This week on the Gadling Instagram feed, we were so inspired by Anna Brones’ week of photos from Paris, France, that we decided to go back.
Actually, pulling a page from the itinerary of a backpacking college student, we’ll only be stopping in Paris for a day while en route to the cities and hamlets of Italy. Expect a week full of photos that range from ruins and relics to hidden restaurants where there will be more than a few shots of pizza and wine. From the hilltop villages of Tuscany to the fabled coastline of Cinque Terre, follow the #OntheRoad Instagram feed for a peek into where our travels have managed to take us.
Before beginning his doctorate in biomedical sciences, “Alex the Adventure Biker” took a break to realize his lifelong dream: to ride a motorcycle through the Americas. Over the course of nearly a year and a half, he rode his bike through 22 countries as he made his way from El Paso, Texas, to Argentina and then back up through Brazil and all the way to Alaska – a journey of more than 82,000 miles.
“In short I drove solo half way around the world, through interstates, highways, dirt roads, no roads, mud, rivers, through hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, rain, hail, sun shine, snow, ice roads you name it and I made it back,” the adventurous biker wrote on his website. Ride along and check out the varied landscape as he saw it (and some disco dancing, too) in the video above, which was created from more than 600 hours of footage.
The first flyable Airbus A350 emerged from a hangar in southwestern France earlier today, showing off a freshly painted livery stamped with the Airbus logo. But the significance of this morning’s roll out goes beyond just a few layers of paint; according to Airbus, the plane has passed a number of milestones, including flight-test-instrument (FTI) verification, and should be ready for its maiden flight this summer.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the manufacturer hopes to bring the wide-body aircraft into commercial service by the end of 2014. The model has been built to rival Boeing’s popular 777 model as well as the 787 “Dreamliner,” which has come under fire recently due to overheating concerns on the aircraft’s lithium-ion batteries.
From white-knuckled first-time flyers to seasoned business travelers, anyone looking for a behind-the-scenes look at air travel should pick up pilot and travel columnist Patrick Smith’s new book. To compose “Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections,” Smith pulled (and updated) content from his former Salon column and AskThePilot.com to give a comprehensive look at the often misunderstood airline industry.
Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction:
More than ever, air travel is a focus of curiosity, intrigue, anxiety, and anger. In the chapters that follow I will do my best to provide answers for the curious, reassurance for the anxious, and unexpected facts for the deceived.
It won’t be easy, and I begin with a simple premise: everything you think you know about flying is wrong. That’s an exaggeration, I hope, but not an outrageous starting point in light of what I’m up against. Commercial aviation is a breeding ground for bad information, and the extent to which different myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories have become embedded in the prevailing wisdom is startling. Even the savviest frequent flyers are prone to misconstruing much of what actually goes on.
Anyone familiar with Smith’s writing knows the opinionated pilot has an entertaining tone that strips out all the pilot-ese (similar to our own Kent Wein, who pens Gadling’s Cockpit Chronicles). In “Cockpit Confidential,” Smith covers everything from airline logos and cabin air misconceptions to the science behind keeping a plane afloat and explaining security issues. Watch the video above for more background, or pick up a copy over at Amazon.com to read on your next journey.
Say you’re on a plane, sitting in a middle seat, and the rude passengers on both sides of you are in command of the arm wrests. Do you say something? Ask a flight attendant to help? Say nothing and live with it? Or are you just not sure? If you are like a lot of people, you say nothing according to a fifth annual nationwide survey that asked Americans how they would handle uncomfortable but common air travel situations.
Nearly half those surveyed (48.9%) would say nothing to their arm-wrest hogging neighbors with about a quarter saying they would stand up for the space they paid for either by saying something to their overflowing seatmate (27.9%) or asking a flight attendant (2.7%) for help. The remaining 20.6 % were just not sure about it.Think that person in front of you who reclines to the point that you cannot open a laptop is a problem? You are not alone. A full 75% would either say something to that passenger or call a flight attendant for help, while 7.7% were just not sure about it. In fact, a number of survey respondents were “just not sure” about most situations. It is no surprise then when asked what to do when seated next to a non-stop talker, 89.6% of those surveyed would read a book, put on headphones, pretend to sleep or just give in and talk throughout the flight rather than say something to them directly about talking (10.4%).
The survey, conducted by the Travel Leaders Group from March 15 to April 8, 2013, measured responses from 1,788 air travelers on a number of very specific circumstances involving rude passengers.
“As their travel agent experts, we hear directly from our clients who share similar complaints regarding their experiences. In our survey, we wanted to know how many travelers proactively take some sort of action to resolve those situations,” stated Travel Leaders Group CEO Barry Liben.
The survey also asked about screaming children on a plane (not popular), which got the highest response from respondents saying it was a matter that flight attendants should take care of.