The newest and possibly most exhilarating views of London hove into sight with a gut-wrenching lurch and reassuring words from the attendant - who pointed out where we could find the panic button should the experience of crossing the Thames on Britain’s first urban cable car become a little too exciting.
"Welcome aboard the Emirates Air Line. We will be reaching a cruising altitude of up to 295ft," the intercom announced. In an instant the car began its climb from the Greenwich Peninsula towards the Royal Docks along a 1.1km cable stretched across the river. The gondola wobbled alarmingly as it crossed the first 90-metre pier sunk in the riverbed. Wind and drizzle whipped the glass, but soon all was forgotten as the cabin opened up a new perspective on the capital.
To the west, a wall of skyscrapers pinpointed the financial heart of London; Canary Wharf, the NatWest Tower, the Gherkin, the Shard, all seen as never before from an elevated perch down river.
To the north, London’s newbuild developments emerged from the haze over the Olympic Park; Anish Kapoor's Orbit tower reduced in scale from my seat on the first overground river crossing to be opened since the Millennium Bridge. The Thames Barrier glinted to the east and The O2 and commuter suburbs trailed away to the south.
The views are all those things but they also expose the gritty reality of London: the barge carrying tonnes of recycled litter along the river, the diggers crushing rubbish in a dump by the docks, the haulage yard, cranes and piles of rubble, abandoned industrial plants along the River Lea, the council estates of two impoverished London boroughs as well as the glass balconies of wharfside apartments.
It may not be picture postcard perfect, but that is London. "You say it is not an attractive view to show investors, but it is quite the opposite," the Mayor said. “It is unique and I see a lot of cities around the world saying, 'Oh, we'd better have a look at this one'," Mr Clark said. "This has got to be on the wish list of every tourist as well as the regeneration of the two communities on either side of the river.”
The cars can carry 2,500 people an hour across the Thames — the equivalent of 30 London buses — and will connect two Olympic venues, The O2 and ExCel. While Transport for London (TfL) met the full cost of construction, the lion’s share will be clawed back through the sponsorship deal and £8 million of European development funding.
Its backers say that the cable car was the fastest possible way of creating a link across the river.
They hope it will become as popular with commuters as tourists and are offering “frequent flyer” boarding passes of ten tickets for £16, compared with a single cash fare of £4.30 or £3.20 for Oyster card holders.
TfL insists that its secondary power supplies, emergency drive system and back-up gearbox will prevent breakdown. But if cars do ever get stuck, climbing teams are on stand-by to reach passengers within 30 minutes. If they are unable to restart the system, passengers will be clipped into harnesses and lowered down ropes to rescue teams in the river. "It would be exceptionally and extraordinarily rare," a spokesman said. "It is not anything we anticipate ever having to be used, but we have to have these fallbacks in place."
Iceland Volcano
Thirty-eight years ago, Arni Stefansson tossed a coin into a hole. He waited about five seconds before he heard a faint “plink”. He didn’t know it then, but he’d discovered one of the greatest natural wonders on earth.
Last week, I joined one of the first groups to be allowed to follow that coin — 400ft, straight down, into a vast, imposing subterranean space. If you’re quick, you can do it too. You should. It’s probably the only way you’ll ever see inside a volcano without being flash-fried in the process.
In a world first, the magma chamber of the Thrihnukagigur volcano, in Iceland, has been opened to the public for a six-week period. Four thousand years ago, this space was the very cauldron of hell, churning with 100,000 tons of molten rock bubbling up at 1,100C. It’s now 6C inside and classed as dormant, which means they don’t expect an eruption any time soon — although the company running the tour gives no guarantees.
From Reykjavik, it’s a 30-minute drive and a 45-minute hike to Thrihnukagigur. The peak is low and unimposing, hunkered down over a stark black landscape of old lava fields raked by cold, howling winds, like Mordor with hail. At the top, a skinny metal gantry is wedged across a 12ft-wide hole. Dangling over the black void is a little platform, attached by steel cables — the sort used by window cleaners on skyscrapers. Your conveyance awaits.
The whole arrangement looks a bit ramshackle, but it’s been thoroughly tested by the Icelandic safety people. On the other hand, surveys show that 20% of Icelanders believe in elves (another 60% are agnostic on the subject), which has to put a question mark over their rationality. Still, this is the deal, so you take a deep breath and clamber on, then a guide hits a button and down you go.
The 2001: A Space Odyssey music is pretty much the only soundtrack that could do justice to the drama of entering Thrihnukagigur. First, the narrow neck, dark and craggy; then, a minute or two in, the walls open out into an unimaginably vast cavern, like a diabolical St Paul’s. Arc lights, temporarily installed on the cave floor for the public visits, show up a riot of colour on the distant walls — bright sulphur yellows, deep rust reds, burnt orange, tinges of green, splashes of crimson, ochres the shade of a Tuscan villa — all created when the searing heat of the magma chemically transformed the surrounding rock. This is what the cauldron of hell looks like when the cooking’s finished. It’s as if the devil forgot to do the washing-up.
You could reasonably spend your allotted 40 minutes at the bottom, lying on your back and burbling. The impressiveness of it all, though, lies as much in tracing what happened four millenniums ago as in appreciating the way it looks now, so it makes sense to scramble around the boulder-strewn floor and explore the cave and its story — a story that has a riddle at its heart.
The thing is, this great big hole just shouldn’t be here. Volcanoes are formed by magma blasting up under pressure from deep in the earth. When the eruption stops, the remaining magma cools inside the volcano, becoming a plug of rock. At Thrihnukagigur, however, a pressure drop caused the magma to drain away, leaving an enormous cavity. Why? How? The experts aren’t sure.
Not all the magma disappeared: at each end of the cavern, huge black gashes on the wall show where it set, glittering and crystalline, inside a fissure — the fault line between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Follow that fissure down on one side and the floor falls away steeply. To reach it, you leave the arc lights behind, scrambling into the darkness over a mad jumble of room-sized boulders, guided only by the puny head torch on your helmet.
You’re not encouraged to venture too far down here, but I managed to cajole Arni Stefansson, the cave explorer who threw that coin back in the 1970s, into being my guide. As the passage narrows, we squeeze through tight gaps, down and down, till we reach something I’d been keen to see: the chimney. It’s a circular tube, maybe 7ft across, rising from the roof of the passage. Its walls seem to drip rock where the retreating lava set in mid-flow, like wax from a candle.
“The magma blasted through the fissure at tremendous pressure and speed, maybe up to 400mph,” Arni says. “Zhoomph! Some found a weakness in the rock here and surged up to form this chimney. The rest went on and eroded away the chamber up there.”
That’s how the magma came — but where did it go? Some argue it drained back down this very passage, in a matter of minutes, like a bucket with a hole in it. Arni reckons it collapsed into an even deeper chamber beneath. Nobody’s mentioned the obvious solution: the elves. They’re mischievous and they live in the rocks. What more do you need?
Climbing back up, we see the mouth of the volcano, a tiny spot of light far, far above. The lift descends with the next group, looking like an alien ship entering inner space. It won’t do so much longer: on July 31, Thrihnukagigur closes again. If this six-week tryout goes well, the company has an ambitious long-term plan to site a viewing platform in the cave wall, reached by a tunnel. There’s opposition, though — and in any event, the floor exploration and the lift ride are one-offs. If you want to appreciate how the earth you stand on was made, go now. This could be your only chance to go down with the devil.
Silicon Valley Travel Tips
IT’S 11:26 a.m. in California and Tim Ferriss, who has turned his personal tactics for streamlining life’s chores and savoring its pleasures into best-selling books like “The 4-Hour Workweek” and “The 4-Hour Chef,” is timing himself to see how fast he can get from his house to his departure gate at San Francisco International Airport.
Using Uber, a cashless car service, and Clearcard, a fast-pass for airport security, he zipped from home to gate in 20 minutes. A friend making the same flight spent 33 minutes on the security line alone. “I had lunch and polished off two conference calls before my friend even got his shoes back on,” Mr. Ferriss said.
If there are upsides to obsessive-compulsive behavior, traveling efficiently is one. I consider myself a nimble traveler, able to fold a dress into the size of a croissant and get out of the airport before most passengers can even find the baggage claim. But as I grilled Mr. Ferriss and a handful of his Silicon Valley peers, who have made a sport of stripping time and pain out of routine nuisances, it was clear that even I could learn a thing or two. (Like when to pack a starter pistol, but more on that later).
For a certain type of frequent-flying entrepreneur in and around Silicon Valley, travel is an art form — one that doesn’t require private jets and fat wallets. Rather, they have perfected the art of traveling comfortably, without anxiety or wasted time. I caught up with half a dozen of these travel aces from companies like Google, Klout, Yelp and LinkedIn and pumped them for pointers on how to make planning and taking vacations as effortless as shuffling an iPod.
Designing Your Trip
Oh, the monotony of cutting and pasting details from confirmation e-mails — plane tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals — into your online calendar. So what do the experts do? They turn to TripIt, a Web site and free app that allows users simply to forward those e-mails to plans@tripit.com and — bang! — everything is instantly organized into a digital itinerary that can be synced with calendars and shared with friends and family. (There is also an option to automatically import the e-mails from an in-box.) The itinerary, organized chronologically from flight to hotel and everything in between, includes all the essentials: addresses, reservation numbers, weather forecasts (notes can be added, too). When your flight lands, pull up your itinerary on your smartphone and tap “directions,” and maps, along with step-by-step instructions on how to get from A to B, will appear. No need to test your phone battery and your patience with GPS.
Minimalist travelers don’t schlep destination guides, especially now that there are Web sites like Wikitravel, a worldwide guide the travelers I spoke to say is particularly useful for figuring out how to get around a city. They also rely on apps from familiar brands like Lonely Planet, and start-ups like Trippy.com. A new social site and free app for the iPhone, Trippy (to which Mr. Ferriss is an adviser) enables users to “friendsource” their vacations by telling connections on social sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn where they are planning to visit. Those in the know can then offer recommendations about where to stay and what to do. Suggestions can be added with a click to a master list, which can then be consulted throughout a trip. A photo album in the app enables users to show friends in real time that their advice is being heeded.
Another handy, free app endorsed by some of the travel aces I spoke to is Room. “When you travel as much as I do,” said Miriam Warren, vice president of new markets for the consumer review site Yelp.com, “you start to forget your room number.” Room stores it on the home screen of your smartphone, along with hints like “east tower.”
Is your French rusty (Est-ce votre français rouillé)? When traveling internationally, Krista Canfield, a senior manager for LinkedIn’s corporate communications, relies on Google Translate, a Web site and free app that translates words and phrases between more than 60 languages.
Of course, part of planning a getaway is preparing for bumps in the road — like having your flight canceled. And the only thing worse than being stuck in an airport without a flight is being simultaneously stuck in a phone maze unable to reach a customer service representative. That’s why Mr. Ferriss and his peers use GetHuman.com, a Web site and free app that tells you the swiftest way to reach a live operator (for example: dial the 800 number, then press 1 and then 4). “Calling on the phone is always faster than getting in line at the customer service desk if there’s a problem,” he said.
Joe Fernandez, the chief executive and co-founder of Klout, a company that uses data from social networks like Twitter to rank from 1 to 100 how influential you are on the Web, suggests also installing the apps of the major airlines on your smartphone, keeping your accounts at your fingertips. “In the ride over to the airport I can make sure I’m all checked in,” he said. It can also pay to check the “perks” section of Klout.com, where users can learn if they rank high enough to reap certain benefits. For instance, recently San Francisco International Airport visitors who had Klout scores of 40 or higher and were using the site’s iPhone app were given free access to the Cathay Pacific Airways first- and business-class lounge, even if they weren’t passengers of the airline.
For overseas adventures, Chris Hutchins, a product manager at Google, recommends safeguarding yourself and your possessions with insurance from WorldNomads, which he said is more comprehensive than many other policies. It covers an array of sports and adventure activities, lost bags, health care, even necessities like food if your flight is delayed. You can get a quote on the Web site — for instance, a weeklong policy covering two people (under age 67) traveling anywhere in the world for a week beginning July 10 was $98. When his camera was stolen, Mr. Hutchins said “all I had to do was get a police report and send them the receipt, and they paid us back.”
Packing
Mr. Ferriss is not alone in feeling like he “would rather jump face first through a window than check luggage.” So it’s no surprise that young entrepreneurs flying without children prefer duffel bags or backpacks that can be squished into an overhead bin. Mr. Ferriss likes Victorinox backpacks because they are durable and can be used for hiking yet also have wheels.
To save time and sanity, he recommends keeping an extra set of phone and computer chargers packed and ready to go so they are never forgotten. Still, even if they are, Ms. Warren of Yelp has a trick she said rarely fails: tell the hotel you want to rummage through the lost-and-found bin. “Every single time I’ve done this they’ll have this huge box full of chargers and all kinds of miscellaneous plugged-in things,” she said. “They’re just like, ‘Please take some of this off my hands.’ ”
Having spent seven months traveling around the world with only a carry-on bag, Amy Fox, a business developer for a technology start-up in San Francisco and married to Mr. Hutchins, knows how to pack light. Her “lifesaver” is Patagonia’s short, A-line Bandha dress ($79), made of a moisture-wicking, wrinkle-resistant fabric originally designed for climbing tights. “It’s pretty much smellproof and wrinkleproof,” Ms. Fox said. “You can dress it up or down.” For a bare-minimum makeup routine, she recommends the Balm Stainiac cheek and lip stain ($17), which delivers a rosy pop to lips and cheeks. “If you throw it on with no other makeup you still look semi-put together,” she said.
For a glamorous jersey dress that can be styled in more than 25 ways, Ms. Canfield of LinkedIn (who lived out of a single bag for two weeks in Egypt) recommends Von Vonni’s Transformer dresses (most are $120), available in long and short styles. She also likes Lululemon’s Covers It All dress ($98), which is reversible and is a skirt, top and shrug, too; and American Apparel’s cotton spandex jersey Bandeau Pencil dress ($41), which can be worn strapless or as a halter. When combined with American Apparel’s Unisex Circle scarf ($28) — which can be worn as a dress, skirt, top, capelet or head wrap — the dresses are not only fashionable but are also able to take you from blistering city streets into churches and other places where shoulders and legs must be covered. Another pick is Lululemon’s moisture-wicking Studio Pant II ($98). With drawstrings at the ankles, the pants morph into capris, eliminating the need to pack both.
In Ms. Canfield’s toiletry bag you won’t find hard plastic refillable bottles “where you know you have enough conditioner but you can’t get it out,” she said. Rather, you’ll find HumanGear’s squeezable, silicone GoToob travel bottles (about $19 for three, three-ounce bottles) with identification rings like “soap” and “lotion” so you don’t accidentally wash your hair with sunscreen. The bottles are BPA-free, and some have suction cups so they can be stuck to walls in tight spaces.
For men, Mr. Hutchins of Google is a fan of quick-dry underwear and socks from Eastern Mountain Sports and REI because they make it possible to travel for weeks with just a few pairs. During the around-the-world adventure with Ms. Fox, “every time I bathed I would just wash a T-shirt or pair of underwear,” he said.
Mr. Ferriss saves space by leaving his gym clothes and sneakers at home and swimming for exercise instead. “I can bunch up my goggles and my swimsuit in one hand,” he said. His Nau riding jacket ($225) is another travel staple because it’s water-repellent and has deep hidden pockets. So are his slip-ons by Native Shoes ($44.99), made of the polymer ethylene vinyl acetate because they’re lightweight and perforated, providing ventilation. “They never smell, and you can hose them down if they get dirty,” he said.
Should you need to bring a computer, Mr. Hutchins suggests buying a lower-end netbook (about $250) specifically for travel so you don’t fret about it being damaged or stolen. “The last thing you want to do is check your suitcase on a bus in the middle of Africa with your $2,000 MacBook Air,” he said.
To charge your devices in foreign countries, Mr. Hutchins packs an extension cord with room for three plugs, which means he has to bring only one converter for all of his gadgets. To charge devices on the go, Mr. Ferriss opts for the PowerGen (about $35 on Amazon) because it’s small and can feed both his iPhone and his camera; Mr. Hutchins likes New Trent’s external battery (about $35 to $77 for smartphone batteries) because it provides more charges than other brands he’s tried.
Also worth tossing in your luggage: plastic zip or cable ties. They’ll enable you to attach your bag to a bike rental, or to fix a backpack strap if it breaks. Ms. Canfield keeps a few around to secure her luggage if she’s forced to check it at the gate. That way, if T.S.A. workers cut open her bag, at least they don’t break her locks, which she uses when she leaves luggage with a bellhop. (She brings along nail clippers in case she later has to cut the ties herself.) If you plan to shop, she said, toss a couple of plastic Travelon compression bags (about $13 for two) into your luggage; valves push out excess air so you can store more in less space. Ms. Fox uses nylon “ stuff sacks” to organize and streamline.
Hacking the Airport
Face it: It’s hard to arrive at the airport at some perfect, magical hour when you can just waltz onto the plane without waiting at the gate; cut it too close and you might end up racing through the terminal like Seabiscut. So if you have work to do or a stack of magazines to pore over, try it Mr. Ferriss’s way: Go early. Absurdly early.
“Let’s say my flight leaves at 7, which means I need to be at the airport at 5,” he said. “Total nightmare. It’s rush hour. I’ll just go to the airport five hours early.” Before you roll your eyes, consider this: Being at the gate even 40 minutes before a flight is still not enough time to plunge into any work you might want to do. But if you’re there five hours early, you can get plenty done in an airport lounge replete with unlimited coffee, snacks and Wi-Fi.
To get to the airport without cracking open a wallet, technology wonks like Mr. Fernandez of Klout opt for Uber, a text-for-a-ride, cashless (and no-tips!) car service that has flat rates (to and from airports and between cities) as well as rates by the mile and by the minute (when traveling at or below 11 m.p.h.). To use it, sign up on Uber.com and when you want a lift, text your address and city (in the United States or Canada) to UBR-CAB and you’ll receive a reply with an approximate arrival time. You’ll get another text when the car is there. After the ride, the credit card you have on file will be charged and a receipt will be sent to you via e-mail. No more idling curbside at the airport waiting for change or a credit card receipt. In San Francisco, the base fare for the cheapest car is $5, plus $3.25 for each mile within the city. (The minimum fare is $10.) Mr. Fernandez said that when his plane lands he messages Uber with his terminal number. “They’ll be waiting for you by the time you get off the plane,” he said. (Mr. Ferriss is also a fan, and has equity in the company.)
At the security line, programs like Global Entry expedite the screening process. Another option is to register for a Clearcard ($179 a year), which uses biometrics (fingerprint and eye scanning) to whisk you through designated fast lanes at a handful of international airports.
If that’s too “Minority Report” for you, get in the security line and follow Ms. Canfield’s choreography: As you approach the X-ray belt, put your shoes in the first bin, your laptop and liquids in the second bin, and your carry-on bag in the last bin. This way, when you’re waiting for them on the other side of the metal detector, you’ll be able to put your shoes back on first, then grab your laptop and liquids and, finally, return them to your bag. “If you do the bag first, you end up being the person who holds up the line,” she said. (Ditto to those who still insist on wearing belts to the airport.)
Staying Healthy
Given that Mr. Ferriss also wrote a book called “The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman,” I asked him how he stays superhuman while locked in a cabin with more than 100 other humans, some of whom have colds and an aversion to covering their mouths.
His answer: He pops Quantum Super Lysine+ supplements (about $8 for 90 tablets) a day before his vacation and at the end to boost his immune system (if the trip is less than three days he takes the tablets the entire time). He also uses a Neti bottle (about $15) to clean his sinuses, and sleeps with an eye mask and earplugs. “I know for a fact if I don’t sleep well for three days straight when I’m traveling,” he said, “I will get sick.”
Stake Out Your House: When he’s on the road Mr. Ferriss uses iControl software, which allows him to receive e-mails with video clips from infrared cameras in his house and to receive text alerts on his phone about who’s going in and out of his home.
Lighten Up: Mr. Ferriss, who sometimes travels to places where safety might be a concern, brings along a Fenix or SureFire flashlight, which he says are so bright they can double as weapons. “They can be used for self-defense, to temporarily blind an assailant,” he said. “Like an optical pepper spray.”
201 Countries
A British adventurer has become the first person to travel to all 201 sovereign states in the world without flying, ending his four-year odyssey early Monday when he arrived in South Sudan, the world’s newest nation.
Graham Hughes has used buses, boats, taxis, trains, and his own two feet – but never an airplane – to travel 160,000 miles in exactly 1,426 days, spending an average of less than $100 a week.
“I love travel, and I guess my reason for doing it was I wanted to see if this could be done, by one person traveling on a shoestring,” Mr. Hughes tells the Monitor Monday by telephone from Juba, South Sudan’s capital. “I think I also wanted to show that the world is not some big, scary place, but in fact is full of people who want to help you even if you are a stranger.”
Hughes, 33, set out from his home in Liverpool in northern England on New Year’s Day 2009.
Since then, he has visited all 193 United Nations member states plus Taiwan, Vatican City, Palestine, Kosovo, Western Sahara, and the four home nations of the United Kingdom.
Guinness World Records have confirmed that Hughes, who has been filming the trip for a documentary and raising money for a charity called Water Aid, is the first person to achieve this feat without flying.
“The main feeling today is just one of intense gratitude to every person around the world who helped me get here, by giving me a lift, letting me stay on their couch, or pointing me in the right direction,” Hughes said Monday. “There were times, sitting in a bus station in Cambodia at one in the morning, riding some awful truck over bad roads, when I thought, why am I doing this? But there was always a reason to keep going.”
Highlights were swimming in a lake of jellyfish in the Pacific archipelago of Palau, watching one of NASA’s last Space Shuttle launches, and dancing with the jungle tribes of Papua New Guinea.
“People asked me how I was going to get to Afghanistan or Iraq or North Korea, but they were the easy ones, you don’t even need a visa for Iraq, you just walk across the border from Turkey,” he says.
To cross oceans, Hughes hitched lifts with cargo ships. He spent four days in an open fishing canoe from Senegal to Cape Verde, and was then arrested when he arrived. Later, officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo jailed him for six days believing he was a spy.
“If you take everything that you know of the world from the news, it’s all the bad stuff and you get very paranoid that everyone is out to get you,” he says. “But the most amazing thing to me is that everyone I met looked after me and I didn’t even know them.”
Hughes plans to stay in South Sudan only until Wednesday. But he will not then be flying home.
He says to “keep in the spirit of the adventure” he will continue through Africa and across Europe by bus and boat, aiming to return home to Liverpool by ferry from Ireland in time for Christmas.
“Someone wrote to me and pointed out that this would be the trip of a lifetime for most people, but for me it’s essentially just the bus home,” he says. After a long rest, he says he will then begin exploring options to continue with a career in film-making.
Electronic Toys On Planes
Over the last year, flying with phones and other devices has become increasingly dangerous.
In September, a passenger was arrested in El Paso after refusing to turn off his cellphone as the plane was landing. In October, a man in Chicago was arrested because he used his iPad during takeoff. In November, half a dozen police cars raced across the tarmac at La Guardia Airport in New York, surrounding a plane as if there were a terrorist on board. They arrested a 30-year-old man who had also refused to turn off his phone while on the runway.
Who is to blame in these episodes? You can’t solely pin it on the passengers. Some of the responsibility falls on the Federal Aviation Administration, for continuing to uphold a rule that is based on the unproven idea that a phone or tablet can interfere with the operation of a plane.
These conflicts have been going on for several years. In 2010, a 68-year-old man punched a teenager because he didn’t turn off his phone. Lt. Kent Lipple of the Boise Police Department in Idaho, who arrested the puncher, said the man “felt he was protecting the entire plane and its occupants.” And let’s not forget Alec Baldwin, who was kicked off an American Airlines plane in 2011 for playing Words With Friends online while parked at the gate.
Dealing with the F.A.A. on this topic is like arguing with a stubborn teenager. The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane’s avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers.
A year ago, when I first asked Les Dorr, a spokesman for the F.A.A., why the rule existed, he said the agency was being cautious because there was no proof that device use was completely safe. He also said it was because passengers needed to pay attention during takeoff.
When I asked why I can read a printed book but not a digital one, the agency changed its reasoning. I was told by another F.A.A. representative that it was because an iPad or Kindle could put out enough electromagnetic emissions to disrupt the flight. Yet a few weeks later, the F.A.A. proudly announced that pilots could now use iPads in the cockpit instead of paper flight manuals.
The F.A.A. then told me that “two iPads are very different than 200.” But experts at EMT Labs, an independent testing facility in Mountain View, Calif., say there is no difference in radio output between two iPads and 200. “Electromagnetic energy doesn’t add up like that,” said Kevin Bothmann, the EMT Labs testing manager.
It’s not a matter of a flying device hitting another passenger, either. Kindles weigh less than six ounces; Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs weighs 2.1 pounds in hardcover. I’d rather be hit in the head by an iPad Mini than a 650-page book.
In October, after months of pressure from the public and the news media, the F.A.A. finally said it would begin a review of its policies on electronic devices in all phases of flight, including takeoff and landing. But the agency does not have a set time frame for announcing its findings.
An F.A.A. spokeswoman told me last week that the agency was preparing to move to the next phase of its work in this area, and would appoint members to a rule-making committee that will begin meeting in January.
The F.A.A. should check out an annual report issued by NASA that compiles cases involving electronic devices on planes. None of those episodes have produced scientific evidence that a device can harm a plane’s operation. Reports of such interference have been purely speculation by pilots about the cause of a problem.
Other government agencies and elected officials are finally getting involved.
This December, Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, sent a letter to the F.A.A. telling the agency that it had a responsibility to “enable greater use of tablets, e-readers and other portable devices” during flights, as they empower people and allow “both large and small businesses to be more productive and efficient, helping drive economic growth and boost U.S. competitiveness.”
A week later, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, also sent a letter to the F.A.A. noting that the public was “growing increasingly skeptical of prohibitions” on devices on airplanes. She warned that she was “prepared to pursue legislative solutions should progress be made too slowly.”
If progress is slow, there will eventually be an episode on a plane in which someone is seriously harmed as a result of a device being on during takeoff. But it won’t be because the device is interfering with the plane’s systems. Instead, it will be because one passenger harms another, believing they are protecting the plane from a Kindle, which produces fewer electromagnetic emissions than a calculator.
Phones On Planes 2
WHICH is worse: not being able to use a mobile phone while on board an aircraft—or being able to do so? Just about the last thing most people want is to be trapped next to someone nattering endlessly into a mobile phone, oblivious of everyone within forced earshot. Rudeness and lack of consideration know no bounds for some folk. And sad to report, as mobile phones have proliferated, such crass behaviour is no longer the isolated exception within an otherwise civil crowd. Were the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to relax its rule banning the use of mobile phones once an aircraft leaves the ground, there would be fist-fights aplenty above the clouds.
Fortunately for those who value at least peace and quiet when crammed in an airline seat, the FCC is in no hurry to relax its ban. However, regulators are finally thinking of permitting the use, during take off and landing, of other sorts of electronic equipment currently forbidden, except when the plane is in level flight. Understanding why this change is possible illuminates a common misconception about what it is that means mobile phones and aircraft do not mix. For the ban exists not (as the public is often led to believe) because mobiles disrupt an aircraft’s sensitive avionics, but rather to stop them playing havoc with the phone companies' receiving equipment on the ground that is trying to handle their calls.
In theory, any piece of electical equipment might interfere with a plane's GPS navigation equipment, VHF omnidirectional range/locators and instrument-landing system. Even gizmos that are not supposed to, such as audio players and video-game machines, may emit spurious radio-frequency energy. The worst of these "unintentional" transmitters are probably the cables and power supplies that passengers bring on board to charge their laptops and tablets from in-seat power sockets provided nowadays by numerous airlines.
Intentional transmitters, like mobile phones, two-way pagers and walkie-talkies, present a different sort of problem. With these, engineers worry about the so-called "near-far” effect. Even if below permitted levels, any spurious emissions they might produce would occur close to an aircraft’s avionics, compared with the weak signal from a ground-based radio beacon hundreds of kilometres away, or the whispers from a GPS satellite thousands of kilometres up in space. The concern here is that weak, distant signals might be drowned out as a navigation receiver captures a spurious signal that may also be weak but is significantly closer.
There are dozens of anecdotal reports of instruments on the flight-deck being affected by passengers using portable electronic devices, or PEDs as they are known in aviation circles. Unfortunately, duplicating these under controlled conditions has proved nigh-on impossible. Both Airbus and Boeing have bombarded their aircraft with electromagnetic radiation at frequencies and power levels used by mobile phones, only to come away empty handed.
In practice, then, the chance of unintentional transmitters doing any harm is infinitesimal. Indeed, that is just as well, because flight crews have had permission from the FAA to use portable computers called “electronic flight bags” in the cockpit since the early 1990s. Today, they carry iPads and other tablets as replacements for the bulky aircraft operating manuals, flight-crew manuals and navigation charts. These portable electronic devices are in much closer proximity to the aircraft’s avionics than anything passengers are likely to bring aboard, and remain switched on throughout the flight.
On top of that many passengers leave their phones, laptops, tablets and other PEDs turned on during take off and landing, even though they are not actually using them. They may not realise it, but closing the lid of a laptop merely puts it into standby or hibernation mode. Meanwhile, the device’s clock circuit continues to hum away and the Wi-Fi chip carries on hunting for a connection. The same goes for mobile phones and tablets, which are often put into standby mode rather than being switched off properly. The latest tablets and smart phones have an “aeroplane mode”, which at least switches off the device’s various radios.
And that is not to consider the scoff-laws who deliberately leave their phones on after the aircraft doors have shut, so they can send text messages and make calls surreptitiously. A three-month study done in 2003 (published subsequently in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ IEEE Spectrum) found that between one and four covert calls were made on each of the 37 domestic flights the researchers monitored with a hidden spectrum analyser.
A decade later, with practically everyone on board now possessing at least a mobile phone, there are probably dozens of such illicit calls being made on every flight. Yet there has still been no airline incident, let alone an actual accident, caused by a personal gadget being used legally or illegally during a flight. Despite 20 years of testing, the authorities have been unable to demonstrate that mobile phones and other electronic devices can interfere with an aircraft’s navigation and communications gear.
The truth is that the FCC never was concerned about the possibility of electronic interference when, in 1991, it banned the use of mobile phones on board aircraft. All it was really worried about was their impact on cellular networks on the ground. These work on the principle that, at any given moment, a mobile phone is within range of only one or two nearby masts. Each mast uses a set of channels different from those allocated to the masts closest to it, but the same as others further away. In this way, each channel can be used, and reused, to carry calls from multiple users.
Unfortunately, a mobile phone operating in an aircraft flying overhead might be within reach of any number of masts using the same channels. This could not only cause calls to be dropped, but would also confuse the network's software—reducing the mobile system’s overall capacity by blocking the reuse of channels.
There is also the added problem of an airborne phone moving too fast across the sky for the ground-based network to respond. The highest speed a mobile network is expected to cope with is that of an express train—not a passenger jet travelling at just below the speed of sound. A mobile used on an aircraft could traverse a tower too quickly to register with the network. If that happened, it would then bombard multiple towers along its route with repeated attempts to register, causing yet further network confusion.
So there are sound technical reasons why the FCC prohibits the use of mobile phones in the air. But why are laptops, tablets, e-readers, audio players and other PEDs banned during take off and landing? Like aviation authorities elsewhere, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says these cannot be used until the flight crew give permission and the aircraft has climbed to an altitude of at least 3,000 metres.
Why so arbitrary an altitude? The standard explanation is that, above 3,000 metres, there would be enough time and height for the flight crew to diagnose any problem potentially caused by an errant gizmo and make a correction. Close to the ground, during take off and landing, there would be a whole lot less.
That might sound reasonable, save for the fact that all those years of tests—and all those live gadgets in the cockpit—suggest the actual threat is approximately zero. Last March, following numerous demands for the ban to be lifted, the FAA unexpectedly told Nick Bilton of the New York Times that it was going to take a “fresh look” at the use of electronic gadgets on board commercial flights. Mr Bilton has been nagging the FAA to relax its regulations governing electronic devices that demonstrably cause no harm to an aircraft’s instruments. A bigger surprise is that he has now been joined by the FCC itself.
On December 6th the commission’s chairman, Julius Genachowski, wrote to the FAA’s acting administrator, Michael Huerta, urging the airline regulator “to enable greater use of tablets, e-readers and other portable electronic devices during [all phases of] flight.” The FCC agreed to work closely with both the FAA and industry to ensure a successful outcome.
It is not that the FAA has been dragging its feet out of bureaucratic bloody-mindedness. The problem is that the current guidelines require each airline to test every make and model of each gizmo it wants the FAA to approve for use on its flights—and then to do the same for every type of aircraft in its fleet. The airlines have baulked at such a monumental task because of the cost. The FAA is now looking for ways to bring airlines, aircraft manufacturers, electronics makers and other interested parties together to streamline the certification process at least for tablets, e-readers, game machines and a few other popular gadgets.
But do not expect such easing to extend to phones. One reason is that, with the enormous number of makes and models in existence, getting all mobiles approved for use on board aircraft would be prohibitively expensive. Another is that the ground-based interference problem has still to be resolved.
Perhaps it never will be; and maybe that will not matter. The FCC has allocated frequencies in the 450 megahertz and 800 megahertz bands for dedicated air-to-ground services that communicate with widely separated ground stations. Small cellular base-stations, known as pico-cells, are beginning to sprout in aircraft cabins, so passengers can make Skype calls to friends and family on the ground, and download content from the internet while airborne. The Wi-Fi connections to an airborne pico-cell are bounced up to a satellite before being beamed down to the ground using one of the special frequency bands allocated for the job.
The service is no bargain. Virgin Atlantic, which expects to have 20 aircraft offering internet access on its Atlantic routes by the end of this year, is charging $1.60 a minute for calls and 32 cents for text messages. Your correspondent is quietly relieved that the cost alone may deter many users—just as it did with those hard-wired, back-of-the-seat phones.
Reclining Seats
The woman sitting in front of me on this plane seems perfectly nice. She, like me, is traveling coach class from Washington to Los Angeles. She had a nice chat before takeoff with the man sitting next to her, in which she revealed she is an elementary school teacher, an extremely honorable profession. She, like me, has an aisle seat and has spent most of the flight watching TV. Nevertheless, I hate her.
Why? She’s a recliner.
For the five minutes after takeoff, every passenger on an airliner exists in a state of nature. Everyone is equally as uncomfortable as everyone else—well, at least everyone who doesn’t have the advantage of first class seating or the disadvantage of being over 6 feet tall. The passengers are blank slates, subjects of an experiment in morality which begins the moment the seat-belt light turns off.
Ding! Instantly the jerk in 11C reclines his seat all the way back. The guy in 12C, his book shoved into his face, reclines as well. 13C goes next. And soon the reclining has cascaded like rows of dominos to the back of the plane, where the poor bastards in the last row see their personal space reduced to about a cubic foot.
Or else there are those, like me, who refuse to be so rude as to inconvenience the passengers behind us. Here I sit, fuming, all the way from IAD to LAX, the deceptively nice-seeming schoolteacher’s seat back so close to my chin that to watch TV I must nearly cross my eyes. To type on this laptop while still fully opening the screen requires me to jam the laptop’s edge into my stomach.
Obviously, everyone on the plane would be better off if no one reclined; the minor gain in comfort when you tilt your seat back 5 degrees is certainly offset by the discomfort when the person in front of you does the same. But of course someone always will recline her seat, like the people in the first row, or the woman in front of me, whom I hate. (At least we’re not in the middle seat. People who recline middle seats are history’s greatest monsters.)
What options do we, the reclined-upon, have? We can purchase the Knee Defender, a product which snaps onto the tray table and prevents the passenger seated in front of us from reclining their seat. But that seems fraught with potential awkward complications. What if the person ahead of you protests? What if the flight attendant gets angry? (The website for Knee Defenders even acknowledges these difficulties with a whole page titled “Etiquette on Airplanes”—and offers printable “courtesy cards” to hand to the person in front of you.)
Lacking a Knee Defender, you can politely ask the person in front of you not to recline. But then the person in front of you is filled with resentment, because he feels you have forced him to give up his comfort in favor of yours. (Plus, the person in front of him may have reclined her seat.)
And it might not even work. Once, on a flight from Chicago to Honolulu, a sweet old Hawaiian lady and her husband sat in front of me, and both reclined their seats at the very beginning of the eight-hour trip. “Excuse me,” I said. “That’s very uncomfortable. Is there any chance you could put your seat back up, at least partway?”
“No!” she snapped. “We paid for these goddamn seats, and we’ll recline them if we want to.” So then everyone was angry: I was angry because I had no room, and she was angry because I passive-aggressively kicked her seat once every 15 minutes—often enough to be annoying, but not often enough to definitely be on purpose.
The problem isn’t with passengers, though the evidence demonstrates that many passengers are little better than sociopaths acting only for their own good. The problem is with the plane. In a closed system in which just one recliner out of 200 passengers can ruin it for dozens of people, it is too much to expect that everyone will act in the interest of the common good. People recline their seats because their seats recline. But why on earth do seats recline? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if seats simply didn’t?
Reclining seats have been with us as long as airlines began making human passengers a priority. In the 1920s and 1930s, people were an afterthought; planes were meant to carry airmail and cargo, and any humans who wanted to come along were welcome to pay an astronomical fare and sit in wicker chairs. “Reclining seats were not a universal treatment until the DC-3 era,” beginning in 1935, says John Hill, assistant director in charge of aviation at the SFO Museum. In the beginning, reclining seats—along with footrests and in-seat ashtrays—were designed as part of airlines’ commitment to deluxe accommodations, as captains of industry in three-piece suits sipped martinis on board, stretching their legs one way and tilting their seats the other.
The seats persisted, even as airlines moved to the tiered service model we know now, which required packing more and more customers into economy in order to keep RPK (revenue per kilometer) high. “They didn’t want to give up the idea of luxury altogether,” Hill notes. But these days, flying is simply an ordeal to be survived. In the era of cheap tickets and passengers crammed onto flights like sardines, reclining seats make no sense.
That’s why the woman in front of me does not really deserve my hatred. (Although would it kill her to straighten her seat back even a little when she goes to the bathroom?) Miss Manners agrees: The real offending party is the airline—in this case, Virgin America. They installed stylish purple lighting and sleek leatheresque seats in this A320 jet; they serve much better food than you might expect; even their in-flight safety video is endearingly written and animated. And the seats on Virgin (and every airline, really)are a marvel: “One of the most highly tuned man-made environments, period,” Hill notes, “optimized for space and weight and safety.” But despite all these nods toward modern, customer-friendly design, Virgin still, in opposition to all that is right and good, installs reclining seats on their planes. Just like everyone else.
Some European airlines have begun installing seats that are slightly tilted in their natural resting state, which, anecdotally at least, helps convince passengers they don’t need to tilt further. But that doesn’t go far enough. It’s time for an outright ban on reclining seats on airplanes. I’m not demanding that airlines rip out the old seats and install new ones; let’s just extend the requirement that seats remain upright during takeoff and landing through the entire flight. (Unlike the stupid electronic-devices rules, there is an actual good reason for this regulation: Upright seats are safer in a crash, and allow for easier evacuation.) To those who say such a rule is unenforceable, I respond: Kick. Kick. Kick.
Of course, this whole debate has a limited shelf life. Ten years from now, if financially strapped American carriers exist at all, they’ll surely have gone the way of budget European airline RyanAir, with its nonreclining seats—and horrifying 30-inch seat pitch. When I fly in one of those planes of the future, will I be comfortable? Absolutely not. But I won’t complain, because at least everyone else will be exactly as uncomfortable as me.
The Golden Tickets
There are frequent fliers, and then there are people like Steven Rothstein and Jacques Vroom.
Both men bought tickets that gave them unlimited first-class travel for life on American Airlines. It was almost like owning a fleet of private jets.
Passes in hand, Rothstein and Vroom flew for business. They flew for pleasure. They flew just because they liked being on planes. They bypassed long lines, booked backup itineraries in case the weather turned, and never worried about cancellation fees. Flight crews memorized their names and favorite meals.
Each had paid American more than $350,000 for an unlimited AAirpass and a companion ticket that allowed them to take someone along on their adventures. Both agree it was the best purchase they ever made, one that completely redefined their lives.
In the 2009 film "Up in the Air," the loyal American business traveler played by George Clooney was showered with attention after attaining 10 million frequent flier miles.
Rothstein and Vroom were not impressed. "I can't even remember when I cracked 10 million," said Vroom, 67, a big, amiable Texan, who at last count had logged nearly four times as many. Rothstein, 61, has notched more than 30 million miles.
But all the miles they and 64 other unlimited AAirpass holders racked up went far beyond what American had expected. As its finances began deteriorating a few years ago, the carrier took a hard look at the AAirpass program.
Heavy users, including Vroom and Rothstein, were costing it millions of dollars in revenue, the airline concluded.
The AAirpass system had rules. A special "revenue integrity unit" was assigned to find out whether any of these rules had been broken, and whether the passes that were now such a drag on profits could be revoked.
Rothstein, Vroom and other AAirpass holders had long been treated like royalty. Now they were targets of an investigation.
When American introduced the AAirpass in 1981, it saw a chance to raise millions of dollars for expansion at a time of record-high interest rates.
It was, and still is, offered in a variety of formats, including prepaid blocks of miles. But the marquee item was the lifetime unlimited AAirpass, which started at $250,000. Pass holders earned frequent flier miles on every trip and got lifetime memberships to the Admirals Club, American's VIP lounges. For an extra $150,000, they could buy a companion pass. Older fliers got discounts based on their age.
"We thought originally it would be something that firms would buy for top employees," said Bob Crandall, American's chairman and chief executive from 1985 to 1998. "It soon became apparent that the public was smarter than we were."
The unlimited passes were bought mostly by wealthy individuals, including baseball Hall-of-Famer Willie Mays, America's Cup skipper Dennis Conner and computer magnate Michael Dell.
Mike Joyce of Chicago bought his in 1994 after winning a $4.25-million settlement after a car accident.
In one 25-day span this year, Joyce flew round trip to London 16 times, flights that would retail for more than $125,000. He didn't pay a dime.
"I love Rome, I love Sydney, I love Athens," Joyce said by phone from the Admirals Club at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. "I love Vegas and Frisco."
Rothstein had loved flying since his years at Brown University in Rhode Island, where he would buy a $99 weekend pass on Mohawk Air and fly to Buffalo, N.Y., just for a sandwich.
He bought his AAirpass in 1987 for his work in investment banking. After he added a companion pass two years later, it "kind of took hold of me," said Rothstein, a heavyset man with a kind smile.
He was airborne almost every other day. If a friend mentioned a new exhibit at the Louvre, Rothstein thought nothing of jetting from his Chicago home to San Francisco to pick her up and then fly to Paris together.
In July 2004, for example, Rothstein flew 18 times, visiting Nova Scotia, New York, Miami, London, Los Angeles, Maine, Denver and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., some of them several times over. The complexity of such itineraries would stump most travelers; happily for AAirpass holders, American provided elite agents able to solve the toughest booking puzzles.
They could help AAirpass customers make multiple reservations in case they missed a flight, or nab the last seat on the only plane leaving during a snowstorm. Some say agents even procured extra elbow room by booking an empty seat using a phony name on companion passes.
"I'd book it as Extra Lowe," said Peter Lowe, a motivational speaker from West Palm Beach, Fla. "They told me how to do it."
Vroom, a former mail-order catalog consultant, used his AAirpass to attend all his son's college football games in Maine. He built up so many frequent flier miles that he'd give them away, often to AIDS sufferers so they could visit family. Crew members knew him by name.
"There was one flight attendant, Pierre, who knew exactly what I wanted," Vroom said. "He'd bring me three salmon appetizers, no dessert and a glass of champagne, right after takeoff. I didn't even have to ask."
Creative uses seemed limitless. When bond broker Willard May of Round Rock, Texas, was forced into retirement after a run-in with federal securities regulators in the early 1990s, he turned to his trusty AAirpass to generate income. Using his companion ticket, he began shuttling a Dallas couple back and forth to Europe for $2,000 a month.
"For years, that was all the flying I did," said May, 81. "It's how I got the bills paid."
In 1990, the airline raised the price of an unlimited AAirpass with companion to $600,000. In 1993, it was bumped to $1.01 million. In 1994, American stopped selling unlimited passes altogether.
Cable TV executive Leo Hindery Jr. bought a five-year AAirpass in 1991, with an option to upgrade to lifetime after three years. American later "asked me not to convert," he said. "They were gracious. They said the program had been discontinued and if I gave my pass back, they'd give me back my money."
Hindery declined, even rebuffing a personal appeal by American's Crandall (which the executive said he did not recall). To date, he has accumulated 11.5 million miles on a pass that cost him about $500,000, including an age discount and credit from his five-year pass.
"It was a lot of money at the time," Hindery said. "But once you get past that, you forget it."
In 2004, American offered the unlimited AAirpass one last time, in the Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog. At $3 million, plus a companion pass for $2 million more, none sold.
Raised just miles from American's Fort Worth headquarters, Bridget Cade started in its reservations department in 1990. In 2007, she was promoted to the elite revenue integrity team, charged with rooting out passengers, travel agents and others suspected of cheating the airline.
Her first big job was to investigate AAirpass users.
In September 2007, a pricing analyst reviewing international routes focused the airline's attention on how much the AAirpass program was costing, company emails show.
"We pay the taxes," a revenue management executive wrote in a subsequent email. "We award AAdvantage miles, and we lose the seat every time they fly."
Cade was assigned to find out whether any AAirpass holders were violating the rules, starting with those who flew the most.
She pulled years of flight records for Rothstein and Vroom and calculated that each was costing American more than $1 million a year.
Rothstein, she found, would sometimes pick out strangers at the airport and give them surprise first-class upgrades with his companion pass. Once he flew a woman he'd just met in New Delhi to Chicago, a lift American later valued at nearly $7,500.
There was nothing in the AAirpass terms prohibiting that. But Cade considered the habit striking in light of something else she found. Rothstein made 3,009 reservations in less than four years, almost always booking two seats, but canceled 2,523 of them.
To Cade, this was evidence that Rothstein reserved flights he never intended to take. It also allowed him to hold seats until the last minute and offer them to strangers, she said later in court depositions, preventing American from selling them. Cade decided it was fraud and grounds for revocation.
On Dec. 13, 2008, Rothstein and a companion checked in at Chicago O'Hare International Airport for a transatlantic flight. An American employee handed him a letter, which said his AAirpass had been terminated for "fraudulent behavior."
He apologized to his friend and filed suit in Illinois the following March.
Vroom's travel history told a different story, Cade found. Time and again, he booked trips with people he'd never flown with before, traveling round-trip to Japan or Europe without even staying overnight.
"We suspect he is selling his AAirpass companion tickets," Cade wrote in a February 2008 email. That, she later said, was against the rules.
She decided to try to catch him in the act.
Checking Vroom's bookings for first-timers, Cade came across Auyon Mukharji, a recent college graduate abroad on a music scholarship. He was scheduled to fly from London to Nashville with Vroom on July 30, 2008.
Working with airline security, Cade hatched a plan to confront Mukharji at London's Heathrow Airport, challenging him to admit he had paid Vroom.
"Mukharji appears to be naive, without financial wherewithal, and most probably very anxious to return 'home,'" American's head of global investigations wrote in an email.
At check-in, American agents detained Mukharji and escorted him to a private office. A former New York police detective working in American security offered a free ticket to Nashville if he'd confess to giving Vroom money.
But Mukharji insisted he hadn't, and American ultimately released him and gave him a coach ticket home. He could not be reached for comment.
Vroom landed at Heathrow that morning. As he boarded American Flight 50 from Dallas/Fort Worth to London the evening before, security officers took note of the clothes he was wearing, down to the Crocs on his feet.
Inside Heathrow, Vroom headed for the VIP lounge, where an American employee handed him a letter and said he could never again fly on the airline.
Vroom was shocked, unable to believe that his golden ticket was gone. He told the airline he had met Mukharji through a friend and, because both had attended Williams College in Massachusetts, simply offered him a ride to the U.S. as a friendly gesture.
With Mukharji insisting he had not paid for his ticket, Cade and her team began tracking down other Vroom flight companions.
In one instance, an American security agent called Sam Mulroy, a Dallas personal trainer who had been set to fly with Vroom to Europe, and told him his trip had been canceled. The agent promised a first-class ticket if he admitted to paying Vroom, according to company emails and correspondence.
When Mulroy refused, American froze his frequent flier account, offering to release it in exchange for details of payments, the documents show. Mulroy complained to American and the Transportation Department that he was being "extorted [in] an effort to punish another customer." He did not respond to requests for comment.
Weeks later, American sued Vroom in Texas state court. Vroom countersued.
In discovery, company lawyers tracked down a Dallas woman who had cut Vroom a $2,800 check to fly her son to London. An elderly couple gave him $6,000 for a trip to Paris. And bank records showed more than $100,000 in checks to Vroom written by owners of a local jewelry store who frequently flew with Vroom.
Vroom admits to getting money from some flying companions, but says it was usually for his business advice and not payments for flights. Other times people insisted on paying him, he said.
Cade wasn't done. In early 2009, the phone rang at the home of Willard May, the former bond broker who openly sold his ticket when he was forced out of work. His AAirpass, too, had been yanked.
"I never tried to deceive American," said May, noting that the Dallas Morning News in 1993 published an article quoting him and an American official about the practice.
Still, May didn't make a fuss when the call came. He'd grown tired of flying.
These days, Vroom busies himself substitute teaching and hosting lectures in a custom-made cinder-block home in a hip Dallas neighborhood.
His lawyers say the seat-selling accusation is moot because Vroom's contract didn't prohibit it; American didn't ban the practice until three years after Vroom bought his pass.
Rothstein also denies committing fraud, saying his contract did not ban making multiple reservations. "It sure seems like the airline was looking for an excuse to be rid of my client," said Gary Soter, Rothstein's attorney.
Last summer, an Illinois federal judge ruled that Rothstein had violated the contract by booking empty seats under phony names, including Bag Rothstein. American had years earlier acknowledged that "airport personnel have become complacent" with the practice, court records show, and Soter planned to appeal. But that case and Vroom's were thrown into limbo when American's parent company, AMR Corp., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November.
American spokeswoman Mary Sanderson said the canceled passes are "very isolated and represent an extremely small percentage of our overall AAirpass accounts."
"We actively analyze all of our ticketing and program policies for any improper activity," she said. "If we determine that any activity has violated our policies or is fraudulent in nature, we take the actions we deem appropriate."
Cade investigated at least two other AAirpass holders, court records show, and concluded that both also had committed fraud. American declined to say why their passes had not been revoked.
Rothstein moved to New York in 2009 and works for a trading firm. His office is crammed with family photos and reminders of exotic locales he visited flying American. Among his possessions is a 1998 letter on company stationery from Bob Crandall, with whom Rothstein once flew on the supersonic Concorde.
"I am delighted that you've enjoyed your AAirpass investment," the executive wrote. "You can count on us to keep the company solid, and to honor the deal, far into the future."
Albergo Diffuso, the Scattered Hotel
I have just spent three days at Pierluigi’s nonna’s house. And it wasn’t full of crocheted Italian doilies and plastic fly curtains. In fact, nonna’s house, in Cabras, Sardinia, is part of an ingenious hotel concept that’s taking hold across Italy.
It started with Giancarlo Dall’Ara, an academic sent to poke around the wreckage of a remote mountain village in Friuli, in the northeast of the mainland, that had been devastated by an earthquake. He saw a way to bring life back to those beautiful, historic areas laid waste by nature, frozen in time or simply deserted by their young people for the big city.
He came up with two words, albergo diffuso, and the concept of the “scattered hotel” was born. It works like this: crumbling houses in remote villages that still have a working community are tastefully renovated with local materials and let out as suites. Across the square, there might be a restaurant in a restored palazzo, a small library in what was once a stable or a spa in the old granary. The reception desk could be in a bar around the corner — and the locals use it, too.
It’s laid-back and respectful of the culture and environment. You get all the luxuries of a hotel while experiencing a real Italian community, mixing with the villagers.
There are now 80 official alberghi diffusi across Italy — visit alberghidiffusi.it for details. We’ve chosen the best five.
1 Munta e Cara
Apricale, Liguria
Describing itself as “a little bit home, a little bit hotel”, Munta e Cara, in the Nervia Valley, is a collection of 33 rooms and suites in a village tumbling down its own small mountain. Apricale (population 600) was the birthplace of Emanuela Pilone, and she inherited her grandmother’s home here. Along with her husband, Silvano, she set about its restoration, then bought up and transformed several more houses. Each room is unique: the Suite dei Gufi (Owls’ Suite) is an old tower converted into a two-bedroom hideaway; the Suite dello Stoppino (Wick Suite) is a fantastical bolt hole with rococo touches. And, proving that this is still a family concern, Emanuela and Silvano’s daughter, Valentina, cooks breakfast in the restaurant on Via Castello.
Why go there?
Italians consider Apricale one of the most beautiful villages in the country. It now has a lively community and is great for spring walkers; it’s also just 10 miles from the beaches of Ventimiglia and a 50-minute drive from the fleshpots of the French Riviera. The village is one of the tasty locations on the Strada dell’olio, a gastronomic route across the country that celebrates traditional produce — and its consumption. And there’s even a local observatory.
2 Borgo Sant’Angelo
Gualdo Tadino, Umbria
Borgo Sant’Angelo rose from the remains of a 13th-century monastery, the grandest building in Gualdo Tadino, a village then home to farmers, woodsmen and shepherds. The monks’ vegetable garden is still at the green heart of this albergo diffuso. There are only 10 rooms here, and simplicity is key, with wooden ceilings and limestone floors providing a cool backdrop for local textiles and craft pieces. Stay in Casa di Elena e Giulio, the charming first home of a newly married local couple in the 1940s, restored by their daughter Maria; or in the rather grander Casa Tironzelli, on the piazza. There’s a bistro and a “history room”, which tells the stories of once prominent families in this village of 15,000 people.
Why go there?
Gualdo Tadino was an ancient stop on the Flaminian Way, the Roman route over the Apennines. It’s close enough to the tourist hotspots (Gubbio, Assisi, Perugia, Spoleto), but provides you with a blissful escape from all those other Brits. You don’t have to leave Gualdo for your cultural fix, though: there are three great museums here, and during the Giochi de le Porte, in the autumn, they re-create the 15th-century vibe with a splendid festival that has the whole town rocking.
3 Sextantio
Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Abruzzo
This is the big hitter among alberghi diffusi, thanks to its founder, the Italian entrepreneur Daniele Kihlgren. He happened on the fortified medieval village while riding in the snow-covered mountains above L’Aquila, and its derelict beauty struck him like “an electric shock”. There were only 70 elderly residents left in a village that’s now thriving, with more than twice as many permanent residents. The renovation took five years and £4m, using only local terracotta, limestone and wood. The flaking plasterwork, rough stone walls and uneven floors were retained. Each of the 27 rooms is unique in its centuries-old splendour, but has remote-controlled lighting, underfloor heating and Philippe Starck bathrooms. A shop offers tastings of cheese, meat and wine, and the restaurant is a baronial affair under the arches of the stables; meals can be shared at a long table, beside a log fire.
Why go there?
The village of Santo Stefano di Sessanio is just a tiny part of the Gran Sasso National Park, home to 2,000 plant species, as well as chamois, wolves, wildcats, roe deer, boars and golden eagles. There’s also cycling, trekking, canoeing and skiing (alpine and cross-country).
4 Aquae Sinis
Cabras, Sardinia
A laid-back little town on Sardinia’s windy west coast, Cabras is home to Aquae Sinis, a cluster of elegant 17th-century residences restored, using the latest bio-construction techniques, by the Cagliari architect Pierluigi Mele and his wife, Rossana Pollino. The main buildings are within a three-minute walk of the buzzy market square, and have been in Mele’s family for decades. He has created a plush 16-room hotel in the house once owned by his nonna, with a fabulous rooftop bar offering views out to the lagoon. The suites are decorated in the local Campidanese style: stylish, boho-luxe interiors, with fiery red and cool blue walls, bamboo ceilings, hand-embroidered linens and french doors that open onto fragrant gardens and a sweet little pool. The spa is a great place to sneak off to while everyone else is snoozing at siesta time.
Why go there?
The Sinis peninsula is a protected marine area jealously guarded by the local community. It’s a world away from the crowded beaches of the costly Costa Smeralda, with rare bird species, pink flamingos, cormorants and turtles strutting their stuff. The archeological site of Tharros is a 10-minute drive away, right next to the beautiful 5th-century Paleo-Christian church of San Giovanni, moving in its simplicity.
5 Albergo Diffuso Scicli
Scicli, Sicily
This albergo diffuso is built on the principles of respect, sustainability, wellbeing and transparency, and it’s light years away from the modern hotel experience — in a really good way. You check in at the Millennium bar, restaurant and patisserie on Via Mormino Penna, the historic heart of bustling, blistering-white Scicli — none of the 20 rooms, managed by the dynamic Ezio Occhipinti, is more than 300yd from here, and all will put you up in serious baroque splendour. You can choose, among others, from Casa dei Saraceni, an authentically Sicilian little house for five; the stylishly stark, modern double rooms of Casa Milizie, in a wee palazzo; or Casa la Nova, a cool, split-level flat for three, with wonderful views. Breakfast, dinner and even pizza are available on a “diffuse” basis, shared with the locals at various spots around the centre — and all are made with ingredients eco-rated at zero food miles.
Why go there?
Scicli is the prettiest working town in southeast Sicily; it’s also a Unesco World Heritage Site, along with seven other towns in the surrounding Val di Noto — the perfect place to OD on the wedding-cake baroque architecture of the region. This is one of the filming locations for the BBC4 crime drama Inspector Montalbano: the fictional police station of Vigata is opposite the Millennium bar.
Norovirus
Passengers on Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas came home two days early this week after more than 600 people fell ill with suspected norovirus, also known as Norwalk disease. Norovirus loves a good cruise ship, with its tight quarters full of people from all over the world. There have been nearly 200 confirmed norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships in the past 20 years, plus many other suspected maritime norovirus outbreaks that couldn’t be definitively linked to the virus. But it isn’t an exclusively sea-going pathogen. It accounts for more foodborne illness in the United States than E. coli and salmonella combined. It lives on doorknobs, handrails, and even soft surfaces like couches and carpets. Norovirus is all around you. And it is sickening more people than ever. It is a wondrous pathogen that should fascinate, disgust, and frighten you in equal measure.
Most viruses are encased by a lipid envelope, which has a couple of vulnerabilities. First, it dries out when exposed to the elements, which is one of the reasons HIV, for example, dies almost immediately outside of a host. In addition, alcohol-based sanitizers easily penetrate a lipid envelope and destroy the virus. Norovirus has a protein shell with no such weaknesses. It can live in the open for weeks and possibly months, and it is resistant to hand sanitizer and soap, unless you scrub the heck out of it. When a cruise ship suffers an outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that virtually every inch of the vessel and everything on it be drenched in a 5-percent bleach solution. Since schools, concert halls, movie theaters, and private homes rarely undergo such a thorough scrub-down, it’s disturbing to imagine how often we encounter norovirus. (If you decide to bleach your house after your child falls ill, it’s better to go with a 10-percent solution, since bleach degrades rather quickly in a bucket.)
Members of a college football team infected members of the opposing team through contact with uniforms.
The situation is all the more worrying when you consider norovirus’ second neat trick—it takes an incredibly small number of viral particles to make you sick. Most pathogens, such as influenza, need to invade you with an army of thousands to cause symptoms. That’s one of the reasons we’re generally healthy in a world teeming with viruses. Mathematical modeling suggests that as few as 10 norovirus particles can make an adult sick. The average norovirus virion is around 35 nanometers across—one-third the size of most viruses—so the volume of an infectious dose is uniquely small. It can easily find its way into your mouth through your hands or a whiff of infected air.
You can contract norovirus in the most subtle and disgusting ways imaginable. In 1999, after one gentleman vomited in a concert hall and nearby bathroom in Wales, more than 300 people inhaled enough airborne norovirus to become ill. Many of the victims were school children who came on a field trip the following day. In another case, several members of a college football team from North Carolina came down with norovirus and managed to infect members of the opposing team from Florida through contact with their uniforms, which were contaminated with particles of feces and vomit.
Norovirus is also eerily persistent. People with colds, for example, are typically not contagious beyond a week after symptoms commence. By contrast, laboratory experiments on human volunteers suggest that people infected with norovirus continue to shed virions for up to three weeks, long after the vomiting and diarrhea have passed.
Why would researchers use human volunteers to study such a horrible bug? Researchers have thus far been unable to culture norovirus in a dish. Last year, microbiologist Christiane Wobus and her colleagues at the University of Michigan were able to grow norovirus in immunocompromised mice, and some progress has been made infecting pigs whose guts had been rid of other microbes, but those are baby steps toward understanding the virus. Until we can grow this stuff in a laboratory, there’s little hope of developing a vaccine or an effective treatment. (Wobus calls in vitro culturing “the holy grail” of norovirus research.) Most of what we currently know comes from deliberately infecting volunteers who submit themselves to three days of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea for the good of science and around a thousand bucks.
Incidence of norovirus has increased in the past couple of decades, and researchers have proposed an intriguing explanation: It may be learning to infect more people.
Your blood type—A, B, AB, or O—is defined by certain sugars on your blood cells. Similarly, people differ in the types of sugars on the cells that line the intestine. Certain strains of norovirus bind specifically to certain sugars—but the strains that have been traveling the world recently bind to a wider range of sugars. That seems to mean the strains can sicken a wider range of victims.
Humans aren’t the only hosts for norovirus. When filter-feeding shellfish ingest norovirus particles, the virus can bind to sugars in their systems and accumulate without making them sick. A recent study found norovirus contamination in 9 percent of oysters on the French market. In some cases, epidemiologists have traced human norovirus outbreaks to specific storms, as heavy rainfall caused sewage overflow and contamination of the oysters’ water supply.
How freaked out should you be? Moderately. Norovirus can kill, but usually indirectly; most deaths are among children or the elderly who become dehydrated, particularly in the developing world. The average adult will experience three days of miserable gastrointestinal distress. If it happens to you, avoid concert halls, football games, and any other social interaction, bleach everything you touch—and drink constantly.
Knee Defender
THERE is an element of game theory to reclining an aeroplane seat. As long as there is equilibrium—either everyone in your column of seats is upright or everyone is reclined—no-one is disadvantaged. But the person who reclines when the passenger behind does not, wins a benefit directly from his opponent (and, for anyone who has spent a flight battling with the person in front of him, opponent is the correct word).
Equilibrium, though, breaks down in the face of a disruptive technology. Enter the Knee Defender. The Daily Telegraph has an article about a small contraption—little bigger than a key—that, it is claimed, can prevent the passenger in front reclining his chair. The two plastic clips are attached the top of the arms of your tray table and are adjustable, so that you can decide how may inches you are prepared to cede to the person in front. They cost $21.95 (£13) and were invented by Ira Goldman, a 6’ 4” Washingtonian, who was fed up with having his knees squished.
The gadget comes with a euphemistically entitled “courtesy card” that…
…can be given to the passenger in front of you to tell them you're using the clips. The note card provides an extensive explanation including why you are using the Knee Defender, how much (in inches) you are willing to allow the seat to be reclined and to notify you if they need to recline their seat at any point during the flight. The card ends with a call to report any complaints of inconvenience directly to the airline in a bid to convince them to “provide enough space between rows so that people can recline their seats without banging into other passengers.
No-one in their right mind would use this card. Just put yourself in the place of the recipient. It would be impossible to receive a courtesy card without viewing it as an outright act of aggression. And air rage is enough of a problem. You would certainly expect a steward to intervene on your behalf and confiscate the clips.
So they can only ever be used surreptitiously. And in game theory terms, the logical conclusion would be that, in time, everyone would fly equipped with Knee Defenders, and the advantage nullified. No-one wins in the long run, except Mr Goldman. Given that airlines are unlikely to increase the pitch of their seats any time soon, better that all planes come with fixed, non-reclining chairs in the first place.
Aircraft Cabin Doesn't Spread Disease
On most modern commercial jets, fresh air is continuously pulled into the cabin from outside the aircraft. Some of the air drawn into the engine compressors, which increase the pressure of the air that feeds the jet engines, is diverted to the cabin air conditioner.
The cooled air reaches you through overhead ducts that run the length of the plane. It leaves through grills along the sidewalls, near the floor. Because the air flows from the top of the plane to the bottom—not from front to back—each passenger shares the air with a few neighbors. That’s why the World Health Organization defines “close contact” on an aircraft as being within two rows of an infected person.
When the air is pulled into the grills in the floor, pilot Patrick Smith writes in Cockpit Confidential, about half is expelled from the plane. The rest is filtered and recycled with fresh air from the compressors. High efficiency particulate air filters, installed on every commercial airliner made since the late 1980s, remove up to 99.97% of all microbes, and “there’s a total changeover of air every two or three minutes,” Smith writes. According to the WHO, “under normal conditions cabin air is cleaner than the air in most buildings.”
The highest risk of catching something nasty from your fellow travelers comes when you’re sitting on the ground. The engines aren’t running, so fresh air isn’t being pulled in. That’s why WHO recommends airlines ensure “adequate cabin ventilation” during ground delays of 30 minutes or more.
That’s not to say airplanes can’t act as carriers of disease, and when they do, the consequences can be amplified.
“Air travel,” according to a report on disease mitigation in airports and aircraft, “highlights the unique factors resulting from the interaction of large numbers of individuals from geographically diverse regions, with differing immunity and endemic diseases.” Smith points to cases of “airport malaria,” in which people in Europe and North America have caught the disease from mosquitoes carried far from their tropical habitats.
Why Air Passengers Get Treated Badly
Good morning. This is your captain. We'll be cruising today at an altitude of 30,000 feet, and we expect to arrive at our destination on time. Then we'll spend 45 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open up, because apparently, the airport folks had no idea we were coming.
Our flight crew will be coming through the cabin shortly to offer you a choice of lukewarm beverages along with a tiny chemical-infused snack that wouldn't sustain a gerbil through a cold night. You're welcome to take a nap, if you can sleep through me coming on the intercom to inform you of things you couldn't care less about.
And if there's anything we can do to make your flight more pleasant, please let us know so we can figure out if there's a way to charge you for it.
But I want to make a special announcement today. My last flight got diverted because a couple of knuckleheads started screaming and throwing things at each other. Turns out one of them wanted to recline a seat and the other took offense. I really hate detours. So let me tell you how it's going to be.
You all bought a ticket for a seat that reclines, which means if you want to recline, you're entitled to do it. I'm not saying you should. Just because you're free to spend the entire flight sobbing to your seatmates about your breakup or berating them with your opinion of Barack Obama doesn't mean it's a considerate thing to do. Just because you are allowed to scratch and belch en route doesn't mean your mother would approve.
But if we wanted to prevent our passengers from reclining, we would install seats that don't recline. So if the person in front of you leans back, you have several options. You can politely ask if he or she would mind not reclining, or at least not reclining quite so far. You can buy him or her a drink as an incentive.
You can pull out a twenty-dollar bill and pay an old-fashioned cash bribe. Heck, I don't care if you offer sexual favors, as long as they don't happen on board. If nothing else works, you can weep and beg.
What you can't do is use a "Knee Defender" to block the seat from reclining. You can't push against the seat until the other person returns the seat to its upright position. You can't scream and swear and throw things. If you do, we'll land at the nearest airport and let the cops put you in a seat you'll find even less comfy.
If our policy offends you, let me make some suggestions. Next time, buy a seat that has extra legroom. Or upgrade to first class. Or patronize one of the airlines whose seats don't budge.
Or just forget flying. I hear Amtrak cars have more room than airline cabins. You could get in your car and drive. You could stay home.
But if being stuck with a reclining seat in your face bothers you so much, let me bring out the world's smallest violin to play a microscopic sad song. Your ancestors probably came across the ocean in steerage, crammed into dim spaces with smelly strangers for weeks at a time, fighting off rats and scurvy.
Or they may have come in slave ships against their will, where they had a truly excellent chance of dying. They may have crossed the continent in a bone-jarring covered wagon eating buffalo jerky three meals a day.
And you? You have to endure modestly cramped quarters for a few hours to be transported vast distances they would have needed weeks or months to cover. Boo friggin' hoo.
Face it, people: You've made it clear you want a low price more than you want comfort, so this airline has provided it, often losing money in the process. That's why we have to charge for bags and meals that used to cost you nothing. Factor in inflation, and you pay a whole lot less than passengers did back in 1979.
If you were willing to pony up for more space, my employer would be happy to install a La-Z-Boy for every traveler. But you're cheap. You squeeze every nickel until Thomas Jefferson screams. And then you wonder why we pack you in so tight.
So be grateful for the bargain fare. And notice: It's not spelled F-A-I-R.
Talking About Your Trip
If you’ve even traveled a little bit, you know this is true: People who can’t relate to your trip hiking the Inca Trail, or wine tasting in Tuscany, or Zorbing in New Zealand, don’t really want to hear about it. Sure, they may listen politely for a minute, but apart from asking questions, there isn’t really much they can say in reply.
This is the basic premise at the heart of a new paper in Psychological Science: the idea that although extraordinary life experiences are exhilarating at the time, they may carry a social cost. Because when we normally chat with people, the authors contend, our conversations center on the things we have in common — movies we’ve seen, books we’ve read, people we know, places we’ve been. But uncommon experiences makes us at once “alien and enviable,” the authors write, which can leave us feeling left out. “At worst, people may be envious and resentful of those who have had an extraordinary experience ,and at best, they may find themselves with little to talk about,” write the authors, led by Harvard University social psychologist Gus Cooney.
In one experiment, they recruited 68 participants and divided them into groups of four. Each subject was sent to a cubicle, where he or she watched a short video alone. One person per group watched an amusing clip of a talented street magician performing tricks for a crowd, while the other three watched a low-budget animation. But the key is that researchers told them whether they were getting the best (magician!) or worst (crappy cartoon) video, and they also told participants what their fellow lab rats got to watch.
After watching the short video, the participants rated how happy they felt in that moment. Then the group reassembled and chatted for five minutes about whatever the members wanted. Finally, they went back to their cubicles, where they answered two more questions: how happy they felt, and how included they’d felt in the conversation with their peers.
Before the chat, those who’d watched what they understood to be the superior video reported feeling happier than those who’d been told they’d gotten stuck with the relatively mundane experience. But after chatting with their fellow study participants, the people who’d watched the better video felt worse than those who’d watched the cartoon; those who’d had what they were told was the superior experience also felt more excluded in the conversation than those who’d been told they were in the same, comparatively subpar boat.
You know the real-life scenario the study authors are reaching for here: Conversation flows easier when you find common ground. Envy and feelings of inferiority, on the other hand, don’t exactly lead to an easy back-and-forth.
But people don’t seem to realize that an extraordinary experience can leave them feeling isolated, this paper contends. Two follow-up experiments asked a different set of participants to imagine the first scenario and guess how the lucky one watching the better video would feel, before and after chatting with his unlucky peers. Most of the people presumed that the person who got the better experience out of the deal would feel happier, and that the conversation wouldn’t change that.
Contrast this finding with another recent tidbit of research, also from Harvard researchers and also recently published in Psychological Science, which explores the unexpected delight that comes from reminiscing about perfectly ordinary experiences. Revisiting the everyday things that didn’t seem very special at the time — the Spotify playlist you built for the marathon you ran last year, the inside joke you shared with a co-worker — make us happier than we predict.
So jump out of planes and travel the world and hobnob with celebrities if you like. Just don’t do these things expecting that they will result in great conversations with your friends when you get home. As Cooney phrased the study’s takeaway message in the press release, “If an experience turns you into someone who has nothing in common with others, then no matter how good it was, it won’t make you happy in the long run.”
Food On Oasis of the Seas
As I left the restaurant, I reflexively patted my pants pockets, checking for my car keys, and tried to recall where I’d parked. Then I remembered: my car was more than a thousand miles away, at an airport lot in Newark, and I was on a cruise ship travelling to Florida from the Bahamas. The ship, Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, is so massive that its motion is usually imperceptible to anyone who isn’t looking overboard. Above me on either side blocks of staterooms with inboard-facing balconies rose like apartment buildings, and the walkway I was standing on was flanked by trees and shrubs. Stars were visible overhead, but I couldn’t see water in any direction.
Oasis is the second-largest cruise ship in the world; its sister ship, Allure of the Seas, was built from identical drawings but came out a couple of inches longer. Each ship can carry more than six thousand passengers and twenty-one hundred crew members, and each has approximately the same displacement as the United States Navy’s largest aircraft carriers. Before we sailed, from Fort Lauderdale, I assumed that most of what I’d be eating onboard would have been mass-produced onshore, as is the case with airplane meals, and that food preparation at sea would be heavily microwave-dependent. In the early nineteen-nineties, my wife and I took our two kids on a four-night Caribbean cruise—a trip that, in family lore, is not counted among our spring-break triumphs. We were assigned to a dining table with another family of four, and my main memory of our meals is of the adults making awkward conversation while the children chewed sullenly. The food was mostly stuff that not even a boarding school could get away with now: a sad-looking salad with a single cherry tomato in the center, a fish fillet as rigid as tree bark. Even so, eating and drinking were the main activities onboard. The ship’s amenities included a snack bar at which soft-serve ice cream was available around the clock, and I did not doubt the cruise-industry maxim that the average passenger gains a pound a day.
Since then, America’s global reputation for gluttony has, if anything, increased. At the same time, though, we have become more adventurous and, in many ways, more demanding about what we gorge on. Chefs are the stars of television shows, and the widespread infatuation with locally produced ingredients has been very good for people who grow kale. Dining opportunities on my Oasis cruise reflected contemporary trends. The ship had twenty-three dining venues, among them a sushi-and-ishiyaki restaurant, an Italian trattoria, a restaurant featuring six-course seasonal menus developed by Michael Schwartz, and a cupcake shop. (At most of these, the food was included in the price of passage; a few added a surcharge.) The ship also had twenty galleys, including a butcher shop that supplied all the dining venues, a bakery that never closed, and a prep kitchen near the storage rooms in which workers did nothing but wash, trim, peel, and slice vegetables. Virtually everything I ate had been prepared on the ship, using fresh, unprocessed ingredients. The ship’s cooks even made items that reasonably fancy restaurants buy frozen, such as vegetable and meat stocks, which they reduced in huge tilting receptacles called Bratt pans, and bath-towel-size sheets of dough for apple strudel.
Many of the dishes I tried were ambitious. Chops Grille, the ship’s steak restaurant, featured a seasoned-bacon appetizer—thinner but more irresistibly molten than the similar item at Peter Luger. The tapas sampler at Vintages, a wine bar, included butter-soft piquillo peppers stuffed with cream cheese and feta, and sautéed balsamic-marinated baby onions. The onions had a brownish glaze that made them look like scaled-down Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and they fell apart when I cut them with my fork. Like everyone else, I’d been assigned a table and a dinnertime in the ship’s main dining room, called Opus—which has three levels and accommodates more than twenty-three hundred passengers during each of two evening seatings—but I was free to ignore my reservation. Electronic displays near the ship’s passenger elevators showed how much space was available in each of the dining venues, generated by infrared sensors that monitored the body heat radiated by the people currently eating.
Oasis, like other very large cruise ships, feels less like a nautical object than like a shopping-mall food court with swimming pools on the roof. Yet something about being at sea must weaken the inhibitions that normally prevent people from topping off a huge restaurant meal by sprawling on their bed and calling room service. A person who, on land, can walk past an auction of Thomas Kinkade prints without regret may be helplessly drawn to one in the Boleros Lounge, on Deck 5, across from Starbuck’s. Maybe oceans exert a powerful transformative force that affects you even when you can’t see or feel or smell the water, and makes you hungry.
The executive chef on my cruise was Lorenzo Dearie. He has a shaved head, penetrating green-gray eyes, and the build and disposition of a rugby player. He was born in northeast England in 1972, began cooking in a pub when he was fifteen, and held a succession of restaurant and hotel jobs in London, Scotland, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Canada, and New Zealand, where he has lived since the late nineteen-nineties. He went to work at Royal Caribbean seven years ago. “To have three hundred and fifty people working for you is a lot of fun,” he told me. We met in the Café Promenade, on Deck 5, and to get from there to the ship’s service area we first had to cross a pedestrian plaza, which was crowded with tortoise-paced, plus-sized people carrying cocktails and beers. “I can’t walk slow,” he said, when we became stalled, momentarily, behind a wandering bride and her attendants. (Oasis averages two or three weddings per cruise.) Dearie moved through the crowd awkwardly, like a child learning to ice skate. “This is killing me,” he said. “I’ve got twenty outlets to check, and I check them three, four times a day. I usually run.”
We moved faster once we’d reached I-95, a two-lane employees-only corridor that runs most of the length of the ship, on Deck 2. From there we climbed a service stairway and crossed a corridor to the ship’s largest galley, which serves Opus. Everything in it was sized for giants: ovens, soup kettles, an automated pot washer large enough to wash a washing machine. Dearie’s staff was preparing for the first dinner seating. A long stainless-steel serving counter had been divided into sections for the evening’s ten entrées, each of which was marked by a labelled photograph: pork, grilled salmon, beef sliders, lobster. (Oasis passengers eat a metric ton of lobster during a typical seven-day cruise.) The Opus kitchen has one executive chef, five executive sous-chefs, eleven sous-chefs, fifty-five chefs de partie, four demi-chefs de partie, and a hundred and sixty-eight commis, or range chefs. Members of various ranks are distinguishable by their uniforms, including neckerchiefs in different colors.
“The desserts are over there,” Dearie said. “You see the tiramisu? Opus will go through at least forty trays tonight, on the three decks.” For the past few weeks, he said, one of the ship’s restaurants had been serving a new item, devised by a colleague: cheesecake lollipops, baked fresh each day. Later, in the ship’s pastry galley, I watched a cook popping new ones from a molded silicone baking sheet and arranging them on a tray. They were shaped like miniature pies, and had been made from scratch, including their graham-cracker crusts. Dearie said, “When we first rolled them out, we had sixteen or seventeen hundred kids on board, and we were going through fifteen or sixteen hundred of just this one item every single day.”
One of the few exceptions to Royal Caribbean’s made-fresh policy is French fries. “If we made them ourselves, we’d need four or five guys doing nothing but pushing potatoes through a cutter all day,” Dearie said. Handmade fries, furthermore, droop quickly; the frozen fries the ship uses, like the ones served in many fast-food restaurants, have a coating that keeps them crisp and hot for longer. (The coating on Oasis fries is made from rice flour and modified starch.) We watched a cook tending a large deep fryer. Piled on a counter to his left were a dozen bags the size of pillows. “That’s about five minutes’ worth,” Dearie said.
Guests in Opus consume roughly six hundred pounds of fries in an evening, Dearie said, and fry consumption rises with the number of Americans on board and the number of children—as does pizza consumption. The night before, in the ship’s “New York-style” pizza restaurant, demand had been so high that Dearie had to redeploy cooks from elsewhere on the ship. Passengers on very short cruises eat significantly more of everything, he said, because they feel time pressure to experience as much as they can, and the ship has to be provisioned accordingly. All Royal Caribbean’s purchasing is handled by the company’s logistics office, in Weston, Florida, which makes adjustments based on cruise routes, passenger origins, and a variety of demographic factors. Nearly all the food on Royal Caribbean cruises, including items imported from other countries, is purchased from American distributors. Even ships based in foreign countries are provisioned from the United States, with air-cargo containers flown to their home ports.
Cruises that originate in Europe or Asia have different gastronomic profiles from ones that operate out of Fort Lauderdale, Dearie said. “The Spanish eat a lot more fruit, a lot more bread, a lot more cheeses,” he explained. “Brits like heavy foods, cold-weather foods.” Fruit consumption rises with air temperature. New Yorkers and people travelling without children are more likely to patronize the restaurants that require a surcharge. Australians drink the most. Americans like chewy cookies, but Europeans want crunchy, dunkable ones. Chinese travellers snack little, prefer set dining times, and usually want to sit with the other members of their tour group. They also drink less than people from most other countries, but shop and gamble more, and are highly unlikely to go dancing after dinner. On Asian cruises with large numbers of Chinese passengers, at least one of the ship’s night clubs will typically be converted into a high-stakes gaming room, to handle overflow from the casino.
The first true cruise is sometimes said to have been the lengthy international tour that Mark Twain describes in “The Innocents Abroad.” That trip began and ended at a wharf in Manhattan in 1867, and included stops in Gibraltar, Marseilles, Genoa, Constantinople, Odessa, Beirut, Alexandria, Cádiz, and Bermuda, as well as side trips by train, donkey, and horse. Twain’s vessel, a refitted Civil War side-wheeler called the Quaker City, took more than five months to circle back to New York. Onboard activities included smoking, card-playing, suffering from seasickness, and playing “horse billiards,” a shuffleboard-like deck game. Seagoing mechanical-refrigeration technology was still at least fifteen years off, although the relatively short duration of the Atlantic crossing would have made it possible for the Quaker City’s passengers to eat fresh meat and produce all the way to Europe. Even so, Twain scarcely mentions food, at sea or on land—although he does write that, at one point, he complained to the captain about the steadily declining quality of the ship’s coffee, only to be told that what he’d been drinking was tea.
During the summer of 1949, my mother, between her junior and senior years at Vassar, spent seven weeks touring Europe with a group that consisted mainly of other college students. They travelled there and back on the Queen Mary, six days each way. In her diary, she described the ship as “a combination of the Rockefeller Center and the Biltmore,” and on the fourth day out of New York she wrote, “I’ve never known such a life of ease.” It was the last golden age of the ocean liner, between the end of the Second World War and the emergence of the jet set. She and her friends played bridge and charades, danced the hokey pokey to Ken Grieff’s Band, and sang on deck with members of a Scottish football team. She was initially more impressed with the food service than with the food, which she described on her second day at sea as “pretty good” but “not extraordinary.” By the end of the week, she’d come around. She wrote that dinner the night before they arrived in England was “simply wonderful”: “I had juice, soup, fish, roast beef and turkey!” And because she saved the menu I know what she passed over: creamed mushrooms on toast, timbale of ham with sauce madère, and farm sausage and tomato (which was grilled to order and took an extra ten minutes). For dessert there was “pouding sans souci,” raspberry coupe, fresh fruit, and three different ices: pineapple, vanilla, and Neapolitan. During the voyage home, she and her friends explored first class—“fabulous shops, lounges, wide staircases, people in evening dress”—and saw Jack Benny and Hedy Lamarr.
The democratization of long-distance travel in recent decades has had varying impacts on dining in transit. The food in coach class on airplanes has grown steadily worse, at least partly because the average traveller tends to book flights based solely on the cost of the ticket. The food on cruise ships, though, has improved, and is now so important to most passengers that new ships are often designed around eating opportunities. Big ships also have economic advantages over airlines: they have large populations of captive diners, and the cruise lines do their purchasing and preparation in such enormous quantities that their costs per meal are extremely low, even for fancy items. If you book an interior cabin, stay away from the casino, and stick with the complimentary meals, a cruise can be a very inexpensive vacation. And even if you treat yourself to meals with surcharges you’re unlikely to run up the sort of tab you easily could on land.
One evening on Oasis, I joined a dozen other passengers at the ship’s Chef’s Table, in a private dining room on Deck 12. (The surcharge was seventy-five dollars.) All my fellow-diners were Royal Caribbean veterans; one couple had taken half a dozen cruises on Oasis or Allure alone, and had eaten a meal at the Chef’s Table on every cruise. We were served champagne in the ship’s library, then taken upstairs for a three-hour, five-course meal accompanied by five matched wines. Each new offering was introduced by either our chef for the evening (Nielish Kanvinde, from India) or our sommelier (Mladen Mitic, from Romania). Both spoke rapidly and with intense enthusiasm. Our first course was constructed from lobster medallions, cauliflower panna cotta, paddlefish caviar, micro-lettuce leaves, shaved beetroot, and Parmesan tuiles, all floating or semi-submerged in a cucumber-basil Martini and served in a Martini glass. (Kanvinde made a modified version, with boneless chicken breast, for a guest from Arkansas who had a shellfish allergy.) That course was followed by three soups served in small teacups, and Kanvinde explained that a key to preparing one of them—a “lemon-scented pea soup with Alaskan crab-leg meat”—was to grate just the very outermost layer of the lemon peel for the zest that provided the first note in its aroma.
When the meal was over, Kanvinde gave each of us an illustrated cookbook, containing recipes from nine of Royal Caribbean’s onboard restaurants. “Back at home you can try my secrets and you can all become good chefs,” he said. I gave my copy to my wife, who has written cookbooks of her own. A couple of nights later, for dinner, she made a dish from the ship’s main dining room: pan-fried cauliflower cakes topped by asparagus spears, julienned tomatoes, and sliced red bell peppers—the last three ingredients sautéed in garlic confit—and garnished with parsley sprigs and blade-thin fried onion rings. Potato pancakes are one of my favorite things, ever, but Royal Caribbean’s cauliflower cakes are better. They’re crisp and light, and not even slightly mealy, and if I’d tasted them blind I would have used up most of my twenty guesses before hitting on their main ingredient.
One of the challenges in marketing cruises is that more than a few people associate them with vomiting and diarrhea. There have been several highly publicized outbreaks, including two early this year on Royal Caribbean ships. In January, more than six hundred people on Explorer of the Seas got sick, and the cruise had to be shortened by two days. The culprit is almost always Norwalk virus, also known as norovirus. It’s responsible for at least half of gastroenteritis outbreaks worldwide, and it’s usually spread through direct or indirect contact with infected people, often through traces of their feces. Ships are vulnerable because they place large numbers of people in close contact for extended periods. The same is true of other institutions where norovirus outbreaks are common—casinos, hotels, dormitories, military barracks, prisons, schools, restaurants, nursing homes, and hospitals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that roughly twenty million Americans suffer a norovirus infection each year; the vast majority recover in three days or less, but the virus is occasionally lethal. According to the C.D.C., noroviruses are associated with cruise ships partly because cruise ships are monitored by health authorities, so that outbreaks on board are more likely to be identified and reported. Cruises also typically last long enough for the causal chain to be obvious; people who pick up noroviruses in airplane lavatories seldom associate the resulting illness with their flight.
In my stateroom, I watched two informational videos on the ship’s closed-circuit TV channel, one about norovirus and one about cleaning hands—which the C.D.C. describes as a “ ‘do-it-yourself’ vaccine” for norovirus and other ailments. I also saw hand-washing notices throughout the ship, including on the walls along I-95 and on a video monitor above the ship’s ice rink. (Royal Caribbean employs more than two hundred professional skaters.) At all hours, I saw crew members wiping down handrails and other touchable surfaces, and there were Purell dispensers everywhere. Most alcohol-based hand cleansers are only minimally effective against norovirus, but a few years ago the company that makes Purell introduced an extra-powerful version, called VF481, especially for cruise ships, casinos, hospitals, and other high-risk environments.
Jim Mann, who is a chemist and the executive director of the Handwashing for Life Institute, an educational organization, told me, “Cruise liners do absolutely amazing things to get clean hands and eliminate the bugs. A cruise ship is the one place where, if you’re working in a galley and you’re caught a second time not washing your hands, they put you off the ship.” Even when employees are rigorous, one or two passengers who are sick when they board can infect others. Jaret Ames, who is the chief of the C.D.C.’s Vessel Sanitation Program, told me in an e-mail, “Though it seems that media coverage of cruise-ships outbreaks has increased recently, norovirus activity has remained consistent with a seasonal pattern of increased activity during the winter months.” On most ships, hygiene protocols are quickly ramped up if onboard infirmaries notice more than the odd gastrointestinal complaint.
Keith Brown, like other Oasis employees, wears a nametag that identifies his country of origin, in his case Trinidad and Tobago. When he was in high school, he told me, he wanted to be a biochemist, and he took courses in biology, chemistry, and physics. But he couldn’t afford university tuition, so, to earn some money in a hurry, he signed on as a stockkeeper on a cruise ship. “Then I fell in love with the job, and here I am, twenty years later,” he said. His current title is inventory manager. He is responsible for keeping Oasis supplied with food and beverages, and also with linens, towels, toiletries, and everything else required for its “hotel-related” functions. I met him one afternoon, and he gave me a tour.
Oasis has twenty-one temperature-controlled storage rooms, each dedicated to a different food or beverage type. Poultry, seafood, and meat are stored in three separate freezer rooms, to reduce the possibility of cross-contamination; fish for sushi is kept apart from other fish; coffee for the ship’s Starbuck’s shop is stacked separately from other coffee, in compliance with Royal Caribbean’s contract with Starbuck’s. Some of the storage rooms are almost large enough to get lost in; signs on their doors warn employees to visit them in pairs and to make sure, before sealing them up again, that no one has been left inside. Brown led me into a vast produce room and lifted a head of broccoli from its box. “This is a flower, so you will have changes taking place,” he said. “It will come in extremely green—looking nice, like this—but it won’t stay that way.” Oasis was scheduled, after our return to Florida, to make a very long trip, a fourteen-day ocean crossing to Barcelona, and then to make a series of five-day cruises in Europe. (After that, it was scheduled to go to Rotterdam for extended routine maintenance, during which all the carpeting and other soft surfaces would be replaced, several galleys and restaurants would be reconfigured, and the current Broadway show, “Hairspray,” would be swapped out for a new one, “Cats.”) For the Atlantic crossing, Brown told me, he would be taking on six thousand pounds of broccoli, and hoping that enough of it would last all the way to Spain. “Broccoli’s a vital part of the operation,” he said. “It’s a center-of-the-plate item on every dish in the dining room.” He stocks a small frozen supply, as a backup, he said, but his goal is never to use it. Other delicate produce types are spinach, mushrooms, bananas, and specialty items like micro-arugula; the hardiest are pineapples, watermelons, eggplants, and peppers. Every day, Brown and the ship’s executive chef visit all the food-storage rooms. If they notice, say, that many of the bananas have unexpectedly advanced from Stage 3 to Stage 5, the chef will add banana bread, banana pudding, or banana soup to various menus.
Most of the storage rooms we visited were nearly empty, because our cruise was almost over, but the ones containing beer, wine, and liquor were full. Brown said that he had taken on all the beverages for the Atlantic crossing when he loaded the ship for our trip, so that he and his crew would have more time to deal with the other provisions when we returned. Beer, white wine, and soft drinks are kept in a chilled storage room; red wine and liquor are housed separately, at room temperature. “Our quickest-moving beer is Corona,” he said. “Right now, we have seventeen thousand bottles. Bud Light, twelve thousand bottles. Crystal Geyser bottled water, seventeen thousand bottles. Evian litre bottles, twenty-five thousand.” Inside the liquor room, boxes were piled high, and the walkways between the stacks were narrow. “This is our bread and butter, so we tend to stock up,” he said. Cruises are effectively subsidized by drinkers and gamblers. Royal Caribbean sells a variety of beverage packages; the most comprehensive one, called Ultimate, costs sixty-five dollars a day and entitles you to unlimited quantities of just about any liquid, from coffee and bottled water to name-brand spirits. There’s also a soft-drink-only package, which comes with an insulated cup. The cup has a radio-frequency identification chip in its base, which activates the ship’s Freestyle dispensing machines, introduced by the Coca-Cola Company a couple of years ago. The machines enable users to serve themselves more than a hundred different soft drinks and soft-drink combinations, and to add flavorings (such as orange, a favorite among passengers from the Baltics) that are otherwise unavailable in Coke products in the United States. In the soda-storage area, Brown showed me a Sprite Zero Freestyle cartridge. “It communicates directly with Coca-Cola headquarters, in Atlanta,” he said. “When it gets low, they will automatically generate a refill order for us to approve.”
On the morning we arrived back in Fort Lauderdale, I disembarked before breakfast and watched the ship being loaded for its Atlantic crossing. Terminal 18, where we had moored, was built specifically to accommodate Oasis and Allure. Semitrailers had been lined up in a staging area near the main building since before dawn, and Brown was inspecting pallets as they were unloaded. Twenty-two thousand pounds of flour, twelve thousand pounds of fresh potatoes, forty-four hundred pounds of spinach. Brown stuck a finger into a box of blueberries and made a mark on a list. He used a knife to cut through the plastic wrap on another box and reached inside. If the top part of an asparagus stalk feels wet, he had told me the day before, it’s already just about done for. Fresh mint. Huge onions. Bright white mushrooms. Radish sprouts.
A longshoreman operating a forklift pushed a pallet of celery against a pallet of sweet potatoes, then raised both at once to an opening in the ship’s hull, where a second longshoreman picked them up, one at a time, with a smaller forklift and transferred them to a member of the ship’s crew, who moved them, on a third forklift, onto a platform elevator and into a storage room. Machines turned past machines as fluidly as dancers; the drivers scarcely seemed to be watching where they were going. Items were mixed—a load of carrots, a load of strawberries, a load of sorbet—to prevent bottlenecks in the storage areas, and to keep everyone busy. I watched for about an hour, both outside and inside the ship, then said goodbye to Brown. Oasis would sail for Spain in just under seven hours, and he had thirty more trucks to unload.
First Class
Travelling fast and flash used to be easy. You boarded “the quick plane”. But Concorde dipped its beak for the last time in 2003. Worse followed. After the financial crisis, first class almost died because nobody wanted to be seen sitting in the pointy end, even if they could still afford it. Airline bosses rushed to cut it. Fast-forward seven years and… poshos rejoice! Airlines are going back to the front.
There are one-third more first-class seats worldwide today than in 2010 — and not just on the shiny new Gulf carriers. BA is spiffing up its £100m First cabins, only five years after it launched them. “It’s an incredible change,” says Nigel Goode, director of PriestmanGoode, the leading British-based airline-design agency that has styled the new premium cabins on Qatar Airways, Swiss, Lufthansa and Air France.
Some carriers are creating services even more extravagant than first-class. Abu Dhabi-based Etihad now offers the Residence, a three-room private suite that has a lounge, shower room and a bedroom with a double bed, and comes with its own Savoy-trained butler. It costs $22,000 from London to Abu Dhabi. One way.
What does the new jet-set age look like? Come fly with me. I’m going first class, nonstop around the world — five airlines in four days. I’m travelling more than 26,000 miles from London to the Gulf, the Gulf to Singapore, Singapore to Australia, Australia to the US, and back to London.
It’s lunchtime on Monday and the sleet has turned the pavement outside Heathrow Terminal 4 into a gritty slushie. But I don’t care. New Globe-Trotter bag in hand, I’m on a treacle-thick red carpet at Qatar Airways’ check-in. I fast-track security, and a doorman greets me by name in the lounge, and assures me he’ll tell me when it’s time to board. “There are no annoying announcements in the lounge,” he whispers. But there is a proper restaurant, with natty crockery, decorated with geometric Arab motifs, and hot’n’cold running waitresses. “Wine list, sir?” Bollinger rosé, please. “And to eat?” Chicken shawarma, followed by the roast lamb, with tabbouleh and preserved lemon yoghurt. Well, when the souk comes to Staine...
Concorde may have been downright sexy, but it was cramped and, since it scythed through inner space one mile every three seconds, you felt every stratospheric bump. Not so with the Airbus A380 superjumbo. It’s so big it swats away turbulence and is vast inside — a $400m double-decker clipper in the clouds.
Qatar first-class on the upper deck of the A380 is the most exclusive in the sky. My chair is one of only eight. Etihad has 10, Singapore 12, and most other carriers 14. The seat is bigger than anything I have at home and, unlike on BA and Qantas, it is next to the window. Gazing down from 39,000ft, especially on flights to China, Mauritius, Buenos Aires and Chile, is a joy. Why do BA and Qantas insist on angling their seats into the cabin, making it impossible to admire the deserts, rain forests, mountains and oceans?
The ceilings are high because there is nothing so common as overhead bins. The lighting is soft and my chair massages my body. The wine massages my ego: Krug Grande Cuvée, Puligny-Montrachet 2010, Saint-Julien 2006 and Château d’Yquem 2008. There’s caviar — Oscietra, not farmed.
On the first £4,269, 3,239-mile-leg of my journey to Doha, the Qatari capital, and on to Dubai, I take a stroll in my Missoni slippers. There are about 300 seats downstairs and fewer than one-third that number upstairs. My first-class seat takes up the same space as nine economy ones. It perfectly reflects our ever more divided world — and explains why first class is back.
Thanks to low interest rates and quantitative easing, stock markets and property investments are at record highs. If you had assets before 2008, you’re way richer now. If you did not and you rely on your income, you’re way poorer because salaries have stagnated. That’s why, while most of us are cooped up downstairs, the 1.0 and 0.1 percenters float above us in a bubble where they want — need — double beds, showers, bars, lounges and chef’s kitchens. It’s as much about bragging rights as comfort. The new global elite have pretty much all the things they could ever want. The only status symbols left are experiences, and travel is the most extravagant. Stand at the bar on the Qatar or Emirates’ A380 and the most common question you hear in the never-ending game of high-stakes, high-altitude one-upmanship is: “And where are you going next?”
The emergence of the Gulf carriers — Qatar, Emirates, Etihad — is the biggest shift in global aviation since the budget airlines easyJet and Ryanair knocked the short-haul stuffing out of Europe’s flag carriers in the 1990s. They don’t pay tax at their home bases, are ununionised and backed by governments that build all the vast airports in the sand they could ever need. But their trump card is geography. Four billion people, many in the world’s fastest-growing economies, live within eight hours’ flying time of the Gulf. If you want to go anywhere, you can get there easily, cheaply and, if you want, luxuriously and expensively, via the Middle East.
Just a decade ago, the Gulf trio ran 19,000 flights a year to and from Europe. Last year, it was 37,000 and this year it will nudge 40,000.Emirates is now officially the world’s favourite airline, flying more than 215bn international passenger kilometres a year, compared with around 150bn for its nearest rivals, United and Lufthansa.
I marvel at the world’s new crossroads when I arrive at Dubai International at 10pm. Between then and 1am, 100 red, white, black and green Emirates’ airliners rain down on the tarmac, shuttling between Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. As hundreds of destinations ping down the departure screens in front of me, from Abidjan to Zanzibar, a woman in a bright-blue polo shirt walks up and hands me a black marker pen. “Please write something on the wall,” she says.
It turns out I’ve landed on the day that Dubai has, thanks to Emirates, officially overtaken Heathrow as the world’s busiest international airport, handling 71m passengers a year, compared with Heathrow’s 69m. Paul Griffiths, the Briton who used to run Gatwick and now runs Dubai airports, has put up a greeting wall for passengers to write messages of congratulations. “Not bad for a bus conductor,” I scribble. Tim Clark, another Brit, who runs Emirates, began his career clipping tickets on Southdown Buses near Bognor Regis.
One of the enjoyable things about travelling first class is the people you bump into. There’s the famous movie producer on British Airways in Los Angeles. Let’s call him Eric (because that’s his name). A king of the British high street tries to steal my seat — 1A — on Qantas, before he settles down to slum it in 2A. (Ray, you snore like a trooper!) Sadly, you also bump into the odd creep. Sepp Blatter, the Fifa boss, is in the bathroom in the first-class lounge in Dubai. I have a shower, but I feel even dirtier going out than when I went in. Thankfully, Flor, the sharp-elbowed sadist in the Timeless Spa, rearranges my internal organs and restores my spirits.
Big companies sometimes do things that sound silly, look silly, and you think you will feel silly doing until you actually do them and you realise they are the best thing in the world and you were a cretin all along. When Emirates introduced two showers in the nose cone of its A380s, people scoffed — waste of space, waste of time, waste of fuel to fly around all that heavy water. I tut-tutted, too.
Fule. Almost 5,000 miles into my £3,140, 6,000-mile journey from Dubai to Singapore, Susan wakes me up and gives me a pair of slippers. I walk past the shower girl, who pretends to be a cleaner but is really there to stop couples piling in to join the Mile High Club, and lock the door. There are Bulgari soaps and shampoos, fresh towels and robes, and a hair dryer. I step into the shower and turn on the water. I’ve got five minutes, which is plenty. I expect the trickle you get on boats or in camper vans. Instead, I get a Niagara. This is heaven in the heavens. And it gets better. I step out onto the floor that is heated (obviously), dry off and then head back to my suite where Susan has left a fresh ginger, mint and lime wake-me-up juice (of course) and a cappuccino with the Emirates logo picked out in the chocolate on top (naturally). I don’t want to get off. Ever. But Changi airport, my next stop, is looming in the cockpit window.
Singapore Airlines knows that the worst bit of air travel is the airport. So, at Changi, their home, they have removed it. First-class passengers have their own terminal building. I check in for my flight to Melbourne, via Sydney, in seconds and fly through the private, first-class immigration. An escalator leads up to the first-class lounge where I am welcomed into the even more exclusive Private Room. It’s vast, but there are only 10 passengers. On today’s specials board there’s steamed lobster with wonton noodles. Back down the escalator an hour and much crustacea later, I’m finally in the actual airport, but only for three minutes. That’s all it takes to clear first-class security and board.
The economics of first class can be ruinous. Each seat costs about £100,000 to develop and build, and caviar’n’Krug ain’t cheap. Airlines do it not just because there is a growing market for it, but also because it has a “halo” effect, making them seem more attractive, even in the cheap seats. No one understands this better than Singapore Airlines. To put a little distance between them and their rivals, they have invented a new class above first: Suites Class, so called because you get a mini-room with Italian leather walls and plantation-style shutters.
Some people like being put in a box, albeit a posh box. Others prefer to see and be seen. One thing everyone likes is Singapore’s “no nut rage” service. Two examples on my £2,525, 3,912-mile flight: I lay my wet swimming trunks and T-shirt — I ran and swam before going to the terminal — on my footstool to dry (not very Suites Class, I know). “Can I hang those for you,” asks Jasmine. They’re wet. I’m just drying them, I apologise. “Allow me.” She gathers them up, puts them in some magic airing cabinet at 39,000ft and an hour later returns them bone dry and folded neatly in a Singapore Airlines branded laundry bag.
Later, I tell Jasmine I’d like a nap. “I’ll make up your bed,” she replies. “But don’t get up. Suite 1K, the other front-row window suite, is free, so you can use this suite to sit in and the other to sleep in any time you want.” A lucky move. The best view of Sydney Harbour bridge in the morning is from 1K.
Qantas has had a torrid time lately. It has been losing money and has divorced BA after 17 years of marriage and jumped into bed with the shiny new Arab on the block — Emirates. The two carriers now codeshare on routes to Australia, giving Emirates more capacity to Oz and Qantas passengers the chance to connect to European cities, via Dubai, Qantas’s new stopover. After Singapore Girl, I reckon Aussie Bloke is going to be a big comedown.
How wrong can a Pom be? If you have not flown Qantas first class, do. Like Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand, it has not forgotten what makes great airlines: personality. From the moment I walk into the lounge at Melbourne, I know where I am. All the staff in the lounge are Australian, including Liz, who gives me a massage before breakfast.
The design is modern Australian by Sydneysider Marc Newson. His sinuous curves and 1970s retro chic are the best an airline can get. No wonder Apple has just hired him. The food is by Neil Perry, of the fêted Rockpool restaurant in Sydney. Here’s breakfast: Shaw River buffalo-milk yoghurt with mango and toasted coconut, followed by sweetcorn fritters with bacon, avocado and tomato jam. Vegemite toast on the side.
On board on my £5,380, 8,000-mile journey from Melbourne to LA — across the international date line, which means I leave at lunchtime on Thursday and arrive in time for breakfast five hours before I left — Newson is back. The seats swivel to face forward or the window. The table is so shiny and big, it’s like a corrupt African dictator’s desk. Best of all, there’s a hook to hang the headphones on.
The staff, food and wine (except fizz) are all Aussie. Liam, who is in charge, rustles up ocean trout with grilled fennel, ligurian olives, cherry tomatoes and summer herbs, which tastes all the better with the Tyrell’s Vat 1 Hunter Semillon 2007. The pyjamas have a giant kangaroo on them and are well worth stealing (sorry). The same goes for Newson’s chunky Seventies-style cutlery (apologies).
Newson is still there 14 hours later when I land in LA. British Airways has given up on its Terraces Lounge at LAX and now shares a Newson-designed lounge with Qantas. For the first time, I can wait in a big BA lounge that gives the Virgin Clubhouse, still the world’s best, a run for its Martini.
British Airways invented modern international flying almost a century ago. On August 25, 1919. Aircraft Transport and Travel Limited (AT&T), its forerunner, launched the world’s first daily international service between London and Paris. BA went on to become the world’s favourite airline. It lost that crown a decade ago and worse — cuts and strikes — were to follow. But thanks to a £5bn investment and a spot of union busting, it is relearning what it’s good at.
Liz, with the Bolton-meets-Beverly Hills accent, speeds me through check-in and barges to the front of the security line. In the lounge, Rob, the captain on tonight’s flight from LA to London, comes to say hello. BA knows everyone loves its pukka pilots, so it is getting them out there to press the flesh. “We want to put a face to the flight,” Rob tells me.
Thanks to British design savvy and our leading Formula One racing teams, which make lightweight kit, British firms manufacture almost all the fancy seats on all modern airlines. BA’s First cabin — in the most class-obsessed country there is no need to add the c-word — should be the best. And it is. The seats and leather trim are dark inky blue, matching the carpet, and the lighting is low and sexy. The 14 mini-suites are private, but I’m not in a box. The same goes for the Julien Macdonald-designed uniforms. Barbara, who runs the cabin, looks grand in her pillbox hat. Her service is modern British: polite but relaxed. The menu she hands me is natty greige but — oh, dear — it has the worst name ever: “height cuisine”. I want to be sick. Thankfully, the poached Shetland salmon, Aberdeen Angus and rhubarb and apple ginger crumble are no joke. I only wish BA were more British. On Concorde, you got bacon sandwiches with your champagne.
Everyone hates Heathrow. But everyone is wrong because Heathrow has Terminal 5. After the final 5,000-mile, £8,427 (double the price of a return; go figure) leg of my journey, I land at the best-designed and fastest-to-navigate major airport terminal in the world. I am through immigration and customs in minutes and home in west London in half an hour. For a terminal that handles 32m passengers a year, half the population of Britain, BA should win some kind of United Nations humanitarian award.
What have I learnt by the end of the four-day, £23,741, 26,000-mile ride of my life? First, this is a very good time to be in the ridiculous-travel business. Every cabin I travelled in was full or nearly full. On three of the five legs, there were young children in first. There are some rich travellers out there. Second, thanks to the magnificent A380, we are entering a new golden era of air travel. Flying at the front of a superjumbo is a beginning, middle and end in itself, just as it was during the Victorian days of the Grand Tour, when the rich took three-day Pullman trains from London to Venice and treated it as part of the fun.
Third, first class is staggeringly bad value. Business class has improved so dramatically, with flat beds on every major carrier, that it is not really worth paying the price of a small car for some more space and better food and wine. After all, your taste buds are shot after a couple of hours on board. That is, unless, you are very, very rich. Or very clever. A plane as big and expensive as the A380 needs to make money on pretty much every flight. Airlines won’t admit it, but they do everything they can to fill the biggest seats, including (whisper it) discounting. Shop around, try different routes, different stopovers, different days of the week and different flight times, use your miles if you have them to “buy” seats outright or to upgrade from business class and you’ll find some golden tickets.
If you do snag a seat, which airline should you choose? Who’s first in first class? All of them, of course. First class is remarkable, whatever colour the tailfin. But, to help you choose: Qantas is the most fun. Emirates (and Etihad) offer the best new perk: an onboard shower. Qatar is best for functioning alcoholics. British Airways is back to its proper and pukka best. And soaring above them all is Singapore Girl.
Airline Food
Who among us has never complained about airplane food?
Today’s in-flight offerings tend to be so common, so bland, so offensively inoffensive. The gluey chicken or the dense pasta? If the plastic tray offerings weren’t so good at breaking the monotony on an hours-long flight, the answer for most people, on the ground at least, would be “no thanks.” Unless, oddly, it involves tomatoes. More on that in a minute.
But airline food has a deeper story. There’s a reason every item served on board, from ginger ale to a dinner roll, was chosen to fly. Each one tells a story about the history of flight and of human taste.
Take the early days. At the dawn of commercial travel, flights were slow and distances long. Food was the only entertainment available. To build the feeble business of commercial air travel, airlines made the service luxurious, which, aside from well-dressed pilots and smiling stewardesses, brought lobster, prime rib, and glasses of wine always topped off.
Just 50 to 60 people on board was a small enough audience for luxury service. “The travail has been taken out of travel,” a Pan American ad from 1958 proclaimed. An announcer also pointed out each trans-Atlantic jet was equipped with four simultaneously-operating galleys, each producing delicious food in less than five minutes. No cabin pressurization meant that low-flying planes kept the air—and the meat—from drying out.
Every innovation in flight has come at the expense of food. Economy class, which arrived in the 50s, meant stuffing more people into less space, which eventually resulted in compromising kitchens for more seats. More seats demanded more meals, making five-star dining unfeasible (and awkward). Airlines that first employed on-board chefs contracted out meal-making to less costly companies.
Food prepared in advance came with new demands: it had to be produced quickly, en masse, easily frozen or refrigerated, even more easily reheated, adaptable to many diets, and much further down the list, agreeable to the taste buds. People were flying for the ride, not the meal, so why put such disproportionate effort, and money, into gourmet food?
Science picks it up from there. A series of studies explain today’s food, and why your in-flight standards differ from what you’d expect in a normal restaurant.
Cabin pressurization does strange things to us. It mutes our taste. And according to research, white noise, like the roar of a jet engine, makes things seem less sweet. When flying at 35,000 feet, even if the cabin is pressurized, low humidity can dry out your nose, reducing sensations of taste. If you’ve ever wondered why each meat item on a plane is bathed in gooey sauce, it’s to solve that moisture problem. If you were to serve a nice breast of chicken, which you can do on board, within a minute or two, the chicken would be like sawdust, as Guillaume de Syon, a historian who has studied airline food, told the Atlantic last year.
But there’s a loophole to all this. If you’ve ever drank tomato juice on an airplane but not on the ground, that’s because of a strange anomaly. “All those travelers who order a Bloody Mary after the seat belt sign has been turned off have figured out intuitively what scientists are only now slowly coming to recognize empirically,” a team of British researchers speculated last year.
Unlike your normal taste sensations - sweet, salty, sour, and bitter - the fifth taste, umami, appears to be immune to those in-flight inhibitors. Even amid loud noise and low pressure, your tongue can still taste the savory flavors in foods like tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and potatoes. It’s not subtle, either. Lufthansa, the German airline, commissioned its own research last year after noticing passengers ordered as much tomato juice as beer. Its harsh acidic taste is masked, while its savory qualities are unchanged.
The primary question is whether findings like this will change airline food of the future. Although most U.S. domestic carriers transitioned to for-purchase food wrapped in plastic—again, that moisture problem—many overseas flights still serve full meals. Professional chefs are at work trying to make them more tasty, particularly for high-end fliers. It’s possible that tomorrow’s airline meals will be heavy in umami foods, none more pronounced than tomatoes. Once that’s decided, however, finding them fresh, and serving them fresh, will be the next problem to solve.
Flying Cheaper Than Rail
Flying from Sheffield to Essex via Berlin is cheaper than taking the train — and you will still have enough money left for a currywurst and a day trip around the German capital, according to new research.
It can also be cheaper to travel by air from London to Bristol via Dublin than to take the train, one of the country’s most dedicated moneysaving experts has found. London to Manchester can cost less by plane as well, if you don’t mind taking the scenic route via Milan.
The unlikely conclusions were made by Jordon Cox, who has forged a living out of being one of the country’s most frugal men. Mr Cox, who lives in Hutton, Essex, was booked to teach a class on “extreme couponing” in Sheffield but was alarmed to discover that the rail fare home was £47.
Determined to find a cheaper option he looked at flights from East Midlands airport.
Mr Cox discovered that he could fly with Ryanair to Berlin for £11.83 and catch a flight back to Stansted for £9.54. Travel to and from the airports added a further £16.20, bringing the total cost to £37.50, a saving of £9.50. The only flaw in Mr Cox’s plan was the seven-hour wait at Berlin airport for the connecting flight but he got around this by paying £5 for a return trip to the city centre for a spot of sightseeing. “Even by my usual standards I’ll admit this is a rather extreme way of saving money,” Mr Cox said. “However, this was the cheapest way for me to get home and I got to enjoy a ‘free’ mini holiday to a city I’ve always wanted to visit.”
The experience encouraged Mr Cox, who writes a blog for the website Moneysavingexpert.com, to do further research and he found that savings can be made by flying other inter-city train routes, usually via Dublin. Travelling from Bristol to Newcastle, for example, costs £74 with Cross Country trains but Ryanair flights via Dublin can cost as little as £14.
“To get the cheapest price on your flights, the best deals crop up about two to four weeks before the travel date,” he said. “It is not always cheaper and you’ll have to book two separate flights, so take into consideration any extra booking fees.”
Beating Jet Lag With Light
For those trying to shake off jet lag the prospect of a burst of flashing lights at 5am sounds horrendous. In fact it may be their salvation, according to scientists.
A sequence of brief camera-like flashes can trick the body into thinking that the day is much longer than it really is, speeding up the adjustment from a different time zone, a study suggests. Most people also seem to sleep right through the “biological hacking”.
Jet lag, which can bring on fatigue, malaise and digestive problems, arises as the body struggles to adapt to a new cycle of day and light that is out of kilter with its internal timing mechanisms. Left to its own devices, it adjusts at a rate of about an hour a day. Researchers at Stanford University in California have previously found that sitting in front of a bright light for hours on end can speed this process up by another 35 minutes or so.
In a new experiment the scientists tested whether exposing people to flashes of light lasting only two thousandths of a second during their sleep could make the recovery shorter yet. They recruited 39 young adults and made them wake and sleep at regular times for two weeks before bringing them into a “sleep lab”. After a series of tests to determine their levels of stress, vigilance and sleepiness, the lights were switched off at midnight before a burst of light therapy shortly before 2am.
Eight of the participants sat in front of a light for an hour, while the rest were exposed to flashes at intervals ranging from two and a half seconds to four minutes. Those who had seen the light for a solid block of time began to feel sleepy about half an hour later the next day. However, the flashing lights delayed the onset of sleep for about two hours, suggesting that they might be a much more rapid treatment for jet lag.
Jamie Zeitzer, assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford, said that the idea would be to use the light therapy early in the morning before a long flight eastwards. People who work wildly varying shifts, such as doctors and lorry drivers, could also benefit. He believes that flashing lights work better than continuous light because they allow the pigments at the back of the eye to recover between bursts, ramming the signal home more effectively.
The scientists plan to take their findings into larger and more rigorous trials. Their research is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Vegas On The Cheap
Things were in full swing when I arrived at the Fremont Street Experience, a covered outdoor street fair that functions as the throbbing party vein of downtown Las Vegas. Occasional screams emanated from above as kids whizzed by on a zip line that runs the length of the street 12 stories up. I grabbed a draft beer at one of the casino bars and walked by an Elvis impersonator and his backing band blasting through a solid rendition of “Hound Dog.”
Young women in barely-there outfits danced on bars all along the street, peddling alcoholic slushies; performance artists played bucket drums, donned moderately soiled super hero costumes and hustled for photographs or covered themselves in silver body paint and stood perfectly still, moving only when someone tipped them. Countless lights attached to casino hotels like the Fremont and Four Queens made it seem like midday, even though it was 9 p.m. I felt as if I was in the center of everything Vegas.
xcept I wasn’t on the Las Vegas Strip. I was on a mission to prove that all of the worthwhile things about Vegas could be had without touching the 4.2-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard between Sahara Avenue and Russell Road. In fact, I was hoping that getting away from the Strip would yield experiences that one wouldn’t normally associate with Vegas, and I could see a side of the city most tourists miss.
hings had started out on a tricky note, though: Finding a cheap room was more difficult than I’d anticipated. I happened to pick a week that three of the biggest conventions of the year were in town. The fabled rock-bottom-priced opulence of Vegas I’d dreamed about — $20 or $30 for a nice hotel room — would be out of reach. Lesson learned: research conventions. (There are a few websites I discovered too late, like vegasmeansbusiness.com, that would have helped.)
Nevertheless, I landed a decent $70 rate at the California Hotel & Casino, one block from the Fremont Street Experience. (Many downtown hotels overlook Fremont. Do not book one of these rooms unless you are a heavy sleeper.) My room was spacious, clean and more than adequate for my needs. After checking in I made my way through Fremont and crossed into the Fremont East Entertainment District. First stop was the Beat Coffeehouse & Records, which had all manner of coffee drinks, as well as liquor and draft beer (when the taps are working, which they weren’t that night). There were also crates of vinyl for sale, $4.99 per record, sitting on big glass display cases. I ordered a $1.99 iced green tea and took a seat at the bar.
It was Open Mic Night. “This next one is called ‘Scattered Words,’ ” said a young woman with an acoustic guitar, and she broke in to a plaintive tune that reminded me of Vampire Weekend. The crowd was young, impressively diverse and thoroughly entranced.
I started talking to Joe, a native Iowan working on the crew of a movie that was shooting in and around Vegas. After the open mic, we grabbed a bite at the Badger Cafe, which opened in 1979 and had a homey, Midwestern feel (the badger in question is the University of Wisconsin mascot). Joe and I each got “build-your-own” half-pound burgers for $5.49 (includes lettuce, onion and pickles) and shared some gut-churning chili cheese fries. My burger, served on a sesame seed roll, was excellent: fresh, juicy and full of flavor. The waitress ribbed us on our choice of light beers — “Y’all want some more water?” she asked, then smiled and went back behind the counter. When we settled our bill, we asked her what there was to do in the neighborhood. Her response: “Y’all been to the Pinball Hall of Fame?”
I hadn’t, but given that A) it was on the next block and B) I have a longstanding fascination with electronic games, I couldn’t really pass this up. The Pinball Hall of Fame is an enormous quadrangular warehouse jam packed — surprise! — with pinball machines. The clamor of bells, bumpers and flippers batting steel balls echoing merrily off the walls creates a near constant buzz in the space. There’s an impressive array of newer and vintage games, many of which can be purchased outright from the Hall, which is run by Tim Arnold. I played “Star Wars” and a few others before finding Joe again. His workmates were going for drinks and karaoke at a casino called, of all things, Ellis Island, and I was invited.
The classic way of getting free and cheap stuff in Vegas is to spend a lot of money — or at least to give casinos the impression that you spend a lot of money. For those of us on a budget, however, a different strategy is needed: one that exploits the system.
My mark, so to speak, was the steak dinner, an iconic Vegas meal. The cafe at Ellis Island has a reputation for serving a particularly good one — $7.99 for a steak, vegetable, mashed potatoes or fries, and soup or salad, if you sign up for the casino’s rewards program and do a little gambling (which you were planning to do anyway, right?).
All casinos have rewards programs. You sign up, get a little card with a magnetic strip, and as you spend money you collect coupons for freebies and discounts. At Ellis Island, they’ll give you that cheap steak dinner (normally $12.99) if you play just $5 worth of slots. But isn’t that just breaking even? Well, in addition to it just being a little mindless Vegas fun, you can push it further: If you play $10 worth of slots instead of $5, not only do you get that discount on the steak dinner, Ellis Island also rewards you with bonus play money — a random amount between $10 and $500.
I got my card, put $10 on it, and blew through it on a slot machine. A notification came up: I had $66 in additional slot play. I played through that and, in the process, won $30. I cashed out and claimed my coupons for the steak dinner. The casino had, in effect, paid me to gamble and eat at their restaurant — and the steak, a 10-ounce top sirloin, was delicious. It was at least an inch thick, flavorful and cooked to a perfect medium-rare. I said goodbye to Joe, who I found in the karaoke bar listening to someone mangle “Sweet Caroline.”
(Vegas, incidentally, isn’t just surf-and-turf and all-you-can-eat buffets. Chinatown — well, more like China Strip Mall — is on Spring Mountain Road. I ventured there late one night and was able to score an enormous, hearty beef roll for $7.50 at Noodle Pot.)
Hoping to burn off some of the steak, the next day I stopped in for a class at Blue Sky Yoga, which works on a donation-based model (suggested $12 minimum). The instructor, Cheryl Slader, led about eight students, including me, through an invigorating series of poses. I asked her afterward whether the donation-based method was working financially. She chuckled and said, “No, not really.” In a transient city like Las Vegas, she explained, it’s not easy to build a regular stable of clients. “I work a lot of other jobs to make this work,” she said, motioning to her studio, the walls of which are covered with local artists’ works. But it’s worth the effort: “I don’t think money should be a barrier to anyone who wants to practice yoga.”
The yoga studio is housed in the Arts Factory, which functions as the heart of the city’s Arts District — less a neighborhood and more a handful of buildings clustered around Charleston Boulevard, but it’s a wonderful side of Vegas many don’t know about. After class, I wandered into the studio of Joseph Watson, an artist influenced by cityscapes and urban life, peeked into a steampunk-inspired gallery called Hiptazmic, then wandered upstairs and took in wonderfully macabre exhibits by Rebecca Hood and Lisa Dittrich.
Just south of the Arts District, I encountered a thriving but underappreciated side of the city: Las Vegas’s craft beer scene. I came across a middle-aged couple from Dallas, Mike Kwasnick and Sharon Blackstock, who were waiting for Hop Nuts Brewing to open for the day. Soon we were chatting, and I found myself sharing some flights of house-made beers they’d purchased. “She’s not feelin’ too good, so you’re gonna have to help me drink all this,” Mr. Kwasnick said. I was happy to oblige. Our excellent bartender, Jessie Dennis, lent some perspective on life as a Vegas native. “You definitely grow up pretty fast here,” she said. “On the other hand,” she added cheerfully, “I pretty much got everything out of my system by the time I was 16.”
Museums aren’t Las Vegas’s strongest suit, but later that afternoon, I headed to one of the city’s more interesting (and cheaper) ones — the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, a $10 admission. (There is a two-for-one adult admission coupon that is readily Google-able.) Most of the exhibits — wonders of ancient Egypt, a giant animatronic T-rex — would be great for kids, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them for lone adult travelers. Better for grown-ups (and considerably cheaper) is the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort next door: for a mere dollar, you can tour the settlement, created by 30 missionaries in 1855, who promptly said “No, thanks” and went back to Utah in 1857.
As I was getting ready to leave, perhaps inspired by the SHOT Show, the enormously popular firearms trade show in town, I made an impulse purchase: $27.20 (with a 20 percent discount code) for a “Quick Shooter Experience” Groupon at the Gun Garage, a gun store and firing range west of the Strip. Two gregarious young women greeted me there and helped me pick my gun. “So, the Uzi is more popular in, like, movies and rap songs,” one of them said. I ended up going with an M4 carbine. A range officer introduced himself and went over some rules: Wear eye and ear protection, keep the weapon pointed downrange and, interestingly, no head shots on the paper target: body shots only. He loaded my gun, showed me how to hold it and how to position myself. Then he took off the safety and put a hand on my shoulder. “O.K., you’re fully automatic now,” he said.
It was over in under 20 seconds; I found it frighteningly easy to rattle off an entire clip. Lori, one of the women at the counter, said, “Not bad for a first timer!,” which I’m sure she would have said no matter what. I was running late and heading to the exit when she called after me, “You might want to wash your hands, depending on where you’re going.” I told her I was rushing to the airport. “You’re definitely going to want to wash your hands,” she said. Apparently, a lot of residue comes off when you’re firing a gun — something T.S.A. agents check for when they randomly wipe your hands at security. I said farewell and headed off to the airport, thanking my lucky stars; it was the most valuable travel advice of my trip.
Where to Stay
Room rates off the Strip can vary wildly. I visited five different hotels walking around one day and asked what the room rates were for that very night. Then, I asked what the room rate would be in exactly one week.
I found the biggest range at the Plaza Hotel & Casino, which quoted a price of $209 for a standard room that night; in one week, the rate would be $55.
Sin City Hostel advertises rates of $15 per night for a spot in a co-ed six-bed dorm on a weeknight.
An important detail for Vegas-goers: Many hotels tack on a “resort fee,” typically anywhere from $10 to $30 per night. So a $60 rate at the Rio might look great, until you realize you’re paying closer to $90 once the fee is added.
Should you rent a car? I got one because I knew I wanted to do some exploring. There’s free parking at the California Hotel & Casino, and for the rate I got from Budget — about $10 a day through their website — it was a no-brainer. Around the Strip, though, it’s best to use taxis or a rideshare service: Traffic is usually a nightmare
The Downton Abbey Experience
A century ago it was a life that offered little more than intolerable hours, backbreaking work, and meagre pay.
Dundas Castle, with its grand entrance hall, is proving a hit with groups of wealthy tourists but many are happy to live life below stairs under instruction from Anita Tobit, the castle housekeeper and cook
However, thanks to the influence of Downton Abbey, wealthy American visitors are paying handsomely to act as skivvies at a historic Scottish home.
Dundas Castle, near Edinburgh, is offering the opportunity to live the “Downton Abbey experience” for £2,500 a day for a small group of friends.
However, rather than tasting the decadent lifestyle enjoyed by the Earl and Countess of Gratham, many are instead opting to experience the downstairs drudgery of a housemaid or servant. Affluent North Americans are only too happy, it would seem, to abandon the trappings of their comfortable existence and spend time making beds, shining shoes or polishing silver.
Lucy Scillitoe, the general manager of Dundas, which combines a 15th century keep with a luxurious 19th century extension, claimed the newly launched Downton experience had attracted a huge amount of interest from across the Atlantic. She said: “Downton Abbey is hugely popular in the US so our aim has been to promote this concept to American visitors. They absolutely love British history. This gives families, and very small groups, the chance to come in and experience life in a working castle.”
A promotional brochure for the costume-drama breaks states: “Tailored to meet individual requirements the package features downstairs activities, including learning how to make a bed like a housemaid, cooking with owner Sir Jack Stewart Clark’s private chef and polishing the shoes or silver.
“Upstairs is much more sumptuous and guests can choose to live like a lord, enjoying meals served by staff in the stylish croquet room where the Stewart Clark family dines, shooting tuition on the estate with a gamekeeper, a private tour of the house with full details of life at Dundas or just living the life of a lord or lady in the comfort and surroundings of one of Scotland’s finest stately homes.”
Ms Scilllitoe revealed they have been surprised by how many had opted to experience domestic servitude rather than basking in indulgence. She said: “The downstairs experiences are just as popular as the upstairs experiences. It’s something that, perhaps, you wouldn’t think would be as attractive as it is. Baking in Sir Jack’s private kitchen is particularly popular. “The butler also shows them how he prepares clothes for the owner of the castle.”
So far, every single guest has come from the US, where Downton attracts millions of viewers on the PBS network. Sir Jack, a former Conservative MEP, stressed that the trips were kept as historically accurate as possible. He said: “Dundas Castle is a family home and so has the welcome of comfort you might have experienced within grand houses of a bygone era, such as Downton Abbey.
“I love to welcome guests who can really feel that my house is their home. Whether it is a personal shooting lesson or a tutorial from the butler, we like to make sure the experience is authentic.”
Travel Agent Tricks
A leading high street travel chain is charging higher prices to older customers who have little knowledge of the internet than to web-savvy youngsters, an investigation has claimed.
Flight Centre is also accused of misleading customers over which tickets are refundable and temporarily reserving cheap seats on flights to make the price of available seats appear higher.
An undercover investigation by Channel 4’s programme Dispatches alleges that the company encourages staff to mark up the cost of flights and exploit less savvy customers. In one incident, a reporter and his mother-inlaw aged 81 went into separate Flight Centres on the same day to request quotes for the same flight to New York. The reporter made it clear that he had already checked out prices online while his mother-in-law told the sales consultant that she hadn’t researched flights. The reporter was quoted £494 and his mother-in-law was quoted £610.
Flight Centre said that the different prices appeared to be extraordinary and one isolated example.
Dispatches also filmed staff discussing “seat blocking”. Airlines usually release a limited number of seats in different price categories; as a plane fills up, the seats get more expensive. Travel agent staff can access the airline booking systems and place cheap seats on hold so they are no longer available. If a customer then looks online for a ticket, they will see that the price of the seats has risen. This misrepresents which seats are available, potentially pressuring the customer to make a purchase. Flight Centre said that seat blocking was “entirely unacceptable and expressly against our company policy”, adding that the company had emailed staff to remind them last November.
The programme also filmed staff explaining how they tell customers that all flights are non-refundable even when a fare allows a flight to be cancelled with a refund. One saleswoman was recorded saying: “My guy cancelled the other day as a ‘non-refundable flight’. It’s not. So I can make a hundred on it and still give him back money. So it looks even better.”
Flight Centre said: “The suggestion that ‘all fares are sold as non-refundable’ is completely incorrect.” A spokesman added: “The views and recordings in this programme are not a fair reflection of our company culture or customer experience. Dispatches’ allegation that Flight Centre has a policy or culture of applying opportunistic or excessive margins to particular customers or demographics is completely unfounded. We acknowledge that this programme . . . may highlight some isolated behaviour that is against our company policies and ethics.”
Tracking Walkers
The Wash around the Great Ouse has beautifully bleak expanses of beach for spotting bird life. On the other side of England, the Tamar otter sanctuary in North Petherwin is a lovely place to drop in on while exploring the DevonCornwall border. And if you’re walking in the country near Llanllwni, the Belle pub is a great place to break for lunch. Not that you would be walking there though, or in either of the other two locations for that matter: unfortunately — for otters, swans and publicans alike — almost no one does.
Using ten years of data from its mobile apps, the Ordnance Survey has plotted an image of 500,000 walks undertaken by its customers. Like a map of the veins in a body, they fan out across the country — coalescing not at major organs but at national parks: the densest locations are Snowdon and Scafell Pike.
Thanks to the coastal paths, and their popularity, the outline of the UK is clearly delineated. Thanks to a handful of people who seem to believe getting on a ferry constitutes a “walk”, so too is the Dover-Calais shipping route. At an average length of ten miles, collectively the walks represent five million miles of rambling. Which makes it even more surprising to find populated areas of Britain where almost nobody walks.
“The popular routes very much mirror the traditional sales of paper maps,” said Rob Andrews, from the Ordnance Survey. “For the hotspots we are looking at national parks: the Lake District, the Brecon Beacons. These are the places that constantly attract outdoor enthusiasts. They have car parks, visitor centres — they are no surprise.”
That a dearth of walkers would be seen around north Norfolk was not anticipated though. “There are big expanses here with not much activity going on, in comparison to 20 miles north, south, east and west,” Mr Andrews said. “It may just be that some parts are not as accessible as others. Equally though, we know there are amazing wildlife spots there.”
He and his colleagues identified two other apparently anomalous areas, inexplicably avoided by ramblers: the country around Rhydowen in Wales and around Boyton in Cornwall. They struggled to explain why people were avoiding what looked like prime walking country. “It’s hard to say. One reason could be the impact of the neighbouring area.”
The Cornish blank patch is sandwiched between two more obvious destinations. “It’s only a few miles away from spectacular coastline to the north, and Dartmoor to the south.” The same could be true for Wales — where Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons draw walkers away from more understated countryside. Even so, Mr Andrews said, “there’s no doubt these are beautiful areas. We’d love to hear why people are not visiting them.”
So too would Pete Waters, from Visit Norfolk. He was mystified as to why people were not drawn to the Ouse mouth. “It’s fantastic for bird life. This is very much the home of migrating bewick’s swans,” he said. It is also the home of the only family traditionally allowed to eat them. “There’s Sandringham, where the Queen spends every Christmas, and currently we also have William and Kate.” Along with George and Charlotte, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have moved into Anmer Hall, just east of Sandringham.
10 Travel Mistakes to Avoid
1. Don’t be fooled by cheap flight hacks
There’s a long-held myth that airlines jack up prices if you search for the same flight too often, so you need to use your browser in “incognito mode”. Another is that the cheapest day to book is Tuesday. The fact is, airline pricing is hugely volatile and demand is just one factor influencing the price you see. So forget the superstitious woo woo. Sign up for free price alerts with airfare search engines such as Google Flights and Skyscanner, and use the latter’s savings generator tool, which identifies the best time to book as well as the cheapest day to travel, based on historical flight data. These will vary depending on the destination. For travel on easyJet, it’s well worth signing up for alerts for the flight schedule release dates when you can pounce on a cheap deal.
2. Avoid the scammers
Everyone loves a great deal, but one that looks too good to be true usually is exactly that. To avoid being scammed, comb online reviews before you hand over your details to an online agency you’ve never heard of; a few minutes’ due diligence could save you thousands. The worst companies will reel customers in with amazing deals and then after you’ve paid, tell you the flight is only available for a higher price. Always check website URLs before entering your personal information to ensure you’re on a company’s official website and not in the hands of a fraudster.
3. Leave the traditional city breaks – find the destination doubles instead
It will be the year of the destination duplicates. Last summer hotel prices in many European hotspots were ludicrously high, boosted by pent-up buying power (especially from Americans and their strong dollar) and it seems unlikely this year will be any different. You’ll tend to get much better value and less crowded experience if you swap cities like Barcelona, Lisbon and Venice for the likes of Valencia, Palermo and Trieste.
4. Avoid queues with fast-track security passes
If you’re too late getting through airport security you could miss your flight and lose the entire cost of your holiday, even if massive queues were to blame. Many airports allow passengers access to a fast-track queue and this can be worth booking during peak times. At Gatwick this costs £5 if you book online (gatwickairport.com), at Stansted it’s £8 (booking.stanstedairport.com), while Heathrow is allowing travellers to book security time slots at Terminal 3 for free as part of a trial (lhr.whyline.com).
5. Ignore the cheapest car hire option (and book well in advance)
Booking car hire is a minefield but there are ways to lessen the pain. It makes sense to use a good broker such as Zest which can advocate on your behalf if things go wrong (zestcarrental.com). Book as far in advance as you can, check online reviews and swerve the cheapest option (especially at car hire hubs like Malaga airport) because you can end up paying far more in damages and charges. Buy third-party insurance to avoid the hard sell at the desk and be diligent with arrival and drop-off times. If you bust them without warning, rental companies will mark you down as a no show and refuse to hand over the keys. They won’t refund you either.
6. Don’t use online travel agents – always book direct
Using one of the giant online travel agencies (OTAs) to book your trip may seem like the best way to snag a juicy deal, but always check prices directly on the airline or hotel website before you commit; hotels will often throw in a room upgrade, free wi-fi or breakfast. OTAs add service fees and extras that bump up prices and have a business model that doesn’t always prioritise customer service. And there’s absolutely no point in booking low-cost airlines like easyJet or Wizz Air through an OTA because these carriers don’t offer them discounted fares.
7. Avoid visiting Cuba if you want to travel to the US
Cuba may be on your wishlist for 2024: who wouldn’t fancy sipping a mojito on glorious Varadero beach? But booking a holiday to this Caribbean island has a serious drawback: set foot on its white sands and you’ll make any future trips to the USA much more difficult because you won’t be able to enter the country using an online £17 Esta visa waiver. One of Donald Trump’s last acts as president was to designate Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, and anyone who visited the island after January 1, 2021 has to apply for a tourist visa through the US embassy; this costs £146 and requires a hard-to-get interview. The same rules apply to anyone who has visited North Korea, Iran or Syria.
8. Don’t book a holiday without Atol protection
Booking a package holiday with Atol protection is a no brainer: it means you’ll get your money back if your travel company goes bust, or if you’re already away, you’ll be able to complete your trip at no extra cost and then be repatriated. In addition, if the package isn’t delivered as promised you’re entitled to free-of-charge rearrangement and compensation for the lost part of the holiday. You should receive an Atol certificate as soon as you pay any amount towards your trip and you can check that the travel company really is an Atol holder on the Civil Aviation Authority website (caa.co.uk). If your holiday isn’t sold as a package but you’ve paid for it on your credit card, you’ll still get a refund if the company ceases trading under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. If you’ve paid by debit card you may also be able to claim through chargeback, although you must do this within 120 days of the holiday date. You won’t get any help if you’re stranded in the destination, however, so good insurance is vital.
9. Don’t get stung on luggage
If you’re incapable of packing light, don’t assume tacking on baggage costs to a cheap fare is the way to go. Some basic fares are fine if you’re only taking a small backpack that will fit under your seat but ludicrously expensive if you want to add a hold bag. Malaysian Airlines’ economy lite fare, for example, includes only 7kg of hand luggage, and to add hold bags you have to pay exorbitant excess luggage prices.
10. Don’t leave travel insurance until the last minute
Travel insurance is a boring extra but you don’t want to be the one crowdfunding for hospital costs or an air ambulance back to the UK after a horrible accident. Buy it as soon as you book your holiday so that you have cancellation cover if you fall ill and can’t go; this cover kicks in as soon as you pay for single-trip cover but you have to specify a start date for annual policies. It may be tempting to buy the cheapest policy you can find but these often have higher excesses to pay. If you’re travelling in Europe, get a free global health insurance card (GHIC), which entitles you to free or reduced cost treatment in a medical emergency.