APEX Editor's Blog

Many travel apps have attracted a huge fan base; users eagerly await every update that arrives with new features. Other apps have gone the way of the dodo, becoming a distant memory in ever-changing landscape of smart phone/ smart tablet usage. Only time and download benchmarks will tell us if travel apps have staying power, [...]

A number of innovative new onboard services and aircraft interiors products are trying to break into the market. Stephanie Gehman looks at how CartMAX, cabinBart, and TSkin could make waves in-flight. CartMAX from Eyelevel can best be described as a lightweight, recycled cardboard insert that lines a standard cart drawer in the trolleys used by [...]

For the last several years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been challenging the aerospace community to design super efficient next generation commercial airliners that could take to the skies in the coming decades. The resulting designs – streamlined, bird-like and in some cases ‘space-age’ in appearance – give us a glimpse of [...]

Ask any self-described aviation geek (or “avgeek”) what their favourite pastime is and you will receive the near unanimous answer of, ‘plane spotting’. Many avid spotters live near an airport, and know the airlines’ timetables by heart, but a growing number of travellers are carving out time pre-flight and post-flight to observe, photograph and log various [...]

Air travel can be a stressful endeavour, and many passengers crave the ability to decompress before a flight. While some airports have offered gyms in their terminals for years (check out this index of in-terminal or nearby hotel gyms), a growing trend in airport fitness products is the emergence of yoga rooms and walking paths. For instance, [...]

The day dawned bright and chilly at Chicago’s Midway airport, site of the inaugural commercial departure of Southwest Airlines’ newest fleet member. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800 dubbed ‘Warrior One’, had arrived the previous evening to carry the largest passenger load in Southwest Airlines’ history.  It was staffed with a full complement of crew – [...]

From the figure-enhancing uniforms worn by Pan Am stewardesses in the early 1960s to the hot pants donned by crew at Southwest Airlines in the 1970s, flight attendant fashions have long fascinated and even titillated the flying public, and in turn have played a role in the passenger experience. But recent decades have seen airlines [...]

On a snowy Valentine’s Day in 2007 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, passengers aboard one JetBlue Airways flight were left sitting on the tarmac for 11 hours. This led not only to the creation of JetBlue’s customer “Bill of Rights”, but also triggered the pursuit of an industry-wide “Passenger Bill of [...]

Board a flight anywhere in the United States and you will see mobile phones in the hands of most travellers. However, due to a regulatory ban on inflight mobile connectivity, passengers are not permitted to use their devices to make voice calls, use traditional text functionality or access data via GSM or CDMA. The US [...]

Flight status, parking coupons, shopping specials, issue resolution; passengers are no longer seeking this information merely on an airport’s website or customer service hotline. Armed with smart phones and tablet computers, today’s tech-savvy travellers are reaching out to airports for real-time response and many are finding it. What is the vehicle for this rapid-fire response? [...]