Month: December 2009

Gizmodo has the text of the new TSA regulations. Note that the order expires on December 30, which suggests that this was simply rushed out to persuade people that Someone Is Doing Something About It, and that we can expect revised (and hopefully more sensible) regulations to follow. Don’t hold your breath, though.

I just sent the following email to the White House via their contact page.

Last year I flew nearly 100,000 miles on business: business that generated much needed US economic activity. And I flew almost all of those miles on US airlines, which desperately need the business. Travel is stressful enough these days, without the US government indulging in “security theater” to mollify people who bleat that Something Must Be Done.
The latest TSA regulations will do nothing to make us more secure, but will be extremely burdensome to many passengers and airline staff. They will drive away passengers, especially the elderly and parents with children, at a time when airlines are struggling to avoid layoffs and bankruptcy.
The last Republican administration used fear as a way of manipulating public opinion and pandering to the neo-cons. I had thought that the Obama administration was above such cynical tricks.
Get rid of these stupid knee-jerk regulations, please. Instead of increasing security, they simply punish law-abinding travelers.

I have no idea if this will do any good, but maybe if enough people make their voices heard…..

As part of the “work” portion of this “family+work” trip to the UK, I was scheduled to do a business trip to Munich on Thursday. We’ve been staying at the Jury’s Inn close to the end of runway 27L at Heathrow, so getting in to the airport for my 6:05am flight was simple: walk across to Hatton Cross station and take the free all-night bus. Check-in was fine, ditto boarding, but then we sat at the gate for 20 minutes before we pushed back. En route to Munich, the pilot advised us that snow in the Munich area might delay things, and our approach pattern seemed to take us all over Bavaria. We parked at a remote stand, and were bussed in to the terminal, so by the time I emerged from the terminal at 9:30am I was half an hour late. Good start.
The meeting had been scheduled for 10-12. based on Google Maps estimate of a 45 minute taxi ride, plus 15 minutes for contingencies, so I jumped into the first taxi, gave the driver the address, and settled down to SMS my colleague and host that I would be late. It was snowing, but we swung onto the autobahn and were soon zipping along at typical German speeds. And then we hit a wall of red brake lights. From the chatter on the car radio, it was clear that there were numerous snow-related accidents and traffic jams around the city. My driver muttered, and then snarled, and then cut across three lanes of traffic to take an exit onto a minor road. I got used to the muttering, but the snarling became worse as we went on. It wasn’t snowing hard, but there was considerable slush even on main roads, and progress was slow. In fact it took 75 minutes to reach the destination: it was now 10:45.
I handed the driver a credit card for the 70 Euro fare. More snarling, and rummaging, and an old paper swipe machine was produced. He positioned my card, inserted the slip, swiped the slider, and ripped the slip. More snarling. Repeat. Same result. Repeat. Intense snarling.
I didn’t have 70 Euros. In fact I hadn’t bothered to get any Euros – taxis all take credit cards, right? So using the currency converter app on my iPhone, I calculated an equivalent amount in GBP and USD, demonstrated this to the driver, gave him the money, snatched a receipt, and exited as quickly as I could.
It was now 10:50am, but the others had waited patiently. Juice and coffee was distributed, and we started the meeting. It was very productive, and although a couple of people had to leave early we kept talking until around 3:00. They called me a cab (with “takes credit cards” clearly specified), and I headed back to Munich airport.
At this point I realized that I was ravenously hungry. I’d had some breakfast at 4:30am (5:30 CET), but nothing since. So when we reached the airport, I quickly verified that I couldn’t switch to an earlier flight (no way – the change fee would have been almost the same as the full fare!), and then found a restaurant and had a good early supper. At 6:30pm I headed over to the gate, to find that boarding was delayed “due to late arrival blah blah blah”. Yeah, whatever. Eventually we were bussed out to the stand, and boarded the A320. LH had screwed up, and allocated two passengers to 14F, but the flight wasn’t very full, so neither of us minded. And then we were told that there was a minor fault with a communications system, and the mechanics were working on it… But eventually we were airborne.
When I had left Heathrow, the weather had been cold (29F) and clear, and I didn’t expect anything different. Was I in for a shock! During the day a windy snowstorm had moved in, and as we descended towards LHR the ride became very bumpy. We were landing on 09L, and coming over Windsor the Airbus was bouncing around like a bronco. It was the kind of approach where passengers glance at each other, quizzically: “Is this going to turn OK? Should I be worried?” My guess is that we had crosswinds of around 15 gusting 30 out of the north, and the landing was hard and off-balance. But we got in OK.
I got the bus back to Hatton Cross and walked the five minutes to the hotel. By the time I got there, the front of my jacket was encrusted with an inch of wet snow. Snow in the morning, snow in the evening. What a day.

The other day, a friend was asking about our upcoming trip to the UK. She had flown BOS-LHR and SFO-BOS, and was puzzled why the flight time for SFO-LHR was so much less than the sum of those two flights. She was introduced to the concept of “great circle” routes, and the fact that the the great circle from SFO is 5,367 miles, and takes you up over northern Canada, while SFO-BOS-LHR is more than 600 miles longer, at 5,969 miles.
Imagine our chagrin last Monday, when UA 930 from SFO to LHR flew almost straight to BOS, and then took a southerly track to LHR, making landfall at the SW tip of Ireland. Total distance flown was 6,050 miles, and we were still 20 minutes early. (And would have been even earlier except for the now-routine hold at Ockham before descending to LHR.) The reason: tail winds of up to 170 MPH, giving us some of the highest ground speeds I’ve ever experienced.
But enough of the good stuff. I want to consider United. Specifically, why the hell would anyone want to fly United?
First, the good points.

• Economy Plus. Legroom is (almost) everything.
• Star Alliance is still the best of the alliances to accumulate frequent flier miles.
• Channel 9. Crack cocaine for the ATC junky.

But do these plusses really make up for all of the minuses?

• Price. Internationally, UA is rarely the cheapest option. On SFO-HKG, everyone undercuts them.
• IFE. The 777 we flew on had tiny seat-back screens that were invisible when the seat in front was reclined, but since there were only a handle of uninteresting video channels this was no great loss. Video on demand? Hah! And some of the long-haul fleet still have 80s-vintage overhead TV monitors.
• Food service. On our flight they advertised dinner and breakfast. With a 7pm departure, we figured (correctly) that the meal service wouldn’t begin before 8:15, so we ate before boarding and skipped dinner. “Breakfast” was a small, dried-up ham-and-cheese roll wrapped in aluminium foil and a sickly-sweet yoghurt. No tray. Juice and coffee, but no time for refills.
• Beverages? If you want alcohol, that will be $6. Only in America…
• Seats? Well, United hasn’t adopted the “shell seating” torture device that CX is now using, but in other respects the seats are pretty bad. They feel, well, worn out.
• Attentive flight attendants? Not on this flight. Unprofessional, sloppy, clumsy, inattentive… and hardly any offers of drinking water, even though the humidity was set really low.
• The Red Carpet Club? OK, the SFO International RCC isn’t bad, as RCCs go, but it still doesn’t measure up to the HKG RCC or any of Air Canada’s Maple Leaf lounges.

It’s interesting to note that on the Transpacific routes the United service is quite a bit better. They now have hot breakfast, free booze, decent lounges, and cabin crew who actually pay attention. IFE? Well, that requires investment. But why does the Transatlantic customer get shafted? Complaints (or lack thereof) from code-share partners, perhaps? Who knows….
So why do I continue to abuse myself? Is it really all about Channel 9?