Star Alliance has completed the rollout of a new check-in concept in the south wing at Tokyo Narita, Terminal 1, “offering customers a wider choice of check-in options and giving them more control over this part of the travel process,” the alliance said. According to Star, the layout of the check-in area has been changed and check-in desks are allocated by airline rather than class of travel. This revised layout goes hand-in-hand with the installation of new self-service check-in machines which, in addition to issuing boarding passes, also print baggage tags. “Our initiative in Narita is part of our global strategy of reducing operational complexities and striving for standardisation with the aim of providing customers with a better travel experience,” Star CE Mark Schwab said. <br/>
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SWISS is targeting a 25% savings on unit costs with its Bombardier CSeries 100/300 aircraft, CE Thomas Klühr said on board the first passenger flight of the SWISS CS100 July 6. SWISS took delivery of its first CS100 June 29. The airline originally ordered 20 CS100s and 10 CS300s, plus 30 options, but then converted 5 100s to the 300 variant. “Everything we have experienced so far with our test flights have fully lived up to the expectations we had when we decided to buy the plane,” Klühr said. SWISS will reduce the average age of its medium-haul fleet to 9 years when all 30 CSeries aircraft have been delivered. Klühr said it is challenging to add two new aircraft types—the Boeing 777-300ER and CSeries—to the fleet at the same time. <br/>
It's only the first week of one month. But United Airlines might have something to be very happy about when July does end 3 weeks for now. That is, if the carrier keeps up the on-time arrival performance it has demonstrated for the first 7 days of July, typically one of the busiest travel months of the year. According to data from masFlight, United ended the first week of July with the best overall on-time performance of any of the 4 major domestic carriers. The numbers show United finished the week with 81.7% of its flights arriving on time. The UA results for the first week of July put the carrier well ahead of perennial on-time frontrunner Delta Air Lines, which slipped in the past week with only 77.4% of flights arriving on time. <br/>