If you bought an economy ticket that is not flexible and requires a penalty fee for changing the date of your flight there is no way around it. You must pay the fee and change your flight. What if all airline companies built up a new section in their websites that would allow people who bought tickets already and thinking of changing their flights find other customers who want to fly on their flight and exchange? There will be no fees paid and more flexibility will be given to all economy ticket customers.

Just after take-off and a few minutes before landing. That's a crazy idea of a musician friend of mine. It's not allowed of course but he asked me to ask people how they would feel if an airline offered a few minutes of in-flight live music. I think it's too difficult if not impossible to do on commercial flights but perhaps on a private flight it's possible. hmmm, I must admit that it's fun to imagine it. Flight attendants playing Mozart on the violin and other musical instruments before landing in Austria. That sounds so... Hollywood! Movies are definitely the place this idea can work well :)

Have you ever wondered why in-flight airline magazines don't sell airline tickets? Here they are with a captive audience. They've got passengers siting in front of their magazine for an hour or two or five or eleven. The fact that they are on the plane reading the magazine in the first place is a pretty good indication that they fly once in a while and that they fly that airline. So why don't airlines try to sell their existing customers more tickets by advertising the offers in the in-flight magazine? They could offer coupons and discounts if the passenger buys the ticket in-flight, perhaps allow 10 minutes of free use of the internet. What a missed opportunity!

This is for people who are not promiscuous or easily offended. It might help people with dehydration drink more during the flight. How about flight attendants dressed in sexy uniforms! Drinks served using straws attached on the clothes of flight attendants. If it's a woman, they are attached to her breast area, if its' a man where do you think women would prefer the straw was attached? No minors allowed of course, so I guess the name of the airline could be Major Airways! :)

I've lost family members on 9/11 and since then I always keep wondering why such a measure has not yet been proposed. What about an intelligent flight navigation system that will lock planes on a course away from tall buildings? The pilot will not be able to intervene to map a different course when the plane is on a collision path with buildings ahead or below. (read more)

Strong injuries from air turbulence don't happen that often, but when they do happen they can be severe. On a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Texas, people were "thrown to the roof as if they were dolls" and some feared for their lives when a Continental Airlines flight ran into turbulence, shaken passengers said. What about installing air bags at the top of the passengers' seats? Grave injury can occur when the heads bumps suddenly and with force into hard plastic, like in a car accident. The air bags will be programmed to open within nano-seconds of a sudden drop in altitude and could help save lives. If it's too expensive or hard to design air bags for this purpose, covering the space with pillows or other soft shock-absorbing material would be preferable to hitting the head on hard plastic.

I just arrived in Beijing flying with Air China on economy departing from Frankfurt. One would expect that in a 10 hour flight, in-flight entertainment would be provided. Well, there were no monitors on the seats and I didn't like the music programs they had either. I took out my iphone to keep myself busy and they told me to turn it off. Why doesn't Apple or Google install their new phones on flights who don't offer in-flight entertainment? An iphone costs $600, that times say 300 seats is 180K, let's say another 20K for installation costs and for a total of 200K the cell makers get to promote their gadgets to all passengers. I don't doubt every passenger will spend hours playing/tweaking the phone and by entertaining with movies, music, games, applications or web surfing we get a most positive experience and become pretty familiar with the product. (read more)

I would like your thoughts on how you would have handled a situation in the plane where a passenger traveling on economy in a long flight reclines his chair to sit more comfortably, as he has every right to do, but the passenger behind him requests that he doesn't do so because it makes him uncomfortable, nervous and very agitated. How would you manage the situation if you were asked to intervene as the flight attendant on duty and how would you manage it if you were the passenger in the front seat who doesn't want to cede his right and there are no other empty seats in the plane?

Some airlines (Delta, United, Virgin etc) are rushing to offer Wi-Fi internet connections in economy. Most people cite cramped space on the tray table as the major problem for laptop use in a flight but I think privacy is a more serious problem. Text chatting with my girlfriend or friends, I wouldn't want the guys sitting next to me reading what I write. We are all curious creatures by nature and easily tempted to read into everything that gets displayed on someone else's computer screen. (read more)

No I'm not a pilot. I'm a writer and I always get my best thoughts and ideas when I'm flying. Something about being on air brings torrents of creativity in me. My imagination runs sweet and sour faster when I find myself traveling above cloud level. I really do work better when I'm flying. At the moment, I can't afford to travel as often as I would like but when my next best-seller surpasses the Da Vince code this is what I have in mind to do. (read more)