Airport Comfort

by Erik Olsen on

Last year about this time, I was hunkered down in the Munich Airport lounge sipping the free beer and wine and gnoshing on snacks. There were comfortable couches and big ocean-liner-sized chairs and there was Internet access and TV and, well, damn, this was real luxury. In fact, it was even better than my apartment. It was not ,then a surprise to discover that the Munich airport actually makes the list of top ten airports.

Strangely, it didn’t make the list for lounges, which you can see if you click the popoff at the site. Which means that the ones who did, well, they must be pretty spectacular. But what is conspicuous to me about the list, and quite sad when you think about it, is there is not a single US airport on the list. Hong Kong tops the airports list, with Munich down at fourth place, but again, not a single US airport. Can’t we do better than this?

Packing List

by Erik Olsen on

I little bit ago, I posted about a new site called One Bag or some such thing. I was actually surprised by the comments response. A lot of people have rather heart-felt passions about what should be brought or left home on a trip.

I suppose if there is any agreement on the matter, though, it is this: as best you can, it is always good to pack light. And so with that in mind, I offer you this link to a rather fancy calculator thingie that will help you do just that. The Universal Packing List gives you all sorts of parameters about the trip you are taking. Weather you expect, duration, part of the world. You add all this stuff, click go and voila, you get a list of all the things you need to bring. Now let me say that I have no idea how well it works. I just stumbled upon it this morning while looking around. But it does seem promising, at the very least to help you get started. So if anyone actually wants to give it a test and then post a comment/review, why we’d just love that.

Farecast

by Erik Olsen on

I’ve read a couple of things about this new site Farecast, and figured I’d go take a look for myself. The site is still in beta, or out of beta though hardly ready for primetime, but what it offers is a unique and much-needed (or at least very useful) take on the whole Web 2.0 travel site thing. What FareCast does is shows you the price history of a particular flight and then offers you what the price forecast is.

That is, through a series of complex algorithms…and some weird juju I don’t profess to understand, black magic if you will, the site will tell you if the price is trending up or down. They also offer a confidence meter showing the likelihood they are right and how the price differs according to time of day.

In other words, it takes what a company like kayak offers and then throws a lot more useful information at you. Really pretty cool. The sad thing is that , as I mentioned, the site hardly works yet, with the ability to view only outgoing flights from Boston and Seattle. But so far, this could be a really cool new way to shop for flights.

Indian Crew Pilfering Whiskey

by Erik Olsen on

Is this major breaking news? No. But you can kind of picture the scene and that will generate a little giggle. Turns out some Indian security officers on the Prime Minister’s flight got a bit of a shock. PM Manmohan Singh’s personal, private cabinets had been illegally broken into, and foul play was suspected. But as it turned out the intruders weren’t trying to plant a bomb. They were ripping off the prime minister’s whiskey. Who was doing the pilfering? Turns out it was the flight crew themselves, obviously unhappy with the airline’s dental plan and eager to supplement its short comings with good scotch.

O’Hare Worst for Departures

by Erik Olsen on

Guess which airport in the is worst overall for departures? The one you most want to avoid, therefore, if you are out traveling this summer? The answer: O’Hare in Chicago. About 69 percent of the flights leaving O’Hare International Airport took off on time in May, putting the airport in last place in the country for on-time departures, according to government data. Perhaps no surprise because I believe it is the largest airport in the , but good info to bear in mind if you have control over your stopover flights.