The Wandering Aramean

Hanging out with Hamlet in Helsingor

2009-07-06T05:00:00.000-04:00

One thing that Europe doesn’t struggle with is castles to tour. From the heart of Prague to the chateaux in France to the ridiculous number of fortified structures in the Irish countryside, there seems to always be a castle available when you’re looking for something historical to see. Denmark is no different with well preserved castles all over the country. There are a few right in and around Copenhagen that make for great visits when in the area. One of these is Kronborg Castle at Helsingør, home of the King, Queen and – in Shakespeare’s mind – Hamlet.

The courtyard of Kronborg Castle

Hamlet does not really exist in history so claiming that the castle is his home is rather off. But there definitely is a royal castle there and it setting works quite well for telling the tale. Plus, it makes for good business with drawing tourists to the site. The Danes have readily adopted Hamlet into their lore and are happy to tell his tale in Helsingør as long as you’re willing to show up.

Helsingør is about 40 kilometers north of Copenhagen, an easy ride of about 55 minutes on the train from one city center to the other. The castle Kronborg is just a short walk outside of downtown Helsingør and is easily accessible to take a tour or simply to wander around the grounds and bask in the glow of royalty. In fact, large parts of the castle grounds do not have any access controls or admission charges. There were a large number of folks simply taking advantage of the well groomed lawns as a site for their picnics and other summer fun. Certainly it is possible to get a good feel for the castle this way, but to truly experience it takes buying in for at least one of the three tours that they offer.

Of the three tours offered the most enjoyable and focused on the history of the castle is that of the Royal Apartments. As it would seem, the tour covers the residential areas of the castle including the royal chambers, guest facilities and the great hall that is still used even today for some royal events. It is also available to rent if you’re throwing a party, though I have no idea just how ridiculous the rates are. There are occasional guided tours of the Royal Apartments and we were fortunate enough to stumble onto one. Having explanations of the history certainly was better than simply walking through the rooms and seeing old furniture and whatnot.

There are plenty of placards around if a guided tour doesn’t seem to be in the cards, but the guided tour is definitely recommended. Taking the guided tour exposes you to such details as the fact that King Christian IV had “seven children by his first wife, eleven by his second wife and five on the loose.” So maybe half the fun of the guided tour is the translations but it was still rather useful information about the history of the castle.

A close-up of one of the tapestries. The level of detail is truly amazing.

The highlight for me of the Royal Apartments tour was the tapestries. They are incredibly detailed and ridiculously large. Some took four years to produce while others were made with threads of silk, silver and gold (that one is rather smaller). The fact that 500 years later they still show much of the same vibrancy and color is truly impressive.

Another impressive bit from the Royal Apartments was the globes they had on display. There are a couple that are about 500 years old and are not completely accurate but certainly give a great insight into how the sailors of that era navigated. Even with the less that perfect maps they seemed to do a pretty good job.

One of the 500 year old globes that they had on display. Truly amazing!


Looking down on the courtyard from the tower in the Maritime Museum.	Looking out through one of the leaded glass windows in the tower stairs.

In addition to the Royal Apartments there are two other sections of the castle that require a paid admission. One is the maritime museum. There is a bit of older history there but most of that museum seems to be a display of random models of ships. They are pretty neat but not all that compelling, particularly as many of them are from the modern shipping era. But the Maritime Museum tour does include access to one of the towers of Kronborg. I’m actually convinced that the only reason to pay for admission to the Maritime Museum is to gain access to that tower – the views from up top are pretty amazing. That, or you’re a big fan of Maersk and their history as a shipping company.

The statue of Holger, the basis of the Casements tour.

The other – and most strange – tour available at the castle is of the Casements. The Casements are essentially the damp, dank, dark basement of the castle. The folks running the show have purposefully kept the casements dark. As in black-out level. I actually used the flash on my camera to light up various areas along the way or I don’t think I would have been able to make it through. Of course they are happy to sell you a flashlight/torch as you enter the basement but it is very, very dark without a light. More than just dark, it is really rather strange. The entire area is set up as a tribute to the legend of Holger the Dane. The walls contain messages written in silver paint that tell the story of Holger, a great defender of Danish life and tradition. Still, without a light it is almost impossible to figure out what the hell is going on or otherwise enjoy the exhibit. Even with a light it still seems a rather strange way to experience the Casements, an area that has housed hundreds of soldiers at various times throughout history.

Beyond the Kronborg Castle there is really little else to recommend Helsingør. There is the church and a few other shops. And there is their single largest industry – selling booze to Swedes who come across to save money on the taxes. But otherwise Helsingør is pretty much just the town that holds Kronborg. Not a bad thing by any stretch, but don’t plan on seeing a lot of other things during the visit unless you head over to Sweden, too.

Note: This post is showing up a couple days later than it actually happened because I’m off in the middle of nowhere enjoying the fjords but didn’t want to leave the blog empty all week.

Random bonus country time – Sweden!

2009-07-03T03:44:00.001-04:00

Our trip to Scandinavia was supposed to only really cover two countries – Denmark and Norway. Still, when I learned that we were going to be visiting a friend of my wife’s up in Helsingør, Denmark – just a 20 minute ferry ride across the way from Helsingbor, Sweden – I became somewhat hopeful of adding that to the trip. That hope was realized yesterday as we headed over to Sweden on the ferry for lunch and to wander around for a couple hours.

One of the many ferries serving the Helsingborg/Helsingor route.

The ferry ride between Helsingør and Helsingbor is quick, cheap and easy, with three different companies plying the route and ferries running several times per hour. And at less than $10 for a return ticket the ferry is actually one of the more affordable things in Denmark. We hopped on Scandlines’s ship Hamlet (cute, right?) and cruised across the sunny calm waters and docked in Sweden about 20 minutes later.

Entry into Sweden consisted of just walking off the boat. No immigration checks. No customs. Nothing. Even if we had wanted someone to check out our passports or if we had taxable items on which we needed to pay duty that would not have been possible as those desks were not manned at the terminal. So we successfully invaded Sweden. We then set off to wander about downtown Helsingborg and grab some lunch.

Locals enjoying the beach near the ferry terminal in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Helsingborg, Sweden is a much prettier town than Helsingør, Denmark so wandering around was rather more enjoyable. The shopping areas seemed to be a bit more upscale rather than focusing entirely on selling alcohol to Swedes who cross over to Denmark to avoid taxes on their booze (truly the backbone of Helsingr’s economy). There are also the typical tourist sites, including the 500 year old church and remnants from an old castle. Both are quite well done, actually, and worth wandering over to see.


The only remaining bit from the castle at Helsingborg.	A rose out in front of the medieval church. Lots of roses all over the region.

One of the many shops in the shopping area of Helsingborg

We also dropped in to the local Italian restaurant for a surprisingly good lunch. My preferred choice was not available and so I ended up with a curried shrimp over pasta, decidedly un-Italian but still rather delicious. And the carbonara was pretty delicious. As an added bonus, I also got to sample the local beer, a lager by the name of Spendrups. Nothing to write home about, but it certainly qualified as cold, wet and beer, three things that I needed at that point.

Overall I must say that Helsingborg is definitely worth the visit. It is a fun, quaint town and has more to offer than Helsingør, assuming that you’re not looking for Hamlet’s castle. Plus it meant that I got another new country on this trip which is always a good thing!

Another failed effort to grow my passport

2009-07-02T04:12:00.001-04:00

With my rather increased international travel schedule (10+ countries
so far this year) my passport has filled up quickly. I'm down to only
one fully blank page now and only about 10 total blank squares. But
that shouldn't be too much of a problem to resolve since getting extra
pages is a simple process. At least that's what folks would have you
believe. I'm now on my 4th different US embassy and have still not
managed to grow my passport, with the latest setback coming this
morning.

It used to be that having pages added while in the USA cost money
while doing it at an embassy abroad was free. The fees no longer exist
for doing it in the USA but it still requires that the passport be
mailed off the Philly, processed and mailed back. And if you want it
handled quickly there is an expedite fee involved. Otherwise there is
the potential to be without passport for weeks rather than just a week
with the expedited service. Getting it done at an embassy makes a ton
of sense since it usually is completed in about 30 minutes and has
always been free.

And so I've tried to get additional pages at the embassy. How hard
could it be? Fill out the form from the State Department website and
just head over to the embassy first thing in the morning to get it
done. Sadly, it just hasn't worked out that way for me. A number of my
international trips this year have been over weekends so those were
immediately disqualified from contention, but I've had plenty of
eligible trips that have simply ended in disappointment.

First was the trip to Panama back in March. I contacted the embassy in
advance, got all the details and paperwork and then realized that I
had no chance. They require a full day for processing according to
their email and I only had about 3 hours on Monday morning to deal
with it. I suppose I could have just shown up and asked but it didn't
seem likely so I didn't bother. Plus, we were busy seeing Casco Viejo
that morning anyways.

Next up I tried for Bermuda. I had plenty of time on the island - two
full weekdays. And still no love. Their policy is even worse than that
of Panama, with all requests taking a full week to process. Apparently
they mail them back to the USA for processing rather than doing it
locally. Plus, they don't have any parking at the consulate there and
it isn't exactly in the middle of town. So that one was out, too.

I had a glimmer of hope for this visit to Copenhagen. The consular
services office would be open one of the days I was here and there was
no reason I could think of why they wouldn't be able to quickly add
the pages for me this morning. Well, they managed to invent one. I was
in the door at 9am, right when it opened for citizen services. I
presented my paperwork and passport and was told that it would be
ready on Monday. Since I'll be on a kayak in a fjord on Monday that
wasn't going to work so well. I asked for immediate processing
instead. The guy wandered off for about 5 minutes and came back with
an offer for maybe having it done at 3pm today. Only maybe and no
promises at all. Since we're headed to Helsingor now and won't be back
until late this afternoon that just won't work. I explained my
situation again and pretty much begged him to process it immediately
as I know can be done. I received a very polite "no" in return. And so
it was that I finished the visit to the embassy in 10 minutes, just
like everyone says it takes, but I managed to do so without my extra
pages.

We won't be near the embassy in Oslo while it is open so that is out
as an option. I might have to actually give in and mail my passport
off to be processed. I hate the idea of not having it available just
in case a great fare pops up and I definitely need it back by
mid-August with more international travel planned. But thus far the
embassies haven't been able to help me so I may have to give in on
this one.

--
Where am I going today?
www.wanderingaramean.com

Playing Viking for a day at the Vikingeskibsmuseet in Roskilde

2009-07-01T11:22:00.001-04:00

That really long word is simply Danish for Viking Museum and a visit to the Vikingeskibsmuseet is the cornerstone of a visit to Roskilde, just 20 minutes west of Copenhagen. The museum serves as both a research facility and as a display for some of the artifacts that have been recovered over the past several decades. And they even let you play “Viking” if you want!

This boat is over 1500 years old and surprisingly well preserved.

The ships that they have recovered are nothing short of amazing. There are at least seven that we saw, ranging from a sixty-person warship that was originally built around 1022 to an eight-seater built around 450. Yup, a 1500+ year old specimen. The ship from 450 is actually so well preserved that we looked at it several ties and assumed it to be a replica before finally being convinced that it is the original thing.

The reconstructed pieces of one of the five ships recovered in the 1960s.

There was a major find in 1962 of five ships at the bottom of the channel leading from Roskilde to the sea. The five were intentionally sunk by loading them with rocks. They were scuttled as part of a defensive effort to blockade the channel, allowing the Danes to control access to their port and slow any advancing navies that might attack. A rather impressive amount of those ships was recovered and they have been reassembled and placed on display in the museum.

One of the recovered ships was actually recreated by the museum starting in 2004. The Sea Stallion of Glendalough was built using tools and methods of the Viking style and era and using similar woods that the Vikings had available. This 30 meter long reconstruction was completed in 2007 and sailed from Denmark to Dublin, Ireland as part of their research. The exhibit and movie that they have on the reconstruction and the journey to Ireland is quite impressive.

There are also a number of workshops and other research facilities that are open to the public. Almost all of their reconstruction efforts are performed using only the tools and methods of 1000 years ago meaning that the progress is slow but quite amazing to watch.

In addition to the many ships that they have on display there are a few that are kept in use, allowing visitors to experience life as a Viking. We were able to take a ship out for about a half hour and experience a bit of the life on the water. We got to row the boat out from the docks and then help raise the sail and cruise under wind power for a bit before heading back to the docks. Unfortunately the winds weren’t particularly strong today but it was still quite an enjoyable experience.

Beyond the Viking Museum there isn’t much to recommend Roskilde. The town was actually somewhat overrun today with folks settling in for the annual music festival which meant huge crowds. And the main streets were mostly full of vendors selling what would politely be called “junk” in most other places. There is a small city museum various other excavations around town. But overall not a ton to see there. Still, at only about 20 minutes out of town on the local trains a trip to Roskilde is definitely a great opportunity if you’re in Copenhagen.

Half price from Gogo

2009-06-30T06:31:00.001-04:00

As part of a promo with Delta Gogo has introduced a promo code good for the next three weeks to provide a single half-price session on their in-flight internet service.

Save 50% on a single Gogo session (except segment pass and 24hr pass) until 7/19/2009. Use code 156FLYDA.
To Use your discount on a wi-fi session:
1) Select 'gogoinflight' as the wireless network and launch you browser
2) Sign in or click 'Buy' to create a new account
3) On 'Payment Info' page, enter promo code in space provide (code is case sensitive)
4) Click 'Update Total'
Thank you! And Happy Travels,
Gogo Inflight Internet

This almost makes the cost of the service reasonable.

The glory of lie-flat coach seating

2009-06-30T06:30:00.001-04:00

As airlines invest heavily in improving their business-class product, updating the seats to be fully flat for the most comfortable sleep possible, there is an often overlooked segment of the market that has great potential for both the customer and the customer’s pocket – lie-flat coach seating. Of course, this is rather difficult to come by, but having just awakened from a solid 6 hours of sleep on my flight from Newark to Paris I have to say that lie-flat coach seating is quite underrated.

When we boarded the flight as some of the first passenger in coach we were already in pretty good shape seating-wise. We’d booked the aisle and window seats in the reclining exit row of the Continental 757-200. These are some of the best coach seats available in the fleet, with full recline, extra legroom and no one reclining into you. There was no one booked into the middle seat between us. Score! I made one last check of the seat map to ensure that we still had the middle seat available and noticed a phenomenal sight – all three seats in the row in front of us were empty. So we split up, each taking a set of three.

Defending the full three seats is not as easy as it would seem. One gentleman across the aisle tried to take mine while I went to the lav and another guy tried to take the window seat that was clearly not his. Fortunately we were able to fend them off and maintain our beds in the sky.

Setting up a lie-flat coach bed requires a bit of work. You have to manipulate the pillows and blankets just so to avoid the metal of the arm rests digging into your side or back and also to properly support your head against the wall of the plane. And having a seat belt extender works wonders for making the sleeping position much more comfortable.

I’d still prefer true lie-flat beds in coach like this one:

But since that seems highly unlikely I guess I’ll have to just hope for more empty coach rows.

Celebrating Continental’s 75th Birthday

2009-06-26T19:22:00.003-04:00

Happy Birthday, CO!

Celebrating a birthday is always cause for a party, and when it is a major milestone birthday – such as number 75 – the party is generally bigger than not. This held true for Continental Airlines as they have been partying up a storm over the past couple days to celebrate their 75th year of operations. The main focus of the party has been the delivery of their 75th birthday plane – a brand new Boeing 737-900ER – painted in the style of the 1947 birds Continental was flying. The plane was delivered from the Boeing factory on Thursday and promptly flew to Houston where it did a fly-by of the Continental headquarters downtown and then was the centerpiece of a party at the airport there. The plane then came up to Newark for a celebration with the employees here.

I should repeat here that the celebration was intended for the Continental employees here in Newark. But that didn’t stop me and a few friends from heading out to Newark to see the new plane and trying to crash the party. It turns out that we were quite successful in this effort. Showing up early and asking a guy in a suit if we could take some pictures was enough to get us “inside the ropes.” Of course, we did take some pictures at that point, but we also just happened to still be there when the event actually got started and at that point it would have been rude to walk out, so we just stuck around and enjoyed the event.

The new 737-900ER in the 1947 livery

Two Flight Attendants, in uniforms of the style of 1947 hanging out on stage during the event

The party was mostly a few speeches from various folks within the organization plus a woman from the Port Authority and a guy from the office of the Mayor of Newark who declared that there will now be a “Continental Airlines Day” in Newark each year. There was also cake. Mmmmm…cake. That part of the event was great for photo ops, and the one local employee they had speak was actually wonderfully excited and happy to be part of the Continental family so that was really quite nice to see. But for me the real fun was hanging out among the various employees, chatting with them and getting a feel for their impressions of the company.

And there were plenty of opportunities to chat it up, even as the interlopers without an employee badge. Sure, we got a lot of strange looks and questions from people, but it was well worth it. I spoke with both Larry Kellner, the CEO, and with Jeff Smisek, the President. They actually sortof remembered me from the various other events I’ve been to so that was quite an ego boost. Those conversations went about as I expected from the guys who run the company. A couple little bits of data were gleaned but no crazy insider knowledge there.

I also got to talk to a 757 First Officer who is currently on furlough and (rather reasonably) less than ecstatic about the situation. It was a very interesting conversation, particularly in light of the interaction I had with some folks from ALPA back in February after the last big Continental event down in Houston. The good news is that we were actually able to have a civil conversation in public and share our views on the airline in a civil way rather than the “discussions” that generally take place on the Internet. And that did include reliving some of my less classy moments, like swigging from the champagne bottle while in the exit row on the charter flight we took. But I think we do understand each other quite a bit better now.

Truly a classy look; I’m a big fan!

I had a very entertaining, albeit brief, chat with a random customer service agent. We saw one of the ramp guys run up to Kellner and grab a photo with him. I joked that having a photo with the boss is always a good thing and we got to talking about Kellner, Bethune (the previous CEO) and many of the other management folks from the past many years. It was clear that he enjoyed the job and that he had been there long enough to know the history and have a reasonable outlook for the future, though he did apparently like the previous boss better.

I spoke with a 777 captain who has been flying with Continental since the era of the Golden Tail - over 30 years of service. He was rather dumbfounded that we were there but appreciative of the business and the excitement that we had for travel in general and Continental specifically. He was also somewhat amazed that he represented 40% of the life of the company with his service; I am too!

There were several other conversations throughout the morning and all were enjoyable. Getting to see the company from the inside – particularly when most of the folks didn’t realize that I was an outsider – was quite refreshing and insightful.

There were a couple slightly juicy bits that came up in terms of the fleet and what is going on with the in-flight internet service options on Continental. They are still sitting back and watching to see how the industry will shake out on this. They see that there are lots of planes being deployed with the service but are waiting to see if there will be a critical mass of adoption before considering investing in something like Aircell’s gogo or the Row44 service. They are still planning on putting a trial of the LiveTV Kiteline service into play once it is available, hopefully with 30 planes in service for the tests by the end of Q1 2010. This pseudo-internet service offers access to email and a few other limited services but not a full experience. On the plus side, they do expect to offer it for free. Oh, and the new retro-jet is going to be headed to Orlando once the party wraps up in Cleveland so that it can have the LiveTV3 system installed. It should be entering commercial service sometime early next week.

One last shot of the plane as it headed out to the runway and Cleveland

Morons refuse to board a plane in Majorca

2009-06-24T20:48:00.001-04:00

There are plenty of reasons to not get on a plane. Being told that you have to sit at the back to help deal with balance issues is quite certainly not one of them. But that is just what a bunch of British tourists did this past Sunday, refusing to board a Thomas Cook flight from Majorca back home to Newcastle. And they’ve taken their story public, desperately trying to make it seem like the airline is at fault and not them.

Many passengers chose to pay $200 or more each to fly home on different airlines rather than board the plane, all because they were asked to sit at the rear of the plane rather than in the front. The rear baggage compartment door was stuck closed so no baggage could be loaded there. That changed the center of gravity of the plane enough that the airline tried to move seats around. And instead of canceling the flight the carrier actually put the laws of physics into action, reassigning seats to keep the plane safe to fly.

But several of the passengers, apparently well versed in the nuance of aeronautics and flight planning refused to board. They some choice quotes, including:

It was like they were being asked to fly in something that was being balanced out like a see-saw.

and

We just wanted a plane that would stay level without us being used as ballast.

Here’s a hint folks: EVERY TIME you get on a plane you’re being used as ballast and to balance the ~~see-saw~~, err, plane. It is part of the pre-flight checklist and one of the reasons the flight attendants count the passengers on the plane. The pilots are going to make sure that when they pull back on the control stick the plane actually gets airborne. And that means getting the balance right. I cannot count the number of times I’ve moved around for weight and balance reasons; it is just part of the travel experience. Oh, and when the pilot – someone who actually does know how the crazy hunk of metal is able to hurtle through the skies at 500 miles per hour - is willing to get on the plane and go maybe that should be a hint that things are fine. After all, most pilots I know don’t routinely hop on a plane to kill themselves and all their passengers.

And instead the news is about kids crying and people kissing the ground as they deplaned because the didn’t crash. They even got a great photo of a forlorn 17 year old “reunited” with her mother after spending the night sleeping on the floor in the airport. Stay classy, media. You’re doing a great job.

Enjoying the High Line – New York’s newest city park

2009-06-24T09:06:00.001-04:00

The cool logo along with the NYC Parks logo

One of the amazing things about a city as big as New York is that there are always people around to take up a cause, not matter how small it might seem. So when an elevated freight railroad line, built in the 1930s and in service until the 1980s fell into disrepair there were actually people around who recognized the potential value that it could offer as a green space and, more importantly, who were willing to invest the time and energy to see the project through. The end result is the High Line Park, the latest addition to NYC’s ever growing collection of park space and, quite frankly, one of the nicer parks in the city.

After serving as an active freight line for forty something years, connecting from the rail tunnel to New Jersey at 34th street to the Nabisco factory and the Meatpacking district (back when they actually did process meat there) the rail tracks became abandoned in the 80s. During the 90s the area became something of a natural park, with wildflowers and other flora growing on it but access was generally prohibited and it was not “user-friendly” at all. What a difference 20 years makes. Over the past 10 years a couple local guys – Robert Hammond and Joshua David – have worked with the city and private donors to raise the necessary funds and secure the future of the space. CSX, the owner of the rail lines at the time, donated the facilities and the renovations began in earnest, culminating in the opening of the first section of the park a couple weeks ago.

It has been an overwhelming success, so much so that the city has actually had to limit access on certain days allowing entry only from the Gansevoort Street entrance to control the crowds. But on a weekday there may not be a better place to get above the din of the streets in the meatpacking district and relax. I even managed to pick up a signal from an unsecured wireless access point around 15th street and did some work for a couple hours on Tuesday, just to see if it was possible. The signal wasn’t great, but it was open, so that was nice.

There are plenty of seats and benches available through the park including some that are full length for laying down. There are even a few that are on the rail tracks with wheels, though they only roll a few inches.

Lounging on the rolling chairs

More than just the benches, the rail theme is tightly woven into the design of the park. The original rails were removed as part of the renovations and many were worked back into the layout of the park. There are rails running everywhere. Some, like in the seating areas, are in areas where visitors are allowed to tread. Many of the others are mixed into the flower planters, a nod to the history of the High Line and its previous overgrown wildlife nature.

Just a couple of the places where the rails are integrated into the design of the landscape.

More than just a park, the developers have managed to work in some art installations on the High Line, too. The most interesting one to me is The River That Flows Both Ways, a series of 700 glass panels installed in the old windows of one of the Nabisco buildings (the one on the west side of 10 Avenue). The installation is quite pretty and changes throughout the day as the levels of light change. I’m not a huge fan of modern art but this one works for me.

The River That Flows Both Ways

The amphitheatre and the sloping ramp integrated into the benches

One of the other really cool features of the park is the mini amphitheatre that they have built at 17th street. It has a half dozen rows of benches looking north over 10th Avenue through great big windows. But in addition to that they have designed it to be ADA compliant all the way down to the bottom and the windows. The ramps are built into the rows of the benches. It really is quite cool.

Finally, the flowers planted on the High Line have already begun to attract residents, mostly in the form of bees thus far. Watching the bees flit from flower to flower certainly kept me entertained with my camera for a while.

One of the many shots I got of the bees

The next phase of the park – from 20th Street up to 30th Street – is still under construction and the ETA for its opening is a bit fuzzy right now, but it will happen eventually. Having that will certainly make the walk up to Penn Station much more pleasant, if not a bit longer, once it opens.

A few more pictures – mostly of the bees - are available here.

Dreamliner first flight postponed. Again.

2009-06-23T10:22:00.001-04:00

Just when it seemed like Boeing was finally really making progress in getting the 787 Dreamliner into the air they’ve hit another snag. This time it seems that there are structural deficiencies in the “side-of-body” section of the plane, requiring that area to be reengineered to provide additional support. This was discovered during the testing of one of the planes on the full-scale static test rig and was announced this morning.

First flight and first delivery will be rescheduled following the final determination of the required modification and testing plan. It will be several weeks before the new schedule is available. The 787 team will continue with other aspects of testing on Airplane #1, including final gauntlet testing and low-speed taxiing. Work will also continue on the other five flight test aircraft and the subsequent aircraft in the production system.

Scott Carson, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes said a team of experts has already identified several potential solutions.

"Consideration was given to a temporary solution that would allow us to fly as scheduled, but we ultimately concluded that the right thing was to develop, design, test and incorporate a permanent modification to the localized area requiring reinforcement. Structural modifications like these are not uncommon in the development of new airplanes, and this is not an issue related to our choice of materials or the assembly and installation work of our team," Carson said.

The good news is that they are continuing with the other testing needed to get the plane ready to fly, but they are still looking at a delay of “several weeks” before the new schedule is even announced, so figure that the entire delivery schedule will push a couple months now. Not good news for the manufacturer or the airlines who have been waiting for years to receive their new planes. Then again, the airlines don’t have to pay for the planes until they are delivered so the delay here – in the midst of one of the most significant industry downturns in history – might not be such a bad thing for the carriers.

I like that Boeing is going to just wait to get the plane actually into its final configuration before putting it up in the air but the additional delay certainly is frustrating – and I’m not even financially vested in the success of the program.

CLEAR lanes closed effective immediately

2009-06-23T08:32:00.001-04:00

Verified Identity Pass, the company behind the “CLEAR” security lanes program at many airports across the United States, has ceased operations effective as of 11pm Pacific time June 22. That was last night. Their security lanes – which used to be available at a few dozen airports – are closed effective immediately. Here’s the notification that they sent to their customers:

Dear xxxxx
At 11:00 p.m. PST today, Clear will cease operations. Clear's parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations.
After today, Clear lanes will be unavailable.
Sincerely,
Clear Customer Support
Verified Identity Pass
600 Third Avenue
10th Floor
New York, NY 10016

Short and sweet as far as notifications go, though they only gave about 3 hours notice to their customers which pretty much sucks.

The company and the associated program had a rocky life. The TSA used to perform background checks on the folks applying for the cards, making it seem somewhat reasonable that they’d move to the front of the security lines. Then that went away and the customers still went to the front of the lines. At the same time, however, those customers were still subject to ridiculous TSA policies, like still needing to show a photo ID after using their CLEAR pass and its integrated biometric features to verify that they were the person who signed up for the program.

In the end, the program only really was helpful at a handful of airports and it cost way too much – over $100/year – to really make much sense for most people. Considering that elite customers with the airline frequent flyer programs often received similar benefits at many airports the target market wasn’t really there for them. And it got even smaller when the economy tanked and the number of folks traveling by air dropped significantly.

I’d like to pretend that I’m sad to see another small business fail but in this case I’m actually really quite ambivalent. Sure, it sucks that a bunch of people are out of work, but the program was silly. They provided very few real benefits and created a tiered system of access to public services. I’m not really a fan of that, particularly when the actual benefits were so minimal. Had it meant a reduced screening or other real benefit maybe there would have been value, but that just didn’t happen based on the idiocy of the TSA.

Wet and wild at the Mermaid Parade 2009

2009-06-22T09:25:00.001-04:00

The Coney Island Mermaid Parade is always a great celebration, welcoming the summer to New York City in a way that only Coney Island can – crazy and fun. Revelers of all ages gather to either march or just watch the show, and what a show it is. This year the weather forecast called for rain which posed an interesting question – would the mermaids still show up even if it were as wet on land as under the sea? The answer was an overwhelming yes. The participants were there, as were the spectators. And the rain actually wrapped up shortly before the actual parade started so the umbrellas disappeared and the fun truly came out.

The parasols were much more useful for looking pretty than keeping the rain away

Hula hoops are always fun!

It helps to know people who know people in life. In my case I happen to have a friend in the family that runs the Mermaid Parade (and the side show in Coney Island). That means that I get to walk inside the barricades on the parade route some of the time and work as a volunteer, in addition to taking photos and otherwise enjoying the day. I even managed to sell a few t-shirts to the fans in the crowd, fulfilling my volunteer duties with great success.

More of the parasols

Fish eyes!

Depending on how you’re counting, it has been reported that the Mermaid Parade is the 2nd largest parade event in New York City. I’m not really sure which metric they are using there, but it is quite a spectacle.

King of the parade, Harvey Keitel

Sea horses lining up for a race on the parade route

The Mermaid Parade is definitely one of the more enjoyable ways to welcome summer to New York City, even when summer arrives a bit cold and damp as it did this year. But the hundreds of participants and thousands of spectators lining the parade route didn’t seem to mind the weather at all. In fact, it is quite possible that the rain brought out the crazy side of some in the crowd a bit more than usual. Good times!

More photos from this year’s Coney Island Mermaid Parade can be found here. Photos from last year’s festivities are located here and here, too.

Terminal hopping at JFK

2009-06-15T10:21:00.001-04:00

What to do on a lazy Sunday morning when there isn’t much else going on in New York City? Why not head out to JFK Airport and check out a few airline lounges and watch the planes flying? That’s exactly what I did with a couple friends, getting to talk about travel and schemes to maximize benefits as well as just hanging out and enjoying the lounges.

Our first stop was the Flagship Lounge operated by American Airlines. The lounge is reserved for their first class passengers traveling Internationally or on the Flagship transcon service and is much more similar to the lounges operated by international carriers than a typical Admirals Club. It was really quite nice inside – bright and wide open with nice windows looking down on the terminal and taxiways below. There were about as many employees in the lounge as there were passengers – 6 or so of each – so there were always folks around to help out if we needed anything. They had some food and drink options that were not particularly inspiring but they were better than nothing, I suppose. The Flagship Lounge also had some workstations available for use and free WiFi via TMobile if desired, both of which were nice. Apparently the bandwidth was sufficient for one of the other guys in the lounge to be streaming porn on his laptop so that is a good metric for the speed performance, I suppose. With the less than impressive “lunch” service out and not so nourishing we decided to head out of that lounge and make our way to the next stop, jetBlue’s T5 facility.

This was the first visit for either of my friends to the jetBlue terminal (but not mine) so it was quite enjoyable to see their reactions in person as we entered the facility. The walk over from the AirTrain station didn’t seem so bad this time and we very quickly found ourselves with boarding passes in hand and passing quickly through the TSA checkpoint. Once inside we were treated to the pleasure that is the bright and open terminal. They were quite impressed and we we wandered around a bit before making our way to the end of the center pier to watch planes for a while. They still have the issues of overlapping announcements from adjacent gates but that is something that I don’t think is going away. And they still have one of the best plane-spotting locations available. Sadly, the runway under construction at JFK is one of the two that crosses in front of the jetBlue terminal so the spotting was not as good as it was last time I visited, but there were still some good photo opportunities to be had. Oh, and the Asian food place is still really good.

One of three different *A liveried planes at the field on Sunday

Lining up to head in to the gates

A Delta jet on climb-out

All in all it was a great way to spend a few hours on a Sunday. Definitely better than being stuck in the chaos surrounding the Puerto Rico Day parade.

Cute kids on the Cayes in Belize

2009-06-12T09:18:00.001-04:00

It turns out that it isn’t possible to spend every waking moment of every day underwater enjoying the marine life of Belize. Sad, but true. The good news is that there was enough to do on land that it made the time between dives pass pretty quickly. We didn’t even have to bother with the inland jungle excursions and we still found ways to fill our time. Much of that was spent wandering around through the streets of San Pedro on Ambergris Caye or around Caye Caulker, watching the locals go about their daily business. You can learn a lot about a place by just watching folks doing their thing.

Whether it was headed to or from school or hanging out on the waterfront and performing some rather acrobatic leaps off the docks into the water, everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time.

I think that the most significant thing I learned about the Belizeans is that they have learned to relax and enjoy life, even while taking important things seriously. Definitely a good balance to strike.

Delta sees further softening in the industry; cuts more routes

2009-06-11T16:40:00.001-04:00

Delta just cannot seem to move forward in their efforts to find profits (or even smaller losses) since their merger with Northwest was completed. In an open letter sent to all employees yesterday that was also shared with the general public this morning CEO Richard Anderson and President Edward H. Bastian laid bare their concerns with the carrier’s chances.

Among the bits that the two identified as troubling are a 20% reduction in passenger revenue from last year and a 20% rise in fuel prices since the beginning of the year. The first one is hard to work against with the sever cuts in travel as the economy has suffered but the fuel pricing issue is one where I think the airlines would have been wise to see that the prices were going to start edging back up once they finally settled late last year.

Most significant, however, is the announcement of a further 10% cut in capacity coming at the end of the peak summer travel season. This is 10% off of last year’s numbers, which were already cut as the high fuel prices and low loads forced airlines to park lots of planes and cut unprofitable routes. Speaking of cutting routes, Delta is doing that, too.

The biggest loser in the route cuts is probably Cincinnati which will be losing its service to both Frankfurt and London. For a city that is supposedly a hub of a major airline they seem to be losing routes and frequencies pretty quickly there.

But even with the cuts that they announced Delta is still planning on launching a bunch of new service, too, mostly on routes where there is already stiff competition (e.g. Los Angeles – Sydney) or where there doesn’t seem to be much of a market (e.g. Pittsburgh – Paris). Oh, and they mention that they are probably going to need to trim staffing head counts but they intend to do so without involuntary furloughs if they can.

I’d like to think that someone there knows what they are doing with all of this but the more I see of the way they are running things the more I question that reality. Things are ugly and they’re likely to get worse before they get better. At least fares have stayed ridiculously low so I can still travel basically as much as I want.

Delta launches a winter (or late summer!) sale to Europe

2009-06-09T20:24:00.001-04:00

Cheap flights to Europe over the winter months are pretty typical, but they usually don’t go on sale until much later in the summer/fall season once the carriers know that folks aren’t going to pay full price. Delta has decided that they can’t afford to wait that long and have launched a pretty aggressive sale to most of their European destinations for ~$230 round-trip from New York City. That is typical of the bargain pricing that shows up in this market and having them available now is a good time to lock in a deal on a New Year’s celebration destination.

For us the destination will be Barcelona. We’ve got the long weekend booked for flights. Woohoo! Oh, and we’re the only assigned seats on the flight so that would probably explain why Delta is starting to panic a bit on future bookings and dropped the price so early in the season.

A quick update on this: The sale is actually valid starting in late August for at least some of the cities. So for folks looking to go while it is still warm there are plenty of options there, too!

A potential new tax on air travel

2009-06-08T10:47:00.001-04:00

Reading an airline ticket price these days is always an entertaining exercise. There is the base fare which is generally pretty easy to understand. And then there is a long series of letters and numbers representing various taxes and fees. These extra costs can add up to be rather significant, even more than the actual base fare in some case for travel. And now, if a group of developing countries have there way we will see another entry in that long line of taxes and fees – a tax to fund developing countries’ efforts to combat climate change.

The text of the tax was discussed at at a UN climate change conference in Bonn where it was proposed by the 50 least developed countries in the world. The target is approximately $10Bn in revenue from the tax. This is simply the latest effort from the developing nations to gain cash and support from developed countries to help fund their efforts in dealing with the effects of climate change. Previously a few billion dollars have been pledged and a few hundred million even given to the countries, but nothing that they consider significant enough.

So now they are coming after the traveling public. Folks who travel are an easy target for taxes. They are often levied by local governments and affect folks who don’t vote locally so they are easy to pass without risking reelection for the politicians. But the taxes also have a negative impact on the industry. As the prices go up discretionary spending gets reduced. In an industry that is predicted to lose $9Bn this year alone trying to extract another $10Bn seems about as foolish as actually expecting those numbers to hold.

Even worse is that the folks responsible for negotiating these taxes actually think they are a good idea:

“People are beginning to understand that innovative ideas could generate a lot of money. The Danish shipping industry, which is one of the world's largest, has said a that truly global system would work well. Denmark would endorse it,” said [Connie] Hedegaard[, the Danish environment and energy minister.]

Working to address and solve the problems faced globally is a god idea. Doing it on the back of an industry and economy that cannot support it is a horrible idea. This falls into the latter category.

Underwater off the coast of Ambergis Caye

2009-06-04T11:54:00.001-04:00

Sure, the Blue Hole may be the most famous single landmark (watermark??) off the Belizean coast, but that doesn’t mean that it has the best diving. In fact, I’d argue that the diving just offshore along the reef is significantly better, especially when the transit time to and from the dive sites is taken into account. Forget riding 2+ hours each way to get to a dive site. The reef is literally minutes from any of the many docks along the shoreline. The reef structure is still pristine, with coral fingers stretching for miles and clear, warm water all along the reef.

We dove with Chuck & Robbies Diving and couldn’t have been happier with the operation. If they weren’t running a particular trip (Blue Hole, for example) they’d make the necessary arrangements for us to get in on the other boat. And the stuff the did operate was top notch. They’re a relatively small operation so they max out with about 12 divers on the boat. Another two or three folks from the shop would be in the water with us, spotting animals and otherwise making sure things went well. I can’t recommend them as a dive operator highly enough.

Petting one of the nurse sharks on the reef

A spotted eel pokes its head out looking for a snack.

I'm a sucker for angel fish. I've spent entirely too much time and air chasing them underwater.

This eagle ray was absolutely stunning.

Another thing that the near-shore diving has going for it off Ambergis Caye is the Hol Chan Marine Park. The park is guarded by marine patrols and very strictly monitored. Yes, there is a surcharge for access but the operators work that into the package price so it doesn’t really matter. And if the extra $10 is what it takes for the dive sites to be so well preserved I’ll take it every time. Diving the Hol Chan Cut is an amazing experience. The water is shallow – the dive maxes out around 30 feet – so there is plenty of bottom time available to swim with the turtles, rays, eels, fish and sharks that call the area home. Depending on the currents the visibility can drop down a bit with silt in the water (also an effect of the shallow dive profile), but the animals are close enough that it doesn’t really matter.

One of many turtles, feeding on the grass in Hol Chan Marine Reserve

A crustacean, taking up residence in one of the many homes available.

Pretty fish & coral

I’ve been missing the diving pretty much since the moment we surfaced on that last dive. With water this beautiful and so much marine life, all just minutes off the coast, it is easy to understand why.

Lots more photos from the diving in Belize – both at the Blue Hole and just off Ambergris Caye – can be found here.

About the loss of AF447

2009-06-02T09:52:00.001-04:00

There is nothing quite like waking up to the news of a plane having gone down somewhere in the world. A mix of sadness and hope, along with a bit of “there but for the grace of god go I” all blend together. And there are generally more questions than there are answers. In this particular case it looks like the number of questions will stay ahead of the number of answers probably for the rest of time.

The plane was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday night when it disappeared in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It had departed the airspace that is under the control of Brazilian ATC and was headed towards controllers working out of Senegal. But they never received the expected communication from the plane. It should be noted here that the airspaces in question are not necessarily territorial but are just the spaces managed by the ATC in those countries to facilitate air travel around the world. So it isn’t that the plane was just off the coast of Senegal; it was very much still in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The plane does have a system that transmits mechanical issues and notes to Airbus and the carrier. This allows them to perform follow-up checks when the plane arrives at its destination. In the case of AF447 it also means that we have a very small bit of information about what was going on towards the end of the flight.

Sources within Air France reported, that the automatic message did not only report an electrical short circuit, but also the loss of cabin pressure. This information has been confirmed by FAB, who also stated, that the position of the airplane was given as N3.5777 W30.3744 in that message.

New information provided by sources within Air France suggests, that the ACARS messages of system failures started to arrive at 02:10Z indicating, that the autopilot had disengaged and the fly by wire system had changed to alternate law. Between 02:11Z and 02:13Z a flurry of messages regarding ADIRU and ISIS faults arrived, at 02:13Z PRIM 1 and SEC 1 faults were indicated, at 02:14Z the last message received was an advisory regarding cabin vertical speed. That sequence of messages could not be independently verified.

I honestly don’t know what most of that means, but things like “electrical short circuit” and “advisory regarding vertical cabin speed” are just not good. And, just now this morning, BBC and several other news outlets are reporting that debris has been spotted on the ocean surface, not too far from where the last communication was transmitted. The good news is that if they have, in fact, located the wreckage then there is a chance that there could be some answers as to what actually happened. But getting a full accounting is highly unlikely; it is, after all, a very big ocean out there.

It is a sad day in the travel world. Very sad, indeed.

United lets go of their “hold” reservations feature

2009-06-01T09:13:00.000-04:00

United Airlines made a rather significant change to their website very quietly on Friday evening, removing the option for customers to “hold” a reservation rather than just ticketing it. This has, as one might imagine, ticked off customers quite a bit. The change appeared overnight on the site, with the option disappearing and their FAQ updated with the great news:

Can I hold a reservation on united.com for purchase later?
It is no longer possible to put a reservation on hold through united.com.
Please note that any reservation booked through united.com can be canceled within 24 hours of purchase for a full refund.

Most significantly, this change means that the ability to redeem vouchers – collected for just about any in-flight problem and one of the best reasons to fly UA these days – is severely hampered. Sure, you can call in and create a booking and hold it that way, but working with the reservations agents to build a wacky routing or to take advantage of some of the other quirks in their faring systems is definitely a less than desirable option. Or you have to actually go to the airport and deal with the pain that ticketing in person involves. Both options suck.

At this point only American Airlines has an official “hold” feature still available, though there are still workarounds on most carriers. For Continental is is the “pay with cash” option. And with United it can be done by entering an invalid credit card number a few times. But losing this sort of benefit does suck.

When a mileage run is not really about the miles

2009-06-01T07:06:00.001-04:00

As crazy as the act of flying for no particular reason other than to collect the miles may be, at least it is reasonably easy to try to explain to people. Elite status and miles to redeem for a reward ticket are relatively easy to explain, even if the other person doesn’t really believe that there is any value in those things. And lots of free drinks and riding in the pointy end of the plane are also relatively well understood. But what about a trip where there aren’t really any miles to be gained, status to be had or – gasp – free drinks on board?? I recently took one such flight and thoroughly loved every minute of it, even with little concrete to gain from the trip.

No miles. No status. Nothing, except the opportunity to fly to a new (to me) airport on a new (to me) airline. And so it was that on a sunny Belizean afternoon I walked to the San Pedro airport (air strip is probably a more accurate description), walked in to the Maya Island Air ticket office and requested a seat on the next available flight from San Pedro to Caye Caulker. Fortunately for me the next flight was leaving in a scant 15 minutes. The agent at the counter made a call on the walkie-talkie to the operations center to inform them that an additional stop would be necessary on the flight – my stop. I handed over USD$25 in cash (how often do you buy an airline ticket in cash??), took my boarding pass (a laminated color-coded piece of paper) and waited out on the shaded deck for them to call our departure.

Ten sweaty despite the shade minutes later the “red boarding pass” flight was called and we walked out onto the grass, around one plane and up to the side of our Britten Norman BN-2. What great luck for me! Not just a new line on the map and a new airline, but I also got my first flight on this particular type of airplane. This was just the icing on the cake. We were assigned seats by the airline employee collecting our passes (I think it was by passenger size but I’m really not sure) and a couple minutes later we were flying at 2,500 feet over the reefs of Belize.


Looking down, shortly after takeoff from San Pedro	A boat crossing the flats between the Cayes

The flight from San Pedro to Caye Caulker is all of 13 miles long, a distance that the Britten Norman BN-2 covered in a scant 8 minutes. Actually that seems a bit slow, but neither they nor I were in much of a hurry. The flight and the landing at Caye Caulker were both uneventful and shortly after the plane pulled up to the end of the runway I was out the door and staring at the airport:

Just a hundred yards or so past the end of the runway along a sandy path and I was back on the beach, meandering my way towards the downtown area, and I use the term “downtown” loosely. There are a couple bars and restaurants and a few hotels and guest houses. And that is it. It was incredibly quiet there, which is either really nice or downright spooky, depending on your point of view.

The walk from the airport to downtown took about 20 minutes, just enough time to see what there was to see and head over to the ferry dock where I was able to purchase my return ticket to San Pedro on the local boat service. Another 20 minutes or so on the boat and I was back on Ambergris Caye.

Thus ended my 90 minute “mileage run” that had nothing to do with miles and everything to do with being just plane crazy.

Diving the Blue Hole

2009-05-29T08:37:00.000-04:00

Belize is known as a diver’s Mecca. The world’s second longest barrier reef sits just a couple minutes off the coast of Ambergris Caye and the reef system is one of the better protected natural resources on the planet. But above and beyond the phenomenal diving that is generally available in Belize there is a holy grail of sorts: the Blue Hole. The Blue Hole is rather famous, mostly for the views of it from above. It is a huge hole – over 400 feet deep – in the middle of a limestone-based reef and shallows. It also appears from the air to be almost perfectly round which makes for some great photos if you happen to be flying over top of it. But if you’re flying over it then you aren’t diving down into it, and that is really where the fun begins.

Getting out to the Blue Hole is something of an ordeal. It isn’t cheap at about $250/person and it isn’t quick at over two hours each way just for the boat ride there and back from San Pedro. But the dive operators make sure to keep their customers busy throughout the (very long) day, from arrival at the docks at 5:30-6am through to the return almost twelve hours later. Oh, and did I mention that there is a lot of diving?

Looking up from 100' below the surface in the Blue Hole

There are three dives on the day trip. The first – the Blue Hole itself – goes down to about 130 feet below the surface, deeper than just about any other commonly visited recreational dive site. The Hole isn’t teeming with aquatic life (though we did see a shark, some lobster and tons of little goby fish) so that isn’t an attraction at all. But it does have some pretty amazing underwater rock formations that come from the erosion of the limestone that forms the Hole. Unfortunately, because of the significant depth that the formations are seen at, there isn’t a whole lot of time spent viewing them. Most folks will get to spend 5-8 minutes at that depth before beginning the ascent to shallower water where there is a seemingly interminable stop to let the nitrogen seep out of the bloodstream, all while floating over the abyss and staring at a lot of nothing.

After the Blue Hole there are two other dives that fill out the rest of the day trip – Half Moon Caye Wall and The Aquarium. For many who make the trip out to the Blue Hole these are the dives that they really go for. The reefs are pristine and teeming with life. From barracuda to angelfish to eels to nurse sharks to dozens of other species that make up a typical Caribbean dive experience, the range is simply amazing.


The scorpionfish does a great job of blending in on the reef.	I was singing Heart's Barracuda quite a bit on this dive


Swimming with the turtles is always fun.	These tiny blue shrimp were fun to watch on top of the coral head.

In addition to all the diving there is a brief lunch break at Half Moon Caye. The Caye is a wildlife sanctuary and a national park and serves as a rookery for the red-footed boobie. There is an observation deck from which hundreds of the birds are visible. Probably not worth a trip in its own right unless birding is really your thing, but it makes for a nice distraction during the non-dive time of the day. And on the boat ride home there is plenty of rum punch of one sort or another being served. That certainly helps the long boat ride home pass more quickly.

Diving the Blue Hole is quite amazing and certainly is a “bucket list” item for folks who dive, but it was also probably the least fantastic dive of the week.

Lots more photos from the diving in Belize – both at the Blue Hole and just off Ambergris Caye – can be found here.

JetAmerica to launch this July; schedules shutdown for July 2010

2009-05-29T05:45:00.000-04:00

Another new carrier plans to take to the skies over America in early July, with an almost certain future – a quick failure. JetAmerica plans to operate service based out of Toledo, Ohio, just up the road from Columbus, Ohio, the recent failure home of SkyBus. It probably is no coincidence that the “brains” behind the operation happens to be the same guy. This should be interesting.

Service from Toledo will include South Bend, Indiana; Melbourne, Florida; Lansing, Michigan; Minneapolis, Minnesota and Newark, New Jersey. The service will not operate daily on any of the routes; they are taking after the Allegiant Air approach of service a couple times a week to each destination. But unlike Allegiant, the destinations being served are not particularly high demand at either end as best as I can tell. Newark and Minneapolis are hubs for Continental and Northwest (now Delta), respectively. If there was demand for those flights they probably would be operating already in many cases.

The carrier is also having trouble with the concept of pricing and their “no gimmick” claims. All tickets incur a $5 “convenience fee” for the booking, so the $9 fare sale is actually $14, with the $5 tucked into the “taxes” section of the record. Yeah, that would be a gimmick.

And they are actually operating as a scheduled charter operator rather than regular commercial service. This makes a bit of a difference when it comes to passenger rights and other details of the operational aspects of the carrier. It isn’t necessarily bad, but it certainly qualifies it as a bit sketchy. At least it means that they will have relatively new airplanes flying around for them.

Finally, they are financing a large part of this service with FAA-provided grant money from the Small Cities Air Service program. Money in this program is supposed to be used to help stimulate service to underserved markets. Toledo qualifies for this service to the tune of $400K and the local airport authority has kicked in another $200K. That’s not enough to operate an airline for very long, hence the prediction of the quick demise

It is hard to believe that folks are willing to continue throwing good money at bad ideas. Fuel prices are slowly ticking back up and the economy is rather in the tank still. Even if it weren’t the chances of success with this carrier would still be miserably low. But the guy keeps getting paid do start up these airlines and then, eventually, screw over customers and investors. That is just sad.

Lots more useful thoughts on this new airline over at Hudson Crossing.

TSA “proves” value of the ID checks at airports

2009-05-28T16:35:00.001-04:00

For years now the TSA has been trying to convince the traveling public that showing an ID at the airport checkpoint is actually somehow helping to provide security to the air travel infrastructure. They haven’t really explained how this is possible, other than claiming that they have some super master list of all the terrorists out there, except for the real terrorists because we can’t have them knowing that we know who they are. Or something like that. Still, the ID requirement has been revised and increased several times over the past few years to the point now that the TSA is pretty convinced that they know who is passing through the checkpoint.

Unless, of course, that person is on a holiday runaway with her daughter to Disney World.

A woman borrowed a former co-worker’s drivers license under the guise of needing it for work-related reasons and used that ID to buy tickets at the airport (paid cash) and then passed through the TSA screening at that same airport. The ID was also used to check in at the hotel in Orlando.

Putting aside that the woman appears to be a whack job she otherwise wasn’t a risk to the air travel system. So in that regard there isn’t really much of an issue with the fact that the TSA completely didn’t notice that the person on the ID wasn’t the same as the person standing in front of them. But the TSA is spending billions of dollars trying to perfect their ID screening efforts, with the REAL ID fiasco, hiring extra TSOs to check IDs at airports and otherwise wasting money. And the results are clear. They’ve found a few fake IDs but failed at the rather basic test of matching the person in front of them to the person on the ID. So all a terrorist would need to do is steal someone’s wallet (or buy an ID from anyone willing to sell one) and they’ve got an easy way past the security infrastructure thrown up at them. That’s awesome, though hardly a surprise. Of course, the TSA continues to claim that their security is working correctly because of the “layers” and the fact that this person wasn’t ever a threat is apparently enough for them to continue on that streak, but no thanks to the actual policies that they’ve implemented.

Along the lines of the ID checking is another new bit that the TSA is pursuing – the collection of birth date and gender from every passenger. Of course, this is supposed to work in conjunction with the aforementioned ID checking bit, so there is sufficient skepticism as to its efficacy right from the get-go. “Secure Flight,” as the program in known, is the next generation of the ID matching efforts from the TSA. In theory it means fewer false SSSS matches for additional security screenings at the checkpoint which is a good thing. But it also means more underemployed TSA employees conducting screenings at the gates rather than spending that money on something useful such as cargo screening. And, thanks to the infinite wisdom of the government, it means a ridiculous implementation schedule that is inconsistent across the industry and probably will remain ineffective for some time to come.

The TSA started requiring airlines to collect the data on May 15. But the deadline for airlines to start transmitting the data to the agency for screening — and even the deadline for the airlines to start collecting the names — are far from set in concrete.

The airlines have staggered dates for compliance, depending on each carrier’s technological capabilities and on what arrangements it has worked out with the TSA. That applies not only to the initial name collection in May but also for the Aug. 15 deadline to begin collecting birthday and gender information and transmitting all of that data to the TSA for screening and verification, agency and airline officials said.

…

"It’s my understanding that the completion of the project will be final for all channels by end of October-beginning of November 2010," said Jim Martin, the North America product market manager for Amadeus. Martin coordinated the company’s efforts to meet the new security requirements for its GDS clients.

In other words, the TSA wants the airlines to start collecting data that they cannot yet process or otherwise deal with. But the airlines must endure the costs today of implementing these systems that no one knows if the TSA will ever be able to use and which almost certainly does not actually help in the security arena. Knowing who is traveling is relatively inconsequential, and despite their claims to the contrary the TSA doesn’t really have a way to process the information anyways.

That’s our tax dollars AND the passenger security fees – costs that the government wants to significantly increase – at work. Or at least sitting around the airport talking to their friends and not really doing anything useful.

The great pupusas war, and other San Pedro dining excellence

2009-05-28T08:30:00.000-04:00

Perhaps calling it a war is a bit more hyperbole than necessary, but there are several options for pupusas in San Pedro town on Ambergris Caye, two of them happen to be right next door to each other and the quality is truly impressive. They were just one of the many incredibly satisfying and reasonably cheap meals available on the island, assuming that you’re willing to walk away from the typical tourist hotspots on the waterfront. There were some good options in that category, too, but at 3-4x the price. Both were good, but as usual the local fare generally won out.

Sarah gets started on another evening of delicious papusas at Pupuseria

The pupusas – corn meal pancakes stuffed with meat, cheese and beans (or some combination thereof and then fried) were truly delicious. A native dish of El Salvador, they are offered on Ambergris Caye by a couple competing restaurants that are literally right next to each other. Both women cook the delicious morsels on griddles right out on the street, in full view of the public. Both have their own recipes for the various stuffing options (my personal favorite was the chicken & cheese; the bean options were too runny for me) but there doesn’t seem to be too much stress in the rivalry. In fact, other than this report I’m not sure that there actually is any rivalry. Sarah, one of the proprietors of Pupuseria (on Pescadoro Drive near Black Coral Street) and a native El Salvadoran has been working her craft for nine years in Ambergris Caye and seemed as happy to be doing it this past weekend as if she had just started. Each pupusa is handmade when it is ordered, fried up fresh and served hot right to the table. There are sides of slaw and hot sauce to round out the flavor. And the best part – they are only BZD$2.50 (1USD = 2BZD) each; the bottles of soda cost almost as much. Getting a great meal for less than BZD$20 for two people is a very likely reality. There are other things on the menu but with the main option this good it isn’t really worth bothering with them.

Huevos Rancheros at My Secret Deli in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize

The other great option for local food in San Pedro comes in the form of the many delis that they have in town. There are more than a handful and keeping track of all of them proved somewhat difficult. But whether looking for a hearty breakfast or a filling lunch of rice & beans with chicken or fish – all for less than BZD$15/person – the delis are a great way to go. My Secret Deli (that’s the real name, not one that I refuse to share with you) offers up options for a variety of tastes all at very reasonable prices. For breakfast the Huevos Rancheros were quite good, as was the Belizean breakfast served with fried jacks – the Belizean entry into the “every culture has a slightly sweet fried dough option at breakfast” competition. They are puffy, doughy, deep fried and just the slightest bit sweet. Oh, and they are delicious either on their own or when used to scoop up eggs, beans and bacon.

There are also some local dining options each evening in the park at the center of town. The vendors vary based on the night, as does the quality of the food provided. But it is definitely cheap and reasonably filling. And if you’re feeling truly adventurous head over to the corner of Barrier Reef Drive and Caribeña Street where you’ll see a guy and his grill out in front of the town’s slot parlor. He’s got BBQ chicken and pork chops, as well as rice & beans. It cooks up fresh so it can take a bit of time if he doesn’t have any ready right then (better than salmonella) but it was damn good and worth the bit of wait and the BZD$15 I dropped for a VERY large meal (I had both the chicken and the pork chop that day).

Enjoying the Grouper Club wrap, the great view and a Beliken for lunch at Wild Mangoes

Moving up from the local “holes” to more tourist-focused restaurants the quality spread got a bit wider while the price point rose rather uniformly. Fido’s, right on the waterfront just north of the center of town was particularly expensive for the quality. It wasn’t bad, but there are way better options for the money (about BZD$25 for a sandwich at lunch). One of the better options at the higher end of the market is Wild Mango’s, just south of the park on the beach front. Yes, the dinners are expensive (lunch is more reasonable) but the food is top notch. The flavors blend well without being overpowering on any one front and the ingredients are ridiculously fresh. And you really cannot beat the view that comes with the meal. Looking out at crystal clear blue seas just 30 feet from the table and extending as far as the eye can see is quite a relaxing way to enjoy a fine meal.

An island institution, Elvi’s has been around seemingly forever and has been cooking up good local food that whole time. Whether you head there for the weekly Mayan buffet night on Fridays (approx. BZD$50/person) or just order up a regular meal from the menu, the local flavors shine through quite impressively. They also have the cool factor of a sand floor and a huge tree growing up through the middle of the main dining room. El Patio presents a similar menu and effect (sand floor, mostly covered outdoor seating) but the food was a notch lower in quality; the flavors were not quite as well defined.

One final note about fresh ingredients – they make all the difference in the world. The piña coladas and margaritas were all delicious because the ingredients were fresh. Apparently it is more expensive to ship in the high fructose corn syrup mixer blend crap than to use fresh lime juice or coconuts. That is a good thing for the discerning drinker. And for the not so discerning drinker the Beliken beer is local and quite refreshing.

A few other random notes on dining in San Pedro:

Lots of restaurants are closed on Tuesdays. Others are closed on Sundays. Plan appropriately.
At the more local places expect to speak more Spanish than English. Even a bit of broken Spanish (all I’ve got, really) was enough to get by, but it definitely helped.
The best value propositions for a “splurge” meal is probably lunch at Wild Mango’s. All the quality while still keeping the price point reasonable, right up until the third daiquiri kicks in.

Pupuseria

Pescadoro Drive, just south of Black Coral Street

My Secret Deli

Caribeña Street, just west of Pescadoro Drive

+501.226.3223

Elvi’s

Corner of Ambergris Street and Pescadoro Drive

Wild Mango’s

Beachfront at Tarpon Street

+501.226.2859

Reservations recommended for dinner

Fido’s

Coral Reef Drive between Pelican Street and Ambergris Street; also accessible from the beach

+501.226.2056

El Patio

Barrier Reef Drive and Black Coral Street

+501.226.3898