Posted by Seth on February 26, 2010 under Trip Reports | 
I’d love to take credit for some sort of brilliant trick or negotiating skill I used with one of the half dozen agents I worked with today trying to get out of New York City to Las Vegas. I wish I had a special trick up my sleeve or a special code word I could share that explains how I actually got on the plane and got the plane out of the snow at Newark today. I don’t. I do have a lovely first class seat on the one 757-300 that Continental Airlines got off the ground this morning that was actually headed to Vegas and I’ll admit that it was mostly luck that got me here.
I’m actually on the same flight I was originally booked on when I woke up this morning. The flight was canceled at least once – maybe twice – and reinstated with customers being moved around and reassigned flights somewhat haphazardly from what I could tell. A few of the times I called in to ask about alternate routings I was apparently already assigned seats back on this flight. The folks at the airport couldn’t really tell me if the flight was going to happen or not; there was mostly just confusion as the various different computer systems were spitting out different data to people.
When I left the Presidents Club the second time two friends were in the midst of a very creative rebooking that the agent seemed to be quite keen on, more more helpful than the three I spoke with that denied much less creative or expensive reroutes earlier in the day. Such is life, I suppose, though the inconsistency in the application of the rules is certainly frustrating.
One smart move Continental made was to not waste all the food that their Chelsea Kitchens division had produced the night before expecting to serve on the flights today. Rather than trash it since most of the flights were cancelled they packed it all up and brought it over to the terminal, setting up a snack bar near the Customer Service station in the terminal. Definitely a classy move, even if a limited choice of options.
But I was leaving the club because my flight was boarding, so I didn’t mind all that much, even if it was 5+ hours after the original departure time. It was only around the tenth flight that Continental managed to get off the ground at all today so the fact that it happened to be the one headed to the place I was going was pretty much blind luck. Oh, and then there were the hundred or so other lucky souls who managed to get a seat on the flight from the standby list. I’ve never seen the list of cleared standby passengers quite so long and I don’t think we left anyone behind at the airport.
First up, deicing, with the nifty trucks that they use at Newark. The guy in the cherry-picker cab actually drives the truck via controls up there. Saves needing an extra guy in the truck and it is pretty cool too.
Thanks to the fact that there were basically no other planes flying we had a quick taxi out to runway 4L and a great view as we made the final turn to depart. I really look forward to this view every time I get on an airplane.
And then it was time for the meal service. Sure, it was 3:15 in the afternoon at this point, but the flight was originally scheduled for a 9am departure. That means it is catered as a breakfast flight. So it was Honey Nut Cheerios or Omelets for everyone. Ten hours after I woke up and three hours after I had lunch I was finally having breakfast. Not that I mind too much; I love Cheerios. But it was entertaining and the flight attendant was laughing at the fact that she was taking breakfast orders in the middle of the afternoon.
A nap and a fresh baked chocolate-chip cookie somewhere over the Rockies and we’re getting ready to start our descent into Vegas now.
I hope the other guys trying to get out from NYC had less trouble with their flights than I did. Most were taking afternoon or evening flights so I’m somewhat optimistic – not overly so, but a bit.
Posted by Seth on February 26, 2010 under Trip Reports |
And it sucks. Mostly because I found alternate flight options and the folks at Continental were unwilling to rebook them and then when I finally found someone who would the flights were sold out. But that’s just part of the fun.
Trying to get to Las Vegas out of anywhere in the Washington, DC – Boston area and not having much luck at all. Sure, I found options. The first couple were even codeshare partners with Continental. But the first call got disconnected after 30 minutes and the second was a rather unhelpful agent. The third got me a helpful agent but in the intervening 90 minutes all the flight options had disappeared. Not good at all.
Still trying to find other options but the well appears to have gone dry. I’m not happy about it at all.
At least I got to watch the cool snow melting machine in operation here at Newark:
UPDATE (11:07am): My original flight was reinstated and I got a better seat out of the deal. Now just delayed 4 hours. Here’s hoping it actually flies…
Posted by Seth on February 22, 2010 under News |
What do you do as a city when you cannot convince commercial carriers to offer more air service? In the case of Branson, Missouri the answer is somewhat surprising. They’re building their own airline.
Well, sortof.
The new carrier is named Branson AirExpress and is operating as scheduled charter service to five different cities from Branson: Austin, TX; Shreveport, LA; Des Moines, IA; Terre Haute, IN and Houston, TX.
Map from Great Circle Mapper
The flights will be operated by ExpressJet on 50-seat Embrear ERJ-145 aircraft. ExpressJet is mostly known for operating the vast majority of Continental Express flights and also for their failed efforts to operate as an independent carrier a couple years back.
The routes are all short – 284 to 507 miles – and there is no guarantee that the services will run daily. Actually it is likely that not all the cities will be served daily. I say likely because the news isn’t actually official yet, except for the part where the new website is online and is showing the destinations though not flight schedules yet.
I’m not a huge fan of scheduled charter service. The consumer protections aren’t quite the same as for regular commercial service. There are the usual things like baggage fees ($15 for the first bag, $25 for the second bag) and telephone booking fees ($13.25/person). There is also a $25/flight lap child charge, something that is rather uncommon for domestic US flights. And then there is the fact that, because it is a charter, the “airline” can actually raise the price of the flight as long as it is more than 10 days prior to the flight. Sure, if the fare goes up more than 10% the passenger can cancel, but that’s still a somewhat strange way to structure a plane ticket deal. Other things that the airline can do without recourse? Change the flight time. As long as the new time is within 48 hours of the original scheduled departure the passenger has no recourse. Lots more fun fine print here.
Assuming they can get any customers I’m sure this will be a good thing for Branson. The destinations are in the 6-12 hour driving range and they are all good connections for middle-America folks who want to stay domestic for their travels. It will be interesting to watch this play out.
Hat tip to Dan for the news of the new routes.
Posted by Seth on February 22, 2010 under News |
Starwood has announced this morning that they are making a significant improvement in the benefits for their top-tier elites: free in-room internet access worldwide at Starwood hotels. Complimentary internet will be given only in the room that the Platinum elite guest is in should they have multiple rooms on one reservation and any charges incurred will be removed on check-out making it a quick and easy way to implement such a scheme. This is a quite nice benefit for those who stay enough to make that elite level, though still not enough to sway me in my theory that hotel elite status is not particularly valuable. After all, I generally stay at properties that already have free internet for everyone anyways or just tether to my BlackBerry and get the connections with no real additional costs.
More details on the promo can be found here and discussion of the promo on FlyerTalk here.
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Posted by Seth on February 21, 2010 under News, Screening Management SOP, TSA |
In a report that should come as no surprise to anyone following the story, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General has blasted the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for a series of failures that let to the disclosure of data classified as Sensitive Security Information (SSI) last December. Among other things, the report identifies as “deficient” the TSA’s information handling policies. Even more damning, however, are some of the details in the back-story that explain how the TSA managed to get themselves into the situation they were in. Indeed, the whole issue stems from concerns about privacy and handling of personal data, something that the TSA has been blasted for in the past. And while changes have been promised in response to the report, it remains to be seen if actual change can come from this event.
In prior years the TSA controlled public access to information that was considered SSI – whether redacted or not – through the use of a password-protected intranet site available only for potential bidders on projects associated with the documents.
Prior to a 2007 solicitation for requests for proposals to implement privatized screening at the Key West Airport, TSA required potential vendors to sign a nondisclosure agreement before providing the SSI Screening Management SOPs via its SPPO web-board. The web-board controlled access via login/password to vendor personnel who had submitted a signed nondisclosure agreement.
TSA officials reported to us that over time, TSA’s Office of Privacy and the Office of Chief Counsel’s Information Law branch informed SPPO and the Office of Acquisitions (ACQ) that the program’s prior process for vetting vendors, which included completion of a nondisclosure agreement, violated their privacy rights. TSA does not have a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) in place for the collection of personally identifiable information provided through the nondisclosure agreements.
In other words, the TSA was inappropriately collecting information from potential vendors and was unable to assure those vendors that the information collected was being handled in a reasonable manner. At this point the TSA had a choice to make: establish a PIA or stop collecting the information. For reasons which are not particularly clear and which are not addressed in the report the TSA chose the latter. They simply stopped collecting the information in question and stopped providing access to SSI documents associated with contracts that were up for bid. This issue came to a head with the 2007 solicitation for security vendors in Key West.
…TSA released the solicitation to implement privatized screening at the Key West Airport with limited information, did not have vendors sign a nondisclosure agreement, and did not release the SSI Screening Management SOPs. After the contract award, one vendor that had proposed to undertake and perform these duties at Key West Airport conveyed to TSA that not having access to SSI Screening Management SOPs placed them at a disadvantage, as other vendors had those documents through previously signed nondisclosure agreements.
In reviewing the Key West solicitation, the Offices of Chief Counsel and ACQ determined that TSA provided too little information and risked receiving an award protest. The expressed view was that incumbent contractors who already possessed the Screening Management SOPs would have an unfair advantage.
That decision made to avoid the PIA led to the scenario where the bids solicited were uninformed and biased in favor of incumbent parties who had previously had access to the information. Bad policy begat bad decisions which begat a terrible blunder.
The TSA made the decision at this point – mid 2008 – to produce a redacted version of the Screening Management SOP document so that they could distribute it to vendors. This was, in theory, the best of both worlds. The TSA would have the information available and would not have the issues associated with collecting personal information and the need for a PIA. Unfortunately, however, the TSA failed to properly produce this document, resulting in the events of last December.
The instructions for producing such documents are pretty straightforward. Indeed, the report includes a pretty picture that describes the process. The key step comes in the box that is redacted in this image but that is described pretty clearly in the report itself, “
In <<Adobe Acrobat>>
the key step to ensure that document contents cannot be either manipulated or retrievable is to check <<Apply Redaction>>. (N.B. – the bits inside the << >> marks are actually properly redacted in the original report. I have inserted the text here based on a reasonably solid supposition as to what the contents likely are. As someone who has worked with the tools in question and from reading the other content of the document it seems pretty likely that the above is correct.)
So, essentially, the error came because someone forgot to click on a checkbox. It was furthered when that user chose to skip the second to last step in the flowchart, searching for known redacted content in the finished document. Moreover, the document was returned to the Office of SSI for clarification of the header/footer that stated the document was still considered SSI. At that time a new electronic document was produced following the same procedures as the first one, skipping the appropriate steps to correctly apply the redaction.
Particularly damning in the report is the Inspector General’s review of the TSA’s training for its employees in the handling of SSI documents.
After our review of [the (SSI) Awareness] training course, we determined that this training does not contain instruction on handling redacted SSI material, the process of consulting with SSI coordinators, or discussion of any other quality control steps prior to the release of redacted information outside of DHS.
It is not clear what the training does cover but the fact that it doesn’t include anything about how to properly handle redacted material or to manage the release of the information to the public. Not comforting at all for the traveling public that the TSA’s training doesn’t actually cover things that seem critical to the topic in question.
Another of the findings in the Inspector General report is interesting, especially in light of some of the comments made by Acting Secretary of the TSA, Gale Rossides. Ms. Rossides testified during hearings before the House Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection that the leaked version was old and that many updated versions had been released in the interim months. While this is almost certainly true it belies a readily apparent fact: the main substance of the document didn’t change all that much. Indeed, the report suggests that over a span of 9 months – from the production of the original redacted version until the version was posted online – the “changes were determined to be insignificant” by the Screening Partnership Program Office and the same document was forwarded on to be included in the posting online.
Ultimately the failures associated with this document being published were many. The TSA made a decision to avoid responsibility associated with a Privacy Impact Assessment. An office worker chose to not follow the established process in creating a redacted document and also failed to check the document after producing it. And the Agency missed at least one other opportunity to discover the error and resolve it. As stated rather succinctly in the report:
We are concerned that an improperly redacted version of the SSI Screening Management SOPs passed through a number of TSA offices from June 7, 2008, to posting the document on FedBizOps.gov on March 3, 2009, and again on March 16, 2009, without any internal procedures to determine whether the document was redacted properly. As a result, TSA and department internal controls for reviewing, redacting, and coordinating the protection of SSI are deficient.
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Posted by Seth on February 21, 2010 under frequent flyer |
I’ve not spent very much money to maintain hotel status over the past several years. Since I switched my travel to all personal from a mix of personal and business my total hotel spend has decreased significantly while the number of nights I’m in hotels has stayed the same or increased. That raises a tough issue: Is it worthwhile to pay extra to have the status that loyalty programs bring?
The question has been brought to the forefront for me this week with an email I received from Marriott. They are offering the opportunity to buy back elite status for their Marriott Rewards members and they’re discounting the number of points required for that renewal right now. As Gary has reported, Gold buy-back can be had for 25,000 points, a discount of 15,000 points off the regular price. In my case, the offer is to buy back Silver status for 7,500 points, a 12,500-point savings.
And I still think that both offers are a pretty cruddy deal. The 7,500 points for Silver is the equivalent of one night in a Category 1 level hotel. That’s not all that much money in spend but the value for the spend is pretty much nothing. The value for Gold status is somewhat higher but it still doesn’t make much sense to me. If you’re not actually staying enough to use the benefits why pay extra to have them? Maybe if the interruption in travel was a one-time thing due to a change in travel patterns or something like that, but for me it makes no sense at all. I’m not going to get the value and I know it. No need to spend extra for it.
Posted by Seth on February 19, 2010 under News |
The State Department has published a proposed rule in the Federal Register announcing their intentions to change the rates charged for a number of consular services that they render around the world. Among these services are the issuance of passports and visas for travelers. Unsurprisingly, these fees are being increased to “ensure that fees for consular services reflect costs to the United States of providing the services.”
The Department conducted a study of their operational costs for a two year period, August 2007 through June 2009 and have concluded that they are not appropriately recovering the costs for performing these activities through the fees they are charging to the public. The issuance of passports, visas and other consular services is based on the following principle:
[E]ach recipient should pay a reasonable user charge for government services, resources, or goods from which he or she derives a special benefit, at an amount sufficient for the U.S. Government to recover the full costs to it of providing the service, resource, or good
For the most part the fee changes are trivial. The cost for a new or renewed Passport Book is increasing by $35 to $110. That is a 46% increase and the new number breaks a somewhat mythical $100 barrier, but the total dollar amount difference is still tolerable in most regards. Of this increase, $20 is attributed to the increased costs of producing the passport books with increased biometric capabilities. These are the RFID chip passports that the US Government has been issuing for about four years now. They are the same passport books that have been the subject of controversy for at least two years. Passport books that are being sold to the Department of State at a huge markup from the actual production costs – a full 100% – and now the State Department has decided to finally account for that largesse. By passing the costs on to the consumer.
Similarly the costs for issuance of Passport Cards are increasing, but not nearly as significantly nor in a manner that actually covers the production costs. Based on the reasoning that, “the card is intended to be a substantially less expensive document than the passport book, for the convenience of citizens who live close to land borders and cross back and forth frequently,” the Passport Card fee is increasing to only $30, well below the cost of about $77. It is worth noting that the cost-basis for Card and the Book are calculated to be different numbers even though both documents are issued based on the same credentials. Gotta love government math.
I’ve previously documented some of the adventures I’ve gone through trying to get extra visa pages in my passport and at least I could take solace in the fact that I was only out time to make that happen. That will change in a big way as part of the proposed changes. Having additional pages inserted into passports apparently doesn’t happen particularly frequently. The expectation is that there will be only 218,000 requests for this service in Fiscal Year 2010 compared to 11.9MM passport books and 1.56MM passport cards issued. Apparently this rarity contributes to the costs of performing the actions. The new fee for this service will ring in at $82 per instance.
[T]he cost of the pages themselves, of having the pages placed in the book in a secure manner by trained personnel, and of completing the required security checks results in a cost to the U.S. Government of $82.48 based on a projected FY10 workload of 218,000. Therefore, the Department will charge $82 for this service.
I can’t figure out which bit actually costs so much. The pages shouldn’t be too expensive as they don’t have the RFID chip that makes the book cost so much. And the “security checks” shouldn’t be much more than swiping the passport like at immigration to make sure that it is still valid and hasn’t been reported lost or something similar. Yet the cost is increasing dramatically. Not good at all.
The most significant dollar amount change for any service is that for the renunciation of citizenship. This process used to be fee-free for folks seeing citizenship elsewhere. It will now ring in at $450. Yikes!
Like many other things the government does these days the fee increases are repeatedly labeled as based on increased costs to comply with “security” changes instituted by Congress. There are “increased costs related to new passport agencies serving border communities,” “costs of increased border security,” and “costs of the enhanced security screening requirements associated with fingerprint collection.” Even worse, is this claim with respect to the increased costs for Passport Book issuance:
[T]his fee incorporates the costs of meeting the increased demand for passports as a result of actions taken to comply with section 7209(b) of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Public Law 108-458 (reproduced at 8 U.S.C. 1185 note).
In other words, the government is requiring all citizens to use passports for travel because of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) rules. And those rules mean that more folks will need passports. Yet the cost to produce the passports isn’t going down as the volume increases. In fact, the per unit processing cost somehow managed to increase. That seems quite backwards from the way things work in the rest of the world.
The worst part of all these fees is that encouraging global travel amongst its citizens is a good thing for the country. Insularity and ignorance of global cultures are bad things for any society. And now the US Government has decided – again – to make it even harder for folks to overcome those limits. Bummer.
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Posted by Seth on February 17, 2010 under News |
The “Southwest Effect” is a rather entertaining part of air traffic lore. The name was coined long ago as Southwest Airlines would show up to provide service at an airport that generally had limited legacy carrier service. Prior to Southwest showing up the fares in that market would be high and then Southwest would bring lower fares in. The legacy carriers would similarly reduce their fares and the consumers won. It has happened many, many times over the years and the effect is pretty well documented.
Southwest announced yesterday that they are going to be launching service between Boston and Philadelphia, taking on US Airways as the only two carriers to offer non-stop service on that route. The fare changes since the initial announcement have been dramatic, to say the least. Dan Webb over at the Things in the Sky blog has some of the numbers behind the expected effect that this announcement will have. Yes, just looking at the walk-up fares available on the route ($550 one-way the week before Southwest shows up, $59 one-way the week after, a roughly 90% drop!) give light to some potential issues that US Airways can expect to see. But even more damning are the numbers available from the federal government.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics collects and publishes a ton of data from air carriers. And it is all available on their website, assuming you can figure out how to generate the queries correctly. When you figure that out you get stats like these:
The important takeaway from these numbers is that, on average, US Airways brings in about $141,000 in revenue daily from passengers flying between Boston and Philly, at an average of $344.60 from each customer. This is only considering the O/D traffic between these two cities – there are plenty of connecting passengers, too – but that revenue number is very strong. With the introduction of the $59 fares it isn’t too hard to extrapolate out that the average fares are going to drop. A lot. Probably down near the $100/passenger numbers that Manchester and Providence are seeing today. Plus, Southwest is likely to pick up some of the load that US Air is getting right now, cutting the total number of passengers that US Air gets revenue from.
But even if the load numbers hold steady the drop in revenue will be a huge hit on US Air. At a $100/passenger average fare each way the annualized hit that US Airways will see in their revenue will approach $35MM. Yup, $35,000,000. That’s a lot of money to lose, especially for a carrier that hasn’t been particularly profitable lately.
There are some reasons to believe that US Airways is still going to do OK on the route. For one thing, they offer up to 15 flights on the route each day while Southwest is starting with only 5 daily trips. Customers are big fans of having choice in their travel schedules. But the five daily flights should offer sufficient options to put a dent in the US Airways numbers. And US Airways has a pretty strong collection of loyal frequent flyers in the Philadelphia area though it is not at all clear just how many of them are loyal only because they have no better option.
Is this a death knell for US Air? Hardly. They’re still pretty strong and they’ve got some options still in front of them. Of course, if they also end up backing out of the LaGuardia/Washington National slot swap as is being reported now, that will further hurt their pricing power in a number of markets. It is going to be a bumpy road for the foreseeable future.
Hat tip to Dan for the graphic with the numbers!
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Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
It isn’t my story so I don’t want to appropriate it too much. And it is certainly not for the squeamish – especially the photo. Still, if you’re not eating right now and have a reasonably strong stomach check out this tale of a truly craptacular experience at the Hilton hotel in Hilton Head, South Carolina from this past weekend.
Not good at all.
Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Four flights covering 7,400 miles is not really all that much for a weekend of travel. Nothing to sneer at, to be sure, but not a ton of miles covered. The fact that I’m earning 150% credit thanks to the booking class helps to justify the trip, as does the rather great sale fare that I got the tickets at. Plus, there is the fun of flying on Copa Air, a/k/a bizarro-world Continental.
Continental and Copa share a lot of similarities in their operations. That makes sense considering that Continental used to own a decent chunk of the Panamanian carrier. And even now that Continental has divested their ownership share Copa still seems to behave a lot like Continental. They share a frequent flyer program – OnePass – and the Copa flight attendant uniforms strongly represent the last generation of Continental’s, for example. And then there is the fact that their logos are significantly similar and that the two carriers operate with immunity from the United States to Panama and connections beyond. Looking around in the galley on one of the flights I noticed that a couple of the bins are labeled as Continental rather than Copa. Yeah, they are very tight.
But not everything is exactly the same. There are just enough differences to make flying on Copa a somewhat jarring experience. Sure, the upgrades still come through generally (I got all 4 this weekend) but Copa serves real meals on all their flights and serves booze from real bottles rather than minis. As it would be described in India, “Same same, but different.”
I was conscious for three of the four flights this weekend. The first – a 5:07am departure from New York City – I slept through entirely. The others, however, were rather pleasant experiences. We had printed menus on one of the three and the meals were consistent enough that I got to try one of everything that they are serving these days, I think. There were ice cream sundaes at the end of each meal, and that goes a long way towards making a flight a success. Of course, unlike Continental Copa doesn’t serve Grand Marnier on their flights. Instead they offer a “Rum of the Month” program in Classe Ejecutiva and I took full advantage of that. Sortof.
It turns out that this month the catering folks only put the good rum in the carts in the back of the plane. So the first two times I ordered the ron especial I was actually drinking Bacardi. I knew that it wasn’t that good but I just assumed I didn’t like the special rum. It was only on my last fight, flight from Panama City back to New York, that I was able to have the conversation with the flight attendant and understand what was being served and solve that problem. Thank goodness, as the special this month – Abuelo Añejo 12 year – was much, much, much better than the Bacardi. I’m no longer wondering why I have to use so much ginger ale to cut it to provide decent flavor, for example.
Beyond the rum there are a number of other nice things about the Copa experience. Full meals on all the flights, for example. It isn’t gourmet by any stretch but the food is pretty decent. I had steak, chicken and different chicken as my three meals and all were completely tolerable. Sure, there was a strange double salad first course on one of the flights but, well, it didn’t kill me.
Oh, and they serve ice cream sundaes on all the lunch and dinner flights. Yummy!
The food service was also much slower than I’m used to. On one of the flights it was 45 minutes before the flight attendant showed up to ask what we wanted and another 30 minutes before drinks showed up. Certainly not the end of the world, but less attentive than I would expect from most airlines in the forward cabin. There’s a decent enough explanation for the slow service. There is only one flight attendant working in the front cabin, expected to serve 14-16 passengers. It simply isn’t possible for that to play out well. But that’s the way they roll. Maybe they have to since they serve a full meal in coach to the 150+ folks back there and that needs the extra body but it does diminish the service up front a bit.
Beyond the food and booze the flights were a great opportunity to meet people. I was wearing my jetBlue shirt on the outbound flights and that was enough for the guy across the aisle on the JFK-Panama segment to start up a conversation. Turns out that he used to work for jetBlue and now works for Copa in their airport operations group. He commutes between Panama and New York most weekends. We had an interesting conversation about impending expansion of the terminal in Panama City, the needs of the terminal (showers in the Presidents Club!) and how incredibly convenient it is as a connection point heading to Central or South America.
I met Tony, a guy who works in the elevator business. We talked about our shared inability to speak Spanish, random visits to various Central American cities and how to better take advantage of the miles he’s been earning all these years. I truly hope he does better than he has with them because he has never redeemed any and, quite frankly, that is a shame. On the plus side, I think I’ve started the education process for him and explained some of the better options he has with all those points.
And then, sitting in the Presidents Club in Panama City, I saw a guy who was obviously from New York (the Duane Reade bags give it away) and who looked pretty familiar. I introduced myself and it turns out that we had met a while back at a FlyerTalk event. We chatted for a bit in the lounge and then ended up sitting next to each other on the flight back to New York. He was wrapping up a weekend in Buenos Aires and me from Mexico City. Similar stories and adventures though also completely different.
Such is the life of the frequent fliers.
Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Given a total of 14 hours on the ground in Mexico City, of which the majority was during sleeping hours, there wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity for grand adventures or expeditions. Things got even worse when my phone lost data service on arrival and I couldn’t find the address of the hotel to tell the cab driver. A quick phone call back to a buddy in Los Angeles solved that problem (Thanks, Damien!) but I was still left with a few hours on a Monday morning that I had to fill. I wasn’t willing to just sit in the hotel room until I had to head back to the airport – what fun is that?!?! – so I set out on a very limited exploration of a very small part of Mexico City.
My hotel, the Wyndham Garden Inn, is in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. About 30 minutes from the airport, the area is very accessible and also happens to be a reasonably nice neighborhood to wander about. Even putting aside the significant number of points I earned for the hotel stay I think that the property is a winner. Free internet that is a pretty decent connection, great towels (very soft) and a pretty good location make the property a winner to me.
I got some great tips from a friend in terms of what I should try to see and I managed to do pretty well overall, I think. I still need to get to El Moro, the churros shop that was recommended, but I did get to see El Angel de Independencia and a couple other sites while wandering around the neighborhood for the couple hours I had that morning. Plus, I’ll be back in six weeks and should be able to get that bit of fun in on that visit.
But on this visit I simply walked up one of the main streets of town for a bit and was exposed to an enjoyable snippet of the city. Plenty of folks out on the street and I watched their completely crazy means of dealing with traffic circles (they just go on whichever side gets them to the destination faster rather than in a circle!). Overall, it was a rather enjoyable way to spend a bit of time in the morning getting acclimated to town.
Plus, I had a ridiculously delicious breakfast on the street. As I walked past the guy on the way out for my rambles I had a very good feeling about the situation. He had several meats, each kept in a very neat pile on the griddle. Plus the whole rig looked to be very clean. Still, there was no one else out eating so I was a bit apprehensive. I got over that when I returned from my excursion and saw a couple others around the stall eating off of plates that were covered in a disposable wrap. So he runs a very clean shop. That’s a good sign.
My initial order – in my version of very broken Spanish and his much better English – was for carne y queso; steak and cheese. Served on a couple tortillas and then topped with onions, salsa and a squeeze of lime juice from the condiment bar that he had on the cart. Half way through consuming that delicious I managed to order a second round, this time with chorizo rather than carne. It also had a different cheese though I really couldn’t describe the difference with any reasonable accuracy.
The two tortillas overfilled with meat plus a soda were about 30 pesos. That’s just over two US dollars. The food was great and at the price there was really nothing better out there. At least not that I could figure out how to order anywhere. After all, I barely speak Spanish.
And then it was back to the airport and then onto the circuitous routing back to New York City. Having the same flight crew for the Mexico City – Panama City flight as the night before into Mexico was fun. So was meeting a guy in the lounge in Panama that I vaguely knew from a previous trip. But that’s all a different story.
I’m actually on the same flight I was originally booked on when I woke up this morning. The flight was canceled at least once – maybe twice – and reinstated with customers being moved around and reassigned flights somewhat haphazardly from what I could tell. A few of the times I called in to ask about alternate routings I was apparently already assigned seats back on this flight. The folks at the airport couldn’t really tell me if the flight was going to happen or not; there was mostly just confusion as the various different computer systems were spitting out different data to people. 
