Dreaming of a 6-foot-long flat bed

There’s a new phenomenon in air travel: the 100% business-class airline. You may not have heard of these yet. But given their (much needed and long overdo) shake-up of the airline industry, it’s a safe bet you’ll be hearing a lot more from these innovative new airlines.

So what is an all-business-class airline? One of the best examples is British-owned Silverjet, which recently launched a daily service between London’s Luton and Newark’s Liberty airports. The introductory airfares are from £799 (US$1,542) until June, when the standard fare of £999 (US$1,928) kicks in.

You can certainly fly between New York and London for less money. But you may rethink your economy-class decision when you see what a few extra dollars or pounds gets you on Silverjet. And we’re not making any of this up!

• No check-in required at Luton, as Silverjet has its own dedicated terminal there. Simply arrive 30 minutes prior to departure.
• There are only 100 passengers per flight (as opposed to the normal 300 per flight) and everybody gets their own 6-foot-long flat bed!
• There are no ‘middle’ seats. Everybody gets a window or an aisle seat.
• Order your meals whenever you want them.
• Each seat has its own entertainment center, laptop power and seat-back massager.
• The 5 bathrooms on each Boeing 767 are regularly cleaned during the flight!
• In-flight announcements and noisy trolley carts are banned on night flights.
• For an extra fee you can pre-arrange a limo or helicopter transfer to / from the airport.

If that’s not enough, Silverjet tickets incorporate a mandatory carbon offset contribution, giving travelers the opportunity to reinvest ‘Carbon Points’ into a variety of climate-friendly projects around the world in partnership with the CarbonNeutral Company. (Which makes us wonder why the major airlines don’t offer similar programs — we’ll leave that rant for another day).

Another all-business-class airline that has launched within the past year is Eos Airlines, between London Stansted and New York City’s JFK airport. Eos planes only have 48 total seats. Talk about mile-high pampering.

It’s hard to see the downside here. In fact we’re hoping this renewed focus on traveler comfort and convenience rubs off on the major airlines. Long-haul flying has hardly changed in 25 years, it’s finally time to drag the airline industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

–Scott McNeely

When I originally wrote this post, I had no idea that Viator and Silverjet would work together to provide Silverjet customers with things to do in New York and London from Viator. But, well, sometimes the world works in wonderfully mysterious ways. Maybe now that Viator and Silverjet are working together, Silverjet will give me a free flight on that NYC-London leg so I can write a first-hand review….

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Departure Lounge, News & Alerts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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