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