I know I said I’d try to only put media mentions on my news page, but when the Queen, Benét Wilson, gives you 10 minutes with her on her podcast, how can you not put that up?

Benét and I have known each other for a long time, since our days living in Phoenix (she working at Mesa and I at America West). So, I’ll try not to hold it against her that she used just about the worst possible picture she could find for the podcast in which we talk about the recent airline schedule changes.

After listening to the piece myself, I had two thoughts:

1. I just kept talking and never shut up. I’m shocked Benét didn’t issue me a verbal beatdown to get me back in line.




2. Anyone else think I sound like Scott Weiland with his megaphone? And that was on a landline, sheesh.

It’s hard to write so many posts in advance of a long trip, so I asked my coworker and Cranky Photographer, Christopher Craig, to pick out a photo from his collection that I could post while I’m gone. Now keep in mind, I wrote this post on April 26, and I’m just going to guess that there’s been more merger activity since then. So, has this merger happened yet?

I’d like to blame this ridiculous idea on my brain not getting enough oxygen at the high Peruvian altitudes, but I guess I already told you I wrote this before I left. Oh well. My plane is landing as this post goes live (assuming we’re on time), so I guess I’ll find out what really happened soon enough. I’ll be back posting on my regular schedule again tomorrow.

It’s amazing how fast time flies. It was a year ago that the inaugural Travvies were handed out, and I was fortunate enough to receive a pair - Best Single Author Blog and Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog. Today, nominations for the 2008 awards have opened.

Once again, Mark Ashley over at Upgrade: Travel Better is hosting this year, so unfortunately he is ineligible once again. We’ll really have to get someone else to host it one of these years so he can have a shot. If you aren’t reading his blog, you should.

Go to this page for all the info you need. Basically, you have two weeks to nominate up to three blogs per category. Then a panel of judges will pick the four finalists, at which point everyone gets to go back and vote for their favorites.

Make sure you head on down to nominate your picks.

Besides being an airline dork, I’m also a weather geek and a political junkie. So I made it a goal to find a way to discuss the current US primaries without going off topic. FlightAware to the rescue!

With the New Hampshire primaries finishing up last night, I thought it would be fun to see where all those private planes went from there. Michigan? South Carolina? Back home? Here’s what I found.

While a few airports around the state had late night flights last night (there were 3 flights between 330a and 6a that went from Pease to Teterboro), most of them came out of Manchester. Can we assume that the 128a departure on a G-IV to Westchester County was Hillary’s plane home? I’m more curious about who went to Vegas at 1244a on a Dassault Mystere. At 951p, someone flew back to Des Moines. Did they forget something in Iowa?

Unlike last week when everyone fled Iowa immediately, some people appear to have stayed the night in New Hampshire before leaving. This morning, an ExpressJet flight left at 925a to go to Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina. That is guaranteed to be a candidate on his way to stump down there. How about the XTRA 737 that went down to Myrtle Beach at 935a? Ok, that may just be a beach charter, but maybe not. I can play around with this all day.

Before I go, I’d like to throw in a shamless plug for my day job. If you’re trying to decide how to vote in the primaries this year, we’ve spent the last few months working on an excellent Election Guide at PriceGrabber. Take the Candidate Match and choose how you feel about each issue. We’ll show you how each candidate matches up with your stances. Happy voting (and happy FlightAware hunting)!

I know I briefly mentioned the Flight Path Museum at LAX in my post last week, but I decided it deserved a post of its own. The museum really is a fantastic place.

It’s awesomeness begins with its location. I mean, is there a better place for an aviation museum than in a former terminal? LAX’s Imperial Terminal hasn’t been used for years, but it’s most famous resident was probably MGM Grand Air which flew DC-8s and 727s between LAX and JFK. You can still see the baggage claim areas outside.

Once you’re inside, you’ll be overwhelmed with exhibits. If you grew up in LA as I did, it just brings back so many fond memories. There’s the history of LAX which takes place along the walls and has tons of great photos. Then there are small areas dedicated to the histories of individual airlines that have made a big impact at the airport. My favorite exhibits had to be the PSA and Western ones. Below, you’ll see a shot of the Mexicana one that I snapped when I was there last week. I still remember seeing those golden DC-10s roll off the runways.

The amount of memorabilia they’ve collected over the years is impressive, but that’s not everything. If you used to visit the California Museum of Science and Industry (now the California Science Center) back in the 80’s, you might remember seeing a DC-3 painted in Union 76 colors in the shadow of a United DC-8. Well, that plane has now made its way to the Flight Path and it sits right outside in all its glory.

In a way, it’s also a living museum. Once you’re done with the exhibits, you can just look out the big glass windows to see a great view of aircraft departing and arriving on runways 25L and 25R. They even have some old airline seats in which you can sit to take a break.

Still not convinced it’s worth a visit? It’s free. Yup. No cost at all. And parking is free too. Shocking, I know. But that should be enough to convince you to go if nothing else. The museum is open from 10a to 3p Tuesday through Saturday. To get there, just hop on the 105 West until it turns into Imperial Highway. The entrance will be shortly afterwards on the right hand side.

My friend Pat from my America West days was dishing out Thanksgiving meals to working crews at Phoenix Sky Harbor today. Since I was in Phoenix, I decided to head on down and say hello for a few minutes. Things seemed to be running well down there with most of the flights on time and most passengers with smiles on their faces. (Even the Trojan fans coming to town for the ASU game had smiles on. Hopefully those disappear after the game tonight.)

I hope everyone else who has to work today is having a smooth day as well. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone keeping the airlines running today.

No, I’m not suggesting we replace pilots with the almost-extinct flight engineer. What I am suggesting is that we need a little more love of rail in this country. That’s a different kind of engineer entirely.

This topic was suggested to me by a reader in reference to the August 23 WSJ article regarding Amtrak’s strong recent growth. It’s really no surprise. As airline delays get worse, the train becomes more attractive, especially in short haul, congested markets like the Northeast Corridor.

If you need to go to the city center, train stations are almost always closer than airports. And Amtrak has some nice features you won’t find in the sky. You’ll be able to plug in electronics and use your cell phone (though hopefully you won’t use it much). You don’t have to get to the train station early at all because there is no security screening (though that will eventually change, I’m sure). And you don’t have to worry about squeezing your bags into a size-wise while an angry TSA agent makes you empty all your liquids before heading to your flight. Oh, and while weather can mess with schedules on the train, you don’t see anything like you see at an airport.

Sounds idyllic, right? Well it should be, but not all is well with Amtrak. There have been reliability issues, but they’ve actually made some good progress in the Northeast on that front. The trains are also too slow, hamstrung by having to operate on tracks that can’t support high speeds. So why not pour money into developing this short haul network to make regional travel more convenient for all? There’s a lot of politics, of course.

Go figure that every person in Congress feels the need to have train service to every podunk town in his or her state. Unsurprisingly, the people in those towns count as votes, no matter how few. So while Amtrak has the potential to really create an excellent short haul regional rail system, it won’t happen as long as it has to support those pricey long haul runs. While the government talks about how Amtrak needs to survive on its own, that’s hard to do when everyone has their hands in the cookie jar.

Can you imagine LA to San Francisco on a high speed train? Maybe Chicago to St Louis? Or the mystical Dallas/Houston/San Antonio triangle? It may work in Europe, heck they can dig a tunnel under the English Channel to make it work, but there’s just not enough support here to make it happen. And there’s a lot of anti-support, if you want to call it that (most grammar snobs would not). Is anyone willing to give up land to build high speed rail corridors? You think Southwest wants to see high speed trains running against its popular short haul runs? I think not.

In fact, the only US airline to have even tried to get in on this concept is Continental. And they do have an advantage. While Amtrak doesn’t get near an airport in most cities, it’s a short people mover ride away from Newark Airport. That means instead of running a flight from, say Newark to Philly, Continental can just send you on the train instead. Imagine flying from Dublin to Philly. Instead of getting stuck with long departure delays out of Newark for that short connection to Philly, you can just head on over to Amtrak and be in the city in no time. And you’ll earn frequent flier miles in the process. Unfortunately, the distance from train station to airport in most cities makes connections difficult.

But let’s not even focus on connections. That’s a nice side benefit, but the real benefit is being able to serve large local markets like the BOS-NY-WASH megalopolis or LA to SF. Thousands of people could have an easier way to get where they’re going every day, but Amtrak’s inability to get out from under the government’s influence has made it uncompetitive, at best.

So to answer the reader’s question about how I feel about high speed trains - I love ‘em. I wish we could get our act together in the US like they have in Europe.

I’ve had enough talking about delays, let’s move on to something else today.

There was a story that came out the other day about a guy who recently smuggled a monkey from Peru to New York, and it brought back a flood of memories.

No, it had nothing to do with my monkey smuggling days. We don’t talk about that anymore. It brought back memories of comfort pets. Now, this monkey was not legally allowed to be on the plane, but there are actually some cases where that is permitted.

When I worked at America West, I was in charge of keeping the contract of carriage updated. Usually, something urgent would come down the pipeline, and another workgroup would call me breathlessly asking me to change it yesterday. I usually just did it, but I always wanted to know what was behind the change first.

One time, I received a call saying that our seeing-eye dog policy had to be changed immediately because it couldn’t be limited to dogs. You can imagine my response:

Me: “Is this a joke?”
Them: “Believe it or not, other types of animals are becoming more common as seeing-eye pets.”
Me: “Like what?”
Them: “Ponies.”
Me: “Ponies?!? Where the hell do you put a pony? Tied to the lav door with a rope?”
Them: “No, these are little ponies that fit in the bulkhead.”
Me: “Uh, ok.”

I really didn’t believe this at the time, but sure enough I had a picture of a pony sitting in the bulkhead of another airline’s airplane in my inbox soon after. There is even a Guide Horse Foundation which helps place ponies with disabled people. As you can tell, these are some pretty small ponies, but wouldn’t you still be freaked out if you pulled up to your bulkhead seat and saw a pony staring you down?

And don’t think it stops with ponies. There are monkeys too. Apparently, people who do not have use of their arms have monkeys that act as substitute arms - feeding them, etc. So again, there you are in the bulkhead about to dig in to your meal when out pops Mr Peepers and he starts feeding his owner. I know, it’s absolutely ridiculous . . . they don’t serve meals anymore. But just pretend that they did, and you can see how this might be a bit uncomfortable for the rest of the row.

So, fine. I have no problem making that change if it’s the law, but there’s more.

Me: “Is that it?”
Them: “Not exactly. We also need to broaden the policy to allow comfort animals onboard.”
Me: “What the hell is a comfort animal?”
Them: “It’s an animal that people need to fly with for psychological purposes. They have a calming purpose.”
Me: “What the f***?!?! Ok, I’ll be sure to tell my friends to declare their St Bernard a comfort pet next time they fly so they don’t have to check him.”
Them: “This is serious. There are doctor’s notes coming along with these animals. And it’s not just dogs. People have ferrets, rabbits, gerbils, etc.”
Me: “Is this a crank call?”

Sure enough, we heard stories about people who claimed all kinds of psychological stress issues, and they had to bring their animal with them to keep them calm. At first, it seemed completely ridiculous, but then I figured that would give me my excuse for bringing Mr Icey, my pet polar bear onboard. As you can see at right, I got a doctor’s note saying I needed my comfort polar bear with me on all future flights.

Of course, there were some problems with this plan (the whole thing, not just the polar bear). Soon after that phone call, it became headline news when someone’s 300 pound comfort pig freaked out on landing (on another airline), ran all over the place, cornered a flight attendant, and relieved itself in the forward galley. SOOooiee!

So, what happened in the end? Well, we did make the change, but I don’t know if it ever got put to use . . . other than Mr Icey of course.

No, Amtrak did not have an airborne derailment as far as I know. The subject is actually referring to the increasing number of travelers bypassing airplanes for trains. Unfortunately, that is VERY rare in the world of Amtrak, but in Europe it’s happening all the time.

Why is it happening more in Europe than in the US? It’s all about speed. You may have seen the news that a train in France last week broke the speed record by going just more than 357 mph. Sweet! But that’s not realistic for every day travel.

What is realistic is this. Let’s take a look at two popular routes supposedly on “high speed” trains:

Now can you see why European trains are taking off? The Acela Express route between Boston, New York, and Washington is the only “high speed” train in the US. Well, when your high speed train takes twice as long to go 50 fewer miles for 50% more cost, you’re in trouble.

Meanwhile, things keep getting better in Europe for train travelers. When London moves the Eurostar to its newly redone St Pancras station, the travel time between London and Paris will shrink to just over 2 hours. Apparently, according to this article, new rail lines will allow you go the 709 miles (as the crow flies) between London and Barcelona in a mere 6 hours! That’s astounding to those of us in the US who couldn’t even hop a slow train from LA to Vegas if we wanted to.

As you can imagine, ridership over there is certainly going through the roof as well. This release says that in the London-Paris market, the Eurostar train has captured 70% of the total travel market. It’s been such a poor air market that bmi recently dropped flights between the two cities entirely. The same is happening in many short haul markets throughout Europe. Does this mean airlines are screwed?

Nah. It just means that they’re going to require fewer resources to serve short haul markets. In London - Paris, only Air France and British Airways are flying the route. You think they’re flying it for the local traffic? I’d bet not.  Those flights have to be there to connect those cities into their respective networks. If this were to happen in the US, you’d see a lot fewer flights in short haul markets that would be timed to feed into the big connecting banks.

So will we see it in the US? I wish, but probably not. First of all, in the west I’d imagine these big ole’ mountains would be problematic for creating straight, flat track. Sure we could run a train straight up the San Joaquin Valley for 500 miles here in California, but getting into San Francisco or LA is another thing. Oh, and it’s not like buying land is cheap or easy for a project like this. Just imagine how expensive it would be to get enough land to run your high speed train between two major cities. It’s definitely no small feat.  Besides, the US government has made sure that Amtrak stays busy maintaining the transcontinental lines that have very little value instead of focusing on high speed corridors.

And of course, don’t forget the airline and oil lobbies. (Not that anyone has ever underestimated the oil lobby.) Airlines want to keep flying those short haul routes and oil companies want to keep filling those planes with liquid gold. They aren’t big fans of electric-powered trains.

So while the Europeans can ride in style, we’ll still be stuck in security lines waiting for our flight to leave when the weather finally clears out.

The Economist this week decided to offer their take on what a truthful safety announcement might sound like. Click here to read what most of us are thinking.