Common Sense and Whiskey

I'm Just Saying

BA’s 777 business class configuration is a scream in both the comedic and Edvard Munch senses. Jamming eight across in business means an outlandish scheme that somebody may have sold as brilliant, but that is not. It yielded a sort of cattle pen inside which we rode over from ATL to London.

The Cold War Comes (Briefly) to Easter Island

The daily LAN flight to Mataveri airport, Easter Island

At 27 degrees south latitude the trade winds blow across Easter Island from the east, so every midday, the daily flight from South America overflies the island, way out beyond it, then turns to descend into the prevailing winds on the NASA-widened air strip. And since it’s the island’s only interaction with the world that day, you watch.

It’s a favorite guidebook story to mention that NASA elongated the airstrip so that the space shuttle could land here in an emergency. I don’t think you’ll find a guide that doesn’t mention it. The runway needed 1,420 additional feet to run it out to the 11,055 feet required for a shuttle landing.

When NASA proposed its scheme some saw it as an evil imperialist plot, and it was met with resistance and even derision by some. In a June 30, 1985 article headlined “Lonely Easter Island Will Be Emergency Shuttle Landing Site,” the L A Times wrote: “Critics claim the United States will turn the remote island into a strategically placed military base that could drag Chile into the forefront of superpower conflicts and make the country a sitting duck in a nuclear war.

In a 1986 article the Times quoted Rado Miro Pomic, a former Chilean presidential candidate, in an interview in Santiago: "The real purpose of the airport expansion is to enlarge the strategic possibilities in the event of a war with the U.S.S.R. It is logical."

Times were different, and it may be worth noting the Chilean government that approved extending the runway in 1985 was a military one, headed by Augusto Pinochet. Maybe that gave some people the jitters. But the objections weren’t just that the Soviets would rush to bomb Chile. Their was also the “Easter Island is an open air museum” criticism. Any criticism in a storm, I guess.

The Times wrote, “the project has come under fire from Chileans who fear it will damage the island's unique archeological heritage.” And: "’The NASA plan is absurd. It's like building a dance floor in the Natural History Museum,’ said Chilean historian Oscar Pinochet de la Barra, one of the critics of the space shuttle landing project.”

For all the angst, as things turned out, the Rapanui today rue the passing of the shuttle program. Chile doesn’t reckon on any more NASA-funded airport maintenance.

Not Many Choices Around Here, Frank. How About We Try Easter Island?

Funny Travel Promotion...

... from Jet Blue.

Unrelated Travel Articles Tenuously Tied Together by Clothing

An Australian couple deplaned from Qantas flight QF94 because there were no complimentary XL-sized pajamas for them for the 15-hour flight from Los Angeles, the Melbourne Herald Sun reports. The A380 - and the up to 400 passengers an A380 can hold - were delayed about a half hour while the couple's baggage was off loaded.

Passenger Angela Ceberano:

"The cabin erupted in laughter when the captain announced the reason for the delay.

He said: 'Just to inform you all, the reason we've had the delay is because two of our first class passengers refused to fly on this plane as there was no extra large pyjamas on board for them.'" 

•••••

And this comes from an article by Michael Moynihan on foreignpolicy.com critical of the leftist slant of guidebooks to lefty places. He's quoting Lonely Planet: Afghanistan: 

"The burqa can be seen as a tool to increase mobility and security, a nuance often missed in the outside world's image of the garment. Assuming that a burqa-clad woman is not empowered and in need of liberation is a naïve construct."

Give the Foreign Policy article a read if you're so inclined. It'll only take five or ten minutes.

Absurd as the burqa quote is (and he finds more), Mr. Moynihan gets a little overwrought about guidebooks describing leftish places in leftish ways. He decides that

"The problem with guidebooks to countries like Cuba, Iran, and North Korea is not that they encourage travel to rogue regimes ... but that they consistently misinform tourists about the exact nature of those countries. The solution isn't to stop traveling, but to travel wisely, not mistaking grinding poverty for cultural authenticity or confusing dictatorship with a courageous rejection of globalization."

Whew, got it. Cuz there I was just about to book myself into Pyongyang after being misinformed of its exact nature by the History section of a Lonely Planet guide.

And is sure is a lucky thing that the solution to lefty guidebooks isn't to stop traveling, huh?

Vignette: The Cyclone Cometh

Suppose you want the ferry to Erakor Island, Vanuatu? You just kilem gong.

The first we heard of the cyclone was Monday afternoon in Vila. That’s Port Vila, main town of Efate Island, and the capital of Vanuatu, an archipelago east of the Solomon Islands, which in turn are east of Papua New Guines in the South Pacific Ocean. We sat pouring sweat at a terrace café on the only proper street in town. 

Burgers and beer were on the menu. The beers were cold and the burgers were more like carnivals on a bun, including the kitchen sink and beets, onions, carrots, eggs, bacon, cucumber, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, salt, pepper, chilies, ketchup - and maybe a little tiny speck of free-range, insecticide-free Vanuatu beef.

A corpulent pinkish fellow at the next table was going on to his friend: "Bluh bluh rain bluh bla cyclone bluh Fiji." I leaned out from behind my mound of putative hamburger parts and inquired.

“Cyclone?”

"Yeah," he said, "Its southeast of here, toward Fiji. We just had a look at it on the Internet. A big, mean thing. It's what's been causing all the rain."

This was notable since we were bound for Fiji in 18 hours, although just then it was sunny, hot and about 600% humid in Vila, and we were just in from the nearby island of Espiritu Santo, where we'd passed sunny days blistering in relentless sun.

Yet sure enough, in the taxi home we heard the cyclone warnings in three languages on Vanuatu's only AM radio station, with a particular warning for the southeast island group centered around the cult-and-volcano Island of Tanna. By now, the cyclone had a name. May I introduce you to Jo.

Nice to Meet You. Here's a Picture of You and Your Wife.

If you post something to Facebook you obviously don't expect it to stay private. Even so, this feels a little creepy of British Airways.

Trouble Everywhere, All at Once

The Middle East was the center of the universe last weekend, as the world watched the Egyptian election results and Syria's downing of that Turkish F-4. Tomorrow the North Atlantic moves to the center, with the Obamacare ruling on this side of the ocean and the 1,437th Euro summit on the other.

As the potential first country out of the Eurozone, you'd think Greece would be under enough pressure. But consider its geographical position.

To the east: The Aviationist blog has published a video alongside an article that contends that,

“It is almost a daily practice for the Greek artillery that its radars lock Turkish fighter jets as they illegally enter Greek airspace. However Greeks do not push the button….”

Hard to see how they sort that out anyway, since the distance between many Greek islands and the Turkish mainland is trivial. The island of Samos, for instance, lies scarcely a mile off the Dilek National Park on a tip of Turkish coast.

Then consider Greece's long unhappy relations with its northern neighbor, The Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, a name Greece insisted on at FYROM's independence from Yugoslavia in 1991,  because it felt that "Macedonia implies a territorial claim by Skopje to a province in northern Greece with the same name." Not that anybody calls Macedonia "FYROM."

Now Macedonia and Greece are in an argument ... over license plates. RFERL suggests that this photo from the internet suggests that Greek officials are covering the Macedonian "MK" with FYROM stickers on cars admitted over the Greek border.

 

Fourth Wife Flies Free

Unusual promotion on South Africa's Kulula.com - via its Facebook page.

"Inspired by regular VIP travellers with sizeable spousal entourages, the offer is open to all fourth wives when the family travels together on the Jo’burg to Cape Town route."

Tourist Hordes, Thataway

Opening up Burma will be constrained by the lack of tourism infrastructure. There aren't many flights, or many hotels to sleep people who find their way in. Bangkok and Singapore are the main gateways. You can fly international carriers from Kolkata and KL. Vietnam Airlines has flights now, there are flights from China and Taiwan, and Doha via Qatar Airways is coming in October. All these flights, though, are to Rangoon.

Once you're in the country it's all day on the roads or rails (or the overnight train) to Mandalay or Bagan - or a domestic flight - and some people avoid domestic flights in places like Burma. But wait: China Eastern has a daily flight from Kunming. Takes about an hour.

Building out Burma will take some time, but not necessarily too much. Think of Luang Prabang, Laos, where scarcely more than a decade ago a room with a loud, lumbering wall air conditioning unit was luxury. Or its sister Siem Reap, which didn't use to claim all the world's most pretentious hotels. Honest.

In fact, if Burma makes good choices on building out all the things it needs, which is everything - road and rail and cell phone towers, to start - it has a shot at being the shiniest new jewel in the region. I found this look at the state of tourism in Burma to be interesting.

Heartwarming New TSA Publication

Via We Meant Well.

The Queue and You

There are two aisles open for American Citizens and Residents in the arrivals hall. Travelers hurry off their planes and fill the queue and it snakes way around behind the pass control booths. The line backs up pretty quick.

You hustle off the plane (Hard learned tip: If there are stairs and an escalator between the plane and pass control, ALWAYS take the stairs) because just like at airline check-ins, if you get in the wrong one, where people have too many bags, or there's some paperwork problem, or maybe the agent's just having a bad day, each customer in front of you could mean an extra six, eight minutes.

Intrepid Traveler Alert

Turkish Airlines begins service to Mogadishu today - from Khartoum. Now you can combine two don't-miss locations, Somalia and Sudan, in one itinerary.

Arrival in Bhutan

 When time came to drop through the clouds into Bhutan, the pilot announced, “We will maneuver the aircraft in the valley. This is a little different from large commercial aircraft. It is standard procedure. You will see the houses and trees a little closer than you are used to. The scenery is beautiful. Please enjoy the ride.”

He just picked a hole in the clouds and dove through. He did a 180 into the Paro valley. The automatic sensors called out, “too low,” and for the record he kept repeating, “acknowledge, override,” into the cockpit recorder.

This was George, bluff, barrel-chested, a real dude with a wide gray mustache, and one of just fourteen people ever to fly for Royal Bhutan Airlines, aka Druk Air.

- From the Bhutan Chapter of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book (Amazon) (Kindle) (BN).

Here, see it for yourself. Here's video of an actual landing at Paro airport, Bhutan. Kind of exciting:

Watch This

Great, riveting stuff for flying fans.

(Thanks to Cranky.)

Defeat!

How much is just too much for a Japanese budget wonk? 10,000 free airline tickets, apparently.

In an effort to relight the fire under travel to Japan after the Fukushima disaster, the Japan Tourism Agency submitted a budget request for money enough to give away 10,000 tickets. The budget was to have been aproved and applications were to be received by about April this year. To apply, you'd send an essay describing why you'd like to visit and where you'd go.

Just found this on the Tourism Agency web site. It was posted while we were away for the holidays:

"The project titled Fly to Japan! (to offer flight tickets to 10,000 foreigners with high potential to communicate Japan’s attractions), which had been covered in a number of media in autumn this year, was not approved as a governmental draft budget of FY 2012."

And I already had my essay written in my head.

 

Looks Cold, Was Cold

At the Ivalo airport, Finnish Lapland.

Quality Transit Time

Hanging out at the Continental Breakfast Bar at Schipol Amsterdam waiting to climb on our flight to Helsinki at Gate C10 across the way there. This is probably the highest and best use of the internet ever.

68.6 Degrees North Latitude, Here We Come

We're starting the long trip north this afternoon with a drive south to Hartsfield Jackson Airport. We'll be at our little cabin in Finland for a few days before heading further north. Photos and reports to come. Happy Holidays to all.

St. Helena Island to Become Less Remote

Jamestown, capital and main town on St. Helena Island

It's timely that Sharon, a St. Helenian (or, as they call themselves, "Saints,") commented in the St. Helena Gallery at EarthPhotos.com over the weekend. It prompted me to check the St. Helena news, and - this is something you can't say every day - there is some. Big news, in fact.

It might be the most-debted subject among the 4000-odd Saints. For sure it's a perrenial. And now comes word that, at last, apparently, St. Helena is to get its own airport. 

If you've been with us for a while, you know that St. Helena is accessible only by ship, specifically the Royal Mail Ship St. Helena. Now, in 2015, an air field is set to open, providing service to South Africa, and bringing the total number of visitors from the current 950 to around a projected 30,000.

The landscape at Prosperous Bay, site of the airport.

From the site Airport World:

"The design phase of the $344 million project is scheduled to commence immediately, and construction is expected to take place over a 48-month period....

According to Basil Read, the scope of work includes building a 1,850m runway with a taxiway and apron to cater for aircraft up to the size of an Airbus A320 and Boeing 737-800.

A 3,500sqm terminal building will be built, as well as an air traffic control tower and a 14 km airport access road and all related infrastructure."

We visited the remote British colony in the south Atlantic Ocean last year, sailing from Windhoek, Namibia (photos) to St. Helena (photos) and on to Ascension Island (photos), from which the RAF runs charter flights to the Falklands, and, in our case, Brise Norton Air Force Base near Oxford, England. Here's what we wrote at the time.