The ECBC Hercules Backpack comes in five discreet colors making it great for business and leisure travel.

How do you travel with your laptop?  Some people have it in a protective sleeve inside a full-sized rollaboard, other people have it in a slimline bag that carries the laptop and almost nothing else.  Some people have it in a larger briefcase/tote along with potentially many other things.  And then there are the people who toss it in a backpack.

To date, I’ve generally carried my laptops either in a slimline bag specifically for the laptop alone, or in a tote together with a variety of other things too – paperwork and files, a book or two to read (or an eReader/tablet), accessories for the laptop, and if just a brief overnight trip, maybe a clean shirt, etc, as well.

This is ostensibly convenient, but it doesn’t take too many miles of walking long airport concourses – with a bag that ends up weighing dangerously close to 20 lbs – before one risks having one arm stretched much longer than the other.  (I just checked, the minimum load in my former tote comes to 17 lbs.)

So I’ve been increasingly interested in some type of a backpack.  Maybe it is just because I’ve been becoming more aware of such things, but it does seem like they are increasingly prevalent, even for middle-aged businessmen on business travel, as well as for younger backpackers on vacation, for mothers with a load of essentials for a young child, or for children with everything they need for the journey and the destination.

If I had a choice, I’d much rather carry a heavy weight on my back than have it hanging down off my arm.

I’ve experimented with various multi-purpose backpacks I’ve collected over the years, and none have felt quite right for the task.  They’ve either been excessively casual, or they’ve been too ‘heavy duty’ – great for a five-day hike through the forest, but a bit much for flying somewhere on business.  Others have gone too far to the opposite extreme- they’ve been too flimsy and insubstantial to protect my precious laptop (whether in a sleeve or not).  Some have been promising, but don’t sit comfortably on my shoulders when laden with a full load of ‘essentials’ inside.

So I’ve struggled on with the status quo, realizing it is not optimum, but lacking the passion to try to improve it.  And then, I bought a new laptop a week ago and accidentally ordered one that was larger (and heavier!) than I thought I was getting.  I liked it, and it was my own fault anyway that I got the 15.5″ screen model instead of the 14″ model, so I kept it, while considering it the catalyst to motivate me to get a better carrying solution.

Which brings me to my wonderful find.  The ECBC brand Hercules Laptop Backpack.

Why do I like this backpack?  I’m glad you asked the question!

In a nutshell, it combines awesome load carrying with a business smart/casual appearance.

Now, I’m a guy, so looks (at least for bags) are one of the last things on my mind, but I place reasonable importance on the appearance of my luggage, especially items that I’ll take into meetings, and items which I’ll carry on the street.  My elusive goal is to find items possessing the ideal compromise blend of ‘ordinary multinational casual’ to avoid drawing attention to yourself or your backpack in dubious foreign back streets, while also possessing quietly understated refinement that makes it not out-of-place when you pull your laptop out of it with a flourish to make your multi-million dollar presentation in the corporate boardroom.

I think this backpack offers that suitable compromise.  It doesn’t shout ‘Rob me – I’m a tasteless and rich American’ when you’re outdoors, and it doesn’t embarrass you in a business meeting, either.

So, after the backpack passed its visual test, I proceeded to give it (and me too!) the torture-test.  Ah, the things I do for you, dear reader…..

I loaded it down with two laptops, a netbook, an iPad, assorted other books and bricks, and then weighed it.  Great – 26 lbs of heaviness – 50% more than my former briefcase/tote.  I strapped the backpack to my shoulders and proceeded to recreate the experience of going through an airport.  Or, to reveal the ‘secret’ of my testing procedure, I wore it for the next 25 minutes while cooking dinner, all the time having this 26 lb weight on my shoulders.

Yes, I’d sometimes have to do things you’re not so likely to do in an airport like bend all the way down to the floor to pick up the food I’d dropped from the bench, reaching up into the top of cupboards, leaning over hot pots to stir them, spinning around and leaping to the stove when realizing ‘Uh oh, I forgot to turn that off’, and so on through a typical David-style frenetic cooking experience.

At times, in the excitement of the moment, I almost forgot I was wearing it, although now, an hour later, I will admit to a few new aches and pains.  However, I can tell you there’s no way I could have been walking or standing in an airport for 25 minutes holding my briefcase nonstop.  After even five minutes, it ceases to be fun – I love airports like Schiphol with those miniature shopping carts that are freely available everywhere in the concourses – first thing I do is to grab one of those and put my briefcase in it.

So, from a weight and balance perspective, two thumbs up.

Let me tell you about this backpack in more detail so you can decide if it might work for you, too.

Its prime mission – for me, anyway – is to safely carry my laptop.  The backpack does this more cleverly than you might think.  It has a nice padded protected pocket for the laptop that is the part closest to your back, so presumably the most protected.  The pocket is clever – it has a spacer at the bottom which you can leave in or take out, meaning that if you have a large 15.5″ or 17″ laptop, it fits in snuggly with the spacer and doesn’t slide up or down, but if you have a smaller 14″ or whatever laptop, put the spacer in and the smaller laptop also sits snugly.  The spacer itself only weighs one ounce, so there’s no perceptible weight penalty to put it in.

The manufacturer says it fits most laptops up to 17″ in size.  My 15.5″ laptop also has an extended battery on it which rudely sticks out the back another inch, which makes it larger in size than most 17″ laptops, and it managed to fit in the laptop compartment, but only just.  I also tested the smaller 14″, but with a ‘slice’ on the bottom of it which added another half-inch all around to its base thickness, and that was an easy fit.  So probably most 17″ laptops would be fine, but if you have an extra slice or extra battery ‘bit’ sticking out the back of a 17″ unit, you might want to check the return policy before buying the bag online, or try it out in the store if buying at a regular retail store.

The next nice part about the laptop storage is that you don’t need to take the laptop out to put the bag through the airport X-ray machine.  You just unzip the bag and then open it out flat on the conveyor belt with the laptop on one side of the fabric hinge and the rest of the bag on the other.  Easier and quicker, and while it happens very rarely, I know that people sometimes end up forgetting their laptop when they leave security – it is much more difficult to forget when it stays in your bag all the way through.

So, the bag’s prime mission – carry and protect the laptop – was handled perfectly well.

Now for its secondary mission – lots of space to load up with other ‘stuff’.  I managed to fit in the other things I usually travel with and still have room left over for – ah, yes, praise be – a one liter bottle of whisky in its display box, such as I might hypothetically pick up while going through Duty Free.

The ability to hold a lot of ‘stuff’ is definitely a plus, but for me – and probably for you too – the more stuff you have, the more you need it organized.  You don’t just want a great big cavernous space.  You want all the nice little loops and pockets and sections and things.  I’d give this backpack a ‘B’ grade for such features.  There were more loops for pens than I’d ever need, but no business card holders.  There was a pouch in one of the compartments, but it seemed intended to hold a reasonably large smartphone, rather than for business cards.  I like to have ideally two compartments for cards – one for mine and one for those I collect on a journey.

The outermost pocket had a zipper across it not quite 7″ from the bottom.  This was not a brilliant placement, because this would normally be the pocket I’d stuff printed out boarding passes, confirmations, and other documentation, which I usually fold in three, making for a shape measuring about 3″ x 8.5″.  So it would be a hassle to get documents in and out of this pouch – it needs another 1.5″ of depth and indeed seems gratuitously shallow – there’s easily another two or more inches of depth it could have.

The next level in has various compartments for things, and zippable pouches on both sides (this section is opened up in the picture above).  One of the pouches is see-through mesh so you know what is inside (a nice touch) and has a keyring cliphook for you to fasten your keys too, preventing a lot of agony when you get home again and start looking every which where for your keys.  Both the zippable pouches are again shallow rather than deep.

The next level is another shallow pouch, accessible from the outside.  When I first saw it I thought I’d now discovered something suitable as a document pouch, but – aaagh.  The zip is only 8.25″ wide, a quarter-inch (or more) too short to allow 8.5″ wide papers to be put in and taken out.

The next layer in (yes, lots of compartments) is the ‘main’ compartment and has an internal see-through mesh zippable pouch, a padded holder for a full size tablet, a velcro closing pouch on the other side (I’d use this to hold papers and other largish sized ‘lie flat’ materials), and a big space in the middle for all your bulkier items (such as, ahem, duty-free purchases!).

The only remaining compartment is the rear-most one, with the padded laptop pouch on one side and another pouch on the other side (also good for more papers or whatever else).

There are also zippable pouches on both exterior sides that seem ideally suited for holding bottles of beer.  Alright, they’d probably work satisfactorily for water bottles, too.

Back to the carrying capabilities of the bag, it has a nicely padded back to it so it sits more evenly against your back.  It has the typical two adjustable shoulder straps – nice and broad and padded, and has a sternum strap to hold them together when it is fully loaded (a great extra device).  Short of getting a heavy-duty pack with a waist strap, this is probably about as good and as comfortable a medium load bearing design as you can get.

Lastly, there’s a padded carry handle on the top of the backpack.

One thing that is missing is an ID holder somewhere on the backpack’s exterior – a place to put your contact details in case the backpack gets lost.

The backpacks come in five colors, all nicely muted and understated.  Most of the zip areas are black, with just a few traces of red on some of the stitching.  The ECBC logos are happily understated rather than in-your-face.

Empty, the bag weighs 2.5 pounds – my soft sided carry bag weighs 5.5 pounds – three pounds more.  So there’s a double benefit – not only does the backpack weigh three pounds less, but it makes great weights easier to manage.

Those three pounds might sound trivial, but with airlines sometimes now weighing carry-on bags (and setting ridiculously low weight limits) those three pounds could make the difference between accepted and rejected (a really scary thought – who wants to check their briefcase and trust it to the tender mercies of the baggage handlers!).  For example, with Air New Zealand and their dreadful 15lb weight limit (and their propensity to actually weigh your carry on item and enforce that limit!), the 3lb weight saving is 20% of the total 15lbs.  That’s a truly significant increase in effective net weight you can take on board with you.

Oh – the cost, yes?  $140.  It comes complete with a three-year warranty, which is nice but not essential – a backpack that you carry with you all the time is much less susceptible to airline damage than a bag you check.

I’ve seen plenty of bags for less, and some for merely half the price, and I’ve also seen plenty of bags costing more, all the way up to the nonsense prices of Tumi type bags ((~$400).  It’s an open secret that there’s a lot less than $140 of material and labor in this bag (ECBC is a US company that makes these bags from Korean materials, and using a Vietnamese company to actually make the bags) but that’s not really the point.  It seems to do the job reasonably well and is fairly priced compared to competing products.

The bag can be purchased direct from the ECBC website.  If you want faster or free shipping (and a $4 discount, too) Amazon also offers it. .

Summary

This backpack is better than most if you’re a businessman wanting a multi purpose travel/business/leisure bag for carrying a laptop and the rest of your road warrior kit.

It is very lightweight, has lots of compartments, a good multi-sized padded protective pouch for a laptop, and the TSA allow you to put it through their X-ray machines without needing to take your laptop out.  There is plenty of room for plenty of stuff, and even when loaded up to a total 26 lb weight, it remains comfortable and doesn’t slip or slide, no matter how you move.

Its pouch sizes are not ideally suited for travelers, but that seems to be its only disadvantage.  This is clearly a load bearing backpack modified for laptop carry and business travelers, rather than a briefcase modified by slapping a couple of shoulder straps on.

At $136 (Amazon) – $140 (direct) it is fairly priced and I’m currently unaware of any better bag in terms of value and features.  Overall, I’d rate this as a B+ or A- bag.  If it had slightly better internal organizers and an external zipped pouch that could fit regular tri-folded letter sized sheets, it would then get a full A rating.

Should we worry? Only a couple of weeks ago Sir Richard Branson showed us what he wears underneath his kilt. This week, he indulges in a bit of cross dressing on a competitor’s airline.

Good morning

Our Sri Lanka tour continues to create lots of interest, and we’re now up to 15 people coming, all but three being repeat travelers who have enjoyed other Travel Insider tours in the past.

I’ve mentioned several aspects of Sri Lanka and the tour in previous newsletters – for example some of the animal wildlife we’ll encounter – our safaris to see herds of elephants and leaps of leopards (yes, ‘leap’ is the term used for groups of leopards), and last week I mentioned the glorious scenic train ride we’ll enjoy.

Today I thought I’d mention a very different type of activity/attraction we’ll see.  Tiny Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is the world’s largest tea exporter, exporting 30% more tea than the world’s second largest country (Kenya).  China is the third and India the fourth largest exporter; surprisingly Britain is fifth, but remember we are talking about tea exported, not tea grown.  As witness the Cutty Sark (originally a tea clipper), Britain imports a great deal of tea, some of which it blends, brands, then re-exports.

Anyway, we’ll have a chance to visit a tea plantation and will travel through the tea growing region of Sri Lanka on our tour, so maybe our group of probably coffee drinkers at the start of the tour will leave Sri Lanka with a new liking for tea, too.

Sri Lanka is an amazing country with a great deal to see, do, enjoy and experience.  Please do come and share this wonderful tour next February with your fellow Travel Insiders.

Also attached to the newsletter this week is a review of a nifty little gadget that all travelers should have, and an article I never expected I would write – a defense of the 787 and the FAA’s approving Boeing’s battery fix.  You’ll have to read it to appreciate why.

Below, please find another reader survey for you to hopefully participate in and other items on :

• Reader Survey – 787 Safety
• Unhappy Passengers
• Happy Passengers
• Mysterious Flights Over Quincy, MA
• An Unexpected Proof that Electronic Devices are Always Safe on Planes
• Google’s Big Non-Event
• Google’s Big Success
• Some Great Hotel Insider Secrets
• An Ugly Disney Secret Revealed
• Terrorists Testing the TSA?
• And Lastly This Week….

Reader Survey – 787 Safety

The 787s are returning to the air, and while it is early days yet, no batteries have yet exploded and, most of all, no planes have crashed.  Yes, it is true that yesterday there was a different type of electrical problem on one of the extended series of test flights ANA is conducting prior to allowing its planes to carry passengers again, but it didn’t impact on the plane’s safe operation.

We were assured by the FAA that it wouldn’t allow the planes to fly again until they were “1000%” certain of the plane’s safety, and Boeing made some mathematically improbable boasts about how many hundreds of thousands of hours of research and testing went into its battery fix, now approved by the FAA and being implemented on all 787s.

So, here’s the question.  Would you be comfortable and happy to now find yourself flying on a 787 on a long over-the-water flight, far from airports to land at if an emergency occurred?  Or will you try to book away from 787 operated flights, at least for the next few months until there’s some more history under the plane’s belt?

I had asked this question a couple of months ago, before a fix was identified and approved.  It would be very interesting to see how you view the 787′s safety now that a fix has been officially approved.

Please click the appropriate link below to auto-create an empty email and send it to me.  Your response is coded into the email’s subject line.

Less worried on a 787 than on any other plane.

Totally unworried on any modern plane including the 787 operated by a reputable airline.

Somewhat nervous, but no more than on any other plane.

More anxious than with other planes, but it wouldn’t cause me to avoid the 787.

More anxious, and if there was a non-787 option with similar itinerary times and cost, I would probably choose the non-787.

More anxious, and I’d pay a small amount extra, and/or accept some scheduling inconvenience, to avoid the 787.

Sufficiently anxious to pay an appreciable amount extra, and/or accept considerable scheduling inconvenience, to avoid the 787.

I will refuse to fly the 787, at least for the next year or two.

As always, I’ll collate and report back on the results next week.

Unhappy Passengers

Remember the Candid Camera television series?  These days, we’re living in a 24/7 Candid Camera world.  There’s always someone with a cell phone video camera, and of course there’s YouTube to then share the event, whatever it may be, with the rest of the world.

Sometimes that awareness can encourage people to act more appropriately.  But sometimes, alas, the situation is already beyond repairing, and so YouTube gets a potentially viral new video.

Here’s one such example, detailing an ‘interaction’ between passengers and counter staff for China Eastern Airlines in Beijing with an exciting part of it being filmed.

The narration of the event is actually full of fascinating oblique social commentary on the evolving expectations of Chinese consumers/passengers, and even some dawning demands for passenger rights and compensation.  Wow – China, and Chinese people, are becoming very westernized, very quickly!

Well worth reading.

Happy Passengers

Quick – off the top of your head, can you name three palpable improvements in your air travel experiences last year?  Three things the airlines are doing better than previously?

Okay, unfair question.  But can you name even one?

Apparently many people can.  Or perhaps what was formerly thought of as bad has now been redefined as the new good, because according to an annual JD Power & Assocs survey, passenger satisfaction levels went sharply up last year, and now are at a level comparable to that back in 2006 (remind me – what was especially good about 2006, anyway?).

The top rated ‘traditional’ airline was Alaska Airlines, scoring 717 points out of a maximum of 1000.  Second came Delta, then Air Canada, American, United, and US Airways last (with a score of 630).

For low-cost carriers, Jetblue took top honors, followed by Southwest.  Both scored higher than the top traditional airline, getting 787 and 770 points respectively.

Passenger satisfaction was most strongly up in the category that scored boarding, deplaning, and baggage handling (an average increase of 17 points), followed by the check-in experience (up 15 points) and the airplanes flown on (also up 15 points).

The strangest result?  Although low-cost airlines scored higher overall than ‘full service’ airlines (well, that’s a strange and significant result in and of itself), passengers were less happy with the cost and fees of the low-cost airlines than they were with the full service airlines.

Overall, satisfaction with traditional carriers went up 16 points to 663 points, while satisfaction with low-cost carriers stayed almost unchanged, with a score of 755 (up one point from last year).

Here’s the JD Powers announcement, which has a link within it to more detailed results.

Mysterious Flights Over Quincy, MA

Quincy, Mass (located on the coast, maybe ten miles south of Boston), was recently in the news for having a mysterious foul stench pervading the town.  The odor has now been attributed to a type of rotting algae that gives off hydrogen sulphide gas, the smell associated with rotten eggs.  Although this article suggests the smell is harmless, in actual fact the gas is more poisonous than hydrogen cyanide (the gas used in gas chambers).

Anyway, Quincy is back in the news, this time for a mysterious plane flying low and slow overhead all night long on cloudless nights.  The FAA refuse to disclose who is operating the plane (thought to be a single engine Cessna) or why.  The FAA refuses to say if it is some sort of law enforcement action and also refuses to say if the plane’s operations are safe or if they denote some sort of danger.

Details – such as they are – here.

It is unsurprising that some people have connected the two incidents, and equally unsurprising that some people suspect there is a UFO at the root of it all.  But until we’re told exactly who is operating the plane and what they’re doing – or at least given a plausible possibility, such as the explanation for the smell, we’re all left guessing.

An Unexpected Proof that Electronic Devices are Always Safe on Planes

Another aviation mystery is why the FAA continues to dig its feet in and make ‘progress’ as slowly as it can (and you’ve got to believe that’s really slowly) on the subject of updating its restrictions on using electronic devices on planes.

The proof, such as it is, of the safety of such devices?  Simply this – lots of devices are left on by passengers at present.  Can you guess what percentage of passengers admit to leaving electronics on during take-off and landing phases of flights?

A recent survey shows that 30% of passengers will confess to this sin, so one wonders how large the number truly is; to say nothing of all the people who don’t realize that ‘turning off’ means more than just blanking the screen of their phone or activating the airplane mode.

With only 30% of passengers leaving devices on, that means on a typical single-aisle plane with say 170 passengers, 50 of those passengers have not turned off their device – or, quite possibly, devices.  Don’t forget the pilots, who are lawfully allowed to leave their devices on (even though the devices in the cockpit are the closest to the cockpit electronics and so presumably the ones most likely to send the plane into an impromptu nosedive).  So, maybe 60 or more devices are on at present during these ‘sensitive’ parts of a flight, with no ill effects.

We occasionally continue to hear stories of how a plane developed some sort of anomalous twitch of one of its instruments, and nothing the pilots could do would solve the problem until one of the passengers admitted to leaving his phone on.  He switched the phone off, and the plane miraculously returned to normal flight again.

Call me cynical, if you like, but I do not believe any of these urban legends.  Everyone – whether they are for or against allowing electronics to remain on – accepts that there are currently no officially confirmed readily duplicable examples of consumer electronics interfering with aviation electronics.  You can be sure that if there was even a single scenario where some unlikely pairing of circumstances and equipment could consistently trigger a problem event, that fact would be shouted from the roof-tops by the same ultra-risk-averse people who believe that pocket knives on planes are an appallingly imprudent thing to allow.

Oh – one more thing.  If there was a known vulnerability, it would be quickly resolved – it would be beyond dangerous to leave it unaddressed, particularly with so many electronic devices being deliberately or accidentally left on.

Google’s Big Non-Event

Google’s annual developer conference/extravaganza, ‘Google I/O’, has been underway this week.

Last year’s conference saw the release of a new version of Android and Google’s first ever tablet (the Nexus 7), plus a flashy presentation built around their still being developed Google Glass product.

Anticipation was high for some exciting new hardware releases at this year’s event.  It seemed reasonable to expect a new version of the year old Nexus 7, particularly now that there is a competing mini-iPad (the iPad mini came out in November last year).  People were also hoping for/predicting a new successor to the Nexus 4 phone (which came out in November and has been in desperately short supply/high demand ever since) and an update to Android.

None of these things happened.

Sure, Google did announce some new software, including enhancements to its Google + product that sort of competes with Facebook, better chatting integration in with its other communications offerings, enhanced free cloud storage, a new music streaming service for $10/month, and – the thing that will probably most directly impact on many of us – improvements to its Maps program.

But no new hardware, other than Samsung making nice with Google and hiding whatever it might truly feel about its uncomfortable partnership.  Samsung released a ‘plain’ version of its new Galaxy S4 phone without the Samsung added-on software ‘enhancements’.

But this was massively less than the two different hoped for Nexus 4 successors – one probably to be built by LG, the same company that makes the Nexus 4, and the other to be created by Google’s new subsidiary company, Motorola.

Rumor mills are now desperately seeking for a new possible release date for the still expected latest generation of Google hardware goodies.

Google’s Big Success

The latest data on smartphone sales is out, comparing the first quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2012.

Overall, smartphone sales continue to skyrocket up, with a 42% growth recorded.  Google’s Android OS continues to take more and more market share, and has increased from a 59% share in 2012 to a 75% share in 2013.

Some of that share came at the expense of Apple’s iOS, which dropped from a 23% share to a 17% share, but the total market now controlled by either Apple or Google has increased from 82% to 92%, leaving very little for other providers.

Amazingly, the Windows product now comes in at third place, with a 3.2% market share, closely followed by Blackberry with 2.9%.  Nothing else has more than 1%.

Some people have pointed to the ‘success’ of Windows Phone as validating the Microsoft/Nokia partnership, but it is interesting to note that last year, total shipments of Nokia/Symbian phones and Microsoft phones came to 8.8% of the market; this year, Symbian and Microsoft combined comes to only 3.8%.  So clearly ‘success’ is a very relative measure.

Blackberry’s poor showing (6.4% last year, 2.9% this year) is not unexpected and may not be very relevant, because their new phones only started to ship towards the end of the first quarter.  It will be more interesting to see the results for this current quarter (and the one beyond this one), and my guess is that with the surge in sales this quarter, Blackberry will claw back the third place from Microsoft.  True market share relativity will only start to become apparent after the initial surge of demand quietens down to sustainable levels of ongoing sales, and at that point, it is anyone’s guess where Microsoft and Blackberry will find themselves.

It is also interesting to note the significant drop of share that Apple has suffered – not something you’d guess at from the ongoing excellent publicity that Apple generates for itself.  Currently, it seems there may be delays in Apple’s release of a successor to its present top-of-the-line iPhone 5, a delay which must surely be hurting it with each passing new Android model of phone that comes out to compete with the iPhone 5.

How long before the iPhone fades to irrelevance, and the lost halo effect from its brief super-nova role in the smartphone universe depresses interest in Apple’s tablets and Mac computer devices, too?

Interestingly, Apple is losing the smartphone war in two directions.  First, its hardware is losing market share.  Secondly, its apps are losing out as well.  Many people now use Google Maps rather than the Apple product on their iPhones and iPads, many people use Gmail rather than the Apple product, many people now use Chrome rather than the Apple browser, and Google’s intelligent assistant (Google Now) seems to be beating Siri in terms of the breadth of things it can do and help you with.

One could argue that the porting of Google apps to the iPhone is actually saving the iPhone, and that without them, the iPhone’s decline would be hastened even further.  Whether that is true or not, what is clear is that Google’s hold on the smartphone market, either directly through Android, or indirectly through its apps on iPhones, is massive.  Let’s hope they can be trusted with that much market control.

The subject of how the iPhone is being commoditized is considered further in this interesting article.

Some Great Hotel Insider Secrets

Would you like to know the most certain way to get a hotel upgrade, and the best way to complain if you have problems with your stay?  Oh yes, and how to get out of paying for your mini-bar charges (well, at least one night’s worth).

Here’s an article that starts off very weakly with the first of its ten hotel secrets, but if you keep reading, some of the others are winners.

An Ugly Disney Secret Revealed

I’ve commented before that there sometimes seems to be a statistically unlikely number of disabled people at Disneyland.  But of course, who would be as churlish as to complain about, for once in their lives, such people being treated as special in the nicest possible meaning of the term, and getting to go to the front of every line and straight on to every ride.  And how kind of Disney to also extend the courtesy to the people who care for the afflicted individuals too, allowing up to six other people to accompany each disabled person and get similar top priority line-busting privileges.

It is also heartwarming to see how many friends and family members each disabled person has.

But – could it be that there’s more than meets the eye to this?  Alas, that does indeed seem to be the case.  If you know ‘a friend of a friend’ and are willing to pay $130 an hour, you can arrange for a disabled person to accompany you on your Disney day, and thereby enjoy all the privileges of accompanying a disabled person.  Lines that take normal people hours to stand in, you get zipped through in as many minutes.

This article tells the ugly story of how some people shamelessly exploit Disney’s goodwill through this secret loophole.

Terrorists Testing the TSA?

Here’s an interesting story of a Saudi man who was arrested at Detroit airport when he arrived, carrying a pressure cooker with him.  The actual arrestable offense was having an altered passport, but he offered very thin excuses for why he was traveling with a pressure cooker (you almost certainly realize that pressure cookers are coming under greater scrutiny now – they’ve been the container of choice for IEDs in the Iraq for many years, and were used in the Boston Bombing a couple of weeks ago too).

A little known fact, but one I’ve heard from several flight attendants on some international routes, is that they are continually being probed (hmmm – perhaps ‘tested’ is a better word!) by people on their flights who they believe to be researching the security measures on the flights.

Passengers will act strangely to see if it brings any consequence to it, and will even try to get into trouble to see if that causes an Air Marshal to reveal himself or not, enabling them to build up a comprehensive understanding of what they can and can’t get away with, and a feeling for which flights are most likely to have Air Marshals, and what they look like.

While this could be benign – the man says he has no idea how it is that a couple of pages were missing from his passport, and he was bringing the pressure cooker for a relative to ‘make lamb’ in, maybe it was also another probe by terrorists who are keen to see what might happen variously with a pressure cooker or a dodgy passport.

And Lastly This Week…..

They say you know you’re getting old when the policemen look young.  For most of us, we hopefully have more contact with pilots than policemen, and if you’re worried that the pilots are starting to look young, the good news is that it may not be just because you’re getting old.

Perhaps the pilot of this plane was so young that he had yet to lose his fear of the dark?

As you may be aware, I consider Facebook to be the tool of the devil, and Twitter to be its handmaiden.  Apparently, I’m not the only one to feel that way.  The Saudi religious police agree with me.

Hmmm – maybe Twitter ain’t such a bad thing after all…..

Until next week, may your travels by blessed, but perhaps not by the Saudi religious police

David.

One of the failed batteries.

In the past, we have regularly been fairly critical of Boeing’s 787 battery problems and indeed, much to do with the plane in general.

Furthermore, we are uncomfortable with the FAA’s approved ‘fix’ that has been put in place.  It ignores the underlying causes of the battery problems, and was rushed into place prior to allowing the NTSB to make suggestions as to the problem’s cause and appropriate solutions.

But today we find ourselves in the unexpected position of defending both Boeing and the FAA.

First, let’s paint the picture as it has now become.  Our three points of greatest concern are :

• The root cause of the two battery fires remains unidentified.  Maybe there are some other electrical system issues that might subsequently manifest themselves in other forms, too.
• We have not been clearly advised about what increased level of risk to safe flight may result from an inoperable battery.  Does it matter or not matter if either or both batteries (safely) fail in mid-flight?
• The accepted battery safety box solution seeks to reassure us that if/when the batteries might again burst into flames, the fire won’t threaten the safety of the plane.  But, as far as we’re aware, this  hasn’t actually been proven by any actual in-flight testing of burning batteries on a 787.

We do not feel the FAA was sufficiently participative in the initial battery approval process, which now self-evidently failed to create a safe battery system, we’re concerned that the fix the FAA has now accepted has not been sufficiently tested to guarantee its efficacy, and we’re very surprised that the FAA has not restricted the plane’s approval for three hour extended range operations (ETOPS), approval which usually requires some two years of demonstrated safe operations as a prerequisite.

But, as we write this, the 787 fleet of 50 planes are steadily returning to the air, Boeing has resumed delivering new planes to airlines, and although there has already been another electrical problem reported on one of them, it did not involve the batteries and was not a critical issue risking the safety of the plane.

Maybe we are wrong to expect a more thorough appreciation of the battery problem and a higher standard of solution.  The thing is, while we have an overview appreciation of the issue and some personal feelings about the subject of aviation safety, we’re not an expert.  All we can really do is expose the issue as clearly as possible and ensure that the FAA is aware of the public interest and that its actions are made public.  The FAA is accountable to our government and therefore, indirectly, to ourselves, and if there is clear evidence of inappropriate approvals being granted, then our redress is presumably through the Congressional oversight route (or possibly the Administrative Procedure Act).

But is this being too passive?  Do we all, as passengers – as the people who could be on a plane if it subsequently crashes and burns – have some right as an affected party to participate in the original airplane evaluation and approval processes conducted by the FAA?

Conventional wisdom might argue that we don’t – and shouldn’t – have this right.  The FAA is there as our proxy.  The FAA has the specific skills to evaluate airplanes, and has the formal processes and procedures that provide certainty for airplane designers/manufacturers and airlines to know what needs to be done to obtain certification.

In theory, it sets objective standards and then measures compliance with them.  If ordinary people were allowed to participate in the approval process, things could become unmanageably complex and outcomes unpredictable.  Should the same people who shriek at the TSA for allowing tiny pocket knives onto planes now be setting the standards for airplane design and safety, too?  Or, if you’re on the other side of the pocket knives on planes issue, should the same people who lackadaisically would be happy to see passengers with knives of any size on planes be the ones we delegate safety making decisions too?

Or – worst case scenario of all – should we have a public panel in equal measures supporting and opposing each and every issue, and unable to find a middle ground to compromise on?

While we can’t actively participate in the approval process, there are some legal maneuvers that might be open to concerned people if they feel the FAA has not appropriately discharged its responsibilities and has incorrectly approved an airplane as safe.

As a side-bar comment, we should point out that proving an airplane is safe (or, for that matter, proving it to be dangerous) is a very difficult thing to do.  It is really only when a plane crashes and burns that one can start to ascertain the reality of weaknesses and risks, and even then, determining the at-fault components and systems and the interplay between different aspects of the plane’s operation and maintenance and everything is both complex and surprisingly subjective.  Just like computer problems are sometimes difficult to establish as being hardware or software based, plane problems are sometimes hard to categorize as design or maintenance issues.

Proving a plane (that has not crashed repeatedly) to be unsafe is a bit like proving medical malpractice in a case where the doctor’s patients are all alive and well.

Anyway, with all that as background, this week saw the group Flyers Rights blow the dust off its cape and leap into the fray, by petitioning the FAA to reduce the 787′s ETOPS certification down from three to two hours.  There is a copy of their supporting note on their website, and if you go read it, there’s one thing I urge you to do.

The note seems to be fairly well written, and bases its reasoning on a series of attached exhibits recording the opinions of people apparently expert on the matter.  But only Exhibit 2, from a person with background in batteries, is arguably relevant, and while that expert expresses concern about the battery safety, and admits to knowing little about the Boeing fix, he says he is pleased that the battery safety box design would vent the gases from a battery explosion/fire out of the plane.

Exhibit 3 is a series of internet article clips and an email sent by the cited professor to a group of people in which he says he does not know the answer to the questions he raises!

This is hardly compelling testimony, and we gather that the gentleman in question did not know and was surprised to learn that his email is now being offered to the FAA in support of Flyers Rights’ claims.

One wonders why Flyers Rights didn’t at the very least get his permission, and perhaps ask him for a more directly on topic commentary in a proper legal affidavit form.

Exhibit 4, while offered in support of their claim about the inadequacy of Boeing’s fix, contains nothing more than an internet clip that was published before the Boeing fix was announced, quoting a person who was merely criticizing the original battery approval process and totally silent about the fix.

As such, it seems to have no relevance to their claims at all, and it is impossible to understand how they felt that comments about the original battery certification process, which incontrovertibly was flawed, have any bearing on the (at the time not yet even disclosed) future fix to the battery problem that Boeing would subsequently propose.

As for exhibit 5 – oh, wait.  There is no exhibit 5.  The next exhibit is number six (and even more totally irrelevant to their pleading).

Most of all, just about everything Flyers Rights say is off topic.  They are concerned with the battery reliability, and while we agree it is a matter to be concerned about, Boeing has essentially conceded that the batteries might be unreliable and might fail again.  Boeing’s fix was not to make the batteries guaranteed to be safe.  Its fix was to make the consequences of any subsequent battery failure benign rather than threatening to the safety of the plane.

The material from Flyers Rights does not seem to address this – surely central and most important – point at all.

Flyers Rights calls on the FAA to create a new advisory panel consisting of battery safety experts plus representatives of passengers and fight crew organizations, with the panel being charged with making recommendations (although it isn’t clear exactly on what they would be recommending).

Do we really want the drunken passenger one row over from you, the rude nasty flight attendant who has just called in a police complaint about you, and the passive pilot up front who agrees to make an emergency landing so you can be hauled off the plane by police as a suspected terrorist to be the people who know sit on a panel advising the FAA about battery safety?

What sort of expert advice could they offer?  Isn’t this already the responsibility of the NTSB (which, in our opinion, does an excellent job of such things)?

Noting also the FAA’s disdain for NTSB advice, how persuasive would the mindless fears of a passenger who may be scared of flying to start with, and a flight attendant who is terrified of passengers with pocket knives actually be?  How assertive about anything would a pilot who lacks the fortitude to stand up to the outrageous demands of his flight attendants be?

Most of all, what is the point of the whole bureaucratic process?  An advisory panel’s recommendations hardly carry much persuasive weight.

We continue to be concerned about the 787′s battery issues.  We’d like to see a clear explanation of what the impacts are on the continued safe operation of the plane if either or both of its onboard batteries fail, and we’d like to see much greater testing and proof of the efficacy of the battery safety box solution that Boeing has created.

But it does seem clear to us that the point of fixation for Flyers Rights – the underlying safety of the battery itself – is not central to the problem as it now remains.  Everyone has agreed the batteries might fail again, that’s no longer the issue.  The issue surely should be what could happen if – when – the batteries next fail.

Beyond that, we are concerned at the suggestion that non-technical passenger rights groups should be afforded a voice in technical determinations of airplane functionality.  The displayed inability of Flyers Rights to grasp the reality of the current situation seems to speak convincingly against their claim that they should be afforded a voice at the table.

An easy way to check your bag’s weight prior to heading to the airport.

News reports this week disclose that the merged American Airlines  is projected to take in over a billion dollars a year in luggage fees.  That’s assuming no further increases in luggage fees, and we both know that there’s every chance that all airlines will continue to push the envelope of luggage fees as aggressively as they can.

These days you can be up for $100 or more if your suitcase is even a single pound over its weight limit, and with the weight limit being a mere 50 lbs, it doesn’t take a lot of stuff to push you perilously close to that magic number.  Some airlines are now starting to weigh carry-on items too, and to restrict those to sometimes impossibly low limits.  Knowing the weight of everything we travel with is becoming increasingly essential.

Being one of the world’s worst over-packers, a luggage scale has been a life-saver – well, yes, that’s an exaggeration, but definitely a penalty fee saver.

Originally I used to use the bathroom scales, but I didn’t consider them to be sufficiently accurate.  I want to be able to pack up to about 49lbs – that way I’ve got a pound or so margin for ‘what say my scale is wrong, or what say the airline scale is wrong’, and with the bathroom scale always seeming to show my own weight as much higher than I’m sure it is (hmmm….) I felt I needed a more accurate device so as to be able to safely pack up closer to the 50lb limit (which is really only little more than 35lbs of actual stuff once you subtract out the weight of the suitcase itself.

The last gadget for weighing my suitcases stopped working immediately prior to my last trip, leaving me in a panic of ‘oh no, how heavy is this’ and no way to clearly answer the question.

I was tempted to get a mechanical scale, because the last electronic unit not only failed, but also had a voracious appetite for batteries.  But as best I could ascertain from some testing and careful reading of reviews, most of the mechanical scales seem to be of limited accuracy, and accuracy was the prime goal for me.

I’ve also alternated as to if I want a device that I’d take with me, or just get a device that I keep at home and use ‘dead reckoning’ to calculate the changes in total suitcase weight during the course of a journey.  In the past, with heavier devices weighing more than half a pound, I’ve preferred to use the ‘dead reckoning’ approach to things.

I’ll weigh the suitcase before I put items in it I know I’ll leave behind, so I can start with a net weight that tells me how much additional stuff I can buy to take back with me.  That has usually worked reasonably well, but I realized I was ending up leaving myself more ‘safety margin’ in my calculations (ie a pound or two or three) than the weight of a more modern lightweight portable scale (ie less than half a pound), plus it was a hassle to try and keep a running total of things during the course of a journey (exactly how much does a bottle of whisky weigh, anyway?).

So I decided I wanted something light-weight and small that I could take with me.

The field was narrowing down.  And happily, units these days are both lighter and less expensive than they formerly were.

There was one other must have feature I wanted.  The unit needed to have an ‘auto-lock and beep’ feature so you could simply lift up a bag then wait until it beeped, then put the bag down and see the weight frozen on the display.  Without that, you end up needing to contort yourself to both lift your suitcase off the ground with the scale and look at the weight display on it.  Not easy.

A ‘would be nice but not vital’ feature was a unit with a strap rather than a hook – some of the hook shapes didn’t fit well around some of the objects I would weigh, a strap seemed more fully versatile.

So, mix that all up, and what comes out?  For my money (ie $19.95 on Amazon) it seems the EatSmart Precision Voyager Digital Luggage Scale is the best choice.  It has all the features I want, is extremely well reviewed, and weighs up to 110lbs in 0.1lb increments (that’s not the same as promising 0.1lb accuracy, but at least it is a start in that direction).

In using the item, which weighs a mere 5.5 ounces, I really liked its backlit display (my last unit had no light), and I also liked its auto power-off feature.  Perhaps the lack of an auto-off feature was one of the reasons why my last unit would go through batteries so quickly? 

Talking about batteries, a small downside is that the unit takes a button type battery rather than a regular AA or AAA battery.  It is a very common CR2032 type battery, but I don’t usually keep a supply of them at home. That will be a hassle when it needs to be replaced, which I fully expect to be at the least convenient time, but fortunately the unit has a low battery warning, and I’ve resolved to simply get a spare CR2032 battery next time I’m at a supermarket to have for whenever it needs replacing.  The batteries can cost as little as 10c each in bulk on Amazon, so it isn’t a huge cost item.

The unit will weigh up to 110 lbs.  I can’t think of a time when I might need that amount of capacity – usually I’m struggling with a 50lb limit and sometimes a 70 lb limit, so one should definitely seek a unit that will go over 70 lbs.  It can also be set to kilograms, and unlike some units, it doesn’t default automatically to kg and require you to switch it over to pounds each time you use it.

Oh – and in case this unit should also fail, it comes with a generous two-year warranty.

Summary

The EatSmart Luggage Scale is a great device, enabling you to confidently pack right up to your weight limit before flying somewhere.  It only weighs 5.5 ounces, so you can take it with you and use it to weigh your bag prior to your return, too – almost as valuable a function as knowing the bag weight at the start of your journey.

Saving you from a single overweight surcharge will repay the cost of this $19.95 device many times over.  And saving you from anxious uncertainty as you approach the weighing machine at the airport is a great comfort, too.

Recommended – great for you, and also as a ‘stocking stuffer’ for friends and family.

A beautiful scenic train ride through tunnels, over bridges and past waterfalls is one of the highlights of our Sri Lanka tour in February 2014.

Good morning

Well, here I am, wrestling with my new enemy – Windows 8.

Polite words fail me when it comes to expressing the degree of total outrage I feel as I struggle to fight the impositions and idiocies of this new operating system.

I’ll spare you the diatribe for now, but do read on to the item below if you’d like to know more about why, for most normal people, and even those of us who dare to think of ourselves as highly computer competent, suicide is a better choice than buying Windows 8.  Indeed, consider Win8 as ‘assisted suicide’ – the raised blood pressure you’ll experience struggling with its unnecessary idiocies is sure to hurry along ‘the big one’.

Phew.  After the stresses of Windows 8, I definitely need a calm relaxing break.  And the good news is, there will be exactly that, albeit not until February next year.  Our Sri Lanka Nature’s Paradise Tour met with a rousing response last week, and we now have 12 people signed up to participate in this tour.

There’s plenty of room for another 12, and maybe even another 12 after that.  So please do go have a look at what it is that 12 fellow readers have already rushed to participate in, and then please do choose to come and add to our group.

What else this week?  There’s a separate item on a neat little speaker unit for your phone or tablet, and below we have the results of last week’s reader survey, plus more items on matters such as :

• Knives on Planes Reader Survey
• Sleeping Pilots
• No Pilots At All
• Naughty Airlines Part 1
• Naughty Airlines Part 2
• Guess What Happens When Airlines Cut Back
• The True Impact of an AA/US Merger
• More Money Saving Strategies (For You, that is)
• Spirit Shows the Irony of Ever Cheaper Long Distance Costs
• How Much Would You Pay to Sleep Between Flights
• Vegas Buffet Extravaganza
• Are We Winning, Redefining, and/or Extending the War on Terror?
• The Nightmare That Is Windows 8
• And Lastly This Week….

Knives on Planes Reader Survey

Last week we asked you how you felt about the TSA possibly allowing small short bladed (under 2.36″ long and less than 0.5″ wide) pocket knives back on planes.  The TSA had announced it would fall in line with international practice and allow them once more, but after a lot of criticism and pressure it then reversed itself and said it would ‘study the matter further’ before deciding what to do.

Part of the chorus of complaints was a claim that a survey by a travel agency had shown that 73% of their customers (described as ‘the majority of Americans’) were opposed to allowing knives back on planes.  This claim triggered by BS meter, and so I asked you, last week, what you thought.

Sure enough, rather than 73% opposed, the survey showed that only 33% of readers are against allowing knives on planes, compared to 56% for.

As you may have guessed, I strongly support this common sense measure too, and I totally don’t understand why anyone would oppose it.  A reader wrote in against it, saying

My husband is a  retired Continental pilot and held senior positions in the company.

He has expressed that the allowing of such items is insane considering 9 11 2001 and the bombing in Boston.  It would only provide another opportunity for those bent on terrorist destruction.

My son and his wife are flight attendants for United and they too agree considering what the terrorists did to flight attendant on 9 11 2001!As a former flight attendant I too, agree with my husband and son……..NO KNIVES!!!!

Now, let’s ignore the very weak link between knives on planes and the Boston bombing, and let’s also ignore the dubious degree of expertise that pilots or flight attendants have when it comes to security matters.

Remember, these ‘security experts’ are the same people who regularly conspire to throw passengers off planes and into federal prisons as alleged terrorists, even though the passengers have done nothing worse than ask for a drink to be served or take a photo of the cabin interior.

I am genuinely curious why some people are so vehemently opposed to allowing knives back on planes, so wrote back politely and positively.  Why are some people so terrified about knives and conflating the issue to now be related not only to 9/11 but also the Boston bombing, too?  Maybe pilots and flight attendants truly do know more than me about this.

So, I wrote :

Hi,

Thanks for writing.

Perhaps you could explain to me how it is for decades and decades, knives were never a problem.  And, as you surely know, knives were not used on 9/11 either.

Today we have armed pilots, reinforced cockpit doors, air marshals, self-defense trained flight attendants, and aggressive fellow passengers willing to engage troublesome passengers/attackers – none of which we had prior to 9/11.

So please tell me how a less than 2.5” bladed pocket knife is a danger now when it never has been in the past.  I just can’t comprehend what threat they pose.

Oh, and as another reader pointed out, what about improvised weapons?  Take a wine bottle, smash it, and don’t you have something every bit as fearsome as a knife.  And so on and so on.  To use your terms, those bent on terrorist destruction already have a multitude of ways to attempt such actions.

Almost a week later, and no reply has been received.

So here’s my request to all of you who are so strongly opposed to allowing knives on planes – the same knives that people can legally carry everywhere else in the country, and can fly with too, just about everywhere else in the world.

Can you answer these questions?  If so, please comment in the blog entry for this newsletter.  The majority of us who seek a safe simple return to carrying these tiny pocket knives are truly curious.

Sleeping Pilots

It is an open secret that pilots like their shut-eye at least as much as anyone else cursed with a deadly dull and boring job and no immediate supervision.

So it is unsurprising that they take naps during the long slow parts of flights, particularly at night, and when their body clock is telling them they should be sleeping anyway.  But usually, one of the pilots struggles to stay awake just in case something might happen that isn’t accompanied by a loud alarm or voice announcement.

So how to respond to this story about the pilots on an Air India A320 flying from Bangkok to New Delhi ?  It is actually a fairly short flight, after allowing for time on the ground, time up to cruise, and then time down again at the other end, there’s less than three hours in the middle; and there’s some moderately congested air-space along the way too.

Anyway, the two pilots on this flight both left the cockpit and went to have a sleep in a couple of empty business class seats.  But, not to worry, they instructed two flight attendants on how to ‘mind the shop’ while they were having a nap.

All went well for an uncertain amount of time variously described as 20 minutes, 40 minutes, or ‘the bulk of the flight’, until, ooops, one of the flight attendants somehow knocked off the auto-pilot, but fortunately a pilot was able to get back to the cabin before the plane spiraled into a steep nosedive to the group.

Bizarrely, Air India denies the event took place, although it seems clear that it did.

No Pilots At All

From both pilots asleep in business class seats, leaving an empty cockpit other than for flight attendants who ‘accidentally knock off the auto-pilot’, it is only a small step to no pilots at all.  Maybe it is a step we are almost ready to take.

Pilots will hate me for saying this, but planes already fly themselves most of the time.  The job of the pilot is more to program the auto-pilot and to keep track of the paperwork than it is to actually fly the plane; indeed, even when ‘flying’ the plane, they have auto-rudders, auto-throttles, auto-brakes, cruise control, auto-altitude setting, auto-followers (dial the heading indicator bug on the plane computer and the plane follows your instructions) and auto-just-about-everything-else.

One could also wryly observe that when things do go wrong and the automatic systems fail, the pilots many times either make things worse (ie the Air France AF447 crash in the Atlantic or the Colgan Air 3407 crash in upstate NY) or are unable to solve the problem in time (last week’s 747 crash on take-off at Baghram).  Pilot error is a large part of all plane crashes – if we eliminate the pilots, might air travel become safer?  There’s an outside the box thought that few dare to express!

We’re not denying there was a time when pilots on planes were essential, and we’ll even concede that maybe there’s a rare need for them now, too, but we wonder, in such a case, if the pilots couldn’t be flying the plane remotely, the same way drones are flown.

I’ve been saying this for some years; now others are starting to join me.  Here’s an interesting article quoting former pilots no less, plus professors at MIT and  NM State Uni, all of whom are anticipating either pilotless or remote piloted planes as a soon to become reality.  I’m not too sure about the ‘soon’ – there’s a lot of public perception issues to be addressed first before most passengers will be comfortable with the concept, no matter how technologically sound it may be.

It isn’t all that long ago that a plane needed a pilot, co-pilot, engineer, navigator and radio operator.  Now we get by with two pilots – how long before two becomes one, and one becomes none?

On the other hand, a remotely piloted or an auto-piloted plane is a very worrying thought when one considers the growing attention being given to the risks of planes being hacked and taken over by remote computer hackers.

Naughty Airlines Part 1

Seven airlines (Air Canada, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Delta, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa and United) are being sued in British Columbia for allegedly misrepresenting fuel surcharges as being a tax on passenger tickets.

The class action lawsuit seeks both an injunction to prevent the airlines continuing to misrepresent their fuel surcharges, and also – get this – a full refund back to passengers of all amounts collected inappropriately – amounts often totalling many hundreds of dollars per ticket.  As we all know, many times the ‘fuel surcharge’ on a ticket is greater than the base fare – this would be poetic justice indeed if the airlines had to now refund some years worth of their taxes/fuel surcharges.

Unsurprisingly, it is the largest ever class action lawsuit in the province.

More details here.

Naughty Airlines Part 2

I wrote recently about reverse direction fares – how it is sometimes cheaper to buy a ticket from Point B to Point A and back, rather than from Point A to B and back.  In particular, I pointed out this was more commonly an opportunity for savvy travelers on international routes rather than domestically within the US.

Maybe Mr Couzens in England read the article, because he did some research and discovered that for travel between Europe and Britain, Ryanair commonly charged up to almost 50% more for roundtrips originating in the UK and going to somewhere in the EU than for a roundtrip originating at the destination and going to the UK.

In his case, the differential amounted to £445 ($700) so he asked Ryanair for the money back.  After no success, he brought about a race discrimination lawsuit against Ryanair, which then offered to settle in full, but only if he kept the settlement confidential.

He refused, and now the cat is out of the bag.

This suggests that Ryanair feels vulnerable.  As word spreads, will Ryanair find itself facing a deluge of similar claims?  And how long before regulation-happy EU officials make it illegal to charge more for travel in one direction that the other?  Indeed, under basic EU principles, it may well be illegal already.

No wonder Ryanair wished to keep it secret.  Surprisingly, there has been no word, yet, from normally garrulous CEO Michael O’Leary on this matter.

More details here.

Guess What Happens When Airlines Cut Back

Our incredible shrinking airlines in this country are managing to counter the global trend of increasing air travel.  An MIT study shows that for the five years 2007 – 2012, US airlines reduced their flight numbers by 14%.

Unsurprisingly, these reductions have been uneven across the country, and some cities have suffered massive losses in air service.  Midsized airports experienced an average 26% cut in flights.  Some individual cities have seen up to a 40% reduction in service.

Here’s an interesting article that chronicles which cities have lost the most over this period.

You have to wonder, don’t you, that if we still had all the different airlines flying today that we had in 2007 and before, if there’d have been quite such an amazing cut-back in airtravel numbers.  Oh yes – the study also showed that real, inflation adjusted, airfares have risen over the same period of time – another thing that one has to wonder about.

The True Impact of an AA/US Merger

Talking about the negative effects of merging airlines, the official claim to reassure us, the DOJ and the DOT, is that the merger of AA and US would see only 12 overlapping routes becoming less competitive, and there’s surely little to worry about with such a minor loss of airline competition, or so AA and US would have us believe.

However, this analysis is incomplete and simplistic.  The Consumer Travel Alliance has dug a big deeper, and discovered that in addition to these 12 non-stop routes where AA and US used to compete strongly against each other, there are another 760 one-stop routes which would suffer by the merger of the two airlines.

Rather than minimal overlap, the study shows that 40% of AA’s one stop routes overlap with US, and 30% of US’ one stop routes overlap with AA.

They point out, quite fairly, that both US and AA have predominantly a hub and spoke route structure, and so the correct comparison is not to focus only on the few nonstop flights, but rather on the vast majority of flights which involve a flight change at a hub.

There’s nothing good about this merger for us as passengers.  You know that, I know that, and of course the airlines know that, because ‘nothing good for us’ translates to extra profit for them.  But how can we encourage the DOT and DOJ to remove the blinkers from their eyes and see the same thing we do?

More Money Saving Strategies (for you, that is!)

I mentioned last week how to get a $150 discount off a new Dell computer.  This week, how would you like to get $25 off your phone and internet bill – every month?

I had received an offer from Comcast to switch to their Xfinity cable product for phone, data and television, and it seemed to be offering appealing rates for good products/services, lower than I was paying Frontier for my fiber based service.  So I simply rang Frontier and said I wanted to stay with them, but had received a better offer from a Comcast representative who was pressuring me to abandon my long-time loyalty to Frontier.  Could they do anything to help me stay with them?

Instantly – no need to check with a supervisor or anything – the woman offered to reduce my monthly bill by $25.  No need to sign a new contract for a new minimum term or anything.  Just a simple instant $25/month reduction in cost.  That was the most valuable phone call I made all this week.

If you’re in a competitive market for phone and internet (and television too, perhaps) service, and if it is a year or more since your rate was last lowered, it probably would be appropriate to be on the lookout for special deals on offer from another provider and either respond to them or use them to talk down the rate you pay to your present provider.

Truly, every time I call Frontier, and Verizon before Frontier bought their business in this region, my monthly costs go down and the bundle of services I get increases.  You should make sure the same is happening to you.

Spirit Shows the Irony of Ever Cheaper Long Distance Costs

As mentioned in the previous item, phone costs are steadily dropping.  Not only are our monthly bills reducing, but we’re getting more and more included.

It is the same for companies as it is for us at home.  Fifteen years ago, it could cost a company a quarter every minute to accept incoming toll-free calls.  Now, with the latest VOIP type technologies powering phone connections, these costs have massively reduced.

But no-frills airline Spirit has just announced its latest frill that it is cutting – it will no longer have a toll-free number for customers to call.

But rather than honestly and openly replace their (800) number with a local number related to where their call center is located – perhaps in Miramar FL where they are headquartered (area code 954 and 754) or one that rings at one of their operating bases in either Fort Lauderdale (also 954 or 754) or Detroit (area code 313); they are offering up a Utah area code instead.

Why would they do that?  They have no substantive business presence in UT that I’m aware of and don’t even fly there.  But the UT area code is 801….

Could it be that Spirit hopes people won’t even realize that they are no longer dialing a toll-free number when they call?

How Much Would You Pay to Sleep Between Flights

We’ve all done it, and particular on lengthy international journeys.  We’ve ended up at an airport somewhere with a three or four hour layover, and have been keen to sleep but have had nowhere to do so.  You’re too jet lagged to be productive, but unable to sleep in a gate area while waiting for your next flight, with people chattering and buzzing about all around you.

How much would you pay for an oasis of peace, quiet, and sleep?

Abu Dhabi Airport is betting you’d be happy to pay $12.25 an hour for sleeper seat/bed cocoons.  And, you know, I think they might be right.

Here’s an article explaining more about the concept.  Hopefully we’ll see it spread to more airports, too.

Vegas Buffet Extravaganza

I still remember my first ever visit to Las Vegas.  For a New Zealander, it was an overwhelming experience, and one of the most memorable impressions was the amazing buffet at Circus Circus.

Don’t laugh.  Back in the very early 1980s, New Zealand (and New Zealanders!) was a lot less sophisticated, both in terms of eating and in general, and perhaps the Circus Circus buffet wasn’t quite as dismal as it is these days.

It isn’t just me.  For most of us, one of the cornerstone Vegas experiences, along with gambling, show girls, and neon, is going to an all you can eat (and hopefully low priced) buffet.  Alas, the low price is very much a thing of the past in most casinos, but the buffets themselves have gone extraordinarily up-market.

Several buffets contend for the accolade of best buffet on the Strip, with the relatively new Caesar’s Palace buffet, the Bacchanal, being considered by many to be the best there is.  Sure, it can now cost up to $51 per person (plus tax and tip) but go read this article and see if it doesn’t get your taste buds a tingling.

Are We Winning, Redefining, and/or Extending the War on Terror?

Occasionally optimistic politicians seeking re-election will assure us that we’re winning the war on terror.  We certainly would be delighted if that were so, but if we are winning this war, how is it that the number of enemies seems to be steadily increasing?

According to this article, there are now 875,000 names in the main central terrorist database, up from ‘only’ 540,000 five years earlier.

Think about that – that is another 184 terrorists added to the list, every day (including weekends and holidays).  If this is a fair measure of the situation, how can we claim to be winning anything when we are adding 184 more potential terrorists to the list every day; more than a quarter million extra in just five years?  Doesn’t winning the war imply a decline, not a runaway spiraling increase?

On the other hand, fighting terror is a huge growth opportunity, especially if you’re a government department with no shame and eager to seize any opportunity to redefine the concept of terror, and to expand your size and presence.  Especially if you’re, to be specific, the hydra-headed Homeland Security Department, who apparently sent along 20 ICE agents (part of Homeland Security) as part of a team raiding a small cell phone repair store in South Florida.

The store’s link with terror, homeland security, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement?  Well, that’s a good point.  The store was accused of repairing iPhones with – gasp – non-Apple spare parts.

Surely, if any crime exists at all (and that is far from certain – in the good old days it was illegal for companies to mandate that only their supplies be used for ongoing maintenance) it is a civil matter between Apple and the repair store, and doesn’t require 20+ ICE agents to raid a store so small they probably couldn’t all fit inside it at the same time.

Clearly there’s no sequestering going on at ICE.  Details here.

Meanwhile, the FBI, which narrowly escaped getting swept up as part of the new HSD when it was formed, and happily remain as part of the Justice Department, nonchalantly disclosed that all calls in the US are recorded and available for them to subsequently play back.

They don’t say who does the recording, and surely it couldn’t be the NSA, could it, because their operating authority specifically excludes them from recording ordinary conversations between normal Americans…..

Which begs the question – if not the NSA, then who is doing this?

The latest extension of the war on terrorism (which, don’t forget, we are winning) seems to be to deem every American citizen a terrorist and therefore deserving of having all their phone calls monitored.

The happy profusion of overlapping windows that equates to productivity in Windows 7 (my former setup). Windows 8 attempts to prevent you from doing this.

The Nightmare that is Windows 8

My new computer arrived late on Wednesday, and I excitedly opened the box and took out the brushed metal exterior clad Dell laptop.

Well, first disappointment.  Actually, it is merely painted plastic – a chip of the paint was missing on one of the sides that betrayed the metallic appearance and showed it to be plastic underneath the fancy looking paint.

I turned it on, created a log in, and then, all of a sudden – wham!  Windows 8 hits me right between the eyes.

Maybe I’d feel better if this totally re-designed paradigm (it isn’t just an interface, it truly is, to use the much overworked term, a new paradigm) came with some sort of documentation – a quick start guide, perhaps, or even, if they don’t want to print anything out, some sort of help file on the computer.  But, alas, that’s way too old-fashioned for the hipster minimalists at Microsoft, who refuse to acknowledge that their interface is obtuse and impenetrable and demanding of documentation.

So there I was – no start button, no fathomable way to access any programs, and a screen full of big blobs of garish color.  Help!  What to do next?

Actually, I knew what to do, because I’d already researched the problem.  I was feeling very clever at having to spend a mere $5 to buy a program that would supposedly override the worst of the Windows 8 interface (Stardock) and make it look more like Windows 7, but alas, every so often Windows 8 appears like a zombie that will not die and takes over my lovely new computer.

I am closer than I have ever been in my entire 57 years to ceremonially burning everything I’ve ever purchased from Microsoft and moving to Apple, or maybe even to some sort of Unix environment.  I’m not just beyond outrage, I’m also feeling totally betrayed.  I’ve been a loyal user of Windows and before that, DOS.  I’ve bought multiple copies of every version of Windows right back to 1.0, and the same for DOS too back to I forget what, possibly even 1.0.

I’ve forgiven Microsoft their occasional idiocies such as Bob and Kin and Zune, because their core products – Windows and Office – have remained bulletproof, solid and stolid.  While Apple has been preening itself and prancing around, Microsoft has been solidly delivering the goods.

But what can I say today?  Right from the instant it turns on, Win8 is a wasteful unproductive layer of nonsense – you now need to hit any key to go from a pretty picture to the log-in screen.  Okay, so that’s just one single wasted keystroke, but it is a fateful start to then doing battle with your computer for all the time you’re at it, never knowing when the zombie that will not die will suddenly take over your screen again.  And this first of many wasted keystrokes sums up the new design approach – ‘We’re going to make it what we think to be pretty, even if it will cost you a loss of productivity’.

I don’t want a pretty looking computer.  Indeed, I do all I can to get rid of the visual distraction and rubbish.  I’m focused on working on programs, not admiring pretty pictures on an otherwise blank desktop image.

Again like zombies, the Windows 8 disease is spreading.  Skype (now owned by Microsoft) is now infected with Win8-itis.  It appears with ‘a new beautiful interface for Windows 8′.  As you can guess, the interface is vomit inducing, useless, and impossible to use.

I went to open a PDF and it now appears in a Microsoft program, ‘Reader’, which again commandeers one’s entire screen, and lacks any apparent way to be closed down.  Help.  Give me back Adobe Acrobat Reader, please!

Windows 8 is also introducing other hidden costs and problems.  I went to load my Corel Graphics X5 suite, which I bought less than a year ago, only to be warned that it is not compatible with Windows 8.  The cost to upgrade?  $189.  One wonders how many other nasty little surprises might be lurking in the background like this one (equal blame to Corel for this, of course).

What is so bad with Windows 8?  I’ll not go into detail, but in a nutshell, Microsoft have taken an unsuccessful phone operating system (Windows Phone 7) and ported it over to their once extremely successful world-changing desktop operating system, Windows.  In the process, they have destroyed the steadily improving Windows interface and franchise they’ve been developing and tweaking over the past seven major and many minor Windows releases.

The new Windows 8 assumes you have a low resolution touch screen and fat stubby fingers rather than a mouse and fine cursor on a high-resolution screen, and further assumes you’d never want to have more than one program open on your screen at the same time.  These assumptions are valid for a small touch screened cell phone, but totally erroneous for a normal computer.

Maybe there are some benefits to the new interface, and judging by the sycophantic chorus of hollow praise from much of the main stream media when Windows 8 was first released, you’d certainly think there might be.  Of course, the Windows 8 fanboys are now almost totally silent, or else they’ve reversed their opinion now that it is safe to dare question the value of something from Microsoft.

Other than some infantile videos that I had neither the time nor inclination to view, there’s no way of knowing if there are hidden treasures in Win8.  Surely, when you’re replacing the design structure that you’ve been building on for almost 25 years, you at least come up with some help files and quick start guides to assist people to make the transition and feel good about it?

It isn’t just the big things that are different.  It is small things, too – some gratuitous, some bothersome, and all annoying.  For example, window ‘frames’ which were first square then rounded are now square again.  That’s as unnecessary as tie widths going wide then thin then wide again.  Work software shouldn’t be driven by fashion, it should be driven by productivity.

In some cases, with some Microsoft programs, but not in all cases, with all programs, if I Alt-Tab from one window to another, I also then need to click to get the cursor focused so I can start typing.  I didn’t have to do this before, now I do.  More to the point, it is worse than an extra keystroke – instead I have to take my hand from the keyboard, to the mouse, position the cursor and click, then take my hand back to the keyboard again.

Maybe this only takes a second or so, but I do it several hundred times a day, probably.  It accelerates my decline into RSI and slows down my productivity, with no compensating benefit to justify it.  Plus it isn’t consistent.  If I anticipate it, I don’t need to, and if I omit it, I’m typing into oblivion.

I was looking at a listing of files, and the column showing the directory path was too narrow, meaning I couldn’t see the full directory path.  But whereas in earlier versions of Windows, I could simply widen the column, there’s no obvious way to do it in the new Windows 8 interface.  Did they forget about this?  Deliberately take it out?  Or obscure the way to do it?

What part of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ does Microsoft not understand?

This interesting article from the Financial Times about the generally acknowledged as being a disaster product that Windows 8 is now accepted as being, refers to the now infamous quote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about the Windows 8 product being a ‘bet-the-company moment’.

There can be no denying that Microsoft has lost its bet, but just how high were the stakes?  Who has experienced any negative consequence (other than Microsoft’s hundreds of millions of Windows customers)?  Alas, Ballmer is still CEO.  There’s been little good and a lot bad since he took over in 2000.  There have been no mass layoffs in the Windows division.

The only good news is that Microsoft is now hinting it will be making some sweeping changes to Windows 8 in an updated version, due to be released some time later this year.  It isn’t actually saying ‘We messed up, we’re sorry, and we’re bringing back the old interface’, and it seems it will be almost exactly a year from the release of Windows 8 last October to the release of a viable Windows 8.1, so clearly there’s little priority or importance being given to the project.

For a good analysis on Microsoft’s mess, here’s a piece from The Economist.

But universally unanswered (and largely unasked) is the biggest question of all – how could a company make such a colossal mistake?  We’re not talking subtle here.  We’re talking Armageddon level disaster.  I know Microsoft spends enormously on usability studies, alpha and beta testing, and I know there are lots of truly brilliant people working at Microsoft, just a few miles from where I live.

What went wrong?

The only possible explanation?  The team that was responsible for one of the greatest modern product disasters of all time, the extremely short-lived Microsoft Kin phone, were not fired.  Instead, they moved, en masse, to the Windows Development division.  :)

And Lastly This Week….

We often read about passengers being ordered off planes due to wearing what some fashion policeman/flight attendant deems to be inappropriate clothing.  Usually the clothing is moderate and nothing worse than you see downtown or at the local mall any day of the week.

But here’s a twist on this problem – this time the inappropriate clothing is the new uniform that female staff on Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains are being asked to wear.  Never mind, Sir Richard is offering to pay for staff to buy ‘suitable undergarments’ to compensate.  Although one wonders exactly what Sir Richard might consider as suitable…..

Admittedly, they did ask for triple scoop sized icecreams, but four British holidayers in Rome were stunned to find that their four cones came to €64 ($85).  They think that a bit much, but the ice cream shop says the price is fair, because they have some ice creams that cost even more.

Moral of the story – check out the prices before ordering.

A happy mother’s day this Sunday to everyone who is, was, or will be a mother, and to everyone who has or had a mother.

Until next week, please enjoy safe travels

David.

The Kinivo BTX350 is a convenient affordable way to play music from your phone or tablet.

The traditional way to get sound from most iPod type MP3 players or iPhones has been to connect them either to headphones or via a docking station to some sort of powered speakers.  Docking stations often contain other features such as a clock, an AM/FM radio, and possibly a CD player.

Not only are many of the extra features of docking station devices overkill and unnecessary duplications of other things we already have (who needs another alarm clock?), they also lock you into only one type of device (typically Apple) that fits in their dock, and you end up with a unit that is comparatively big and heavy and not something you’d choose to travel with.

Even worse is what happens when Apple changes its connector design, as it did with the introduction of the iPhone 5 and iPad 4 last year.  Your old docks suddenly became obsolete.  And – oh yes, iPads don’t fit in most docking stations anyway, which are designed for the form factor of an iPod or iPhone.

Let’s not also forget that these days Apple is far from the only provider of smartphones and tablets, making an Apple type docking station of much less than universal appeal/application.

So there is a clear trend now emerging where companies are abandoning the Apple docking station concept (and saving themselves – and thereby you too – the need to pay a hefty royalty for Apple’s proprietary connector) and instead making use of Bluetooth wireless connections, enabling a broader range of devices to connect to the speaker unit without the physical restriction/constraint of needing to have a compatible physical connector.

More and More Music Sources

There are now many more ways to get music to play through your device, in addition to using its built-in ability to store music files.

You can play music you have stored ‘in the cloud’, eg on Amazon or Android servers, and there are all sorts of music streaming services that will allow you access to just about any type of music, including intelligent streaming services which adapt to your own preferences and tastes.

My favorite of these is Pandora, but there are lots of others, too.  Pandora is free, although enhanced versions cost a few dollars a month (I use the free version myself).

Anyway, your phone or tablet can now not only play the music you have loaded on it, but also act as a conduit to access music from internet and other services and pass it on to you.

Plus, if you’re watching any sort of video – something that is becoming increasingly practical with larger screen sizes and faster internet connections – you’ll quickly become keen to free yourself from the tiny and tinny speakers built-in to the phone or tablet and enjoy much greater sound quality.

Which brings us, after this lengthy introduction, to the device we’re introducing to you today.  The Kinivo BTX350 Bluetooth Speaker.

The Kinivo BTX350 Speaker

The device is very simple.  It is small (7.8″ x 2.9″ x 2.2″) and light (14.5 oz) and has two speakers and a passive sub-woofer inside it (the latter isn’t really a speaker at all, more like a moving baffle that amplifies the bass a bit).

Any type of device that has Bluetooth and supports the A2DP profile can connect to it wirelessly, from up to about 30 ft or so away.  Although the official Bluetooth specification calls for a 30 ft range, this unit has a very sensitive receiver in it, and was working perfectly up two levels and more than 30 ft away from a music source for me.  Just about every modern smart phone or tablet has Bluetooth and supports the A2DP profile.

Inside the unit is a rechargeable Li-ion battery.  The battery is good for ‘up to’ five hours of music playing (depends on the music volume, of course) and the great thing about this battery is that it is a replaceable and standard Nokia type battery (the 5C).  You can buy replacement batteries for a mere $5 or so on Amazon, and with the batteries being wafer thin, small and light, it makes sense to buy a few spares so if you’re going away, perhaps camping for a weekend or something, you have enough power to run the unit as long as you could possibly want.

The unit is charged via a standard USB cable and connector (supplied), and you can be using the unit and charging simultaneously, for the greatest of flexibility.

Pairing the unit to a phone or tablet is fairly easy and doesn’t even require a password, but don’t lose the (well written) instruction booklet as you’re sure to forget some months later if you find yourself buying a new phone or tablet and needing to add it to the list of devices the speakers work with.  The speakers remember up to four different devices, and will first try to connect to the most recently connected device, and then the second most recent, and so on.

In addition, you can also connect the unit via a (also supplied) standard headphone type cable to anything else which doesn’t have Bluetooth in it (such as an MP3 player, perhaps).

There are eight buttons on the top, each labeled with its function (Volume up, down, bass boost on/off, skip forward, skip back, source select, Play/pause/pair, and power).

Once the unit is paired to a music source, you can use either the player controls on the music source (ie phone/tablet/whatever) or on the unit to control the music playing.  So as long as you have one of the devices close to you, you can conveniently control things.

One thing I did notice was the lack of an ‘auto-off’ feature.  I’d sometimes forget to turn the unit off after playing something – not the most severe problem in the world, but if it meant the battery drained (albeit very slowly while playing nothing) it is a bit of a waste of a battery charge, although most of the time you’ll probably be close to a power source to recharge it.

The Sound

The sound is reasonable.  There’s no way you’ll confuse it for a high-end set of free-standing speakers, but it is a gazillion times better than what you’d otherwise hear through the built-in speaker(s) on a tablet or phone.

Plus it is also much louder – not sufficient for a ‘blow the windows out’ party that has neighbors a block over complaining at 3am, but enough for several of you to enjoy background music while in a hotel room, or to provide a decent audio track for the movie you’re watching on the tablet/phone.

We preferred to operate the unit without the bass boost enabled, and did lament the murky/muddy higher end frequency response, but one has to judge this by the appropriate standard, and for what it is and claims to be, it is perfectly good and more than acceptable, and most of all, a huge improvement over the speakers built-in to phones and tablets.

You’d get better sound listening through a medium or high quality set of headphones for sure, but that’s not always convenient or appropriate, especially if wanting to share music with other people.

Two Models

In addition to the BTX350, Kinivo also offer a BTX450.  The BTX450 is slightly larger and heavier, has slightly better sound, but has a built in not so readily swappable battery.  It is also slightly more expensive.

There’s a danger with things like this that you keep upgrading to the next level until you end up having lost sight of your original objective and have a unit that while better in some respects, is no longer what you originally needed or wanted.

So if you want a lightweight unit to travel with, we’d say the BTX350 is the best compromise between size, weight, price and performance.  For a keep at home unit, then the BTX450 might be better.  The BTX350 is available through Amazon for $39.99 , and the BTX450 is $59.99 from Amazon .

If you get the BTX350, here’s a link to Amazon’s page of Nokia BL-5C type batteries.  As you can see, they’re very inexpensive.

Both units have a generous one year warranty.  Support is available direct from Kinivo via email or online chat – we tried the online chat and found the person helping us to be sensible and responsive – clearly he wasn’t juggling a dozen different chats concurrently, as seems to often be the case elsewhere.

Summary

With so many different sources of music now available through phones and tablets, and/or with the need for decent sound to go with any video you might be watching on your tablet, the near universal connectivity offered by a Bluetooth speaker unit is very convenient, both for around the home and for when traveling.

It allows all your A2DP Bluetooth equipped devices to conveniently benefit from external speakers, and has a regular wired connector too for ‘legacy’ devices without Bluetooth.

The Kinivo BTX350 and its bigger brother, the BTX450, are fairly priced and decent performers.  You’d be happy with either, although we recommend the BTX350 for travelers.

Hopefully we’ll see elephants just like these while on safaris as part of our Sri Lanka tour next February.

Good morning

Yes, there was no newsletter last week.  Computers are funny things, aren’t they, and even though my increasingly aged Dell has had its motherboard replaced twice over the last year, and has a new hard drive too, somehow it has just become ‘tired’ and no longer as lively as it once was.

Although the machine is still under a costly extended warranty, it seems that it is just no longer capable of performing at the level which I need, and so after ongoing problems with both the main web server and my main personal computer filling the last week, I bit the bullet and ordered a new personal computer, due to arrive late next week.

If I get almost five years of life from it, I’ll be amazed and delighted, as in truth I generally have been with the Dell I’ve been using for the last almost five years, and I’m eagerly looking forward to a blazingly fast new computing experience and the improved productivity I hope to enjoy as a result.

Talking about improved productivity, and just simply a better computing experience in general, one thing I can most sincerely recommend to any computer user is to double up on your screens.  My productivity has materially improved since I added a second screen to my desktop.  It means I can simultaneously see more things without having to switch between windows, which makes potential interruptions much less intrusive – I can just glance over to see who new email is from, rather than needing to flip through windows to the email program and back to whatever I was working on each time.  It also allows me to keep some real-time monitoring windows open for things like computer loading and website visits, too.

Plus, on rare occasion, being able to open up a spreadsheet even larger than normal, or to have two documents side by side for comparison purposes is really convenient too.

Studies have suggested as much as a 20% improvement in productivity by having two screens attached to a computer.  I’d generally agree with that, depending of course on your typical computer usage patterns, and you’ll get the most benefit if you make the screens as large as possible and with 1920×1080 resolution.

One last point on that.  If you are an employer, and if you have office staff who are costing you, say, $50,000 a year when you allow for their salaries, benefits, office space costs, supervisory costs, and so on, you’d be beyond crazy not to spend $500 (or less, maybe only half that) on such a productivity aid.

Spend 1% of your employees’ annual costs this year, and get, well, let’s be enormously conservative – a 5% increase in productivity from them this year, and another 5% next year (with no further cost, because you bought the second screen this year) and another 5% each following year too.  That’s the best investment you and your company could make.

Plus you’ll have a happier employee who is more likely to stay with your company, who will interact better with co-workers and clients, and so on.

Talking about productivity and saving/making money, can I remind you of something I’ve occasionally said before.  If you are buying a Dell – or probably any other brand – computer, after you’ve configured up your dream system on their website, and taken advantage of whatever probably phoney discounts they have on offer, don’t then buy the item.  If you’d like to save some money, there’s one very important step to take.

Either phone the company or chat with them online, and ask for a discount.  Every time I’ve done that, I’ve received a further discount.  This time, I simply chatted online with a helpful person who I guess was in the Philippines, and within a few minutes, I found myself the happy recipient of a $150 reduction in total system price.

As I always do, I don’t just say ‘give me a discount’.  First I ask a couple of simple questions about the system, then I say how I’m a loyal Dell customer and would love to buy another Dell computer now, but I’m a bit worried at how the system is pricing out, and is there any way they can help me choose their system.  I add that I’m ready to give them a credit card immediately if they can help me with the price.

The guy asked me to wait for 2 – 3 minutes, and in less than that time he was back with the $150 discount.  That’s a great return on 2 – 3 minutes of time.  You should do the same.

And now, a topic change – from business to pleasure.  The big news, that I was keen to share with you last week, is that we now have the details of our amazing Sri Lanka tour live on the website.  I’m calling it the Nature’s Paradise Tour, because I’d not fully appreciated, before doing all the research, just how much amazing wildlife, birds, reptiles and aquatic creatures there is in Sri Lanka.

I  know the word amazing is used too often, and much of the time with insufficient justification, but this time, it is truly justified.  See for yourself, and you’ll surely agree this is an extraordinary itinerary, staying in some of the absolute best deluxe hotels and resorts in Sri Lanka, filled with activities and sightseeing, and with not one but two guides accompanying us (this will allow us to split into ‘easy walkers’ and ‘fast walkers’ when we go sightseeing), on a very comprehensive thirteen day itinerary that allows us to fully experience the best this charming island nation has to offer.

The most amazing aspect of the whole thing?  This tour is available to you for the astounding great value of only $2445 per person (share twin).  I’ve seen other nearly identical itineraries priced at twice that much.

There’s an article telling you more about this attached to this week’s newsletter.

We’ve got five people signed up already for the tour.  Please do decide to join your fellow Travel Insiders on this amazing tour, full of history, wildlife, tropical sights, sounds and smells, and good fellowship.

There’s another article attached that looks some more at the subject of airline computerized control systems being vulnerable to computer hacker attack – it is time for the ‘experts’ to stop rolling their eyes at the suggestion this is possible, and instead of sneering at people who demonstrate clear vulnerabilities, prove to us (and to the actual hackers) how they have made the airplane computers as truly secure as they assure us they are.

The refusing-to-believe-what-is-in-front-of-their-faces approach and their ‘trust us, we’re the experts’ attitude reminds me so strongly of the TSA’s reaction when a college student videotaped himself smuggling a metal box that could have contained a gun, explosives, or whatever else through two of the TSA’s whole-body X-ray machines at airport security screening stations.  The TSA responded by saying either that what was filmed did not happen, even though everyone could see it did, or alternatively saying that it didn’t really matter, even though everyone could understand that it did matter.

What else this week?  Your participation is requested in a reader survey, plus articles on :

• Reader Survey – Knives on Planes
• Boeing 787 Takes To The Skies Again
• The Decline of the 747….
• ….And the Fall of the 747
• A Different Measure of AirFare Increases Suggests Prices Have Gone Up More Than Thought
• A More Subtle But Insidious AirFare/Fee Increase
• Frontier Joins Spirit in Charging for Carry-On Bags
• Talking About Bags and Costs
• Another ‘He Said/She Said’ Passenger vs Flight Attendant Problem
• Attn :  TSA – Here’s a New Type of Explosives Scanner You’re Sure to Love
• A Rose By Any Other Name?
• And Lastly This Week….

Reader Survey – Knives on Planes

Well, the TSA caved in to pressure and just days before its new policy of allowing passengers to take short bladed knives and pocket knives (with blades no longer than 2.36″) onto planes was due to be implemented, it reversed itself and has delayed the new policy indefinitely.  The TSA had originally decided to do this to bring their policies in line with international norms, and to make security screening procedures simpler.

Various airline groups opposed the TSA’s proposal, and a survey suggested that 73% of the public were against allowing knives on planes too.

Those opposed said that it would expose passengers, flight attendants, security personnel and just about everyone else, everywhere else to unacceptable levels of risk.  Those who supported allowing knives back on planes claimed there was no risk at all, pointing out that small pocket knives are legal everywhere else in the country and have never been used in the furtherance of any crime on any airplane, ever.

I was surprised to read that 73% of the public is opposed to allowing small knives back on planes, and realized it would be interesting to see what you – frequent fliers who are generally well read and well-informed on issues – think on the issue.  So let’s have an instant survey, and I’ll publish the results next week.

Please click on the link that best describes your opinion about allowing small knives on planes.  This will create an email to me with your response coded in the subject line – send me the email and I’ll tally up the responses.

I strongly support allowing small knives back on planes

On balance, I believe allowing small knives back on planes is appropriate

I am neutral on the concept with no strong view one way or the other

On balance, I think allowing small knives back on planes might do more harm than good

I strongly oppose allowing small knives back on planes

Many thanks for your response.  Answers next week.

Boeing 787 Takes To The Skies Again

Ethiopian Airlines was the first airline to restart its 787 service, doing so on Saturday 27 April.  This was, I think, 101 days since the FAA issued its grounding order.

After the FAA approved the 787 return to service the previous Friday, Japan’s equivalent body made Boeing wait another week before falling in line with the FAA and also allowing the plane to resume passenger flights.  But whereas Ethiopian Airlines got its plane in the air as quickly as possible, ANA has said it will conduct some 200 test flights before returning its planes to service.

That’s an interesting contrast.  Boeing does two test flights and says the planes are fine.  ANA plans to do 200 more to make sure of Boeing’s claim.  Shouldn’t that normally be the other way around?

Do you think ANA is making an oh-so-subtle Japanese type statement of unhappiness at the Boeing testing process?

The last word about the whole debacle (actually, very unlikely to be the last word, but at least for this newsletter, this week) will be given to James Hall, a former Chairman of the NTSB.  He writes a searing indictment of the FAA in the NY Times and refers to safety taking a back seat to commercial considerations, and claims the return to service of the 787 occurred ‘with astonishing swiftness’.

The present NTSB Chairman, Deborah Hersman, has claimed that Boeing has engaged in ‘obvious obfuscation’ about the overall battery safety and certification process (see the latter part of this article), and former NTSB board member John Goglia writes that there are unanswered questions remaining.  Clearly Mr Hall’s views are shared by others.

The Decline of the 747….

There’s an interesting article in the Wall St Journal about the 747 and its dwindling remaining role as a viable plane.

It is easy for some of us to forget that the 747 is an old plane – to me, it still seems state of the art.  But it is, indeed, old.  It first flew 43 years ago (Feb 1969) so it is a testimony to the plane’s original brilliance that it has reigned supreme as the world’s largest passenger airplane for most of the decades since then.

But the latest 747-8 model has not been a success; indeed in the short while since the WSJ article Boeing announced that five of the very few 747-8s on order had been cancelled.

The 747-8 has been partially superseded by the A380, but it is also being superseded by not quite so large twin-engine jets which offer almost as much capacity combined with much lower per mile operating costs.  The launch of the 777 marked the turning point in the 747′s fortunes.

Underscoring this is the new 777-9X announced this week, which will have the ability to carry up to 406 passengers, making it very close in size to the 747-8I (max of 467 passengers, but realistically 360 – 390), and with much improved economics.

The decline of the 747 is not new.  A chart in the article shows how the 747 peaked in 1998 with just over 1000 operational around the world.  There are now only 685 still in service.

We will be sorry to see the plane continue to disappear from the skies.  It has carried us very many times, and always reliably and well.

It is a strange and doubtless irrational thing, but whereas I sometimes cross my fingers when taking off in a twin-engined plane, the surging drone of the four engines on a 747 straining to lift the plane off the ground always fills me with confidence.  Truly, it has been a great plane.

….And the Fall of the 747

Actually, the 685 planes still in service tragically reduced to 684 earlier this week.  If you haven’t yet done so, by all means have a look at this spectacular dashboard cam footage which captured a 747 fall out of the sky immediately after taking off from Bagram in Afghanistan (it seems the plane had not even started to retract its undercarriage).

No-one knows what caused the crash at this stage, although, as the video clearly shows, it seems unlikely to have been an enemy rocket.  We’d like to offer a couple of comments to put it in perspective.

First, it is normal procedure when flying out of an airbase surrounded by hostile territory to fly the plane at a maximum rate of climb angle, so as to get the plane up as high as possible as quickly as possible and out of the range of small arms fire and man-portable SAMs.

The plane’s angle of climb is not, however, as steep as it seems on the video.  It looks so astonishingly steep simply because of the angle from where the camera was to the plane, which exaggerated its rate of climb.

The problem with such a take-off is that for the first minute or two after taking off, the plane is extremely vulnerable to engine failure or other unexpected events.  It has insufficient airspeed and is at the wrong angle of attack to recover if something goes wrong, because it also has insufficient altitude.  The margin of safety between flying too slow and stalling, and its actual speed, is very slim.  This is a known risk which pilots accept as the trade-off for getting out of SAM range as quickly as possible.

Something happened to cause the plane to stall.  Some people have speculated that some of the cargo inside the plane may have broken free and slid back, causing the plane’s nose to pitch up too far.  Others have wondered if a ‘microburst’ bit of weather might have caused a sudden ‘tail wind’ to take away too much of the plane’s through-the-air speed, causing it to stall.  Maybe it was ‘just’ an engine failure.  Black box data – not yet released – may give us a good insight into the cause of the disaster.

Whatever the cause, my interpretation of the subsequent events is that the plane started to stall, with its left wing dropping.  The pilot did a good job of catching the wing drop and corrected, but (perhaps due to increased loss of airworthiness), the correction was too great and so the right wing dropped way low.

The pilot did an excellent job of leveling the right wing, and correctly pushed the nose down and got the plane back into what was becoming a flying configuration, although it seems that maybe the nose was slow to go down.  That is not surprising, because with a huge plane fully loaded, and flying at very slow speed, the plane is very unresponsive to all flight surface movements.

Unfortunately, the plane ran out of altitude and before it had a chance to stop its sinking and start to climb again, it hit the ground and instantly exploded in a spectacular fireball from which there was absolutely no escape for the seven crew on board.

If whatever the problem was had occurred 30 seconds later, maybe even only 15 seconds later, the good piloting might have managed to get the plane climbing again before hitting the ground.  But it was the worst possible event at the absolutely worst possible time, with – alas – the worst possible outcome.

Most importantly, this crash does not expose any weakness or flaw in the lovely old 747.  You can still continue to confidently fly on 747s.

A Different Measure of AirFare Increases Suggests Prices Have Gone Up More Than Thought

How much is the average airfare?  That’s a question seemingly allowing of an exact answer, but not one as easily answered as you might think, because within the fuzzy blurry concept of ‘average’ are a number of different and unrelated variables, such as journey length, departure and arrival airport, whether the fare paid was more or less than the minimum fare, and so on.

Here’s an interesting report which suggests (on page 7) that airfares are now 12% up on what they were in 2008, and it further claims that if you adjust for the impact of fees as well, actual total amounts paid to airlines have gone up 29% during this same time frame.

While it is true that  in real dollar terms, airfares are still less than they were in 1969 when deregulation ended, it is also true that the former steady decline in airfares seems to have ended.  Alas.

A More Subtle But Insidious AirFare/Fee Increase

One of the reasons airlines love fees, and increasing them, is because they’re not so ‘in your face’ as are rises in the base published air fares.  It is easier to increase fees without having any passenger push-back, and the fact that fees are not taxable whereas airfares are is further incentive for airlines to shift more and more of their revenue generation into fees rather than fares.

Their enthusiasm for fees has long gone past the point of ‘cost recovery’ or even ‘fair profit’.  Now it is simply rapacious pillaging and plundering of your pocket-book, because they can (due to lack of competition).

The latest example of this is United’s decision to quietly and with no advance notice increase its change fee by $50.  You’re now looking at a $200 fee on most domestic tickets, and a $300 fee on most international tickets if you need to make a change to your flights.

As you probably realize, this fee is on top of any additional ‘add/collect’ airfare that might apply to the ticket, too.

The bottom line, especially if it is the last leg on a domestic ticket that you need to change – it is entirely possible that it will be cheaper to throw away the unused part of your current ticket and just buy the least expensive one-way ticket to complete your journey (or, if necessary, buy a round trip/open jaw two segment ticket and use it to get some future travel started).

Thinking that we are all gullible fools, United says the fee increase is necessary to cover its costs.  Yeah, sure, right.

Frontier Joins Spirit in Charging for Carry-On Bags

Troubled airline Frontier Airlines has been for sale since November 2011, and despite eking out a small profit for its current owner, Republic Airlines last year, lost money again in its first quarter, and the occasional rumors of buyers have yet to materialize into any firm deals.

So if you’re a loss making airline, eagerly seeking a new buyer, and hoping to tempt companies/individuals who have formerly invested in Spirit Airlines, what do you do?  Simple.  You copy the Spirit business model, or, in particular, Spirit’s contentious policy of charging passengers for carry on bags.

Frontier announced earlier this week that it will start charging passengers who don’t buy their travel directly from the airline’s website for carry-on bags (you can still take small bags that fit under the seat in front of you on the plane for free, the same as with Spirit).  The cost will range from a low of $25 (paid in advance) to a high of $100 (if they catch you trying to sneak a bag on at the gate).

You’ll also be charged $2 for a cup of coffee or a soda once you get on board.

Details here.

We don’t see Frontier’s move as indicative of a mainstream carrier decision to start charging for carry-on bags, due to Frontier’s special circumstances and desire to see itself sold.  But with now two airlines charging up to $100 per carry-on, how long will the dinosaur airlines be able to resist the temptation to do likewise?

Talking About Bags and Costs

Delayed and lost bags cost the airline industry $2.6 billion in 2012, with the greatest reason for bag mishandling being problems while bags are being transferred from one flight to another – this was the reason for 48% of bag problems last year.

If you’d like to know more, here’s a catchy infographic that presents a lot of information in a readable format.

It is true that some bags disappear forever – and some reappear, with no way of linking them to an owner, so are sold off by the airlines.  But sometimes a lost item has a happy ending, as this seven year old boy found after losing a special shirt on a Delta flight.

Well done, the decent people at Delta who helped find it.

Another ‘He Said/She Said’ Passenger vs Flight Attendant Problem

We regularly write about passengers who fall victim to the lies of flight attendants, who claim the passengers have done bad things on flights.  The flight attendants might make these claims vindictively to ‘punish’ a passenger they took a disliking to, or they might do so proactively because they fear the passenger is going to complain about them, and so it is better to be the first to lay a complaint.

Whatever the root cause, the rest of each story is dismayingly familiar.  The pilot passively goes along with whatever the flight attendant says, eager police, federal agencies and TSA agents then arrest the passenger as he leaves the plane (sometimes after the plane makes an emergency diversion) and he is charged with federal crimes.  Whether found guilty or not, the passenger has to spend tens of thousands of dollars on attorney fees, and possibly suffers grave career and personal harm as a consequence.

The one thing that is most consistent in all of these stories is that there is always one huge missing part of the puzzle.  Corroborating evidence from nearby passengers.  Surely this is essential, and surely the inability of a flight attendant to get half a dozen nearby passengers to back up her fanciful claim is prima facie a clear indicator that her story is a tissue of lies.

Here’s the latest case – a passenger accused of using profanities, not following instructions, and – oh yes, not flushing the toilet, either!

At the very least, we’d expect to see a photograph confirming the validity of that specific accusation.

The hapless passenger was met by six officials when the plane landed and was detained before being released with no charges laid.

This time, the passenger is fighting back, and is suing the airline (Virgin America) for $500,000.  His moral high ground is slightly weakened though because among other causes for his action he is claiming racial discrimination.  No – he’s not African-American.  He is instead a member of that other well-known-to-suffer-the-effects-of-prejudice, Italian-Americans.  Hmmmm…….

Attn :  TSA – Here’s a New Type of Explosives Scanner You’re Sure to Love

The TSA has several times now invested tens of millions of dollars in explosive detection devices that have turned out to be unsatisfactory, and which have ended up being taken out of service.

It has also invested still more money on new technologies which it has promised us will improve our security screening experience – meaning we would no longer need to take shoes off, and/or meaning the liquid restrictions can be lifted, but these technologies have never made it out of the lab.

So a radically new type of explosive detection device that has been used for some years by the Iraqi government and its contractors for detecting explosives in that troubled country would surely be of interest, you’d think, right?  Developed by a UK gentleman, and operating on a non-intrusive manner that apparently involves no dangerous radiation whatsoever, these units would seem to have a lot going for them, as evidenced by their robust level of sales to Iraqi defense organizations and contractors.  US bases have even been secured using them too.

There’s just one slight flaw, but surely the TSA could excuse one slight flaw – after all, all the other systems are not without limitations, either.

Please click here to read more about this technology and its one slight flaw.  We understand that the selling price per unit is likely to be greatly reduced, any day now.

Efforts to contact the inventor will be unsuccessful for the next ten years.

A Rose By Any Other Name?

One of the (many) curses of ‘social media’ and ‘viral’ content is that advertisers try to come up with increasingly bizarre concepts that they hope will capture the interest of the internet.

One such concept which proved very successful was the state of Queensland in Australia’s campaign offering the so-called best job in the world a couple of years ago – a concept now repeated, in amplified form, by a group of Australian states.

But not all campaigns are quite that original or quite that inspired.  Iceland came up with a competition to rename the country – after all, a country called ‘Iceland’ doesn’t sound all that great, does it?

This reminds me of a still ongoing campaign to rename the bay on which Gisborne, NZ, sits.  It was named, almost 250 years ago by Captain Cook as Poverty Bay; for many decades, the locals have been trying to change the name, with the leading suggested alternate name being ‘Sunshine Bay’.

Anyway, so here is Iceland, wondering what would be a better name.  Volcanoes-that-spew-ash-into-the-sky-and-disrupt-aviation-land, perhaps?  We’ll-take-your-fish-because-the-EU-says-we-can-land?  Sorry-about-your-pension-plan-in-our-bankrupt-banks-land?

Well, their campaign received more than 25,000 entries, and the clever people in Iceland have narrowed it down to two leading contenders, which they’re now asking people to vote on.  (I hasten to add the country is not going to rename itself, the whole thing is simply a gimmick.)

The two winning names?  With over 25,000 entries, be prepared for a couple of truly powerful innovative clever names?

Well, yes, maybe some of the entries were clever, innovative and powerful.  But the two shortlisted names are :

Let’s Get Lost Land

and

Isle of Awe Land

I know you will find this impossible to believe, so here’s the proof.

And Lastly This Week….

I wrote some time ago about a London policeman who has a long commute to work.  He and his family live in the South Island of New Zealand.  He works six weeks on at a time, sleeping in a cheap shared apartment in London, and then spends six weeks off duty with his family in New Zealand.

He finds that this saves him money (even after flying business class to and from London) and gives him and his family a much better lifestyle.

Now a call center in Wales is emulating the London Bobby.  Taking advantage of the 12 hour time zone shift between the UK and NZ, their night shift of operators were given the option of working from New Zealand rather than from Wrexham.  Details here.

It is an amazing world we live in these days.

Talking about the amazing world (and also about slightly corny publicity stunts) here’s an amusing story.  Jacobite Cruises is a small company that operates cruise boats on Loch Ness, taking hopeful tourists out for possibly a sighting of the Loch Ness monster.

Their owner has been worried that her boats might get damaged by the monster colliding with them, and so has taken out a £1 million insurance policy covering her for any damage claims caused by such events.

One wonders how much the premium was?  Being as how no boats have been damaged in the almost exactly 80 years of recent sightings, one would hope it was not too much – and almost certainly much less than all the free publicity the company is now enjoying.

Until next week, please enjoy safe travels

David.

These days airplanes are essentially one giant big flying computer. It seems reasonable to infer they are therefore liable to being hacked.

I’ve written about a hacker demonstrating his ability to remotely hack into an airplane flight management system in the last two weeks’ newsletters.

His claims were controversial, but most of the controversy seemed to be people with their eyes wide shut saying ‘Ignore what you see and what this pilot is showing you, it just isn’t possible’ – a statement they would make without any evidence to back it up.

Sure, it is difficult to prove a negative, but that is the whole thing – it is so difficult to ensure and to prove that any computer, anywhere, is secure.  We regularly read about supposedly super-secure computers being hacked – why should an airplane’s computers be any more hack-proof than an ultra-secure military intelligence computer?

To date the largest problem in hacking into an airplane’s control systems has been how to gain access to the plane’s computers.  One potential vulnerability – through the seatback entertainment system – suffers from a clear disadvantage.  If a hacker were to use that route, he would be sacrificing his own life when making the plane crash (although the solution to that would be to load code into the computer with a time delay associated with it, so that the code would take over the computer only some hours later, when the hacker had safely deplaned).

It also has an inefficiency – clearly a hacker can only attack one plane at a time (ie the plane he is on).

The ‘Holy Grail’ of hacking planes is to get remote access to them – for a hacker in his basement, far away in another country, to be able to hack into planes in the air, halfway around the world.  The articles I linked to in the last two newsletters detailed one way in which that could be done.  Other methods may already exist, but until now, planes have been fairly ‘insulated’ from the rest of the internet.

Note the phrase ‘until now’.  With this as background, here’s an interesting article with a terrifying quote :

“The next frontier is the connectivity of everything,” says Carl Esposito, vice president of marketing and product management at Honeywell Aerospace. “Most of the aviation systems we’ve designed to date have been relatively self-contained with little communication to the outside world.”

My prediction – while the TSA and various pressure groups obsess over miniature pocket knives, liquids, and shoes; the next terrorist attack on airplanes will be computer based.  What is the TSA doing about that?

Yalla National Park has a greater density of leopards than anywhere else in the world.

Not an Indian Jones scene! Climb up the Sigiriya Rock Fortress.

We’ll enjoy one of the world’s great scenic train journeys.

We have wildlife safaris in two different national parks.

We’ll see amazing ancient cave frescoes.

We’ll visit bazaars and spice markets filled with local produce.

We visit a tea plantation and enjoy great views in the hill country.

The royal palace ruins at the World Heritage site in Polonnaruwa.

I had not really focused on the country and its potential until a regular Travel Insider tour member insisted I do so.  Thank you very much for your insistence and persistence, Hilda.

If you’re like I was a few months ago, you probably vaguely perceive Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) as an island of the south-east coast of India, and generically ‘tropical’, whatever that might mean.

You might remember it being where Arthur C Clarke lived for many decades, and you might be aware of its terrible and extended insurgency with the Tamil Tiger separatists (now thoroughly concluded), and none of that elevates the country to a high position on your list of must-visit countries.

But did you know that it is teeming with wildlife, birds, fish, and reptiles (and plants and trees too, for that matter)?  It has the world’s only elephant orphanage, and the greatest density of leopards of anywhere in the world.

You probably know of Ceylon as a name you sometimes see on packets of tea (assuming you drink tea), but did you know it is also a major region for a plethora of different spices?

You might know it was a British colony for 150 years, but did you know that before that, the Dutch had settled there (the English forced them out) and before that, the Portugese were there (and forced out by the Dutch).  Sri Lanka’s history goes back through time, to the Biblical times of King Solomon, and still further back, with remains of human settlements dating back 125,000 years.

Ceylon is a center of Buddhism and has a holy relic (a tooth) of the Great Buddha on display in Kandy.  It has the remains of several amazing kingdoms, and in total has six different sites denoted as World Heritage Sites of Outstanding Global Cultural value (we visit them all of course).

It also has amazing world-class hotels, great food, and a wide diversity of other sights and experiences, all crammed into an island the size of West Virginia (making it easy to get around and see all that should be seen).

February is the best time of year to visit from a weather perspective (and it’s a great time to escape the depths of our winter, too!), so that’s when we’re going, for a wonderful thirteen day tour.

A pre-tour option in Singapore and a post-tour option in Bangkok can add still further to your South East Asian touring experience.

Now for the really great part.  We have a thirteen day tour of Sri Lanka, including accommodation at some of the country’s very finest five-star and award-winning hotels and resorts, cooked breakfasts every morning, two special dinners, sightseeing every day, other activities, and all transportation (including a glorious scenic train ride), which in total comes to only $2445 per person (share twin).

I’ve seen other companies charging twice as much for almost the identical itinerary and hotels, but by going direct to the source and cutting out two layers of middle men, I’ve managed to put together a high-value and high-quality experience you are sure to love.

But wait – there’s more!  This is in effect ‘two tours in one’ – we have two guides, and when we visit sights and sites, we’ll allow you to choose between the ‘easy walkers’ and the ‘active walkers’ groups.  If you want to amble around on a more relaxed and leisurely basis, you can become an easy walker, and if you want to more actively see and do as much as possible, become an active walker.  You can choose as you wish, each time we do something.

The more I’ve been researching the country and putting together this itinerary, the more excited I’ve become.  Clearly there’s a reason that Sri Lanka is now the number one destination in the entire world (at least, according to Lonely Planet).

So – please come with me and a group of your fellow friendly Travel Insiders next February, and let’s experience Sri Lanka together.

This promises to be the best ever Travel Insider tour – the best itinerary, the nicest hotels, the broadest array of experiences, and the most ‘different’ destination compared to our usual lives and lifestyles.

The full Sri Lanka tour details can be seen here, and there’s a link from that page to the complete day by day itinerary information too. ]]> &#160;<a title="View Comments" href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/04/sri-lanka-natures-paradise-tour-february-2014.html#comments"><img height="20" style="border:0;margin:0;padding:0;" src="http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/comments20.png"></a>&#160;<a title="Follow Comments via RSS" href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/04/sri-lanka-natures-paradise-tour-february-2014.html/feed"><img height="20" style="border:0;margin:0;padding:0;" src="http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/commentsrss20.png"></a><h3 style="clear:left;padding-top:10px">Related Stories</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/05/weekly-roundup-friday-10-may-2013.html">Weekly Roundup Friday 10 May 2013</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/05/weekly-roundup-friday-3-may-2013.html">Weekly Roundup Friday 3 May 2013</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/04/weekly-roundup-friday-19-april-2013.html">Weekly Roundup Friday 19 April 2013</a></li></ul> http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/40520274/0/thetravelinsider/blog~Sri-Lanka-Natures-Paradise-Tour-February.html/feed 0 http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/04/weekly-roundup-friday-19-april-2013.html http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/40256898/0/thetravelinsider/blog~Weekly-Roundup-Friday-April.html http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/40256898/0/thetravelinsider/blog~Weekly-Roundup-Friday-April.html#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:38:21 +0000 David Rowell http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/?p=3013 [...]]]> &#160;<a title="View Comments" href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/04/weekly-roundup-friday-19-april-2013.html#comments"><img height="20" style="border:0;margin:0;padding:0;" src="http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/comments20.png"></a>&#160;<a title="Follow Comments via RSS" href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/04/weekly-roundup-friday-19-april-2013.html/feed"><img height="20" style="border:0;margin:0;padding:0;" src="http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/commentsrss20.png"></a><h3 style="clear:left;padding-top:10px">Related Stories</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/04/weekly-roundup-friday-12-april-2013.html">Weekly Roundup Friday 12 April 2013</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/05/weekly-roundup-friday-10-may-2013.html">Weekly Roundup Friday 10 May 2013</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2013/05/weekly-roundup-friday-3-may-2013.html">Weekly Roundup Friday 3 May 2013</a></li></ul>

Today marks the 238th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution.

Good morning

Today is day 94 of the 787′s grounding.  The rumor mills are starting to obligingly circulate the story that FAA approval for the 787 to be returned to service is expected next week.  More details (of course) below.

A very special happy birthday wish today – to none other than most of us reading this newsletter.  Today is the 238th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution.

On this day in 1775, over 700 British grenadiers and light infantry marched to the towns of Lexington and Concord to confiscate weapons from the Colonists, but were met by approximately 70 Minute Men at Lexington Green.  A shot rang out, the “shot heard round the world” and when the fighting stopped, eight Colonists were killed, ten wounded, and the “assault weapons” of that day were confiscated.

The British then continued to the North Bridge in Concord but this time were confronted by over 300 armed Colonists.  The Colonists, although severely outnumbered, used deliberate aimed fire to strike four of the eight British officers and five of the enlisted soldiers, causing the British to break ranks and run.

As the British retreated, more Colonists joined the fight from behind trees, stone walls, and houses, only appearing long enough to fire, then dropping out of sight to reload.  The British troops endured an 18 mile gauntlet of fire as they retreated, throwing down equipment, arms, and even loot as they fled back to Boston.  The British sustained 273 casualties; the Colonist 93, and the American Revolution was born.

Six bloody years later, the British surrendered at the battle of Yorktown, and a peace treaty was finally signed in 1783; the American (military) Revolution was won, and our country embarked on its remarkable ongoing social and economic revolution of freedom, growth and success.  Happy birthday, the United States of America.

On a more mundane note, it has been a nightmare week, not only again for Boeing, but, alas, here at the headquarters of The Travel Insider too.  The now more than six year old server which hosts the site suffered a hacker intrusion, and so I decided to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ – necessarily reformatting the hard drives and reloading clean uninfected software to resolve the hacker intrusion, and so replacing/upgrading some of the probably soon-due-to-fail components of the server, too.

I’ll spare you the technical details.  Suffice it to say that much of the time from Sunday through Wednesday had the main web and mail services down and the server offline, and currently it is working on a ‘jury rigged’ emergency server while an expert friend attempts to resolve the plethora of hardware issues that came to light when we started to look closely at the server.

I fear it may become necessary to replace it entirely; and my four year old main work computer is in desperate need of retirement too.  It has been wonderful to spend little or no money on computer hardware purchases for four years (it used to be that a work computer would be good for about two years before needing replacement) but alas, the crows are now coming home to roost.

If you sent me any email between Sunday and Wednesday, it is quite likely I never received it.  Feel free to resend, accordingly.

This has unavoidably slowed down the release of next February’s Sri Lanka tour details.  But I can tell you that we’ll be using some of the finest hotels in Sri Lanka, in idyllic settings, we’ll have plenty of animal themed safaris, visit some ancient sites, world heritage locations, enjoy a stunning train journey, and very much more, and at a great value for the thirteen day tour (15 – 27 Feb) of less than $2500 per person.  Computers (and Sri Lankan travel companies!) willing, more details and a booking form next week.

So there’s not as much as normal this week, but here are a few items for your Friday enjoyment :

• 787 Update
• Boeing’s Devolution
• More on Hacking Planes
• Electronics on Planes
• Buddy Pass Opportunists
• Recent Tech Disasters
• Turkish Jail Threat to US Tourist after Collecting Stones on Turkish Beach
• Well Done, the TSA!
• And Lastly This Week….

787 Update

It seems almost guaranteed now that next week will see the FAA allow the 787 to resume commercial flights, with rumors early in the week about approval ‘very soon’ hardening into more definite rumors later in the week about approval next week.

Update – late Thursday saw the Wall St Journal predicting approval may be granted today (Friday).

Two things remain very big unknowns.  The first is whether the Japanese equivalent of the FAA will mirror the FAA’s approval, or if it will continue its own investigation and evaluation at its own speed.  No-one is clear about that.

Another update – later Thursday – it is being suggested that the Japanese authorities may delay their decision and may impose more stringent conditions.

The second unknown is what type of ETOPS certification the plane will be allowed.  Prior to the grounding it had a 180 minute certification, and Boeing had been hoping to get that extended to a massive 330 minutes.  Will the previous 180 minute certification be returned, or reduced, or extended?

This commentator says the 180 minute rating will be reduced.  This commentator says it will definitely not be increased (a very safe bet).  And this commentator says they have no idea at all (the safest statement of all!).

A reduction down from 180 minutes would mean that airlines would need to alter (as in lengthen, of course) the routes their planes take on some of the current longer over-the-water routes (eg US-Japan).  Longer flying times and more fuel burned is hardly a happy-making recipe for airlines or passengers, so the pressure on the FAA to allow the 180 minute ETOPS approval to remain has to be considerable.  Maybe we’ll know their decision sometime today.

Boeing’s Devolution

In other Boeing news, it is interesting to read the obituaries of two recently deceased former Boeing engineers – Bob Kiliz and Kenneth Holtby.  Both evoke an apparently long-ago era where people rather than computers designed planes, and when innovation was excitingly progressing in many fields.

These days, Boeing outsources not only manufacturing but also engineering and design services, and is laying off its own engineers.  Apparently the lessons it claims to have learned about the perils of outsourcing with its disastrous 787 development program have only been selectively learned (if at all).

Furthermore, when it is not outsourcing, Boeing is fragmenting itself.  Not content with moving its management away from the Seattle area and to Chicago (a move which remains as inexplicable and inappropriate now as it was when first announced back in 2001) it is also splitting up its manufacturing and other facilities too.

While Boeing has for decades been split over several states, often as a result of mergers and buyouts, it has now created a new 787 assembly operation in South Carolina, and theatrically wonders aloud where it will locate future assembly lines.  Some people might think that this succeeds most notably in creating a fractured disjoint company with communication problems internally and externally.

Progress is a funny thing, isn’t it.

More on Hacking Planes

The article I mentioned last week about how a pilot managed to hack into an airplane flight management system caused a lot of comment, including a pilot who expressed outrage at the concept, saying ‘This guy obviously knows nothing about flying’.  I pointed out to him that the hacker was a qualified pilot…..

Other people said ‘I know this is not possible, it is nonsense’ but when I pointed out that it had actually been demonstrated, and asked how it was that they knew it was not possible (it being admittedly very hard to prove a negative) they lapsed into silence.

Here’s some more information on what the hacker actually did and how.

Here is another, and fairly scholarly and thoughtful article on the topic of airplane hacking vulnerabilities.  It is unrelated to the hacking exploit, and points out some additional vectors by which planes and their computer control systems could be attacked and compromised.

As uncomfortable as this topic is, ignoring it or refusing to consider it is not the right approach.  I don’t think there’s a computer anywhere in the world that has not been repeatedly proven to have security flaws and vulnerabilities; there’s no reason to assume that airline computers are uniquely the sole exception to this.

Electronics on Planes

More benign that hacking an airplane is simply settling back and reading an eBook on a Kindle, or playing a game on a tablet, or watching a movie on an iPad.

As you of course know, such activities are prohibited during any flight’s initial take-off and final landing phases; prohibitions that are liberally and capriciously extended by airlines and lazy flight attendants as it suits them.  Although pilots can now use laptops and tablets in the cockpit whenever they wish, we passengers still have to fight off boredom any other way we can for these parts of each flight.

The clamor and call for a relaxation of these rules – rules which are based on pseudo-science rather than hard facts, and made worse by people deliberately confusing the ban on cell phone usage by the FCC with the totally different ban on electronics which is sort of an FAA decision – continues to slowly mount.  Here’s a brief mention (near the bottom of this article) which raises an interesting test for what should be allowed :  If the President and his companions are allowed to use electronics all through a flight on Air Force One, surely we should be allowed to do the same thing.  If it is safe for our President, why is it not then equally safe for us?

The FAA is proceeding at glacial speed to respond to the calls for action.  Although it seems it can certify as safe a battery system on the 787 which has twice, for unknown reasons, erupted into spectacular fires, it is very much more cautious when it comes to our eBook readers and other conveniences.  The FAA promises some initial recommendations (whatever that means) by July (presumably 2013).

Buddy Pass Opportunists

One of the perks of working for most airlines is not just the free or reduced rate travel employees get for themselves, but also the ability to get reduced rate travel for friends, too, using what are often referred to as ‘Buddy Passes’.

Buddy Passes are subject to the same terms, conditions, and restrictions as staff travel passes, and it is common that they come with some type of dress code requirement, particularly if the travel is in first class.

Those of us ‘in the know’ often joke that we can always tell the staff and buddy pass passengers in the first class cabin.  With the changing of dress styles over the decades, but the unchanging dress code requirement for staff/buddy travel, the only people in suits and ties in long distance first class cabins these days are the airline employees and their friends.

Goodness knows I’ve been the fortunate beneficiary of a similar type of travel myself on many occasions, and putting on a jacket and tie is a small thing to do in return for massive savings in travel costs.

With that as background, here’s a sad story about two travelers – it isn’t clear from the article, but the comments confirm they were traveling on buddy passes.  They are expressing outrage at being required to change from jeans to slacks, to put on button up shirts, and remove their baseball caps in order to be allowed to fly first class.

Their conclusion?  They were being targeted for unfair prejudicial treatment because they were black.  So they’ve filed a lawsuit against US Airways in a federal court, seeking as much money as possible from the airline.

It is beyond appalling that these opportunists are playing the race card inappropriately, and doubly beyond appalling that they’ve found an attorney to push their case, clearly in the hope that US Airways will settle rather than defend the action.

This time I’m fully rooting for the airline, and hope US Airways will press their case fully and seek a debilitating sum in fees, themselves, when they win, as they surely will and must.

Spare also a thought for the poor airline employee who thought he/she was doing a couple of friends a favor by arranging buddy passes for them.  This unfortunate outcome can hardly be a career enhancing move.

While they’re not the wonderful deal they once were, buddy passes can still be good, but this sort of exploitation of the system may see airlines curtail them, a move which will harm the buddies of airline employees much more than it will the airlines.

Recent Tech Disasters

From time to time, I find myself thinking ‘These days, management and marketing are such mature and well-developed sciences, that well resourced companies can no longer make huge mistakes’.  And a corollary also exists – ‘market research and the internet and faster product development cycles make it easier for companies to ensure their products match marketplace needs and opportunities’.

But I continue to come across examples of companies destroying themselves and their market shares, and realize that no matter how much business science has been distilled and codified in text books and MBA case studies, actual business executives can still colossally mess up as much today as ever in the past.

Now, I grant you, the collapse in Apple’s share price (now under $400 – in the last 48 hours, the company’s market cap has declined by more than the total value of major companies such as Lockheed-Martin) isn’t necessarily a negative commentary on the current Apple company and managers.  Perhaps it shows instead the return to normalcy that I’ve long expected now that Steve Jobs is no longer helming the company, and a realization by the market that Apple’s seemingly unstoppable growth actually does have limits.

But what about Blackberry’s decline into irrelevance?  Or, most recently, the announcement on Thursday that Nokia is reporting its smallest quarterly revenue in 13 years – this in the cell phone industry, which has seen an enormous explosion of growth over the same 13 year period.  Then there is hollowed out remains of Motorola.

Who would have believed us, if ten years ago we’d predicted that Motorola, Nokia and Blackberry would have declined into almost irrelevance in the market?  The ‘big three’ have become the ‘small three’, with the largest cell phone manufacturer now being a company from South Korea (Samsung).

Indeed, think about that, too.  There was a time when the US dominated consumer and cell phone electronics, and a time when Europe (not just Nokia but Siemens and Ericsson too, amongst others) was also a major player.  Then there have been major forces in Japan and even Taiwan, but today we see the largest company as a South Korean company.

In among all these losers is one that stands out from the rest.  The biggest loser of all has to be Microsoft.  There’s a company that was ‘too big to fail’ – a company dominating every sector of the world that it chose to become active in, and a company at the forward edge of all technologies, but now a company reduced – reduced to what?  Its repeated attempts at creating a smartphone operating system are notable only for earning smaller and smaller, rather than larger and larger market shares, and its Kin semi-smart phone was one of the biggest marketing disasters and shortest lived products of the last decade.  Its Zune player was no less unsuccessful, just slower at being killed off.

And most of all, there’s their latest monstrosity – no, not the astonishingly disappointing Surface tablets, but rather the nightmare that is Windows 8.  Do you know a single person who likes Windows 8?  Without exception, everyone I know doesn’t just dislike it, but actively hates it.

Here’s a recent article which suggests that disgust at Windows 8 has caused millions of people to switch to Apple based computers, and many millions more to delay and defer upgrading their current Windows 7 or earlier computers.  Microsoft’s missteps are harming not only itself but the entire PC marketplace which depends on Microsoft as the underlying engine that drives ongoing upgrades and replacements.

How can a company so full of clever people do such stupid things?

Here’s a compelling article published back in August 2012 that answers this question – and the answer is surprising but understandable.  In the eight months since then, the article’s analysis has been vindicated and re-vindicated.  It is no wonder that Microsoft’s share price – once the darling that created ‘Microsoft millionaires’ galore in the Seattle area – has hovered in the same $25 – $30 range for about twelve years, and is down from its highs of twice that level, reached in early 2000.

Turkish Jail Threat to US Tourist after Collecting Stones on Turkish Beach

That’s stones on a Turkish beach, not stoned on a Turkish beach.  But, for whatever reason, someone in the Turkish authorities is not thinking clearly in deciding to press charges against an American tourist, claiming that two of the objects in a collection of stones from beaches the tourist had been staying at, are actually Turkish antiquities.

Turkey doesn’t dispute the tourist’s claim that he found them washed up on the beach along with the other stones, nor does it dispute his claim he collects interesting stones from beaches, the world over.  But it seems that a couple of nondescript stones might be old, and therefore could be considered as antiquities, and rather than letting the guy off with a warning or even a fine, it is pressing charges that have a maximum consequence of twelve years in a Turkish prison.

Details here.

Well Done, the TSA!

The TSA is refusing to retreat from its decision to allow small short bladed knives on planes again.

Just about every possible pressure group has argued that small short knives should be banned – even those uniformed rocket scientists in disguise (the people manning the metal detectors and X-ray machines in the airports) have expressed their concerns and advised that their ‘operational experience’ (whatever that means) leads them to believe that allowing knives on planes would be too risky.  The screeners’ union (sigh) even went as far as to say that allowing knives onto planes would increase the risk to them (ie the screeners on the ground) – this claim also being backed up by their ‘hands on operational experience’.

As I said, rocket scientists, indeed.  Details here.

There is however one group that has not been well represented during such lobbying, and that is the vast overwhelming preponderance of ordinary normal travelers, all of whom are surely delighted at a chance to travel with a Swiss Army Knife or similar in their carry-on once more.

Remember that no hijacker or terrorist has used a knife on a plane.  There’s no history of knives being dangerous or problematic in the past, and no reason to suspect they may be dangerous in the future.

This is one time that the TSA has done the right thing, and stepped gingerly beyond ‘security theater for appearance’s sake alone’ and actually rationally decided ‘Here’s something that isn’t a threat and never has been, and which other countries don’t prohibit, so why don’t we allow it too’.

Well done, the TSA (words you probably never expected to read here!).

And Lastly This Week….

I wrote last week about a contender for the world’s worst airport project, so to leaven the mix, this week here’s another of those silly ‘top ten’ type lists, this time claiming to list the world’s best airports.

Alas, no American airports make the list, although Vancouver comes in at number seven.  The best airport in the world, at least according to this article, is Changi in Singapore.

Until next week, please enjoy safe travels, and through nice airports

David.