Madrid airport luggage handlers smuggle 17 kilos of cocaine into Spain

by Abha Malpani on

4 luggage handlers at Madrid Barajas Airport have been arrested for smuggling cocaine into Spain by taking advantage of their position and access to luggage that is unloaded off air crafts.

A bag with over 17 kilograms(!) of cocaine was loaded onto the plane from an unspecified destination. The “loaders” then contacted their friends who worked at Barajas with identification details of the bag that had the drug. Once the bag arrived at Barajas, the luggage handlers picked it up and sent it to the person responsible for delivering missing luggage to its owners (who was also part of the scheme) — this is how they had planned to get it out of the airport. Sounds too easy to be possible, eh?

It seems like this wasn’t the first time it has happened, but the first time they’ve been caught. It is unclear at what stage they got caught, and how.

Spain has a serious cocaine problem: 3% of adults in the country consume cocaine (even more than the US), making Spain the largest consumer in Europe.

Spain is very lax in many aspects: it’s rules are not applied stringently, especially at the airports the controls are quite loose, nobody seems to be really bothered. For example: I have American friends living here for years without papers, sin problema. Once, one of them got questioned on her overstay when she re-entered Spain from the US. She told them she had fallen in love, that’s why she didn’t go back when she should have. Apparently, the officer smiled and let her back into the country! It could have been her lucky day, but I still don’t think that’s acceptable.

Another example: smoking marijuana in public is illegal here (you can grow and smoke it at home!), yet every one does it — I don’t know anyone who has been caught.

In my opinion, no matter what soup you are in, if you look innocent, behave with the authorities, and are a little smart, you’ll probably get away with it in Spain. So it doesn’t surprise me that even authorities take advantage of this chilled attitude. I am glad they got caught. Hopefully this will make Barajas re-evaluate their procedures and tighten controls!

New website: Delaycast

by Abha Malpani on

A new website called Delaycast has just gone into beta. As the name suggests, it’s a website that forecasts flight delays so that you can optimize your travel time.

Run by analytical professionals with a strong base in statistics, they run historical flight performance details into advance predictive mathematical models to understand flight delay patterns. Like this they predict future flight patterns basis the airport you are flying from and the time of your flight.

So (as I understand) Delaycast will give you the odds of your flight being on time or getting delayed, calculated from historical data. These odds are useful when booking because you can keep in mind the chances of you being delayed, missing connections, and the possibility of unintended stay-overs. Sounds like they use some math version of Probability(?)

The estimates are based on historical data and you can only search delays basis airports (not flights). They project 4-5 months in the future, and of course, since they are estimates, there are chances that their predictions don’t hold through. To add to that, understandably, they do not take into account “in the moment” delays that could happen while you are flying: weather delays, or technical difficulties that might occur on the day.

In my mind, the main causes of flight delays are: 1) weather 2) technical difficulties in air 3) late take-off due to technical difficulties 4) not being able to land because of issues at destination airport 5) reputation of airline. Other than the reputation of the airline, none of these factors are taken into consideration at Delaycast.

So, all in all, it’s surely a novel concept that provides a service if you take it into account when booking flights. However, everything can change on the actual day of the flight, so how useful is it really?

Update on the Clear Security free pass – Marriott Rewards members now eligible

by Grant Martin on

This past Monday I posted an interesting article on how to get free Clear Security access, the new fangled super security screening that has popped up at numerous airports around the country.

Basically it involved applying to get free Hyatt special status, then turning around and using said status to get apply for a free one year Clear membership. I have yet to jump on the train, largely because Detroit doesn’t have Clear lanes (perhaps because their security is already pretty fluid).

It now looks like Marriott is going the same way with their rewards program. Platinum members of Marriott Rewards can now apply for their special passes, while Gold and Silver members will be given a marginal discount on the service. You can check out the full details at Marriott’s promo website.

I am suddenly curious as to why all of these Clear promotions keep coming up. I’m willing to bet that profits haven’t been super robust, largely because people haven’t been willing to cough up over a hundred bucks to pay for faster security when they could just arrive a half hour earlier and stand in line. Perhaps this is a way to appeal to some of the “higher dollar” business travelers who might find themselves important enough to become Clear members.

Here’s an idea Clear: offer the promo to Blackberry users.

Salvation: Newark and JFK airport flights capped

by Grant Martin on

Looks like New Yorkers are starting to see some results from last year’s suffocating loads — and subsequent complaints — out of and the Newark and JFK. If you remember the piece published in the New Yorker late last year and several of the subsequent articles that ran here at Gadling, you may know that the three airports suffer from terrible congestion, resulting in late flights all over the country, hours on the tarmac and general misery for anyone traveling through the area.

Much of the problem lies in the sheer demand out of the three airports. Passengers want to fly out at optimal times so airlines pack flights into certain times of the day. But FAA and Air Traffic Control requirements stipulate that only a certain amount of flights can leave within a particular window.

Until recently, there were more flights than there were take off slots, which kind of creates a problem even before one even exists. Mix some crummy weather and mechanical problems in and you have what’s known as today the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Now, the maximum number of outgoing flights will be changed from 100/hour to 83/hour, which should ease some of the congestion woes. Extra flights that were during peak hours will be spread throughout the day, with the net result of extra flights overall during the day. Recall however, that even at 100 flights/hour supply was still extremely tight during peak times. If that goes down, will ticket prices go up? My guess is yes.

[Via CNN]

RFID for Luggage: Coming To An Airport Near You?

by Martha Edwards on

Most people have a story of an airline losing their luggage. For me, it was en route to Thailand, and I was forced to spend a couple of days wearing my travelling companion’s clothing — too bad she’s about half my size. Luckily, I was prepared and brought a toothbrush, deodorant, some soap and most importantly, an clean pair of underwear with me in my carry-on.

A newish technology is being integrated into a number of airports, and is already in operation at Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport, as well as the Hong Kong International Airport. It’s called RFID — radio frequency identification — and it is embedded into luggage tags.

RFID works much more effectively than the current tracking device, bar codes. And while with bar codes, baggage handlers have to manually search for a bag, RFID allows them to track down the bag’s exact location. So far at McCarran, the technology has 99% accuracy in it’s read rate — the 1% being tags that are unreadable because they’ve slip under the bag handle. It’s relatively cheap too — $0.15 per tag, compared to $1.80 in 1997.

Expect to see this technology at Airports in Paris, Amsterdam, Milan and San Francisco, among others.