Flight Log: Continental Unveils New BusinessFirst Seat

Considering that a $1 increase in the cost of crude translates to $43 million a year in expenses for Continental Airlines, the carrier's planned $100 million upgrade of its new BusinessFirst fully lie-flat seat is a drop in the bucket. Still, CEO Larry Kellner, after lifting the veil on the upgraded prototype at the National Business Travel Association International Convention & Exposition in Los Angeles late last month, said he expects enough front-of-the-plane demand to bring a return on that investment. Debuting in fall 2009 on some Boeing 777 aircraft across the Atlantic and Pacific, the new seat also will be featured on the carrier's 757-200 fleet beginning in 2010, and its 787 fleet upon Boeing's delivery of the long-awaited aircraft. Kellner said fully lie-flat seats on international business and first class cabins will be a must-have within five years, and airlines without them will lose coveted high-yielding passengers.

OpenSkies To Upgrade Coach, Add Amsterdam Service
If launching an airline and acquiring all-business carrier L'Avion weren't enough to keep OpenSkies busy in its first few weeks of operation, the carrier late last month piled on two more announcements with its plans to launch its second route from New York to Amsterdam in October and revamp its aircraft from three classes to two—dropping the 30 seats currently residing in coach. British Airways-owned OpenSkies begins service from New York's JFK to Schipol on Oct. 15, managing director Dale Moss said. The route will feature a Boeing 757 aircraft configured with two classes, instead of the three with which the carrier launched on June 19. OpenSkies expects to roll out the new configuration to the rest of its planes, starting with those flying between Paris Orly and JFK, beginning Oct. 1. The reconfiguration means taking seat capacity per plane down from 82 to 64—with 24 in its "Biz" class and 40 in "Prem+." Not everyone is impressed. Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson—joint venture partners of Air France and KLM, the two airlines whose home turf OpenSkies has invaded—invoked Delta's failed carrier-within-a-carrier Song when he said, "We've played that movie in the U.S. and it's not a pretty movie."

Like Its Peers, Continental Seeks U.S.-China Changes
First United Airlines requested to postpone its San Francisco-Guangzhou launch one year to June 30, 2009. Then US Airways asked to move its Philadelphia-Beijing launch to March 2010. After that, Delta Air Lines told the U.S. Department of Transportation it plans to shift daily Atlanta-Shanghai service to five flights a week beginning in November and return to daily service in May 2009. Most recently, Continental Airlines filed a DOT request to trim a few weekly services from its Newark-Shanghai and Newark-Beijing routes in the fall. Continental in the filing said "the extraordinary increase in the price of fuel, coupled with global economic concerns, require airlines to tailor their schedules more carefully than ever to adjust to these conditions."