Zoom joins the summer lineup of bankrupt airlines

by Scott Carmichael on

The only thing worse than seeing an airline go out of business, is watching it unfold while you are at the airport waiting to get on one of their flights. That is the unfortunate situation many passengers of Canadian airline Zoom found themselves in yesterday.

Zoom took off in May 2002 and was founded by 2 brothers who wanted to introduce low cost international travel to Canada with a fleet of 5 Boeing aircraft. The airline flew various routes from Canada to the United States, The UK, France and Italy.

One of the Boeing 757’s leased by Zoom was stranded in Glasgow and impounded when Zoom failed to pay the required air traffic control fee. Another 213 passengers were stuck in Halifax while volunteers attempted to find alternative ways to help them get to their final destination of Ottawa. Zoom naturally blames the loss of their airline on rising fuel costs and a general ecomonic downturn. They are they the 36th airline in the world to close this year according to a list posted on Wikipedia.

Sadly there really are no good tips on what to do when you are stuck at an airport after your airline goes bankrupt. All I can suggest is that you have the phone numbers for other airlines and hotel chains programmed in your phone, the quicker you get in touch with them for an alternative flight, or for a room where you can spend the night, the greater your chances are of getting home before anyone else. It is in times like this that you’ll also learn to appreciate the importance of paying for your tickets by credit card, which might help you get your money back. Don’t depend on the airline to provide you with information when things go sour, most of their staff will be the first to leave the building once they hear their employer is going under.

Woman goes down baggage chute with her baggage. Whoopsie daisy.

by Abha Malpani on

I don’t want to laugh but this is too funny: A 78-year old Swedish woman misunderstood check-in procedures at Stockholm-Arlanda Airport and along with her bag, she also stepped onto the conveyor belt and fell down the baggage chute. She was rescued by baggage handlers and taken back to the terminal. The conveyor belt was unmanned at the time so no one was there to stop her.

Luckily, she came out with no injuries and in time to catch her flight to Germany.

Poor lady, such an innocent mistake. I hope atleast she enjoyed the slide down.

Austrian airport’s security screeners mistake bacon for a bomb

by Jeffrey White on

We often like to mock the sleuthing abilities of the Transportation Security Administration, or lack thereof, since its security screeners can get confused over a misshapen tube of toothpaste or a computer with no drives.

But as far as I know, the TSA has never become addled over bacon.

I cannot say as much about the crack security screeners at the airport in Linz, Austria.

Recently, a man on summer vacation hurrying through screening there was stopped when a security worker noticed something suspicious in his carryon.

The man fessed up. “Da ist Speck drinnen.” There is bacon inside.

This is recounted in a pretty funny article on the Austrian news site Nachrichten.

Seems that security authorities were not satisfied with the man’s direct, not to say a little flip, explanation. They made him go into a bomb proof room and prove it was really bacon. An interesting little detail in the article says that police waited outside the room for fear that something might detonate.

Now, Austrians and Germans alike eat their fair share of bacon and other pig products. They couldn’t somehow recognize this without virtually calling in the bomb squad?

One screener tells Nachrichten, “During security screening, we look at the density of atoms, and bacon has the same molecular density as Dynamite.”

I’ve eaten a few meals in Germany that would corroborate that statement.

Luckily, the man was let go, with his bacon.

This article goes on to praise other successes the Linz security folks have had foiling threats recently. They stopped another man for having an electronic shoe buffer in his carryon, similar to the one you find at hotels or clubhouses at posh golf courses. The man knew nothing about it — his wife had packed his suitcase — and he wasn’t likely to ask her, since the two had just had a major fight.

And a bag was recently found unattended at the Linz airport. X-raying it, screeners saw an unidentifiable object inside. Its owner could not be located, so authorities blew the bag up, only to find the charred remains of a doll inside.

Underwire bra dispute causes woman to miss her flight

by Anna Brones on

First it was loose change in your pockets, then it was jewelry, and then it was shoes. For Jet Blue passenger Nancy Kates, it seems like bras might be the next thing to go in the airport security line. A big-busted woman, Kates was wearing a large underwire bra as she went through the security check at Oakland International Airport but when it set off the metal detector she was pulled aside by a TSA agent.

Kates accuses the agent of getting a little too personal. “The woman touched my breast. I said, ‘You can’t do that,’ ” Kates said. “She said, ‘We have to pat you down.’ I said, ‘You can’t treat me as a criminal for wearing a bra.’ “

Refusing to be fondled, Kates asked to see a supervisor and then the supervisor’s surpervisor. Kates reminded the TSA agents that the Constitution bars unreasonable searches and that “scrutinizing a woman’s brassiere is surely unreasonable.” She was offered a private room to have her pat-down, but Kates refused. Instead she asked if she could simply remove her bra, to which the TSA agent agreed. This isn’t the first breast related TSA incident, but the whole escapade took 40 minutes and caused Kates to miss her flight. Jet Blue was nice enough to put her on another one.

Being a woman, I myself have had the bra pat-down several times, and I’m sure there are other fellow females on the Gadling team that have gone through the same experience. Normally such pat-downs are off limits to fingers; TSA agents only use the side of their hands. But all the same it’s still a little unnerving. As Kates said, “If I was carrying nail clippers and forgot about them, I wouldn’t have gotten so upset. But here I was just wearing my underwear.”

What are your thoughts? Is it humiliating to get a pat-down to make sure the underwire in your bra is what’s setting off the metal detector?

10 tips for smarter flying


London notes: Some UK airports up for sale soon

by Jeffrey White on

There’s been a couple of big stories in the London newspapers this past week. One is the full fledged anticipation of the 2012 Olympics after the so-called “hand off” on Sunday, as Josh wrote about recently. Another is the fact that shamed pedophile (and former British pop heartthrob) Gary Glitter is back on British soil after being released from jail in Vietnam (he served three years on charges of sexually abusing children).

But another story, which hasn’t been as hyped, could impact you as a traveler more.

BAA, Britain’s largest airport operator, is expecting a ruling from the country’s Competition Commission that will order a break-up of its airport holdings, on the grounds that one company owning so many of Britain’s major airports is not good for the country.

The result? BAA is likely to have to sell two of its airports, maybe more.

BAA owns giant Heathrow, and also Gatwick, Stansted, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Southampton.

Most pundits are speculating that Gatwick or Stansted are on the block (and perhaps both), as are Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Obviously, holding onto Heathrow will keep BAA a powerful market player.

What does this mean for you?

Any time competition trumps monopoly the consumer could win, in terms of better and more varied service and better prices. There are rumors flying around that a group of airlines is thinking of pooling its money and buying a BAA airport. Ryanair is one airline denying that it’s looking into buying an airport (in this case, Stansted, a major hub for the carrier). With airlines in control, they could save on costs and, in theory at least, pass that on by way of lower fares.

The BAA isn’t buying the competition argument, however. It says that owning Heathrow really doesn’t translate into a competition issue with other British hubs because Heathrow isn’t vying against them for business. Heathrow is going up against other European and International hubs, like Paris, Amsterdam and Dubai.