Trying to exit Algiers Airport

Visiting Algiers on Business for 48 hours has more blogging experiences that I can type up - however please be warned getting a flight out of the Algeria is a time consuming and repetitive process - Your sequence will be something like this:

1. Arrival at airport - Vehicle Check by Military
2. Entering departure terminal : X-ray baggage and personal search
3. Check in
   Stamp of boarding pass by government rep who checks boarding pass versus passport at your airline check in desk.
4. Formal Passport check - you have to fill exit form and then go through Passport control.
5. X ray baggage and personal search + check of boarding pass
6. Customs check give back declaration on Currency (a form you filled out on entry) + another boarding pass & passport check
7. Boarding gate - you will notice the Gate staff give you back your boarding pass stub - this you give to another policeman directly behind the boarding gate, who checks your boarding pass and passport again.
8. On the air bridge to aircraft - all hand baggage is manually opened and checked.
9. then final body search

You get on the aircraft a relieved person !
I know it is better safe than sorry, but the process is fairly stressful and makes the US entry exit process look like a "walk in the park"……….

Excess baggage

Whilst waiting to check in for my Turkish Airlines I watch the Check-in queues for an Kenyan Airways flight to Nairobi.
The amount of luggage, boxes and containers per family was frightening. I see no chance of the plane taking off whatsoever - it will be too heavy !
Box after Box disappeared down the belts, and having checked in, everyone trooped to the excess luggage desk to pay their due. I hope Kenyan Airways are not as expensive as Emirates - who charged me 300 pounds for an extra 15 kg, when I moved out to work in Sharjah

Impact of flight cancellations

It's funny living and working away from Europe. Tonight both Air France and Alitalia have cancelled their respective flights to Paris and Rome. It caused mayhem here, amongst the normal chaos that is Dubai airport. Lots of very stressed Europeans trying to find a way home. It's Friday, you're due home for the weekened for an important family appointment......been there done that. I guess if I had been in Europe, there would have been plenty of news footage but out here there has been zero coverage.
I knew about these cancelllations many hours ago as I was due to travel on the Air France flight, but my company's agent was informed yesterday 7am CET i.e. nearly 48 hours ago that the flight was cancelled. I was then going to travel via Rome with Alitalia, but that was cancelled , so my route to Algiers is via Istanbul and Turkish Airines. I will blog later on my experience & my first leg is full of Frenchman, who I guess will seek out a connection onwards to Paris from Istanbul............

A summer horribilis for British Holidaymakers

It's been an awful summer for Brits jumping on flights both short and long haul. There has been plenty of bankruptcies, (probably EXCEL wins the award for the most horrible in terms of stranding holiday makers); and there have been plenty of safety incidents (e.g. cabin depressurisation on Ryan Air)
This incident today probably sums up the summer as a whole (Air Europa were rumoured to be one of those "local spanish airlines" with alledged financial problems as well) -

Gone 2 Sharjah

Well jumped on an Emirates flight from Manchester on Tuesday lunchtime to start a new job in Sharjah. It was a good job it was half empty as the service was pretty lousy. It seemed that one of the senior staff members was running a staff training session in the kitchen - the airline has obviously expanded so quickly, they're struggling to keep up on the staff training front.
Dubai airport was its usual chaos. The new Emirates terminal is meant to open on Monday, so perhaps some of the stress will come out of the existing terminal. It seemed a miracle that any of got our bags - they were running 3 planes's baggage per carousel, which given each plane was 777/340 size - baggage continually stacking up on the belt making it difficult to retrieve it , even for fairly tall people like me.

any way you find out how I am doing on my new blog

100 up but that is it !

So that is 100 flights this year, but with a new job starting in a few weeks I don't think I will cross 120 by year end.
New job, New country, New (well second) Blog.............

Caught in the ATC delays

Being on the 1650 FlyBE flight Southampton-> Nice I was right in the eye of the storm. It did seem chaotic in terms of the information from NATS to the airport. In the space of 30 mins, our slot (time when the aircraft is allowed to take off) went from Indefinite Delay to 2050 then 2350 to 1755. The last change was amusingly heard over every Aviance Ground staff radio as "oh SH#t they bought forward the Nice to 1755 - get those OAPs moving" - before the flights was more formally announced on the Airport tannoy in the correct way.
To be fair to the Aviance/FlyBE staff they did manage to cajole the 100 so passengers (mainly OAPS) very fast onto the Embraer 195; only for the Captain to explain that although we had a slot, we could not fly because our flight was outside UK airspace ......mmh .....obviously NATS needs some geography lessons. We finally left Southampton 2 hours and 35 minutes late.

XL - Still confusion and cost

Angry piece in the Times today from Stephen Pollard:

According to reports at the weekend, taxpayers - you and me, in other words - will be stiffed to the tune of £20 million to pay for the flights home of some people caught out by the collapse of XL. The Civil Aviation Authority runs a compensation scheme to take care of stranded holidaymakers and to refund forthcoming holidays that won't take place. But the scheme is already £21 million in deficit. So guess who is going to pick up the tab? You and me.

I did not see the weekend comments however:

• Why is the CAA fund in deficit ?
• Does it really cover forthcoming flights ?
• Where does the various ATOL /IATA/Holiday insurance /bond/schemes overlap this one?

As I have said on previous posts, someone need to straighten this out to end the confusion etc. especially as further airlines will inevitably fail.

1650 and it's almost over

As anyone noticed that the demise of Alitalia is dragging on much in the same way as Gordon Brown's premiership( whoops..... slipped into politics there ....not the plan for this blog.- Ed).
I guess politics are involved with Silvio's promise to bring the Calvary, but my experience of Italian entrepreneurs (perhaps distinguishing them from other parts of Italian commercial community) is that they are smart investors. Despite the distraught loss of jobs, you wish someone would end it .......if only to see what would rise from ashes - maybe a new airline with new jobs or just another slightly more efficient Alitalia ( with some jobs) as we saw in Brussels with Brussels Airlines following on from Sabena.

XL - Was it really the oil price ?

The XL story may not be as straight-forward as it seems - Radio 5Live have been running stories that in the last 2 months employees were phoning around Customers witrh bookings asking them to take further services for cash e.g. priority boarding and check-in, so XL management knew cash was dwindling.
Now it appears Financial Markets knew and people were betting on a bankruptcy outcome. If the Icelandic stock exchange forced a statement out of XL's Loan Guarantors, why couldn't some sort of action be taken here in the UK ?

demise of XL and the spiral of airline demise

I was planning to write a slightly jokey entry about the funnier side of my recent experiences in Russia, however with Ike destroying the houses of friends of mine in the US and 1000's of XL customers struggling to get home, I feel I need to move more serious comment.
As usual step forward Mega travel hero Simon Calder , who in 8 minutes on 5live this morning, explained clearly the issues around refunds from Atol bonds, Credit card bookings, direct airline bookings etc. Until that time, I have heard no clear explanation of the different routes to refund. This is just the info people need - not endless film of crying passengers repeated every 30 minutes.

Quite rightly Simon also pointed the airlift underway to bring the 80,000 XLers home was another Dunkirk as claimed by some in the Media - there real heros under fire bought UK troops home - I do not believe the CAA efforts come anywhere near.

However brickbats to Simon too, for joining the malaise of talking down the airlines and the survival rates. We should know Simon is your list the same as Willie Walsh's ? Which airline are you travelling next sunday Simon? I too am on small airline on Monday 0650 (I paid by credit card) ...I wonder whther I will be stranded up North ?

Trip around Russia (to explain the Twitter updates)

New second Blog

Well as it is has been announced by my present employer, I can reveal that from early October, I have new job in Sharjah, working for a new employer, who is an Arabian E&P company. This I will use an excuse to start a second blog to descirbe my experiences.

If anyone has hint or tips for working in Sharjah then please add to the comments column.

In the meantime my present employer is sending on a 6 day Bus Dev trip to russia (punishment for leaving !?!), starting Sunday. Given Siberia wont support GPRS (no Blackberry) or email, so it will be twitter updates. I will post the routing later

Gloomy weekend for the airline industry

It's been a horror week for the airline industry. This article by William Lyons in the Scotsman is best summary of the Zoom debacle, I have found so far - three things immediately strike me:

• The lack of management knowledge - one of the brother CEOs said on Radio Fivelive on Friday night at 22:30 - Zoom had less than 10,000 bookings outstanding - it appears the number was 60,000.....mmmh one wonders if the lack of management information may have been one of the issues...........
• the nervousness of the airline industry..... like the Financial markets ........ as soon as there was a sniff of an issue, all the creditors piled in led by the British CAA, so quickly that filing for bankruptcy under the generous US/Canadian laws was not quick enough cover to keep up operations.
• the confusion around refunds, passengers in transit have had to spend 1000s to get home and there seems to be inconsistency amongst those with bookings about how they get their money back - Visa people seem ok but Amex not - some people seem to able to use ATOL bond arrangements, others not i their rebooking.. Given it is likely that other airlines will go under, it would be good to see some sort of regulator step and produce clear rules to protect passengers.

Meanwhile in Italy basket case Alitalia has gone under the statistics are stark:
It was losing $3 million a day, its net debt at the end of July amounted to $1.73 billion. The figure does not include a $442-million loan that the Italian government granted in April to keep the airline flying, that is still under investigation. It appears friends of the Prime Minister Silvio are going to step in and take up the "profitable bits" - sounds like a typically Italian Solution
Air France/KLM must be really glad they weren't bullied into a JV earlier in the year.

Plane safety - rational approach

Simon Calder spot on again

Weetabix

Having said I would not blog about trains - Hull Trains finally get a mention. On the red-eye from Hull (well.....the first train anyway), we pulled into Kings Cross 19 minutes early, which bought the following PA comment from the train manager:
"ladies & gentleman, we are arriving into Kings X, we are 19 minutes early due to the fact your driver Kevin had 3 Weetabix instead of 2 this morning.

.....I didn't have the heart to ask why they couldn't do it all the time ?

Lack of Blogs again

Sorry for the lack of blogs over the last 7 weeks but there have been some major upheavals in my life, none of which I can publish yet, but it will set up a whole new set of blogging possibilities.
Actually I have done comparatively few flights in the last few weeks, travelling mainly around UK on the train, which has not inspired me to write in my blog.

Have you seen this before?

Last night whilst waiting board a Boeing 767 for my flight, I watched ground crew load a small mazda soft-top sports car - literally "raw" - there was no containers or packaging ..... at first they could not get the car onto those clever machines with rolling floors used to lift and load baggage containers. So one of the crew got into the car, started it ( well all the lights came on) , and drove it onto the loading plaform. they then lifted it up to the hold door and the then guy appeared to carefully drive into the hold. They followed it with subsequent containers. I did not see how they secured the car; but immediately had visions of becoming one of those National geographic programme " Closest shaves" with a white mazda busting itself out of the hold door at 37000 feet. Glad to report we landed safely at Heathrow & I am writing this blog.

Bag Moment

Had a bag moment yesterday - got my KLM plane from Manchester to Schiphol- waiting on the bus for other passengers watching the baggage crew.
Working fast - they filled the first baggage trolley (transfer bags), a guy moved it but before he could put the next trolley in place......... out flew my bag out of hold - dropping 8ft to the tarmac with a thump.
luckily they picked it up and put it on the trolley and when I got it on the baggage reclaim - I am glad to report its contents were shaken not stirred....... though it's no wonder I get through a trolleybag every year !

FCO travel advice for UAE

I am fascinated by this travel advice about the UAE, recently posted by the Foreign Office.
I can find no support for it on any of the website you would expect e.g. US State department. But as ever the FCO remain coy why they are saying - I guess the long suffering travel agency Business in the UK is not pleased.
To my knowledge there have been few or no terrorist or extremist attacks in the UAE. In fact the the rulers of UAE have been very careful to balance the conversion of the Emirates into a Tourist wonderland with support of more islamic schemes e.g. religous schools across Middle East & Asia food and development aid to more improverished states in Asia and Africa etc etc. The big UAE property concerns are trying to rebuild Gaza and the Palestinian homeland.
I am pretty sure that such actions & support provides an incentive for attacks not to be undertaken by Islamic extremists for risk of losing such massive support for their homelands.

Silverjet finally goes under

Silverjet has finally gone under as the potential purchaser realised that the framework of the Business e.g. Aircraft leasing costs, could not be changed to make the business viable. hatip BBC.
Meanwhile Flyeb forges on with apparently low fares depsite invcreasing fuel prices.:

Southampton to... Alicante £59.99 Malaga £79.99 Nice £54.99 Paris (CDG) £59.99
Isle of Man £51.99 Frankfurt £34.99 Belfast City £39.99 Jersey £31.99 Rennes Brittany £49.99 Brussels £39.99 Amsterdam £53.99 Dusseldorf £34.99 Hannover £51.99 Manchester £29.99 Glasgow £55.99 Edinburgh £52.99 Dublin £27.99 Avignon £59.99 Brest Brittany £31.99 Palma £49.99 Bergerac £74.99 Aberdeen NEW! £51.99 Inverness NEW! £66.99 La Rochelle £54.99 Guernsey £34.99 Bordeaux £59.99 Leeds Bradford £29.99

You wonder how much longer Flybe will be able to sustain this level of fares given their costs of fuel etc (though on most of these fares would have extra costs + taxes). I guess though that passenger numbers may hold as to drive from say Southampton to Aberdeen would cost more that £85.

Cuts in US Flights

There are very mixed signals from the airline market. In UK airline market, Players such as Flybe & Jet2.com continue to expand their European routes, whereas in the US there are continued contractions on routes. One of my colleagues from Work only recently used a commuter service to Grand Canyon 2 months ago.
hattip NYT

New Security Machine

I went through Schiphol this afternoon & one of their new security gates - a backscatter X ray scanner to detect hidden weapons and explosives on passengers. These devices, which use Compton scattering that require that the passenger stand close to a panel and produce a high resolution image.

It seems to slow the process down you have to stand at 90 degrees to the entry point and raise your arms. The scamnner rotates inside a cylindrical perspex section that forms the side of the machine

The image is of Susan Hallowell, Director of the US Transportation Security Administration's research lab, taken with backscatter X-ray system, used for airport security passenger screening. hattip Wikipedia and the Boston Globe

KLM moving away from their UK Services ?

Came through Schiphol and infamous gate D6 on a KLM flight for Humberside tonight - those travellers who travel to the UK will know the majority of KLM's UK flight leave from Gate 6, which at busy times is best described as a cattle market. Tonight KLM exhibited all the signs they are about cast off their UK connection:

1. All the flights were late - anywhere between 15 mins - 2.5 hours
2. All the gate staff were under-enthused & unhelpful
3. the majority of flights were over-booked - new tactic exhibited here by KLM - no longer do the offer increasing amounts of euros by loudspeaker instead they ask peope to sign up to lists with their reward being specified after signing - surprise surprise there were no volunteers.
4. The flightcodes are no longer KLM but WA.......

My guess is they will merge the UK part with City Jet Air France's operator out of London City. You read it here first...........

Crash at Brussels airport

As a complete co-incidence I have ended up staying in a Hotel room overlooking the crashed Jumbo at Brussels airport. It is about 350m from the end of the runway, broken as per the video(seee post below) - it was very lucky - the plane obviously structually failed on the runway and literally ran off the end of it, without really taking off. It is very close to the rail lines into the airport, and if it had got off the ground it would have crashed into Zaventem village.
The thing that strikes you that unlike the recent Heathrow airport incident - there appears nothing happening- a solitary fire engine and van guard ove the site. There are no cranes, no signs of real action or recovery - it's really odd.

Flyglobespan Prosecution

The CAA's planned prosecution of flyglobespan (hattip BBC) illustrates the pressure of the low cost airlines to keep flying "come what may". The frightening aspect that these were transalantic flights, so engine failure could be catastrophic, with safehaven airports being much greater than flying time than within Europe. With rising fuel costs, it will be maintenance budgets and other fixed costs, these airlines will look to minimise.
Certainly as I cris-cross europe you wonder about the age of the aircraft you are travelling in on the budget airlines - Easyjet and Ryanair excepted (as the majority of the planes are less than 6 years old) . Yesterday a series 1 cargo Jumbo suffered catastrophic structural failure at Brussels - the aircraft must be at least 35 years old.

Success comes to Hull

I was not born in Hull, but have lived here for 19 years. My 3 teenage kids have grown up in the city and consider themselves from 'ull. The City does have serious problems in term of povety, education and unemployment, but the people are incredibly friendly and proud of their city. Yesterday's triumph and entry into Premiership is incredibly good news for the city - it is not just the £60m (which will probably stay within the Football team) but the huge amount of the money playing in the Premiership will bring to the City. Hull will also be centre of the Clipper Ship racing in 2009, which brings further funding to help fight the City's issues.
Today the city will wake up with the biggest community hangover ever, the celebratory scenes in the city were like an Italian city on a night Italy won the World cup. Tomorrow there will be 11 mile round the city bus ride for the victorius team and a civic reception - so the party will continue !
And what does this have to do with travel I hear you say- well wherever I travel in the world I always seem to meet Alumni from the Hull University - To a person they all say what a great time they had in Hull & at the University, and how the friendly city was. I note Tracey Crouch is one of the gang. I hope they are all as proud of the City as we are this morning and its favourite son Dean Windass and his "Roy of the Rovers" winning goal......

small planes - Red Arrows - very important

Sorry to divert from the normal thread, however I have just discovered that the UK Govt have banned a Red Arrow fly past at the 2012 olympics. This is a ludicrous decision, please sign this No 10 petition to hopefully reverse the decision:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/RedArrows2012/?ref=redArrows201

Easyjet

I have travelled on EasyJet a couple of times in the past 2 weeks, once in Airbus 321 and once in 737 and both times the aircraft has been cold. Passengers have been getting up and putting extra layers on, and there has been no air or cold air coming out of the floor vents - Is Easyjet trying to save fuel - Has anyone else noticed?

Dambusters

I am sure Theo Stark will have this on his blogsite but it's worth watching this Dambusters news item just for the sound of merlin engines
hattip Telegraph TV

How many more ?

You wonder in the days of high oil price and increasing inflation, how many of the UK's smaller Regional airlines will go under ?
I note Flybe stepped in immediately........
At Southampton airport, we have seen the a similar slimming of the market with Scotair withdrawing their Amsterdam return flights and Estern airlines their Brussels routing leaving Flybe only - great for competition right !....................



Euro manx airline goes out of business
May 10 2008 by Neil Hodgson, Liverpool Echo
ONE of the main airlines connecting Liverpool with the Isle of Man has ceased trading.
EuroManx blamed rising fuel prices as one of several factors behind the business.
The Isle of Man-based airline operated five flights a day between the island and Liverpool John Lennon airport.
It started flights in 2002, taking over from Manx Airlines. Last year it carried 140,000 passengers.
Passengers learned of the company’s failure yesterday morning.
Rival Flybe, which started flying the route on March 30, stepped in and offered free replacement tickets for Euromanx passengers.
Liverpool JLA spokesman Robin Tudor said: “Thankfully, they were accommodated by Flybe who have four flights a day from Liverpool. .”
Euromanx employed 70 staff and flew to Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast and London.

Hatip - Liverpool Echo

Hold the Front page - Flybe manage 2 consecutive on time flights

Well a fairly standard week judders to the end ....literally given the standard of my last landing on Eastern Airlines tonight - but with 5 flights in 4 days it's probably worth reflecting on couple of things.
Regular readers will know I am not FlyBe's greatest fan, however they did manage 2 on-time flights this week but it was the difference in the crew's attitude - Tuesday's flight to edinburgh the crew was attentive with their service and announcements and the landing was smooth. On the flight back from Frankfurt, the attendants spent the majority of 90 minutes chatting at the back of the plane, the captain was silent and the landing was fast, furious and spine juddering.
The Lufthansa Edinburgh Frankfurt leg of the week was brutally efficient and on time, but the sandwiches in economy were unpalatable ( I was even offered a second).
And tonight's flight with eastern airlines - the less said the better let's just say a Jetstream 41 was not made for family travelling with 3 kids under 5 - the smell of baby sick is not easily dispersed on such a small plane !

Terminal 5 & BA

Had my first trip thru heathrow terminal 5 on Wednesday night.

Pretty impressive structure - check in & bag drop went well but security will be a nightmare when the terminal gets up to full capacity-

• because of the layout with domestic / foriegn flights mixing, like Manchester airport, they have to photograph all domestic passengers - the queues will be tragic when it get busy.
• The baggage x ray machines will also slow everyone - they have an automated tray return system, which failed 3 times in the 10 mins I was waiting to go thru a particular machine.

BA were awful as ever - 3 hours delayed to Newcastle - the plane was declared unservicable by the engineers as soon as it landed. It took the gate staff 45 mins to be honest with us the passengers and start looking for a new plane. The new plane was smaller than the original, so they had bump off the last 4 rows of passengers (luckily I had moved forward on check in !) and then the weather turned foul, so we had a further 45 mins on the ground.

Classic mobile phone moment

Interesting moment travelling (late again) between Paris and Frankfurt with Lufthansa. A french lady, who to be frank looked like a bit of hippie, the four decades having passed her by, turned on her mobile phone on final approach into Frankfurt. (Those of you who read the ever- informative simon calder will know even those airlines which will allow mobile phones in future, will ban them below 10000ft) .
Not surprisingly as she tried to tell her boyfriend, she was delayed and may miss her connection, the cabin crew "were having kittens", ordering her in fairly germainc terms to turn the phone off.
Her excuse - "Air France allow it" ................mmmmh

Fly(may)be- lets me down again

Top draw incompetence from my friends from Flybe - this morning went like this:
0600 check in for the 0715 Southampton to Brussels services. Offered emergency exit seat on an embraer 145.
0645 in aura restaurent with tuna wrap, cappucino and emails
0650 announcement: plane delayed by technical issues more 0730
0730 nothing - can see the engineers working on the plane problem with de-icing kit on left wing.
0745 - announcement that there will be more info at 0830 - all the early start planes to perhaps 12 locations have left....except for Brussels. - engineers have gone for breakfast
0830 nothing - engineers back from breakfast and have bits off the palne
0845 Flight delayed until 10:30 as plane is faulty and we have to wait for new plane
0915 making calls - doing emails - pilots come out after consultation with engineers get in plane and start it up i guess to fly it to Exeter for maintennace but it's a frustrating moment watching the plane you should have be on ...............fly away
0945 planes start coming in on morning return flights including embraer 145s, however no effort to try and shuffle planes to get our flight away.
1030 nothing
1045 we are going to board soon according to announcement
1050 Boarding but it's a Dash 8 - seating free for all because all our boarding passes were set up fro an embrarer 145 - how come Flybe couldn't have found us an earlier Dash 8
1105 Paperwork buggered because no doubt some people have given up & gone home
1115 still no paperwork - hold -re-opened to sort bagggage issue.
11.25 Door closed - push back
1320 (cet) land brussels
1345 in taxi to restaurent
1410 arrive 1 hour 10 minuts leate for lunch meeting with morning meeting completely blown.

Come on Flybe - How's about a spare plane at southampton or some decent ops people to shuffle planes/flights

trip to the US

Manic Trip to Houston and San Antonio lasting 10 days - here are a few travel observations:

1. Normal BA inconsistency - Crew Gat-Hou were crap, no service ethic and they even ran out salads. Crew back Hou -> Lhr first class - served everything promptly and regularly -supplied coffee and Port throughout the night trip back to LHR.
2. Recommend the martinis at Timpano
3. If you drive from Houston to San Antonio you must stop off in Luling at Luling Bar-B-Q, 709 E. Davis St.Luling, Texas.
4. Fly Continental back into Houston - it makes transfer across to international flights very easy across George Bush inetrnational airport
5. Flew back into LHR terminal 4 - Bags only took 15 mins (yes 15 mins and BA didn't lose anything) but BE WARNED - Heathrow Express doss not run to terminal 4, so it's some other service about once very 25 mins back to the main station at Terminals 1,2 &3
6. Terminal 1 is now bearable now BA has left it. BMI tried losing my bag on the last leg back to Leeds thanks to "stuck baggage belts"

Loved this quote from Castro supporting UK MP

hattip the BBC

Different rules for Passport control officers

Regular readers or should that be reader of this blog will know Passport control officers are not my favourite people. They now have smart uniforms and outwardly remain as petty and hostile as ever.
At manchester yeterday, there was a growing queue of people off my flight from frankfurt and other european locations with 2 desk officers on + a guy from security staff, making sure we queued correctly and switched our mobiles off as per the copious signage.
Suddenly a loud phone rings, everybody looks guiltly around to see one of the Passport officeers take the call, leave his desk and wander around in the space behind passport control taking I guess a personal call.
How come they don't have to turn their mobiles off ?

savings at British airways

Travelled BA on Thursday - the cuts are getting serious: Lunch last year in economy class was a wrap filled with chicken, salad etc. cut into two. This year it's half a feta cheese wrap....my guess is soon they will follow BMI, Flybe, Ryanair and sell you sandwiches.
However I am glad to report they did not lose my bag, although I had to change terminals from 1 to 4, and they had only 70 minutes to get transfer bag - had to admit I was surprised it appeared in Brussels - expectations are so low of Britain's favourite airline !

Rugby post not travel

As per my profile, I managed to get to a Jason Robinson Benefit dinner tonight in Newcastle. Apart from the man himself (modest & generous with his time, autographs etc), Toby Flood, Matthew Tait and Jamie Noon were at the dinner with of course one J Wilkinson esq.
Despite his new "relaxed image", JW still looked nervous because as ever he attracted his biggest cheers of the night. His recent interview on BBC's Inside Sport did show the new JW is different but you felt the old , slightly obessesive JW was just below the surface during the Q&A session with John Inverdale.
Meanwhile Messrs Tait and Flood come across as modest, yet great role models, I am sure they do not realise the influence they have young 14 year old rugby players like my son.
However Jamie Noon stood out for me - he again does not realise how junior rugby players across the nation, idolise his defensive strengths, went out on Sunday morning (and Sunday mornings to follow) to try and do " a Noonie" on the nearest opposition full back or 3/4 in honour of the tackle on Cedric Heymans in the 4th minute of the England v France game, last Saturday night.
Let's hope they can can kick on and beat Scotland a week on Saturday.

new passport

Those of you have read this blog will know my old passport I felt was bita of a liability with all its "dodgy" stamps.
Well it finally got worn out and a passport officer at Heathrow suggested I procured a new one. So I now have a new passport with a microchip and a shiny cover. It now takes me twice as long as it used to ( well it seems that way) to get through passport controls; because it appears 95% of UK border officials believe it's fake ( it's not folks !) because it is so shiny and has no stamps (yet !).
Finally I was stopped by a plain clothes officer on the way to Brussels this week who asked on inspecting my virgin passport: "Do you not travel very often sir !"?

sorry i have been away

I realise I have done a lot recently but none of it was really world shattering or reportable; but it must have been time consuming since my last entry into this blog was August 2007. I will try and renew my efforts to record my travels in 2008 starting with a great comment from the Captain of the VLM flight into Manchester from Antwerp this morning:

"The weather in Manchester is rainy like it always is"

Give the man a job with BBC weather team !