Direct Air halts flights without warning
NEW YORK – Charter airline Direct Air has suspended flights for at least two months, leaving passengers scrambling to get home and wondering if they’ll get their money back.
The airline abruptly stopped flying Monday afternoon – at the peak of the spring break travel season – apparently because it couldn’t pay its fuel bills. Direct Air, based in Myrtle Beach, S.C., says it will not fly again until May 15. Ticket holders were told to contact their credit card companies for refunds.
Public charter airlines such as Direct Air don’t operate under the same consumer protection rules as regularly scheduled airlines such as United or American. Prices and schedules, for example, are not always guaranteed. And travelers don’t have as much recourse in getting refunds or rescheduling flights.
Direct Air marketing manager Ed Warneck told the Sun News in Myrtle Beach that the airline missed a fuel payment and the supplier cut it off. That left Direct Air no choice but to ground its fleet. It is unclear how many travelers were affected by the shutdown.
Direct Air began flying in March 2007. It serves 17 cities in the Midwest, East and South – mostly smaller markets where big airlines don’t fly. But it’s faced increased competition in recent years from a number of discount carriers including Spirit, Allegiant and Southwest.
Wal-Mart, Hollywood in ‘disc-to-digital’ deal
LOS ANGELES – Wal-Mart has unveiled an exclusive arrangement with five of Hollywood’s top studios to convert DVD collections into digital copies.
Beginning April 16, consumers will be able to take their DVDs to about 3,500 Wal-Mart stores and have a digital copy stored in the cloud – a storage system offering access from a broad array of Internet-connected devices – for $2 each. Customers will have the option to upgrade standard DVDs to high-definition online copies for $5 each.
Wal-Mart, by far the nation’s largest retailer of DVDs, will be the only store that can offer so-called “disc-to-digital” until its period of exclusivity ends in the fall.
The news came as part of an event held in Hollywood on Tuesday announcing Wal-Mart’s support for UltraViolet, the online movie technology backed by most movie studios and a coalition of technology companies. The previously expected news provides a major boost to UltraViolet, which has had a rocky launch and faces a formidable competitor in Apple’s iCloud film service.
Customers can take their DVDs to Wal-Mart photo centers where employees will add digital copies to Vudu accounts. To make sure the same disc is not copied multiple times, store associates will stamp the discs after the conversion is done. They won’t accept DVDs rented from outlets such as Redbox, Netflix and Blockbuster.