He started his journalism career in 1992 as a freelance writer for Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest daily national newspaper and soon specialised in air transport. Jens joined Aviation Week and Aviation Daily in 2000 as one of the European correspondents. Later his role was expanded to cover international air transport. In 2013 he was named Managing Editor Commercial.
Jens frequently appears on radio and TV to comment on industry matters. In 2003, he received the Hugo Junkers Award of the German aviation press for his coverage of Fairchild Dornier’s bankruptcy. He was named the country’s top travel and air transport writer by the Travel Industry Club three times. Jens graduated from the Munich School of Journalism.
All U.S. domestic flights will have a single-class service only in a few years, American Trans Air Chairman and CEO George Mikelsons believes. Mikelsons said at this week's Phoenix Aviation Symposium that an operating model such as Delta's new low-fare subsidiary Song "may well become the mainstay" in the industry. He also predicted a segmentation of domestic and international services with a growing market for BBJ-type all-business services.
The current revamp of U.S. carriers' labor deals "must be a paradigm shift in worker/management relations," said Association of Flight Attendants President Pat Friend this week at the Phoenix Aviation Symposium. "We have made the necessary wage reductions to save our airlines," Friend claimed, even though labor relations have been poor in the good times in her view. If workers are not treated better and a paradigm shift is not apparent, when the recently approved deals become due in 2008 "we are looking at Armageddon." -JF
Traditional network carriers should be able to "sustain some kind of revenue premium" over low-cost carriers, US Airways Senior VP-Marketing and Planning Ben Baldanza believes.
