The next time I’m in line for security, or customs, or passport control, or heck, the supermarket, I’ll try to remember this video. Taken in February 2007 at London’s Heathrow Airport, the video shows people lined up to pass through customs.

The line just. keeps. going.

via The Gate

It’s been a tough few weeks, so the posting machine has been running a bit slow. Time to clear some of the backlog:

Survivor: Skybus edition
Jaunted’s Mark Johnson played anthropologist in the airline world last week, doing some participant-observation onboard ultra-cheap negative-frills airline Skybus. The whole saga, with videos and pictures, can be found here. Photo above is Mark’s pic of a $9/hour Skybus flight attendant selling goods (on commission). Ah, the ubiquitous Toblerone, official chocolate of 35,000 feet. But ice wine? And those crew uniforms look remarkably like the folks in those hotels.com TV ads…

Bonus: Skybus is adding three cities to their roster. “Hartford/Springfield” — which is really Westover Metropolitan (CEF), 19 miles from Bradley (BDL). “Jacksonville/Daytona Beach” — which is really St. Augustine/St. John’s County (UST), a whopping 42 air miles from Jacksonville (JAX). And San Diego. Yes, it’s really San Diego. One out of three ain’t bad.

At least he didn’t threaten the flight attendants
The TSA reportedly detained director Mike Figgis for five hours at LAX, after he told security screeners that he was in town to “shoot a pilot.” What, LAX employees never heard the television-industry parlance of “pilot”? UPDATE: This never happened. Mike Figgis himself says it’s BS. But it’s a good story, I tells ya.

Arthur Frommer had better watch out
Latest competitor to Fodor’s, Frommer’s, and Lonely Planet? Borat!

Canadian citizenship for Kip Hawley?
Even though the Canadian government has created their own security lists, Canadian airlines are still using American no-fly lists. Will TSA Director Kip Hawley freedom baggies be far off?

I’d rather pay for my mortgage with miles
Gary Leff wants to pay his mortgage by credit card, so he can earn points. And it will soon be possible, via American Express and a small set of lenders, who take a $395 fee up front. Years ago, I checked out a rental apartment that let you use Visa to pay your rent. (I didn’t rent it.) The apartment sucked, but think of the miles I left on the table!

Villa livin’
Wendy Perrin has written a great guide to finding an affordable villa or vacation home. But the prices she mentions are still not ultra-cheap. I’m already a villa convert: In December 2005, my wife and I rented a small beachfront house in Anguilla. The house had its own pool, looked across the strait to the beautiful, mountainous island of St. Martin (or St. Maarten, if you prefer), and cost a little over $200 per night. It had no butler service, and, while comfortable, it wasn’t “luxury,” but it was amazing value.

Spend green to go green?
The city of Denver wants passengers to buy carbon offsets when they fly out of DEN. They’re setting up kiosks that let you buy offsets just like you might buy that Mutual of Omaha travel insurance. At the same time, Republican Congressmen are, perhaps ironically, championing a greater role for the federal government: regulating carbon offsets. Might not be a bad idea. I’m all for supporting the environment, but I’m suspicious of the offset idea. This skeptical op-ed in the Times of London doesn’t help.

Explosive curry
Explosive curry damages a Boeing 747. Say no more.

Boxers = Boeing, briefs = Airbus
Great moments in headline writing: “Hong Kong tycoon buys B787 jet after seeing passenger in underpants.”

Yes, that hamster is happy to see you
Jetlagged? Try popping a Viagra. After all, it works for hamsters!

Downgraded: Presidential security
The Secret Service is overburdened. So they’re bringing in the TSA! If presidential candidates look like they haven’t washed their hair, because their shampoo was confiscated, this will be why. God help us all.

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Just when I thought I’d heard it all, comes this:

The entire Tuscan village of Tenuta de Castelfalfi has been snapped up by Europe’s largest tour operator and will be transformed into an integrated holiday playground for German tourists within two years. [...] The exquisitely beautiful but rundown medieval settlement north of Siena, and close to Florence and Pisa, is soon to be renamed Toscana Resort Castelfalfi. [...] TUI says it wants to offer its guests the full rural experience, including locally produced fruit, vegetables and wines.

Sure, that sounds really authentic. And EPCOT Center’s German pavillion is a perfectly authentic recreation of German life, in its totality.

I can understand the tension that makes this sort of development possible. Many people want to experience a change of scenery, perhaps even with some notion of some “authentic” local flavor, but they aren’t willing to step outside of their comfort zone. But this is going too far.

The trend toward self-contained “safe” environments, homogenized for foreign consumption yet situated in an exotic location, isn’t a new one. Travelers to a resort compound in Jamaica, for instance, aren’t experiencing Jamaican culture, but are simply there for the beach and the weather.

In the most crass example, Secrets Resorts, created by the AMResorts division of Apple Vacations, are designed to completely recreate American bar and beach culture in Mexico and the Caribbean, while blocking out the local Mexican environment as much as possible.

“We Americanize it like no one else. The ketchup on the table is always Heinz. The mayonnaise is always Hellman’s. The yogurt is Dannon,” [Alex Zozaya, the head of the resorts,] said. “On the television, you’ll find ABC, NBC and CBS. [...] we focus on all the American sports all the time. If there’s an important European soccer match at the same time as a hockey game, our televisions will be tuned to the hockey game. We even have tailgate parties where guests can watch football on giant screens, barefoot in the sand, eating chicken wings and drinking Coronas.”

At least they serve Corona!

So you have two extremes: A sterilized “authentic” museum city in Tuscany — except that it’s entirely in German, and a recreated America-land in a sunny climate with no sense of place.

Travel, by its very definition, means an interaction, or a collision, of cultures. Hoping to experience a “pure,” unadulterated place, or trying to avoid any trace of the local flavor, is equally desperate and sad.

Perhaps the futility of the quest for authenticity is best demonstrated by Monty Python:

(Thanks to Tim Hughes!)

For those of us in the United States, Monday, May 28 is Memorial Day, commemorating those who died in military service. For many people, it also means picnics, barbeques, and travel, so the media are once again pitching the predictable, dog-bites-man story that the roads will be busy with travelers. What a shocker! But why does Memorial Day fall on a Monday?

The backstory comes to us from Eric Felten’s always-informative spirits column in the Wall Street Journal. Leave it to a boozehound to give us a civics lesson:

Memorial Day wasn’t always on a Monday. Inaugurated shortly after the Civil War, the holiday was originally known as “Decoration Day,” and came to be observed in most states on May 30 of each year. Come the 1950s, NATO started militating for Memorial Day — and a slew of other holidays, including the Fourth of July — to be moved to Monday. This particular NATO, Frank Sullivan noted in a 1955 New York Times Magazine article, was not the defense alliance, but rather the National Association of Travel Organizations, a lobbying group that wanted to boost the number of three-day weekends.

Fantastic! So now we know to not only honor fallen soldiers, but travel agents of yesteryear as well. The three-day weekend is clearly a goal to which all Americans can raise their glass. Perhaps even in Mr. Felten’s recommended cocktail for the holiday: The Tom Collins.

1½ oz gin
Juice of ½ lemon
¼-½ oz simple syrup, or 1-2 tsp. sugar
2-3 oz soda water.
Build on the rocks in a short highball glass (what was once called, appropriately enough, a “Collins glass”). Garnish, if you like, with cherry, and orange or lemon slice.

Enjoy your picnics and barbeques, and cheers!

Thanks Dr. Vino!

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When e-tickets first rolled out, they held the promise of paperless travel. For example, Alaska Airlines, the first domestic U.S. carrier to introduce wireless check-in back in early 2001, offered this nugget to the media when they rolled it out: “Once a passenger checks in via a cell phone or another wireless device, he or she can go directly to the appropriate gate, show a photo identification and board the plane.” Ha!

Ah, what could’ve been. I was reminded of the pre-9/11 predictions of how e-travel would be when I read how Northwest Airlines rolled out upgrades to their website, allowing you to perform a greater number of services via wireless devices. If you browse over to their site with your mobile, you’ll be able to buy tickets, change reservations, check in, etc. (Other airlines, such as Southwest, let you check in for your flights, but don’t let you buy tickets wirelessly.) But fully electronic travel, once promised, is a bust. It’s still a paper-trail world. The trees aren’t safe.

You can’t print a paper boarding pass from your smartphone, after all. Even in Europe, where you can use SMS text messaging to check in, you still need to stop at an airport kiosk and choose to “reprint” the pass.

After 9/11, it was no longer possible to go through security without a paper boarding pass. Mind you, the real security benefit of this requirement is highly questionable. Sure, it means that fewer people actually pass through security, but having a slip of paper with your name on it really doesn’t make you any more or less of a threat. (See, for example, the hoopla surrounding the fake boarding pass generator.)

At the end of the day, I’m glad to have Northwest and others on the wireless train. Being able to make changes via the wireless web really is an improvement. But it falls short of the predictions that we could skip the paper boarding passes altogether. Or that gate readers could scan a phone, or swipe a card, at the gate. That would really put the “e” back into e-tickets. Dare to dream.

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Related:
- Forged boarding passes: Fraud, yes, but where is the security threat?

Arthur G. writes in:

The Airbus 380 looks amazing. How much will tickets cost?

This is actually quite a common question received here at Upgrade: Travel Better HQ. People are clearly awed by the size of the A380 — I was awed, too, when I saw it back in March. Others are wary of getting on a plane that big, especially in case of an emergency. (See the evacuation test video for a best-case scenario.)

But your question about prices can’t be answered, Arthur. While an airline’s equipment certainly affects its cost structure (and the A380 isn’t cost-effective on every route), the price of a plane ticket isn’t solely linked to the model of aircraft.

You probably wouldn’t ask, “How much will a flight on Boeing 737 cost?” After all, you can fly a Boeing 737 on Aloha Airlines from Honolulu to Kona, or on Continental from San Francisco to Newark, or even from Houston to Zurich in an all-business class configuration on Privatair. The price could be anywhere from $39 to $8000. The model of plane isn’t determining the fare.

So if you want to fly on the Airbus A380, your fare will depend on the route, the airline, the class of service, how far in advance you buy the ticket… not to mention that old standby, supply and demand. Just like every other flight.

Singapore Airlines will receive the first four A380s to roll off the assembly line, with expected delivery date in the fall of this year. The initial route will be London-Singapore-Sydney. Qantas will bring the behemoth to American shores on flights to Australia in 2008. Lufthansa will bring the ‘bus to New York thereafter, if all goes according to plan.

But the price of those flights? That depends.

Related:
- Airbus A380 at Chicago O’Hare
- Video: Airbus A380 evacuation test

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