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 !