bus in the sky, Virgin America soared above the competition in Consumer Reports’ airline rankings released Wednesday.

“Virgin America is a cut above the rest,” Consumer Reports senior editor Amanda Walker told NBC News. “People were very happy with their flights on Virgin.”

… Survey respondents said they liked the check-in, flight attendants, the in-flight entertainment options, cabin cleanliness and seat comfort. Virgin was also the only airline to get top marks for baggage handling.

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ICAO’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection proposed using a plane’s maximum take-off weight, or MTOW, to help gauge aircraft emissions and efficiency, the Montreal-based regulatory body said in July. The ICAO council was expected to approve the system this year, it said at the time.

“Standards, not to mention the broad consensus which effective ones require, take time to develop,” Anthony Philbin, a spokesman for ICAO in Montreal, said yesterday by e-mail. “The present timetable looks to it being more fully resolved by end-2014 or possibly sometime in 2015.”

The United Nations-overseen body is crafting its greenhouse gas-reduction plan after the European Union broadened its emissions market to cover airlines in January 2012. Europe can replace its aviation targets with a global measure as long as it’s as stringent as the EU’s, Connie Hedegaard, the bloc’s climate chief, said in February 2012.

Critics of ICAO’s measure include Dimitri Simos, founder of aeronautics software company Lissys Ltd. in Woodhouse Eaves, England, who argues it should include an aircraft’s empty weight rather than the more theoretical MTOW.

“It was flawed at its heart” because it’s an incomplete picture of aircraft emissions, said Simos, whose clients have included Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS. A more stringent metric would stop airlines from “getting away with things that may be commercially beneficial but are bad for the environment” such as using inefficient aircraft, he said.

Lissys’s Piano software has been approved under ICAO’s models for determining aircraft fuel burn.

The airline regulator’s standard is still in a research- and-development stage and criticism is premature, Philbin said. ICAO called the metric a “major move forward” in July.

“ICAO has no comment on the supposed positions of any industry operators or manufacturers who may be assisting in this process,” Philbin said.

Editors: Andrew Reierson and Randall Hackley.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net.

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Since 2011, airport police have received 130 reports of theft aboard flights, which includes items taken during the flight or after the plane landed.

“I got my carry-on luggage out and the lady across the aisle said to me, ‘Is that your carry-on?’ I said, ‘Yes, why?’ She said, ‘Because a man, when you went to the restroom, took it out and took some things out of it.’”

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The lighter-weight material will be deployed on the wings of the 777X, an upgrade of Boeing’s biggest twin-engine model, which the company began marketing this year. Chicago-based Boeing is betting that the plane, which will also have more- efficient engines, will cement its lead in the market for wide- body jets typically used on long-haul routes.

Airbus doesn’t “have an airframe that can compete with the 777X,” McNerney said today at an investor conference. “They don’t have the appetite to do a ground-up airplane, and they’d have to do a ground-up airplane.”

Boeing, which is targeting a commercial debut for the 777X near the end of the decade, doesn’t yet have board approval to start production. The largest version of Airbus’s competing A350, the -1000, is scheduled for delivery in 2017.

Boeing climbed 0.2 percent to $98.93 at 9:31 a.m. after a previous gain of 31 percent this year. The stock still trades at a 21 percent discount to Airbus parent European, Aeronautic Defence & Space Co.

Editors: James Langford and John Lear.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Langford in New York at jlangford2@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ed Dufner at edufner@bloomberg.net.

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Passengers are increasingly relying on their tablets and other personal electronic devices for entertainment and work on U.S. domestic flights, despite a ban on their use during takeoff and landing, a study to be released Wednesday concludes.

The use of electronic devices, ranging from laptops to tablets to smart phones, rose 24.3% this year over last year, according to the study by the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University. Researchers observed 1,688 passengers on 23 flights operated by six airlines at randomly selected points when at cruising altitude.

The increase in tablet and e-reader use was most significant, from 8.4% in 2012 to 10.7% in 2013.

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An Airbus A380 jet of Singapore Airlines takes off from the airport in Zurich. Arne Wiegmann / Reuters

Singapore Airlines, which has too many pilots amid a business downturn, does not expect the surplus to ease any time soon.

Cadet pilots have been told that until Sept 30, those who quit may have their bonds waived.

The usual payback for leaving before serving the seven-year work bond can be more than S$250,000 (US$199,250), pilots said.

There are 95 cadets currently in training, said SIA, which froze fresh recruitment early last year.

About a third who have completed their flying training are now doing ground work, The Straits Times found out.

They have not been told when they will be able to start flying.

The cadets as well as 76 captains on expatriate terms which will be terminated by the end of next month or when their contracts expire — whichever is sooner — are among those affected by the surplus manpower situation.

SIA is helping to facilitate their movement to other carriers within the group.

For example, Tiger Airways recently held a briefing for SIA cadet pilots on job opportunities, SIA spokesman Nicholas Ionides said. The budget carrier is about a third owned by SIA, which has around 2,400 pilots.

Of the expatriate pilots who have left SIA, six have gone to SIA Cargo and another six, to long-haul budget arm Scoot.

Those who move to the other carriers must first resign from the parent airline.

Captain R. Subramaniam, vice-president (industrial) of the Air Line Pilots Association of Singapore (Alpa-S), said: “We suggested to management that our excess pilots should be considered first for vacancies at the subsidiaries, so we are happy this is being done.

“But pilots who move should not have to resign from the parent airline because they end up losing their seniority and salary increments over the years.

“We don’t think this is very fair.”

Ionides said: “Our subsidiary airlines are separately managed and handle their own recruitment. However, we work closely with them and where there are employment opportunities we assist pilots to take up employment with them.”

High fuel prices, competition from other carriers and a slowdown in Europe and the United States, which are key long-haul premium markets for SIA, have taken a toll on the airline’s bottom line.

Last week, the airline reported that operating profit for the year to March 31 fell by 19.8 per cent, to S$229.2 million.

The net profit of S$378.9 million was 12.8 per cent higher from a year ago, but mainly on the back of an increase in non-operating items such as surplus on the sale of aircraft and spare engines.

(c)2013 the Asia News Network (Hamburg, Germany). Distributed by MCT Information Services.

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And a key negotiator for the European Union’s Executive Commission, focus of anger from many other countries over its emissions trading scheme (ETS), said she hoped a road map towards a pact would be agreed by this autumn.

The comments came on Tuesday at a discussion on prospects for a global deal eliminating the threat of regional or national rules, which aviation leaders say would be disastrous, at an annual European show for the international aviation business sector, EBACE.

“Eventually I think we’ll get there,” said Kurt Edwards of the International Business Aviation Council, IBAC, which groups plane and equipment makers and service providers for the multibillion dollar sector.

Guy Visele of the European Business Aviation Association, EBAA, agreed but argued that meanwhile his industry – which creates a tiny fraction of the emissions which contribute to global warming – should be treated less harshly by the EU.

Business aviation – in which a major role is played by big manufacturers like Boeing, Europe’s Airbus, Canada’s Bombardier and Brazil’s Embraer – has been seen by many politicians as a playground for the super-rich.

But its advocates say the industry, in the doldrums since the financial crisis of 2008/9 after a decade-long boom, plays a major role in world trade and that over 80 percent of its operations involve moving businesspeople rather than elite individuals.

The EU, committed to combat the climate change blamed on carbon emissions, created an international storm when it said it would impose its rules from January this year on all flights to and from its territory.

China and India, among others, ordered their carriers not to comply and the United States said it would consider retaliatory action.

EU MEASURES SUSPENDED

The EU suspended implementation of the scheme, which would have compelled commercial and business aviation carriers from anywhere in the world to purchase offset credits for the carbon they emit over a set baseline for any flight arriving or departing European airspace.

At Tuesday’s EBACE discussion, Elina Bardram of the European Commission’s climate action division said Brussels remained committed to dialogue as the best way to achieve global agreement by 2020 through the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization.

It has already suspended enforcement of its own interim scheme pending the outcome of negotiations at ICAO’s triennial assembly from Sept. 24 to Oct. 4, but has not yet made clear what it will do if those end in deadlock.

“The path remains challenging but we can remain confident that a road map will be agreed at ICAO if political rhetoric can be dropped,” she said.

Officials from 17 countries are working with Montreal-based ICAO to shape an agreement acceptable to its 191 member countries to reduce aviation’s carbon footprint through market measures.

Paul Steele, environmental specialist for the commercial airlines’ International Air Transport Association, IATA, and head of the Geneva-based Air Transport Action Group, ATAG, said considerable progress had been made in the ICAO talks but quick agreement was unlikely.

“We’re not going to get there this year. With 191 countries in ICAO, you’re not going to get agreement easily,” he told the EBACE session. But to reach the 2020 deadline, agreement was vital at ICAO’s next assembly in 2016, he said.

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According to the profile created by compiling the preferences of more than 700 flight attendants, the lucky man is also likely to be smartly dressed – a handy hint for any hoping to blag themselves a roomier seat.

While the poll showed men were preferred (58 per cent compared to 42 per cent for women), and that 30-40 was the age group most likely to be considered, travelling alone was proven to be most important if you want to be offered a premium seat.

Having good manners and being a frequent flyer also helps, according to the survey which was carried out by the flight comparison website Skyscanner.

The research showed that businessmen stand a good chance of moving beyond the economy class curtain, while those who would have the hardest time getting an upgrade would be anyone flying as part of a hen party. Votes from cabin crew showed that females in their late teens wearing revealing clothing and travelling as a group would be the least likely to qualify.

The survey of flight attendants in 83 countries found that nearly three-quarters of those questioned, 72 per cent, said they were more inclined to give an upgrade to a passenger flying alone.

Having an injury also makes you a likely candidate.

The cabin crew provided suggestions for increasing the chances of being offered an upgrade. Here are the top ten ways to improve your chances.

1) Be friendly and polite – 82 per cent of crew said it makes a difference

2) Join the airline’s frequent flyer scheme – 80 per cent said it helps

3) Travel alone – 72 per cent are most likely to upgrade a lone flyer

4) Point out an injury – 65 per cent said this would count as a factor

5) Dress smartly – 59 per cent are more likely to upgrade a well dressed traveller

6) Point out that you are on your honeymoon – 58 per cent would be more likely to upgrade newlyweds

7) Know the cabin crew – 55 per cent said they are more likely to upgrade a friend or family member

8) Travel at unpopular times – 47 per cent of crew said that if there are plenty of premium seats to spare, you are more likely to have an upgrade request accepted

9) Tell the crew a sob story – 35 per cent said this could sway their decision

10) Look your best – 31 per cent of crew said they are more likely to grant an upgrade to a well-groomed, attractive passenger.

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American Airlines outfitted in its new livery takes off from Montreal, Canada. Patrick Cardinal / Flickr

Last week at the 54th annual CLIO Awards creative marketing agency FutureBrand North America was received a trophy in the corporate identity design category for its recent work with iconic American Airlines brand.

According to the agency, the honour marks the first time an airline brand has been awarded a CLIO in Corporate Identity Design.

Launched around the world on January 17th, 2013, the new American Airlines identity and livery reflect a more modern, vibrant and welcoming spirit for the brand, according to FutureBrand. It also marks the first time the identity has been updated in 46 years.

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