I just want to be clear. I’ve actually been eating Thai food here in Thailand. I can be a pretty picky eater, but the food’s been pretty good and relatively close to what I’d get at the Thai restaurants around Somerville. Which is shocking, really, because whoever would expect to find authentic Asian cuisine in a dinky place like Somerville?
I tossed and turned all night, waiting for a 4 am phone call that never came. A quick dash to the NW airlines office at the airport before catching my flight to Chiang Mai yielded still more depressing news. I had come to Thailand. My bags had gone to Hawaii.
I provided them with my contact info for the remainder of the week and tried to remain optimistic.
Nonetheless, my trip continued and it was time to rally. I jetted off to Chiang Mai, eager to see the city in the north.
My whole first day has been reshaped around clothing. Finding yourself tall, alone, and in 90 degree Asia with only the long-sleeve sweater and khakis you wore for the preceeding 36 hours while traveling is a helluva way to start a trip.
Exploring the shopping plaza next to my hotel I was able to locate two shortsleeve shirts and a pair of khakis, giving me at least something to work with. Having completed the purchase, I sent everything away for express laundry service, so that with any luck I should have clean clothes in the next three hours.
If those get lost as well, I won’t even be able to say I still have the clothes on my back.
3 am Saturday morning, NJ time. I woke up groggy after a little less than 4 hours sleep. Destination: Newark Airport.
6 am Saturday morning, NJ time. The flight to Minneapolis boards. We’re served omletes with sausage and potatos for breakfast.
9:30 am Saturday morning, Minneapolis time. The flight to Portland is delayed. I’m reassured that I will make my tight connection on to Tokyo.
10:30 am Saturday morning, Minneapolis time. I’m served a second breakfastof omletes with sausage and potatos.
12 pm Saturday, Portland time. The flight lands, and after a brisk walk to the next gate I’m one of the last to board the Tokyo-bound flight.
At this point all sense of time goes out the window. It’s impossible to figure out where you are on four hours sleep with all the dateline and time zone changes.
4 pm Sunday, Tokyo time. Our flight lands, but that’s great with me. I’m in Narita, one of my favorite airports in the world.
6 pm Sunday, Tokyo time. For the third time on this trip (out of four flights), we’re leaving late. Thankfully boarding concludes quickly and we’re on our way.
1 am Monday, Bangkok time. My checked bag never made it, assuring me of having no clothes to wear. But Northwest did provide 2000 baht ($50) as an allowance to spend to purchase some new threads, and a promise that my bags should arrive in time for me to head up to Chiang Mai without them. At this point, having slept for onoly around 8 – 10 hours out of the last 48, I’m too tired to care.
I’m off to Thailand and Japan for a week. See you when I get back (unless I see you in one of those places, of course)!
I caught a 3:40 pm flight on Friday to Houston.
The party was already underway when I arrived at the Marriott ballroom. Swanky Flyertalkers were mingling while others raided the buffet table and the CEO of Continental signed posters. Xyzzy and his wife were there, along with the “infamous” Speedyturtle (who’s not at all as evil as some might argue).
Saturday morning began with the tours, one to the flight simulators, one to the CO HQ and Ops Center, and the third to the maintenance hangar, catering floor, and the baggage handling system. Due to a mix-up, my hour and a half wait for a bus that was never going to arrive resulted in my attending the ops center. This provided a fascinating look at just how the difficult decisions are made around flight cancellations and delays (btw, thanks, guys, for the delay going home Sunday). Catering and the executive offices rounded out the tour.
The evening was filled with a Q&A session with the CEO and his management team, then a BBQ dinner, all taking place inside the maintenance hangar. By far the most exciting aspect was the 757 that everyone had access to, from the cockpit to the engines to the cargo section.
Saturday rounded out with some poker for charity, before everyone began the trek home Sunday. Until next year!
I read the article in Slate about a new registered traveler program, but couldn’t figure out what the hubaloo was about. Special express security screening lines already exist at many airports offered by the airlines for their best customers. Anyone who pays the $80/year and submits to the background check will still have to go through X-ray and the metal detector. And if you’re traveling enough to be willing to pay the $80, you would likely have enough accumulated travel and/or clout with the airlines to qualify for their express screening lines. If you don’t, your travel department and/or secretary aren’t doing a good enough job.
Edited to Add: I’ll expound on why I think every registered traveler program is destined to fail, at least as an economic venture. The target market is first limited to frequent travelers. Since most frequent travelers receive expedited screening privileges at the busier airports due to their frequent flyer programs, the reduction of wait time for your primary screening from 30 minutes down to 3 already applies in the most important cases. By receiving the benefit for free, there’s an instant reduction in the size of the target market. You can’t eliminate the primary screening for anyone without opening a gigantic hole in the screening process that makes the whole operation worthless.
So who would still be interested? Those on the do-not-fly list or are regular recipients of the dreaded psuedorandom secondary screening. These would be the travelers who most often have to be wanded down and have their luggage searched, either because their name appears on one of the mysterious government-maintained lists or due to certain travel patterns that trigger additional screening. A limited market exists where these travelers would appreciate relief from additional screening. However, these are also likely to be the audience most likely to be denied access to the program by the TSA.
So long as the program offers no relief from the X-ray and metal detector process, their adoption rates will not support a large market. To make matters worse, should the market fracture, with airports contracting with separate, incompatible providers, I would anticipate a further rejection of the idea from the marketplace.
Now that I have a moment, I’m going to begin my brief retrospective on 2005 with my travels. While I made it to many destinations over the preceeding twelve months, there are several sights I’ve had the good fortune to see that remain stuck in my head. And while it was difficult to sort out those that would make the top 5, here goes.
1. The Petronas Towers – Kuala Lumpur – Currently the second tallest building in the world (tallest twin towers), they rise above the skyline of KL and are a phenomenal sight to see. Each tower is shaped after a five-pointed star, with a skybridge connecting them.
2. Bar Charlotte – Charlotte, NC – THE favorite hangout spot when we actually had a few minutes free during our migration weekends in Charlotte, this bar was a riot. Women were dancing on the bar, and there was at least one swing up there as well. On the opposite side of the room, high above everyone, were several poles to dance on. And don’t forget the mechanical bull for good measure. There are things I saw I won’t soon forget.
3. Manoa Falls – Island of Oahu, Hawaii – After a trek along a rough path (flipflops = bad idea), your reward is a beautiful waterfall raining down from at least 100 feet up. The lush vegetation makes the locale feel remote, even though you’re just a short drive from Waikiki and Honalulu.
4. The Andes Mountains – Mendoza, Argentina – Though I never made it to the Andes up close (the tours I found were entirely in Spanish, making it difficult to jusity both the cash and the 7 am departure), from Mendoza they were always off to the horizon, rising up and providing a phenomenal backdrop for this fertile agricultural region.
5. Rutgers v. ASU in the Insight Bowl – Phoenix, AZ – The 10,000 fans in scarlet were excited come game time. Though we were outnumbered in the stands and outgunned in the end, the trip was well worth it to be present at the first RU bowl appearance in 27 years.
Runners-up include the baggage handling facility in the Houston Airport, the Northwest Folk Festival in Seattle, and the red rocks of Sedona in Arizona.
While 2005 was a relatively quiet year on the negative side, terminal D at the Philadelphia International Airport is the worst terminal I have experienced. The closest airport that compares is perhaps the temrinal in San Jose, Costa Rica. Both are heavy, bloated concrete dungeons with practically no amenities. Even the terminal in Mendoza, with its single jetway, was a nicer place than Terminal D.
So, as I mentioned earlier, my sister and I were in Phoenix to see the Insight bowl, which which Rutgers unfortunately lost.
All in all we had a great time. The game was Tuesday at 6:30 pm, so we headed over around 5 pm to get there in time to park and wander around a bit. Scarlet fans were everywhere; the sea of red bodies as amazing to see. We picked up our T-Shirts and headed up to our seats in row 2 of section 322. From our vantage point we could watch the whole game without difficulty, despite being up high. We watched the marching bands perform their pre-game shows, followed by the paratroopers landing through the temporarily open dome.
Then the game was on, which Rutgers controlled in the first half. Unfortunately the offense stalled in the second half, which the defense was unable to control the incredible passing game that Arizona State brought to the table. While they did win, the fans were relatively good-natured about the whole thing. And while there were 43,000 attendees in total, the amazing aspect was to see nearly 10,000 Rutgers fans attend.
At the same time, they were everywhere the entire three days. From the time we entered Newark Airport until the time we walked out of the airport returning home yesterday, Rutgers fans were everywhere. In the airports, on the planes, around Scottsdale and Phoenix. It was an experience I have never seen before to see so much Rutgers pride, and one I won’t forget anytime soon. My sister wore her T-shirt home, and even in Detroit we had strangers come up to us to talk about the game.
All in all, a great time. And I already posted my photos from the trip.
Today I had my first encountered with the latest “innovation” in airline revenue management, journey logic.
Journey logic, or married segmnets, comes in to play most frequently when trying to book complex itineraries. Airfare is identified by a set of codes, i.e. VPEE02, BLAXP, or YLE. Each code, or fare basis, combined with an origin/destination pair, correlates to a set of rules and a price in the reservations system. At the same time, the number of seats available on a given flight on any day is maintained by looking only at the first letter of the fare basis code. So if I were looking to buy airfare using the VPEE02 fare basis code, I would need to find flights that had seats available in the “V” fare class. Using some clever tools that exist on the Internet, I can query the global reservations systems to check for just that kind of info. And putting the two data sets together I can determine what flights are likely to price at a given point, or what flights have upgrade seats available, even before I go to buy anything.
Still with me?
Journey logic throws a wrench in the works. Journey logic says that if you’re connecting on an intinerary such as Newark (EWR) to Minneapolis (MSP) to Portland (PDX) to Tokyo (NRT) to Bangkok (BKK), and you want to upgrade any available segments, the routing EWR-BKK has to say that it’s allowed. If there are upgrade seats available on the segment PDX-NRT, but not on EWR-BKK, even though PDX-NRT is a subset of EWR-BKK, you can’t upgrade.
Sound difficult? Basically journey logic throws out the availability in the middle and only looks at availability from the true origin city to the final destination. Any flights that have availability in the middle essentially become irrelevant, and you can’t upgrade.
The same thing can happen if you’re trying to book a cheap airfare. Say there was a sale on flights from EWR-San Francisco (SFO), with a fare basis KLXVR2. Flights were available at a cost of $200, but you have to connect in MSP. You go try to book the flight, but it keeps pricing at $325 with a fare basis code of QWLXSP. So you go check to see if any seats are available on each segment in “K” class, and what do you know, EWR-MSP is showing K7 and MSP-SFO is showing K5. But with journey logic, EWR-SFO is at K0, so there are no seats available.
In the end, after two phone calls and several hours of hammering away at the website, I did get my ticket, EWR-MSP-PDX-NRT-BKK-NRT-LAX-MSP-EWR booked, with every segment except BKK-NRT in business class. So it looks like I won this battle against journey logic, even if I did deliver a self-inflicted wound by putting it on the wrong credit card.