A bit of old news maybe – SAS will reinstate the Oslo-New York route in 2011 and it is brewing up to be quite a price-war as Norwegian has also announced that they will start flights to New York as well (and to Bangkok). So it seems like SAS and Norwegian is taking the battle scene from Norway to world now. Hopefully this will result in good prices for the consumers but it will be exciting to see how Norwegian will be able to handle long-haul flights. You can read more about the SAS news on businesstraveller.com and you can read more about the new planes that Norwegian is getting to fly their new routes on Flightglobal.com.

Bangkok Post reports that Thai Airways are planning on spending “billions of dollars” on a makeover of their planes starting in 2012. The article in Bangkok Post will give you all the details but in general it seems like they are going to upgrade first class to be a light version of what you can find on Emirates A380 and the business class will also be upgraded to have a 180 degree full flat bed. I have had the pleasure of flying Thai first class (as you can see from the range of blog post here) and it was not bad at all but the problem is that the product varies from plane to plane and from route to route. Another confusing issue for me is that the photo of the new business class in the Bangkok Post article is identical to the Pearl Business Class on Etihad Airways. So is Bangkok Post just speculating or will they have identical products? Another thing that is worth noticing is that they will actually reduce the seat pitch on economy class. They have had about 34″ pitch before and now it will be 31-32″. Well, it will be exciting to see what the final products will be like when they are introduced.

I have never experienced something like this on a plane but I would probably pay close attention to the safety instruction if it was done in this way. Something for SAS to try out maybe??

Nikki and I went to Dubai in May and I have finally gotten around to finalizing the trip report. You can find it on this page http://gardkarlsen.com/Dubai_UAE_trip_report.htm . I have also made this Dubai Google map, posted lots of photos and written about my experiences at Dusit Thani Dubai and Traders Dubai. Maybe I have been a bit too harsh in my conclusion of Dubai and I would love to hear from people that have been to Dubai and how they feel and it would also be great to get some feedback from people that actually lives/works/studies in Dubai – how do you feel about your city? My harsh conclusion is related to the fact that it seems like foreign workers are being exploited on a large scale in Dubai. Well, I hope that you will enjoy the trip report. Get in touch on gardkarlsen@hotmail.com if you have comments or questions.