How do you prepare for your flight?

by Grant Martin on

Everyone has their own pre-flight ritual to make the upcoming torture bearable. I personally wander over to the lounge, check my email and try to make sure that I’m top of all of my active projects. Others have a more, well, active ritual. This guy at LAX was drawing such a crowd that someone pulled out his camera to film the spectacle. Take a look:

Perhaps if we all did this before our flights we’d no longer have angry passengers and cranky flight attendants.

Thanks to the lovely Paula Berg at Southwest Airlines for the link.

Survey ranks Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle and Los Angeles worst airports in the world

by Scott Carmichael on

A Priority Pass survey of frequent business travelers has revealed what many of us knew all along – London Heathrow is the worst airport in the world. Heathrow is followed by Charles de Gaulle and Los Angeles.

These three airports tend to pop up on “worst airport” surveys most of the time, and anyone who frequents any of them will understand why. Heathrow is improving slowly, and the new Terminal Five is making travel through the UK airport a slightly better experience, but the other terminals are still quite a disgrace.

Charles de Gaulle is another dump of an airport. Even though it has invested heavily in some new terminals, there are still plenty of parts of this facility that need to be flattened and built from the ground up.

Los Angeles airport just signed off on a multi-year, multi-billion Dollar renovation plan, which should be completed by 2013. Of course, that still means 4 more years of being in the top three of worst airports in the world.

Singapore Changi, Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok and Amsterdam Schiphol are voted best in the world, and anyone who has spent any time at these airports will understand why. These are the kind of airports where it is actually a treat to be stranded for a couple of hours, unlike places like Heathrow where your only urge is to get the hell out of the place as quickly as possible.

What do you think? Do these airports deserve to be crowned “worst in the world”, or do you know of an airport that is even worse? Leave you comments below.
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Want a lifetime of free flights? Give birth on board

by Jamie Rhein on

There’s one lucky newborn baby and mom living in Malaysia. The mother, a 31-year-old Malaysian woman, added excitement and drama to an AirAsia flight from Penang to Kuching this past Wednesday when she gave birth to her bundle of joy while the plane was still in the air.

Shortly after the baby was born, the plane landed in Kuala Lumpur. The aim was for the emergency landing to occur before the baby arrived but obviously the baby had other ideas.

Giving birth in flight, with the help of a doctor who was on board, has landed this mom a jackpot of free flights on AirAsia for life. The airline has also bestowed these riches to the newborn.

Can you believe the luck? Just two days old and already a budget traveler to envy. Think of all the nifty vacations this kid will be able to go on. AirAsia, a budget carrier, flies all over Asia and to the United Kingdom.

In a way, this is also like being granted lifelong companion fare status. If either mom or son want to travel with a friend or relative, they could offer to pay a portion of the companion’s ticket in order to share the wealth and have a steady stream of traveling pals.

Happily, mother and son are doing well, even though, the birth was 11 weeks premature.

Northwest pilots fly plane miles past airport where plane was supposed to land

by Jamie Rhein on

Missing a highway exit, thus driving well past it and needing to turn around may be common, particularly if a driver is feeling spaced out and road hashed. Missing an airport, thus flying past it, is unusual. Even so, it happened this past Wednesday. A Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 overshot Minneapolis where it was heading.

Luckily, the plane only went 150 miles further before the pilots realized their mistake and turned around. I guess they must have missed the fact the landscape below had turned from rural to suburban to urban. Minneapolis does have impressive architecture and it’s not small. How do you not notice a city?

Overshooting Minneapolis wasn’t the pilots only mistake. They didn’t contact radio controllers for over an hour. Because of this, the Air National Guard was alerted to be on stand-by and airport police met the plane when it landed at Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport. Police involvement is standard procedure when there is a communication failure.

As an explanation for the big whoops!, the pilots said they were distracted by a heated discussion they were having about airline policy. That must have been some discussion.

There is a possibility that the pilots may have been suffering from pilot fatigue which caused these errors. They could have been taking a snooze. Whether it was fatigue or a heated discussion, the pilots are suspended from flying during the investigation.

As for the 144 passengers, they didn’t know anything was amiss until the police showed up.

I can imagine those people who had scrambled to get their bags out of the overhead bin before the seat belt sign went off thinking when they saw the police board the plane, “Wow, I won’t do that again. I promise I’ll keep my seat belt fastened and wait for that last ding. I swear I will.” [Bloomberg.com]

*The photo is of an aerial shot of Minneapolis. Along with the tall buildings, it seems like the water could be a nifty visual cue to keep in mind when flying to Minneapolis.

Gatwick Airport to be sold, modernized

by Sean McLachlan on

This week’s announcement by the British Airports Authority that it will sell London’s Gatwick Airport has everyone wondering about the future of the city’s second busiest hub.

The BAA, owned by the Spanish group Ferrovial, sold Gatwick for £1.5 billion ($2.49 billion) to Global Infrastructure Partners, owned by Credit Suisse and General Electric. The deal comes after the UK government decided the BAA had a near monopoly and ordered it to sell Gatwick and Stansted, both serving London, as well as either Glasgow or Edinburgh airports.

BAA also owns Heathrow, London’s busiest airport, and is expected to use some of the money for that airport’s infrastructure, but most of it will be go towards reducing a staggering pile of debt amounting to almost £10 billion ($16.6 billion).

What this means for travelers is not yet clear. The new owners have stated they plan to modernize Gatwick, and have expressed interest in expanding the north terminal and adding a second runway. Gatwick is the world’s busiest single-runway airport, serving more than 32 million passengers last year. An agreement with local residents has stopped any additional runways until 2019, but now that there’s a new company in the cockpit, that may change. A new runway could enable Gatwick to serve up to 80 million passengers a year, more than Heathrow. The situation will become clearer in early December when Global Infrastructure Partners officially takes over.