Overall, fewer carriers seemed to fail in 2014. For many airlines, it was a much more profitable year. Of concern was how many of the carriers that collapsed were only flying for months. I am tempted to call 2014 “the Year of the shortlived airline”. Air One Italy: 23 November, 1995 to 30 October, 2014 Fleet: 10 Alitalia’s low cost subsidiary never quite made sense. Following the takeover of Alitalia by Etihad, Air One was shut down. AirTran USA: 26 October, 1993 to 28 December, 2014 Fleet: 138 Destinations: 72 (at peak) On 28…
Cool Copenhagen
In 2014, I was lucky enough to visit my sixtieth country Denmark. Copenhagen is the 183rd city with a population of over 100,000 I have visited in my 50 years! Flew into Copenhagen with Finnair (see Tuesday’s post), zipped through the very easy arrival procedures as were already in the Schengen zone, found the metro, bought a pass and were heading into the downtown in minutes. Oh, if arrival at so many cities was this easy. Asthetics: 9/10 How many cities in the world, have a harbour that is clean enough to swim in?…
Etihad delayed flights end with passenger death
One does not associate fog with the desert kingdom of Abu Dhabi. Last weekend, chaos hit the capital when fog blanketed it for hours. There was a 19-car pile-up on on Saturday morning which left three people injured. The airport saw 20 flights cancelled and thousands of passengers stranded. One flight EY183 to San Francisco sat on the tarmac for 12 hours before its 16 hour journey! In other words, passengers sat inside that metal tube for 28 hours.Another, EY023 to Dusseldorf, Germany was kept on the tarmac for 13 hours. It was then forced…
Flying Finnair Four Times
I have never booked a flight to HEL before! Re-assuredly, I was also able to book flights out of HELsinki, the capital of Finland quite easily. I was bemused that one of my flights was AY 666 (Biblical number of evil) from Copenhangen to HEL. None of the crew or passengers were sprouting horns and the only non human creatures we encountered were popular Finnish Comic Moomin family products which the airline was selling on board. Of the 15 One World member airlines, I have now flown 11 of them (and two ex members!) for…
My Top Travel Tips of 2014
I love sharing things that I find make my travel faster, easier, more enjoyable, safer and cheaper. My ultimate aim is to let my travel serve me not the other way around! In 2014, readers liked the following Travel Tips posts the most: Travel insurance Rocks! The Man in Seat 61 – the best guide to riding trains across the globe -ever Seven Things not to pack – which generated some controversy with heaps of comments! What to do with left over foreign coins? Some very helpful comments here Don’t carry a Money Belt-my other controversial…
Reviewing 2014-How do you measure your travel?
As I reflect on 2014, I pondered how do I measure my travel? 1. By Kilometres, miles or points? In 2014 I covered: 3000km (2000 miles) by train 4000km (2500 miles) by bus 12000km by rental car (7000 miles) 124,754 (77.5k) by air to or from 22 airports. I flew four new airlines bringing my total number of air carriers to 91 airlines! The new ones were: Burma’s Air KBZ, Bangkok Airways Finnair (review coming Tuesday) and Germania 2. The Goals I achieved? In 2014, I completed my first (and last) marathon in Berlin, Germany hiked across…
My Top Five Airlines of 2014
I feel this post is almost a repeat of the last two years! Not much has changed for me at the top of the airline pecking order! I did fly fewer times and far fewer kilometres than other years. I did a lot more surface travel through Asia and can certainly give you the best and worst bus companies and rail operators! I rate each flight I take for every factor from Booking to Check-in to deplaning. and keep a tally of my rating using Flightmemory.com. The scores averaged out give me the ranking…
My Essential Travel Apps for 2014
Twenty five years ago, I travelled with paper tickets, travellers cheques/checks and lots of real cash. We organised to meet people by letter and I sent postcards home. Now, a credit card and a smartphone are all I really need to organise my travel world. As I approach the end of the year, I am reflecting on what have been my essential travel tools. These are the ones I could not live without: Kayak and Skyscanner – Nothing beats these two fare and accommodation finding tools for getting the best deals. Their interfaces give me flexibility…
Ryanair US site – tips for flying
I have flown 90 airlines to all continents of the world (except for Antarctica) and one airline continues to dismay me: Ryanair. People keep flying Ryanair for one reason: cheap fares. I avoid them because of their seats, customer disdain, staff attitude, ethical concerns and their flying to random secondary airports nowhere near the city I am flying to. My experience of Ryanair is that they are like a bus. If you like bus travel, its fine. If something goes wrong, then you are on your own. The airline has made a concerted effort to improve…
Paris locks bridges down to stop love locks
“Paris is the capital of love, and we are all proud of that…But there are other, more beautiful ways of showing love than attaching padlocks.” I have said a few times in this blog how I hate people damaging the things they visit. Nothing riles me up as an example of this than the vandalism of Parisian bridges! What started as a romantic symbol on one bridge in 2008 has become a blight on bridges across Paris and seems to be spreading to other cities. After part of a bridge railing collapsed on the Pont…
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