Fly-by-night Airlines?
 

FT'ers,

I am presently debating whether to take a flight on a not-well-known Colombian airline, and I was wondering whether others on this board have their own airline classification. Mine goes something like this:

Airlines I go out of my way to fly: This is usually dictated by FF memberships, and in my case includes UA and Star Alliance, plus Lan Chile.

Airlines I would definitly fly: Again, in my case, this includes most serious airlines in which I don't have a mileage preference, e.g, AA, US, BA, JL, etc.

Airlines I would rather avoid, but have no qualm flying: In this category, I lump those with plain (har, har) bad reputations for service and/or attitude (AF in my case), or tend to be sloppy operationally (Avianca, LAB and the like).

Airlines I will not fly: This is the world of the fly-by-night operators, who don't take safety and/or operations seriously: Aeroflot (yes, I understand they are trying to get their act together), Air India, Korean and some of the African/Latin American/Asian carriers.

That's my opinion. I'd be interested in hearing what others have to say.

Uh ooh! Here it comes! Be prepared for some "civilized hate mail!"

I'll avoid the "civilized hate mail" by dumping on an airline that no longer exists. In about 1979, we went to St. Thomas, by way of San Juan, and the connection from San Juan to Charlotte Amalie was on a carrier called Aero Virgo. When we boarded, after the 14-year old had gotten done filling the tanks with fuel on top of the wings, I was assigned the exit seat over the wings, and noticed that there was what appeared to be a large tin can lid hanging over the place where the handle should be. Looking below the tin can lid, I saw that the handle for the emergency door had been wired up into place, and the lid was covering that fact. Didn't notice this until we were already taxiing, so there wasn't anything I could do about it. Made the trip a little more exciting than I would have liked, and never had the chance to fly Aero Virgo again after that. Can't imagine why they are no longer in business!!

Djlawman

You may find some interesting reading on this website: http://207.48.130.144/airline.htm , which lists fatal events since 1970 for many airlines.

Don't fly with them if they're in the habit of crashing...

Baobab Advises: I guess that means I should chuck my Windows 98?

Rudi is smiling...

and I definitely wouldn't want to board an aircraft with Windows running the flight control systems!

Excellent point baobab!

http://talk.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif yes tree - even if my Mac needs a restart too, sometimes.

You know United flys by night.

Article in 7/7/99 WSJ Europe on Korean Air's poor record.

arturo knot lik to flie-bye-nite. et meen arturo flieing on hes tim an knot on biznes tim. arturos brouser nevr crash, ether.

Ah, arturo, a postie after my own heart... one of the reasons why I am so fond of BA is that they have one of the few daytime flights (for me) to Europe. Although coach is crowded, there is usually extra space in Club - so I can stretch out, get a day's work in *and* avoid losing out on my beauty sleep.

baobab: so what's the beauty sleep for? http://talk.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

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Mahalo brudda!
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Some of us need it more than others, wanderlust...

Ask Rudi - he's seen me too early in the morning, grouchily about to ascend the Jungfrau
(it was worth waking up for)

Wingless says if that's the case, I'm in need of a 3 week coma. I wonder what she means by that?