In Brief

Royal Brunei Airlines Introduces Flatbed Sky Dreamer Seats

Royal Brunei Airlines recently unveiled its new flatbed Sky Dreamer seats in its business class cabin now rebranded as Sky Executive Class. The Sky Dreamer seats offer maximum comfort as it can extend to 75 inches when fully reclined. The podded seat feature provides extra privacy. Each seat comes equipped with in-seat power connector and a 10.4-inch personal TV. New economy class seats featuring 8.4-inch personal TVs have also been installed.

To complement the new seats, Royal Brunei has also installed the latest Thales i-4000 series personal in-flight entertainment system in the entire cabin. The new system branded as Sky Show, offers a new level of service with 17 video on-demand selections, 5 broadcast video channels, 10 games, 12 CD albums on-demand and 15 channels of continuous audio entertainment in a variety of languages.

"Royal Brunei Airlines is delighted to introduce its new flatbed Sky Dreamer business class seats. Together with Sky Show and the new Sky Lounge at Brunei International Airport, we are now in a position to offer our customers a truly superb travel experience," said Peter Foster, Royal Brunei's chief executive officer.

Sky Dreamer and Sky Show is currently only available on one of the airline's retrofitted Boeing 767 aircraft, and will gradually be implemented on four of its B767 aircraft by the middle of the year. This aircraft will initially serve the airline's Frankfurt route, eventually extending to London and Australia. Depending on operational requirements, it may also be utilised on some of the regional routes.

SriLankan Offers Double Skywards Miles On Business Class

Skywards is offering double miles from May 1 to June 10, 2004, for travel on business class on SriLankan Airlines on most of the airline's routes. For example, on a Delhi/Colombo return journey, a member is entitled to 4,461 miles on business class; during this promotion he/she will get 8,922 miles. With just 10,000 miles, a member is entitled to a free return ticket from Colombo to the Maldives or to any point in South India.

Skywards is the frequent flyer programme of SriLankan Airlines and Emirates and has three tiers - Blue, Silver and Gold. Leading airlines like Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, British Airways, South African Airways, Delta, Continental and United Airlines are partners of the programme, as are leading hotel chains and several world-class financial, rent-a-car, leisure and lifestyle partners.

A-I To Introduce Flights To Los Angeles

Air-India, which has been gradually expanding its network in recent years, is all set to launch flights to the West Coast of United States. Los Angeles will be on Air-India's network effective June 11, 2004 when flights are introduced on a thrice-weekly basis on the Mumbai-Frankfurt-Los Angeles route.

The flights will be operated with Boeing 747-400 aircraft being taken on dry lease. Air-India Board accorded its approval for dry leasing of two Boeing 747-400s at its meeting held on March 30, 2004. While the first Boeing 747-400 will be delivered in June 2004, enabling Air-India to commence flights to Los Angeles, the second Boeing will be inducted in October 2004, when Air-India will step up the frequency of flights to Los Angeles from three to five.

The USP of these flights, as in the case of other Air-India flights operated between India-USA, will be that they will be direct and not involve change of aircraft at a transit point, as is the case with flights operated by all other airlines.

Services to the United States will go up to 23 with the introduction of flights to Los Angeles in June 2004, and to 25 in October 2004, when two more flights are added on Mumbai-Frankfurt-Los Angeles sector.