Air Travel

Julia Gillard wanted her huge compensation package to give the carbon pricing scheme a soft landing in July. But Qantas has shot down that hope with February price rises.

The carbon scheme pushing up Qantas fares is the European version. But their penalty on emissions is much smaller than our $23 a tonne will be. The impact here could be greater. Opposition leader Tony Abbott will use this to further underline his claim that carbon pricing will hurt the economy, and to question whether families will be fully protected from rises in expenses.

The airline has preempted by two months the start of the Government’s carbon pricing compensation, $1.5 billion which was to go to welfare recipients in May and June as advance payments.

Continue reading "Fuelled by carbon tax, plane fares have lift off" »

To fly, or not to fly, that is the question/Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of disgruntled travellers/Or to take flight against a sky of troubles/And by opposing, end them?

Like Hamlet, airlines face a lose-lose situation.  Do they cancel flights at the expense of customer good will or risk planes falling out of the sky from catastrophic engine failure?  Because, let’s be honest here, there are no good plane crashes. 

In June 1982, Capt Eric Moody and his crew were flying from Kuala Lumpur to Perth when all four engines on their British Airways jumbo jet failed.  Without knowing it, they’d flown into a volcanic ash cloud.  For the next 13 minutes, the lives of the 248 passengers and 15 crew were in the balance.  Without engines, they were ditching into the sea.  That they restarted the engines and saved 268 lives is well known and dramatised on TV shows.  But what if the outcome was different?

Continue reading "It could’ve been ashes to ashes, dust to dust" »

Well, a Chilean volcano has finally given Australia what we tried but spectacularly failed to achieve last summer. We have The Ashes.

In a spooky parallel to the Eyjafjallajokull eruption last year, the Puyehue volcano has erupted, wreaking havoc with air travel. Just as an aside, wouldn’t it be nice if a volcano we can all spell went haywire for a change?

For so many Australian travellers, the long weekend has been long for all the wrong reasons. If you’ve been stranded somewhere, or know someone who’s been stranded, tell us your story.

Continue reading "Ash Tuesday" »

The worst place in the entire universe is any of the smoking rooms at the otherwise spotless new Hong Kong airport. In these tiny glass cells, dozens of travellers squeeze in for a desperate last puff before they fly out. If you’re foolish enough to step inside, you emerge instantly reeking of ashtray. Bleah.

As these loathsome smoky dens are to Hong Kong airport, so is the airport to the wider world. Airports themselves are captive hell holes, where we can no more escape the check-in queues, the over-inflated prices and the smug frequent flyers heading off to their poncy “lounges” than a smoker in the Hong Kong cubicle can escape the smoke cloud.

And Australian airports are among the worst, as a “leaked” survey yesterday confirmed. Leaked schmeaked. Like that was some kind of secret. Anyone could have told you our airports are shocking. All airports are shocking, even the supposedly good ones. Quite rightly, we hate airports… but not as much as we secretly love them.

Continue reading "Our secret shame: We actually love airports" »

An upstart Thai airline recently revealed that it had begun hiring “third sex” staff. By third sex, the airline means trannies. Pre-op, post-op, they don’t appear all that fussed; apparently they’re an inconclusive mob over there at PC Air.

A win for the rights of transgender and transsexual people the world over? Hmm. I’m 30. Not so young, but certainly so, so cynical.

I’m guessing that the airline name comes from the initials of the founder, Peter Chan, although in the West, PC has connotations centred on computers. And politics. The later, no doubt, underpins the temptation to rejoice.

Continue reading "The mile high club just got a whole lot weirder" »

It’s a very first-world picture of human misery: a packed airport terminal filled with thousands of delayed travellers.

There are frazzled parents at the limits of their patience, looking after bored kids giddy at being on their school holidays but frustrated at having nothing to do. Passengers milling around, trying to nap on a hard floor, anxious that the next announcement on the public address system will be the one that cancels their flight.

And all because of a computer problem.

Continue reading "Virgin blip gives a glimpse of total digital chaos" »

Mostly flying doesn’t bother me, although there was a time when just the thought of a trip to the airport would make me break out in a sweat.

My head would suddenly fill with all the possible bad things that could happen, notwithstanding the fact they rarely do.

On the other hand, I rarely worry about a visit to the doctor, and while I’d rather not see the inside of a hospital ward, I don’t get the chills at the thought of it. Sure I know there’s chance of something going wrong in even the best-run hospital, but how bad can things really be?

Continue reading "Why the hospital will kill you before a plane crash does" »