Bus accident at airport sends passengers to hospital in a travel snafu

by Jamie Rhein on

If you’ve flown enough, you’ve probably been on one of those buses that transport you between airport terminals.

When riding in such a vehicle, who really thinks about anything but making a connection? After reading this article about an accident at the Sydney Airport in Australia this morning, I’d say, here’s another reason to hope there’s enough time for terminal transfers in order to catch a flight.

This morning, a bus was bringing passengers from the international to a domestic terminal when the driver had to swerve quickly and slam on the brakes to avoid hitting another vehicle. I can imagine the body slams. Several people flew out of their seats. As a result, seven people were hurt, although nothing so serious that they couldn’t walk off the bus.

Still, I imagine there was quite a ruckus as paramedics in seven emergency vehicles arrived at the scene of the accident to check folks out. Several passengers were taken to the hospital for a careful, just in case, look over. Can’t you just hear the protests? “No, no, no, I’m fine, really. I have a flight to catch. I’ll miss my connection.”

That’s one way to experience a flight delay. Hopefully, folks found themselves winging their way to their destinations soon after, and had a kiss and make up ticket voucher in hand. With luck, there wasn’t another bus transport involved in the rest of their journey.

5 steps to smarter packing

Airlines Complain about Vegas Airport’s Plan

by Josh Lew on

Despite seeing a decrease in the number of arrivals, construction of a new terminal will go ahead as planned at McCarran Airport Las Vegas. Though the 2 billion dollar project will not be completed until 2012, some airlines are questioning the timing of the project. It’s not secret that airlines are struggling. Arrivals are down almost 5% at McCarran since last year. A drop of as high as 15% is forecast for next year.

Southwest Airlines has been the biggest critic of the expansion. Over 30% of Las Vegas arrivals fly Southwest. But the airline has been trimming back its service to Sin City. The airport expansion will mostly be funded by an increase in the fees that airlines pay to use the airport and its gates. No one wants to hear talk of higher prices right now, especially at a bread-and-butter location like Las Vegas. After the rapid growth that the city has been experiencing, no one seems to want to look at the facts. But things are slowing down. I guess McCarran is gambling that things won’t be so slow in a couple of years.

TSA agent helped himself to a $47,900 camera (and more!)

by Scott Carmichael on

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of the TSA. While I fully understand the importance of keeping our planes and airports safe, I’m just not sure the TSA is up to the job. The agency is also plagued by bad PR, mainly because of incompetent staff members and insane decisions that impact us as travelers.

The latest in a long lineup of bad press for the agency involves TSA screener Pythias Brown. This 48 year old resident of Maplewood, NJ was supposed to keep bad stuff off the plane, but instead, he was helping himself to valuable items from the bags of people entrusting him with their belongings.

Pythias started small, stealing cameras, laptop computers, gaming consoles and eventually moved on to the good stuff including a video camera belonging to CNN, and a $47,900 camera stored inside the bag of an HBO employee.

The items were sold on Ebay, and as you can see from his feedback listing, these were not cheap items.

His greed eventually came back to haunt him, when CNN found one of their cameras listed on Ebay. With a little help from the local police department and the USPS, Brown was apprehended.

When agents entered his house, they found 66 cameras, 31 laptop computers, jewelry, lenses, GPS devices and more.

The total value of the stolen items is well over $200,000, and if you have ever lost an expensive item when flying from Newark Liberty Airport, you’ll be thrilled to hear that the TSA is taking the matter “seriously”. News like this just reinforces the need to keep anything of value out of your checked bags.

Of course, this also makes me wonder just how on earth a TSA agent is able to leave the sterile area of his or her local airport with a $47,900 camera hidden in their bag. We passengers get screened, so perhaps it is time to start screening TSA staff when they enter and leave the airport?

Ways to make that airport delay tolerable

by Jeffrey White on

I was scanning through some travel sites this morning when I stumbled on this piece over at MSNBC.com.

The reading experience I had started with what the hell and ended only slightly more upbeat.

Harriet Baskas, who writes the sites’s weekly “Well-mannered Traveler” column — though has never, really, defined exactly what that means — offers in her latest column, as far as I can tell, ways to make a flight delay more bearable when you’re stuck in an airport.

Specifically, the piece’s angle is this: “I’ve discovered that sometimes the line between a well-mannered traveler and a downright obnoxious one can hinge on the presence of an amenity or two in the airport.”

Attending an amenities conference in Boston, she describes all the innovations coming to airport lavatories. Self-cleaning toilet seats! Pimped-out hand dryers! Sinks with a swing-out extension for your little one to wash his or her hands.

All pretty cool, granted, but would any of these make waiting out a flight delay really that much better?

That’s pretty much where the specifics stop. Baskas tells us that most airports will soon have WiFi. And renting DVDs is a lot easier these days. OK, that will help. An airport amenities salesman tells Baskas that we can look forward to advancements on the food front too, but offers no specifics.

All in all, there’s not much hope here that waiting in the airport will become better any time soon (unless you really like rotating toilet seats).

I’m still waiting for a serious campaign to install major hubs with a movie theater, perfect for longish layovers.

Until then, let’s face it, nothing beats that old standby: The bar. A few good drinks passes the time like nothing else.

Air traffic controller oversleeps, delaying two flights landing on Greek island

by Jeffrey White on

Last week saw two airplanes that were headed to the Greek island of Lesbos have to circle above the Aegean Sea for 40 minutes because an air traffic controller was asleep.

The flights affected were an Olympic Airlines plane and a Slovakian Airlines plane, both of which tried several times to raise the control tower but couldn’t. No one there would answer.

The woman who should have been there later acknowledged that she had overslept.

You’d think they would have a contingency if a worker oversleeps, but apparently not. The airplanes eventually landed with the help of computer assistance. The sleeping controller has been suspended for three days.