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......