Posted by Seth on April 28, 2010 under Book Review | 
Spending as much time as I do on airplanes has done wonderful things for my reading habits. I’m reading more than ever and loving it. The majority of my reading is travel-related. Not necessarily travel guides – those are more fun to write than to read for me – but the stories I’m reading, both fiction and non-fiction, are set in destinations that I’m excited by. They might be places I’m going or places I’ve just been or just places I’m intrigued by. I often find inspiration for my travel obsession in the stories being told in these books. Most recently I’ve been reading about India. I got started late last year when I thought I’d be going back this spring thanks to a great sale offered by British Airways. That fell through, but my desire to read more about the country didn’t nor did my desire to return for another visit. In fact that desire continues to grow, based mostly on my reading of two books during the intervening months.
Maximum City is a collection of stories told by a Bombay native who returns to his hometown from New York City twenty years after having left as a teenager. His return finds the city reborn as Mumbai and many differences but also enough similarities that he is able to settle back into the routines and find his way. During the couple years he spends with his family in Mumbai he follows a few main story lines and characters around town.
There are stories of gangsters responsible for extortion and contract killings – they come as cheap as $10 on the street – and there is the story of the police commissioner responsible for tracking down and prosecuting such criminals. Whether taking a meeting with men responsible for dozens of murders and inciting riots around town or with the man who ultimately broke open the case of the riot organizers and drives the prosecution, the story is engaging and riveting. There are movie stars and producers under the protection of the governments from the extortion schemes of the criminal organizations which are run by leaders who are based in foreign lands and there are occasional efforts to actually reign in the crime waves, though mostly the efforts focus on just keeping enough people alive and financially sound so that there isn’t a revolt in the communities.
There is the tale of the beauty queen, working in one of the many dance clubs that Bombay has to offer, trying to break out of that world and into the realm of professional modeling and acting. And there is her counterpart, a man who dances as a woman and who is known for the energy and excitement she exhibits while dancing. The story tracks her home life where she lives as a relatively normal man, married and eventually a father. These two stories surround a world of women being exploited and, when successful, turning that exploitation back on the men who effect it, becoming rather wealthy at the expense of the men who would take advantage of them.
One story follows a family seeking enlightenment. A successful diamond merchant, the patriarch of the family ultimately decides to devote his life – and that of his family as well – to the pursuit of moksha, the Jain concept of enlightenment. They are millionaires who divest themselves of everything, literally throwing their money and possessions out into crowds, as they pursue this spiritual cleanliness.
The author gets invited to help write scripts for movies in Bollywood, rubbing elbows with the star directors and actors and giving a view into the way that industry works, both on the financial and human side of things. The author tells of working with a director to write an “A-level” movie and following the gang-funded development of a lesser film, tracking the hopes of an aspiring actor and the stories of woe of the thousands who move to Mumbai each year in hopes of breaking into the business.
There are other stories as well, each its own tiny piece of the whole story that makes Mumbai such a magnet for immigrants from the countryside. And each of the stories makes me want to discover just a bit more of Mumbai for myself. I know I’ll never get close to most of the people described in the book, but I want to see the city and experience my version of the life that can be had in those neighborhoods.
Were this simply a novel built from the imagination of someone who decided to disappear into the underworld of Mumbai the story would be fascinating. Considering that the tale is loosely based on the author’s actual experiences, it is simply phenomenal. I didn’t know that it was a mostly true story until I was about 80% of the way through (sorry for the spoiler if that ruins it for you) but once I found out I actually spent a couple hours just remembering some of the crazy situations that the author recounts. Even if they are only half true the fact that one man experienced so much is awesome.
Shantaram is the story of an escaped convict living on the lam in Mumbai. He did time in prison in Australia before escaping to New Zealand and eventually to India, a great place to get lost in the underworld for a few years if you’re willing to make some sacrifices. Unwilling to risk living in guest houses and hotels – locations where passports must be registered – the protagonist befriends, or is befriended by, a local who lives in one of the many slums around the city. He moves in to the slum, living on what he can drum up in various gray and black market businesses. And those are the least crazy parts of his time in town. His time in town starts with meeting a guide as he comes off the bus from the airport. That brief moment in time, a gutsy decision to trust a random stranger, turns out to define most of the rest of his time in Mumbai.
Of course, he falls in love with a woman; there is the long chase of that love. There is also his indoctrination into the true underworld of crime in Mumbai. He becomes an expert in black market currency exchange, the smuggling of gold into the country and the production and sale of false passports and other documents. He breaks into the movie business, arranging for funding of some films and working to cast extras – westerners he initially meets for drug or currency deals – in others. He sets up a small medical clinic in the slums based on his limited first aid training, eventually becoming the initial doctor for thousands of folks living in the neighborhood, people who otherwise would never receive medical treatment. Oh, and eventually he travels off to Afghanistan, smuggling huge caches of weapons along the way, to become a fighter in the war there, fighting along side natives who had previously transplanted to India and set up shop as gangsters.
He serves time in the Indian prisons, accused of a crime that he might have committed. But the accusations are secondary to the corruption in the prison system. Although he eventually manages to bribe his way out – the fingerprints taken at his initial processing return his true identity as an escaped convict – the stories of the treatments inside the prison are harrowing.
There are heroin dens and hashish bars, great meetings of the mafia dons and trips to meet with the lepers who can provide him with black market medicines for his clinic in the slums. How do you stop an epidemic from spreading through a community where an eight foot by eight foot room is home for a whole family? You simply hope to contain it and isolate the sick long enough that the others can survive. Such tales are heart-wrenching but also tell the story of the communal spirit to survive that permeates the poorest of the Mumbai communities.
And then there’s the fact that he actually wrote the book more than once. The notes, scribbled on random slips of paper accumulated over the years and eventually committed to a manuscript were all lost after he returned to prison for real, his history finally catching up with him. Still, with everything lost he wrote the stories again and weaves a tale that, while probably not 100% factual, is close enough that it is easy to feel yourself alongside him as he tries to move past the previous life and simply reinvent himself in a city that seems built for such a task.
The story is incredibly long but reads quickly. It is a page turner that is hard to put down. And the stories are compelling.
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Posted by Seth on April 28, 2010 under News |
Just announced on the quarterly earnings conference call:
- 7x daily DCA-BOS
- 1x daily DCA-FLL
- 1x daily DCA-MCO
That makes a lot more sense than trying to get Charlotte or JFK on the schedule. There is competition on all these routes, most notably from US Airways on all three routes, but also from Delta, American Airlines, Spirit Air and AirTran.
The new flights put JetBlue in the drivers seat on traffic between Boston and the DC area, with 18 daily departures amongst the three airports. The fight for Boston is going to be fun to watch…
The new flights are bookable now at jetblue.com, with some good sales out there for travel prior to December 15, 2010.
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Posted by Seth on April 27, 2010 under News |
As the expected recipient of a number of slots at Washington, DC’s National Airport (DCA), there has been much speculation about which routes JetBlue would launch service on. A hint may have been received this evening as fares were loaded into the Global Distribution Systems that are used to feed data to all the booking engines world-wide. Specifically, fares were loaded for service between DCA and New York City’s JFK, Boston, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando and Charlotte.
Searches for fares to a number of other cities return no results. This certainly is not conclusive evidence of their route planning strategy, but it does yield some ideas. None of these flights are loaded into any schedules yet, at least not those that are publicly available.
Want to be able to search for fares and schedules like those above? Check out The Wandering Aramean Travel Tools. Pretty good stuff, really.
Posted by Seth on April 27, 2010 under News |
Following up on the news that the development of the Kiteline service for domestic commercial air service has been suspended, LiveTV, a subsidiary of JetBlue, has made some noise about Kiteline Global, a service that will provide limited bandwidth using the Iridium satellite network. The system will use a very small antenna and provide a 128Kbit link for in-flight internet traffic. Yup, only 128Kbit. That’s not much at all. But the expectation is that it will be much less expensive to install and maintain, and it is sufficient bandwidth for instant message and light email traffic. Not a full-browser solution by any means, but way less expensive, too. Will that be enough to drive adoption? LiveTV is betting yes. We’ll learn if they’re correct in the coming months as the product sees first flight and deployments. There were hints of this service coming on-line as far back as last October and it is great to see it finally coming to fruition.
On the Kiteline front LiveTV has noted that they now have a “carry-on” product they are calling Kiteline GA for general aviation use. This is a portable radio device that leverages the ATG spectrum previously purchased to permit any GA aircraft to have connectivity. The service is available on an ad hoc basis for customers who have the Airfone product installed.
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Posted by Seth on April 27, 2010 under Trip Reports |
For years now every time I’ve read anything or talked to anyone about what to do during a layover at Los Angeles International Airport the answer has been simple and singular: Plane spotting from the In-n-Out. I’ve done that a few times now and been quite happy with it. But I also discovered this weekend that there is another option for folks on a layover, one that is more educational, less fattening and every bit as cool to an aerophile like me: Flight Path LAX.
Flight Path is a museum and learning center is a non-profit organization formed 15 years ago as part of an effort by the operators of the airport to honor the 75th anniversary of its founding. In the intervening years the facility has blossomed into a phenomenal collection of models, photographs and memorabilia, all of which celebrates the history of flight in Southern California. The museum is situated in the Imperial Terminal, on the grounds of LAX. The terminal has served a number of purposes over the years, from operating as the MGM Grand terminal for shuttles to the casino in Las Vegas to the charter operations facility for private flights at the airport. And they’ve got the photos on the walls to prove it.
The museum has one of the largest collections of aviation uniforms out there. They have almost all of the mumus that the United Airlines flight attendants wore on the Hawaii runs in the 60s and 70s. They have several of the paper dress uniforms that the TWA attendants wore on their premium runs to London, Paris, Rome and New York City. Our guide was Eleanor, a former Flight Attendant for United and a woman incredibly knowledgeable about the industry and its history had a number of stories to share with us about those paper uniforms, including how they were hemmed to fit each attendant (scissors) and how the businessmen “flirting” with them would accidentally brush their cigarettes up against the attendants, risking the uniforms going up in smoke (and coming off). They’ve got hot pants from Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) and several generations of Pan Am uniforms, among others.
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| The paper dress uniforms from TWA, 1968. On the left is the Rome outfit; Paris on the right. |
Pacific Southwest Airlines’ uniform from the 70s. |
The museum also has a pretty impressive collection of in-flight service sets, ticket stubs, napkins, models and just about anything else that has an airline logo on it from the past 100+ years of flight. The breadth of the collection is rather astounding.
As part of our tour we were also treated to a bus ride around the airfield. I’m pretty sure this isn’t part of the regular visits, but if you can arrange it I highly recommend doing so. We all loaded up onto a bus and cruised around the airport, mixed in among the baggage trailers, maintenance trucks and crew vans. It was wonderful to be up close with the planes and see the operations from that perspective; it is much different than from inside the terminal.
Finally, the museum has a DC-3 parked out on the tarmac outside. The aircraft was built in 1941 and served in commercial service and as a private airplane before it was retired and eventually moved to the airport. We were quite lucky during our tour and were actually permitted to go inside. It sounds like this is somewhat common – more so than the bus tour – but it was still a special treat. The interior is still in its private plane configuration and it looks quite lavish for the era it was flying in.
No, they don’t have a Double Double available. And you cannot hop on the Parking Spot shuttle to get there (though the Embassy Suites El Segundo is right across the street, maybe a 5-10 minute walk). But the museum is open five days per week, Tuesday – Saturday, from 10 am to 3 pm and admission is free. It is absolutely worth visiting for a peek back at the history of aviation in Southern California and around the globe. You can even watch the video that includes the airport’s theme song. It is a classic (made it to #54 on the pop charts in the USA)!
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Posted by Seth on April 26, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Los Angeles International Airport is a bit quirky. It is pretty much smack in the middle of town, but it is also an enormous facility that sees an incredible range of aircraft passing through on a daily basis. There are almost as many Embraer E-120s (tiny prop planes) as there are Boeing 747-400s. And there are the Qantas Airbus A380s, too. Indeed, if it is flying in the western world odds are it passes through LAX at some point during the day.
Did I mention that it is pretty much in the middle of town? The airport is wonderfully accessible and there are two prime spots where folks so inclined can hang out and watch the planes come and go. One is on the south side of the airport, up on Imperial Hill. That position is elevated and built out with benches and such to accommodate the folks watching the planes. The other location is on the northeast corner of the field. It is a small grassy park area immediately adjacent to the Parking Spot Sepulveda location and an In-n-Out franchise. I like the views from Imperial Hill, but the snacks at the In-n-Out location are better so that’s usually where I end up when I’m in town. Plus, you can take the Parking Spot shuttle (tip a couple bucks!) and drop in for a visit during a layover of 3-4 hours.
This past Sunday morning the park had a whole bunch of folks out and about. Families with kids running around whooping and hollering as the 747s came in around noon (mostly the adults, actually) and otherwise running around and having a good time. Plus, a Double Double meal is a great breakfast to follow up a night of drinking.
Without further ado, a few photos from the collection I shot on Sunday morning…
The KLM 747 did a go-around on Sunday morning, passing way high over the field on its first approach. This is from the second time around.
China Airlines was the fourth of the 747s I saw on this morning.
Singapore Air’s 747-400, with vapor trails coming off the trailing edge of the flaps.
Walk across the street from the park and you’re directly under the approach path, in the midst of all the orange towers with the lights on them. They help frame the photos nicely…
A United Airlines A320 about to touch down.
I think the KLM 747 might be speeding.
The Qantas A380 arriving as seen from my hotel room Friday morning.
A bunch more photos can be seen here.
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Tags: A380, Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Flying, KLM, Los Angeles, Photos, Qantas, Singapore Air, United
Posted by Seth on April 26, 2010 under News |
For the next few weeks – until May 19th – you can fly between Long Beach and either San Francisco or Oakland on JetBlue for only $9 each way, plus taxes and fees. That should come out to about $40 round-trip. The main catch is that it is only valid on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Still, not a bad deal if you’re looking on making a trip anyways. Oh, and you have to purchase the ticket today. Get shopping.
Posted by Seth on April 23, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Most folks want oceans, mountains, lakes or other beautiful nature when looking out of their hotel rooms. I like that stuff, too, but if I’m staying at the airport hotel I’m hoping for a room with decent views of the runways. At an airport like Los Angeles International, where the airplanes coming and going are more varied that desire is even stronger. I love that I got to watch a Yangtze River Express 747 freighter land this morning as the sun was coming up and that I got to watch the sun disappear into the sea just off the end of the runways last night as planes came and went. Besides, the LAX runways have mountains (ok, hills) and ocean surrounding them so everyone wins.
A Southwest 737 prepares for takeoff with a Virgin America Airbus right behind.
A Southwest B737 just off the ground with an Air China B747, Air France B777 and Alaska Air B737 in the foreground
A B747 freighter arriving from China
Look up a bit from the horizon and you cannot even tell it is an airport.
Yeah, it may not be for everyone, but this is a room with a view that is pretty much perfect for my somewhat “different” outlook on the world. For those curious, room 1438 at the Sheraton Gateway LAX.
Posted by Seth on April 23, 2010 under Trip Reports |
I’ve taken the United Airlines p.s. flights a couple times between New York City and the west coast, but always in coach. They were, to be frank, not all that special. Really not much “premium” about them in the back. In the business or first class cabins it is a whole different story, or so I’d been told. This weekend’s trip to Los Angeles finally gave me a chance to find out for myself. Thanks to a friend with extra CR1 upgrades lying around I managed to find myself in seat 10A, a window seat in the business class cabin of the Boeing 757-200.
One nice thing about the p.s. premium cabin service is that it includes lounge access. Of course, in New York that means the somewhat tired Red Carpet Club, but it is better than nothing. They had some yogurt out as well as fruit juices on the bar. And since I was in a premium cabin they even gave me drink chits for the alcoholic beverages when I went in. Not so bad. Still, that lounge needs some work. At least it wasn’t too crowded at 7:45am.
Boarding was quick and easy. It is amazing what reducing the number of seats on a plane by 30% will do to ease the boarding process. Plenty of overhead bin space and everyone was able to get settled into their seats pretty quickly.
The seats are the same as the old international business product seats. They aren’t my favorite, to say the least. Adjusting them is a very manual process and getting them “right” is something I have yet to master. Still, plenty of room to stretch out and work. It didn’t hurt that the seat next to me was empty on the flight, giving me even more space.
The meal service in business class is also a premium product. Printed menus and table cloths and quality glassware for the drinks. I had one drink on the flight – it was early and I was also working during the trip and needed to be somewhat coherent – and it was juts fine. Not really my favorite flavor but I figured it would be worth trying the featured drink in the menu. And the food – I had the pancakes – was, well, airplane food. Certainly not gourmet by any stretch but better than the Buy-on-Board boxes offered up in the back. One very nice thing was that the meal service was on-demand. The couple in front of me chose to sleep for the first three hours of the flight and they got their breakfast when they woke up.
In-flight entertainment was provided by both overhead monitors and personal media players distributed by the flight attendants. I don’t know how anyone could even consider watching the overhead monitors on the plane. I had a view of six from my seat. One was completely dysfunctional and the other five were all different colors while watching the same content. I’m not all that surprised as most folks in the cabin were just using the portable devices the FAs were handing out, but it is still a bad overall representation of the product and the brand to have the systems in such a state of disrepair.
The entire p.s. fleet also has Aircell’s gogo service available. I’m not a huge fan of paying for in-flight internet, but I had work to do and it was stuff I couldn’t load on to my laptop and do offline. So I sucked it up and paid the price. The service was pretty good this time, without any drops in performance or other troubles. I even uploaded a video to YouTube of our takeoff that morning during the flight and it made it through OK, albeit slowly.
Lest the above report sound like a bunch of griping, let me be clear: the trip was just about what I’d expect from a premium transcon product on a US legacy carrier. Maybe it is just that my expectations have be reasonably set low. If I can get my hands on more CR1s I’d certainly do it again, but I’m not going out of my way for it nor would I ever consider paying the fares that United charges. Sure, it is better than a poke in the eye (or coach) but not that much better that my budget would accept it. But I was up in the air, looking out at this, and that’s rarely a bad thing…
Posted by Seth on April 23, 2010 under Trip Reports |
About half-way through a day of tourism, significant beer consumption and various other fun, a group of five of us were relaxing in Panama City and started talking about our frequent flier account balances and dream trips that we were looking to book. One guy said he had ~150,000 points. Another mentioned ~95,000. And then I noted that I had 206. The reply, “Well 206,000 isn’t so bad.” No. Two. Hundred. Six. Suffice it to say that the group all got very quiet.
How is it possible that someone flying as much as I am only has 206 points in their primary earning account? Quite simple, really: I burn them, too. A lot. I’ve burned somewhere in the range of 750,000 points in the past 18 months on trips all over the world. A lot of trips, most of them in the pointy end of the plane, and the miles disappear just as quickly as they show up in the account. If I had been earning more miles I’d almost certainly have burned more, too.
Moral of the story? Burn your points as you earn them. If you want to keep one ticket’s worth in an “emergency reserve” that might make sense, but with the way the airlines treat the programs it is important to remember that generally speaking the points will never have more value in the future than they do right now.
And, lest anyone be worried for me, that balance is recovering nicely and I still have more than 500,000 points socked away in various accounts, all of which are looking to be redeemed in the future.
Posted by Seth on April 22, 2010 under News |
Back in December drug maker Cephalon was anxiously awaiting an expected approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to permit their drug Nuvigil to be prescribed to treat jetlag associated with east-bound travel. They were thwarted then, with the FDA choosing to delay a ruling by three months. Well, the new deadline came and went and the FDA still has not issued a final ruling on the drug. Even more concerning for the manufacturer is that such an approval still seems a bit of a ways off.
The FDA most recently issued a complete response letter indicating that the the new indication would not be approved at this time. The basis for the delay is that the FDA is not quite sure that the results of the trial as “robust” enough statistically to show a true benefit versus a placebo. The good news is that the Agency didn’t outright deny the application. The decision to offer the letter instead permits the company and the Agency to discuss further before a final ruling is issued.
I’m actually not all that surprised by this move from the FDA. I’d tend to agree that the questionnaires used in the trial were, well, lacking in many ways. But I didn’t design the study and I’m not experienced in clinical drug trials so what do I know.
No word yet on an expected date for any future announcements on the trial.
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