A little bit of an unusual post this week. This is an important one, however. Love your comments/feedback. Before Travel Consider what shoes you will need. Are you going to be sitting around the pool? Exploring cities on foot? Attending dinners and functions? Practice walking in your shoes before you travel. Wearing your new sneakers on day one of a Paris walk is not a good idea! In the air Don’t take your shoes off during take off and landing. Wear closed in shoes that will protect your feet if you need to evacuate Avoid…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for January 2014.
Non allocated Seating Dead?
In the early days of Low Cost Carriers, non allocated seating was the norm. With Ryanair’s announcement of allocated seating from February, 2014, there are few airlines that continue to offer it. Easyjet made the transition to alllocated seating last year. Jetstar did it in 2011. Air Asia followed on 2012. Southwest continue to offer it but their boarding system is now so complicated it may as well be a form of allocation! Now airlines (Low cost and full service) almost universally offer seat allocation on line. Some carriers charge a fee for advance seat…
A friendlier Ryanair cuts fees
Yes, you read that right! After being accused in 2013 by consumer group Which as the worst brand in the Uk and after years of being perceived that the airline is above addressing customer complaints, Ryanair have been introducing a whole raft of improvements. This follows chief executive Michael O’Leary’s comment to shareholders last September that it should scrap its “macho” image and eliminate things that “unnecessarily p*** people off”. Ryanair has a reputation for publicising very cheap fares while charging passengers high fees for a whole raft of things check in luggage and to…
Lost in Transit
As I lined up to withdraw from an ATM at Singapire’s Changi airport, I became aware of a disturbance . An elderly Sikh gentleman was clearly struggling to use the machine. Firstly, he did not appear to know how to insert his card. A young couple behind him showed him this. Entering the pin stumped him next. Dressed simply, in sandals, open necked shirt and a wrap and clutching an ID card, atm card and some cash, he looked vulnerable and out of place in this vast bustling mega airport. At this point, some of…
Yell No
In 40+ years of travel, I have only had one incident where I felt I could have been mugged. As I changed money at a Paris railway station, I realised I was being observed. Worse, the group of three followed me onto the metro and into my carriage. They then carefully watched me at each station to see when I got off the train. I spontaneously hopped off the train at a busy station just as the doors were closing. They jumped off too and trailed me down the platform to the exit. I turned…
2014 World Anniversaries
2014 marks 100 years since World War One. It is 75 years since World War Two and 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. How will you remember these events? Have we learnt from them?
Airlines that vanished in 2013
Twenty carriers disappeared in 2013 compared to twenty-six 2012 . Six of them were based in Eastern Europe/former USSR countries. Most of the carriers were small regional airlines with tiny fleets. Kingfisher of India was only one carrier that could have been considered major, although it has been some time since they were India’s largest airline. Nearly all of the airlinest that vanished are young but a few Evergreen, JAT, OLT Express and Ryan International are old names in the airline game. I thought Air Zimbabwe would finally vanish but they managed to get enough…
A century of commercial airlines
On January 1st, 1914, the first scheduled US commercial airline flight using a fixed wing aircraft occurred. The passenger was Abram C. Pheil, the then Mayor of St. Petersburg. He flew to Tampa, Florida paying 400 dollars for the round trip ticket in a charity auction. Pilot Tony Jannus flew a Benoist flying boat for St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line taking 23 minutes for the journey at a height of five metres (15 feet). There were reported to be over 3,000 spectators at a parade accompanied by an Italian band at the departure point. Kermit Weeks…
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