KLM has launched a quiz contest on their KLM India Facebook page that would give one winner a chance to win an all inclusive ticket to Amsterdam in their Business Class. The quiz contest is about answering five questions on the new KLM World Business Class.
KLM launched its fully flat beds on its international long-haul destination flights served by Boeing 747-400. The seat can be horizontally reclined at 180 degrees providing more legroom and no middle seat. Every seat is installed with a 17 inch screen video monitor for in-flight entertainment and storage compartments.
Air France, with an aim to engage and stimulate their online fan base, had partnered with world famous Indian fashion designer Manish Arora and launched a contest on August 5, 2013 for aspiring designers to showcase their creative talents.
It was a month-long contest, which provided an opportunity to fashion enthusiasts to create a ready to wear look. All that the contestants had to do is take inspiration from the designs of Manish Arora and create his/her own design or embellish a look of ready–made garment and upload them along with a short write up on www.facebook.com/airfrance and invite their friends to vote for their collection. Commenting on this contest, Yeshwant Pawar, General Manager, Air France KLM said:
“We are delighted with the overwhelming response that we have garnered via this inspiring concept. Through this initiative we were able to reach out to a much wider set of consumers and strengthen our social media engagement with them.”
After four weeks of voting, Mr. Siddharth Arya was voted as the lucky winner of the contest and was awarded with two all-inclusive tickets to Paris by Ms. Kamal Sengupta, Director Sales, Air France KLM.
The winner was also awarded with passes for Manish Arora’s show in Paris during “Paris Fashion Week” held on September 26, 2013.
To mark the birth anniversary for the father of India, Air France KLM, a member of the Sky Team alliance announced a special online contest for all their Air France and KLM follower base in India.
KLM India team will quiz their fans each day on location for two photographs of iconic Mahatma Gandhi statues around the world. The KLM India Twitter (www.twitter.com/KLMIndia) followers will need to identify both the photographs and tweet their answer with hashtag #Tribute2Gandhi.
While Air France India team will invite fans to share photos of Gandhiji’s memorabilia in their cities with interesting captions on Twitter (www.twitter.com/airfranceIN) channel with hashtag #GandhiInMyCity every day till the October 2, 2013.
A truly inspiring action by Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson, who gave up his seat on a full flight to a mother so that she could return home in time to pick up her 12 year old diabetic daughter from a summer camp.
Ms. Jessie Frank who was to fly home to Atlanta from Washington DC on June 13 morning. After a series of delays and cancellations, Frank was anxiously hoping against hope to get on one of the last flights of the day, since she was number eight on the waiting list and zero seats were available.
Her prayers were answered and the agents called her name and asked to board the aircraft.
A vaguely familiar face met me at the doorway, not in uniform so probably an off-duty pilot I had seen before. He quickly grabbed my roll-aboard, helped clear a space in the overhead, and showed me to my seat.
As the flight was descending in to Atlanta, the cabin crew announced a special guest was riding in the jump seat of the cockpit, because he had given up his place to allow one more person on the flight, Richard Anderson, Delta's CEO.
Frank then recognised the "vaguely familiar" face since Anderson is in the flight safety video played at the start of every Delta flight.
On a shameful day when politicians in India were publicly bickering on who will take credit for rescue operations in Uttarakhand, may be they need to see across the oceans to see how true leaders help their supporters.
Winning recipe to feature in Lufthansa flights and The Leela restaurants
Ms. Vandana Sethi was declared the Grand Prize winner of Lufthansa Star Chef Contest in the Grand Finale at The Leela, Mumbai yesterday where 12 aspiring chefs, selected from thousands of contestants across India, vied for top honours in a live cook-out.
Vandana won the battle of taste with her recipe for Khoye ki Subzi, which will feature in the celebrated Star Chef menu on-board Lufthansa’s India and at select restaurants at The Leela.
This contest began as a unique talent hunt on Lufthansa India Facebook page to find the best original Indian recipe. The 12 finalists emerged through a Facebook poll of the best recipes selected by the celebrated Star Chef jury comprising Master Chefs Kunal Kapur, Surender Mohan, and Thomas Brockenauer, all known for their culinary excellence and innovation. MasterChef Kunal Kapur explained
"Vandana’s innovative entrée was a clear winner as she stayed true to India’s culinary traditions,”
Ms. Sethi will fly to Frankfurt for a holiday and visit the LSG Sky Chefs facility in Germany. She also wins a coveted internship at the Leela Group for three months.
German carrier Deutsche Lufthansa has launched an exclusive contest, for aspiring chefs, on its India page on Facebook.
Called the Star Chef Contest, the aim of the contest is to find Indian main course recipes for service aboard Lufthansa's First and Business class flights between India and Germany.
The winning recipe will be featured in business or first class in one menu cycle on-board all Lufthansa flights ex-India. The duration of each menu cycle is two months. The winning recipe will also be featured at these restaurants - Jamawar, The Leela Mumbai and Diya, The Leela Kempinski Gurgaon
The Grand Prize winner also wins a free trip to Germany to visit LSG Sky Chefs kitchen, including a three night hotel stay, and gets a prestigious three month internship at one of The Leela hotels to hone their culinary skills.
Weekly winners will also be chosen as ‘Chef's Pick of the Week’ to win a kitchen appliance worth Rs 5000 or more!
To participate, entrants must:
Submit an original recipe for an Indian main course (vegetarian or non-vegetarian)
Upload a picture so that the jury can view a presentation of the dish
Submit recipes before March 31, 2013
The jury of Chefs Surender Mohan, Kunal Kapur, and Thomas Brockenauer, will select the 15 best recipes based on taste, presentation and innovation. The Lufthansa India Facebook fans will then vote on these 15 to decide the ‘Top 8’ recipes.
One of the contest requirements is that the recipe has to be original and another is that the ‘Top 8’ entrants will be required to attend a live cooking contest judged by the jury in the Grand Finals at The Leela in Mumbai on 25 April 2013. Lufthansa will provide air tickets.
There are some aspects of the terms and conditions of the contest you should read carefully. The one we found troubling was under clause 3.a.
Once the recipes are submitted, they become the property of Lufthansa and the Star Chef, and can be used/ altered in any form for any usage in future.
Effectively you transfer your intellectual property to Lufthansa and an unnamed Star Chef (we assume Mr. Kunal Kapur) just by entering the contest. We have asked the airline for its comments on this broad-ranging condition, and are awaiting their answer.
Also Non-resident Indians (NRIs) and foreign citizens residing in India, need not bother participating; the contest is only open to Indian citizens who are resident in India.
Mumbai based Jet Airways (mobile website)is celebrating the crossing of 100,000 fans of its Facebook page. It is a significant statement on the growth of social networking in India that this achievement has been reached in less than a year of the airline launching its social media efforts and January 19, 2010.
The airline is marking its celebration with a Jet to Milan contest which runs until December 14, 2010. As part of the contest, guests must upload an image of any destination in Italy, tell about the place in not more than 200 characters and answer three simple questions on Jet Airways’ new services to Milan. A lucky winner will win return tickets for a couple, on Jet Airways’ Milan Delhi.
The airline launched its Facebook community, with the primary objective of engaging with passengers apart from providing guests with real-time news, updates about flight schedules, new guest programs, route additions, services and special offers, etc.
Jet's experience highlights the lack of mobile driven social networking in India, as well as the general ignorance of privacy concerns. In the US and Europe, the social media channel of choice for airlines, is Twitter, which is ideally suited to the smartphone, Blackberry, iPhone and Android environment. Comparing Jet Airways to JetBlue of the US -- on Facebook, JetBlue only has about 4.2x the fans of Jet Airways, but has almost 1.6 million followers on Twitter or 307x the meagre 5,213 followers of Jet Airways.
With the expected roll out of 3G services soon, one can expect more data-service-enabled smartphones entering the customer base. Operationally too, Jet Airways along with most Asian airlines, has a lot to learn from JetBlue which succeeds due to its constant monitoring and extremely fast responses on Twitter, and protection of passenger privacy by using the Direct Message feature of Twitter (reflected by the high number of Twitter users JetBlue follows). I recommend reading these two articles (article 1, article 2) which highlight how JetBlue uses Twitter to enhance the customer service experience.
The social media team at Jet Airways is good, and having met them, I wish them more success. I do hope they read this article and implement a strong Twitter policy. Time for them to repeat their Facebook success on Twitter.
While on the subject of social networking, a small pitch from me. Please follow Bangalore Aviation on Facebook and on Twitter.
Coming across a variety of questions on the discussion boards, I have written this strategy guide that may help you get ahead in the game.
First and most importantly -- Forget conventional wisdom. To make the game simpler and appealing to a wider audience the developers have taken a lot of liberties with the models of planes available, the airports, and timings.
You can operate any plane from any airport. For example an Airbus A380 on a runway only 3,000 feet long is no problem in the world of Airline Manager (or AM for short).
The size of the cities do not matter. AM only calculates the total number of flights operated by all players in the game to adjust demand. So you can operate multiple A380's in to the smallest town with the same demand effect as the largest metropolis.
Planes destined for delivery five years from today, such as the A350XWB are already available now.
Do not pay attention to brands. A Boeing aircraft has the same reliability as an Ilyushin or Antonov or Tupolev or Dassault or any of the other manufacturers.
Fuel consumption is meaningless.
Planes Probably the most asked question in the game is "which is the best plane for use in Airline Manager?".
To answer this, I have prepared an Excel file which computes the ROI (return on investment) for various models of planes which I recommend you download from here.
Update - July 10, 2010. The developers of Airline Manager have increased the maximum number of routes from 401 to 501, and you can purchase additional capacity using pax points to 601.
Update - March 29, 2010. The developers of Airline Manager have changed some of the pricing for the aircraft. The spreadsheet can be modified. Just enter the new figures and the ROI figures will get calculated for you.
When you first start the game you will get a Boeing 737-800. Sell this immediately. You need to start generating a good cash flow.
In the spreadsheet I have highlighted the aircraft which deliver high returns on investment. For this the best aircraft is the Dassault Mercure which will pay back your investment within 15 hours of operations.
Use the money generated by the sale of the 737-800 and buy multiple Mercures. The only drawback of this strategy is the short 1,700km range of the Mercure. To earn money quickly, you will need to play the game frequently, may be every 2 hours or so. Who said gamers need sleep?
As you progress in the game, you can induct the British Aerospace BAC-111-500 which has higher range (translate in to longer breaks between playing the game), and the McDonnell Douglas MD-81.
Once you reach about 100 Mercures, I recommend moving up to the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10. It will give you a 250 passenger capacity and a range of 6,436km. Once you reach 200 aircraft, I recommend you start withdrawing the Mercures from your fleet and adding more DC-10-10's. The longer range of the DC-10-10's will allow you a 6 hour break from the game.
The IL-86 for short range (3,800km) high passenger count (350 pax) and IL-96-400 for medium range (10,000km) high passenger count (436 pax) can also be considered for select routes.
AM places an inordinate premium for high passenger capacity airplanes. It is better to put two aircraft on a route rather than one big passenger plane.
Since you are limited to 401 routes (an extension to 451 routes can be purchased) the end goal is to end up with a long distance fleet of 401 Airbus A380s. You can buy and sell a Boeing 747 and a Concorde for the achievement badges once you reach the top.
Income In AM, the revenue calculation is simple. Gross income is $0.5 per passenger per km. i.e. the number of passengers x the route distance. From this subtract airport taxes which are 15.99% up to a maximum of $200,000. As you go up in the game and start inducting Boeing 787-8 (range 15,200km, 250 pax) and Airbus A380 (range 20,000km, 644pax) the tax element cap will add to your profit.
Fuel Unlike the real world, the cost of fuel is actually very low in the overall scheme of things. In the spreadsheet you can change the numbers and do your own "what-if" analysis.
The cost of fuel varies on days of the week, and at times of the day. The lowest price of fuel is $400 per 1,000 pounds. At present the lowest priced day is Monday and the best time to purchase is right after 01:00GMT till about 04:00GMT. The developers of AM have recently tweaked the schedule and previously Thursdays were also a low cost day for fuel. Now it appears to have shifted to Wednesday and occasionally Fridays.
It is good to slowly start developing a reserve of fuel worth 4~5 days of consumption. At present I am at about 200 million pounds of consumption per day. So I typically stock up about 800~950 million pounds of fuel. The maximum you can store is 999,999,999 pounds.
Advertising Simple rule -- always advertise, and always select billboards. With no advertising you will loose about 15%~20% of passengers. On a 250 seat DC-10-10 it translates to a loss of $75,000 per 6 hour flight.
Advertising costs vary from $5,000 per day to $40,000 per day, so you can see, that even on the most expensive day, your passenger losses far outstrip your advertising expenses.
The lowest priced day for advertising is Mondays and Thursdays, so I recommend taking a 3 day package on Mondays and a 4 day package on Thursdays.
Base Hub Use the Profile button on the main overview page to select your hub city. Apart from getting an achievement, your hub will automatically show as the originating city.
Finding good routes AM does not require connections for your flights; i.e. you can have a flight between any two cities. (Remember I told you to leave common airline wisdom at the front door of the game).
Use the "find route" on the flights tab to obtain a demand profile across the world. Click on the Demand column heading for a reverse sorting. Use high demand cities in your planning, but do keep in mind, other players are doing the same.
This website is great for finding routes. Just appreciate the fact that it is a labour of love and has no connection with the developers of AM (just like this guide). Drop him a note of thanks for his effort.
Catering This has a very minor impact on your reputation and I recommend it purely as an option if you have the money. You do not loose by not catering, and as you go forward the income relevance drops even further. I transport some 150,000 passengers every day and have a daily cash flow of $500 million. Earning about $500,000 on catering does not hold much charm.
Maintenance As you operate flights you will have incidents. I recommend opening a 2nd tab and performing repairs reasonably quickly, otherwise your reputation will suffer.
As your planes reach 400 flying hours, you will require them to undergo a C-Check. C-Checks can get expensive (up to $2 million) and will take your aircraft out of commission for anywhere from 6 to 16 hours depending on the aircraft. However, by this time you should be up to 401 routes and this will become just another chore in the game.
Do not miss your C-Checks. You can have a crash and nothing will impact your reputation and airline more.
Staff Every once in a day or more frequently, visit the staff tab. Every so often the staff will move from "happy" to "talking" to "unhappy". Do not let the staff stay "unhappy" you will have a strike, and your reputation will start suffering. I normally let the staff be "talking" for a few hours and then give them a raise.
Airline Value and Pax Points The best way to increase airline value and earn pax points is to add aircraft to your fleet. Unless absolutely necessary do not spend your pax points.
Business Jet The Airbus A318 Elite is available for 3,000 Pax Points. Not worth it in my humble opinion.
Conclusion I hope you find this guide useful and helpful, it is by no way full and complete. I request you to please add your own pearls of wisdom. If you find it helpful, feel free to drop in a thank you comment. If you find anything wrong, please feel free to add a correction via a comment.
India's Jet Airways, in association with South African Tourism and Sun International are conducting a social media and blogging contest titled ‘Why I should visit South Africa this summer’.
The winner of the contest, to be selected on the basis of a lucky draw, will be provided with two Jet Airways return economy trip tickets (for a couple) from Mumbai to Johannesburg and return. South African Tourism and Sun City will organize three nights and four days complimentary one room stay for the couple on bed and breakfast basis at The Palace of the Lost City in Sun City.
The contest involves writing a 200-word note on ‘Why I should visit South Africa this summer’ and answering two simple questions.
Participants can submit their note on Jet Airway's Facebook page. Bloggers can also write blogs on the topic and submit their blog URL on the same Facebook page.
The contest will run from 8th April to 5th May 2010.
Note from the publisher: Bangalore Aviation will not participate in this contest since it is against our code of ethics to write a promotional piece for profit or gain, but we salute Jet Airways on its recognition and adoption of the growing world of social media and blogging.
After much goading including, by yours truly, Jet Airways has finally embraced social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. Welcome aboard!!!
Jet Airway's objective is reaching a larger cross-section of its customers and keeping them informed on a real-time basis, and will also provide customers with news updates about flight schedules, new customer programs, route additions, services and special offers, etc.
Besides being a connecting medium, Jet Airways will also provide guests with news updates about flight schedules, new customer programs, route additions, services and special offers, etc.
On Facebook you can browse the official page and become a Fan. You will be able to view our latest information, photos, videos and more, which will be updated from time-to-time. What's more, you can also connect with other Jet Airways fans and share your experiences.
Via Twitter, stay updated on-the-go with promotions, trivia, real-time help, maintenance alerts, best deals, news feeds and more.
