Well when this posts it’ll be midnight in the United Kingdom and the New Year will be amongst us. The times on this server are bit behind that though .

Today’s airplane art is two 747-400′s – A Lufthansa 747-400 in the foreground and a Qantas 747-400 in the background at Frankfurt-am-Main Airport.

The week and a bit extra of airplane art will be concluding on Monday before it shifts back to it’s usual Sunday slot (least of all, I’m having this nasty feeling I could well be beginning to scrape the barrel of what I have that’s reasonably new in the archive).

I’ll have to fix that in February

So lets do the end of year stats for my person travel this year in the air.

Map – www.gcmap.com

Segments Flown: 33
Miles flown: 60,477
Longest Leg: London Heathrow T3 to -Vancouver International Airport, 4708 Miles
Shortest Leg: Birmingham Airport UK – Dublin Airport,  200 Miles

Airports visited: 20
New Airports: Vancouver International , George Bush Houston International , Amsterdam Schipol, Toronto Person International , Zurich Airport, Barcelona El-Pratt, George Best Belfast City Airport.

Airlines flown: 14
New Airlines: Air Canada, Swiss International Airlines, Helvetic Airways, Brussels Airlines, FlyBE
Carriers Flown: Aer Lingus, BMI, Air Canada, Continental, BMI Baby, United, (GoJet, Alantic South East Airlines), British Airways (British Airways CityFlyer), Swiss International Airlines (Helvetic Airways), Brussels Airlines, FlyBe

Booking classes and seating: 33, All economy
Window: 31
Isle: 2
Middle: Nil

Status going into 2012
Status’s Gained: Lufthansa Senator, Priority Club Gold, Platinum
Status’s retained: British Midland International Gold, Flying Blue Gold

Equipment types flown: 18
New Equipment: Boeing 777-300ER, Boeing 737-800, Boeing 737-900ER, Fokker 100, Embaer E-195, Avro RJ-85
Most flown equipment: Boeing 757-200

Hotel by groups (26 Nights):
Intercontinental Hotels Group: 13
Hyatt Group: 11
Travelodge: 2

Status going into 2012
Status’s Gained: Lufthansa Senator, Priority Club Gold, Platinum
Status’s retained: British Midland International Gold, Flying Blue Gold
Status’s lapsed: None.

The sorry tale of baggage
Bags Destroyed: Two
Bags Lost: Nil

Well, it’s Saturday, so it must be time to the paint gun out as Emirates demonstrate how one of their A380′s gets painted (Video – Airbus S.A.R.L.).

More aircraft repainting will be winging it’s way to you next week!

Ok, it’s a bit late (as I snored most of last night), but here is yesterday’s Airplane art – A Lufthansa Airbus A330-300 taxing in at Frankfurt International Airport

More later today…

It seems British Airways is a plane down for bit with one of their Boeing 777-200′s suffering a bird strike strike according to The BA Source

G-VIIU – A Boeing 777-200ER suffered the strike to the engine nacelle and wing. From the looks of it, the bird itself was not ingested by the engine, but the damage is… enough.

Reports indicate the plane made it to the ground safely without any causalities – bar the birds.

There are pictures of G-VIIU in the hanger on Airliners.net, and… it isn’t pretty. Those who are of sensitvie disposition should avoid the following 3 links:

http://www.airliners.net/uf/view.file?id=12412&filename=phpWVNweL.jpeg shows the damage on the wingspan

http://www.airliners.net/uf/view.file?id=12412&filename=phpx4L1ln.jpeg shows the damage to the engine nacelle and the wing, and

http://www.airliners.net/uf/view.file?id=12412&filename=phpx4L1ln.jpeg shows the damage to the engine nacelle casing, and if you look closely, the buzzard marker appears to be blood stained too – possiblily damaging the engine.

All I can is…. ouch.

Well, we’re closing up on 2011, so it’s time to do a mini-retrospective on this years travel.

Firstly the trips…

• Gold Run 2: Blame Canada! It’s only a mileage run anyway! With Aer Lingus, BMI, Air Canada and Continental - BHX-DUB, DUB-LHR-YVR, YVR-IAH-LHR (also on FlyerTalk)
• Re-Creating a Photo – To New York with United, British Airways and BMI Baby -  BHX-AMS, AMS-IAD-LGA-IAD-FRA, FRA-LCY (also on FlyerTalk)
• Going the Canadian Way: To Chicago with Air Canada LHR-YYZ-ORD-YYZ-LHR with Air Canada (also on FlyerTalk)
• SEN for £128.20? A Swiss Adventure – BHX-ZRH-BCN-ZRH-BHX with Swiss and Helvetic (also on FlyerTalk)
• From One Side of Birmingham to another (Post Birmingham Riots 2011) and Crossing back across the city one day later
• Multi-Modal Mayhem with With Eurolines, Brussels Airlines, Air Canada and Lufthansa (also on FlyerTalk)
• A Smooch of Chicago and a Kiss of DC – with United – LHR-ORD-IAD-LHR (also on FlyerTalk)
• Narrow Minds and Narrow Bodies – To Denver with the New United, Aer Lingus and FlyBe – BHX-DUB;DUB-EWR-LAX-DEN-SFO-EWR-BFS;BHD-BHX (also on Flyertalk)

Highlights of the Year

• Finally getting to New York and doing one photo:

(See Re-Creating a Photo – To New York with United, British Airways and BMI Baby -  BHX-AMS, AMS-IAD-LGA-IAD-FRA, FRA-LCY)

• Getting soaked under the Niagara Falls. I swear my coat took weeks to dry out after that…
• Some Excellent United Crews – people who understand the words “Customer Service”

Discoveries of the Year

• Swiss International Airlines - Why did no one tell me about them sooner???
• The Senator lounge at Zurich Airport – Bubbles and Ice Cream for breakfast is perfectly acceptable.
• British Airways CityFlyer – A lovely little gem of an airline.

Lowlights of the Year

• Being stuck at Canadian Immigration not once – but TWICE – I’m not bitter about this – much.
• Not being anywhere near a business class cabin this year – It happens. Something I’ll resolve next year
• Continental Airlines crews based at Houston – Or “Fake like you want you come to work”.
• United 747 crew from LHR-ORD -  A crew that demonstrated they were there for my safety. And chatting. And doing make-up in the Galley.

Idiots of the Year

• The Transportation Security Administration.  Yes -  Lets award them something for their wanting to use scanners and me opting out. I’m still waiting on a few sets of flowers, chocolates and dinner dates. Oh, and seriously – Brush up on your manners and politeness. And then there’s bag wrecking too.
• Frankfurt Security also gets a Idiot award for bag wrecking too.
• Canadian Immigration and Customs. 4 hours of my life I’d kindly like back please.

And the biggest highlight and stress point for me… Moving from Blogger To BoardingArea. It was an interesting move (and here’s a hint: Migrating away from Blogger is a right royal pain), but I feel the move is bringing my thoughts to a larger audience and has forced me to focus my content better – which is a very good thing.

There’s a few more posts as we pile into the New Year, but hopefully there will be no drama’s or crises that will ruin anyone’s New Year.

Thank you for reading during the year – both old visitors and new ones.

The week of Airplane art continues today with a Cathay Pacific Boeing 747-400 pushing back from London Heathrow Terminal 3, beginning the long journey back to Hong Kong.

More during the week, in what was meant to be a quiet week… that’s turned into one of the busiest I’ve had of posting!

A semi-serious blog entry as there’s been a bit bounding around about referral fees and affiliates and as such on various other blogs, and how it affects the quality of the blog information (i.e. a blog entry turning into an advert for a product).

I’ve been watching this very carefully and how others are handling the situation, and thought it is best that I state my position on the matter.

I have updated my Links, Ethics and Legal notes page (which is reviewed at least every 2 months), which contain the main messages to these changes:

Funding
Links may contain content that have been linked to advertisers. GhettoIFE.com cannot take responsibility for the offers listed or given by our advertisers.

Referral links may be offered to you that may offer some compensation to either this site, our affiliates or to the visitors. These will be kept to an absolute minimum and will be listed appropriately. Your consideration of using these links is appreciated if they are offered.

GhettoIFE.com does not provide nor receive commercial endorsements unless specifically stated in a post.

Reviews and Opinions
Any reviews are the opinion of the author only and reflect what the author saw at time.

Opinions are based on the authors thoughts and not through commercial incentives.  Should a commercial incentive be a factor, it will be declared within the report.  Additionally, commercial gifts will be declared to the blog if it is deemed by the author that it may impact the reading of your report.

In addition, I’d like to draw your attention to the following specific types of products and how they will be handled:

• Credit Card Spamming – is off the the table.  Most of you have been inundated with Chase’s Sapphire Card as being the best piece of plastic on on the planet. As the blogger is in the UK,

1. I’m only going to show UK credit cards when deals
2. Cover them if they are are updated, appropriate and of reasonable value, and importantly
3. No affiliate links will be made available – only direct links to the product in question.

• Groupon Deals – are on the table if they’re are interesting and relevant to the subject (and if I’m blunt, these are becoming rarer by the day).   You won’t see these otherwise from me.
• Quidco/TopCashaback (etc) affiliate link – If there is a good deal via Quidco, I’ll point you in that direction. If you haven’t signed up to Quidco, an affiliate link will be provided, with a 50/50 split on a new member joining. This I suspect will be equally rare.

I still intend GhettoIFE to be still as independent and sarcastic as ever (even after the move to BoardingArea), and to hold both airlines, governments to account where needed, to handle news that comes in a balanced format, and my reviews and trips covered in  own unique manner. Similarity, I will continue to focus on the content of this blog, honing in on UK and Europe Coverage as a default, with interesting World coverage.

By removing the temptation of affiliates and such, I feel can look after my writing better. Heck, I might actually use the spell checker every now and again.

Whilst I have no issues how others choose to run their blogs, I hope this clarifies my personal position on how this blog operates.

If you have any questions about these minimal changes (and in-fact the most I did was bold a couple of things, tidy up the spelling in a couple of paragraphs), please feel free to email me at blog@ghettoife.com or use the comments box.

For those remotely interested, I can list what gifts I have received by writing this blog (other than your comments):

• 1 Polo Shirt (large)
• 1 T-Shirt (large)
• 4 Pens
• 1 box of business cards

And yes – that’s it so far…

Thank you for reading

Delta answers the question with a Video of what happens when your bag disappears down the luggage belt and off into the blue wild yonder of an airport luggage sorting system

Of course, this is to plug their baggage tracking function they have in the Fly Delta App.

I swear this is missing something. Like the pile of TSA tape and the free throwing around some bags get….

The week of airplane art is still in progress even though there’s a fair amount of news going through. Today, its a British Airways Boeing 777-200ER taking off at London Heathrow Airport

More Airplane art tomorrow as the week of airplane art continues!

With a hat-tip to Xander who commented about one of my pictures yesterday Airline Route confirm the launch of a Brussels Airport to New York JFK International operated by Brussels Airlines.

The route is due to commence on 1st June 2012, operating the following legs

SN0501 -  DEPART BRU 10:20       ARRIVE JFK 12:35
SN0502 -  DEPART JFK 17:15       ARRIVE BRU 06:25+1

Operates Daily
Booked Equipment: Airbus A330-300

Economy Returns are pricing in from £486.70 based on a departure from MAN/BHX.

With Brussels Airlines returning to JFK, it marks the return of a Belgium flag carrier serving the Trans-Atlantic Market since the collapse of Sabena in November 2001.

However, there is some major competition into the New York Area, with United (Continental) operating to Newark International and Jet Airways operating to New York-JFK.

It’ll be interesting if Brussels Airlines can tap into the JFK destination market from it’s built network in Africa and let it flow through, as well as marketing the service locally when there are existing Star Alliance (or Jet Airways service).