Tag Archives: 787 Dreamliner

The IBIT Travel Digest 6.16.13

Leave a reply

The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

Airbus A350

AIRBUS A350 — Airbus Industrie

BOEING v. AIRBUS: IT’S ON
Up next, a heavyweight fight over a pair of new lightweight jets.

When Airbus successfully debuted its new A350 wide-bodied airliner last week, it effectively threw down a multibillion-dollar challenge to Boeing.

Boeing invented the jumbo jet concept with its now-iconic 747, but when Airbus upped the ante with its humongous double-decked A380, the Americans changed the game with their 787 Dreamliner, opting for longer range over greater size.

When the airlines rewarded Boeing with an avalanche of Dreamliner orders, a panic-stricken Airbus scrambled to create the A350.

Both aircraft use lots of carbon-fiber in place of metal to save weight. But the A350 was still on paper while the Dreamliner was already flying. It looked like a first-round knockout for Boeing.

But multiple delays made Dreamliner deliveries three years late, and when the 787 finally did go into service last year, its well-publicized battery problems grounded them all for months. Airbus took full advantage.

Now, the A350 is flying, just in time for the week-long biennial Paris Air Show, where airlines and aircraft builders traditionally do their mega-deals.

And which officially opens…tomorrow.

I’d go to the Paris Air Show just to watch all the flying displays and check out their air museum, but between Boeing and Airbus, there will be enough back-room dealing and drama to create your own reality TV show.

Trust me, it’s on now.

-0-

PARK YOURSELF
Regular readers of IBIT know that next weekend is the first African American National Parks Event. If you haven’t heard about this, read up on it here — then start planning your weekend outing.

Too many have this misguided idea that America’s national parks consist of a handful of giant, scattered wilderness preserves, beautiful but distant to reach, expensive to access and unwelcoming to “us.”

None of that is true.

In reality, our national park system is as diverse as the nation for which it was created — parks, monuments, seashores, lakeshores and recreation areas in virtually all 50 US states. Admission is cheap, and often free.

And the National Park Service is practically dying for more black American visitors.

So consider taking some time next weekend to see what your taxes are paying for — and what you’ve been missing.

-0-

HAVE PASSPORT, WILL WIFI
Need a reason to include Taiwan in your Asia travels? How about free wifi?

Taiwan already offers free wifi to all its citizens. Now it’s making wifi available at no charge to tourists…all tourists. Just show your passport and you’re in.

Check out this story from CNN for more details on how it works.

Taiwan is an underdog in a take-no-prisoners battle with the rest of Asia for a share of the tourism market, but it’s coming out swinging — and it has to. Japan already makes wifi free for foreign visitors and Thailand is making plans to follow suit.

Expect this trend to continue throughout the region.

-0-

CARNIVAL TRIUMPH RETURNS
The cruise ship Carnival Triumph, whose name became synonymous this year with nightmares at sea, is ready to return to sea, according to NBC News.

This was the ship that left some 4,200 passengers and crew adrift for five days earlier this year, with little food and few working bathrooms, the result of an engine-room fire that left the vessel powerless. More problems soon followed aboard Carnival Dream, Carnival Legend and Carnival Elation.

Meanwhile, Travel Weekly is reporting that while this and other mishaps with its ships have given Carnival Cruise Lines a public-relations beatdown, veteran cruise travelers are remaining loyal.

Carnival can brave-face this situation all it likes, but the fact is that such brand loyalty is likely to be of scant comfort in its Miami headquarters. Why? Because Carnival needs a steady stream of new cruise vacationers to fill the tens of thousands of cabins in its large and growing fleet.

And it’s those cruise virgins who are most likely to give cruising the side-eye following the Carnival Triumph and other unfortunate episodes. Some serious confidence building — or in this case, rebuilding — may be in order.

And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from NBC News
American Airlines, trying to merge with US Airways to stave off financial demise, has figured out an ingenious way to lure more passengers — reduce the legroom on many of its planes. What will they think of next…and are you sure you want to know?

from NBC News
Another one for the “What will they think of next?” category. A new private air service in California called Surf Air doesn’t want to sell you a ticket. It wants to sell you a subscription.

LAND
from Agence France Presse via France 24
Dubai debuts one of the world’s tallest buildings…and when they say this tower is twisted, they’re not kidding.

from France 24
And speaking of “twisted,” are you ready for a flying bike?

SEA
from the Washington Post
The beleaguered cruise industry has come up with a passengers’ bill of rights. But does it protect you, or the industry?

from SFGate.com
Cruise the New England coast as 19th century seafarers did, aboard a three-masted schooner. SLIDESHOW

FOOD & DRINK
from the Washington Post
Want to see where your food comes from, and maybe bring some of it home, fresh from the source? Do a rolling tour from farm to farm along Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

from The Guardian (London)
Street food, Greek style. Athens is the place.

from The Guardian (London)
A taste of Bolivia, cuisine with as much attitude as altitude. How else can one describe bull’s penis soup? Uhh…

from SFGate.com
Come to picturesque, trendy Monterey, CA for some of America’s finest…moonshine? Yes. And it’s legal, too.

-0-

AFRICA
from The Point (Gambia) via allAfrica.com
The Gambia’s president pushes food self-sufficiency for the country and urges Gambians to “go back to the land.”

from the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
A museum in Tanzania dedicated to the birthplace of humanity itself…or so they will tell you.

from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
If you thought the poaching in Kenya couldn’t get any uglier, with entire elephant families being wiped out to the last animal for their tusks, guess again: Conservationists are now being accused of colluding with poachers.

from Reuters via Yahoo!
In the Ivory Coast, the government is trying to reclaim its national park parks from cocoa growers — in some cases, by force.

AMERICAS
from the Los Angeles Times
Drought-stricken Southern California may not much going this summer for river-rafting enthusiasts, but there are plenty of places in Northern California and elsewhere in the West to take your whitewater thrill rides.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from the Toronto Star
For a stunningly beautiful and spiritual time, hike the Himalayas.

from the New York Times
The other Bangkok — the cool, green, smog-free Bangkok. Hike. Ride your bike. Then retreat to your boutique hotel.

from the Toronto Star
When Americans want to visit a Pacific island paradise, they go to Hawaii. When Chinese tourists want to do the same thing, they head for Hainan.

EUROPE
from the Washington Post
The Santorini that the tourists don’t know, and most won’t find.

from the New York Times
No man is an island, but Stockholm is composed of 14 islands. On one of them, gentrification is grudgingly depriving the Sodermalm neighborhood of its reputation for high crime. Crime…in Sweden? Who knew? SLIDESHOW

the IBIT Travel Digest 2.17.13

Leave a reply

The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel


BEER AND THE POWER OF TRAVEL
If you’re ever visiting New York anytime soon and find yourself feeling thirsty, you’ll want to introduce yourself to the Brooklyn Brewery.

If you have any doubts about the difference that travel can make in a person’s life, you’ll want to get to know the man behind the beers from Brooklyn Brewery, one Garrett Oliver.

Garrett Oliver

Garrett Oliver

He spent a year in Britain in the 1980s and developed a taste for Europe’s fine brews. Then, he came home to the United States, where most beers — churned out in industrial quantities by a handful of giant corporations — had no taste.

I remember those days. In much of the world back then, the term “American beer” was a bad joke, the ultimate oxymoron. When Oliver referred to the US beers of the time as “this thin yellow liquid,” trust me, he was being kind.

Most flavors of Kool-Aid had more character — and for that matter, more flavor. Some of this limp-wristed refrigerated dishwater was so pitiful, it couldn’t even form a decent head when you poured it into a glass. You were better off drinking tap water.

So in true American spirit, Oliver took matters into his own kitchen and started making his own beer at home.

Over the next several years, the amateur brewer became a professional brewmaster. And a guy who had graduated with a college degree in broadcast and film morphed into the world’s pre-eminent scholar on the brewing art.

He also became a creator of some truly world-class beers. How world-class? These days, the Europeans are importing beers from him.

Garrett Oliver is one of the reasons you now can find some 2,000 craft breweries scattered across the United States, from Portland ME to Portland OR, Savannah GA to San Diego, each literally lending its own flavor to the city in which it sprang up.

Who knows how much of this, if any of it, would have happened had Oliver not spent that year overseas, having his eyes opened by something he never would have experienced had he played it safe and stayed home. Travel has the power to change lives.

Road trip, anyone?

-0-

AIR NIGHTMARES
Halfway through the second month of 2013, Boeing seems no closer to getting its problematic 787 Dreamliner back into service after grounding all of them worldwide due to in-flight problems with its lithium-ion batteries.

Poland’s LOT went so far last week as to declare that no flights using Dreamliners will be scheduled until October — whether the bird is fixed by then or not.

In addition to grounding all the 787s already in service, Boeing has halted delivery of new ones until the battery issue is resolved. Either way, the airlines already committed to the Dreamliner are losing money daily while this drags on.

Meanwhile, Boeing’s principal rival, Europe’s Airbus Industrie, has dropped plans to use the same battery aboard its new A350 airliner, which is designed to compete with the Dreamliner but has yet to enter service.

-0-

And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from USA Today
Poland’s national airline, LOT, is the latest to ground the troubled Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and it says the plane will stay grounded into fall. Ouch.

from Travel Weekly
The American Airlines-US Airways merger may be official, but there’s still a long way to go before it becoes a physical reality on the ground and in the air.

LAND
from Budget Travel via Yahoo
Getting married? Planning on raising a family? Here are eight travel destinations you might want to see before you start having kids.

from the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Are reading and travel equally fundamental in your life? Five of the world’s most literary cities, all of them suitable for the literate traveler.

SEA
from USA Today
Multiple stories on the Carnival Triumph mess…and “mess” is indeed the operative word here, in more ways than one. And just when the cruise industry was still trying to put the Costa Concordia disaster fully behind it.

from AARP
Three classic cruise rip-offs and how to avoid getting stung.

FOOD & DRINK
from CCSD Tours
You’ve heard of pub crawls. Are you — and your bike — ready for a pub roll? These guys offer a cycling tour of pubs in Britain. They have other cycling tours in Europe, too, but this one’s for you beer drinkers out there.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Want a taste of fine French cuisine in a genteel English setting? Go north, young gastronome, to Montreal.

from the Washington Post
Welcome to Chicago, where the locals take their hot dogs seriously. Very seriously. These dogs “ain’t your average Huckleberry Hound.”

-0-

AFRICA
from Africa.com
Want to start real discussion at your next party? Get three people together at random and ask them to name five livable cities in Africa. When they’re done, you hit them with this list of ten, and the reasons why. Watch their jaws drop.

from New Era (Namibia) via allAfrica.com
The Namibian government and the private sector lay down guidelines for tour guides.

from the Washngton Post
West Africa’s French-speaking Cameroon is a microcosm of Africa, in ways good and not-so-good.

from the Tanzania Daily News via allAfrica.com
Authorities in the Mara region are turning to a new weapon in the battle against poaching — education.

from The Namibian (Namibia) via allAfrica.com
A generation before the Nazis, Germans were waging genocide in East Africa. It’s a story little known in this country and largely forgotten elsewhere — except perhaps Namibia.

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
When it comes to the lush jungles of Costa Rica’s incredible Caribbean coast, the local indigenous peoples make the best guides.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Agence France Presse via France 24
Gamers in Hong Kong are creating their own great escape. All you have to do is figure out how to get out of a locked room while blindfolded and handcuffed, with a ticking clock prodding you on. In high-pressure HK, they call this fun.

from The Guardian (London UK)
What you’ll find in a walk across Shanghai, where 21st-century China coexists, barely, with the 14th.

from The Guardian (London UK)
In the largely unvisited northern Indian hill country of Meghalaya, the wild scenery is but the first of its surprises. For one thing, in this male-dominated nation historically torn between Hindus and Muslims, Christianity is the major religion and women rule the roost.

EUROPE
from France 24
Formerly down and dirty Marseilles is trying to remake itself this year as the official 2013 capital of European culture.

from CN Traveller
Berlin — rooms with a…zoo?

Edited by P.A.Rice

the WEDNESDAY TRAVEL DIGEST

Leave a reply

The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

Chicago Midway Airport | © Greg Gross

Okay, my West African sojourn is over. Time to get back to business. And I’m not the only one who’s back.

The Amazing Race, easily one of the most successful of all reality TV series, is back for another round-the-world round on CBS.

This time around, some old friends — teams that fell short for a wild variety of reasons — return for a second bite at the million-dollar apple.

Some of them — like the Cowboys, the Goths and the Trotters, among others — were viewer favorites. Others were more anti-favorites back to raise our collective blood pressures, like the NFL cheerleaders.

While they all battle each other for the bucks, we get to follow them vicariously around the globe. Sounds cool to me.

They started from the desert outside Palm Springs. First leg, Sydney, Australia. First surprise of the series: Sunday night’s debut was a two-parter, so nobody’s been eliminated yet! So if you missed last weekend’s opener, you’ve got a chance to catch up next Sunday.

The Boeing 747 will never die, just modify.

You know how rapper Tupac Shakur, who’s been dead since 1996, somehow magically seems to release a new CD almost every year? So it is that Boeing keeps coming up with new incarnations of its now iconic 747, which first flew 42 years ago.

The newest version is the Boeing 747-8, rolled out earlier this month. Designed to fly farther, faster and quieter on less fuel, this latest version of the original looks like Boeing’s latest bid to throw down with rival Airbus and their massive double-decker A380.

As some of you will recall, that’s what the new state-of-the-art Boeing 787 Dreamliner was supposed to do. But with Dreamliner deliveries top the world’s airlines still stalled by a seemingly never-ending set of problems, the Boeing folks appear to have settled on the 747-8, with its increased capacity and redesigned wings, as their Plan B.

You can read all about this latest version of the 747 in the CNET magazine story here.

This follows an old rule of aircraft makers: If it ain’t broke, upgrade it. When the original design is a winner to begin with, you can do that.

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

AIR
from the New York Times
The FAA held its annual Aviation Forecast Conference last week to look at various indicators for the immediate future of air travel — costs, aircraft and airport room, availability of flights and the like. For the traveling public, none of it looks good.

LAND
from Frommer’s
ATTENTION, BEER LOVERS! Where are the best places in the world to knock back some truly great beers? the Frommer’s crew offers up their 14 nominees. Between my own experience and that of friends, I can vouch for seven of them. WOW, I’m way behind! SLIDESHOW

from the New York Times
When in Rome, shop like the Romans do. From personal experience, I know that if you want to save money when you travel, go local. Nowadays, that includes scouring the Web for sites offering deals and discounts for locals only.

SEA
from Maritime Matters
The Carnival Splendor, crippled by an engine-room fire last November, is back in business.

from Smooth Jazz Cruise
First, all you jazz purists out there, just chill! Aiiight?! Second, for you smooth jazz fans out there — and you know who you are — the Smooth Jazz Cruise is taking bookings for their two Jan. 2012 sailings. So why am I giving notice 11 months early? Because these cruises sell out every year, that’s why.

AFRICA
from msnbc travel
With the political chaos in Cairo having subsided (at least for now), Egypt is desperately trying to get its tourism back up to speed. (NOTE: With Egypt trying to lure back visitors, that could mean some real bargains in the offing. Keep an eye on this!)

from We Blog the World
A look at Swaziland, the last African monarchy. It’s small, it’s peaceful — albeit with perhaps a sternly forced peace — abnd culturally fascinating. All of which may explain why it doesn’t show up on the cultural radar of mainstream media.

from allAfrica
In South Africa, talks are underway that could lead to the African Diaspora becoming more than just a concept, but a place — a formal recognition as a region of Africa itself. The implications, and their potential, are off the charts.

AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN
from the San Francisco Chronicle
As expected, the presence of The City’s new fan-friendly baseball park has drawn new restaurants, shops and residential building to an area once known only for run-down warehouses and little-used railroad tracks. King Street is becoming the new epicenter of San Francisco.

from the New York Times
Meanwhile, an hour’s flight to the south, downtown Los Angeles is turning into a place that’s actually worth spending some time in. Best of all, you can actually WALK there. Walk in LA…what a concept!

from The Grio
B&Bs in Massachusetts and Michigan offer a descent into history with their bed and their breakfast — tunnels, trapdoors, secret passages. That’s because a century and change ago, these inns were stops on the Underground Railroad that took escaped slaves to freedom.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Asia Travel Tips
If you’re flying on China Airlines to Taiwan and plan to use their high-speed trains to get around (and why wouldn’t you?) you get a 25 percent discount on your train tickets.

EUROPE
from the New York Times
Could you get through a weekend in Paris on only $100? See what happens when the NYT’s Frugal Traveler, Seth Kugel, gives it a shot.

Delta does Africa

Leave a reply

Delta Airlines flight landing at Lindbergh Field, San Diego

One of the hassles for Americans visiting Africa has always been the lack of direct flights from the United States to the Mother Continent. Little by little, that’s starting to change. But real progress may depend on a balky new Boeing jet.

Delta Air Lines today began flying between a dozen U.S. cities and Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. It’s perhaps the clearest sign yet of that nation’s comeback following its two civil wars, the last of which ended but seven years ago.

Beyond that, it is a sign that, one link at a time, the air bridge between America and Africa is growing.

CONTINENT TO CONTINENT, COAST TO COAST
Delta’s air route to Liberia covers the entire continental United States, including both coasts — New York, Boston, Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Cincinnati, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Salt Lake City and Seattle.

(This actually could’ve started before now; Delta first applied for this route two years ago. But the federal government wouldn’t give its okay until the TSA was satisfied with Liberian airport security.)

This is a good thing. It could’ve been an even better thing had Delta not decided to play the usual airline games with the airfares. Their “introductory fares” for these flights range from $639 to $749. Sounds like a fantastic deal, until you read that fine print which says these prices are only one-way — and if you want that rate, you naturally need to buy a round-trip ticket.

(Why do the airlines play these silly games? It’s not as if you’re going up end up paying only half the fare for a round-trip flight, right?

COME CORRECT, COME DIRECT
All the same, it looks as if Delta is making an early bid to become America’s air bridge to Africa. In addition to Liberia, Delta is starting direct U.S. service this fall to:

  • Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria
  • Cairo, Egypt (and yes, Egypt is in Africa, whether Egyptians like it or not!)
  • Dakar, Senegal
  • Accra, Ghana
  • Johannesburg, South Africa

It also has its sights on Equatorial Guinea and Nairobi, Kenya.

That puts Delta flights literally end to end across the Mother Continent.

According to Britain’s Financial Times, Continental is planning a route connecting Houston and Lagos starting next year. European airlines also are looking to get in the game, notably Germany’s Lufthansa.

So what’s holding up the rest?

Read the entire Financial Times story here.

WAITING ON A DREAM
According to FT, a lot of airlines feel they can’t handle the long ranges of African air routes and still turn a profit without the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

And that’s a problem, since this bird was supposed to have entered service in 2008 — the same year Delta applied for its Liberia route.

Not only has the Dreamliner yet to carry a single paying passenger, but technical problems have pushed back its debut by two years — and they haven’t stopped yet. Some airlines have canceled their orders for it, and one even wants Boeing to cough up $840 million for the delays. Ouch.

Even so, it looks as if the world’s major air carriers have finally figured out that Africa is a place they need to be, a feeling reinforced by the success of this year’s FIFA World Cup in Johannesburg. And you increasingly get the feeling that, sooner rather than later, they’ll get there.

The end result should put the Mother Continent within much easier reach for American and European travelers. With luck, the increased competition also will make the flights cheaper.