onwardandupward

Mark Cycles from Land's End to John O'Groats

The owner of this blog will be setting off on Saturday June 13th to cycle from Land's End to John O'Groats for charity. Please support him at his LEJOG blog.

Virgin Strike Averted

Virgin Atlantic and the cabin crew union Unite, have agreed a resolution to the recent dispute over pay. Unite has now called off the industrial action planned for 9, 10, 16 and 17 January 2008.

All Virgin Atlantic flights will operate as scheduled on all of these dates with the exception of those that were originally cancelled.

Great news for long haul travellers!

Normality Returns?

It was with some trepidation and a distinct lack of sleep that I headed for Stansted airport at 4.15am on Monday 14th bound for Amsterdam Schiphol. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Check-in took 30 minutes and in total getting to the gate probably took around 10 minutes longer than usual. The EasyJet flight was bang on time.
The plastic bag regime was in place; so we could take a clear plastic bag with essentials in it and our mobile phones.
Returning from Schiphol today (Tue 15th) the usual check-in regime seems to be back in place. I was allowed to take on board my usual carry-on case. So everything seems to be back to normal... even the EasyJet customer communications. The plane should have taken off 2 minutes ago and they have just announced that it hasn't even left Stansted yet! How reassuring.
[Later: Although the flight was 2 hours later it was charter airline (Titan) 757-200. So I flew home in luxury with a row to myself. Passport control going into Stansted was pretty average.]

Aptitude Test for Private Hire Drivers

Like many business travellers the company arranges for me to get picked-up by a private hire company to get taken to/from the airport. Here's a quick Multiple choice to see if you have any aptitude to be a driver...

1. You are due to pick up a client at 6am. You arrive at 5.45am, the downstairs lights at the clients house are on and you can see someone moving about. Do you...
a) Immediately beat on the door, waking up other residents of the house (and next door)
b) Wait until 6.05 am and then perhaps quietly knock on the door.
c) Fall asleep drooling whilst listening to your Phil Collins CD?

2. You pick up a client from the airport at midnight. The client has just got off a long-haul flight after an exhausting 5 day trip. Do you think that the client...
a) Wants to hear in great detail about your time as a road manager for Phil Collins.
b) Wants more than anything else to sleep in the back of the car until he gets home
c) Wants to listen to your speed-camera detector shrieking every 5 minutes?

3. You park up your Mercedes and go to meet the client at arrivals. You then have to pay for the car park ticket before leaving...
a) Do you wave in the general direction of the car and tell the client that the "BMW is over there", leaving him to bumble about the car park dragging his case behind him.
b) Ask the client to wait where he is for two minutes while you pay.
c) Ask the client if he has any change because you forgot to bring any?

4. You are 10 minute late meeting the client at arrivals. On finding him do you...
a) Tell him that you were there all the time, but somehow he didn't see you.
b) Apologise and offer to try and make up the time.
c) Give up and go home?

Results: If you have 4 b)s you are definitely not cut out for the job. No b)s and you're ideally qualified.

Airport Wifi

Any business traveller must by now be familiar with the joys of WiFi Internet access at airports. You have 30 minutes until you have to board so decide to be super-productive (or check today's Dilbert) so open up your laptop and try to logon. But sometimes it's not that easy.
On this trip (London Stansted-Copenhagen-Amsterdam-Stansted) I tried to logon at Stansted, but despite having a strong signal I couldn'’t open the logon/payment page. So you spend half an hour diddling around on the laptop getting increasingly frustrated when you could be sitting back and having a cold beer. I've tried several times to logon at Munich airport and never succeeded. By comparison I'm writing this at Copenhagen Airport and it worked first time! Or at least it did in the main lounge, but now I'm in the departure lounge and there's no signal nor any power sockets.
All this is doubly galling because so many of us now have WiFi at home and realise how incredibly cheap it is to put in. How anybody has the temerity to charge up to £6 (UK pounds) per hour astounds me. I know at least three decent pubs in Cambridge that have free WiFi, and take my word, they are much more pleasant places to spend time than the average airport.
Here is a list of enlightened airports that offer free WiFi (courtesy of WiFi Free Spot). Way to go.