Guest Posts From My Favourite Bloggers : Brett Snyder – The Cranky Flier

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22/09/2009 – Guest Posts From My Favourite Bloggers : Brett Snyder – The Cranky Flier

As a photographer, traveller and airline industry geek there are a few blogs I read on a daily basis. With the broad range of readers that Flying With Fish attracts I’d like to introduce to you folks to the bloggers I follow.

Today’s guest post on Flying With Fish comes from Brett Snyder, creator of The Cranky Flier. Brett’s insights into the airline industry are not only brilliant, but his blog, The Cranky Flier, was ranked #29 among The Guardian’s The World’s 50 Most Powerful Blogs…think about how many blogs are out there and the influence of London’s Guardian newspaper and that should give you a sense of the type of power Brett can swing with what he writes. When I read certain posts on The Cranky Flier I am often reminded of the EF Hutton television ads from the 1980s “When EF Hutton talks people listen” …just swap out “EF Hutton” and swap in “The Cranky Flier.” You can follow Brett’s crankiness on Twitter at www.twitter.com/crankyflier

Here is Brett’s guest post…

Since Fish seems to travel more often and to more places than Carmen San Diego, I thought I’d use my guest post to write about a funny little piece of news that touches a couple different corners of the world. Last week, Emirates and V Australia announced that they would start codesharing. That seems like an odd pairing.

Your first thought might be . . . “Where could they possibly codeshare that it would make sense?” The answer? The Trans-Tasman market. Weird, I know. Initially, you can fly V Australia between LA and Sydney and then jump on to Emirates to fly on to Auckland and Christchurch.

This seemed crazy to me. V Australia is a sister company to Pacific Blue and that airline flies nonstop from Sydney to both Auckland and Christchurch. Why the heck would they put their passengers on a competitor? It’s all about timing.

I was surprised to see that Pacific Blue only has a single daily flight each way in those markets. The flights leave New Zealand in the morning and return at night. That doesn’t even get close to connecting up with the LA flights.

Ah, now it makes sense. Right now, V Australia can’t get people from LA to New Zealand. Of course, Air New Zealand and Qantas can both get people there nonstop, but if V Australia has empty seats (they do), then they might as well try to fill them. And we know that Emirates has empty seats on those airplanes since they’re just tags on the end of the Dubai to Sydney run.

So I think we can call this a marriage of convenience. They both have flights that have some empty seats and happen to connect well. There might be a marginal benefit to both, but I doubt we’ll see any other routes in their respective systems that can grow this into a much bigger partnership.

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Brett Snyder is the author of the award-winning consumer air travel blog, The Cranky Flier. You can usually find him milling around his home airport in Long Beach.