Posted by Seth on June 11, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
Delta just cannot seem to move forward in their efforts to find profits (or even smaller losses) since their merger with Northwest was completed. In an open letter sent to all employees yesterday that was also shared with the general public this morning CEO Richard Anderson and President Edward H. Bastian laid bare their concerns with the carrier’s chances.
Among the bits that the two identified as troubling are a 20% reduction in passenger revenue from last year and a 20% rise in fuel prices since the beginning of the year. The first one is hard to work against with the sever cuts in travel as the economy has suffered but the fuel pricing issue is one where I think the airlines would have been wise to see that the prices were going to start edging back up once they finally settled late last year.
Most significant, however, is the announcement of a further 10% cut in capacity coming at the end of the peak summer travel season. This is 10% off of last year’s numbers, which were already cut as the high fuel prices and low loads forced airlines to park lots of planes and cut unprofitable routes. Speaking of cutting routes, Delta is doing that, too.
The biggest loser in the route cuts is probably Cincinnati which will be losing its service to both Frankfurt and London. For a city that is supposedly a hub of a major airline they seem to be losing routes and frequencies pretty quickly there.
But even with the cuts that they announced Delta is still planning on launching a bunch of new service, too, mostly on routes where there is already stiff competition (e.g. Los Angeles – Sydney) or where there doesn’t seem to be much of a market (e.g. Pittsburgh – Paris). Oh, and they mention that they are probably going to need to trim staffing head counts but they intend to do so without involuntary furloughs if they can.
I’d like to think that someone there knows what they are doing with all of this but the more I see of the way they are running things the more I question that reality. Things are ugly and they’re likely to get worse before they get better. At least fares have stayed ridiculously low so I can still travel basically as much as I want.
Posted by Seth on June 9, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Cheap flights to Europe over the winter months are pretty typical, but they usually don’t go on sale until much later in the summer/fall season once the carriers know that folks aren’t going to pay full price. Delta has decided that they can’t afford to wait that long and have launched a pretty aggressive sale to most of their European destinations for ~$230 round-trip from New York City. That is typical of the bargain pricing that shows up in this market and having them available now is a good time to lock in a deal on a New Year’s celebration destination.
For us the destination will be Barcelona. We’ve got the long weekend booked for flights. Woohoo! Oh, and we’re the only assigned seats on the flight so that would probably explain why Delta is starting to panic a bit on future bookings and dropped the price so early in the season.
A quick update on this: The sale is actually valid starting in late August for at least some of the cities. So for folks looking to go while it is still warm there are plenty of options there, too!
Posted by Seth on June 8, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Reading an airline ticket price these days is always an entertaining exercise. There is the base fare which is generally pretty easy to understand. And then there is a long series of letters and numbers representing various taxes and fees. These extra costs can add up to be rather significant, even more than the actual base fare in some case for travel. And now, if a group of developing countries have there way we will see another entry in that long line of taxes and fees – a tax to fund developing countries’ efforts to combat climate change.
The text of the tax was discussed at at a UN climate change conference in Bonn where it was proposed by the 50 least developed countries in the world. The target is approximately $10Bn in revenue from the tax. This is simply the latest effort from the developing nations to gain cash and support from developed countries to help fund their efforts in dealing with the effects of climate change. Previously a few billion dollars have been pledged and a few hundred million even given to the countries, but nothing that they consider significant enough.
So now they are coming after the traveling public. Folks who travel are an easy target for taxes. They are often levied by local governments and affect folks who don’t vote locally so they are easy to pass without risking reelection for the politicians. But the taxes also have a negative impact on the industry. As the prices go up discretionary spending gets reduced. In an industry that is predicted to lose $9Bn this year alone trying to extract another $10Bn seems about as foolish as actually expecting those numbers to hold.
Even worse is that the folks responsible for negotiating these taxes actually think they are a good idea:
“People are beginning to understand that innovative ideas could generate a lot of money. The Danish shipping industry, which is one of the world’s largest, has said a that truly global system would work well. Denmark would endorse it,” said [Connie] Hedegaard[, the Danish environment and energy minister.]
Working to address and solve the problems faced globally is a god idea. Doing it on the back of an industry and economy that cannot support it is a horrible idea. This falls into the latter category.
Posted by Seth on June 4, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Sure, the Blue Hole may be the most famous single landmark (watermark??) off the Belizean coast, but that doesn’t mean that it has the best diving. In fact, I’d argue that the diving just offshore along the reef is significantly better, especially when the transit time to and from the dive sites is taken into account. Forget riding 2+ hours each way to get to a dive site. The reef is literally minutes from any of the many docks along the shoreline. The reef structure is still pristine, with coral fingers stretching for miles and clear, warm water all along the reef.
We dove with Chuck & Robbies Diving and couldn’t have been happier with the operation. If they weren’t running a particular trip (Blue Hole, for example) they’d make the necessary arrangements for us to get in on the other boat. And the stuff the did operate was top notch. They’re a relatively small operation so they max out with about 12 divers on the boat. Another two or three folks from the shop would be in the water with us, spotting animals and otherwise making sure things went well. I can’t recommend them as a dive operator highly enough.
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| Petting one of the nurse sharks on the reef |
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| A spotted eel pokes its head out looking for a snack. |
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| I’m a sucker for angel fish. I’ve spent entirely too much time and air chasing them underwater. |
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| This eagle ray was absolutely stunning. |
Another thing that the near-shore diving has going for it off Ambergis Caye is the Hol Chan Marine Park. The park is guarded by marine patrols and very strictly monitored. Yes, there is a surcharge for access but the operators work that into the package price so it doesn’t really matter. And if the extra $10 is what it takes for the dive sites to be so well preserved I’ll take it every time. Diving the Hol Chan Cut is an amazing experience. The water is shallow – the dive maxes out around 30 feet – so there is plenty of bottom time available to swim with the turtles, rays, eels, fish and sharks that call the area home. Depending on the currents the visibility can drop down a bit with silt in the water (also an effect of the shallow dive profile), but the animals are close enough that it doesn’t really matter.
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| One of many turtles, feeding on the grass in Hol Chan Marine Reserve |
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| A crustacean, taking up residence in one of the many homes available. |
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| Pretty fish & coral |
I’ve been missing the diving pretty much since the moment we surfaced on that last dive. With water this beautiful and so much marine life, all just minutes off the coast, it is easy to understand why.
Lots more photos from the diving in Belize – both at the Blue Hole and just off Ambergris Caye – can be found here.
Posted by Seth on June 2, 2009 under Uncategorized |
There is nothing quite like waking up to the news of a plane having gone down somewhere in the world. A mix of sadness and hope, along with a bit of “there but for the grace of god go I” all blend together. And there are generally more questions than there are answers. In this particular case it looks like the number of questions will stay ahead of the number of answers probably for the rest of time.
The plane was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday night when it disappeared in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It had departed the airspace that is under the control of Brazilian ATC and was headed towards controllers working out of Senegal. But they never received the expected communication from the plane. It should be noted here that the airspaces in question are not necessarily territorial but are just the spaces managed by the ATC in those countries to facilitate air travel around the world. So it isn’t that the plane was just off the coast of Senegal; it was very much still in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
The plane does have a system that transmits mechanical issues and notes to Airbus and the carrier. This allows them to perform follow-up checks when the plane arrives at its destination. In the case of AF447 it also means that we have a very small bit of information about what was going on towards the end of the flight.
Sources within Air France reported, that the automatic message did not only report an electrical short circuit, but also the loss of cabin pressure. This information has been confirmed by FAB, who also stated, that the position of the airplane was given as N3.5777 W30.3744 in that message.
New information provided by sources within Air France suggests, that the ACARS messages of system failures started to arrive at 02:10Z indicating, that the autopilot had disengaged and the fly by wire system had changed to alternate law. Between 02:11Z and 02:13Z a flurry of messages regarding ADIRU and ISIS faults arrived, at 02:13Z PRIM 1 and SEC 1 faults were indicated, at 02:14Z the last message received was an advisory regarding cabin vertical speed. That sequence of messages could not be independently verified.
I honestly don’t know what most of that means, but things like “electrical short circuit” and “advisory regarding vertical cabin speed” are just not good. And, just now this morning, BBC and several other news outlets are reporting that debris has been spotted on the ocean surface, not too far from where the last communication was transmitted. The good news is that if they have, in fact, located the wreckage then there is a chance that there could be some answers as to what actually happened. But getting a full accounting is highly unlikely; it is, after all, a very big ocean out there.
It is a sad day in the travel world. Very sad, indeed.
Posted by Seth on June 1, 2009 under Uncategorized |
United Airlines made a rather significant change to their website very quietly on Friday evening, removing the option for customers to “hold” a reservation rather than just ticketing it. This has, as one might imagine, ticked off customers quite a bit. The change appeared overnight on the site, with the option disappearing and their FAQ updated with the great news:
Can I hold a reservation on united.com for purchase later?
It is no longer possible to put a reservation on hold through united.com.
Please note that any reservation booked through united.com can be canceled within 24 hours of purchase for a full refund.
Most significantly, this change means that the ability to redeem vouchers – collected for just about any in-flight problem and one of the best reasons to fly UA these days – is severely hampered. Sure, you can call in and create a booking and hold it that way, but working with the reservations agents to build a wacky routing or to take advantage of some of the other quirks in their faring systems is definitely a less than desirable option. Or you have to actually go to the airport and deal with the pain that ticketing in person involves. Both options suck.
At this point only American Airlines has an official “hold” feature still available, though there are still workarounds on most carriers. For Continental is is the “pay with cash” option. And with United it can be done by entering an invalid credit card number a few times. But losing this sort of benefit does suck.
Posted by Seth on June 1, 2009 under Uncategorized |
As crazy as the act of flying for no particular reason other than to collect the miles may be, at least it is reasonably easy to try to explain to people. Elite status and miles to redeem for a reward ticket are relatively easy to explain, even if the other person doesn’t really believe that there is any value in those things. And lots of free drinks and riding in the pointy end of the plane are also relatively well understood. But what about a trip where there aren’t really any miles to be gained, status to be had or – gasp – free drinks on board?? I recently took one such flight and thoroughly loved every minute of it, even with little concrete to gain from the trip.
No miles. No status. Nothing, except the opportunity to fly to a new (to me) airport on a new (to me) airline. And so it was that on a sunny Belizean afternoon I walked to the San Pedro airport (air strip is probably a more accurate description), walked in to the Maya Island Air ticket office and requested a seat on the next available flight from San Pedro to Caye Caulker. Fortunately for me the next flight was leaving in a scant 15 minutes. The agent at the counter made a call on the walkie-talkie to the operations center to inform them that an additional stop would be necessary on the flight – my stop. I handed over USD$25 in cash (how often do you buy an airline ticket in cash??), took my boarding pass (a laminated color-coded piece of paper) and waited out on the shaded deck for them to call our departure.
Ten sweaty despite the shade minutes later the “red boarding pass” flight was called and we walked out onto the grass, around one plane and up to the side of our Britten Norman BN-2. What great luck for me! Not just a new line on the map and a new airline, but I also got my first flight on this particular type of airplane. This was just the icing on the cake. We were assigned seats by the airline employee collecting our passes (I think it was by passenger size but I’m really not sure) and a couple minutes later we were flying at 2,500 feet over the reefs of Belize.
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| Looking down, shortly after takeoff from San Pedro |
A boat crossing the flats between the Cayes |
The flight from San Pedro to Caye Caulker is all of 13 miles long, a distance that the Britten Norman BN-2 covered in a scant 8 minutes. Actually that seems a bit slow, but neither they nor I were in much of a hurry. The flight and the landing at Caye Caulker were both uneventful and shortly after the plane pulled up to the end of the runway I was out the door and staring at the airport:
Just a hundred yards or so past the end of the runway along a sandy path and I was back on the beach, meandering my way towards the downtown area, and I use the term “downtown” loosely. There are a couple bars and restaurants and a few hotels and guest houses. And that is it. It was incredibly quiet there, which is either really nice or downright spooky, depending on your point of view.
The walk from the airport to downtown took about 20 minutes, just enough time to see what there was to see and head over to the ferry dock where I was able to purchase my return ticket to San Pedro on the local boat service. Another 20 minutes or so on the boat and I was back on Ambergris Caye.
Thus ended my 90 minute “mileage run” that had nothing to do with miles and everything to do with being just plane crazy.
