Business travel

Gulliver

  • The Geneva motor show

    Genevitis

    Mar 2nd 2011, 15:32 by I.C. | GENEVA

    THIS week thousands of motor-industry executives and motoring journalists descended on Geneva for the motor show, held incongruously in one of Europe’s smallest car markets in a country more famous for watches then wheel spin. Once a gentle affair in a couple of halls at the exhibition centre next to the airport, it has now grown so large that cars heading there face gridlock on the roads from the city centre. Many visitors never see the fine prospect of the lake and its iconic water spout, because they cannot get hotel rooms in town. Car companies block-book expensive suites for their bosses on an annual basis, but minions and journalists find they have to go as far away as Lausanne to get a room.

    The happy hoteliers of John Calvin’s town rub their hands at this influx. Prices for a distinctly ordinary town-centre room can be as high as SFr395 ($425), while the grand hotels along the lake and by the Rhone charge as much as SFr650-900 for standard rooms. It’s that peak demand-during-trade-show thing that hits everything from the Frankfurt book fair to the Hanover trade fair or the Paris fashion show—to the annoyance of all but hoteliers.

    In Geneva, restaurants and taxi drivers join in too. A seven-minute ride from the airport to the nearby Hotel InterContinental—a grand affair on the hill at the edge of downtown Geneva—sets you back over SFr20, while an onward trip to the downtown banking district on the other side of the Rhone costs SFr45. There are very few bars outside the grand hotels, and even they charge about SFr7.5 for a pint of lager. A two-course meal with half a bottle of wine in a (rare) brasserie will set you back about SFr100. But there is one bit of good news for motorists: should they deign to take public transport, they will find Geneva hotels often give out free travel passes for the city’s excellent trams and buses. These have the added advantage of gliding in their dedicated lanes past the gridlocked chauffeur-driven Mercs and taxis.

  • Restaurants

    France: a great place for cheap food

    Mar 1st 2011, 16:16 by A.B.

    THE press release accompanying Michelin's latest guide to the restaurants and hotels of France has a slightly unexpected emphasis. Perhaps the company feared that its book might lose relevancy in these belt-tightening days, but it mainly trumpets the growing number of "Bib Gourmand" restaurants. These wallet-friendly establishments offer three-course menus that cost €35 or less in Paris and €29 or less elsewhere. Their number has risen by 117 to 601 and now, for the first time, they outnumber the starred restaurants.

    And yet, while admired, none of these Bib Gourmand restaurants actually earns a Michelin star, unlike 571 of the 3,419 restaurants in the guide. So they're cheap, yes, but they're not offering "very good cuisine in its category", the requirement for one star. Still, Michelin has another good reason to celebrate France's cheaper eats: there is rather less to say about top-end dining. For the first time since 1992, no new restaurant was promoted to three stars. Last year's 26 three-starred restaurants have become 25, thanks to the demotion of Les Loges de l’Aubergade in the Lot-et-Garonne. Michel Trama, the disappointed chef, compared his lot to that of a Formula 1 driver: "Have I hit the gravel for good, or just for once race? Have I lost the battle or the war?"

    He can at least console himself with his restaurant's continuing existence. One small Normandy restaurant which won its first star has already closed down since the inspection because of a lack of customers.

  • Train horrors

    Good Samaritans on the 10.15 to London

    Feb 28th 2011, 12:48 by A.B.

    ALWAYS first with the news, I have just come across the heart-warming story of Tom Wrigglesworth. He’s a stand-up comedian who, back in October 2008, took it upon himself to defend a fellow passenger facing up to the Byzantine awfulness of the ticketing systems that operate on Britain’s railways. As recounted by Victorian Coren in this weekend's Observer, a 75-year-old passenger had got on a Virgin train from Manchester to London that left 30 minutes before the one for which she had actually purchased a ticket. The ticket inspector on the train decided to charge her £115 for a new ticket, which was ten times what she had originally paid. Enter the good Samaritan.

    The gallant Wrigglesworth stood up and began a whip-round in the carriage. It didn't take long; everyone was disgusted by the policy and sympathetic to the elderly passenger. Wrigglesworth handed over his gathered £115 to safeguard the bullied old lady… at which point the train staff radioed British Transport Police and asked that he be arrested for begging. They were waiting for him at Euston.

    In true Dave Carroll style, Mr Wrigglesworth got creative in his revenge and used the story of the journey in his stand-up show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2009. Sadly I can't find any footage of the routine online, but 28 months after the original event, I warmly salute both his gallantry and his retribution.

  • A business bans the TSA?

    A Seattle cafe bans TSA agents... or does it?

    Feb 27th 2011, 21:38 by N.B. | WASHINGTON, DC

    THE ESTIMABLE Chris Elliott had a great story last week on a cafe near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport supposedly banning Transportation Security Administration agents from the premises. "We have posted signs on our doors basically saying that they aren't allowed to come into our business," Mr Elliott's tipster told him via email. "We have the right to refuse service to anyone." That's not all:

    My boss flies quite a bit and he has an amazing ability to remember faces. If he sees a TSA agent come in we turn our backs and completely ignore them, and tell them to leave.

    Their kind aren’t welcomed in our establishment.

    A large majority of our customers — over 90 percent — agree with our stance and stand by our decision.

    We even have the police on our side and they have helped us escort TSA agents out of our cafe. Until TSA agents start treating us with the respect and dignity that we deserve, then things will change for them in the private sector.

    The story was quickly picked up by the local and national press, and soon Mr Elliott was receiving inquiries from local journalists, looking for his tipster's contact information. Even the TSA itself felt compelled to make a statement—a spokesman said its employees had not been banned from any Seattle cafes. As Mr Elliot points out, that's pretty meaningless—"They’re not paid to monitor discrimination practices at restaurants." But later in the week, several local outlets published stories suggesting the tipster's story was fake—or, in the words of the Seattle Weekly's Curtis Cartier, "smelling more and more of bullshit."

    Now Mr Elliott has published a follow-up post noting that the name his tipster orginally offered was a pseudonym and suggesting he believes it's possible "she made the whole thing up." But there are still some lessons to be learned here. This whole episode is just more proof of my theory that the "TSA horror story"—or really, just about anything to do with how awful US airport security can be—is a meme with a permanent grip on the national psyche. And if people are going to the trouble of inventing stories about the TSA, that means these stories have a particularly broad appeal. Mr Elliott's story got picked up by national media before anyone even knew whether the cafe in question even existed at all. In this particular case, the story is a fascinating inversion of the traditional tale of TSA mistreatment—this time, aggrieved airline passengers are taking their revenge. It's tailor-made to go viral.

    Mr Elliott, for his part, says he believes his tipster's "words struck a chord with American air travelers that I couldn’t have foreseen," and notes that "a lot of readers weighed in with strong opinions about barring TSA employees from businesses." He adds that "it might be a good idea for the TSA to address that hostility." All that seems right. But I'm going to come down against this perhaps-theoretical banning of TSA agents from places of business. What TSA security screeners do may be invasive and inconvenient, or even occasionally stupid, but it's neither illegal nor immoral. They're just doing their jobs—which, at least theoretically, consist of protecting their fellow citizens. Banning them from your coffee shop would be misguided and wrong.

    What about you? Do you think it's a good idea for businesses to ban TSA agents? What do you think of this whole episode? Let us know in the comments.

  • Guns on planes

    Flying the well-armed skies

    Feb 26th 2011, 22:54 by N.B. | WASHINGTON, DC

    REMEMBER Farid Seif? Mr Seif is the Houston Iranian-American businessman who mistakenly carried a Glock handgun through security, onto a plane, all the way from Houston to Indianapolis. When he got to his destination and realised his mistake, he alerted security officials. There was reportedly "nothing else" in Mr Seif's carry-on besides the weapon. Yet the security screeners at George Bush International, America's eighth-busiest airport, missed it entirely. The scariest part of that story was that Transportation Security Administration officials told reporters that this type of incident was "not uncommon."

    Now another Texas airport, Dallas-Fort Worth, is proving the point. This week, a high-level TSA source told the local NBC affiliate that "An undercover TSA agent was able to get through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with a handgun during testing of the enhanced-imaging body scanners." Really:

    The TSA insider who blew the whistle on the test also said that none of the TSA agents who failed to spot the gun on the scanned image were disciplined. The source said the agents continue to work the body scanners today.

    This is not confidence-inspiring. It's actually infuriating. If TSA screeners can't even stop guns getting through security, why are they taking away our bottled water? Incidents like this only lend ammunition to TSA critics who say the whole airport security apparatus is an enormous waste of time and money. The TSA's attitude towards the reporting of these sorts of screw-ups isn't helpful, either. They only provided NBC with a brief statement claiming that they don't reveal the results of cover testing for "security reasons" and arguing that " advanced imaging technology is an effective tool to detect both metallic and nonmetallic items hidden on passengers." That's pretty much the public affairs equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "lalalalala we can't hear you!"

    As Gulliver has argued before, it is really hard to have an accountable TSA without greater transparency about the results of covert testing. The TSA continues to try to have it both ways on testing. Instead of leaking hints to the press that failure rates have decreased since the last public reports, the TSA should back up its whispering with actual data. If it won't, some enterprising congressional committee should subpoena it. "Trust us that this works" just isn't cutting it anymore.

  • In-flight distractions

    Something's bugging me

    Feb 25th 2011, 18:01 by A.B.

    AN angry British Airways customer has responded to a pair of disastrous journeys by setting up a website chronicling her miseries. Zane Selkirk flew from Los Angeles to London Heathrow on January 28th and from Bangalore to London Heathrow on February 5th—and on both flights she claims to have been attacked by bedbugs. Her new website, BA-bites, goes through every aspect of the trip and provides various photos. It also details the rather desultory response Ms Selkirk got from BA staff on both occasions, although I suspect readers may be more concerned at the carrier's lack of hygiene than its lack of PR skills.

    BA was sufficiently concerned to take the two planes out of service, and it did indeed find bedbugs on one, which has been fumigated and returned to service.

    Now bedbug bites are not much fun, as Gulliver can testify from his youth-hostelling days. But you have to be truly angry at a customer-service response (or else very bored) to put together an entire website devoted to your itchy experience. More to the point, I do have some sympathy for BA. It operates 250,000 flights a year at a time when New York is suffering a massive surge in the numbers of bedbugs. And the BBC has even referred, not very helpfully perhaps, to a "global pandemic" of the beasties. So some of the more intrepid bugs have hitched a ride with a passenger or their luggage and then made merry in premium economy. Horrible, yes, but I don't think we can expect a carrier to inspect their bedding after every trip. (Or do these incidents indicate that this needs to change?) For the time being, though, I think we excoriate BA for a lacklustre response to Ms Selkirk's complaint and chide it for the presence of the bugs. Not the other way round.

  • Canadian fees

    Charging Canadians to fly to America

    Feb 25th 2011, 11:08 by A.H. | TORONTO

    GIVEN the myriad fees already imposed by Canada's government and airlines on passengers, another one should hardly rankle. But the American government's proposed $5.50 inspection fee for Canadian flyers has prompted plenty of squawking. "The problem is that it's just one more of a thousand paper-cuts that are hurting the competitiveness of our Canadian air travel industry," said Daniel-Robert Gooch, communications director of the Canadian Airports Council, which represents more than 200 airports. Birgit Matthiesen, of the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, Canada's largest trade and industry association, said: "The raising of any fees on the Canada-US border is troubling." And a new poll suggests 64% of Canadians would favour imposing a fee on visiting Americans if the US inspection fee is enacted.

    Even Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, has weighed in, saying a flight fee is not a useful way for the US to raise revenue. This criticism is somewhat ironic given that Mr Harper's government seems to believe passenger fees are indeed a great way to generate revenue. Passengers flying from Canada to the US must pay a security charge of more than C$12.

    But the proposed inspection fee, which was introduced in the 2012 US budget, is not actually a new one, but rather an end to an exemption air and marine travellers from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean have enjoyed since 1997. Some 16m Canadians fly to the US every year, so the fee would raise about $90m from Canada alone—chump change given America's projected $1.6 trillion budget deficit for 2012.

    A recent survey by the Hotel Association of Canada showed that 21% of Canadians drove to an American airport last year to benefit from cheaper airline tickets for US or foreign travel, up from 18% in 2009. It's unlikely that another $5.50 fee will stem that traffic.

  • Delhi's airport link

    Delhi gets its airport link

    Feb 24th 2011, 18:31 by A.B.

    A 28-KILOMETRE rail line opened in Bangkok last August that links the city centre to the airport in as little as 15 minutes. Not to be outdone, Delhi's high-speed airport link finally opened yesterday, and a colleague has written on the topic on our Asia view blog. Like Bangkok's line, Delhi's was plagued by delays, and indeed it should have been ready for October's Commonwealth Games.

    Recriminations fly back and forth between the private company that is to manage the train for the next three decades—Reliance Infrastructure—and its partner, a public body, Delhi Metro Rail, which was responsible for building the structure of the line. Each side blames the other for delays. And though the trains are running, they are yet unable to travel particularly fast; two intermediate stations are not complete; and a promised city check-in service for luggage is not yet working.

    But despite the service's teething problems, it is already taking passengers from city centre to airport in 20 minutes. Costing 57 billion rupees (some $1.3 billion) to build, it provides an example of the kind of public-private partnership that could be hugely beneficial to India's cities.

    Delhi’s new train and metro are welcome examples of an Indian city that has succeeded in thinking creatively about how to ease dreadful congestion. Other booming cities, notably Mumbai and Hyderabad, are now reaching out to private actors to help build city rail networks, just as many states have handed over airport construction and operation to firms. The only hope of spending $1 trillion on infrastructure in an effective way is to get more private partners involved. Delhi’s airport express got off to an imperfect start. But better late than never.

  • Face-to-face meetings

    You can't share a beer over e-mail

    Feb 23rd 2011, 17:06 by A.B.

    THE justifications for face-to-face meetings are manifold and well known. This article on the Harvard Business Review's blog offers one businessman's rationale for the expensive airfares and inconveniences to senior employees that resulted from his insistence on monthly management meetings in different locations.

    By breaking down the geographic and psychological borders between subsidiaries and involving all of our senior managers in a regular, rigorous business analysis of each operation, we created a team that felt a sense of ownership not just of their P&L, but of the entire company.

    The writer goes on to admit that such a pace was unsustainable—and indeed unnecessary once personalities had gelled—so the meetings were scaled back to quarterly affairs. And so to the nub of the article:

    Big multinationals hold meetings like this as a matter of course, but in many ways I think they're even more valuable for small companies — even if they stretch managers' time and put demands on limited cash flow. Small companies tend to lack the infrastructure and controls of large companies, and our monthly in-person meetings helped overcome that.

    I'm interested by the notion that smaller companies have a greater need for face-to-face meetings than bigger ones. I think that's what instinct tells us, though I do wonder whether workers in some faceless über-company would struggle to feel a sense of community without meeting distant colleagues. Answers, then, please to a very general query: which has greater need of face-to-face meetings, the smaller company or the bigger?

  • Delta

    Delta's fine

    Feb 23rd 2011, 12:03 by A.B.

    AMERICA’S Department of Transportation (DOT) has fined Delta Air Lines $2m over its treatment of disabled passengers. This is the largest fine the DOT has ever levied in a case not involving safety violations.

    Delta was remiss, the DOT said, when it came to "providing enplaning, deplaning, and connecting assistance" and in the way it responded to complaints. Airlines are required by law to help disabled passengers get on and off planes, "including the use of wheelchairs, ramps, mechanical lifts and service personnel where needed."

    The DOT looked at all the complaints it received from Delta passengers in 2007 and 2008, as well as a selection of the complaints that Delta itself had received. It noted a number "egregious violations" of the applicable law, and cited examples, including one disabled passenger being left in a plane for 15 minutes after all other passengers had disembarked, and another being left at the wrong gate and so missing their flight.

    Delta settled out of court, but has not admitted culpability. Of the $2m penalty, only $750,000 must be paid as an actual fine. The rest can be put towards improvements in the way it treats disabled passengers. So, for example, up to $834,000 can be spent on a wheelchair-tracking system

    Since 2008 the DOT has fined 11 other airlines over their treatment of disabled passengers.

  • Liveability ranking

    Where the livin' is easiest

    Feb 21st 2011, 16:06 by A.B.

    VANCOUVER remains the most liveable city in the world, according to the latest annual ranking compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The Canadian city scored 98 out of a maximum 100, as it has done for the past two years.

    The ranking scores 140 cities from 0-100 on 30 factors spread across five areas: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. These numbers are then weighted and combined to produce an overall figure. The top ten cities occupy the same positions as last year, with the exception of Melbourne and Vienna, which have swapped places.

    The report, which some companies use to determine hardship allowances for relocated employees, explains what makes a high-ranked city:

    Cities that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density. This often fosters a broad range of recreational availability without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure. Seven of the top ten scoring cities are in Australia and Canada, where population densities of 2.88 and 3.40 people per sq km respectively compare with a global (land) average of 45.65 and a US average of 32.

    At the other end of the ranking, Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, is in 140th place, thanks to particularly poor scores for its stability, health care and infrastructure. Somewhere between the extremes sit London and New York in 53rd and 56th places. They are let down by stability scores of 75 and 70, the result in turn of poor scores for the perceived threat of terror and the rates of petty and violent crime.

    UPDATE 23rd February: It turns out Vancouver is only the 29th-best place to live in Canada. Those standards must be pretty high.

  • No-fly lists

    How the American no-fly list applies outside America

    Feb 21st 2011, 12:54 by A.H. | TORONTO

    A BRITISH man prevented from flying home from Canada because his name was on America's no-fly list could be just the first of many such instances, says the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Dawood Hepplewhite was not allowed to board his Air Transat flight from Toronto on February 13th when it was discovered that he was among the 8,000 to 10,000 people prohibited by the US from flying over its airspace. Even though Canadian airlines are not under any legal obligation to give passenger information to the US, Mr Hepplewhite was subsequently denied flights on Air Canada and British Airways.

    It's unclear how Mr Hepplewhite's name was given to American authorities. Under existing Canadian privacy legislation, Canadian companies are not supposed to supply customer information to foreign governments. But that will change if a piece of Canadian legislation known as Bill C42, now in its third reading in the House of Commons, is passed. The bill puts in an exemption to the country's privacy laws that will allow airlines to divulge passenger information to the US, essentially giving American authorities the final say on which passengers will be allowed on flights due to pass over American airspace.

    The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has “serious concerns about the lack of legal safeguards in Bill C42” and also the about the no-fly list's fairness and the listing process in general. “If a person believes they were wrongfully placed on the US No Fly List, it is apparently very difficult to find out why they were placed on the list, and difficult to get their name off of the list,” the association said. The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, has brought a lawsuit challenging the no-fly list as “unconstitutional” and “un-American”.

    Mr Hepplewhite has reportedly blamed his appearance on the no-fly list on his conversion to Islam and the fact that he was once interviewed for a teaching job in Yemen, widely considered a terrorism hot spot. But his story has a somewhat happy ending. The British High Commission intervened and got Mr Hepplewhite and his family on an Air Transat flight to Glasgow on Wednesday. If it hadn't done so, Mr Hepplewhite would have had to appeal to US Homeland Security to clear his name, a process that would have meant spending another 45 to 60 days in wintry Canada.

  • Airline fare increases

    The big airlines get cold feet

    Feb 20th 2011, 22:54 by N.B. | WASHINGTON, DC

    ON MONDAY Delta and other major American airlines increased prices on first-class, business-class, and seven-day advance tickets in an apparent attempt to wring a few more bucks out of business travellers. Short flights went up $20 each way, medium-range flights went up $40 each way, and long-haul flights over 1,500 miles went up as much as $60 each way. Delta initiated the increase and was quickly followed by American, but by the end of the week, both airlines got cold feet and backed off the price increases. USA Today's Roger Yu explains:

    The network airlines' most recent attempt to raise business travel fares was their second in as many weeks. They've also raised fares more broadly — affecting most of their seats and leisure travelers — five times since December.

    But the airlines' failure this week may be a sign of the tentative pace of the recovery of business travel, which sank along with the economy in 2008.

    Rick Seaney, the CEO of air-fare watchdog FareCompare.com, told Mr Yu that Southwest Airlines, America's largest discount carrier, seems to be in the driver's seat when it comes to fare increases this year. Southwest didn't raise its prices in two of the five rounds of increases in the past few months, and "If Southwest doesn't participate, [other airlines] tend to tiptoe around those [routes] to make sure they're at equilibrium with Southwest," Mr Seaney told Mr Yu.

    The bottom line here is the same one Gulliver has been spouting for weeks: any economic recovery is far from solid, and the business-travel recovery is even more tenuous than the improvement in the broader economy. Airlines are still having trouble raising their prices. In the short term, that's good news for those of us who have jobs and are travelling—we're travelling cheaper and better. But in the long term, a more solidly grounded recovery would be good news for all of us. When the airlines start being able to raise their prices without blinking, we'll know we're really on the road to recovery.  

  • High-speed rail in Florida

    Rick Scott deep-sixes Florida high-speed rail

    Feb 19th 2011, 21:48 by N.B. | WASHINGTON, DC

    RICK SCOTT, the newly elected Republican governor of Florida, made national headlines this week when he announced plans to reject $2.4 billion in federal money intended for the construction of a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando.

    Mr Scott worries about cost overruns and long-term operating costs. Those are legitimate concerns. But in the short run, the governor's decision probably wasn't the best for Florida's economy—the federal money would bring spending and jobs to the state. So it's unsurprising that other Sunshine State politicians, including Jeb Bush, the former governor and younger brother of former president George W. Bush, criticized Scott's actions.

    If Florida rejects the money for the Tampa-Orlando project, it will almost certainly be used in other states. (Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy has already sent President Obama a letter saying his state would be happy to take the money.) Ray LaHood, the Obama administration's transportation secretary and a former Republican congressman, has said Florida has until February 25 to change its mind before the money gets reassigned.

    High-speed rail supporters around Florida are working to get Scott to reconsider. A veto-proof majority of the state Senate sent Mr LaHood a letter on Friday urging him to give the money to Florida despite Mr Scott's objections. "This is like holding a gun to our heads and telling the federal government: Don’t give us this money or we’ll blow our brains out," Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, told the St. Petersburg Times.

    Gulliver is skeptical of Mr Scott's motives for rejecting the rail money. The governor says the rail line, which he calls a "boondoggle," wouldn't have as high of a ridership as currently projected—citing a study from the Reason Foundation. But even Republicans in Florida have attacked that study as "inaccurate."

    Mr Scott could have some deeply held, high-minded policy objection to the Tampa-Orlando line. But it seems a lot more likely that he is simply following the lead of other newly elected Republican governors around the country. Ohio's John Kasich and Wisconsin's Scott Walker dramatically raised their national profiles by sticking a thumb in the eye of the Obama administration and rejecting rail money targeted for their states. So far, Mr Scott's move seems to be earning him the same kind of press—and the same sort of credibility with the GOP's conservative base. Now some in the media are even talking about Mr Scott as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. That could be just what the governor wanted out of this.

    All that said, the Tampa-Orlando project has serious flaws that Gulliver has noted before. There were no plans to connect the project to the new SunRail system, for example. Moreover, researchers at the think tank America 2050 have found that city pairs that are less than 100 miles apart "are better-suited for auto and commuter rail networks" than for high-speed rail. Tampa and Orlando are 85 miles apart. There are plenty of places the money could be better-spent.

    Mr Scott's rejection of the rail money might end up being bad for Florida, which could probably use the boost to its economy. But those 2.4 billion dollars will probably end up being put to better use in Maryland or New York or Connecticut or California anyway. Why worry about scrapping high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando when you can have it between Washington or Boston or San Francisco and Los Angeles instead?

  • TSA

    Not guilty by association

    Feb 18th 2011, 13:17 by A.B.

    A TSA SUPERVISOR working at Newark airport pleaded guilty earlier in the week to stealing from passenger luggage. As Reuters reports, Michael Arato had taken "kickbacks from a subordinate officer, whom he permitted to steal between $10,000 and $30,000 in cash from travelers over the course of a year ending in October 2010". The subordinate co-operated with the investigation that preceded the arrest of Mr Arato, who now faces a sentence of up to 15 years.

    This is a superb story with which to bash the TSA. At a time when many Americans are fed up with intrusive security procedures, commenters have been lining up to sound off about the horrors of the administration, viz the responses to these reports of Mr Arato's doings. But these reactions strike me as unduly harsh. Whatever your views of full-body screening, it is important to resist the temptation to villify TSA officers as a group. Doing so certainly doesn't help them to do their job nor passengers to enjoy their airport experience. Two officers in Newark have been found to be corrupt; nothing implies the problem is endemic.

  • British Airways

    London Airways?

    Feb 17th 2011, 18:06 by A.B.

    A LETTER to the editor makes a good point in relation to a recent article in The Economist about London. It deals with aviation, so I've grabbed it:

    SIR – It was interesting to read about “Londonism” and the challenges presented to Britain by having such a dominant city (“The capital’s creed”, February 5th). You might also have mentioned how Britain’s so-called national airline, British Airways, has distanced itself from the British regions in favour of operations at London’s airports, thus supporting the London-as-a-city-state concept.

    This is unique among large European countries. Lufthansa has two main hubs, at Frankfurt and Munich, and secondary ones at Dusseldorf and Hamburg. Berlin’s new airport will open next year. Air France is not merely entrenched at Paris; it has a hub at Lyon and subsidiaries flying from airports all over France. In Spain, Iberia is building a second hub, after Madrid, at Barcelona. I could go on.

    In Britain if you really must fly on BA, you make your way, usually with difficulty, to London. Or you try to find another carrier. The airline should rebrand itself as London Airways.

    I'm not sure that's entirely fair. On a crowded island such as this I suspect it wouldn't make much commercial sense for BA to set up a second hub. What the airline could improve is the way it feeds passengers from outside London into its hubs. Otherwise they will increasingly choose to ignore BA and take feeder flights to better-organised hub airports on the continent.

  • Loyalty programmes

    Delta improves its loyalty scheme

    Feb 16th 2011, 17:18 by A.B.

    SOME good news from Delta Air Lines, which has announced that its SkyMiles loyalty points will no longer expire. Previously, they would disappear into the ether two years after the "last qualifying mileage activity". Now, with effect from the start of this year, they become ageless.

    Jeff Robertson of Delta commented: "We know how much customers value their miles, so eliminating mileage expiration is a major win for them." I suspect it's not actually a "major win" for customers who value their miles. Those customers' mileage accounts would not have been inactive for 24 months in the first place. It's the irregular flyers who forget they are members of the scheme and can't remember their log-in details who stand to benefit. It's a nice bonus for them and a wise move from Delta—the first of its kind from a legacy carrier.

  • Hotel prices

    Russian alpha beds

    Feb 16th 2011, 12:02 by A.B.

    MOSCOW still has the most expensive hotel rooms of any city in the world, according to the latest annual survey (PDF) by Hogg Robinson Group (HRG). The average price of a bed in the Russian capital declined over the course of 2010 by 3% when measured in pounds (12% in roubles) to £258.67, yet keeps the city in the top slot for a sixth successive year.

    Abu Dhabi, which was behind Moscow last year, plunged to 19th place, mirroring Dubai’s fall in the previous year, and for much the same reason of soaring supply. As a result New York moved up to second place with rates of £211.92, an increase of 3% on 2009.

    The biggest increases were seen in Australian cities, with costs in Sydney and Brisbane soaring by 21% and 32% respectively. The report attributed to this to a strengthening of Australia's dollar and its resource-rich economy. And it was a recovery in the financial sector that helped London avoid the downward trend shown elsewhere in Europe. Instead, its average rate rose 3% to £156.91, though this was still only enough to place it 29th out of 75 cities, below the likes of Istanbul, Johannesburg and Mumbai.

    Most expensive cities: 1) Moscow £258.67 2) New York City £211.92 3) Geneva £203.42 4) Paris £200.90 5) Zurich £198.58 6) Washington, DC £193.12 7) Hong Kong £191.24 8) Stockholm £189.30 9) Doha  £183.54 10) Riyadh £175.82

  • Aviation security

    Clever hounds

    Feb 15th 2011, 17:14 by A.B.

    FOLLOWING on from our recent piece on explosive-detecting mice, I would direct your attention to this post on a sister blog, Babbage. It tells of a recent experiment that showed how sniffer dogs react to the signals their handlers unintentionally give. So if a handler thinks he has spotted a potential source of drugs/explosives, his behaviour will convey that message to the dog, and the dog is then more likely to "spot" the drugs/explosives by, say, sitting next to the bag. As the piece describes the experiment: "The human handlers were not only distracted on almost every occasion by the stimulus aimed at them, but also transmitted that distraction to their animals–who responded accordingly." Read the whole thing. (And then campaign for more mice.)

  • Tipping

    Charge of the tight brigade

    Feb 15th 2011, 12:28 by A.B.

    A LETTER published in yesterday's Daily Telegraph told of a meal in London that concluded with a 14.5% service charge. "Not only did the percentage seem high," reports the reader, "but I could see no reason to pay for service based on a total which included 20 per cent tax. In America, where the percentage is traditionally higher than in Britain, the tax is disregarded in the calculation of the percentage for the tip."

    Service charges perplex me. They just go on creeping up, from 10% to 12.5%, and in some cases higher still: a number of British restaurants now see fit to add 15% to the final bill. We can abandon the charade of calling them "discretionary" charges, since they are patently not there to be contested, but it would be magnificent if diners did query them more frequently, especially the 15 per centers. I would be glad to know the justification for the rise (any offers?), especially, as the letter writer notes, when the tip is based on the post-tax price of the meal, and that tax has recently risen from 17.5% to 20%.

    I only read the letter after the BBC referred to it on this morning's Today programme. When asked his views, Michael Winner, film director and gourmet, complained about the practice whereby restaurants that include a service charge also ask a credit-card-using customer if they want to leave a tip. But he said he wouldn't be bothered to argue if that service charge had crept up to 14.5%, as suffered by the Telegraph's letter-writer. I suspect that's at the heart of the rising charge. It's not as if staff wages have risen faster than inflation and so require extra augmentation. It's just that customers don't like to make a show of tight-fistedness in an environment where they are already paying to be fed and waited on. They're there to be squeezed, and an inflated service charge is the simplest way to do it.

  • Boeing

    Boeing celebrates the birth of its biggest baby

    Feb 14th 2011, 16:38 by A.B.

    BOEING launched the latest incarnation of its 747 in Seattle yesterday. The 747-8 Intercontinental is longer than its predecessor, the 747-400, and carries 51 more passengers (467).

    And the improvements don't apparently stop there. Thanks in part to its use of technology developed in the building of the 787 Dreamliner, the 747-8 also has "16 percent better fuel economy, 16 percent less carbon emissions per passenger" and "a 30 percent smaller noise footprint " than the 747-400.

    It can't transport as many passengers as Airbus's giant A380, which can carry 525, so Boeing is pushing the line that the A380 is too big. The deputy programme manager, Elizabeth Lund, said the 747-8 was "the right size most of the time in most markets".

    Not many carriers have shown signs of agreeing thus far. Just 33 of the planes have been ordered: 20 by Lufthansa, five by Korean Air and the rest by private buyers. (At the launch of the original 747 in 1968, 156 firm orders had already been signed.) But Boeing can take heart from the fact that 74 of the freight-carrying versions of the 747-8 have been ordered. And Boeing planes tend to sell better once they have been flying for a while, or so Ms Lund told Bloomberg:

    Boeing is optimistic about a pickup in sales, Lund said. Development of previous aircraft shows they sell well at launch, drop off while in production and flight testing, then improve once the plane proves itself in the market, Lund said.

    The launch plane is painted in "Sunrise livery" with colours symbolising "prosperity and good luck". Given Boeing's ongoing difficulties with the Dreamliner and the WTO, the 747-8 could certainly do with both.

  • Business travel on the rise

    Fired up and ready to go?

    Feb 13th 2011, 16:29 by N.B. | WASHINGTON, DC

    IT SURE SEEMS like every newspaper in America is running Scott Mayerowitz's piece on the ongoing business travel rebound. After all, everyone likes good news:

    U.S. companies are forecast to spend 5 percent more on travel in 2011 than they did last year — a sign of confidence in the economy that is giving a boost to airlines, hotels and rental-car companies. That's double the growth rate from 2010, which followed two years of decline.

    This makes sense, of course. It's hard to imagine 3.2% GDP growth without a business travel expansion. But as my colleague at Free Exchange did with those GDP growth numbers, Gulliver feels obligated to sound a note of caution. America's economic recovery remains fragile. Employment growth remains sluggish. Mr Mayerowitz notes that corporate retreats are coming back into vogue. That's good news for the hospitality industry. But what would really benefit every sector of the economy—and every business-travel-dependent business—is more people returning to work. Unfortunately, that's not what's happening right now.

    Here's the reality: most analysts don't expect business travel spending to return to its pre-recession highs until mid-2013. We're starting to travel more, but we're flying coach, not business class. We're not even necessarily flying direct. We may be going on corporate retreats, but they're at bargain destinations. Average cost-per-trip, a key measure, is still 6% below its 2008 high. Mr Mayerowitz gets to all this in his story—but not until the ninth and tenth paragraph. By then, many readers will have drifted off. They won't even realize that the trumpeted "return of corporate retreats" means retreat bookings are expected to bounce back to "just short of their 2007 level." Things are looking up, sure. But there is still a long, hard climb ahead.

  • Development in China

    The Pearl River mega-city

    Feb 12th 2011, 15:57 by N.B. | WASHINGTON, DC

    BLOGGER Matt Yglesias and my colleague over at Free Exchange had an interesting exchange this week on the topic of Chinese growth. Both of them are riffing of this report in the Telegraph:

    City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta.

    The "Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One" scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.

    The new mega-city will cover a large part of China's manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

    Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some 2 trillion yuan (£190 billion). An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong.

    Here's a map:

    This seems like some serious business. But my colleague notes that as large as it may seem, the Pearl River mega-city wouldn't be totally beyond the bounds of American comprehension: it's about the size of greater Los Angeles. "What the Chinese effort actually seems to entail," he writes, "is a significant improvement in transportation around the region, harmonised local policies, and a rationalised metropolitan system of governance."

    Mr Yglesias, for his part, notes that "we’ve largely stopped doing this in the United States." Perhaps. But let's not hit the panic button quite yet. American political leaders actually seem increasingly cognisant of the need for more infrastructure development and perhaps even some governmental reform. High-speed rail development may not be moving quickly, but it's moving—and that's more than could be said for tech-bubble-era-America.

    On Tuesday, for example, the White House announced a six-year, $53 billion plan to improve America's high-speed and inter-city rail. It's no mega city. But these sorts of stories out of China can only help America fix its problem of chronic infrastructure underinvestment. In a highly nationalistic democratic political culture that is always worried about decline—and often concerned about the rise of China—tales of "mega-cities" and massive domestic rail networks help create the political pressure for infrastructure investment. As Churchill said, "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing—after they have exhausted all other possibilities." The business travellers of today can't travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco on a high-speed rail line. But one day, we almost certainly will.

  • Hotels

    Royal flush

    Feb 11th 2011, 17:51 by A.B.

    NOT that this is a slow news day, or anything, but I want to direct your attention to this USA Today piece. Gulliver has never previously tussled with the subject of toilets in hotels, but they are, it seems, very much a live issue. Changes to building codes mean that today's hotel toilets, in America at least, have to flush with around half the water they used to. And this causes repeated difficulties for guests. The article details the particular pains of the 18-hotel Loews chain:

    At Loews' three hotels at Universal Orlando including Portofino Bay, workers had to respond to 120 service calls per month - per hotel - that required a toilet plunger. About 12 guests per day faced this issue.

    The chain has decided that enough is enough and is to upgrade the toilets across its properties. And we're not talking any old loo. We're talking American Standard's Champion 4. This rather official-looking video demonstrates the toilet's prowess. This more unofficial item is still strangely serious. Both convey the same message: in Loews's bathrooms the good times are set to roll.

  • Aviation in Britain

    IATA's boss takes on "potty" Britain

    Feb 10th 2011, 17:55 by A.B.

    THE head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Giovanni Bisignani, took potshots at an array of British targets in a speech in London yesterday. The primary object of his ire was Air Passenger Duty (APD), a tax charged on every passenger, except those on transfers, leaving Britain on a plane seating more than 20. The taxes rose in November 2009 and November 2010, and the Telegraph has suggested that the effect can now be detected in a diminishing number of Britons holidaying in places like India and the Caribbean. Mr Bisignani objects to the way the government seems to see raising APD as an easy way to cut into the national debt.

    Instead of helping industry to reduce emissions, the UK government raised taxes. In November, Air Passenger Duty (APD) increased to GBP2.7 billion annually. That’s enough to offset all of the UK’s aviation emissions four times! To borrow a UK phrase, this is potty. Environment policy should not be designed around paying the bills for the government’s failure to effectively regulate the financial sector. This punitive approach isolates the UK from the rest of the world.

    That last comment could be a reference to somewhere like the Netherlands. The Dutch equivalent of APD was dropped in 2009 after just a year because the money it raised was reckoned to be less than the money the economy was losing as a result of abandoned travel plans. Mr Bisignani told The Economist earlier this week that it was figures presented by IATA that persuaded the Dutch government to alter its stance. Perhaps he's hoping to achieve something similar with the British?

    He also criticised the failure to develop a third runway at Heathrow:

    Heathrow is becoming a secondary hub… Compare Heathrow’s two runways to Europe’s other major airports. Amsterdam Schiphol has five runways and Paris four. Frankfurt will soon open its fourth runway and Madrid is taking on a new strategic role as a major European hub with four runways and lots of room to grow. With the BA-Iberia merger, it will gain the most from the UK’s decision to stagnate Heathrow.

    The situation is probably worse even than that, since Heathrow is not only competing with European hubs. As The Economist noted in this article last year, British flyers who don't live near Heathrow can choose to fly from regional airports such as Manchester or Newcastle directly to Dubai for connecting flights to Asia. Previously, they would have flown to Heathrow on feeder services.

    Mr Bisignani held out little hope of high-speed rail taking the pressure off a bursting Heathrow. "If building 2,200 metres of runway takes decades and still fails," he said, "building or upgrading 650 km of rail will take several lifetimes". Unless something is done, he added, "the government’s policy pillars of excessive taxes, inefficient airport regulation, and limiting growth" will destroy the country's "proud legacy" in the aviation industry. He doesn't pull his punches.

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