Carry On: News for business travellers

EXECUTIVE TRAVEL

Southern heli skiing in luxury
Australian skiers and snowboarders are being offered the choice of two chartered heli-skiing packages in Central Otago this winter. Southern Lakes Heli Ski has joined forces with Liquid Snow Tours to offer four days of skiing plus a selection of down day activities such as skydiving, spa treatments or golf. Accommodation is at Queenstown on the 24m yacht Pacific Jemm, berthed as Lake Wakatipu, with a personal chef to tend to every catering need. The Yacht and Heli Ski package starts at $8A500 per person for a group of four. The Mt Nicholas Private Lodge Heli Skiing package includes skiing at Treble Cone, hot spa and golf at Millbrook with seven nights’ accommodation. From $10,950 per person for a group of four.

Darwin connects with Japan
Jetstar extended its route between Darwin and Manila through to Tokyo Narita . It runs four times weekly with A320 aircraft. Freed up capacity comes from the airline having dropped its flights between Darwin and Ho Chi Minh City. Competition on the new route between Manila and Narita comes from JAL’s twice-daily service as well as daily flights by Philippine Airline, ANA and Delta. Jetstar Group CEO Bruce Buchanan says the new link will soon join to the Jetstar Japan network, “putting low fare travel to Australia within reach for millions more Japanese.”

Cheap fares go quickly
Jetstar Japan, which launches on July 3, sold 10,000 one-way tickets for one yen apiece. The tickets were available for six new domestic routes – four connecting Tokyo with Sapporo, Fukuoka, Osaka and Naha, and two connecting Sapporo and Fukuoka – from September 5 through to December 4. The campaign lasted for just two hours on a single day. Meanwhile, Scoot, Singapore’s new low cost airline, says it sold 30,000 seats in less than a week after it announced $S88 fares for its launch flights to Sydney.

Cash for Spaceseat experience
British travellers who book Air New Zealand's Spaceseats on London-Los Angeles-Auckland will earn £50 in cash. If they tell their friends about it on Facebook. The new “fan-distribution” programme aims to encourage Brits to share recommendations through social media. The scheme, which is the first of its kind running in the UK, rewards anyone who directly influences a Premium Economy booking for the airline made before May 16 through their shares on Facebook, Twitter, email or blogs. The Premium Economy Spaceseat was introduced in April last year and has won a Wallpaper* Magazine Design Award (Best Air Style) and helped the airline land the 2011 Skytrax Award for Best Premium Economy.

Qantas considering cash card
Qantas is looking to turn its Frequent Flyer cards into prepaid travel money cards that can be used in shops, restaurants and ATMs overseas. Travel money cards are loaded up with foreign currency and are becoming increasingly popular with business travellers. Qantas low-cost sibling Jetstar already has its own Jetstar Travel Card with Macquarie Bank and MasterCard, while Air New Zealand's OneSmart card issued by BNZ and doubles as a MasterCard.

New route of the week
Among this week’s announcements is an Airberlin service to Kaliningrad offering three weekly flights from June 5. Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave on the Baltic coastline that was originally the German city of Königsberg. It was part of pre-World War II East Prussia and was absorbed into the Soviet Union as part of the post-war Potsdam agreement. But it remained apart from both Poland and Lithuania, staying a detached part of Russia when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. The city was renamed in 1946 after an early Bolshevik but there is talk of it reverting to the original German name. Russian carrier KD Avia last operated a service to Berlin in 2009. Airberlin will use a Dash 8 aircraft.