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