The Big Country

NYT Travel Section Round-Up

San Francisco: Hotels are now called cheap at under $200 a night.

San Francisco: And cheap eats don't include burritos.

Istanbul: Proud to serve the best food in the "Eastern Mediterranean"!

Shanghai: Quite a schlep to only spend 36 hours.

Montevideo: Like Punta del Este, only without the beautiful people. Or beaches.

Airlines: No fat chicks. Or fat fellas. And fat is NOT the new tall.

Airlines: How much for open bar?

Living the Fluorescent-Lit High Life

The Wall Street Journal notes today that airports are trying harder to pamper travelers. Vancouver, in particular, has instituted pay-per-use lounges. For $30 a pop, visitors get an open bar (the most important), plus access to buffets showers. No word yet on whether they'll be importing American Airline's own special brand of snack mix from the Admiral's Club, but one can always hope. The airport is also home to sleeping pods, which can be rented for up to two hours. They are described as "semi-private", which isn't very enticing; I don't want random Canadians telling me how peaceful I look when I'm sleeping.

Vancouver is not home to the strangest amenities in a transport hub, though: that title belongs to Metro Marché, a sit-down French restaurant opening in the NY Port Authority Bus Terminal this week. Yes, wander through dingy lighting past the Cinnabon and you too can eat steak frites at a gin-u-wine zinc bar. I can only assume they've hired the homeless people who live in the Port Authority as staff--wouldn't the specials be more exciting if they were delivered by a shambolic man wearing a tinfoil helmet?

Nothwest: Not Smart

Oh, Northwest. Here's what I love about this ad: Northwest wants to tout that you can check-in online, pick your seat ahead of time and do all the things that any other airline does in this day and age. They say it as the phrase "It's smart to check-in online"; that nannyish phrase sure sounds like the features are helping Northwest more than passengers, becuase it means less work for the ticket agents. Plus, if you check-in online, you more likely to pay for those premium coach seats NWA instituted last summer. Of course, if you check-in at the airport when they release those unsold seats, you then have a good shot at an exit row, or at least one of those "premium" aisles. Not to be confused with their "premium" snack boxes filled with "premium" beef sausage sticks. 

Fun and Games with Gross Generalizations

Via the always excellent World Hum, Rolf Potts discusses what nationalities makes for bad tourists in his Yahoo! column this week. Well, not exactly. His point is that the Brits make generalizations about other nationalities often—Americans don’t as much because so few of us have passports—and how that's not productive for the thoughtful tourist.

We should all learn to love one another, but I find discussions of national character fascinating. They may not be productive with a Brit rattling off which nationalities are the dirtiest, but asking a local what he or she thinks the national character is can open a window to the culture.

Just because other nationalities travel more than Americans or Germans doesn’t make them better tourists. Potts points to a study that shows Americans and Germanys are highly rated as tourists because they spend so much money when they travel. Compare that to the Dutch—famous for brown-bagging it at many a far-flung destination—and you’ll see that some of these studies are shell games to prove a point. Besides, as an American tourist, if you ask two reasonably intelligent questions in a row while abroad you’ll get this response: “Gosh, you don’t seem like an American!”

NYT Sunday Travel Capsule Review

Georgia: Not just about Stalin anymore!

Barcelona: Cheap, as long as you're not wedded to the idea of your own bathroom. Or eating at a restaurant with chairs.

Otranto: Italy's boot-heel has famous architecture, unlike the rest of the country.

Bangkok: Coups make for excellent drinking games.

Central Europe: English-language bookstores are just as cool as Before Sunrise, right?

Bucharest: Go for the deals, stay for the feral dogs.

Airlines: They don't care that you own the world's tiniest violin.

Ryanair's Big Bucks

Fantastic article from the Guardian on Ryanair’s attempt to buy Aer Lingus. While it’s chock full of financial information that’s in flux right now, we found the tidbits on CEO Michael O’Leary to be quite delicious. O’Leary is big on publicity stunts and general lowbrow craziness, yet he went to the best prep school in Ireland, and thanks to his success as Ryanair’s CEO, he’s got $570 million fortune. What’s most shocking is to what lengths Ryanair will go to save a buck. The lack of food, reclining seats and window shades are well-known, but some of these ideas are horrific:

O'Leary has made himself rich, with a fortune estimated at €450m, a beautiful country house at Gigginstown, and the ability to indulge his passion for horse racing. He has done all this by obsessive focus on the no-frills business model: low costs - applicants have to pay for their own interviews and staff buy their uniforms - low fares, short-haul routes and antipathy to unions.

They have to pay for their own interview? No wonder Ryanair employees seem so depressed. They’re in debt to the airline before they’re hired.

JetBlue's Big Shoulders

Glory be, JetBlue hopes to park at O’Hare at the very near future! They’ve applied for about seven arrivals a day--subject to approval by the FAA. Who knew there were gates available? American and United control 91 percent of them at O’Hare, mostly with long-term leases, and the FAA strictly regulates the number of flights into O’Hare during peak hours—rightfully so, for an airport that’s the crucible of many delays across the U.S.

Unfortunately, JetBlue’s operation will be closer to what they have at LaGuardia—occupying the slots for the prestige more than anything else. Is JFK-ORD as appealing for the business traveler as LGA-ORD? No. But for the “casual fan” it might be a break on another shuttle route, a type of fare that JetBlue has accreted with gusto, adding service to DC and Boston in the past year alone. What I don’t understand is why JetBlue isn’t working harder on attacking NWA hubs—it’s the weakest caribou in the herd these days.

Haute Cuisine in Low Places

As a New Yorker, I have the dubious honor of using LaGuardia as one of my home airports. There, I’ve experienced: massive lines at security, ground stops, a baggage claim area that appears to have been imported from Katmandu, and easily some of the worst airport food I’ve ever eaten. And yes, I’m counting layovers in Dayton and Belgrade.

So it’s no surprise that there are plans afoot for a complete teardown of the concourses in LaGuardia’s Central Terminal (though the Delta Terminal is no peach, either). According to the Wall Street Journal, the reconstruction would cost at least $1 billion dollars, and be finished probably around the same time as the Second Avenue subway line. Oh, and passengers would pay for it with “Facility Charges”. It’s a similar principle to paying for those dreadful airline sandwiches; you must pony up to dough in order to be maltreated. Remember, there won’t be more gates, since there are only two runways—just more space.

The real piece of information to take away from the article is that there’s a Todd English restaurant the Central Terminal Food Court. How that happened, we’ll never know, but maybe Joel Robouchon could consider opening an outpost at JFK?

Joe Sharkey, Living on Borrowed Time

I’ve oft mocked Joe Sharkey of the New York Times for being a fusspot who is late to catch onto trends and enjoys belaboring the obvious. While I don’t take it back—he’s an established enough journalist that he can fend for himself—I do feel slightly guilty, since he did have a near-death experience this week.

Sharkey was in the “other plane” that experienced a mid-air collision with a Gol 737. The Gol plane crashed into the Amazonian jungle, killing all 155 people aboard. Sharkey was visiting Embraer’s headquarters, on a test flight of the new Legacy 600 with several Embraer executives (the company is Brazilian). The collision sheared of part of the stabilizer and the wing—the 737 actually hit Sharkey’s plane twice.

We hear time and time again that flying is safer than driving, staying at home or bathing near the toaster. But only with flying is your life in the hands of someone else: the pilot. That’s what makes it scary for a lot of people, and Sharkey was able to survive thanks to the capable crew aboard the Embraer, who were able to land at a military base without the aid of many of the plane’s computerized controls.

Still, I’m not testing any Brazilian aircraft after this incident: consider me a dyed-in-the-wool Canadair man. Also, Sharkey gets major points for filing another story today. Doesn't he get a few days off or something?