Fly as you like

AVIATION: Maersk Air has achieved success as a budget airline with built-in customer friendliness and flexibility.

Finn Øelund, President of Maersk Air

The Danish airline Maersk Air has turned decent into ascent over the last 12 months. Rather than park up permanently in response to the financial problems besetting the global aviation industry, Maersk Air has set its course to fly out of problem territory.

A year ago, the company decided to change its business concept from standard airline to budget airline. But not the nofrills version. Maersk Air introduced one-way tickets at prices where passengers pay only for what they get. The Maersk Air concept “Fly as you like” helped the company win the Danish Travel Writers’ prize this year as the most innovative and customer friendly airline.

In addition to selling only one-way-tickets, “Fly as you like” comprises three price categories, small, medium and large, where the legroom between the seats, location in the aircraft and choice of food determine the price. The concept also gives passengers a high degree of flexibility. Ticket changes, name changes and refunds can be made up to three hours before scheduled departure. For the small and medium categories there is a modest surcharge, but for the large category it is free.

While a lot of large and reputable airlines have tackled the crisis by saving and closing routes, Maersk Air has opened a total of 23 new routes since the introduction of the new concept, so that today the airline has 38 scheduled routes plus charter. At one time Maersk Air was opening a new route practically every day from either Copenhagen or Billund airports to European destinations.

”We know what customers want and we give them the very best from all the competing airlines – plus a little more,” says. “That is low prices, choice of legroom, flexibility for all tickets and many direct services from Copenhagen and Billund.”

Finn Øelund continues: “Maersk Air’s pricing and the extremely flexible rules for changing name and date of departure and refunding without having to pay for the flight again are going to challenge and change the way the airline industry thinks and acts. With fair prices and fixed trade-up supplements for the different ticket categories and customers only having to pay for what they themselves choose, we place the customer truly in the centre.”

http://www.maersk-air.com

Copenhagen Airport the best in Europe

Readers of Business Traveller, Germany’s leading magazine in that sector, have judged Copenhagen Airport in Kastrup Europe’s best for the third year in succession. Zurich Airport was second, and Munich third.

Business Traveller caters for “frequent flyers” and has been in existence since 1976. In Germany alone, the magazine is published quarterly with a run of 210,000 copies. The magazine is also published in the US, Great Britain, Asia, the Middle East and China. 3,000 readers completed a questionnaire, enclosed with the September/October issue of Business Traveller in Germany, which asked them to rate a number of airports, airlines and hotels. The responses were subsequently analysed by an independent institute. Singapore was voted the best overseas airport and best airport in the world, while the airport in Nürnberg was judged the best in Germany.