DL Standby List Not What It Seems?

I have in the past commented favorably on the Delta system of displaying standby status, and upgrade status, on large flat screens at the gate. This tells you whether you have a chance of making the flight, as it shows your position on the list, as well as the number of seats available.

Recently though ,I discovered that things are not quite what they seem. Due to delays at PHL (again), I was lucky to be able to get on an earlier flight, and also arrived in time for an earlier connection. Of course, without a reservation I was placed on the standby list, but I was glad to see that I was number one on the list. Once the flight had been boarded I felt that my chances were good, until the gate agent called up four passengers, with names that did not appear on the standby list and proceeded to board them. I also noticed that these passengers were indeed holding seat request cards and not full boarding passes.

So why were these names not the standby list? Were these some kind of special passengers, or were they friends of the gate agent?

P.S. The good news is that after allowing these other passengers on, we were lined up in order of the standby list, and allowed to board and take any seat, one by one. So I did make it onto the flight. I would have been a very unhappy camper though, if I had not made it.

Delta, it is not much good providing information, if the information that you provide is flawed!

A new income stream....

...but more inconvenience for frequent travelers.

I took a week off from flying last week, and worked from home. When I wnet to check my seats this week for my return I noticed that DL has a new "feature", Coach Choice seats. These are seats which are held open until 24 hours before the flight departs, and then can be purchased 'for a token fee'. The good news is that Elite level members do not need to pay, the bad news is that they are using half the exit row seats for this money spinner.

This means I have to set an alarm to remind me to log on exactly 24 hours before deaprtue, so I can get these special seats. Just an extra hassle that I could do without.

PHL security breach

Today, as I was about to have my ID checked by TSA, the word came down to stop all security processing. We stood around for over 60 minutes, for the majority of that time not knowing what was going on. Shortly before the end a rumour started circulating that it was due to a security breach.

In the Crown Room I overheard someone who had been at the metal detectors, and it seems that someone walked through a lane that was not in use. So of course, everything had to be shut down and rechecked.

Luckily my flight was already delayed, due to weather in ATL, so I just tried to relax and "enjoyed" the experience.

Still, as we say back in Blighty, some muvvers do 'ave 'em.

Tapeless, diskless, driveless video camera - HF11

I finally took the plunge and upgraded my video camera. I decided I wanted to have something that did not need tapes or DVDs for recording. This left the choice between a hard drive or solid state memory. After a lot of research, e.g. camcorderinfo.com and CNET, I decided not to go with a hard drive camera. Primary reasons were drive reliability and battery usage.

Again the web reviews were useful in helping me narrow down my choice. My choice was made a little easier when I discovered that Canon had introduced an HD camera with 32GB of onboard memory, the HF11. Of course I could get more memory with a hard drive, up to 120GB, and other solid state cameras use memory cards. But having onboard memory is more reliable, and the camera that I chose has an SD slot for expanding the memory with SDHC cards. This amount of memory equates to almost 3 hours of recording at the highest quality. This is more than enough for week to week recording, as I can transfer the files to my computer on a regular basis. When we go on our round the world trip, sometime in the next 12 months, I can buy some extra memory cards, or use hotel computers to transfer the files home.

The camera arrived last week, and I had a great weekend playing around with it. An important part of my testing was with the editing of the digital files. The HF11 stores files in the AVCHD format, and I had read that this format uses a lot of computer cycles when processed for editing. Luckily, my editing environment, quad-core CPU with Sony Vegas software seems to be able to handle the AVCHD files almost as easily as the files captured from tape. One big advantage of the non-tape based recording is that file copying is much faster than the real-time capture that I had to do with tape.

I was totally blown away by the size of the camera, compared to my previous first generation HD tape based Sony HDR-HC1, it is about 50% smaller in all directions making it about one quarter in volume! It is literally a palm sized camera. That gives it a link to the travel side of this blog, because the camera is small enough to slip into a brief case, even a (largish) coat pocket. [Just remember to take it out when you go through security at the airport]

Once I have more experience with the camera, I will post some more information.

Expansion of paperless check-in

A few months ago I wrote about using Continental's paperless check-in service at EWR. I also mentioned when Delta started their trial at LGA. Earlier this week USA Today carried the good news that TSA have approved these trials and the service will be rolled out across the US. I was especially please to see that Delta will be introducing paperless check-in at two airports that I use on a regular basis, Orlando and Atlanta. No word of this on the Delta web-site yet, so I hope that USA Today's information is correct.
The other big question, now that Orlando and Atlanta are on the list, is whether Clear, who operate at both of these airports, will also have the necessary bar code readers. Hopefully they will, so I can save a tree or two.

Thanks TSA, finally a useful step forward

How secure is security?

In the last few weeks I have accidently left a small bottle of water in my briefcase, a couple of times. In both cases TSA did not see, or at least did not react, to this "contraband". While the bottle is small, it is most certainly larger than the 3 oz limit. I understand that something like this might be missed once, but twice in a relatively short period? Ooops!

So is this an oversight, or just TSA being nice to me?

End of extra fees?

Now that the price of fuel has fallen dramatically, will the airlines be dropping their extra fees for baggage, drinks , etc?

Probably not!!!!

I stand corrected - I just found out that Air Canada is the first to remove their extra baggage fees. Hopefully others will follow soon!

Kudos to AC

Time to segregate elite level boarding?

I have been flying out of PHL on DL for a number of weeks now. In addition to the awful gates that Delta uses, especially A13, the end of week flights often have a huge number of elite level passengers. On some flights over 80% of the seats are filled with Silver, Gold or Platinum travelers. Delta seems to have dropped the zone 2/zone 3 groupings for frequent travelers concentrating everyone into zone 2. When you have between 80 and 110 (yes, that was the number announced for one of the flights) people waiting to board an MD-88, chaos ensues. Even more so when a poorly designed gate A13 is being used.
So I think, Delta, it is time to re-think your process, and return to a segregated boarding. It would either have to be all elite levels, but by row, or, as a biased high level elite, even better would be zones by elite level, i.e. Platinum zone2, Gold, 3, etc.
For flights where the number of qualified passengers is below a certain threshold, e.g. 20, the gate agent could call the three zones simultaneously.

C'mon Delta, give us really frequent travelers a break

Delta Ugrade Priority

A while back I posted my suspicions that Delta's upgrade priority was based more on ticket price that elite mileage (the plasma screens do say "a combination of ......."). In a recent issue of Business Traveller, a magazine that can be found in the Delta Crown Club rooms, I found proof positive of this policy. A reader wrote in to complain that he, as a Platinum member, had not been upgraded, while a colleague with Gold status, but on a more expensive ticket, received the upgrade.



I have to say Delta that I think your policy is wrong! I undertsand that if two people with the same elite level are vying for an upgrade that you use the ticket price as a tie breaker. But it should not be the primary deciding factor. The ticket is a one time event, while someone who has colected MQMs to reach an elite level is a return customer and should be treated as such.

So Delta, please use medallion status (or even last year's or this year's MQM count) as primary criteria for upgrade priority, rather than ticket value and trip disruption.

Cell phone usage at home

My home is located at the edge of a mobile phone cell, which means that my reception in house is pretty unreliable. As my business contacts tend to call me on my cell, poor reception is very inconvenient, so I have been looking for a solution.
There used to be three possible solutions:

1. A cell repeater, expensive and complicated to install, especially if you need to use 3G connections.
2. A supplementary antenna, ties the phone pretty much to one location in the house.
3. Femtocell, which is another form of repeater, and needs to be provider supplied. My carrier (AT&T) has not started with them yet, although there are rumors. T-Mobile and Sprint do have solutions.

Recently I discovered a new solution, cordless phones that have a built-in Bluetooth link. This allows you to pair your phone with the base station, and then use the cell phone as one of the outgoing, or incoming, lines. GE has the Cell Fusion models, and Panasaonic has Link2Cell. I recently purchased the GE model, which is a DECT system (as is the Panasonic), so no interference with your in-house Wi-Fi either.

I now leave my cell phone in the front room, where I do get some reception. When the cell phone rings, a second later the GE handset starts ringing too, and shows that the incoming call is through my cell phone, and includes caller ID information. The base station is also connected to our (VOIP) landline, so the GE handset acts as a two (or three) line set. Yes, three lines, if I pair my wife's iPhone with the second BT channel. I also use the handset to initiate outgoing calls through the cell phone, for business calls where I do not want to expose my home number through caller ID.

Being a DECT system the phone works well throughout the house, so I do not need to worry about missing cell phone calls anymore. Right now I only have a single handset, but the base station can accommodate up to six handsets. As my current DECT cordless handsets break, they will be replaced by the GE handsets. I am still playing around with some of the features, like distinctive rings for specific callers, and I believe that I can also assign a different ring between landline and cell phone calls. Audio quality is as good as our other cordless handsets, and the ringer is much louder.

Free gift from Delta

Today I received an email from Delta, which seems to be aimed at SkyMiles members who have not flown for a while:

"You're a valued SkyMiles® member and we've missed having you onboard. We'd like to welcome you back with a special gift—1,000 bonus miles. Register today, then book your round-trip ticket and fly by November 15, 2008.
Plus, if you book at delta.com you'll earn an additional 500 bonus miles. You'll always find our best fares at delta.com—guaranteed ....."

As I travel twice a week (out and back), it looks like they started missing me after a few days already. Still I am not one to pass up a few bonus miles, so I registered, and will book the necessary flight shortly

Thanks for the extra miles Delta!

Treo 750 Disaster

This weekend disaster struck on Labor Day. My phone had been acting funny for 7-10 days, freezing more than I had been used to, primarily while on power and after going into sleep (blank screen) mode. During the preceding week things were getting worse, with freezes while live. I put this all down to software (MemAid? Opera Mini beta?) and resolved to do some research. Thursday, as I was returning, the phone froze in the plane when I turned it on to call up my daughter, who was picking me up at the airport. When I did a soft reset, the phone decided to do a hard reset, and all sorts of other problems occurred. Next day I was able to get the phone working again, after carrying out a couple of hard resets, soft resets had stopped working. Part of the problem is that when the soft resets stopped working I was essentially unable to to a restore (or backup), because Sprite Backup does a reset before and after any activity :-(.

The next, disastrous, step was that the phone refused to cycle through the hard resets. I was able to do a hard reset, but it just stuck somewhere in the initialization process. Tuesday morning I called AT&T immediately, who were not able to offer any help as they told me I was out of warranty. I contacted Palm, through their Live Chat support and has handed off to the phone support group. While they could not help me, they did indicate that their records showed that I was still in warranty, because of that fact, they could not arrange an exchange repair, I had to return to AT&T for that. When I called AT&T, I was told that I was indeed out of warranty, by one week! If I had called a week earlier, my phone would have been exchanged for free, now it would cost me $399 for a refurbished model, more for a new one! begging and pleading with AT&T had no effect, even when talking to their retention department, where I was transferred immediately when I asked how much my Early Termination Fee would be (as offset against the cost of a replacement phone with AT&T, compared to taking a new line at one of their competitors) :-( :-(

However, before taking that final step I decided, as my phone was pretty much worthless, I might as well try to re flash the ROM. This was because I had a gut feel that the reset freezes might be due to a corrupted ROM. I am not too sure how that can happen, but as the phone's ROM can be flashed I guess it can be corrupted too.

Unfortunately I had lost the flash software which I had used a number of months earlier to upgrade the phone from WM 5.0 to WM 6.0. However, even if I had it, it would not have helped as it was designed to be loaded via a sync connection. And as my phone would not reset, no sync. I knew that there was an alternative method to flash the ROM, using an SD card. So using good old Google I manged to find the necessary software. I used a spare mini-SD card, loaded the software and then used the particular key presses to start the ROM flash procedure. It took about 10 minutes, and much to my surprise and relief....it actually worked. I have a fully functional phone again!

On the same forum where I found the 6.0 ROM (xda-developers), I also saw postings about upgrading the Treo 750 to run WM6.1. As I now had a way back to WM6.0 I decided to try it out. It was not as easy as the instructions indicated, but I did finally manage to load something that looked like WM6.1 on my phone. Unfortunately I discovered that firstly my data connection stopped working, and then shortly afterwards the initially working phone connection also stopped . So I had to drop back to WM6.0, but it works and I just saved myself having to buy a $399 replacement phone. Now I can wait until AT&T add the Treo pro to their line-up, and my contract is up (April next year). or maybe by then I can go for a new HTC Touch HD.

MemAid for WM6

I have been using the Opera 9.5 beta for WM recently, and while it is a fantastic browser (think Safari on the iPhone), it is a memory hog. I tried out and was impressed with MemAid by DinarSoft. this program monitors memeory usage and can reclaim 'lost' memory. It also allows you to set limist for the PIE browser cache, and even for Opera (although it does not work with the 9.5 version yet).
You can schedule a regualr memory clean on a daily basis, so that you alway have a 'clean' system.

Recommended tool!

I am afraid that I have to caution you about my recommendation above - I suspect that this program is responsible for the ROM corruption mentioned in the post above. However, I will add that it is only: 'suspect this program is responsible'.

More (good) technology news from Delta

On a couple of recent flights I was privileged to experience some of the new changes to Delta's interiors. One of the surprises was the availability of USB power at all seats ,yes including coach! One was on a 737, I think 800 series, which will found regularily on domestic flights, long and short. The second was on a 757-200 (Ex-TWA seating according to Seatguru) which had been refurbished with intercontinental seating (electric lie flat style, masses of legroom and in seat 110V or USB).
The USB connections are great for recharging a cell phone, especially since I find that I am tending to run out at the end of the day with my Treo 750. I was thinking of buying a second battery, but think I might not need to with this new power source. Of course, it is not available in all aircraft yet, but I hope that Delta will install these outlets out as they roll out their in-flight WiFi.

Way to go Delta, you are thinking of us frequent business travellers again - thanks

Geek pride label

You may have noticed these strange bar code boxes around the place. They are 2-d or QR barcodes. There is now a site on the Internet where you can generate your own code with your choice of URL or text coded into the symbol. Why would you do this? Well, there are now programs which run on your cellphone and use the phone's camera to read the barcode. For example, I use I-nigma on my WM Treo 750, but a quick Google will find many different ones. You can also try this site, or use the software list on the Semapedia site linked below.

If I see one of these codes somewhere, I-nigma takes a picture and decodes it for me. If it is a URL, it will link immediately. So if you see me in the airport, feel free to take a picture of the QR coded label on my luggage, it will link you to this blog.

Another site that uses QR barcodes is http://www.semapedia.org/. They only generate codes linked to Wikipedia entries, but useful to put on buildings and other locations which have Wikipedia entries.

There is even someone on the Net who will create a wearable patch from your QR code. That is really showing your pride of geekdom!

Another PHL disaster

The PHL curse strikes yet again. After arriving two hours late, due to weather, last Sunday I arrived at Hertz a little before 2 a.m. to find that, while my name was on the Gold board, there was no car in the stall indicated. So I went over to the Gold office to find that they were closing up and sending us, there were more travelers in my position, over to the main office. This did not look too good, as there was already a line of at least twenty people waiting and only two agents. Luckily the opened a 'Gold' line with intially two agents. However, very quickly one of the agents disappeared, without any explanation. There was no visible manager at the office, no-one directing anything at all. The one person being handled in the gold line seemed to have some problem with his reservation and so I had to wait about twenty-five minutes before being helped. I was the next person in the Gold line, and I felt very sorry for the the five or six people behind me, as it seemed they would have a long, long wait.

During all this a manager surfaced briefly, looked at all the irritated people and disappeared again. The agents behind the desk seemed to have been dragged from everywhere, because the one that took over the 'Gold' line, had to ask other Hertz personnel about completing almost every part of the rental agreement. And yes, this was all being done by hand as the computers were down for their nightly maintenance. So when I was finally at the counter, it took another 15+ minutes to complete my paperwork. I walked across to the stall number that the agent had written down, and drove towards the exit almost over 45 minutes after arrival.


As the guard checked my paperwark and car, he looked a couple times and then, can you believe it, told me that I had the wrong car and that I had to go back to the office to sort it out. This really ticked me off as It was now after 2:30 am and I wanted to get to my hotel. The 'ghost' manager happened to be wandering the lot nearby, so the guard called him across. He also offered no other solution than returning to the office, so I removed my luggage from the vehicle and walked across to the competition (Avis). In spite of a line of people at the Preferred office, out was off the lot in less than 15 minutes.


I sympathize, a little, with Hertz that weather problems play havoc with the arrival of clients and pickup of vehicles but they need to find better ways to treat their regular customers.


Questions/comments for Hertz:

1. While there are still cars on the lot, why is the car allocated to me gone?
   
2. If my car is used, why was my name not removed from the Gold board?
   
3. If you know that the computers will be down, but still expecting a number of clients, why not print out the rental agreements before the system goes down, saving time when the client arrives. (They do this to have the RA hanging in the car for pickup, so it cannot be a big deal. Just need a special version, without vehicle number, which is the only thing that needs to be filled in at the time of pickup)
4. If you end up seriously inconveniencing your regular (Gold) customers, offer something, for example a free tank of gas. [In my case I normally use much less than a 1/2 tank anyway]

Sorry, Hertz a SUDOK for you. Any rental company can rent a car, but it takes a good location to handle difficult situations well.

Pi.. Poor Planning Punishes Passengers

Unfortunately, as much as I love flying Delta, occasionally they do make mistakes. Two weeks ago was a howler......

It started with my flight out of PHL. Although evrything looked OK there, delays were being psoted for the ATL bound flights. Thunderstorms was the reason given, and normally I do not worry too much because all flights get messed up, including the connecting flights. But to be on the safe side I decided to ask whether I could go standby on the flight which is scheduled to leave one hour before my flight. This actually occurred just as they announced that my flight, a commuter jet, was delayed by a couple of hours, making it leave at least 30 minutes after the previous flight, instead of one hour before.

Much to my surprise I was called up for the new flight, but ended up with a middle seat fairly far back. Little did I know how much I would regret that decision. We finally leave the gate, and then spend forever on the taxiway. All the time I am looking at the time, and doing caculations to see if I would make the revised departure time (delayed) of my connecting flight.

As we landed at ATL, I checked my clock and then immediately called up the flight status for my connection. According to the website, the flight was still on the ground with a departure scheduled 15 minuets later. As it was departing from a gate close our our arrival gate I began to hope that I might be lucky this evening. We taxied over to the concourse, then the pilot cam on and said that our gate was still occupied, but that the other aircraft was loaded and would be pushing back very shortly. To cut a long story short, we stood outside the gate for a full hour after our arrival.

In the meanwhile, using my PDA with its Internet connection I was able to see that my connection flight left about 15 minutes after we should/could have deplaned. Adding insult to injury, while waiting I found out that the flight home before my connection was delayed even more, and I could have made that one, if we had not sat outside the gate for so long.

I understand, or at least try to understand, when airline operations fall to pieces because of weather conditions. But in this case I feel that Delta made a really stupid mistake by not arraning an alternative gate. This would of saved a number of passengers an unexpected night in Atlanta.

While Delta was probably claiming 'weather conditions' so not taking any responsibility for overnight expenses, if I had not been so tired (it was after all after midnight by the time we deplaned, I think we could have had an argument that it was not the weather, but poor planning and execution of their bad weather procedures that forced us to miss our flights.

The final mix-up occurred next morning, when I checked in for my 'replacement' flight. The evening before, on my way to the hotel, I had called Special Member Services to complain that I had bee rebooked on a 10:30 am flight next day. I was told all the earlier flights were full and that this was the first confirmed seat they could offer me. I asked to be placed on waitlist for the first flight (07:30 am), which was done. When I checked in in the morning, the selfservice machine just gave me a boarding pass for my 10:30 flight. Expecting a seat request for the 7:30, I quickly went to the Crown Room and asked why I was not listed for the 07:30. The agent checked everything for me and found that there was a single seat, at the back of the plane but aisle. The good news was that, now being confirmed in a seat, I was eligible fo the upgrade list. Given how busy things were, I did not even expect to get the upgrade, but my luck had turned. So there was at least one glimmer of sunshine in my trip.

But seriously Delta, please try harder and plan better.

Delta moving forward on technology again

Delta made some great news known this week, they are going be the first of the big airlines to offer WiFi on all their doemstic flights. The first aircraft will come online in the fall, and apparently they will be starting with the MD-88s. This is good news because those aircraft normally do not have an entertainment system. So now for $9.95, or $13.95 for longer flights, the entertainmnet will be 'surfing'.

Some of the comments in the Delta blog are suggesting that elite status travellers should get discounted or free access. I wholeheartedly agree!

Fly Delta into the future!

Thanks Delta

iPhones for the family

My wife and younger daughter have been anging to get iPhones for quite a while. When the 3G was annouced at the much reduced price, we had to bite the bullet. Being on the return trip from our RV trip (see earlier post) we were unable to join the throngs lining up on July 11th. After that it turned out to be quite difficult to find one, let alone two. We tried the two Apple stores in Orlando, I even made plans to drive to New York from South Jersey, to their flagship 5th Avenue store. But last weekend we managed to get our two in Orlando.

I am quite impressed with the user interface on the phone, and the large screen. Unfortunately, the iPhone is missing some key features that I find very useful on my Treo. They include Voice Command, Bluetooth A2DP (stereo), tethering, cut and paste, memory chip expansion, turn by turn GPS, MS-Office compatibility, to name a few. Some of these are no doubt available now, or soon, in the Apps Store, but I will wait to see what the Windows Mobile phones such as the HTC Touch or Samsung Omnia are like.

It has been interesting to see how my wife has taken to texting, even in this short time, now that she has an easy to use keyboard instead of a phone pad. The fact that the messages get delivered immediately is also a plus since her experience with T-Mobile was frequent delays in the delivery of the text message which I was sending. I will blog in a few weeks about her experiences with this new toy.

Philly good omen?

Well I finally switched back to travelling in and out of Philly. On my first "return" trip to PHL I am very happy to report that my flight arrived exactly on time. In fact pretty much the only hitch was my name missing on the car rental car assignment display. It was great to be at my hotel not too long after midnight, instead of somewhere between 1:30 and 3:30 a.m.

Thanks Philly, hopefully a good omen for my upcoming flights

Weather discrepancy

Last week I was getting ready to leave for my 90 minute drive to EWR and decided to check fly.faa.gov. The FAA was showing 75 minutes delays at EWR, due to low ceiling (low clouds). I have complained earlier about how quickly these two runway airports back up, so was not surprised. However, on the drive up to the airport I was surprised that the sky was beautifully clear, so reckoned that the delays would be over. I checked the flight status on pda.continental.com and my flight was confirmed as 'On time'.

As I rushed to the gate (I had left the office a little later than planned) I noticed that there were a lot of people standing around at the gate. Yes, the flight was not boarding on time. In fact, about twenty minutes after the official boarding time, the display board at the gate suddenly had a new departure time, ninety minutes later than scheduled. So even in good weather EWR continues to be plagued with delays.

In flying in and out of EWR over the last 12 odd weeks I have had only one flight, in or out, that left on time. So time for a change, I an going to give my nemesis, PHL, another chance.

Useful gadget

A while back I mentioned how much I love my TomTom GPS solution running on my phone. One of the problems has been finding a place to balance the phone on the (rental) car dashboard. After having the phone fall off, normally at an inconvenient time. My GPS came with a windshield holder, but it is quite a large piece of equipment, and by briefcase is already pretty full. So I decided to get an airvent holder, and found I should have bought one of these much sooner. This gizmo holds the phone so that the screen is easily visible while driving. When using the car charger cable the phone battery, which normally runs hot while charging, is kept cool by the air coming out of the vent.

[Sorry no pictures of the phone in the holder, as I used the phone to take the pictures]

Back to Blogging

It has been a while since I posted anything here, partially because I took a break from flying up and down to South Jersey. Getting away from the hassles of boarding passes, malfunctioning monorails, security lines and delayed flights, I drove from Central Florida to Jersey. There is a little method to my madness, we have an RV and I took my wife, our dogs and our cat along for the ride.

We arranged to spend the July4th weekend in South Jersey, and used it as a base for visiting Philly and New York. Of course, July 4th was reserved for Independence Mall in Philadelphia. There was something special about visiting Independence Hall on Independence Day, 232 years after the deed was done. We also watched the Philly fireworks, in the rain, but have to admit that once you have enjoyed the Disney extravaganzas, you are spoiled for life.

But I am back to travelling, so posts will start coming again.

Stefan

Delta moves to paperless checkin

Delta has just announced that they will join Continental in offering paperless checkin. delta's initial foray into this technology will take place at their main terminal at LGA. Having used this on my recent departures from EWR, I am looking forward to DL rolling this out across their network, especially their main hub ATL and my home airport MCO.

The future looms closer

Overloaded hubs....

As you will see from my posts, my recent travel has been in and out of EWR and PHL. One of the disadvantages of both of these airports is that they are both effectively only 2 runway airports. And yes, I know that PHL has a small runway used by some commuter planes but most aircraft, including commuter jets use the 2 main runways. As both airports are also hubs (EWR = CO, PHL = US), this means that things can get very busy at peaks times. Any small weather problems can really mess things up. So on my recent trips to or from the NorthEast almost every flight has had more than usual delay.

Even when there are no weather problems, I have had bad experiences. About a week ago on a flight out of EWR there was an initial delay of 45 minutes, due to the later arrival of the incoming aircraft. Once we finally left the gate we waited over an hour before we could even take off. This on a day when there was absolutely no bad weather any where up or down the Eastern seaboard. In other words the delay was purely due to scheduling too many departures at the same time.

I wish there were a way that the airlines could be penalized for making these bad scheduling decisions. Oh, I forgot, they can....avoid those airports or airlines!

Delta Down on Information?

Dear Delta,
One of the benefits of flying on your airline is the ability to get information about stand-by and upgrade list status from the screens at the gates of many of your aiports. One quirk has been that your flagship international concourse E at Harstfield never had these screen. I always put this down to the fact that this concourse had been equipped just before the screens were available.

However, today I noticed that some of the E gates have been remodeled, and still no status screen. The only reason that I can think of, is that international travel does not involve as much stand-by and upgrade travel. But you still have quite a few domestic flights leaving from the E concourse.

I sincerely hope that this is not the start of the removal of the status screens from all of your gates. This is easily one of the most useful tools for frequent fliers and much appreciated by all of us.

Delta, please, say it ain't so....

StuffBak WORKS!

Earlier this week I was devastated to find that I had dropped my phone while travelling. I knew roughly where I had done so, so retraced my steps, but to no avail. I tried all the usual things, calling the phone, sending an SMS message and calling the 'Lost and Found' at the car rental where I dropped the phone. I was just getting ready to call ATT to order a replacement when I received a call from StuffBak, saying that my phone had been found and helping me arrange for its return. For those who do not know this service, StuffBak sells stickers, at electronic retailers, office supplies stores or online, which offer a reward for calling an 800 number (or accessing a website) if an item is found. Each sticker has a unique code number, which enables Stuffbak to relate it back to the owner. I my case, it was a Hertz employee who found it and called Stuffbak.

I have had these stickers on various items for a while now, unfortunately not on some items that I have misplaced over the last couple of years, so this was the first time I had actually lost a tagged item. Of course I was very pleased to receive the phone call as I had really given up hope. StuffBak claims a 75% success rate, and while I originally thought this might be advertising hype, I now believe them. In fact I am so happy about this that I am recommending that my employer join their corporate program.

Thank you StuffBak

N.B. More Kudos to Hertz as well, their 'Lost & Found' department voicemail promises only return calls if an item is found, but they did call me to say that my phone had not been turned in to them. Once again, great service from Hertz. It is this kind of service that keeps me coming back.

Misery at Liberty

As you will notice from my posts, I have been travelling with Continental quite frequently in the last few weeks. One of the reasons was it helps me avoid my least favorite airport, PHL. I am having to rethink my strategy though, as this trip, both out and return I had some bad experiences with the AirTrain monorail at Newark. On Sunday night, when the train runs as a single line shuttle, combined with technical problems, it took me over an hour to get from gate to rental car. On the return trip, again there were technical problems, so this time it took only 45 minutes to get from the rental car facility to the terminal.
On Sunday evening I sort of understand that they use the 'quiet' time to do maintenance, but why not start at 2 am as there seemed to be enough irate passengers arriving between midnight and 1. The troubles today were at peak time though, so should not happen.

I have always wondered why the Port Authority installed such a tinker toy type monorail anyway. They should have ordered the Disney monorail system. These sleek, reliable trains run 365 days a year, with hardly any problems. But they probably cost a lot more than the AirTrain.

You gets what you paid for......

Back to Old Fashioned Flying?

On my flight up to EWR last night, I felt like I had taken a step back into the past. Due to weather in the North east we had to wait on the ground in Orlando, and stayed parked at the gate. I was surprised to see the Captain coming through the cabin, handing out flight crew (wings) pins to all the children on board. I can remember when I was young that getting such a pin was a big deal. Of course, flying is not the big adventure that it used to be, but it was nice to see Captain Beattie bringing back some of the magic.

Paperless Check-In

For a while I was jealous of Continental's trial at IAH for paperless check-in. This involved displaying a special 3D bar code on your cell phone, which could be read by both TSA and at the gate. Well, I have to wait no more. CO have recently extended this facility to include departures from Newark (EWR), as well as Washington national (DCA).
It is really fantastic to be able to take out your phone and be scanned through. On my latest trip, someone in front of me at the TSA line used his phone and a number of people were asking the TSA officer about it. Even the gate agent was pleased to be able to do this, obviously not a lot of people are doing it,.....yet!
It finally looks like the US is catching up with Europe, where cell phone check in has been available for quite a time. Now just to hope that this capability spreads to other airlines (Delta, are you listening?) and airports all over the US.

Update: The day after this posting, I read in USA Today that NWA are starting paperless check in at Indianapolis. Begs the question why not at Minneapolis or Detroit. So maybe DL will get this functionality via the (merger) back door.

Even more penny pinching? Award travel price hikes!

I am afraid that my favorite airline, Delta, has blotted its copybook. This concerns the 'junk' fees that are charged for the so-called free, award travel. I happened to be looking for flights to Europe, using Delta's excellent award travel calendar. Having found some flights I noticed a major discrepancy in the extra fees, depending on whether the flights were actually booked on Delta, or one of the SkyTeam partners, Northwest or Continental. In the past I remember paying about $50-70 per ticket to Europe, so I was very surprised to see that DL is now charging over $200 in extra fees. NW and CO flights were still at the $50-70 level, for the same itinerary.
So, is this an underhand way to reduce the cost to the airline of award travel? Come on, DL, not the way to treat your hard travelling supporters.

The dreaded PHL curse strikes yet again

This evening, as I drove through the airport to the car rental returns, I noticed that there was a major backup of traffic approaching the terminal. Not wanting to spend 20-30 minutes in the shuttle bus to the terminal, I decided to use shanks pony (foot power). The Avis lot is just across the road from the Marriott and I had seen signs in the terminal pointing to the Marriott. So I figured that would be the way to go. I should have known better! Still, I did get a good exercise session out of it. It turned out to be quite an odyssey, with not real route and very little in the way of signage. The few signs which I saw were also pretty confusing. So 15 minutes later I finally arrived at one of the terminal A security checkpoints. The silver lining to this cloud was that I had found such a little used route that the checkpoint had absolutely no line at all; it was hidden away in a corridor.

The, further to the JD Power survey, boarding through Delta's gate A13 was a total disaster in terms of layout to accommodate anxious passengers and a very poor PA system, which made almost all announcements virtually unintelligible.

Sorry JD Power you got it wrong

Nifty site for mobile data users (kudos to CO)

Hats off to Continental for their mobile web site pda.continental.com . In addition to all the usual things you would expect, you can also check on the status of the standby and upgrade lists, as well as taking a look at the seat plan, to check if that seat next to you has stayed empty. I have always been please with Delta's policy of displyaing the upgrade and standby lists at the gate, if they have the plasma screens installed. But not every Delta station has this equipment. The Continental site means that you can get that information at any airport.

Of course CO is also at the forefront of switching to paperless check-in. In IAH, DCA and soon EWR you can check in on your mobile, receive a barcode on your phone and then have TSA check your details through a scan of the barcode. The gate scanners also read the barcode, so ...no paper. Of course there is now a very strong argument for making sure that you keep your phone well charged.

Well done Continental, you are well tuned to the busy, mobile traveller.

More penny pinching

AA have just announced that they will be charging $15 to check the first suitcase. This is in addition to the $25 that was already in place for the second bag. So now the "full-service" airlines are beginning to act like the discount airlines like RyanAir, who charge extra for about everything except the air in the plane. I know that the current fuel prices are causing a crisis in the airlines, but why not just bite the bullet and increase ticket prices. Instead AA is trying to collect more money via a sneaky backdoor because so many people check bags nowadays, due to TSA security.

So it will not be long before there will be charges for: carry on bags, soft drinks, peanuts, window seats, aisle seats, exit seats....seat belts?

Who did they ask?

The local Philadelphia radio and TV stations were crowing this week about a JD Power report that placed PHL as the number 1 airport in customer satisfaction. Who did they ask? Or were they handing out cannabis cookies? While the new terminals are a major improvement over the old concourses, there are still many problems, e.g. traffic and the disorganized car rental lots. So #1 seems a little strange.

Further erosion of frequent flyer rights (UAL)

United has decided to remove the 500 mile minimum for mileage and elite qualification mileage. This means that only actual mileage will be accrued. AA also has the same rule, probably for longer that UA. This will be interesting to see whether my favorite airline, Delta, decides to follow suit. It will actually be difficult for them to do so, since UA and AA both use miles or segments for elite qualification. Delta got rid of segment qualification when they introduced MQM, and if they try to follow UAL's lead, there will be a lot of very unhappy campers, who used to make elite status on short flights, that will now miss that privilege.

Change to FAA rules, or safety violation?

I have been flying Continental recently, as this gives me a direct flight to NJ for my current project. As I am not eligible for upgrades, I was glad that I could get my second favorite seat, in the exit row. I was surprised to notice on both the flight up, as well as the return flight, that not of the cabin crew came to the exit rows to give the usual (FAA mandated?) exit row pep talk. On one flight this would have been useful as it would have alerted the crew to the fact that the passenger next to me, luckily only two of us on this side of the plane, did not have her seat in a fully upright position during take-off.
Kind of makes you uncomfortable when you see that the crew are a little slipshod in their attitude.

Scheduling Inflexibility

The dreaded PHL curse strikes again. On my first return flight from my new project I arrived at PHL about an hour before my flight. Hoping to relax for a few minutes I went off to find the Crown Room. To my surprise I discovered that the club was about to close, even though there were still 60 minutes until the departure of the last Delta flight.
You would think that Delta could have adjusted their opening times to close 30 minutes later, in order to incorporate the passengers of that last flight.

Sorry Delta, time for another 'soduk'

A week later I managed to arrive 20 minutes earlier, so did make it into the Crown Room. Once inside though, the food and beverage service had already been closed down, although one of the agents kindly went into the closed kitchen and brought me a soft drink. I also found out that the opening hours have not been chaanged because effective July 1st the last flight will be leaving at 7 p.m. Still showing you inflexibility DL-PHL.

Blowing My Own Trumpet?

A while back I blogged about the free WiFi available at airline clubs, decrying the lack of free access at the Delta Crown Rooms. You will also see that I did have to eat crow, after getting a reply from Delta to my email to Customer Service. In this reply, they indicated that free access had been available on request since some time last year. I thought that I must have missed a communication from Delta somewhere, but a week or two ago I received a general marketing email, highlighting....free WiFi at the crown Rooms.

Did my email to Customer Service (including the link I put in it to this blog) cause Delta to realize that they needed to publicize this benefit?

TomTom Traffic Rocks

When I switched to my Treo750m I treated myself to Palm's GPS solution. this includes a matchbox sized (for those of you who can remember matchboxesu BlueTooth GPS receiver and TomTom software. As consultant who often visits different clients, travels to different client locations, having a tool that helps me find my way is indispensable. The small GPS receiver does have one disadvantage, it is so small that it is easy to fforget about it. I did in fact leave it in a cab on one occasion; luckily was able to reach the driver who brought it back. All it cost me was a big, fat tip.
In addition to the standard voices, I have downloaded, for a nominal sum, driving instructions read by John Cleese. So my journeys now have Fawlty Towers touch.
Recently I noticed a new bar and icon on the side. On tapping it, I discovered that it controls TomTom Traffic. This week I was using the GPS on my way back to the airport, and was surprised to be directed along a different route than I had seen when checking directioms back to the airport earlier in the week. Pleasantly surprised, ecause it was taking me along the road recommended by locals in the office to avoid traffic jams. Initially I though that this was just coincidental, and that the new route was shorter. However, as I approached the airport, I was warned that there was a traffic jam ahead. The instructions showed that I should take the next exit off the highway, to follow an alternate route to the airport. As it was, I was coming off a bridge and could see that the traffic jam had resolved itself. But it is nice to know that the navigation program is looking out for you. In that not what technolgy is all about?

Updates for Outlook

After the problems with the Delta updates for Outlook I found that Orbitz, which I was using because I could not get Delta only flights for my upcoming trips. While I am not too keen on the format, at least they provide individual items per day, unfortunately not per segment. I also found that Avis and Marriott provide Outlook updates for reservations at their sites.

Save a lot of typing.

Philly Stake

In my new job and new project I am "blessed" to have the opportunity to fly through Philadelphia. I had my first trip this week, and was wondering how the aiport had changed compared to my experiences a number of years ago. In the past I found that PHL was pretty much the worst airport to fly through. Not just the terminal, but for some reason the support facilities, specifically car rental, also match the airport in terms of my rating.

After deplaning (USAir, which contributed to my negative demeanour) I was optimistic as we had arrived at the new terminal A. Everything looked quite good, until I stepped out to for the rental shuttle. The pickup lane was packed with parked cars, sorry, waiting cars so that the rental and parking shuttles were having to line up to collect their passengers. When building such a nice new terminal I would have expected that a better solution for private and shuttle pickups would have been incorporated into the design.

And then, not contrary to my expectations, I had to wait almost 20 minutes for my Avis rental shuttle. In that time two or three of the competitors' buses passed by. But of course, if I had booked a car with any other company, its shuttles would have been delayed. There is just something about PHL and I that do not mix.

Hopefully on my way out my bad luck will have run out. Again I am optimistic, especially since I noticed that Delta have moved from the old E terminal to the new A terminal.

My Review of Case it HIP-15 Case-it Hip-15 Neoprene Cd Player Case (Case It HIP15)

Originally submitted at Beach Audio

Accommodates Most Personal Cd Players ;stretchable Neoprene Forms A Snug Fit With Player Case That Prevents Skipping ;large Pocket Accommodates Jewel Boxes, Leads, Battery Packs, Headphones & Accessories

Case it HIP-15 Case-it Hip-15 Neoprene Cd Player Case (Case It HIP15)

Not bad for the price

By DisneyDude from Celebration, FL on 4/18/2008

 

3out of 5

Pros: Versatile, Durable, Easy to Use

Cons: Not well finished

Best Uses: Travel

Describe Yourself: Value Oriented

Primary use of this product: Business

I am using this product in a different way than intended, but it does what I need. I needed the stretchy fit, but did not need the belt part - so I cut that off. I was not too impressed by the overall finish, but as this item will spend most of its time hidden in my briefcase, it does not matter for me. If you were using this as intended, i.e. to carry a CD player around on your waist, it should look more finished off.

(legalese)

Photo Ringer

On the Palm Treo 750 which I use, there is a feature to associate pictures with a contact, so that the picture appears when a call is received from any of the numbers stored for that contact. I found out that one of the advantages of switching from Lotus Notes & mNotes (previous employer) to Exchange server (current employer) is that the pictures are also stored in my contact list on the server. In the past, if I carried out a hard reset on my phone, I had to go in and reconnect the pictures to all the relevant contacts. Now it is done automatically

Even better, my new employer has an application on their intranet site, which can be used to look up information about colleagues, and includes a picture. As a new employee, connecting faces and names can be difficult, but now I get a reminder any time the person calls me. I just download the picture from the intranet and connect it to the contact on my phone. I can do this either directly on the phone, or in the Contacts function of Outlook on my laptop. In eithercase a quick synchronization brings both sides up to date.

P.S. One other advantage - in Outlook displaying an email also shows the contact photo, if available.

Tumi case repair

A few weeks ago, I noticed one of the zippers on my 12 year old Tumi briefcase starting to 'unravel'. Taking the advantage of working at home for a couple of weeks, I took the bag into the local Bags & Baggage store, who are listed on the Tumi site as official repair agents. I have taken this and my suitcase for repairs on a number of occasions, and even with expedited processing, it takes 3-4 weeks before it is returned. This time I was very pleased to receive my bag back in just over a week, and even better, it was delivered directly to my home address. Kudos to B&B for such speedy service.

Free WiFi for AA Admirals Club members

AA has joined the ranks of United, NWA and Continental as Admirals Club members now have free WiFi access in the clubs. Although AA uses T-Mobile Hotspot service, like Delta, they have arranged for their members to have free access. Unfortunately Delta still expects us to pay for club membership and then also to pay T-mobile for internet access, not just WiFi, but also on the desktop computers or broadband access at the work areas. Hopefully Delta will think about changing this soon....

I stand corrected, as Delta has just let me know that, since 6/17/2007 complimentary day passes for T-mobile WiFi and wired access are available from the Crown Room attendants, for members only.
I must of missed the email, but will try this out on my next visit.

DAL-NWA merger on back burner?

It has been very quiet on the DL/NW merger front, so it looks as if it will not go ahead. Based on a discussion overheard at the airport, it seems that the pilots have problems with agreeing on common ground. A Delta captain was telling someone that the NW pilots, who recently negoitated a pay deal that included lower salaries but retention of pension rights, wanted to keep the pension rights in a merger but match the Delta salaries. Delta pilots has recently given up their pension rights in exchange for keeping higher salaries, so they see the NW suggestion as having the cake and eating it too. This is even without bringing in the other major issue of how to merge the seniority lists.
As long as safety or flight availability are not affected, as passenger I do not mind what goes on, and whether they are able to get together or not. Except for the selfish reasons mentioned in my other blog.

***yet again, I stand corrected as the DL-NW merger has been announced. Of course, we have to see if the pilots all accept it, and the FAA, SEC, FTC, etc. allow it to go through***

Delta Update for Outlook

Since changing employers, and having returned to using MS-Outlook as calendar tool, I needed a way to quickly enter my travel data into my calendar. In the past I have used a tool (Infotriever) provided through the company travel agent, but as my current company encourages us to book directly at the airline sites I thought I would see what Delta has to offer. I found out that there "Outlook update" does not actually work very well. NWA has a similar capability, using '.ics' files that works much better.
In Delta's case, I found that the following issues occurred:
My four segment itinerary was loaded into Outlook as three items, two outbound and only one inbound.
The two outbound items overlapped, i.e. one item was for the origination to intermediate segment, while the second one covered origination to final destination. I really expected the second one to be intermediate to final destination.
The reminder on all items was set for a day ahead. This only makes sense for the first segment (on-line check-in), I prefer to set the reminder to 30-45 minutes prior to departure - time to leave the Crown Room and head to the gate.
Hopefully Delta will read this, and take a look at the software that generates the '.ics' files. maybe they can "borrow" the NWA version, if the merger goes ahead.

Bluetooth NR headset

Over the last few months I have been using the nXZen BT headset. I chosse this headset for its very strong noise reduction capabilities. At the time the main competition was the Jawbone headset, but I had read that while the Jawbone has good noise reduction, it does rely on having the headset correctly seated on the ear so that a critical part is pressed against the head (or actually, the jawbone). The nXZen relies on two microphones to exclude background noise and I was impressed by the sample recording on their site. One feature I really like is the fact that the set has two separate operating controls, in addition to a volume control switch. This allows for a wide range of actions, without having to take the set out of the ear and look at flashing lights. I am also very happy with the battery life and the USB charger cable, supplied in addition to a normal 110v charger. In practice the set has worked well for me, but there are a couple of negatives.

1. In the beginning I lost a number of the ear buds, as well as the ear loops. The buds seemed to fall off very easily, and the loops are not too strong and break quite quickly. However, by being a little more careful I have been able to keep the current ear bud and ear loop for a couple of months now. I must add that the vendor has been very good in sending replacements of both buds and loops, when I contected their customer support group.
2. Although I would have expected wind noise to be excluded as well as other background noise, on one particularily windy day outdoors I had to mute my phone as the other parties on the call were hearing a lot of noise. Covering the headset with my hand while talking helped, but I had hoped for better wind noise reduction.

All in all I am reasonably pleased with this product, but would I buy it again if I needed a replacement? Based on the small issues mentioned above I think I might give a different set a try. Would I recommend it? If you are looking for a solid headset with very good noise reduction, except in windy conditions, it is a good product. It is not as small as some models on the market today, but the size allows for easy to use controls. battery life is good and most important the voice communication is clear, in both directions.

Light is the way to go

I have recently changed employer and at the new employer was given a choice of laptop. basically the choices were between a standard or lightweight model. I was also asked to choose between XP and Vista. I decided to go with the lightweight model, which turned out to be a 12" Lenovo X61 Duo-Core. This was a great decision, as the difference in weight between my previous 14" T42 is amazing. Even with the external CD/DVD drive that I need to carry, there is still a significant difference. I loose a little screen real estate, but a laptop, whether 12" or 14", is not really a vehicle for using multiple windows.

I also decided to go with Vista, although I do not like Vista too much, but it came with Office 2007. I had seen Office 2007 on a couple of colleagues' laptops before my job change as my previous employer was in the process of upgrading from Office 2003 to 2007. So I decided the "problems" with vVsta were worth the upgraded Office suite. Up to now I must admit that Vista has not been too much of a problem. Other than the annoying "Confirm or Deny" messages at frequent intervals (and yes Apple, your commercials are right on the mark there) Vista is actually quite usable. And as I get used to Office 2007, I am finding that it is a real improvement over 2003.

Windows Mobile & Active Sync

After switching a few montha ago to a Windows Mobile phone, I was pleased to be able to sync up my important data, e.g. email, calendar, tasks, and contacts, using a wireless data connection. Because my previous company is using Lotus notes for email, I had to buy extra software, mNotes, and service to do this from CommonTime. I really enjoyed the increase in productivity that this brought, but was a little disappointed at the extra costs involved, and some small issues that occurred with mNotes.
I recently chnaged employers and was glad to find that my new employer uses MS-Exchange, so that I was able to use the built-in ActiveSync linkage. So now I have a connection, without any extra costs, other than my normal unlimited data plan, and all my important data is immediately sent to my phone. In fact, in many cases, emails arrive on the phone before they arrive on the laptop, even though both are connected at the same time. And knowing the new data added to the phone, such as contacts or appointments, is immediately transferred to my account on the main server means that I do not have to worry about losing key data.

As a certain fast food chain says: "I'm lovin' it!"

Link to older posts

Some topics of interest were posted in my earlier blog, which can be reached here

Delta Upgrade Priority

For years I have wondered how the airlines determine the priority on the standby lists, most specifically for 'at airport' upgrades. Delta, on their slick plasma/LCD screens at the gate, have a message (roughly) saying "your position on the standby list is influenced by your SkyMiles status and the cost of your ticket". Last year I was able to significantly exceed the Platinum qualification threshold, almost double, so was hoping for more frequent upgrades this year. My experience to date is not good, so I am deducing that the statement above should read "your position on the standby list is influenced by the cost of your ticket (first) and your SkyMiles status (second). Either that, or, on the flights that I have been using, there have been an awful lot of Plantinum Elites who also exceed the threshold by double or more. Not impossible, but 10-15 on each flight? If that is true, more power to Delta, they must have sold a lot of tickets last year.