sri lanka

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Illegal Immigrant Caught Stowing Away Inside a Suitcase

by Gary Leff

Jul 06 2016

In 10 weeks at the beginning of the year I traveled to Paris, Bangkok, Doha, Maldives, Sri Lanka, the desert outside Dubai and Maui (plus places like Washington DC and San Francisco of course). Over and over, when people asked where I was going next, I heard “can you take me along in your suitcase?”

This morning an Eritrean man is making news, having been found inside a suitcase in Chiasso, Switzerland after train passengers heard moans emanating from inside. The train originated in Italy, and the man in the suitcase was traveling with another man who was hiding in the bathroom.

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New Award Connectivity: Lufthansa Now Flying to the Maldives and Mauritius!

by Gary Leff

Dec 13 2015

Lufthansa has added several new long haul leisure destinations include Mauritius, the Maldives, and Cancun — on top of recent new flights to Tampa and Nairobi.

Flights to the Maldives generally, and with Star Alliance miles in particular, used to be really tough to get as recently as four years ago. There was once-weekly Austrian service from Vienna (that’s now been upgauged to a Boeing 777 and flies twice weekly). Otherwise you’d fly Singapore Airlines or you’d Thai Airways to Colombo, Sri Lanka and buy the short flight to Malé.

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Leaving from New York JFK or Have a 3 Hour Layover There? Do This.

by Gary Leff

Jun 30 2015

Good Sri Lankan food is always a great option. Spicy Lanka is just 5 miles from New York’s JFK airport.

I was in New York for about 20 hours, flying into LaGuardia and out of JFK. I was on a 5:30pm flight out yesterday. The lunch event I attended in Manhattan yesterday was more useful for talking with folks and I decided not to eat anything, I got out of there around 2:30pm, so I decided to stop here on the way to the airport. Good call.

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Review: Emirates Colombo Airport Lounge and First Class, Colombo – Dubai

by Gary Leff

May 19 2015

Now it was really time to head home from my Maldives trip, having had my fill of Sri Lankan food for the day. We checked out of the Hilton and made what was nearly an hour’s drive in traffic to the Colombo airport.

Once there, though, things moved quickly. I had boarding passes from the day before, picked up in Male for both Colombo – Dubai and Dubai – Dallas. And there was pretty much no wait at all for immigration formalities or security to head to the Emirates lounge while waiting to fly Emirates first class to Dubai…

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A Big Movement Is Coming To Re-Regulate The Airlines, And Make Air Travel Worse

by Gary Leff

Sep 22 2023

There’s a shot across the bow of aviation – an intellectual case is being made for airlines to revert to the status of public utilities. Sitaraman’s upcoming book can be seen as a starting gun for arguments over regulating the airline industry. The arguments for this used to be unserious, by folks like Robert Kuttner. That’s changing, and with a direct line to people in power.

People who care about not making air travel worse need to wake up to the threat, though there is also much we should be doing that would make air travel better.

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A Former American Airlines Plane is Still Missing After 20 Years

by Gary Leff

Big American Plane
May 25 2023

Disappearing planes, and no clear answers, just isn’t something that happens in aviation. There hadn’t been a single commercial aircraft go missing in the prior 13 years. Nearly all the aircraft that have disappeared have been probable crashes. Perhaps surprisingly commercial planes simply aren’t ever stolen. At least they almost never are.

Yet a Boeing 727 disappeared on May 25, 2003 from the international airport in Luanda, Angola. The plane used to belong to American Airlines. It was never found.

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