LX 707 -> LX 729

For the background story see my previous post.

Did I end in stating that from now on I would avoid Swiss as much as possible I now realize I was to mild. What happened? What happened was that the replacement flight to Zurich was not operated by Swiss but by this 'price fighter'/charter Edelweiss Air which was founded when Swiss Air went down. Sort of phoenix that rose from the SA ashes. Is Swiss out of airplanes? Out of money to pay for the fuel?

Funny thing is that there was an article in EA's flight magazine 'sunflyer' (I told you it was charter company: airplanes smelling of sun lotion and cheap disco booze) in which Edelweiss Air was showing off to Swiss how good they are. As if they were prepping haughty taughty Swiss personel for their future new job. Me not flying with Swiss again? Chances are that pretty soon Swiss won't be flying anybody anywhere anyway.
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Sent from my iPod

Veilig vliegen

Een mijner grootste ergernissen is al die veiligheidsprocedures waar je je aan moet onderwerpen voordat je zelfs maar in de buurt van die vliegende buis komt. Alstublieft ondernemers richt "fly at your own risk airlines" op. Kortweg: FAYORA, klinkt erg goed vind ik.

Dit keer vroeg ik mij af tijdens de onzinnige "Please turn of all electronic equipment" of dat nu ook gold voor electronische horloges? Is best wel eng. Er kunnen wel 50 mensen met e-watches in een vliegtuig zitten!

Gelukkig gebeurde er niets. En dat terwijl ik ook nog eens mijn telefoon en iPod Touch aan had laten staan. Pfoei, dat ging dus nog maar net goed....

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Sent from my iPod at 25,000 feet

Swiss Crises

Switzerland well known as freehaven for large piles of money and for that same reason home to many and large banks and insurance companies got and did his part of the credit crises as well.

Today I had to go to Basel (Basle?) and best fitting with my time schedule would be the Swiss flight of 13:10. Arriving at the airport at around 12 it again struck me how quiet it was. Like last week Monday morning. And again I was the only one at the check-in counter. Killed some time inbetween before walking to the gate. And there was a nice surprise waiting for the passengers: CANCELLED. WTF as my kids would say.

At checking-in, less then half an hour ago, nobody said anything and there is no plane at all! They should have known that. Either they are to stupid/badly organized to warn the passengers or they do it on purpose. Anyway a 5 minute walk to the transfer desk only to find out we had to go back to the gate and wait for someone to take it furter. That person showed up shortly after 1 and the solution provided was to transfer all the 40 odd passengers to the 14:55 flight to Zurich. Same gate she said. Of course it was not. Another nice walk was the consequence.

So 40 passengers could simply be added to the Zurich flight. That must mean that that plane was only half full. Which leads to the conclusion that Swiss has become cheap&mean: just cancell a flight if there is another one some time later going to somewhere in the region of the original destination. That a large portion of their passengers will be missing appointments and are in no way interested in an extra train trip Zurich-Basel is apperently of no concern.

Well, dear Swiss if I can avoid it in anyway I will not be travelling with you again. Second time out of 3 trips! And, dear Lufthansa, shape up! Story I hear from fellow travellers is that you are not an inch better.
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Sent from my iPod

Crises, what crises.

I had to make the cross of the Atlantic again this week, so Monday morning I headed towards the airport. It was cold and chances were there could be some ice and snow so I did not want to go by public transport. Even in 2009 the train is still pretty unreliable under non-standard weather conditions. Non-standard being anything outside a calm dry 10 - 25 C day.

I was a bit late getting to the airport as traffic was unusually bad at a couple of spots. Nevertheless still pretty much well within time I arrived about 70 min prior to departure at the check-in. And nobody was there! Was I at the wrong desk? Was the flight cancelled? Was I much to late?

Luckily I found a lady behind one of the counters who was sort of sorting out her stuff. And she even could check me in! While I wandered through the airport it became more and more apparent to me that this was actually a very quiet Monday morning. Could it be that the looming crises already had so much of an impact on air travel?

The thought did not leave me and I came to the conclusion that it really was much quieter then on any Monday morning since nine-eleven. The business class of the airplane was full, but peeking into economy revealed some empty seats. OK, not a full plane, but still far from ‘empty’.

Atlanta Hartsfield airport and the boring burden of the slow immigration process is always good for ruining my mood of being happy to walk on solid ground again after a 10 hour flight. The only nice thing about the whole process is that you can study your fellow travelers. This time it struck me that there were actually a lot of backpackers in the queue. That was new. A few are always there, but 10-20% of the few hundred people long queue, that is something different.

I guess the financial crises leads to cheap coach airfares and the declining dollar (70 cents to the Euro) makes staying and traveling in the US quite affordable. If this is true and if it progresses along these lines then soon we have another ‘cheap labor’ country in the world. Off-shoring to India or China? No, set-up your next call center in the US. Cheap and some of them even speak decent English.

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Sent from my iPod

Dunglish

Enkele recente nederlands/engels hybride zinnetjes die ik oppikte:

"Can I see inside" (kan ik naar binnen kijken)
"What a fine time I picked for it" (ik heb hier weer eens een mooi moment voor uitgekozen)
"I am going to try something out on my warlock" (ik ga iets uitproberen op mijn warlock)
"No flight behaviour" (geen vluchtgedrag)
"They come over as noobs" (ze komen op mij over als noobs (beginnelingen))