Common Sense and Whiskey

Will They or Won't They?

A survey of North Korea coverage:

A military blog called Information Dissemination, which describes itself as "the intersection of maritime strategy and strategic communication" thinks it's possible. In the post "One Sep from War," it says,

"the last straws have been broken. The US has always been on South Korean time, and it appears the clock is set only a minute until midnight."

Nightwatch for last night agrees that,

"Tension is high and small incidents can lead to large reactions."

They were more sanguine last week, writing,

"A review of diplomacy, international relations and leadership activities confirms that North Korea is not preparing for war. Its volleyball team just advanced to the quarter finals at the Asian Games in Beijing. Senior officials are receiving foreign diplomats as usual. Kim Chong il and his son were reported on 23 November visiting a plant together and Kim visited two others without his son.

The number and detail of the activities show that the North does not expect the shelling incident to escalate. There also are no reports of increased civilian or military alerts in North Korea, which would be mandatory precautions if the North expected or intended an escalation."

And 38 North weighs in about North Korea's motives.

Meanwhile for the traveling public, Wikipedia cites these 2009 statistics:

Aircraft movements: 211,404

Passengers: 30,000,000

Tonnes of cargo: 4,500,000

That's the traffic tip-toeing (whistling past the graveyard, choose your own metaphor) through Incheon International Airport, scarcely 50 kilometers from the Koreas' border.

(Incidentally, since I've just come across it, here's another travelogue from North Korea, from Der Spiegel.

 

Congratulations, and Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Terror, Terror Everywhere

 
Oddest story of the day:

"A suspect package containing a detonator, batteries and a ticking clock was found on a suitcase checked onto a Munich-bound plane, German police have said.

The bag was detected before it could be loaded on the flight from Namibia."

It's always something, ain't it? It's just that this time, it comes from about as far away as it gets. Of course, Namibia was a German colony (hence the flight - Air Berlin AB7377 from Windhoek to Munich) and just now Germany is taut with terror tension.

But note the low-key way the Namibian authorities handled things:

"It was detected at the luggage screening point prior to loading, said the Namibia Airports Company (NAC).

"We are still investigating the suspicious object," a Namibian police spokesman told the BBC. "It's too early to say if it's terrorist-related. We will only pronounce when the investigation is completed."

Further security checks were carried out on passengers, luggage and the plane itself before the LTU/Air Berlin flight was allowed to depart.

No explosives were found in the bag, Air Berlin said.

All passengers had to identify their own bags before they were reloaded.

However, cargo due to be loaded on the flight was kept back for further investigation, said a statement from NAC."

They held the cargo back, put everybody's bags out, had the passengers point to their own, loaded everybody and their bags up and sent them home.

It's fortunate for the Namibian Airports Company that Namibia has no non-stop flights to the USA. The TSA would transform Windhoek airport, a casual, relaxed, shoulders-down kind of place, into a grim, locked-down, angst-laden perpetrator-processing boiler room filled with bins of empty water bottles and toothpaste tubes, brooking no dissent as passengers are manhandled one by one for their own good.

Hang in there, Namibia.

It's much better the way it is.

(Photo from the tarmac at Windhoek Hosea Kutako International Airport from the Namibia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Midweek Miscellany

If I wait until I do a proper treatment of all these I may never get them online. So here are just a few quick items that have caught my eye lately:

- China's version of Google Maps is called Map World. "Map World only provides high-altitude images outside China, with the other side of the Chinese-North Korean border a stark white blank once a certain resolution is passed. Other countries also turn up a blank page at close resolution,” says Reuters." Still, it's fun to play with the world in Chinese. (via The Map Room.)

- Two of the longer flights we've been on, both through our home airport, have been ATL - JNB, 15 hours 20 minutes, and DXB - ATL, at 15 hours 45 minutes. The current longest scheduled nonstop is 18 hours plus. Take a guess on the route, and then click here for the answer.

- There's a story about how, shortly after 9/11, a very rural town nearby here in north Georgia, USA, applied for emergency FEMA aid for its post office - and after some snickering, was turned down. Here's a story about the most remote place in the USA and the emergency aid it's applying for - equalling about $3,500 per resident per year.

- Bad translations are always fun. For example, here's a tourism site offering "a wide range of gut-curdling activities." John Rahoi's May I Take Your Order, a bi-lingual restaurant menu in China, is a lot of fun. Next post we'll link to some fun photos of questionable products, including this one, the unconvincingly named Aftertaste perfume.

Don't Try This at Home. Or on an Airline

When traveling, I carry on my camera bag, and a bag containing my camera accessories (and toiletries and a t-shirt). Then I worry the whole way about my tripod, which I check because it's a little too big to carry on. How you can check this, well, is your best argument for an inheritance tax.

Fabulous Destinations When Money Doesn't Matter #10

Survey after survey ranks Singapore Airlines at the top, and no wonder. These are photos from the airline's web site of the suites aboard Singapore's A-380s.

Checking on a suite on a random Sydney to London Heathrow roundtrip, departing SYD on 1 January and returning two weeks later, the price came back at AUD$16353.16. That's AUD$32706.32 for the two of you, or USD$31323.48, according to the currency converter in the column on the right.

But now the big news: Now, instead of spending more than the gross national per caita income of all but five countries in the world, you can cash in some of your frequent flyer miles for those suites. How many miles for a a couple of suites, SYD-LHR-SYD? According to this flyertalk thread, just 6,200,200.

Get yours today.

 

Two Months of Paid International Travel, Anyone?

Are you able to travel independently nonstop for two months throughout October and November 2010? Finnair will pay your air fare. They're hiring four "Quality Hunters," "whose task is to travel to Finnair’s destinations in Europe, Asia and the US for a period of two months in search of quality experiences."

You have through Sunday to apply. The less-than-good-news: There are 124 pages of applicants so far.

Eyjafjallajokull's on Summer Vacation, Too.

This is not the famous disruptor of air traffic, Eyjafjallajokull. But it is a volcano in Iceland. (It's a photo taken from a small plane on a flight from Reykjavik to Heimaey Island in 1991.)

It's almost time to leave for our cabin in Finland. We leave this weekend, which got me wondering, after our last trip was completely rearranged by volcanism, how Eyjafjallajokull's doing lately.

Timely of James Burton to write Whatever happened to ... Iceland's volcanic ash in the Independent yesterday. And the news is good.

Writes Burton, "...not only has Eyjafjallajokull calmed down, but also Ketla's 'imminent' eruption may not take place for another 100 years."

Let's just maintain the status quo for one more week.

And may I just note in passing that flying off to the east is the wrong way to get this experience. But I sure have made a note of it.

More photos from Iceland here at EarthPhotos.com.

Hey Buddy, Can You Spare £125?

Readers of the Financial Times Weekend will be familiar with Tyler Brûlé, the peripatetic columnist who flies internationally like a fiend, and who wants you to know that he'd fly in better-than-first-class if only it were available.

He publishes a magazine called Monocle, available for a £75 annual subscription (which is $114.43 today according to the handy currency converter on the right of this page). It would be nice if you could help Mr. Brûlé with his next international airline ticket by dropping by the Monocle online shop. Perhaps you could buy a tiny bag of wood, which is currently priced at $190. 

(Thanks to The Smart Set's article, Printing Money.)

Security Theater: The Movie

The trailer, and the Please Remove Your Shoes website.

The World's Shortest Commercial Flight

According to Seth at The Wandering Aramean, "The trip, between Westray and Papa Westray, takes anywhere from 75 to 180 seconds, depending on the winds."

Coming: 3-D Satellite Maps

Or, more specifically, "... a globally standardised 3D digital elevation model of Earth, and with a measuring point density of 12 metres, it will be incredibly accurate," according to the director of the project, which is called TanDEM-X.

Two satellites will map the earth's terrain in tandem, creating the 3-D effect. The second satellite was successfully launched on 21 June.

"Within three years, this will create a gigantic data record equivalent to the storage capacity of 200 000 DVDs, " says the German Aerospace Center site.

See also a very nice animation here.

Illustration from the German Aerospace Center site.

"Passengers should not worry," Reassures the People's Daily

From the article accompanying this picture, "Lu Xiang, who teaches aircraft maintenance at the Civil Aviation University of China, said it is safe to use aluminum tapes to fix things on a plane temporarily, but not as a permanent solution.

Passengers should not worry, because before every take-off, planes need a nod from qualified professionals who thoroughly check their condition, he added."

The Free Press Calls It a Ferocious Eruption

And the airport is closed until tomorrow (Monday) night at 6:00 due to volcanic ash.

Seven Million Dollar Airplane Seat

... but it's a very special seat.

An opposition Labor Party politician named Iosif Shatberashviliin the Republic of Georgia has claimed, via the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet (Liberty), "that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had a personal ejection seat installed on board his jet, but the presidential office denied the claim."

Mr. Saakashvili travels via Bombardier Challenger.

Ethiopian Airlines Crash Update

To follow up on a previous post, no one else suggests terrorism in the Ethiopian Airlines crash off Beirut on 25 January - only DebkaFile. 

And that's good, because doggone it, we want Ethiopian Airlines to do well. There just aren't that many African airlines to root for. There's South African, obviously, for the long haul, but suppose you're not going all the way to the far end of Africa. With service to 35 African cities, Ethiopian provides the only way in to some places other than a much more seat-of-the-pants national carrier.

And consider a one way itinerary between Paris and Libreville, Gabon, randomly chosen for 1 April, and priced just now. The only European airline going is Air France, priced at $4418. Ethiopian, same day via Addis, quotes $838.57 (quoted as 616.05 Euros). FIVE TIMES the price and a couple hundred dollars besides.

Ethiopian has got the capitals of countries across the Sahel covered, and destinations on the east and west of Africa, warts and all.

*****

Meanwhile, back at the crash, the AP reports that "Relatives of those killed aboard an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed into the Mediterranean off Lebanon in January are planning to file a multimillion dollar lawsuit against American plane manufacturer Boeing." And at a press conference, Girma Wake, CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, "accused Lebanese officials of providing information that was unfounded and misleading concerning the ET409 accident even before the findings of the investigation have been announced," says AddisFortune.

(Photo of Bole International Airport, Addis Ababa, from the Ethiopia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

The Airbridge Airline of the Month

Other than your own private transportation (specifically an ocean going yacht), there are only two ways onto and off of Ascension Island, which is about a thousand miles west of Africa in the South Atlantic Ocean: The Royal Mail Ship St. Helena, which shuttles between Ascension and St. Helena Island (which is also in the middle of the ocean - see previous post), and the twice weekly "Airbridge" run by the British Ministry of Defense.

Ascension is the refueling stop between the Airbridge's real destinations - The U.K. in the north and the Falkland Islands in the south. Twice a week a flight leaves the Brize-Norton RAF base near Oxford, England, stops to refuel at Ascension, and continues to the RAF's Mount Pleasant airport on the Falklands. And twice a week it returns.

If You Can't Do It Our Way, We'll Keep Your Airplanes

"Iran has warned that airlines will be banned from flying into its airspace, unless they use the term "Persian Gulf" on their in-flight monitors" instead of "Arabian Gulf," the BBC reports.

Airlines have "15 days to change the name to Persian Gulf on their in flight monitors."

And the BBC continues that "if the offence was repeated, foreign airliners would be grounded and refused permission to leave Iran."

Hey, maybe not all these airlines will notice the fifteen day deadline. Impounding a plane here or there might help restore Iran’s aging fleet of jetliners.

Et Voila: The Economy Class Lie Flat Couch

The idea here is to sell two economy seats, and then the empty one in between them at something like half price.

Read about it at:

Flightglobal, View from the Wing, and The Wandering Aramean.

Photo credit: Air New Zealand

Just Hanging Out at Ascension Airport

Waiting in a little chain-link pen on the tarmac at Wideawake Airfield, Ascension Island, for the interminably delayed RAF flight to England. We're precisely twelve hours late just now (after being hauled here to sit in our pen four hours ago) and won't leave for two more hours, or so they say most recently.

Listening to British armed forces radio from somewhere up in the U.K. just doesn't fit: "Snow spreading slowly north this morning...." Outside the pen here are palms and blooming tropical flowers, and there's sunshine and a light, fresh breeze. Fresh in contrast to the transit passengers from the Falklands who, already ten or twelve hours into their ride back to England, are here with us, and face ten more hours at least.

But there's wifi, and so to pass the time I thought I'd put up a couple new photos. First, a view down from Green Mountain, the island's peak, which really is green and maybe a degree or two cooler than down here at sea level:

 

And second, road signs. However many boats you want, Ascension's got you covered:

You think this place ain't a hot holiday destination?

 

*****

See you soon (or at least eventually) from back north in the snow.