Posted by Seth on September 15, 2008 under Trip Reports | 
Apparently bus travel is the new hotness in travel in the North East Corridor. There are about 5 new companies operating in the Boston – Washington, DC area. Some of them are just new brands on old names, like BoltBus and MegaBus instead of Greyhound and Champion, and some would seem to be newcomers to the space. And these are decidedly NOT the typical Chinatown bus setups. Yes, they leave from a random street corner somewhere in the cities they serve, but they also have real websites where they sell tickets and publish schedules. Some of them (at least Bolt and Mega) have on-board WiFi and plugs at the seats. I’m on the bus now and plugged in and posting away, as well as getting some work done.
On the down side, it is still a bus. Only about 30% of the seats are full on the mid-day Monday New York-Philly run, but I can imagine it being rather uncomfortable if it got more crowded. And I did just get to listen to J.K. (the woman across the aisle) talk to about 4 different people at top volume about getting her time sheet in and her expenses paid. I suppose that happens all the time on the train, too, but it was still pretty annoying. And there is always the potential for traffic problems, but we’ve managed to avoid them thus far.
And we managed to pace an inbound flight on final approach into Newark as we headed down the NJ Turnpike, affording me this fun shot from basically right outside the window:
Overall, I’m satisfied thus far, especially since it is rather less expensive than the train options and is a non-stop trip, at least to Philly, but I don’t know that it would be a great option on a crowded ride. I’ll potentially find out next week when I make the final leg of my ridiculous 2x to Hawaii in 10 days trip back from the Philly airport and try MegaBus out (I’m on BoltBus today).
Turns out that the WiFi isn’t very good, which is too bad. I just dropped offline (from the bus to the internet, not locally) though it was working OK about 10 minutes ago. And now I’m sortof back, though it is slower than the free WiFi at a Continental Presidents Club, which is saying a lot.
Update (~5pm): After spending about an hour in traffic thanks to a fire somewhere on or near the Ben Franklin Bridge into Philly I’m not as convinced of the value of the bus. If it really was a train fire as was indicated online then I might’ve been just as delayed on the train, but this is getting to be pretty painful, even with the Internet (which has been pretty good during the hour delay).
Posted by Seth on September 15, 2008 under Uncategorized |
For some carriers it seems that the general idea is that there is nowhere to go but up. United announced today that they are doubling the fee for a second checked bag, from $25 to $50 each way to counteract a slow-down in travel and high fuel prices. Of course, they seem to be ignoring the fact that oil prices have actually dropped significantly over the past couple weeks, from $140+ to less than $100 today, despite a hurricane having just blown through the Gulf of Mexico.
But that isn’t stopping the good folks at United from blaming this new fee on the price of oil.
Morons.
Maybe they should sell people like me a round-trip ticket from Hawaii to Newark for $260. Then again, if the fare was higher I wouldn’t be going on this trip, so who knows.
Posted by Seth on September 14, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Hurricane Ike has done a number on Houston’s George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport over the weekend. Lots of broken glass, leaking/flooding and some pretty significant damage to some of the jetways, too.
Continental suspended operations on Friday afternoon in advance of the storm and they’ve had a skeleton crew in the airport to manage the situation and start the recovery process as soon as they are able. One of them has been posting some updates on FlyerTalk and some photos on flickr, including this one, showing a jetway with some of the walls blown off.
I spent most of the weekend thinking about how fortunate I was to not be affected by the weather and storms in Houston. Then I remembered that I’m supposed to be passing through on Tuesday on the first leg of my double Hawaii trip over the next 10 days. The good news is that Continental is expecting to be operating a pretty full schedule starting on Monday and I’m not going to be there until Tuesday. The bad news is that if I don’t get to Hawaii on Tuesday I have a decent chance of missing my flight on Tuesday afternoon back to the mainland, and that could mess up my plans pretty good.
Posted by Seth on September 12, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Seriously. OK, I admit that I’m rather crazy and that my obsession with flying and travel might be a bit over the top, but I’m not completely alone. Witness a column from today’s NY Times that discusses the good things about hanging out in airports.
With time to spare before my flight, I’ll soak up the atmosphere of perpetual expectation. I ignore the haggard business travelers or the chaotic families as I sneak quick glimpses into travelers’ lives and listen to snippets of their conversation. “You’re missing two bags? We’re missing one”; “What’s wrong with you? You looked like you knew what you were doing”; “I gotta run. I love you.” I watch Caribbean vacationers flaunt sandals and T-shirts as they hail taxis in cold winter air, and feel sad for the last-minute gift buyer grabbing a generic teddy bear with some city name stitched to its belly.
On a recent trip to an airport, I saw a guy wearing shorts, a khaki multi-pouched vest and a straw hat, striding with grand purpose like an Amazonian explorer, his wife about 20 paces back and struggling to keep up. They marched to the piped-in sounds of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell singing “Ain’t no mountain high enough, Ain’t no valley low enough, Ain’t no river wide enough, To keep me from getting to you, babe.” Right on.
The other thing that the author touches on is the beauty of the family reunions that happen hundreds of times a day at every airport around the world.
Still, should you feel despondent about the human race, I recommend hanging out at baggage claim or in the area outside where cars pull in to pick up arriving passengers. Watching one reunion after another, I find it hard not to be cheered by reckless smiles and wanton hugs.
It reminds me quite a bit of the opening and closing sequences of the movie Love Actually. And even when those reunions are getting in the way of me getting out of the terminal and into my car home or to the hotel it is hard to be too upset with them. After all, I still remember flying in to LaGuardia as a kid and seeing the big “Welcome to New York” sign on the side of the runway and my grandparents waiting at the end of the terminal to welcome us to town. And those memories trump just about all of my grumpy thoughts.
Posted by Seth on September 12, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The traffic in Istanbul sucks. There is no two ways about it. The city is on the water, with the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus major impediments to travel there, funneling all traffic through a couple of bridges that are woefully undersized to handle the loads. They are apparently planning on adding an additional bridge on the Bosphorus, but that is still a ways out, as it has only just been approved by the government and the final site hasn’t yet been selected yet. A taksi from the airport to downtown is easily a 45 minute endeavor, at a rate of something around YTL30, which isn’t horrible, but also certainly isn’t cheap by any stretch. The roads are just ridiculously crowded. Not quite as bad as Delhi or Saigon, but close.
Fortunately, they have a pretty solid mass transit system in place. And we rode a lot of it. We didn’t take a bus in Istanbul, but there are plenty of them and it seems there is pretty reliable route coverage and frequencies. Similarly, the ferries cover the water crossings way better than a car possibly could; as busy as the waterways are they are still way better than the bridges. There is even an aerial cable car that operates just below the Hilton Hotel near Taksim Square, crossing over a park for those who don’t want to walk or drive around to the other side. Those are the pieces we didn’t get to try, but there are plenty that we did.
There is a Metro system – actually a few light rail systems that connect at transfer points – that cover the city, from the airport in the West to the Sultanhamet to the Beygolu area across the Golden Horn. There’s another tram system that runs on the Asian side as well, with easy ferry connections. With trains running about every 10 minutes and air conditioned, modern cars the light rail was truly phenomenal. From the airport to the Sultanhamet area was about a 45 minute trip, the same as a taksi, and the cost was two tokens – YTL 2.80 – per person. The one thing that is a bit annoying is that transfer between the various lines requires a new token and fare to be paid, but that’s a minor inconvenience considering how convenient the trams are to the vast majority of the areas that most folks want to visit.
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| The engine that drives the funicular. |
There are also a couple funiculars (inclined trains) that run in the Beygolu area. One of them is almost brand new (~10 years old) and the other is actually the third oldest mass transit system in the world (behind London and a now defunct Brooklyn route), over 130 years old. We tried to ride on both one day and managed to find the new one pretty easily, but the older one was elusive. As we departed Istanbul for Cappadocia we actually still hadn’t found it. As we had a 7 hour connection on our return through Istanbul, however, we had a second chance to find the old one and ride a piece of history.
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| The tunnel for the older funicular route. |
The older funicular was more fun, with the tunnel looking its age and the tram car somewhat newer, but not a ton. And we managed to take the Metro in from the airport, ride the funicular up to the Tunel Square area, have a very long and relaxing brunch and repeat the trip in reverse in about 5 hours. Plus the old funicular has a different fare, YTL 0.90, so we had to buy a different token and that meant another fun souvenir for me. I’ve now ridden on at least the three oldest, so I need to find out what the rest of the old ones are and start planning some new trips.
They also seem to have a “tap-and-go” system where you can put money on a card/pass of some sort rather than buying individual tokens. I certainly don’t speak enough Turkish to try to figure out how that works, but it seems like an easier option if you don’t want to mess with tokens during a visit, though I have no idea if there is a charge for the card and/or a discount for using it.
I’m a big fan of mass transit in general, and even more so when it goes to/from the airport. This wasn’t as easy as the Metro in Washington, DC or BART in San Francisco, but it was pretty darn close, and it was way cheaper and mostly easier than a taksi in from the airport. It will definitely be my transit choice next time I’m in Istanbul.
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| The view inside the car of the newer funicular. |
The platform for the newer run. |
Posted by Seth on September 12, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Two more carriers shutting down to report for the past two weeks, both out of Britain. They are actually both more tour operators than traditional carriers so that may have something to do with their shutdowns. The two are XL Airways, which shut down this morning stranding 67,000 passengers in overseas destinations, and Zoom. Bad news for everyone involved in both cases.
Posted by Seth on September 11, 2008 under Uncategorized |
As we drove from Goreme to the Ihlara valley one of the repeating scenes on the roadside were the farms. Mostly they seemed to be gourds of various sorts growing in the fields, but there were also many, many patches of sunflowers interspersed. They weren’t particularly large, and I’m not sure if they were there for commercial or other reasons, but they were quite amazing to see.
At one point I decided that taking some pictures of them was a good idea. Well, I decided that as soon as I saw one, but finding one where I could pull off the road easily was a bit harder. We finally found one here (worthless link unless you want to see the GPS coordinates) and I managed to pull off the road and into a driveway pretty easily. I wandered the 50 yards or so into the field and started snapping away.
As luck would have it, I managed to pick a field where there were actually a few guys out working and tending to the gourds. One of them spoke English and we had a great conversation. He gave me a sunflower to take home with me and we exchanged email addresses, too. All in all a very nice experience. Plus, I got some great photos out of the deal.
More of the pictures can be found here.
Posted by Seth on September 9, 2008 under Uncategorized |
JetBlue has started selling some flights and vacation packages through eBay, allowing customers to set the price rather than using the normal booking channel. While this is theoretically good for the customer in that it lets people actually pay a fair price (or at least their desired price) for the trips, it seems that a sucker is born every minute. See even the “secret” destination flights include the departure times, so the destinations aren’t all that secret. And the packages that are available can be purchased for less money directly from the JetBlue website than they can on the auctions at this point, at least for the Aruba trips that is available. And we’re not talking about a couple dollars here. The price difference between the direct purchase and the eBay option is over $1000 right now.
There are some who will say that this is just the airline taking advantage of their customers, but I have to disagree. If someone goes in to buy something and can’t figure out that it is a really bad deal, or at least comparison price things out, they get what they deserve. P.T. Barnum was right and, while I feel a bit badly for the people buying these for not understanding what they are getting themselves into, I have no problems watching fools part with their money. I just wish I got more of it.
Posted by Seth on September 8, 2008 under Uncategorized |
One of my favorite simple treats for myself is a shave at the barber shop. The hot towel, fresh lather and straight-blade make for a great experience, and usually a pretty decent shave as well. Since I’m generally pretty lazy about shaving on my own while on vacation I had a couple days’ stubble by the time we got to Kayseri, and following the kilim shopping I had a bit of time before we were going to be able to get dinner and the kid doing the selling was still around, so I convinced him to help me find a barber and get a shave.
We wandered across the town square and over to the less touristy part of the area and he managed to find a barber shop that was open and had a seat open. The shave experience was somewhat different than I usually have in the US. The guy studied my neck and chin for a couple minutes to get a feel for just how bad it was going to be and then began to lather me up with a brush just like it should be. He actually used his hand to collect the detritus off of the razor after each stroke, collecting a handful of stubble and cream with a smooth motion that culminated in the whole of it being tossed into the sink and him starting anew on another section of my face. He moved quickly and deliberately and was incredibly thorough in the effort. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied after the first pass because he actually lathered me up again and made a second run across my face to clean things up even more.
The aftershave was particularly exhilarating. I know that it is mostly alcohol and that it is supposed to burn. But this stuff was way more exciting than I normally get. I made it through the aftershave and kept my composure, but that was definitely a challenge.
And then I was done. A quick banter between the barber and my translator and I found that the cost for the service was 5 Lira, or about USD$4.25. Not a bad deal, and a heck of a lot less than I generally pay at home, plus a better shave and a much better experience, too.
Posted by Seth on September 8, 2008 under Uncategorized |
I’m sitting on the plane now about a third of the way across the Atlantic and the flight attendants are stowing the gear from the duty free sales efforts. They made it through the cabin pretty quickly, so I’m guessing that there weren’t a ton of sales. But even if there were, I’m having trouble believing that the whole thing makes sense for the airline.
The cart, along with its contents weighs about 200 pounds. That’s a rough guess, but in the galley the slot for the duty free is labeled with that as a max weight, so I think that it is a fair guess. In addition to the cart there is also a duty free catalog at each seat. It is a pretty nice glossy, so that can’t be all that light, especially when there are 175 copies on the plane (for this 757; bigger planes will have more, and possibly a second cart, too, further adding to the weight). So we’re looking at something around the same weight as a (larger than not) passenger in order to have the whole kit on board. The cost to fly a passenger from Bristol to Newark is, based on a very rough calculation using average costs, about $300. It is probably a bit less considering that planes operate better at cruise than for takeoff/landing and the 757-200 is actually a pretty efficient plane, but the flight is over 3300 miles, so there is a pretty decent cost component there. And fuel is about 30-40% of the total cost of operating the flight these days, so that means that the hard cost for the duty free kit is probably somewhere in the $100-$150 range. Again, just an estimate, but I also picked a shorter flight than not and I think that the number is reasonable enough.
So in order for the in-flight duty free to make sense the margins on the sales have to be sufficient to justify carrying the whole kit, or more than $100-150. I’m sure that the margins are pretty ridiculous, but I have a hard time believing that they are much more than 25% on average. And that puts the target at a minimum of ~$400 of gross sales to cover the costs for carrying the kit on board the flight. I don’t pay a ton of attention to the sales on board, but it seems like that’s more than actually gets sold. And there are additional costs beyond the fuel that the program has to incur. There are accountants to track the money, folks stocking the carts and doing inventory in the warehouses, etc. So maybe the break-even number is higher. Of course, it could also be lower, but I’d be pretty surprised if it were. Duty free does help to cover its costs through revenue generation, but in this age of a surcharge for just about everything, I can’t believe that the revenue generated on board is sufficient to keep it around for long.
Airlines are doing everything they can to cut costs, including US Air removing their entertainment systems from a bunch of their planes, airlines removing (or not having) magazines, switching to plastic service ware from glass/metal, removing pillows & blankets, etc. Is the duty free shopping the next to go? Clearly I don’t actually have the real numbers to justify any of this analysis, just some rough estimates that are just as likely wrong as they are correct, but I have to think that the duty free is under the microscope right now, and possibly on the chopping block before too long.
