thoughts of a travelling middle manager

Egypt Air

2009-01-21T19:51:00.002Z

Travelled back on the Red-eye between Cairo to Dubai (2230 out of Cairo inti Dubai at 0355 local) interested by the safety briiefing.

Normally this would be done in arabic and then English, if the pattern is aligned with otehr airlines.

I have no arabic, but I think we were given some sort of religious prayer ( arabic text backed by a piccie of a mosque) leading straight into an modern animation video in English. No arabic verion of eh animation

Can anyone enlighten me what Egyptian normally does for its HSE briefing ?

Next time you travel Korean air make sure the Engineer has his calculator in his briefcase !

2009-01-21T19:45:00.002Z

hattip www.Rucku.com

Trying to exit Algiers Airport

2008-12-02T18:32:00.003Z

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:

Arrival at airport - Vehicle Check by Military
Entering departure terminal : X-ray baggage and personal search
Check in
Stamp of boarding pass by government rep who checks boarding pass versus passport at your airline check in desk.
Formal Passport check - you have to fill exit form and then go through Passport control.
X ray baggage and personal search + check of boarding pass
Customs check give back declaration on Currency (a form you filled out on entry) + another boarding pass & passport check
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.
On the air bridge to aircraft - all hand baggage is manually opened and checked.
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

2008-11-14T22:17:00.005Z

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

2008-11-14T21:56:00.005Z

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

2008-10-31T17:13:00.003Z

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

2008-10-10T11:18:00.005+01:00

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 !

2008-09-26T17:31:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-26T17:14:00.005+01:00

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

2008-09-18T20:23:00.007+01:00

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

2008-09-18T20:23:00.003+01:00

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 ?

2008-09-13T16:43:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-13T14:11:00.003+01:00

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)

2008-09-10T20:49:00.002+01:00

New second Blog

2008-09-05T21:28:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-31T10:38:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-22T18:11:00.000+01:00

Simon Calder spot on again

Weetabix

2008-08-22T17:46:00.005+01:00

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

2008-08-21T17:48:00.004+01:00

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?

2008-06-27T19:51:00.004+01:00

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

2008-06-22T12:53:00.005+01:00

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

2008-06-16T21:04:00.002+01:00

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

2008-06-15T11:43:00.004+01:00

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

2008-06-08T20:57:00.003+01:00

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

2008-06-01T22:16:00.006+01:00

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 ?

2008-06-01T21:38:00.004+01:00

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:

All the flights were late - anywhere between 15 mins - 2.5 hours
All the gate staff were under-enthused & unhelpful
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.
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

2008-05-29T06:07:00.003+01:00

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

2008-05-26T17:23:00.006+01:00

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

2008-05-25T09:18:00.006+01:00

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

2008-05-20T21:46:00.004+01:00

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

2008-05-16T23:42:00.003+01:00

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

2008-05-16T23:36:00.003+01:00

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 ?

2008-05-10T19:43:00.006+01:00

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

2008-05-09T22:01:00.010+01:00

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

2008-05-03T12:45:00.003+01:00

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

2008-04-18T07:17:00.003+01:00

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

2008-04-16T06:29:00.003+01:00

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

2008-04-08T13:24:00.005+01:00

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

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.
Recommend the martinis at Timpano
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.
Fly Continental back into Houston - it makes transfer across to international flights very easy across George Bush inetrnational airport
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
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"

2008-03-08T12:03:00.002Z

Loved this quote from Castro supporting UK MP

hattip the BBC

Different rules for Passport control officers

2008-03-08T11:43:00.003Z

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

2008-03-01T18:57:00.002Z

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

2008-02-28T00:24:00.004Z

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

2008-02-22T21:35:00.002Z

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

2008-02-22T21:27:00.005Z

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 !

Gossip

2007-08-23T21:12:00.000+01:00

Had one of those "people watching" or should it be "listening" experiences at the Brussels airport sheraton this week. 3 middle aged ladies - they all tend to be of a "certain age" on Amercian airlines long haul spent 90 mins gossiping about all their crew mates and Pilots. My favourite comment was:

" Last week I went to Mexico with a Captain who had never been there and neither had the co-pilot... I would never fly with captain, as a passenger, if he didn't know where he was going"

mmmh How as a passenger are you going to find out - "good morning ladies & gentleman this is your captain speaking for your flight to London, unfortunately I have no idea where I am going............ ?

It's those middle east stamps again

2007-07-30T21:19:00.000+01:00

Well I had my second dodgy passport check today - coming off a Leeds Bradford to Southampton flight i.e. domestic, I was asked by a zealous immigration control officer to show my passport. His hair nearly stood on end when he saw my 25+ UAE (various)/Oman stamps in my passport + 2 chinese visas (expired) + assorted SE asian stamps + 1 from Canada and 1 from US. Demanded immediately to know what my job was (still not plucked up the courage to say more than Chemicals), who I worked for, where their head office was and why was I travelling.
of course when you say travelling to our HQ in Lyndhurst (the truth).....he gets really suspicious.......but then just waves you on your way !
they really amuse me..........................you could see him itching to stop me.....but then the story was so incredible it had to be the truth! They're going to be far worse when they all get uniforms !

Where have people been ?

2007-07-19T22:32:00.000+01:00

As the nation heads to the airport for the annual summer exodus, it still stuns me the amount of hand luggage and "banned" articles people still try and take on planes. It's over a year since the 1 hand bag + plastic bags of liquids & gel came in yet it seems so many people have not learnt the rules. yes your water bottles, coke bottles, bottles of perfume, flasks of tea, picnic cutlery,suncream etc etc will be taken off you Culminated tonight with some reporter on BBC tv tonight explaining the rules again.
please can everyone wake up - last year's regulations have not gone away and still apply and now following the latest attacks, you will need to park your car a long way from the terminal.
OK so please concentrate, so us regular travellers can try and get our flights ! Sorry for being so grumpy !

Oslo airport

2007-06-17T13:22:00.000+01:00

As part of my company's latest acquistions in Norway, made my first trip through Oslo airport- a couple of observations:

be prepared to walk, when you land they make you walk all the way to the fruthermost part of the airport to go through passport control and then walk the complete length of terminal to get to the exit.
the train service to and from Oslo is great.
Don't try and catch a plane at 6:30 am on saturday morning in late May/ June - It's complete chaos. I may have not slept for 48 hours but my perception was if I'hadn't been able to check in using a KLM e-machine- I would not have made made my flight.
It wins my award for Airport with most unpronounceable destinations - any Norwegian internal flight !

Eastern Airways

2007-05-18T22:00:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last month, I have been working hard on a project in southern England and Brussels. This means except for one flight my last 9 has been on Eastern Airways. I guess it is testament to their steady, on time services that Eastern run that I have had very little to post over past month. I could start writing horror stories about FlyBe delays and cancellations, frustrated tearful passengers etc. ; but actually I have spent every little time in airports because I have been arriving closer and closer to my Eastern departure time, and so I spending very little tome in departure lounges. That now means next Monday's flight will be a disaster !
One thing about Eastern they fly Jetstream 41s - I always try and sit in seat 6c next to the emergency exit (most room). Every time they brief us it's the same -pull the door in, turn the door on its side, throw it out FORWARDS, no other airline to my knowledge has ever specified FORWARDS, but no one can tell why.........

BA Crew standards

2007-04-21T21:19:00.000+01:00

Went to Abu Dhabi for the 5 days this week using British Airways - I was stunned by the difference between the 2 crews.
Going out on the Monday, we were an hour late due technical difficulties, but the crew from the purser downwards were incredibly helpful - they regularly explained what was going on and did their best to make everyone comfortable. As a Goldcard holder travelling further back in the plane than normal, I was still picked for exemplary service including extra G&Ts, but generally the service was excellent, particularly to those travelling with younger children.
Coming back to London overnight last night, the crew were from the other end of the spectrum - zero service ethic and treated us like cattle.
BA will never succeed with such inconsistent approach to customer service.

Marked man

2007-04-11T13:15:00.000+01:00

Interesting experience at Southampton airport @ 0615 this morning - boarding my flight to Amsterdam, a person from immigration control asked to see my passport- I was then questioned as to whether I was flying onwards from amsterdam and what my business there was?
Having flicked through my stamp pages he then commented - "you have a lot of Middle east stamps in your passport sir" - why is that and what is your line of business ?
I have to admit all sort of answers that would not have got me on my plane, so I simply said - "I like visiting there and I work in Chemicals" to see whether I would get further reaction. He grunted a thank you and moved on to the next passenger.
So perhaps I am "a marked man" because of passport stamps ?

Change of carrier - can other countries keep track?

2007-04-09T15:26:00.000+01:00

Those of us ex BA Connect travellers now with flybe are becoming increasingly confused as to actually which airline we are travelling.
Last Tuesday caught the flybe flight to Dusseldorf fromSouthampton - this route was announced before the BA Connect takeover. They have used mainly Dash 8 sprinkled with BAE146s on the routing, so I was somewhat shocked to suddenly find myself on a BA embraer 145 with obviously a BA crew on board; despite their uniforms, confirmed by the "why don't you check out our cheap flights on http://www.ba.com..... www.flyba.com.......I mean wwww.flybe.com ....",well she got there in the end.
( I actually asked the hostesses what it was like now they had crossed over to the "dark side" - they said it was ok but were shocked at the lack of attention to detail and disorganisation - they seem amazed that Flybe managed to operate a service at all).
Anyway on arrival at dusseldorf, it was the ground crew that amused me you could see all these Germans trying to work out what BA plane from Southampton was doing in that slot. Much shrugging of shoulders, mystified looks at paperwork, should they provide a valet service etc. anyway they figured it out in the end and got us on the bus without too much delay.

Update 21/4 - since I wrote this the last three domestic flights I have taken with Flybe have all used BA Connect Embraers - the crew still remain amazed at Flybe's disorganisation.

Diverse Paths

2007-04-01T20:48:00.001+01:00

Now my kids are teenagers, the conversations we seem to have are far more interesting - this evening over family tea I was trying to illustrate though we may go through the same experiences in life we turn out in very different way.
For example I went to school with George Monbiot, probably one of the leading Green activists in this country, well known Guardian columnist and TV pundit. George and I won the natural history prize at our boarding school when we were aged approx 11. To procure the prize, we managed to turn an old 1940's enamel bath (recently saved from the destruction of the communal bathroom I used for the first 2 years of prep school career) into a faithful reproduction of our school pond, complete with lillipads, tadpoles, mud etc. I remember George being very disappointed by the fact that he could not keep fish in the bath, because a science teacher said the water was not oxygenated enough.
So George grows up, travels the world, nearly dies at least twice in pursuing his quest to show us the true green agenda and how we are destroying our planet through Global warming etc. Meanwhile yours truely, grows up , travels the world for the 3rd biggest oil company in the world for 15 years and now I work for the second biggest chemical company.........it must be worth a Channel 4 documentary...........

Heathrow Terminal 1

2007-03-24T21:36:00.000Z

Arrived into Heathrow Terminal 1 on an early BA flight from Dusseldorf at about 0745 Friday morning.

5 of 6 of the travelators between my arrival gate and Passport control were out of order.
Only 1 person checking UK passport holders.
Baggage carousel display system not working to say where bags would arrive.
all luggage seemed to be arriving on a single carousel.

Welcome to Heathrow !

Deathwish

2007-03-17T11:32:00.000Z

Couldn't help overhearing a conversation between a lady and her colleague sitting behind me on the landing Southampton Leeds flight last night. They use a small Jetstream aircraft, and as commented elsewhere on this blog, Leeds Bradford's exposed location can make the landings bumpy in strong cross-winds:
Anyway back to the lady behind me - I quote as much as I can remember:
"I would prefer to know I was going to die than having a bumpy landing like that".
Colleague "mmh that's a dark view"
Lady: " It just not knowing whether you're going to crash as it bumps around on landing, I'd just prefer to know I was going to the crash"...........
My immediate thought was she should avoid Leeds Bradford as 9/10 landings are bumpy and she would only get more depressed......

Twickenham

2007-03-14T23:09:00.000Z

Took my son Chris (13) to Twickenham last Sunday. Great day out we flew down from Leeds Bradford, spent an hour at the Imperial War Museum and headed for Twickenham on the 11:25 to Twickenham.
The train was packed to be the point of being unsafe, but we got there safely. Of course we really enjoyed the game (England won yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!), but you can only describe the crowd (80,000) exit at the game as total chaos.
Just waiting for a free bus to richmond saw a number of near tramplings and car near misses with pedestrians. Police and stewards were trying hard, but any plans they were implementing were swamped by simply the huge number of people exiting the stadium within 30 mins of the end of the game.
Managed to get Heathrow to get our return flight, by an illegal exit from Heston services by our resouceful cabbie and his Sat Nav, encouraged by me waving the cash (M4 was closed because of an accident).
It does not bode well for 2012 or the new Wembley.......I hear the new Emirates is not good either.

Mystery of the on-time Ferry

2007-03-04T20:53:00.000Z

I had an interesting ferry Journey from Rotterdam to Hull on Thursday night. The ferry normally leaves Rotterdam at 9pm and get to Hull at 7am the next morning
When I arrived at the Ferry terminal the winds were blowing at 30mph and it was beginning to rain heavily.
About 30 minutes after arriving all passengers were handed a handed a letter from PandO staff:

Due to the high winds the Ferry needed tug assistance to turn around in harbour.
However the Port of Rotterdam Tug company was on strike for 24 hrs so no tug would be available until 0430 the next morning.
The ferry would therefore leave at 0430 and get to Hull at 1500.

Some people were very upset, but most (who were British) trooped onto the Ferry anyway at the normal time 1700 onwards. The main conversation was around whether there would enough beer on the Ferry for a 22 hour trip and would lunch on Friday be free ?

In one of the shops at 1830, the staff explained that they had heard the captain was making a decision at 2130 whether he would try and turn around in the harbour or wait for a tug the next morning.

However Captain Tyson is a Hull man, and one should never keep a Hull captain from his breakfast in Hull. At 21.04 he comes on the loudspeakers saying, he was going to the Ferry around under its own power and we should be in Hull in the morning.

With a careful turn-around of we headed into the North Sea, for what was a fairly rough crossing, subdued in my case by copious amounts of red wine !

When I awoke at 7am we were in Hull - I wondered how many people cancelled holidays, Business trips or visits........just because the letter of PandO published 14 hours earlier ?

2007-03-01T00:22:00.000Z

The next time you fly and the landing seems hard, spare a thought for the customers of Adam Air on an internal flight in Indonesia.

Definitely nil points for technical merit and a sympathy 3 for artisitic impression - well I think the new curve of the 737 is very elegant .

hat-tip - Wikipedia

Passport control

2007-02-23T00:08:00.000Z

For those of us who travel through Leeds Bradford late in the evening are beginning to become irked by the officious officers of HM Immigration service -

They seem to enjoy looking you up and down as if you an immigrant from the 3rd World country- remember people are innocent until you prove them guilty.
They ask stupid questions such "as where have you come from" - Read the arrivals Board people it's fairly clear we have come from either Dusseldorf, Amsterdam or Brussels
They love swiping every passport through the machine and waiting for another glorious Government IT system to respond quickly (mmmh) to say you are acceptable - leads to queues of several hundred people off 4 planes.

Have to admit sometimes I become a fan of profiling to keep the queues moving.

flybe - keeping people waiting

2007-02-19T21:33:00.000Z

Scraped out of a foggy leeds bradford at 0700 arrived in southampton an hour later. Looked up at the southampton departure board and the early Flybe flight to leeds due to leave at 0720 was now due to depart at 1100!
Going back through southampton airport to get to brussels tonight and sat next to gentleman who had been the airport departure lounge all day:

he was due to go on the above early plane but Flybe camcelled it at 11am.
he was re-booked on the lunchtime flight - but that was cancelled due to lack of crew.
12 hours later, he had been put on the 1750 plane to Leeds which was 1hour 10 minutes late when I boarded my plane for Brussels.

I hope he made it - I marvel sometimes at the patience of fellow travellers

Fog

2007-02-17T09:06:00.000Z

On a Jet2.com from Dusseldorf to Leeds - Plane very full 142 passengers - totally uneventful flight until 3km from leeds, I realised it was very foggy. Big thump as the plane hit the runway, but landing was ok otherwise but very foggy. Whilst taxiing Captain comes overs the intercom - "Due to the visibility being 250m, a computer has just landed this aircraft, in afew years you wont need pilots!"
Passenger reaction was interesting over the next 5 mins: reaction ranged from "Never flying again, wouldn't have flown with these people if I knew they used computers" - to one great comment - "hope they weren't using Windows Vista !"

Absolutely Bizarre

2007-02-12T21:15:00.000Z

Checking in tonight at London city airport @ VLM Check-in desk - I have just answered the security questions "Have you anything sharp in your Hand baggage etc.", as you do with my hold luggage disappearing down the belt - when up rushes a Gentleman, dressed in full Hassidic Jewish suit with accessories with a 3" blade fold knife in hand and I quote:
"They wouldn't let me take this through with hand luggage"
VLM Lady: "No sir - knives are not allowed"
"Can you reverse the belt and get my luggage back so I can put it in"
VLM Lady "No sir - I can't do that"
"But I don't want to lose it"
VLM Lady keeping calm – “I suggest Sir goes and buys a stamp and envelope from the Newsagent and post the knife to your home address.”
And off he rushed.
Bizarre !

It could only happen at a British Airport

2007-02-04T07:29:00.000Z

On an early flight to Amsterdam from Humberside International Airport (only international because of the 3 flights a day to Schipol): Plane mainly full of Business people travelling across the world for Monday morning + a smattering of OAPs travelling to see loved ones in far flung corners of the world.
All Boarded ready to go, waiting for the Humberside De-icing machine to clear the ice - after 1 wing it breaks down leaving the operator stranded 30 ft in the air in a cherry-picker type basket! They can't seem to rescue him even with the fire brigade ladders! Engineer to fix the de-icer is an hour away and the sun wont warm up sufficiently for 2 hours - it's going to be a long wait.
People's connections bust, Business weeks and holidays ruined.....thank goodness I am only going to Amsterdam.........hopefully

How good is your Chinese?

2007-02-03T15:01:00.000Z

Travelled Flybe back from Southampton. Surprisingly it was an ATR42 plane (flybe normally use DASH8s) with emergency exit signs in Chinese! When you looked at the safety card it was in German, & Chinese and finally English.
The plane actually involved did not belong to Flybe but an airline called Air Atlantique. When I looked them up on the internet depsite their French name they are actually based in Coventry. Still does not explain the chinese emergency exit signs......

Airplane lottery

2007-02-01T05:25:00.000Z

Sitting in Antwerp airport to catch the early plane to London city, watching the ground crew preparing two aircraft: one is 0700 to London City & Manchester the other is 0700 to Nuremburg (standard passenger dress: walking boots and leiderhosen - I do not exagerate). From the body language of the groundcrew, I would say one plane is bust and the other ok (cue growing number of little white vans with flashing lights around an aircraft - man in cherry picker looking at wing - mystified men with torches and manuals)- but which flight will go.....anybody got a coin ?

This is standard fare in Belgian Politics

2007-01-27T23:29:00.000Z

For those who work and travel in Belgium, this story is not quirky but standard Belgium Forbids 18 and 88 | The Brussels Journal

Disaster at Marseilles airport again !

2007-01-26T15:08:00.000Z

Air France & Marseilles airport strike again – tricky flights to make happen Marseilles Lyon followed by Lyon Dusseldorf with an hour to change. Boarding the Lyon flight called to the gate on time then disaster:
17:30: boarded to Bus
17:40: Bus arrives at Plane – ground agent seeks permission to Board us no response from stewardess.
17:50: ground agent announces problem with aircraft steps – should be fixable unquote !
17:55: hassled engineer appears from plane – new announcement from plane it’s not the steps it’s an electrical fault in cockpit. Bus returns to terminal.
18:05 more info at 18:15 whether they can fix.
18:15 an honest ground agent – no info next update at 18:30 but he is pessimistic. Everyone leaps forward because they all have tight connections at Lyon.
18:20 Manage to get early in queue – connection to dusseldorf blown, no other way there tonight via Paris etc. Bail will have to try and reclaim 50% of large sum of money via internet sales.
18:22: Plan B – no other options via Frankfurt or Munich with Lufthansa so it’s Ryan air to Eindhoven from terminal 2.
18:30 find my way to terminal 2 – used to be the old freight sheds @ Marseilles airport now with it’s a minimalist conversion to a terminal “MP2”. Wow that man Ryan is clever – a bit of internal steel girdering, lots of chipboard and corrugated thick plastic and you have a terminal.
18:32: arrive at Ryan air ticket desk to buy 1930 flight ticket to Eindhoven. Don’t take amex or maestro, so it’s cash.
1837: no cashpoint that works in MP2 so back to terminal 1.
1845: back to ticket desk – a ticket is fine but no change for my cash. Argument then follows if my ticket is 194.40€ the how much change from 200€? 3 ticket sellers cannot work it out and don’t have the change.
18:50: still arguing about change.
18;54: finally check in
1900: thru security to join the “cattle herding” for boarding.
1910: officially boarded but no plane yet – in cattle queue No 2
19:12 Plane arrives it’s a Ryan air legendary turnaround.
1925: Boarding – otherwise known as a “sprint for seat”. Manage elbow my way to get an emergency exit seat (without paying more) so better legroom. Interesting use for Sick bags – double as postal envelopes for film developing – I wonder how many bags of sick the developers have received instead of film. That man Ryan is brilliant at cost saving !
19:45 taxi past broken down Lyon plane.
1952: take off behind the BA flight.
20:30 – Final straw did you know a Ryan Air sandwiches are made from 3 slices of bread not 4 – what a rip off (and more expensive than BA Connect and that is saying something !)

Paris CDG

2007-01-24T23:56:00.000Z

Travelled through the World's worse airport tonight - Paris CDG. It's such a maze with no space for actual departure gates and the world's only airport where tannoy announcements talk across eachother instead of being sequential. At one stage I suspect there were no less than 4 simultaneous announcements for leaving flights - combined withe its maze features I am amazed they get any passengers to the right gate.

Air France Website

2007-01-20T01:14:00.000Z

Booking my travel for next week 6 flights + 1 ferry journey - took 1 hour to book 4 flights on Air France. Could not crack it.......to book flights from Germany to France and back, it would only allow me to do it on the German website of Air France, which not being fluent in German was really tricky. Could not find a way to do it English ..unless one of you bloggers knows best.
It also offered me a great connection with 45 mins to get from Paris CDG to Paris Orly ...mmmh.....you have been warned of Air France's sense of humour
And the cost for the price of Dusseldorf Paris Marseilles 24 hour return - I can fly 2 people to Australia and back....sacre bleu!

What happened to the British stiff upper lip ?!?

2007-01-13T00:00:00.000Z

Travelled back on a Jet2.com flight from Dusseldorf to leeds tonight. very windy as we crabbed our way on the runway @ Leeds, which being on hill is well exposed to crosswinds.
As we finally landed and straightened up the runway, people started cheering & clapping - this is a new behaviour for me in Europe as I have only encountered before in the Far East on Korean or Japanese planes - the first time I was on Jumbo with 400 japananese tourists + me, who clapped and cheered when we took off form Singapore and landed at Djarkarta. It was very unnerving that
A) they all started and stopped clapping at the same time
B) What happens when the Captain doesn't make a text book landing - perhaps another Blogger will tell me
Any way I digress What happened to the British stiff upper lip ?!? a bit of a breeze off the port wing....pass the G&Ts and leave me to read my paper quietly !

Low pay ?

2007-01-11T20:19:00.000Z

2 flights so far this week, second of which was Southampton to Amsterdam. The flight nearly didn't go because of no crew. In the end a Hostess had been volunteered by the company. She was due to finish at 1400, on her flight into southampton from edinburgh arrival 13;30, she had been told she was on the 1400 Amsterdam. As she has a monthly salary she only receives an extra 1.70 an hour she is the air. There was a possibly an extra £30 payment but when she left Southamptoin the Captain of her previous Edinburgh plane was still arguing with Fly BE HQ about whether she was elligble for payment.
mmmh I wonder what BA Connect staff are thinking - my impression is they are voting with their feet.....

2007-01-06T17:37:00.000Z

Talking of Crosswinds

Not to be watched if you are scared of flying !

Test via Email

2007-01-06T17:19:00.000Z

I promise I will try and keep a more regular blog, if I can get this to work.

Bristol Airport

2007-01-06T17:03:00.000Z

Took the family through Bristol Airport. Travelling AirSouthWest on Dash 8 no real trouble with runway, but it was very rainy & a very bad crosswind. Easyjet + continental planes were parked and everything seemed fine. very surprised by all the whoop-la that causing all the cancellations.

Goodbye 2006

2006-12-28T22:14:00.000Z

well made 153 flights on Business and 4 for R&R - so just made the grade. Do not think I will make 100 in 2007 because of my change of role.
Well 2007 rearing its ugly head and guess what I am doing in the last days of 2006, taking my family on plane from Leeds Bradford to Bristol......a busman's holiday.

OTT

2006-08-25T22:21:00.000+01:00

Flew back into Humberside aiport tonight from Schipol om KLM (Keep (your) Luggage Missing) - 80 people on a Fokker 70. 4 passport officers + 3 police complete with 2 Heckler Koch machine guns + 3 revolvers. Mmmmh what a waste of resources "to keep" the country safe. Quicker we think through a way of profiling and assess where the risks to travellers really lie, the money will hopefully get spent in the right place.

Flights early this week

2006-08-25T22:13:00.000+01:00

A couple of flights early in the week:
Leeds - southampton
Southampton - Brussels
The queues are down, maybe less people travelling (?) - but the greatest bugbear seems to be causing BPR (boarding passenger rage) is incosistency between security checks. People get really steamedup if they lose things, but allegedly find someelse has got their item through.
One irate lady at southampton - large gucci bag has lost all her make-up at Manchester that morning, but Southampton in evening was the final straw - because they took her final article of make-up -a face powder pad, which Manchester had let through.

Gatwick last week.

2006-08-22T16:23:00.000+01:00

travell to Marseilles and back last wednesday/thursday - interesting experience being 1st time on easy jet and under version 5 of the new security regs. Queued 2.5 hours at easyjet, although i had only handluggage (very small bag) and no liquids. Then passed through main security a breeze really (10 minutes tops) except the slowest part of the queue was getting through teh pre-checkers , who were taking chewing gum off you!
Coming back through Marseilles, plane was 1 hour late arriving, it then took an hour to board because the Marseilles airport authorities had decided on a final extra search of handluggage. My boss lost both his toothpaste ( he had bought airside at Gatwick + the tolietries he nicked from the Hotel we were staying in. The extra security check meant we missed the slot much to chagrin of the captain. arrived back at gatwick 2.5 hours late.

Bit of a Break from travelling - then hell.

2006-08-21T06:11:00.000+01:00

Started back travelling week before last:
Jet2.com Leeds to Dusseldorf - interesting service given you have to queue so long with all the holiday makers going to Palma, Malaga etc. Plane 737 full to bursting so they must be doing something right ! BA Connect stand no chance having steadily reduced the size of the planes and kept their fares high.
Black Thursday: I arrived into Heathrow at 0724, 6 minutes before they shut the airport. Knew there was something wrong as we landed as there were to park. ATC told our plane to stop. Pilots allowed us to switch on phones and I was showing the pilots waht was going on from the internet via my phone, given atc was silent ! Finally parked up after 2 hours.

Normal week

2006-07-28T10:20:00.000+01:00

3 flights this week - London to Dusseldorf on Monday, Brussels to Edinburgh on wednesday night and Edinburgh to Leeds on Thursday afternoon - unspectacular as they passed and on time (British airways were not involved) but really weird routings, particularly the last Leeds to Edinburgh leg.
Instead of flying due south south east, we head west flew over Dumfries, down the west side of the Lake District and then due south east to Bradford - you wonder how much fuel was used Co2 was emitted for such a circuitous route.

Embarrassment

2006-07-21T18:34:00.000+01:00

0715 Dusseldorf to London on BA on Thursday morning - loaded in a timely fashion as ever (personally believe all Heathrow Ground Handling staff should spend time @ dusseldorf and learn a thing or two about brutal German efficiency!).
Doors on the point of closing, sitting in 9F minding my own business and chief lady purser strides down cabin with passenger printout and says "Mr S.... we have put you in the wrong seat - please move to 1F.
Now I am obeying company travelling policy (in economy) and checked in via the internet last night so I know I have put myself in the right seat - but the Pursar has obviously taken pity on a gold card holder sitting economy, so has upgraded me to business.
I have to admit for a micro-second I was elated (hot towels , cooked breakfast etc), which then turned to horroras I realised everyone on the plane was looking at me. I am forced to extract from the packed lockers my 2 bits of hand luggage (one of which is illegal in economy) and move right to front of the plane.
You feel people thinking in economy "lucky bas#@rd etc" and people in Business class thinking "he's not paid the fare". What makes it worse is that business class is 50% empty but the purser moves no one else ......

Manchester airport on a Monday morning

2006-07-18T09:16:00.000+01:00

Arrived at Manchester airport at 0540 BA terminal 3 - complete chaos with queues a mile long @ the ticket office not check in. My flight to dusseldorf is Ok but the early flight to Gatwick is cancelled.....a killer for long haul passengers trying to catch one a day long hauls out of gatwick - no wonder there is such stress and at least one over-stressed passenger.
Loads of BA cabin crew in the lounge complaining about the cancellation - so it' s just not the passengers who suffer - you wonder what the consequential flight cancellations are because there are no crews at Gatwick......all from one flight cancellation in Manchester!

Southampton Airport (2)

2006-07-13T21:23:00.000+01:00

I have just read that Southampton Airport had a nightmare yesterday when man with bulldozer dug up main BT telephone line so many flights were cancelled. Wonder whether it affected the PA system ? (see previous post)

Dusseldorf back to London

2006-07-13T21:13:00.000+01:00

I reflected as I flew over the Thames estuary this morning how much of my life I have spent flying around Essex waiting to get into Heathrow.
I think the calc looks something like this:

Been flitting around contintental Europe for 7 years for various companies.
On avearge (particulary worse on BA) we spend 12 minutes circling Essex to get in Heathrow.
On average I do the equivalent of say 1.5 flights a week into Heathrow
Therefore I have spent 4.2 days in the last 7 years of my life circling Essex @ circa 10000 ft

sad really !

Heathrow Terminal 2

2006-07-12T08:06:00.000+01:00

Travelled to Dusseldorf via Heathrow on Monday night - Terminal 2 @ Heathrow is probably the worst piece of airport in the UK. Fortunately there wasn't the 750m queue for security on Monday night but the intense heat of the building beyond makes you feel like you are in a sauna. All shops/and sitting areas have really cramped feel, all set at slightly different levels.
Evening crowned by Lufthansa sending an HS146, so it was pretty cramped. Key thing with RJ100 / HS146 if you are sitting in rows 6-11 is to get your hand luggage in rows 1-5, because the lockers in 6-11 are very narrow due to the "over wing design"

petrol prices

2006-07-09T20:40:00.000+01:00

Chatting with a self-employed lorry driver today at my son C's Judo grading - he was complaining how petrol prices/oil companies wiere putting him out of business - he can't drive enough hours to make reasonable money.
I am surprised that people forget so easily that its UK Government duties that are approx 75p in every £1, added to which when oil does up on world markets, the Government just pocket more funds proportionally.
One other useless fact I learnt this week - BP once "British Petroleum" are now fufilling their new maxim "Beyond Petroleum" are selling their last oil refinery in the UK. Who would have thought of Britain without "British Petroleum"?

Southampton Airport

2006-07-07T21:37:00.000+01:00

Can anyone tell me why the PA is so loud at Southampton Airport - its incredibly loud and with continual announcements of flight departures it really grates and makes you really grateful to get on a plane .

Actually was at Southampton to catch an Eastern Airlines plane:

14.50 Arrive Airport:
10.55 to Leeds due to depart 15:30
16:00 to Leeds due to depart 16.35
14:52: Check-in Eastern Airways use J41s so lose 1 handluggage to Hold. Check-in lady says my plane is late and when will take-off when the plane gets down from Leeds. mmmh that means my plane logically can't leave until 2.5 hours after it leave Southampton for the first time - 16:35 no chance - time for some lunch.
1500: try and make some calls sunk by the PA again.
15:10 Stag party to ?? has taken over the bar area so get a sandwich and pint and sit in the cafe.
15:15 10:55 Cancelled they are put on my flight due to the fact they can't fix their plane.
15:40 enjoying Pint and sandwich - it's been a long week Marseilles/edinburgh/southampton all in the same week
15:41 My flight is boarding eh - rush for security - another middle manager emerges from WH Smith and has the same realisation. Computers have to be removed @ security- (useless Traveller Fact that all UK BAA airports they insist on removing computers but at Humberside & Leeds (not owned BAA) they don't bother). Have never managed to purloin a better computer as part of this process!
15:54 Boarded on my plane - profuse apologies and boiled sweet for the 10:55 flight travellers.

ah well another friday afternoon at an airport