Posted by Seth on February 28, 2008 under TSA | 
I came across this the other day and can’t stop laughing at it, mostly because of how sad it is that things have come this far. The video is titled TSA Gangstaz and is a pretty ridiculous parody of the TSA screening process at airports. Highlights include the various items that the TSA will confiscate from you (technically you surrender them, though that’s a whole different boondoggle) and the “extra” attention you can get with a secondary screening.
Watch the volume – this one is definitely NSFW (language, not nudity).
Posted by Seth on February 27, 2008 under News |
In an attempt to regain their lead in the race to the bottom of customer service levels, and hoping to catch up with United Airlines who announced a similar policy a couple weeks ago, US Air announced yesterday that they will only allow one free piece of checked luggage for their passengers, frequent fliers and first class cabin excluded. This sort of policy doesn’t affect me since I rarely check bags (2 weeks in New Zealand with only my carry-on!) and if I did need to check I’ve got my frequent flier status to offset the issue. Where this really starts to hit home is for the occasional traveller who shows up at the airport with a lot of luggage for their annual vacation. Before they even get on the plane they’re out $25/person for that second bag. Maybe they should’ve known that it was going to happen and maybe not. Either way, shelling out extra cash at the counter is a rather frustrating way to begin a trip.
This is yet another step in the unbundling of airline ticket prices. A ticket used to include everything associated with the trip. People Express was one of the earlier entrants in the surcharge game, with fees for snacks/sodas on board, checked luggage and other similar “perks.” They went away (consumed into Continental) and so did most of those policies, but they’re making a comeback with the European LCCs, SkyBus and now some of the legacies here in the USA.
Ironically they only do it this way because they can’t seem to raise prices to a sustainable level due to over-capacity in the industry (too many carriers/planes), so they have to get their incremental revenue elsewhere. Most in the industry hope that the pending mergers (NW/DL and CO/UA seem most likely, if they happen at all) would reduce some of that capacity and increase fares. Probably not good for passengers, but better than an airline closing up shop and putting tens of thousands of employees out of work.
Posted by Seth on February 26, 2008 under News |
Back in December we hiked on Franz Joseph Glacier. Apparently a German tourist wasn’t satisfied with the normal options for visiting the site, so he chose a different approach – tagging it. The guy – caught by some British tourists on camera – apparently decided that the natural beauty of the glacier needed to be jazzed up a bit, so he brought some spray paint with him on the hike in to the terminal face and used it on the rocks as well as on the ice. The cops grabbed him the next morning at the bus stop headed out of town and forced him to spend the next day and a half cleaning up his mess, in addition to enduring verbal redress from the guides and tourists making the hike those days. Having met some of those guides, that wouldn’t be an encounter I’d want to endure (though I’d enjoy watching it). No permanent damage to the glacier, which is good news.
Posted by Seth on February 25, 2008 under News |
A long time ago I wrote a paper about the development of the interstate highway system. Among the various bits of trivia that I picked up in my research was that supposedly one mile of every five is straight, relatively level and without overpasses. Why? So planes can land on them, just in case – an insurance plan for the national aviation network. Today that insurance plan was put to use when the pilot of a small prop plane landed on I-70 just outside Indianapolis. After a couple hours of maintenance work the plane was repaired enough that it was able to take off from the highway and resume its travels. Interestingly enough, the sheriff’s department had no idea where the guy was going or why he stopped. He also wasn’t cited for disrupting traffic.
On a much sadder and scarier note, a flight operating from Manchester, UK to Cyprus had to divert to Istanbul this afternoon when the co-pilot died during the flight. Everyone else was safe and fine and the pilot was able to land safely. No word yet on exactly what happened there.
Posted by Seth on February 24, 2008 under News |
The good news is that anyone can ride for free on PATH service connecting New York and New Jersey on Monday. The bad news for New Yorkers is that it makes it easier to escape New Jersey. The other bad news for New Yorkers is that the last stop on the PATH is Newark.
I actually have to go to Newark on Monday for work it turns out, and the PATH station isn’t too far from my apartment, so it looks like I’ll be taking that trip.
Oh, and they’re doing it to celebrate 100 years of service, in case anyone cares.
Posted by Seth on February 24, 2008 under News |
Air travel is often cited as one of the largest contributors to global warming. There is a significant amount of fuel burned on any given flight, and there is also the impact of the contrails (link 1, link 2) and the various auxiliary vehicles associated with air travel (buses, tugs, baggage carts, etc.). Since the odds of a solar-powered commercial airplane are pretty low, looking at other options for lowering the impact of the flight has become a hot topic in the industry.
Sir Richard Branson, President of Virgin Atlantic, has vowed to spend all of the profits from his travel groups searching for ways to reduce the carbon footprint of air travel. A significant step in that direction was taken today, when a Virgin Atlantic 747 flew from London to Amsterdam using biofuels in one of its four fuel tanks rather than Jet A. The hopefully clean fuel is a mixture of coconut and babassu oils. The flight had a number of engineers on board to review the data and check to see if it actually did burn cleaner as well as what the efficiency of the fuel mix is. Burning 10% cleaner but using 20% more doesn’t help so much, it turns out.
Posted by Seth on February 23, 2008 under News |
A great topic amongst frequent fliers is what compensation the airline owes you when things go wrong during a trip. Depending on the carrier and the cause of the trouble the answer covers a broad range of options, from a refund to free upgrades to bonus miles to travel vouchers. Those types of compensation are generally used to cover things like the in-flight entertainment system breaking or a flight being delayed or cancelled.
But what if your flight comes up a couple hundred yards short of the runway due to air in the fuel lines (that’s the current theory, anyways)? In that case, British Airways might offer you a pretty impressive package: Four tickets anywhere in the world (it doesn’t say if they are in Coach of First Class) and a five year membership in the British Airways Executive Club Gold Level, giving the same benefits that BA’s most frequent fliers receive without having to do the flying part. Of course, if they aren’t flying then the benefits are worthless, and I would assume that the fine print adds something like “oh, and you can’t sue us” to the details of the package. Considering that there is discussion of a guaranteed GBP85,000 payout for the passengers without too much trouble, I’d think that settling for the four tickets and the status is a pretty poor offer. And since there’s a pretty good chance that the passengers are going to seek more than that in damages it becomes a terrible offer.
It does seem pretty reasonable relative to the $150 voucher I got on my last flight because the flight was cancelled and they rerouted me to get me home at the same time. Actually, since I didn’t have to go through the crashing on an airplane part, I’m still probably better off with my deal.
Posted by Seth on February 22, 2008 under News |
Faced with the need to upgrade their reservations systems, Ryanair has chosen to do what any reasonable company with thousands of customers a day would do: shut it all down for the weekend. Yup, that’s right – they are completely shutting themselves off from their customers for three days this weekend. The outage will include their web site AND their call center, so basically customers will not be able to get any information at all from the company, though they will keep flying.
Considering that customer service was never too high on the list of things that Ryanair cares about this approach isn’t all that surprising, especially since this is also probably the cheapest way to do things, another of Ryanair’s hallmarks.
Posted by Seth on February 21, 2008 under News |
OpenSkies, the British Airways subsidiary focused on connecting mostly premium passengers between non-London markets and the USA has announced that their first market will be Paris – New York. They’ve applied for the appropriate route authorities, which should pretty much be a rubber stamp at this point, hasn’t decided which Paris airport to use and will use JFK in New York.
Like many things in life, however, this is subject to change, particularly since the BA pilots are threatening to strike over the plans to staff the subsidiary with lower paid crews than regular BA flights. While they may just be idle threats for now, the union has voted overwhelmingly in favor of authorizing the strike, though no date has been set. BA challenges the union’s stance, suggesting that a few hundred new pilot positions will be opening up in the London bases of the carrier, though that seems to be insufficient to assuage the pilots anger at this point. Good times.
Posted by Seth on February 20, 2008 under News |
I posted a couple days ago about the cool new PDA web info site from Continental Airlines. At the time I alluded to a second tool but didn’t post anything about it. Here it is – a month long search tool.
On the regular search interface you can search for flights +/- 3 days from the date you put in the box. But if you are truly flexible and just want a flight to a destination at any point in the next month or so, finding fares can be much more difficult. Now, thanks to the month-long search tool the task is significantly easier. Give it a start and end point, class of service, duration and advance purchase and it’ll return a 30-day view of fares. For some reason, however, Continental doesn’t make it readily available from any of the various flight search screens on their site. Even worse, if you can figure out the URL bookmarking it doesn’t work too well because the first search you do messes with the address, leaving you with an inflexible and relatively useless result. Fortunately I found a way around that.
It is a nice little form/JavaScript nugget that runs completely client-side so it can be ported over to any website that wants to. I’ve added it to the right column here on http://www.wanderingaramean.com/, including a link to the source code.
Enjoy!
Posted by Seth on February 20, 2008 under News |
In another huge blow to Heathrow’s reputation as a reasonable place to travel through, there has been a catastrophic failure of the baggage handling facilities at Terminal 4. British Airways has responded by prohibiting checked luggage on almost all flights that they operate to or from Terminal 4. That’s right – no checked bags! Of course, there are the usual exceptions for their most frequent fliers and passengers in first and business classes, but a limit like this is is pretty drastic.
It is supposed to get better over the next couple days, but Heathrow keeps losing its respect (what little it has left) as the world’s connecting point for air travel. Can’t wait for my trip through there later this year.
