Like JetBlue, the U.S. carrier that first brought no-frills chic to air travel, Japanese StarFlyer combines low cost with high quality.
"Blazing through the world like a comet," StarFlyer's homebase is the new airport of western port city Kitakyushu. Flights currently run between Kitakyushu and Tokyo (90 minutes), but the airline is planning to expand to more regional destinations, as well as international destinations such as Seoul and Shanghai.
Sleek, black and white and sexy, the airline's look was designed by Flower Robotics, a Japanese design firm that specializes in robotics and architecture. Instead of fitting in the maximum of 170 passengers in their Airbus A320 aircraft, StarFlyer stopped at 144 seats, creating extra legroom and comfort. Each roomy, all leather seat also has its own LCD monitor for in-flight television, and a laptop power port. (For a not entirely serious aircraft tour, watch this video on YouTube.)
If you don't have a few billion yen starting capital lying around, no worries. Our point is that the combination of low cost and high style can be applied to everything. Whether it's the Ginger hotel chain in India, or Viktor & Rolf designing for H&M. For a wide range of examples, check out trendwatching.com's coverage of no frills chic. Oh, and if you do happen to have, say, 130 million dollars to spare (JetBlue's start-up capital in 2000), please note that Europe is impatiently waiting to board its own cheap-chic jets. Ryanair and easyJet soon won't cut it anymore ;-)
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best airplane in the world
To answer Francesca Smith's question 'Is the concept ‘No Frills’ going to travel globally?', the answer is a big 'YES!' You only have to notice that no-frills airlines are cropping up all over the world, and now some airlines are even venturing into the 'low-cost, long-haul' market, such as OASiS Hong Kong Airlines that has recently launched flights between London/Gatwick and Hong Kong for as little as £75 one way (excluding taxes, mind!).
As for the concept itself and its inception into the European market, I too think it could be just as successful as the likes of JetBlue and Starflyer.
People all around the world have been bombarded by 'low-fares', so much so that they have now become an expectation, not a promise. Thus people will soon become more demanding about what they get for their money, and I also expect that most people would be willing to pay just that little bit more for an overall better level of service onboard.
All I need now is the money to do it...lol!
‘No Frills for Air Travel’
As we all know throughout Europe, ‘no frill’ airlines like easyJet, Ryanair and Buzz have been very successful and continue to offer extremely low priced flights to hundreds of destinations. In the UAE, economy travel isn’t that popular, but recently airline Arabia Air has started, this week (Feb 06) to provide no frills, economy flights from Dubai to London Heathrow – this has proved successful so far, and other destinations have been well supported. Is the concept ‘No Frills’ going to travel globally?
Francesca Smith | August 2, 2006 3:30 PM