Posted by Seth on January 18, 2008 under News | 
A couple years ago I found myself on a trip to India. It was a great trip, and I highly recommend everyone go there, to see the Taj Mahal and the rest of the country. But the “how” part of my being on the trip always seemed a bit strange to me – until now.
My wandering consort was truly enamored with the idea of visiting India. Much Bollywood was being watched, the cultures studied and tourism research performed. She actually had a great plan for making the trip happen, which was to convince her mother to go to India for work (something that was actually supposed to happen anyways) and then the two of them would travel together. I’ll admit that I was a little jealous when I heard the plans, as I wanted to go too, but I kept quiet and let the plan play out. A bit more research showed that women didn’t often travel alone, certainly not single women. So I got invited along as an escort as much as anything else. We weren’t married yet, so that probably raised just as many questions and protocol issues, but we were made to feel quite welcome everywhere we visited. Plus it turns out that my presence was quite helpful on a few occasions when the “two tall white women” became just as much of an attraction as whatever site we were at.
And now French President Nicolas Sarkozy is experiencing some of the same protocol issues, though at a much higher level. He divorced his wife last year and pretty much immediately started dating a supermodel; the two are rather inseparable. The problem is that formal Indian protocol doesn’t know how to deal with the presence of the “girlfriend” at a State event. Does she get to sit at the head table? A second hotel room? So many little things to think about, and only a few days to figure it all out before he shows up next week. And things aren’t being made much easier by the fact that no one has told the Indians if she is coming along on the trip or not, though their Visa program should have cleared that up by now I would think – they take time to get.
Nothing more than a reminder that cultures are all different and that you have to respect your hosts when you go somewhere, which is made much more difficult by the fact that the world keeps getting smaller.
Posted by Seth on January 17, 2008 under News |
The latest candidate to get their recent flight into the news is Hillary, who decided to do a bit of a stand-up routine on “Hill Force One” on a recent flight to Reno. Mocking the typical flight attendant spiel, she offered up, “regulations prohibit the use of any cell phones, Blackberries or wireless devices that may be used to transmit a negative story about me.” I have to think that was scripted in advance, but who knows. Definitely a better story than Obama’s landing issues the other night.
Posted by Seth on January 17, 2008 under News |
A British Airways 777 came up short of the runway at London’s Heathrow this afternoon (~1300 GMT). All 136 passengers were evacuated safely, and the airport was only shut down completely for about 90 minutes, though it seems that one runway is still out of service.
LHR is tremendously busy on a typical day, and they only have the two runways, so with one closed there is not a lot of slack in the capacity to handle all the displaced planes. Things are going to be ugly over there for a while.
And, in a strange twist that I find entertaining every time I see it, the first official response is that the event is not terrorism related. I’m not sure why everyone assumes that everything is these days until they are told otherwise, but that’s a whole different ball of wax to get in to.
There’s a pretty good discussion and collection of news links and photos on FlyerTalk right now.
Posted by Seth on January 16, 2008 under News |
A few bits on the A380, aka the Whale:
- Singapore Air managed to lose one off the taxiway due to a failure in the tug, causing it to roll into the grass at Singapore International Airport. They had to move all the passengers to an alternate plane, a 747, and replace all the tires, just in case. Fortunately it happened the same day they took delivery of their second A380, so they weren’t out of commission for too long. And now they have both back in service. Hong Kong will be the second airport served by the A380 (SYD was first), and when the third plane arrives they’ll move the HKG service to LHR (London Heathrow) as they need two planes to meet those needs. They expect to have six in service by the end of July, ahead of the oft-revised delivery schedule from AirBus.
- According to these guys via FlightBlogger one can now book for the maiden EK flight of the A380, EK201 from DXB (Dubai) to JFK on 1 October 2008. It looks like a r/t F seat with a one week stay in NYC is ~$6,700. Flying in J will set you back ~$4200 and Y is ~$1400. The article cites etravelblackboard.com saying that there will be shower facilities on the plane. Carrying that extra ton of water will burn a lot of fuel, so hopefully they are selling a lot of those F fares.
- Qantas, the third carrier to take delivery of the A380, is getting closer. Their first plane was seen on the taxiway in Toulouse today.
Posted by Seth on January 15, 2008 under News |
Looks like Boeing is in more trouble with the new 787 Dreamliner. The latest rumor circulating has them another several months delayed, on top of the initial 6 months. This delay would have a significant impact on the ability of the company to meet its revised delivery schedule, which would cost it a LOT of money in penalties from the carriers who have committed to the planes. Actually they may not deliver any planes in 2008, which is a huge blow to their credibility, especially after the last round of delays was supposed to “handle” everything. It also doesn’t look so good for them after they publicly mocked Airbus for the delays in the delivery of the A380. All in all a bad thing for the aviation industry and my hopes to fly one sooner than not. At least this delay doesn’t appear to be tied to the hackability of the control and maintenance systems.
Oh, and it looks like the rumor is confirming itself pretty quickly on FlightBlogger, the site that broke the story in the first place. An announcement is expected from Boeing before market open on Wednesday.
Posted by Seth on January 12, 2008 under News |
The campaign seems to still be on track, but their plane did have some trouble last night. After leaving Las Vegas from a campaign visit the plane arrived at Chicago’s Midway airport and clipped the wing of a parked plane, causing minor damage to both aircraft.
The part about this that I find most strange is that the flightaware.com website which generally can be used to track just about any flight that files a flight plan doesn’t seem to have a record of a flight leaving Las Vegas and arriving at Midway around 2:30 Saturday morning. I’m calling it a conspiracy. I’m not sure who is in on it, but it is definitely a conspiracy. Or the secret service has decided to not list his flights.
Posted by Seth on January 12, 2008 under TSA |
No-bid contracts are generally a bad thing, especially when they are given to a former employer of the person responsible for managing the contract, and even more so when the implementation is so grossly fubar’d that it results in the US government exposing personal data of people while at the same time claiming in hearings before Congress that the information is being protected.
But that didn’t stop the TSA from following this recipe for disaster with their Traveler Redress website. The site was set up so that anyone who found themselves on the watch list – which would result in an extra 15-60 minutes at the airport for each trip – could submit certain personal information and get themselves removed from the list. Of course the personal information required was detailed and probably stuff you wouldn’t want others on the internet to know about you, like your SSN and place of birth, but it was OK because the site was run by the TSA and they were definitely behaving appropriately in managing the data. After all, they are a government agency and have certain protocols that they have to follow. In reality, the site was only half encrypted, and the encryption that was there was done using a self-signed certificate, which is generally a bad idea. So the data being submitted was done in clear text most of the time, making it susceptible to eavesdropping.
The guy who exposed the risk has blogged about it a bit, and his most recent post includes a response from the TSA Spokesman, which is pretty entertaining to read both for the poor grammar and then flawed assumption that knowing the name of a passenger can accurately determine if that person is a danger on an airplane (or that someone can be so easily identified as being a danger on a plane).
It is not surprising to see the TSA continue to maintain the party line that we need deeper invasions of privacy into Americans’ lives in order to keep us secure, and I applaud anyone who exposes the flaws in the system. I’m actually not sure which is more important, getting the TSA to follow their own rules or fixing the rules, but in the mean time I’ll settle for people continuing to expose just how ridiculous the policies are. Oh, and if they wanted to fire the guy who no-bid the contract to his buddy that’d be OK with me, too.
Official House report/release here. MSNBC coverage here and BoingBoing coverage here, too.
Posted by Seth on January 11, 2008 under Trip Reports |
Rather random, but a couple funnny ones, though not mine. And one is actually a real picture.
Check them out here.
Posted by Seth on January 10, 2008 under News |
Delta seems to be back out doing the merger dance again, this time looking at both NorthWest and United as potential partners. The CEO is actually planning on talking to both other companies and planning on picking which one he thinks is better and then moving forward with the merger that way. I like the idea of having potential bidders competing for a “prize” (assuming that Delta is one), but it is certainly strange for a public company to admit that they are actively soliciting mergers with multiple parties.
Anyways, the most recent wave kicked off with Lufthansa buying in to JetBlue, and this one seems to be pretty serious. But most of these mergers are based on financial expectations and not the real world. In the real world the integration of airlines (and other unionized companies) has huge implications on union contracts and seniority and other things that all have to actually be worked out with real people, not just on a balance sheet, and that is one of those things that is a huge wildcard in any of these mergers. When USAir and America West merged a couple years ago they anticipated a quick and seamless integration of their reservations systems and their unions. The reservations systems merger resulted in a complete check-in kiosk system failure for ~5 days, and they are still negotiating their pilot contracts after almost two years. Easier said than done, I suppose.
Posted by Seth on January 10, 2008 under News |
Following on the negotiation of an “open skies” agreement between the USA and the EU, allowing any carrier from either side of the pond to fly to any destination on the other side, British Airways has announced their intentions to launch a new carrier/subsidy in early 2008. The new carrier will be named – somewhat appropriately and somewhat stupidly – OpenSkies, and will provide service between New York City and either Brussels, Belgium or Paris, France. They haven’t indicated which airport in the NYC area they’ll use (JFK or Newark), nor if Brussels or Paris will actually be first, though they expect to have both in service by late 2008.
They’re going to fly with a smaller plane (757) than many carriers use on transatlantic (TATL) flights, but they are also only going to have 82 seats on the plane. Of the 82, 30 will be coach seats and the other 52 will be split between business class and premium economy (24/28). This cabin configuration is a new one in the TATL market but very similar to what United offers in their p.s.-configured planes for transcontinental service within the USA. The cost of flying the plane across the pond remains pretty constant independent of the number of seats, so this means that OpenSkies/BA will need to drive a certain amount of revenue premium with the Business and Premium Economy seats in order to have a profitable service.
OpenSkies will also find themselves competing directly with a number of established US- and EU-based carriers on the routes they’re going after, and without the ability to offer convenient connections on either end, so they’re only going after point-to-point traffic, making their job even harder. On the plus side, they’ll have the marketing and frequent flyer programs of their parent company, BA, on their side to help drive the business.
The all-premium class TATL market is still trying to break out, with one carrier having already failed. OpenSkies will get to benefit from fuel hedges of BA, which will help, and they’ll have a few different price points to sell seats at, which should also help, but there are still no real guarantees (there never are).
I’m all in favor of more competition, as it usually means lower fares and I like that a lot. I just don’t know if they’ll be able to actually make a go of it long term.
