Travel

Travel Companies, Airlines, etc.

Gran Hermano

| Richard

So it has been revealed that BAA, owned by Spanish construction company Ferrovial, plans to fingerprint all passengers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

Why?

Well apparently:

“Under the security measure, prints will be checked at the gate to try to ensure the person who checked in is the same person who is boarding the aircraft.”

I would have thought the person’s passport would do this just fine, wouldn’t you?

So why are they doing this? Who knows: maybe it’s just a commerical decision to push their miSense product following their earlier trials. Certainly the Home Office is quoted as saying there’s no requirement in terms of security for fingerprinting to take place and the Information Commissioner is apparently looking into it. There’s also the question as to transmission of the biometric data within the EU (and who knows where else).

The trouble for someone who wants to travel by air on international as well as domestic flights is that with BAA in such a dominant position in terms of airport ownership, you may effectively be forced to be added to a database. Once on there, who knows how long the information will be held and by whom.

What’s the next step? RFID tagging for everyone?

The Trials of Trustees

| Richard

It appears that this October I shall be required to attend a couple of meetings here at Sabah in Malaysia. I’ve yet to find out of we’ll be insisting on business class travel or choosing to travel economy for the benefit of the members…

Now to me, that looks like a little bit of paradise, but I will be mainly sitting in some conference room or attending some semi-formal dinners whilst I’m there. It might be nice to share the trip with my partner, but it may well be a tad expensive for a short break… Still, at least they’d be able to relax in luxury, so we’ll see.

Pretty in Pink

| Richard

The problem with having a girlfriend who likes the colour pink is that when you have to borrow her car – and she owns a white Golf with pink pinstriping – you’ll look absolutely fabulous driving it to work, like the bloke I saw this morning. Not one for guys who aren’t secure with their own sexuality…

SatNavs Compared

| Richard

I had a journey to go on today: Google Maps reckon the outward leg should have taken 3 hours. The Garmin i3 (aka Psycho SatNav Bitch as ‘she’ tends to taunt me with unrealistic targets, even the way I drive) reckoned around 2¼ hours. My Nokia N95-8GB with Nokia Maps, on the other hand, reckoned 4 hours. Something of a disagreement.

In the end, the combination of the time of day, the occasional spray and muck left over from gritting (even though it hadn’t been icy) and the way I drive meant it took 2½ hours.

The routes themselves were almost identical, the only difference being the route in or around Grantham.

And the other differences were:

  1. the Garmin had the speed camera database to warn me of “accident blackspots”;
  2. as the Nokia was on the cradle and connected to the car kit, every spoken direction muted the radio which is a tad annoying when the voice prompts get a little frantic; and
  3. the Nokia’s display also shows the current speed (good) and the time left rather than the ETA (bad).

Looks like there’s still no ideal solution for me, but the Saga-driver Nokia is closest as it’s so nicely contained within the phone.

Ryanair in Schoolie Shocker

| Richard

Ryanair Schoolie AdSo Ryanair have been criticised by the ASA for their amazingly tacky advert featuring a model dressed as a schoolgirl: the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the “irresponsible” image appeared to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behaviour.

Now personally, I have reservations about people who find images of women dressed as schoolgirls sexy, but that’s probably because I have a daughter of school age.

Needless to say Ryanair knew exactly what they were doing as they obviously think there’s no such thing as bad publicity:

“The ASA becomes more Monty Pythonesque by the day.  This latest ruling shows how absurd and out of touch this quango really is.  It is remarkable that a picture of a fully clothed model is now claimed to cause “serious or widespread offence”, when many of the UK’s leading daily newspaper regularly run pictures of topless or partially dressed females without causing any serious or widespread offence…”

Maybe because they’re not regularly dressed as schoolgirls to broaden Ryanair’s appeal to the frequent paedo flyer…

Soap

| Richard

I’m currently in Leeds in a really rather nice hotel. And as usual that means some nice toiletries but I do wonder about the soap.

I get back to my room, get changed and shower to freshen up. So I open up the soap box and use the soap. Then in the morning I shower and use the soap again before breakfasting and heading off.

By the time I get back, the old soap has disappeared and new one is in its place. So what do they do with the old ones? Do the chambermaids take them home en masse?

Fortunately this evening my soap was still in the wire soap dish and a fresh one placed next to the sink.

Ryanair’s Headline Prices

| Richard

I will be attending some meetings in Dublin in October/November this year, so I went to look at flights from London Stansted to Dublin.

The Ryanair headline prices are impressive: £9.99 each way!

But then when you look at booking them, you find that with charges added for airport charges, an insurance levy and a wheelchair levy (I’m not disabled), that increases to almost £59.

Would I like any baggage? Well unless I want to stay unwashed for almost a week and wear the same clothes too, I’ll need some baggage at an additional cost of £10.

And according to Ryanair’s charges schedule, there could very well be another £4 for the credit card booking fee – how else can I pay for fights booked online?

So we’re approaching £73 now: slightly different to the £10.00 rates they advertise as “including taxes, fees & charges” on this page…

Misleading or what? In fact, isn’t that a complete lie?