Fake Pilot Arrested After Flying Across Europe

by Sean McLachlan on

Police in Italy have arrested a man for impersonating a pilot and fooling the crew and ground staff into letting him into the cockpit of a European flight, the BBC reports.

A man managed to pose as a pilot using a uniform and fake ID and fly in the cockpit of an Air Dolomiti flight from Munich to Turin on April 6. Reportedly he flew as a “third pilot” and did not touch the controls.

Police, who have not revealed the man’s name, say he is jobless. They are now investigating his motives. They’re also checking to see if he managed to become a “crew member” of any other flights. He was arrested at Turin airport and was found to be in possession of uniforms similar to those worn by pilots but lacking an airline logo, a fake ID and fake flight manuals.

The man used the alias Andrea Sirlo and even created a Facebook page for himself with fake flight attendants as friends.

The website Myflightbook lists Andrew Sirlo as the pilot on a Munich-Turin flight on October 23, 2011.

Bungling airport security seems to be a regular feature here on Gadling. We’ve covered a number of stories such as a child boarding an international flight without a ticket or passport, TSA workers claiming body scanners cause cancer, and an elderly woman being put on the wrong flight.

[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Paraglider And Hang Glider Collide Midair In Italy

by Kent Wien on

It’s probably every paragliding pilot’s biggest nightmare – flying within a gaggle of other pilots in search of lift and, even though you’ve kept your head on a swivel carefully watching for traffic, you notice something out of the corner of your eye behind your risers. A hang glider is coming at you.

One pilot, flying in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy, had exactly this experience a few days ago and caught it on his camera.

Fortunately, even though the hang glider pilot’s parachute failed to open, the flat spin was enough to let him down slow enough that he was able to survive the impact with the trees.

With the advent of GoPro cameras, many hang glider and paraglider pilots record their moments in the air. That has led to an abundance of scary, ‘there I was – I nearly died’ YouTube videos involving the sports.

While paragliding in Utah last week, building up my experience for a future “Cockpit Chronicles” article on the sport, I was initially surprised at how stressful it was to fly in a confined area scratching for lift with 20 other pilots. Occasionally, I had to give up the search and try for another flight later in the day when the traffic died down.

Paragliding enjoys a remarkably good safety record (a point that’s subject to debate as you’ll see in the comments below), so hopefully these videos won’t discourage you from trying this purest form of flying.

The Great Italian Island Caper

by David Farley on
The island of Pantelleria sits 58 miles southwest of Sicily, which doesn’t seem very significant until you realize it also sits 45 miles from Tunisia, making this Italian island closer to North Africa than to Italy.

The island has been shaped by many occupiers and visitors; the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Normans, Bourbons, and Genovese have all stopped here and somehow left their mark. But it’s the Arabs who really engraved, “We were here” the deepest into the island’s ubiquitous dark-hued volcanic rock. They brought with them dishes like couscous and shakshouka. They also planted olive and citrus trees, as well as something that has given the island its main reputation: capers.


Whenever I told someone I was headed to Pantelleria, they’d either give me a blank stare, which told me they had no idea what I was talking about, or they’d say, “Oh, capers!” Yes, capers from Pantelleria are the capers to consume, apparently.

Capers are everywhere on the island, particularly, of course, in restaurant dishes. There were capers in pasta, in pesto, on spreads over crostini, topped on fish, in caponata. It was starting to seem like a caper version of Monty Python’s famous skit about Spam.
I wanted to get to the center of caper production on Pantelleria. And so one day I wandered into the middle of a caper field and began chatting with a farmer named Lorenzo “Until the ’70s,” he told me, “the island’s economy was based solely on capers and grapes.” In fact, every farmer had a field that was a mix of both. But in the ’80s, he told me, the caper-eating world became aware of the high-quality capers Pantelleria was producing and soon enough, many farmers just switched to capers. “Thanks to the volcanic soil,” the farmer said, “as well as things like culture and wind and moisture from the morning dew, the capers here have a distinct taste.” It’s true: they’re bolder and slightly sweet and the smaller capers have a crunchy-ness you just can’t find elsewhere.

The fertility of the soil is, in some cases, buttressed by the wind. This has led to some interesting innovations by the island’s farmers. They built walls out of volcanic rock around lemon and orange trees; they cultivated olive trees so that they would grow more like shrubs, spreading, tentacle like, their branches along the ground, too low for the wind to dry out its leaves. And the same goes for capers.


He knelt down on one knee and showed me how capers are picked. “Like praying,” he said. “It’s very difficult work.” So difficult, in fact, that the next generation or two might see the end of caper production on the island. “The next generation won’t want to do this work,” he said. “And then what will we do?” he asked, and then shrugged.

Until then, we should enjoy the capers of Pantellieria. As the farmer would say, they go well with everything, proven by pretty much anything you eat while on the island.

Travel Rule #1: Talk To Strangers

by Dave Seminara on

The man approaching our parked car had an unkempt beard and was wearing a dirty T-shirt. My first inclination was to try to avoid him, but then I had a sudden change of heart. Earlier that morning, I remarked to my wife that we’d been traveling around the U.S. for more than a month and hadn’t really made a single new friend or, for that matter, even had a very substantive conversation with anyone other than people I was interviewing for a story.

This realization came to me after noticing that a friend we had met on the Greek island of Patmos a few months before had posted a photo of his cat on my Facebook page. Seeing Vlachos the Cat made me think of all the friends we made while traveling in Italy and Greece over a three-month period earlier this year. Now that we were back in the good old USA, how come we weren’t meeting people on our home turf?We were in Manchester, Vermont and had just parked our car in front of a breakfast place we were about to patronize when the scruffy looking guy that I had decided not to avoid parked his bike across the street and ambled over to our car.

“You’re from Virginia?” he asked, noticing our license plate.

“We spent the last two years in Falls Church,” I said.

“I hate Virginia,” he said. “You should move here.”

The man introduced himself as Chris and he and I got to talking, as my wife tried to corral my two young sons, who were playing on the sidewalk. In about 15 minutes, Chris told me the Cliff Notes story of his life. After graduating from college in the ’70s he walked across the state of Ohio to meet Ralph Nader because he wanted to work for the Green Party and thought that might impress him.

In the ’80s, he gravitated to Arlington, Virginia, but hated it there, so he moved to a town called Strasburg in the Shenandoah region based on his desire to live in the “real Virginia.”

“I hated that goddamn place,” he said. “I’ve never seen more ignorant, backward people in my entire life.”

It seemed as though Chris had stopped to talk to us primarily because he wanted to vent a little about our adopted home state, but I didn’t mind because our morning had just gotten a bit more interesting. Chris moved to Manchester earlier this year and said he’d found paradise. He said he was “hoping to get into environmental engineering,” and I loved the fact that at his age he was still wondering what to do with his life.

“Don’t let the high home prices here in town fool you,” he said. “I just picked up a log cabin, a little primitive but not bad, for 80k, about 20 minutes away from here.”

Eventually, we parted company but I was glad that I stopped to talk, or mostly listen, to Chris. The friends you make while traveling might not become lifelong buddies but if I don’t meet people when I’m traveling I feel a little like I’ve missed something. When I think back to my favorite trips, I tend to remember the people I’ve met more than the things I’ve seen.

After talking to Chris, I thought about how we had made so many friends in the Mediterranean and realized that the reason we weren’t making friends on the road in the U.S. wasn’t because people here are less friendly or approachable. It was us and how we were traveling. Here are a few thoughts on making friends while on the road.

Get out of your car. In three months on the road in the Mediterranean, we rented cars for a grand total of just two weeks and, while not having a car can be an inconvenience in some places, it also creates opportunities to meet people. We met loads of people on trains, buses and ferries and a few more while mooching rides to places we couldn’t get to on public transport.

Trying to visit places in the U.S. without a car is a lot harder than it is in many other parts of the world but you can still park your car and sightsee on foot or bike more often than you might think. When you’re driving around seeing things inside your car, you obviously aren’t going to meet anyone.

Brings kids and/or dogs. OK, I admit that bringing small children on a trip isn’t the most relaxing way to spend your holiday, and a lot of hotels don’t allow dogs, but kids and dogs are great conversation starters.

Don’t be in a rush. People who know me know that I have a hard time with this one. Americans have a tendency to travel like cheetahs on amphetamines. We want to cover 12 countries in 6 days and see everything that’s listed in our guidebook. That’s a surefire recipe for not meeting anyone.

Don’t get too comfortable. When we travel to another country, especially if we don’t know the local language, we are in many ways helpless. We need to seek people out to ask them how to get places and how to do things, but when you’re in your own country, you’re a lot more self-sufficient.

Here in the U.S., we have a GPS and I have a phone that allows me to pull up restaurant reviews or anything else I need in a moment. I like that technology, but it also robs us of the chance to stop and ask people for help, directions and recommendations. Use the technology, but still stop and ask someone if the route your GPS suggests is a good one, or if the good reviews you read about on Yelp are legit.

Stay in small hotels or bed and breakfast places. When visiting large U.S. cities, we have a tendency to stay in big chain hotels, but if you seek out smaller, independent places you can get to know your hosts – who are often very interesting people. In Italy, we made friends with landlords who rented us apartments in Spoleto, Perugia and Lecce and they helped give us insights into their hometowns, and in Greece, we became friendly with a host of couples that ran the small hotels we stayed in.

Some bed and breakfasts in the U.S. don’t welcome families with small children but if you do your homework you can find family-friendly establishments.

Become a journalist, if only for a day. Blog about your travels and use your site as an excuse to interview people you want to talk to.

Split from your group at least once. Solo travelers are more approachable and when you travel as a couple or a group, you tend to rely on each other for conversation. At least once or twice on any trip, split up from your party for at least a half day and see what happens. When you reconvene, you’ll enjoy each other’s company all the more so.

Make the effort. This is really the most important rule. We managed to sleepwalk through a month of travel in the U.S. largely because we were a self-contained unit, dependent only on each other, traveling by car and mostly staying in large hotels. Strike up conversations with people and don’t assume that everyone that approaches you is hoping to save your soul or fleece you.

[Photos of strangers met on the road by Dave Seminara]

The Mediterranean Island Of Pantelleria: Where Italy Meets North Africa

by David Farley on
Despite a small handful of attempts, I’ve never had any luck hitchhiking. But when I recently found myself on a desolate stretch of road on an Italian island in the middle of the Mediterranean, I decided to give it a go again. On the second attempt, a clunky greenish-blue Fiat Panda slowed to a crawl. I never did get the driver’s name – a bald, gold-chain-clad guy in his 30s, wearing, of course, wrap-around sunglasses – but the first question he asked, in English, was: where are you from?

“New York,” I said.


“New York?” he asked, the tone of his voice incredulous and amazed at the same time, as if I’d said I went on a stroll from my West Village apartment, and somehow randomly ended up here on a one-lane road where sharp, black volcanic rock met the rough post-storm Mediterranean.

I nodded, affirming again where I live. His follow up: “Then what the hell are you doing here?”
We both laughed and then I explained. I was in Pantelleria, an island about the size of the island where I live (Manhattan) but literally and theoretically half a world away. I was there to take part in a food conference for the organization Oldways, a group that attempts to create awareness to culinary cultural preservation. I was done with my conference responsibilities and had walked into the eye-sore eponymous town (it was almost completely razed by British bombs in World War II) and was now on my way back to my hotel.

I have to confess: I’d never heard of Pantelleria. But when I looked at it on a map I was intrigued. Closer to North Africa than it is to Sicily (and further south than Tunis), Pantelleria appears to be the love-child of Italy and North Africa, an interesting hybrid of two cultures. Town names reflect the 500-year, early-medieval Arab occupation of the island (Khamma, Gadir, Khaddiuggia, and Bugeber). And much to my delight, so did the food. Sure, there were plenty of pasta dishes, many of which were sprinkled with pistachios, as is the Sicilian proclivity, and it seemed every restaurant in town served pizza. Nearly every time I sat down to eat, though, I was offered seafood-spiked couscous. Not unlike one would find in, say, Morocco.


It was one dish, in particular, that intrigued me the most: sciaki sciuka. If you’ve ever traveled in North Africa, this dish might sound familiar: shakshouka. I was in Israel the first time I had this wacky-sounding dish. In fact, I discovered it at a place in Jaffa called Doctor Shakshouka. The good doctor was there that day, cooking the tomato and onion-laced, poached egg-topped dish on four burners from a pedestal above the dining room, like some kind of culinary deejay, entertaining the hungry crowd. Once I dipped a piece of bread into the cast iron pan in which it was cooked, scooping up chunks of tomato, garlic and peppers – as is the custom in eating this dish – I was having something of an eating epiphany. The citric and onion flavors melded together in a harmonic and deeply satisfying way. I loved eating hummus and pita and baba ganoush while I was traveling in the area, but this was a real taste of the Middle East to me.

Or so I thought. Here I was in “Italy,” eating a near-ubiquitous dish that had traveled here possibly a millennium ago and is now as Pantescan – the adjective for something from Pantelleria – as it is Middle Eastern and North African. No one is exactly sure where the dish comes from: some have said Morocco, the Ottoman Empire, or Yemen. Libyan Jews (like Dr. Shakshouka) say it originates in Libya.

On Pantelleria, the dish has adapted to local ingredients and at times almost seemed more like a ratatouille. It was filled with capers, one of the most popular products on the island, and eggplant, which seems to be in just about everything there, potatoes and peppers. Sometimes I saw boiled, not poached eggs, sprinkled on top.

I have to admit I like the shakshouka better in North Africa but the presence of the dish on this relatively little-known island in the middle of the Mediterranean filled a hunger inside me in a completely different way.

The gold-chain-clad guy who picked me up wished me well when I got back to my hotel. When he drove away, he was still laughing about the fact that I’d come so far to be in Pantelleria. But I don’t think he realized how well I ate here.