June 20, 2008
Inside upscale OpenSkies after first landing at JFK
NewYorkology contributor Vidiot commits journalism by night and explores NYC by day. He's especially interested in the infrastructure, transit, architectural wonders, drinking establishments, and hidden corners of the greatest city in the world.
New York gained an airline Thursday when OpenSkies, a subsidiary of British Airways, inaugurated service to JFK from Paris Orly airport.
The first flight, a Boeing 757-200 operating under the callsign "Mistral 001" (the mistral is the powerful wind that blows down France's Rhône Valley), touched down on JFK's Runway 31 Right half an hour early, at 12:52 p.m., and received the traditional water-cannon salute while taxiing to Terminal 7.
OpenSkies carries just 82 passengers aboard the narrow-body 757, in three classes:
 --24 "Biz" business-class seats, which recline to form a 180-degree bed, the only fully flat bed in business class between Paris and New York. These seats cost around $3,200 each way;
--28 "Prem+" seats, with 52-inch seat pitch. These seats cost around $1,500 to $1,700; and
--30 Economy seats, (pictured below,) which are priced about $500 to $800 each way.
All classes include leather seats and portable video-on-demand individual in-flight entertainment screens that attach to the seats. Individual cabins are small, and the frontward Biz-class cabin is decorated with stylish black-and-white pictures of both the Eiffel Tower and the Flatiron Building.
Since the aircraft only carries 82 people in a space that most airlines use for at least double that number, there's lots of overhead-bin space as well. Cabin crew member Sonja Robb told NewYorkology that "even if you're all the way in the back, you don't have to wait for 200 people to get off first." OpenSkies also offers a concierge service to all passengers, which will book hotel rooms and sightseeing tours, provide destination information and quick translations, and arrange other services.
The airline takes its name from the recent agreement between the European Union and United States, which allows European and US airlines to fly between any two points in the European Union and United States. Before the treaty took effect in March, a UK-based airline such as OpenSkies would not be permitted to operate a flight that didn't take off or land in the UK.
 At a press conference in the Concorde Room at Terminal 7 after the plane's arrival, Dale Moss, Managing Director of OpenSkies, said the flight from Paris was "a very special journey" that was 15 months in the making from the original idea for the airline. A New York native, Moss described growing up in Ozone Park, recalling how "my grandparents used to take me to Idlewild in my footie pajamas, and that was when I got kerosene in my veins."
OpenSkies began operations with just one airplane, named "Lauren" after Moss's granddaughter. Moss described how watching Lauren learn to walk, and her refusal to give up after repeatedly falling down inspired him to name Project Lauren, the original internal British Airways codename for the OpenSkies project.
Future aircraft will also be named after family members of OpenSkies employees. The airline's second 757, dubbed "Penny" (after the daughter of engineering director Ron Froude), will be operational by the end of this year, and the airline expects to operate six aircraft (all retrofitted with fuel-saving winglets) by the end of 2009. OpenSkies will not participate in BA's OneWorld alliance with American Airlines and others, and will not offer interline onward connections from JFK or Orly; Moss said that "people will interline themselves", and that "if we add complexity, we add cost."
The airline is currently weighing other destinations including Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Milan. But Moss noted the uncertainty surrounding startup airlines in light of record fuel prices, but said that he intends for OpenSkies to be a spirited competitor in the transatlantic airline market, declaring "While we'll never be big, we'll be fierce, and we'll be very, very good."
Picture credits: Vidiot.
Earlier: OpenSkies' new premium JFK-Orly tickets now on sale
BA's new OpenSkies gets OK for JFK-Paris for June
OpenSkies aims to fly JFK-de Gaulle in 'early summer'
June 20, 2008 7:42 AM in Arrivology
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