Posted by Seth on December 16, 2011 under Internet, News | 
Qantas announced today that they will be fitting their Airbus A380 aircraft with the OnAir SwiftBroadband connectivity suite, providing in-flight internet connectivity on trans-Pacific flights between Australia and the United States. The move brings WiFi connectivity to the fleet type but not GSM/GPRS mobile services so there will not be the option for in-flight voice or SMS/text services. The service trial is expected to start in February.
This is a similar system to that which Emirates will be using on their A380 fleet as announced earlier this week. It will also allow Qantas to remain competitive with United Airlines, which has announced intentions to outfit its entire fleet with WiFi, including the 747s they are flying to Australia.
No word on pricing yet, and the trial in February is for "business and first class passengers" according to one report, though I don’t know how they’ll keep the WiFi signal only on the upper deck. More details as they come out.
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Posted by Seth on December 14, 2010 under frequent flyer, News |
Star Alliance is already the largest of the global airline alliances but they appear to be showing no signs of slowing their growth. At their regular CEO summit this week, held in Queenstown, New Zealand, Virgin Blue CEO John Borghetti was in attendance. Only Qantas, a member of OneWorld, is in an alliance currently in Australia so there is room for either Star Alliance or SkyTeam to make a move with Virgin Blue.
Virgin Blue and Air New Zealand have tried to link up already once. Their application to cooperate on trans-Tasman service was rejected by Australian competition authorities in September. Still, the carriers are looking to move forward with a partnership that could benefit both sides as much as possible.
An additional quirk that might come into play with the possible Star Alliance move is that Virgin Blue has some existing partners that could confuse the situation. Their loyalty scheme, Velocity Rewards, is shared with long haul carrier V Australia. V Australia currently is partnered with Delta, a SkyTeam member. Having one half of the Velocity Rewards program working in Star Alliance and the other in SkyTeam would be quite unusual, though it is possible.
If Virgin Blue – and V Australia along with it – were to leave Delta it would be quite a blow to the SkyMiles program. Currently the V Australia option is one of the best redemption opportunities that SkyMiles has.
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Posted by Seth on October 28, 2010 under Trip Reports |
A few months ago I was ecstatic after securing an award ticket to New Zealand for this coming December. It wasn’t just that I got seats on the dates I wanted. And it wasn’t just that they were in premium cabins almost the entire way. And it wasn’t just that I was able to get one of the longest possible routings along the way to maximize my time in the big comfy seats (and lounges). OK, maybe it was that last one.
Unfortunately, however, the reason I was going to New Zealand changed around a bit. And it looks like we’re going to be spending a couple weeks in India at the end of December, No reason I cannot combine the two trips, right? Apparently Continental felt that was actually going to be a problem.
It seems there are two ways for the airline to issue award tickets and mine was originally set up with the method that requires the agents working on the ticket to manually verify the details. Based on what the agent I spoke with today explained, it seems that a small detail was missed during the original, manual booking of my award. It wasn’t a legal routing according to their system. Oopsie.
Of course, I wasn’t really ready to give up on what was an absolutely awesome award trip, despite their suggestions that they could convert it to an Around the World award for only 120,000 extra points (75% more than the 160K I originally redeemed). Ummmm, no thanks. After a bit of discussion we agreed that, while it might not actually be valid in their system, I shouldn’t be penalized because someone misunderstood the rules a couple months ago when issuing it. So I was permitted to make my change – and I was still able to find seats on flights I wanted within a couple days of my ideal – and to keep the ticket.
So I ended up with this little bit of awesomeness:
![map[1]](http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewanderingaramean/files/2010/10/map1.png)
I get a new carrier (Swiss) as well as my first experiences in the Lufthansa and Thai Airways first class cabins. Only the segment between Auckland and Melbourne is in coach; the rest are all in the highest class of service available on the flight. I tried to mix Air Canada in for one of the transatlantic segments but couldn’t make that work. And I gave up the chance at a first class suite on the Turkish 77W, but those are apparently less consistent these days anyways so it wasn’t a sure think even if I did keep that route.
I am not complaining one bit, even if I did have to trade a boondoggle in Singapore for an overnight in Bangkok.
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Tags: Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Auckland, Australia, award, Bangkok, Continental, India, Lufthansa, Munich, Thai Air, Thailand
Posted by Seth on June 15, 2010 under Trip Reports |
As my day of beach visits in Sydney wrapped up on Saturday afternoon I headed back in to the Circular Quay area and up towards The Rocks to my bed. I desperately needed to shower and change before going out for dinner. As I walked up the side of the harbour I noticed quite a few folks with their cameras mounted on tripods, all pointed at the Opera House. OK, such a scene isn’t all that unusual but, well, it just seemed different this time. Sure enough, it was.
I happened to be in Sydney during the middle of the Vivid Sydney event. Billed as the largest event of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, Vivid Sydney includes large-scale light installations, a concert for dogs and all sort of other wacky stuff. One of the events, a repeat from last year but with a different artist this time, was Lighting the Sails. Basically the Opera House was lighted from across the harbour with rather intricate patterns and designs. It was surreal, particularly as some of the schemes were animated (there is a video below).
The event was, overall, very cool. And it definitely brought folks out to the harbour. That being said, it looked pretty much like all of us watching were tourists, not locals, so I’m not entirely convinced that we wouldn’t have been in that neighborhood anyways.
A very cool exhibition, though also quite trippy.
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Posted by Seth on June 14, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Sure, it was winter time in Australia while I was visiting but apparently my visit brought (or at least coincided with) the first warm, sunny day that Sydney had seen in several weeks. This meant that lots of folks were out an about, especially on the beaches. I really wanted the ferry ride through the harbour so I hit up Manly beach first, but given its slightly more popular coverage in the media (at least up here) I also felt that I should take a trip out to Bondi Beach. So after lunch I did just that.
Unfortunately, by the time I got out to Bondi the weather had turned for the worse. It was grey and overcast, with intermittent spurts of mist, drizzle and rain. It was not beach weather at all. Still, I had made the trek out there and I was not going to be denied.
One of the “must do” events at Bondi Beach is a visit to the pool at the southern end of the beach. It is justifiably famous and really quite cool. It is open to the public for a small fee but, alas, I didn’t have my suit with me. Plus it was cold and raining. Still, I did stop by to see the famed salt-water pool that sits right on the ocean.
All the photos I’d seen and reports I’d read mentioned how cool the pool was, mostly based on its location. But not a single one of them ever showed just how crazy it could be, particularly when the weather was a bit less than ideal. Well the day I was there definitely had less than ideal weather and the pool was constantly being overrun by the waves crashing against the sea wall.
Yeah, the waves were somewhat violent crashing against the wall there. I guess the folks in the water are used to it because they just kept on swimming.
There is a long walkway that connects the beaches around Bondi. I headed a bit further south along the walk just to see how folks were enjoying the afternoon. Even with the misty drizzle folks were out, doing what they could to keep dry as appropriate and to enjoy the waterfront where they could.
I enjoyed Manly better than Bondi but I cannot say that it wasn’t entirely because of the weather. The beach at Manly is longer though Bondi is deeper. I suppose they both have their appeal and either one is a great place to spend a few hours – preferably when it is warm and sunny – during a stay in Sydney.
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Posted by Seth on June 4, 2010 under Trip Reports |
It is not often that folks have reason to be happy about delayed flights. But anyone complaining about the initially posted 15 minute delay on my flight from San Francisco to Sydney last night would be someone who hadn’t ever chatted with route planning folks in operations. Indeed, we actually needed to take the delay on our departure in order to ensure that we could arrive on time.
There are crazy rules all over the world about where you can fly and when. Among those is a restriction preventing arrivals at Sydney earlier than 6am. With favorable winds our flight time was under 14 hours, meaning that if we departed on time we actually would have arrived too early into the Sydney area and then we’d be forced to circle, waiting for the airport to open up for morning operations.
I’ve had the opportunity to chat with the flight plan guys on a couple previous occasions and understanding the immense amount of planning that can go into a single flight, such as Newark to Hong Kong, is quite overwhelming. In addition to operating at the edge of the performance envelope for the aircraft the route has to be timed to hit certain waypoints over foreign airspace rather precisely. If you’re not where you are supposed to be over Russia or China at the exact moment you’re supposed to be there things can get ugly.
It turned out to not be as important that we take the initial delay holding based on the predicted flight time. As we got to our new departure time the pilots determined that there was a problem with the #2 engine that would require some maintenance guys to cannibalize another 747 across the field to get us some spare parts so that we could make the trip safely. I got to chat with the captain, listen to the flight attendants discussing whether they were going to be going illegal or not and watch out the window of the jetway – under the careful eye of the armed Customs & Border Patrol officers waiting for us to close the door and go. Ultimately I’m quite glad that they got the repair done right, even if we’re now two hours late and I risk losing my room reservation for tonight because it was only being held for three hours after my planned arrival. I’m sure I’ll figure that out and it beats not quite making it all the way to Australia.
Oh, and I managed to get lie-flat coach seating again on this flight. Four across in the center of the 747, all to myself. Hard to complain about that. I slept great!
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Posted by Seth on June 3, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Yes, I will be spending more time flying round trip than I will on the ground in Sydney. Yes, I plan to have a ton of fun this weekend. Yes, I am crazy.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, allow me to elaborate. A couple weeks ago United Airlines had a very brief 40% off sale for fares to Australia. Not being one to ignore a good sale I took a peek and noticed that it included trips from New York City. The price was right and the number of miles earned – almost 20,000 EQMs and almost 40,000 reward miles – are large enough that knocking out a weekend of flying was a good investment plus a great way to get back down to Oz. Tickets were booked and I didn’t look back. Now, a couple weeks later, I’m in the middle of my first segment of four on the trip, JFK – San Francisco aboard a United 767-300 with the International configuration.
The regular p.s. plane was swapped out due to a fire a couple weeks ago so I get this one instead. The plane feels especially roomy due to the fact that there are way more coach seats on this than on a normal p.s. plane though United is still only selling the normal number just in case. Pretty much everyone who wants one has their own block of seats. Quite nice indeed.
That being said, I’m a bit disappointed in the interior appointments on the plane. Yeah, I know I’m sitting in coach, but I still expected a little better. United has been tooting their own horn a ton lately about cleaning up their aircraft. Maybe they just haven’t gotten to this one yet but the insides have a few issues that don’t make me all that comfortable about maintenance habits. Like I put my armrest down and was greeted with this:
Yeah, I can put the piece back on and I did and no big deal in the end, but it’s just not right. A couple minutes later, after push-back I look across the cabin and notice the flight attendants fighting to keep a couple overhead bins closed. They’re not over-stuffed or anything; thy just won’t stay closed. Apparently a previous attempted fix – taping them shut – also didn’t work. So there we were, cleared to taxi into position for take-off, and the crew was scrambling to find somewhere to store a few bags. Again, our plane was empty enough that it wasn’t an issue but not comforting to see that even the “just duct tape it together” approach wasn’t working. 
And, to top it all off, the IFE was broken. I’m not sure how entertaining watching a movie on these tiny screens would be; watching the moving map was hard enough though I do applaud United for not going to the fully advertising sponsored model there. Still, not having an option on the video was a bit annoying when I woke up from my nap. The good news is that United is familiar enough with things going wrong on flights so their flight attendants are prepared. They made an announcement about an hour prior to landing and came through with the compensation certificates for the entire cabin without prompting. They definitely have the service recovery part down pat.
And the flight itself hasn’t been all that bad. I got some work done, had a nap and read a bit. Not bad at all. Of course, this is the short flight, only 5:50 in the air. The true test is coming up in a few hours when I strap in on a more crowded 747-400 for the 14ish hour overnight flight to Sydney. Good thing I’ve stoked up on drink chits for the RCC in advance of that.
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 2, 2010 under Flying, News |
Delta Airlines has decided to go a bit crazy this afternoon with coach pricing to Tokyo, Sydney and other destinations in Asia. They’ve loaded a number of fares <$500 for trips from New York City and Cleveland to Narita. They’ve also loaded ~$900 fares from New York and Minneapolis to Sydney; from San Francisco Sydney can be had for <$700.
These fares are a great deal if you don’t mind going that far in coach and if you can spare the time off. Most of them have 3+ day minimum stays required and are only valid through the next couple weeks.
Deals have also been spotted in Denver, Houston and Los Angeles. If you’re itching to get on a plane, give your favorite airport a try and see what you come up with.
Good luck!
Posted by Seth on March 31, 2010 under News |
And it just so happens that the winner of the trip was from a comment posted here on The Wandering Aramean. Congrats to Jonathan Heckman and have a great time in Australia; I’m looking forward to a post card.
And now back to the regularly scheduled coverage of random travels and industry news…
Posted by Seth on March 26, 2010 under News, points |
On Monday I announced an opportunity to win a free trip to Australia’s Gold Coast, thanks to American Express and BoardingArea.com. There are a whole bunch of entries already out there but still plenty of time to get your entry in if you haven’t yet. Head over to my original post for the contest and enter there. Then click over to the BoardingArea page for the contest and get the 19 other entries you’re allowed with all the other participating bloggers. Couldn’t be easier!
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