News and notes from around the interweb:
- Nicholas Kralev, who used to write an excellent travel column for the Washington Times (on the side, he was their diplomatic correspondent) and who wrote an excellent book on understanding airfare construction (disclosure: I arranged the venue for his book launch party) has a piece on the state of travel journalism when headlines have to shout ‘free travel’ to get articles read.
- Passenger tries to light plane on fire
- Emirates has re-engineered dining at 30,000 ft so that airplane food tastes good. The claim is that Airbus A380 pressurization means we don’t lose the ability to taste and smell as much, yet there’s also a focus on flavors that stand up well at altitude. I’m not sure I buy that, and the rest of the piece talks about parts of the meal experience that better airlines do in first class as well. In the end, I wasn’t enlightened — although I do think that Emirates does an excellent job with their first class catering.
- There’s some progress with legislation catching up to current decrees permitting Cuba travel
- Which airports have the best cell service? My experience is that JFK and Dallas are not very good, with DFW problematic only once you’re out on an aircraft.
- London Heathrow is the world’s first ‘imaginary friend’-friendly airport. It is not, however, in my experience particularly friendly for ‘real’ people making connections.
Forget imaginary friends; I just wish that LHR would be carry-on friendly. I grow tired of having them empty my entire carry-on because someone saw a “dark spot” on the x-ray screen.
@Doug, I constantly hear this complaint about LHR and don’t understand it. I’ve carried plenty of items that the TSA made me take out through Heathrow (T5) and they’ve never stopped me. One time I had twenty 7-inch tablets in my carry-on in 2 packing cubes. At JFK I had to take each one out and lay them in the bins flat. At Heathrow I let the person know, she disappeared for a second to ask someone, and told me it was fine to leave them in the packing cubes.
I’ve traveled through T5 at least 40 times and never had my stuff pulled aside even once.
+1 Doug. I’ve only been through 2x, but both times had the same experience. Last time, I was so distracted trying to put it all back together, I ended up forgetting my cell phone, which 5 min. later, when I returned, was long gone. (The most frustrating part was that is was an American burner type phone, that I only took with me so I could call my ride at the US airport when I got home. It was useless to anyone else and I’m sure the thief tossed it as soon as s/he saw it was a “dumb phone.” Of course, it had all my phone contacts in it, so to ME it was a real loss.)