Open Skies: Shakeup Coming in Transatlantic Business-Class Markets

British Airways, as mentioned in yesterday's post on the troubles at MaxJet, is creating a new mini-airline that will fly transatlantic routes from various European cities.

The service will start next spring after the Open Skies agreement takes effect at the end of March. The agreement between the European Union and the U.S. greatly relaxes rules on which cities international airlines can serve between Europe and the U.S.

The name for B.A.'s new subsidiary hasn't been announced yet, but B.A. has been developing it under the code-name "Project Lauren." There's lots of speculation about the name, and I'd point out that the domains flyopenskies.com, along with flyopenskies.co.uk and the .eu and .de extensions all were registered and parked in early October by someone.

Several months ago, B.A. chairman Willie Walsh said he wasn’t sure whether the anticipated new service would be all business class or a combination of business class (which B.A. brands as Club World) and premium economy (which B.A. calls World Traveller Plus).


B.A. has now decided to launch the airline starting in May. The new B.A. airline will fly 757s most likely configured with two cabins — business class and premium economy, though I don't know yet whether B.A. will brand the business cabins Club World. Initially, B.A. will devote only two or three 757s to the new routes.

The strategy, as Walsh described it to me months ago, is to fly from various U.S. gateway cities with heavy business travel demand to premium-market cities in Europe — he named Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam and said others were possibilities — using 757s.


Given British Air's worldwide networks and alliances, a B.A. entry into the boutique end of the transatlantic premium market would be bad news for MaxJet, since MaxJet flies out of the B.A. bastion at JFK. MaxJet uses 767s that are 18 years old on average.

But it probably wouldn't be good news for Silverjet, sincer Silverjet has long-0range plans to expand after Open Skies. And Eos can't be applauding the prospect of a new layer of premium service by the formidable B.A. B.A. flying a new premium service between Paris and the U.S. is bad news for l'Avion as well.

Not known: Where is the also-formidable Virgin Atlantic on this new strategy? Virgin -- whose luxury Upper Class business-class service is a high-shelf competitor to B.A.'s on the transatlantic London markets -- also has been talking about a new premium service niche between European cities and the U.S.

So there's a realignment in store over the Atlantic, come spring. And there could be casualties, perhaps well before spring.

MaxJet, which abruptly halted trading in its shares on Friday without explaining why, was said to be scrambling for emergency financing. In a statement today, it said it was continuing to operate flights and take bookings.

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Repeat After Me: Security, 9/11, Rudy, Security ...

Via YouTube. But remember, in American politics, farce has a tendency to return as history.

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MaxJet Alert

MaxJet, the two year-old all-business-class airline, suspended trading of its stock on a London market.

In a very vague statement yesterday, the airline said "it is business as usual" -- which itself is a red flag because suddenly suspending trading of your stock is by definition not "business as usual." It is not a good sign for a start-up company to clumsily try to hide whatever the problem, disruption or unexpected turn of events is.

MaxJet has been reporting significant losses.

See this story today in the Times of London. (The London Times story says MaxJet is based in the UK. It's actually based in at Washington Dulles airport in Virginia). Also see this one in the Independent.

MaxJet is one of four discount all-business-class international startups to come on line in the last two years.

The others are Eos, which flies between New York and London and occupies the highest-end niche with its 48 lie-flat seats in 757 airplanes; Silverjet, which has been posting respectable loads on transatlantic routes between Newark and London; and l'Avion, which flies between Newark and Paris. (L'Avion seems to be competing with Air France for the title of Crappiest Airline Web Site in the western world, incidentally).


MaxJet flies 767s, with an average age of about 18 years each, between Kennedy and London Stansted; Las Vegas and Stansted and Los Angeles and Stansted. In late October, MaxJet suspended its service between Washington Dulles and Stansted.

The MaxJet roundtrip fare between New York and Stansted is about $3,900. Silverjet, meanwhile, has a fare sale, about $2,200 roundtrip on its Newark-Luton route. American Airlines, by comparison, charges over $8,000 for a refundable round trip business class seat from Kennedy to Heathrow. (Don't gasp: the walk-up first class roundtrip fare is about $13,000).

On Friday, Silverjet brashly announced that MaxJet passengers "worried about flight cancellations" would be accommodated on Silverjet on Friday and Saturday, on a space available basis, if they produced a MaxJet ticket. (MaxJet flew its normal weekend flights.)

The start-ups have generated industry interest in all-premium-class service, by the way.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have been making noises this year about possibly starting some all-business-class routes, or maybe even starting separate small airlines with all-business-class service (or a combination of business class and premium economy class).

There has been speculation that British Air might be looking to acquire an all-business-class airline, but I'm skeptical of that. For example, Willie Walsh, the CEO, told me that B.A. has plenty of suitable planes in the fleet that could, if called upon, be easily converted to accommodate all-business-class or premium-class cabins, depending on routes, flying to various cities in the U.S. from London and various other cities in Europe.

With oil prices hammering every airline's operating-costs projections, there are bound to be a few casualties among recent airline startups. I'd be surprised, for example, if the Midwest-based SkyBus makes it through the winter.

Meanwhile, in the absence of forthright information from MaxJet about what's going on, I'd avoid MaxJet, at least for now. Holding a ticket on an airline that goes belly-up is an EZ Pass to that queue marked "Unsecured Creditors."

If MaxJet is going to continue operations, the airline need to get out front of this situation and level with its customers. Pronto, and in detail.

***

Here is the MaxJet statement:


"MAXjet has temporarily suspended its share trading on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in the UK. This decision has no effect on MAXjet’s normal operations, and the Company and its Management Team assures its customers that it is business as usual. MAXjet continues to make bookings for its daily flights to/from London, Stansted and New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. There are no changes or cancellations in the flight schedule, and MAXjet will continue to offer its award-winning service."

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The Morning News: A Modest Proposal

--This character says "media must stop creating celebrities out of lunatics." But, but ... what will all those Washington reporters do all day?

--The "lyrical terrorist" who posts online poems about how cool it is to behead infidels was given a suspended sentence after a conviction on (weak) terrorist charges in Britain (where else?). Great outfit, incidentally. Add a wimple I'm back in fourth grade being whacked by Sister Mary Godhelpus.

--Via the always excitable Drudge, Agence France Presse quotes John McEnroe fretting about Mafia influence in tennis. Suddenly a new mob-nickname world opens: Tommy "White Shorts" Fatarino; Vinnie "Fuzz Balls" Pecatori. Beware the rackets ... OK, I'll go do some paying work now...

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The Morning News

--Only USA Today, folks, could come up with a headline like this over its story online today about the mall massacre in Omaha:

Horror for holiday shoppers:
'Terrible way to start' season

No, that isn't a parody from the Onion. It's really the headline they put on the story.

[Update, 7.20 a.m. -- The day crew must have got up and had a horrified look at the Web site, because the headline has now disappeared in favor of a more appropriate one. Maybe Al Neuharth was wandering around the office in the middle of the night muttering about what's really important in the USA, and his password still worked.]

***

--Speaking of Onion, the Onion News Network Undercover Investigative Unit demands answers on airport security.

***

See Salon's "Ask the Pilot" columnist Patrick Smith today on the Thanksgiving Express Lanes farce and the airplanes-underfueled nonsense overblown by ill-informed reporters.

***

--Jayzus, come back to Earth and stop smoking that stuff, Pico. In which a travel writer actually states the following: "Air travel is as comfortable and reasonable today as it's ever been."

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2 Airline Trends That Will Make 2008 Worse

Here are two things we should be paying more attention to: 1. Flight cancellations. 2. Plans by U.S. airlines to further reduce domestic seating capacity next year, in a system in which all domestic flights are already full.

First, flight cancellations:

Since the start of the Thanksgiving holiday, the airlines have been able to avoid a lot of bad publicity – the kind that comes from stranding passengers for many hours on planes parked idly on tarmacs – by canceling flights in advance when conditions start going south.

Obviously, weather is a factor. The Midwest has been hammered with ice and snow. But hey, it’s December. Weather is always a factor. What’s different now is that many airlines have cut domestic flights and seating capacity, and the system has no slack.

The airlines have learned that massive flight delays create very picturesque scenes in airports that resemble Red Cross camps and draw in the media cameras, and could lead to unwanted Congressional attention (assuming Congress is capable of paying attention to anything).

Not to mention Kate Hanni and her vigilant army of about 20,000 volunteers working for federal legislation to force the airlines to treat stranded passengers better. Kate has been advising passengers stuck on planes to take pictures.

So for the airlines, you could argue that it’s a lot more expedient to cancel flights in advance -- and hope that the media doesn’t notice beyond those lame AP bad-weather reports that usually just note that “hundreds of flights were cancelled.” As if the real number doesn’t count or is too hard to find out.

It isn't, by the way.

Let’s look at Chicago O’Hare from last Saturday. Hobbled by bad weather, O’Hare struggled to get 30 percent of its flights in and out on time. But the flight-cancellation figures (from FlightStats.com) were something else: Of 1,120 scheduled departures that day, 354 were cancelled. Of 1,187 arrivals, 337 were cancelled.

That’s nearly 700 flights that simply did not take off, either from Chicago or from other airports with Chicago as the destination.

Because O’Hare has a high percentage of regional-jet flights (many with about 50 seats), let’s be very conservative and say that each cancelled flight represents, what, 80 passengers? That’s probably a low average, but even then it represents over 55,000 people who didn’t make a flight last Saturday – in a system where all flights are already full, meaning it can’t readily handle tens of thousands of displaced passengers.

Let’s return to O’Hare today (figuratively, because it’s again not a good day to be flying there). More bad weather. And another very high cancellation rate.

Today, as of 1.30 p.m. Central time, 370 flights have been cancelled at O’Hare. [Update, Dec. 6: The total number of cancellations at O'Hare was 508 yesterday.]

For the flights that did fly, the on-time performance during the morning was well under 30 percent -- and the vast majority of late departures and arrivals were at least 45 minutes behind schedule.

That’s just a snapshot. But it’s a picture of things to come.

We’ll soon be seeing another round of those excitable media stories about record numbers of travelers taking to the skies for the Christmas and New Year holidays.

But record numbers of travelers have been taking to the skies all year. And in a system where nearly every seat is already full, an influx of holiday travelers doesn’t mean all that much, beyond misery as usual. In fact, most of them merely replace the business travelers who back out of the system during the holidays.

Barring a big airfare increases to offset oil prices (and the airlines have so far been able to do much more than push through a series of small incremental increases of $5 or so each), demand is likely to continue rising, in already known patterns. The weather is likely to disrupt flying a lot more than it did at Thanksgiving, again in known patterns.

So stand by for heavy rolls, as they say in the Navy when the seas get rough.

Meanwhile, as predicted here, the airlines are further reducing capacity for next year, meaning the squeeze gets even tighter.

Delta, for example, said this week that it would (further) reduce domestic capacity by up to 5 percent in 2008, while adding capacity to lucrative international expansion routes. Sometime in 2008, Delta says, international flights will account for 40 percent of its overrall seats. Southwest Airlines -- which recently started a new focus on luring more business travelers -- said this week is was further reducing growth plans for next year and planning to mothball some older 737s.

United Airlines -- which has already announced a 3-4 percent reduction in domestic capacity next year -- also is looking at a big international expansion in 2008 and the following two years.

According to this AP report, Jake Brace, the chief financial officer, told an investors' conference in Chicago yesterday that United "can carry out its next round of international expansion by reconfiguring or shifting planes from its domestic operations" -- but may also buy some new long-haul planes. (My question: Yeah, you and whose wallet?)

If you're a domestic airline competing with all of those fancy international airlines, you can maybe foist some Boeing 767s onto your international customers, but I wouldn't do it with the fierce competition flying better airplanes. The current long-haul workhorses, the Boeing 777-ERs, cost about $270 million each, a little more than a 747.

Assuming its uncle doesn't die and leave it about five billion dollars to buy new long-haul airplanes, how does United really propose to beef up international operations by 15 percent?

Hey, I can answer that! Shift more big planes to overseas routes and fly more crummy little regional jets on ever-longer domestic routes. And cut service in smaller markets that don't cough up enough dough per passenger.

As Michael Boyd keeps pointing out, when domestic airlines cut capacity, the first places they put the screws to are small and mid-sized markets where the economics don’t work well because they don’t have well-established business-travel feeds into airline hubs, especially feeds into international routes.

So look out Small Town U.S.A.!

And keep an eye on those cancellation figures to get an idea of how the system is tottering.

The latest report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that 132,632 domestic flights were cancelled in the first 10 months of this year, compared with 94,282 in that period in 2006, and 117,393 in 2005.

Yes, flight operations are up slightly, given the increased relilance on small-payload regional jets. But remember, each cancellation represents x-number of passengers thrown into a system that, by definition, can't readily accommodate them.

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Free the London Underground Emma!

Proving that only some Brits have a great sense of humor, the nitwits who run the London Underground system fired Emma Clarke, the woman whose voice is heard on some of those famous voice announcements for the London subway system.

You know, "Mind the gap" and all that. The voice that tells you what the next stop is. The one with the accent that American feature writers always call "plummy" and the English used to call "Received Pronunciation."

Emma's offense: She got interviewed by the Mail on Sunday newspaper and allowed as how she doesn't ride the subways herself. She takes buses or taxis instead.

"The thought of being stuck in the Tube with strangers for minutes on end and having to listen to the endless repeated messages of my own voice fills me with horror," she said. Sounds to me like she was joking, incidentally, but that isn't the point.

Emma (above), a comedy writer, is also a voice-over specialist for radio and for advertisers. On her Web site, she's posted a variety of pretty funny spoof announcements. Here's the link.

I love the gentle admonition to American tourists. And also the one about people engrossed in "their Sudokos." Also the one about Londoners who think their city is the center of the world.

The nimrod PR man for the London Underground said that Emma was fired because "we wouldn't employ somebody to promote our services who simultaneously criticized our services."

I recently saw the excellent movie adaptation of the play "The History Boys," and reading the PR man's statement caused me to hear the voice of Clive Merrison, the wonderful actor who played the pinch-faced Headmaster, in my head.

Now if someone would only track down that American lady who sounds like Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies, and who does those grating, annoying announcements for U.S. airport terminals -- like that infuriating one they keep running at the Houston airport that says you will be arrested if you make "eny inappropriate remarks or commints concerning s'curity."

I'll bet that lady doesn't have a Web site with funny spoof announcements.

She could get 'rristed.

###

Snow Day 2 [With 3 P.M. Update]

A lot of airplanes are out of position today because of the ice storms in the Midwest, which arrived in the Northeast overnight as snow. Luckily it’s a Sunday and, if nothing else goes wrong, the air-travel system should struggle back to shape by tomorrow.


Till the next time the weather turns bad. This being the cusp of winter, that'll be soon enough.


But consider: Of the 2,297 departures and arrivals scheduled yesterday at Chicago’s O’Hare, 683 were cancelled. That’s a whole lot of airplanes spending Sunday morning where they aren’t supposed to be, in a system without any slack.

Questions: Where are the thousands of people who were booked on those cancelled flights? How many are still stuck in airports, given the fact that there are often no short-term re-booking options if your flight doesn’t fly.

Anyway, be sure to check on your flight times today or tomorrow.

[Update Sunday 3 p.m. -- I was maybe a little too optimistic earlier. Cancellations to and from airports in the Northeast are piling up, and no way does this get fully sorted out by tomorrow, even if the weather is great. As of 3 p.m., there already had been about 225 cancellations at Newark. Snow-and-ice delays were stacking up at Kennedy, LaGuardia, O'Hare and Philadelphia, and at San Francisco high winds were delaying flights.

If you're traveling tomorrow, plan ahead. And make sure you have an apple or a granola bar or two in your carry-on, in case your flight gets stranded for hours on the tarmac, as sometimes happens.]

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Best Thanksgiving Travel TV News Feature

The Onion News Network on the scene, as usual.

Also, in light of the hostage-taking disturbance at Hillary Clinton headquarters in Rochester, New Hampshire, yesterday, help for schizophrenics.

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Snow Day in the Midwest

Delay alert if you're traveling today, especially from, to or through the Midwest:

Freezing temperatures and ice are hampering air travel in the Midwest and into upstate New York. As of noon, Chicago O'Hare had a ground-delay program in effect. Aircraft de-icing was slowing traffic at Minneapolis/St. Paul. Des Moines Airport was closed this morning and hadn't re-opened as of noon, after a United regional jet skidded off the runway.

(Update: At 6 p.m. Eastern time, O’Hare is a mess. According to FlightStats.com, of the 426 flights scheduled to depart O'Hare between noon and 6 p.m. Central time (an hour from this writing) 159 have already been cancelled. Of 461 flights scheduled to arrive from other airports in that period, 163 have been cancelled. Not delayed -- cancelled. Now the delays and cancellations at O’Hare and elsewhere in the Midwest are starting to roll out to either coast, and come tomorrow a lot of airplanes are going to be sitting at the wrong airports. Good thing today is a Saturday (though that sentiment does you no good if you happen to be flying today).

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For Rudy, A Little Travelin' Music

Not at all sure Rudy is going to be able to 9/11 his way out of this derision about his 2000-2001 business-travel expense accounts. These are being widely e-mailed. Source: Bartcop.com

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Peninsula Manila: Crisis Management 101

(Above: The lobby of the Peninsula Manila hotel. Without the tank.)


I deal with a lot of PR people. A few of them are stone dopes who do things like pitch good story ideas to multiple people simultaneously (you want to P.O. a reporter? There's a very fine way). But most of them are at least pretty good -- and some are absolutely excellent, top of the game, smart and savvy.

The hotel industry, it's been my experience, tends to have some of the very best PR people. In fact, I enjoy all hotel people in general, especially at the big multi-national companies. You routinely run into a savvy GM who's now running the resort in, say, Phoenix, having just come back from a few years running the five-star property in, say, Cairo.

I'm writing a book about my travels in the last eight years, and I find that some of the best stories are associated with hotel people.

They're among the last of the great classic travel adventurers, hotel people are. The good ones can think on their feet anywhere in the world, hit the ground running, never have a hair or a collar out of place, and still manage to keep the kitchen running and the sheets washed.

I'm especially impressed today with the way the staff and management at the Peninsula in Manila appear to have handled the nasty hostage crisis this week, which was the Manila radicals' latest adventure in Woody Allen-land, with crazy armed rebels who evidently had no idea what the hell they were doing.

Two bishops were said to have been part of the rebel group. Manila has one of these half-baked coup attempts about once a year, but this is the first one I've heard of that included a luxury hotel and two bishops. Not to mention a tank smashing through the Peninsula's doors and being driven right into the lobby.

Anyway, it's over.

Savoir-faire is what the best hotel people have, and they showed it in Manila, from what I'm hearing from friends in the industry.

Here are is how the hotel PR people handled the crisis. No fancy flack language, no obfuscation, just the facts -- and the contact names and numbers. No baloney. That's exactly what a reporter needs on a deadline in a bad situation. And it's also what you or I as a business traveler perhaps with plans to stay at the hotel might need to know:

***

News release Nov. 29, 3.15 p.m. -- "The Peninsula Manila has been occupied by a group of gunmen. There are no reports of any injuries to hotel guests, patrons or staff, and the matter is being dealt with by the relevant Philippine authorities ...The Peninsula Manila is currently being evacuated and hotel guests are being transferred to neighbouring hotels. ... The Peninsula Manila is now closed until further notice ..." {My note: The list of contacts for guests and press were attached, with names and phone numbers}

News release, Nov. 29, 7 p.m. -- "The occupation of the Peninsula Manila has now ended and the rebels have left the hotel. The matter is now being dealt with by the relevant Philippine authorities. Hotel guests are currently being accommodated at neighbouring hotels. ..." {Again, the list of contacts was attached}

News release Nov. 30: -- "Following the recent incident at The Peninsula Manila, the hotel is now closed temporarily and will re-open for business at 3:00 pm on Monday 3rd December 2007.

"Guests with bookings for arrival before Monday 3rd December are kindly requested to make alternative arrangements for their visit to Manila. For assistance, please contact the hotel on + 632 887 2888 or reservation.pmn@peninsula.com , and our staff will be pleased to help.
For general enquiries, please contact The Peninsula Manila on (632) 887 2888.

"For media enquiries, please contact Ms Irene Lau, Corporate Affairs Manager of The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Limited on (852) 9094 3153 or Ms Sian Griffiths, Director of Communications, The Peninsula Hotels on (852) 9026 5217."

Just the facts.

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Just Askin'

How high are air fares prices headed? It's anybody's guess, with oil prices basically out of control and the media focused on nonsense like the purported success of the "Thanksgiving Express Lane" White House publicity stunt.

Given the lack of scrutiny, it's my guess that the airlines are feeling free to run up fares in this brief slack period before the next holiday crunch. (Though, of course, most leisure travelers have already purchased their tickets for holiday travel, unlike many business travelers).

FareCompare.com reports a "significant increase (in) matching activity by Northwest Airlines, US Airways and Alaska Airlines." United started this latest fandango.

"Northwest Airlines significantly matched the $20 roundtrip increase for both business airfares (those less than 14 days advance purchase) and leisure airfare in over 18,000 city pairs," reported FareCompare.com's chief executive officer Rick Seaney, who added:

"US Airways significantly matched both business and leisure airfare in over 9,000 city pairs -- Alaska Airlines matched in over 200 city pairs.

"This latest wave of matching by the legacy airlines of the 10th attempted increase since Labor Day has left Continental Airlines as the lone holdout not to match – I expect them to match over the next few days."

***

Just askin' ...


Did the airlines and the air-traffic system dodge the bullet this Thanksgiving holiday period? I'd say so, though I'd also point out that the overall on-time rate of about 75 percent was nothing to hire a brass band over.


Nice weather also had a lot to do with whatever success the system claims. Last Monday, when the weather did become gloomy in the Northeast, and nasty in Atlanta, the delays began stacking up again, making for a bad night at airports from Atlanta to Boston.

By the way, the Air Transport Association, the trade group representing the interests of major airlines, posted timely operational updates for the period on its Web site. Good for the ATC. Trouble is, you have to look at that damn Edna. (Above. Sorry.)

Just askin' ...

Is Registered Traveler doomed as a technology-based alternate security program for those who pay the annual fee? One who thinks so is Bruce Schneier, the security-cryptology analyst and author, who told me recently he thought private-sector security technology was a deeply flawed concept.

"At first I thought Registered Traveler was really stupid," he said. That's when the programs were being marketed with promises of tecnology like electronic shoe-scanners that would allow members to avoid the hated requirement to take off shoes for a pass through the magnetometer.


The program -- now up and running in 14 airports -- is also based on members carrying a biometric ID card encoded with iris scans and fingerprints. You get the card (with a $99.95 membership at the major operator, Clear, for example) after the TSA runs your name against no-fly lists and terrorist watch lists.


Neither the shoe scanner nor the biometric ID have yet been approved by the TSA for checkpoint security use. Clear and two small competitors are now marketing their versions of the RT program essentially as fast-pass lanes with concierge service to help you keep track of your stuff as you go through regular security.


Schneier thinks that's the way to do it. "I'm perfectly happy with people paying extra money to go in faster," he said. "Concierge service, that makes a lot of sense. But basically the background checks are irrelevant. Dump them. The verified I.D. is irrelevant. Dump it."

But a fast-lane concept itself? "People are going through (the RT lanes) faster just because the amateurs are not in those lines. I'd pay money to go through the line with just people who know how to go through security."


Just askin' ...

--Why hammer Rudy for his entourage's 9/11 travel expenses to visit his girlfriend, when his good bud, the naughty police commissioner Bernard Kerik, was actually commandeering a Ground Zero condo -- donated as a rest spot for emergency-personnel -- to shag the scary Judith Regan? Oh, I see. It was the Hamptons for Rudy. ...

--You think they're kidding about air travel becoming more like taking the bus? In his weekly newsletter in Travel Insider, David M. Rowell notes that the Delta's new executive vice president for operations used to run Greyhound.

--Why did the media take those Thanksgiving Express Lanes -- opening up some military space for commercial traffic to stack up -- seriously?...

--Is Christopher Hitchens the only national reporter with guts to address fraud dressed up in religious vestments? Hitchens, who told the stone truth about Mother Teresa, calls out Bishop Romney and those oh-so-delicate campaign reporters in a piece in Slate (And yeah, Romney is a Mormon bishop) … Did you know that Caroline Kennedy just turned 50 years old? Not possible, but true. ... Does Junior Gotti even begin to comprehend the notion of irony? ... What are the the four most terrifying words in journalism? "First in a series" ...

--Will no one speak for Teddy Roosevelt? The Sudanese government imprisoned a British teacher who taught at an exclusive grade school in Sudan for blasphemy, inciting hatred and insulting Islam. Her offense: Her students had a teddy-bear-naming contest, and the name Muhammad, which of course is a common name throughout the Moslem world, was selected. Hmmm. It would seem the authorities in Sudan might have more important things to concern themselves with ... like, oh, dunno, Darfur? Incidentally, teddy bears derive their generic name from Theodore Roosevelt, who was president at the time the little stuffed critters became a craze. ...


--Now that they've screwed up everything else, are they about to screw up the simple, utterly practical, all-weather, easy-to-use-without-gizmos-with-keys, ain't-broke-don't-fix-it book. (Yep.)


--And lastly: Is there anything Diane Sawyer won't do?


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Brazil Blog. The Transponder: Case Closed?

The Brazilian Air Force panel investigating the horrific Sept. 29, 2006, mid-air collision that killed 154 in the Amazon has concluded that the American pilots could not have accidentally turned off the transponder in the business jet that survived the crash. And nobody who isn't certifiably crazy thinks they did so deliberately.

(Update, Nov. 30 -- Down the rabbit hole again: A Brazilian federal judge says the pilots have to return to Brazil for trial. Case closed! Call the witnesses! See my Brazil blog. )

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Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims, The Worst Business Travelers Ever

I cannot be held responsible for my actions the next time I am presented with one more Thanksgiving feature about either that dirty old rock sunk in trash-filled muck on the beach in depressing Plymouth, Mass., or about the damned miserable Pilgrims.

Why do we buy into this nonsense every Thanksgiving, an otherwise fine holiday? Why do we teach children these stone lies?

The Pilgrims' voyage was the earliest example in this country of a really, really bad business trip that never should have been undertaken.

Having been given the bums' rush from England, where they were unable to establish their odious form of sexually-repressed religious fanaticism, they inflicted themselves upon these shores expressly to implant a tradition of religious fanaticism, intolerance and Taliban-like retributiveness in the unsuspecting New World.

I think the Indians were remarkably tolerant of these gapers, considering that the Indians carried hatchets.

I tell British friends who pronounce themselves appalled at some of the things going on in the U.S. today that their own ancestors bear a good part of the blame. I mean, they imposed the Pilgrims, and the Pilgrims' partners in repression and religious hatred the Puritans, upon us 400 years ago.

"Can we send them back now?" I ask. "No, thank you very much," the Brits reply quickly.

Anyway, happy Thanksgiving.

We're holed up for the holiday at our getaway in the Sonoran desert, where it's 80 degrees and spectacularly sunny. This year, my daughter, son-in-law and their two small children joined us in Arizona.

Last night near twilight, my wife took our 4-year-old grandson for a walk in the Saguaro National Park. The boy is at an age where television and peer influences press the idea of "monsters" on him, and his parents have been very successful at dispelling the notion that monsters exist.

But on their walk on a long path, my wife and grandson encountered a huge jackrabbit that was more than 3 feet tall. The beast must have weighed 30 pounds, said my wife, a woman who never, ever exaggerates, and who only takes a single Coors Light on occasion.

The humongous jackrabbit just sat there looking at them, and as they looked back, he moved off to a spot 10 feet away and resumed staring. Then everybody walked on.

Now to me, this constituted an encounter with an actual, living monster. All of that work gone to hell, telling the kid there are no such things! But the boy just took it in stride, informing me later that he saw a rabbit "that was as big as me."

[I know Sonoran jackrabbits are not known for growing to anywhere near that size, but there are plenty of anecdotal reports online of just such beasts, and a cowboy I know out here says he's seen more than a few. Trust me: This was a monster jackrabbit].

But enough about rabbits.

The morning travel news is keyed to the idea that air travel yesterday went off fairly smoothly. My jaw dropped to see news organizations actually credit that risible "Thanksgiving Express Lanes" nonsense (that's a reference to Bush's hyped press conference last week, where he said some that commercial airliners would, for five days, be able to wander into air space reserved for the military off the East Coast. The effect is like adding an extra lane to a congested section of I-95 feeding into a tool plaza. That anyone took the Thanksgiving Express Lanes ploy seriously is a great wonder.)

Air travel went off yesterday without horrendous hitches because the weather was good. But many airports, especially in the New York area, still reported serious delays. And nothing has been fixed.

Meanwhile, as predicted, an airfare hike snuck in while the media were running around shrieking about travel delays and other worsening problems, real and imagined.

The fare hike, which could be the start of the 9th round of incremental industrywide fare increases since Labor Day, was slipped in by US Airways Tuesday night, according to the vigilant Rick Seaney of Farecompare.com

US Air calls it a "fuel surcharge." Call it what you will. According to Rick, US Air filed a $4.65 per ticket increase, which comes to $5 with the 7.5 percent U.S. sales tax. That means, you pay an extra $5 whether you buy a roundtrip or one-way ticket.

You'll hear no carping here about these small fare increases, buy the way. Oil is about to kiss $100 a barrel again and the airlines need to raise fares a modest amount. They also need to improve service and improve their attitudes along with those slightly higher prices -- and that doesn't mean cutting capacity and strangling routes in small and mid-size cities.

I just wish they wouldn't be so coy about it. Come right out and say it: Can everybody please chip in for gas?

###

Bwaaaaaahahaha: Holiday Hobgoblins

Every Monday I enjoy reading the airline forecast expert Mike Boyd's provocative, refreshingly cranky, online column on air travel -- even though he dismisses most travel reporters as dimwits. Of the the big holiday travel day on Wednesday, he says: "The good news is, it should be like pretty much like any other Wednesday. The bad news is, it should be pretty much like any other Wednesday." Here's the link.

###

The Morning News: Kyla We Hardly Knew Ye

Does every incident in this country ultimately turn into cheesy irony?

Remember Kyla Ebbert, the 23-year-old college student (and, let's get it out of the way now, part-time Hooters waitress) who was barred from a flight by a snippy Southwest Airlines agent named Keith for wearing the outfit shown at left?

To me, the incident was an indication mostly of Southwest Airlines disgracing itself. Again. (See my posts of Sept. 15, 13, 9 and 7.)

Well, now I see from an item today in Salon that Kyla has flipped her 15 minutes of fame into a photo layout in Playboy.


Jayzus.

Incidentally, does anyone still buy Playboy, even for the articles?


Says Salon, with a bit of a Fox entertainment-TV, male-adolescent snigger:

"After consulting with Mom and Dad, Ebbert agreed. She's currently featured on the magazine's Web site in a spread titled, wait for it, "Legs in the Air" (it goes without saying, NSFW)." [Geezer alert here: I have no freaking idea what that coy 'NSFW' means. I'm just guessing it indicates if you're 13 years old Salon says you shouldn't click on it. Me, I say go for it.] (Update Nov. 19 -- Readers inform me it means "Not Suitable For Work." Thank you.)

Anyway, Salon adds, "If Playboy's overloaded server is any indication, plenty of people would have been more than happy to be her seatmate.


"Southwest capitalized on this media circus by recently offering "miniskirt" fares -- now Ebbert's getting her piece of this prurient pie. When asked to comment on the photos, Ebbert simply said: "I don't see anything wrong with the female body."

Me either, sweetie. And I certainly got nothing against what the author Jim Harrison calls "nekkid women."


The issue is her brain, not her body. Kyla, trust me: You do not have a career in Hollywood no matter what any of those nice people told you. It's time to go back to school and shut up now.

###

Hype Arriving at Gate 1600

The airlines and their pals the pols are increasingly afraid of the potential for a major breakdown in air traffic over the year-end holidays. Every time I check my e-mail I have another breathless press release about how they're rushing to make it all o.k. Don't worry! We're on top of it!


Even the White House has stirred itself and got into the act. Uh-oh, now I know for sure we're in the jackpot.

Note the tone in the media. Now we have an official White House promise! It's NEWS! Jayzus, I can see the correspondents posing in front of those airport tote boards already, and it's not even time for the network news.

Anyway, you heard the following here first:

--The risible "Thanksgiving Express Lanes" proposed by the White House. Selectively opening up air-traffic lanes reserved for, but little used by, the military in the Northeast will be the equivelant of opening up an extra lane on some ramps on I-95 north of Miami. It will funnel traffic into a slightly wider space and promptly pour it right back.

--After they announce caps that will put limits on the numbers of flights at JFK and LaGuardia (and they will), some of that traffic will spill over to Newark, which already has some of the worst delays in the country.

--The White House says the government is "encouraging airlines to take their own measures to prevent delays." That's simply a reiteration of "promises" the airlines have made in a desperate attempt to sidetrack a federal Passenger Bill of Rights law, versions of which are now in both houses. Conspicuously missing from all of the vague "proposals" are guarantees, or mandates, on how many hours stranded passengers can be kept on board planes for the convenience of the airlines. That is the third-rail that nobody in government really wants to touch.

--The phony pose of rushing to action will hand the airlines a beautiful opportunity to announce further domestic capacity and schedule cut-backs, except on lucrative business-travel routes and domestic routes that feed into international connections. You know, as a patriotic gesture.

--The Executive Branch? Come on. Every one of them, from the President to the head of Transportation and Homeland Security departments, and the inept FAA, is a short-timer, planning to cash-in the minute the next president raises a hand to take the oath of office. You really don't think they're serious about fixing a very complex problem, do you? There's no upside to that. Just hold a press conference to Show Your Care. But hey, there's a war on! Where's your flag lapel-pin?

--On the other hand, the White House has cleverly positioned itself to win no matter what happens. If the holidays go off without a major hitch, the Bush administration will take credit for it (and just watch how fast some media dimwits rush to credit the risible Thankksgiving Express Lanes, when any actual credit should go to luck and good weather). If it all goes to hell, the White House is on record expressing its concern and desire for action.

Meanwhile, the House Aviation Subcommittee held a hearing today to examine the preparations by airlines and airports to handle the holiday travel rush.

“The airline industry has had a very tough year in terms of customer service,” said Rep. Jerry Costello, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, which heard from airline and airport executives. That would be the understandment of the month (so far).

"No one expects them to eliminate all delays, but it is how they mitigate delays and how they treat their customers when delays happen that matters,” he said.

The witnesses noted that the airlines have hired additional staff, particularly customer relations personnel, and will use what the subcommittee press release calls"enhanced communications with passengers to inform them about delays and time-saving practices." (Right. Airlines say they bought some new PCs and software to fix the problem. Ran down to Best Buy and picked up a few things.

The statement added, "The airports have also added staff, and will have more food and water available and the necessary equipment to get passengers off of planes if necessary in case of long delays."

Well, we'll see. The very last thing the airlines want is still another debacle with passengers stranded on plans for six, nine, 12 hours. Very bad PR, that. But if bad weather hits in a system with no slack, during a peak travel season, with all planes full, there may be nothing they can do to prevent another ugly occurrence.

Kate Hanni tells me that she and her 20,000 or so volunteers in her Coalition for Airline Passengers Bill of Rights are loaded for bear during the new travel-torture season, which starts tomorrow.

Kate, whose energy has been unflagging as strandings became a huge issue this year, is virtually single-handedly responsible for the current rush within the airlines, the Congress and now the White House to get on the popular side of the issues of stranded passengers, both those stuck on parked planes and those stuck in airports where airlines have no ability to accommodate them, sometimes for days.

As soon as the subcommittee posts a transcript of the hearing, I'll link to it.

The subcommittee heard testimony from among the usual suspects:

Richard Anderson, chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines; David Barger, the chief executive of JetBlue; Edward P. Faberman, executive director of the Air Carrier Association (and a lawyer who represents airlines and airports); Krys T. Bart, executive director of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport and the chairman of the American Association of Airport Executives; and Gregory Principato, president of the Airports Council International – North America.

We'll see what they had to say for themselves once a transcript is available.

###

Airline Delays Accelerating?

Above: Pinal Air Park near Tucson, one of two big desert sites where airlines can park planes.

I once worked for a smart newspaper city editor who had a couple of pet peeves on behalf of readers. Top on the list was: In a story, don't ask me any damned questions. I'm a reader who is paying you 25 cents (this was a long time ago) to give me answers, not to annoy me with questions.

That said, are airline delays accelerating?

The stats are sketchy, as the Thanksgiving holiday travel season/airport torture-fest starts tomorrow. But early indications do not look good, in an air-traffic system stretched to its limits. Last night, I was getting calls from people maneuvering flight cancellations and delays on the West Coast, bound for New York.

Here's how it looked yesterday afternoon and night at New York airports, which are the dog that wags the national air-travel system tail. Ground-delay programs were in effect by late afternoon at all three airports, which also were citing weather, specifically "low ceiling," for mounting delays.

Using the brilliant old technique of looking out the window, what I saw was a moderately cloudy late afternoon, with no storms and no rain. It was a Wednesday before the holiday season, a slow travel day, and weather across the country was O.K.

Anyway, at Newark, a mere 17 percent of the 347 flights scheduled to arrive between 3 p.m. and midnight yesterday were on time. Of the late arrivals, the vast majority, 208, got in 45 minutes or more (and sometimes much more) after arrival time. (The stats are from http://www.flightstats.com/)

At Kennedy, only 36 percent of the 338 flights scheduled to arrive between 3 p.m. and midnight arrived on time. Of the late arrivals, 135 got in 45 minites or more after arrival time.

At LaGuardia, 18 percent of the 274 flights scheduled to arrive between 3 p.m. and midnight arrived on time, and of the late arrivals, 153 got in 45 minutes or more late.

This, folks, does not look good.

Meanwhile, the airlines are busy giving songs and dances to anyone who taps them on the shoulder. They're tripping over one another to send out press releases assuring the public that they will more more adept at providing adance information to travelers in the event of impending disruptions.

Not to worry!

Several major airlines have actually issued press releases saying they've reiterated or imposed procedures for addressing the ticking-time-bomb problem of stranded passengers. Most say they will re-assess the situation when a plane is stuck on the tarmac for three hours, allowing pilots and ops centers to try to work out a way to get the plane back to the gate.

And the airlines are also claiming that they have installed new technology to run their operations more efficiently and to track delays and diversions better.

Yeah, and I've installed a new system to address the problem of mounds of clutter on my desk. It's called hope. My wife calls it "pipe dream."

Are delays accelerating?

My hunch is, you bet.

How will the airline deal with disruptions?

My guess is they'll punt. The airlines -- network carriers and low-cost carriers alike -- are terrified by surging fuel costs and declining revenue quality, to the point where schedules could be pulled back on short notice.

Mike Boyd's airline-forecast column this week at http://www.aviationplanning.com/ makes some very intriguing points.

Some are long-term look (chronic high oil prices, severe pilot shortages, especially on the regional carriers, looming labor-union trouble).

And some are short-term -- most prominently, that rising fares might finally trigger a sudden, unanticipated drop in demand, causing airlines to "valve off" capacity.

Valve-off capacity? That means, basically, remove more seats from the system and on short notice.

How do you do this? Well, if you're a big network carrier with all those older planes, say Northwest and American, you can rather simply yank some out of service and park them in the desert till things blow over, if and when. After all, you own that trusty old MD80, which has been paid off since Christ was a corporal, as that same city editor I knew used to say.

If you're a low-cost carrier you have a bit more of a problem. Chances are higher that your (newer) planes still have a monthly payment due. Parking them in the Sonoran or Mojave deserts, where they generate no revenue at all, isn't an attractive option.

I'm hearing a lot of speculation right now that airlines have contingency plans to "valve down" capacity on short notice even before the end of the year. Any fall-off in passenger demand caused by rising fares wouldn't really manifest itself in the next six weeks of peak travel, since most polans have been made and most tickets have been purchased. But the smell of panic is in the air.

My bet is the airlines slip another unilateral fare hike in this weekend. It would be the ninth incremental fare hike since Labor Day.

Sorry, but I have to leave this with another unanswered question.

Will panicked airlines, despite their growing fears of serious federal intervention if they start stranding passengers in large numbers again, reduce capacity on short notice?

I was walking past Macy's in Manhattan yesterday and my spirits lifted as I watched the crews and trucks and cranes installing the massive store's Christmas decorations. I was up by the skating rink in Rockefeller Center the other day and it too was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

We're headed to Tucson this weekend for Thanksgiving. (Pinal Air Park, where airlines can mothball or temporarily park planes, is nearby, and I expect to pay it a visit).

But then it's back home. I like New York at Christmas. And that is where I intend to be, far from the airports.

At least that's my hope and/or pipe dream.

###

Great American Airlines Ad

No kidding, check it out. (The one titled "Team Building.")


It's one of the new American Airlines ads produced for business travelers, and it made me laugh out loud. You ever been to one of those goofy training seminars?

###

Plane Porn: The Private A380

Lookit that! Those are some renderings of what an Airbus A380 might look like outfitted as a private jet.

I wrote about this a while ago, but now there's an actual buyer identified. (Airbus told me they have still another private-A380 buyer lined up, but didn't identify the person).

The superjumbo Airbus A380, the first commercial flight of which occurred recently from Sydney to Singapore on Singapore Airlines, is also being marketed as a business jet for the extremely rich.

But build a little skepticism in for media hype here, because it's going to be many years before Airbus delivers any A380 to any private customer. So far, 10 A380s have been built, of the total 189 on order by 16 corporate customers, including international airlines (no U.S. carriers, and none on the horizon) and airline fleet-leasers.

By the end of 2009, assuming there are no further production hitches in the hitch-plagued production schedule, Airbus will have completed fewer than 100 of the planes already ordered.

So that's a long time before the Saudi prince -- who's currently in a mere private Boeing 747 -- gets his plane (and by the way, sweet Jayzus, how many princes does that country have? I know it's somewhere in the thousands).

(Some of the background in the AP story linked to above is ridiculously wrong. You can't get a LearJet or a Gulfstream for "$2 to $5 million," for example. Add a zero to those single digits. Also, that British editor the AP quotes is misinformed. There are dozens of commercial airliners that have been converted to private jets, including A319s and 320s and Boeing 737s, 757s, 767s and 747s. There are at least 10 private 747s flying now.)

Anyway, it's nice to have a look at what the designers of a private A380 have envisioned. These mock-ups were given to me last year by Lufthansa Technik, the Lufthansa subsidiary that specializes in private jet interior design, among other things.

The A380 currently sells for about $320 million. Add another $100 to $125 million for the interior fixings, Technik says.

I flew the A380 on a shakedown flight between Frankfurt and New York earlier this year, by the way. That plane, operated by a Lufthansa crew, carried about 500 people in three classes.


The A380 actually is actually certified to carry 853, just to give you an image of the other extreme from the Saudi prince's airborne palace. Imagine, just you and 852 others on a plane! Or lined up at the baggage carousel.

###

The Morning News: Coincidence? You Decide

Vice President Dick Cheney, the warrior who dodged the draft during Vietnam by applying for and receiving five deferrals ("I had other priorities," he once explained), gave the memorial Veterans Day speech yesterday at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Washington.

Meanwhile, news reports said the monument, formerly known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, has developed cracks.

###

The Morning News: Yo, Rocky Travel

Top: Philadelphia Museum of Art

Right: Crappy "Rocky" statue before they moved it down to the sidewalk.

The city where I was born, Philadelphia, has always had a split personality. I personally once heard the thuggish late mayor Frank ("I'll Make Attila the Hun Look Like a Fag") Rizzo refer to the Philadelphia Orchestra as a "band" -- which kind of sums it up for me. Though in fairness I should add that he did call it a "really great band."

Here's a link to Rizzo.

Actually, it's a nice town in a lot of ways -- not all of which are apparent in some Philadelphia-generated tourism information, which tends to focus on things like that godawful kitsch statue of the movie character Rocky Balboa, which was once located actually above the magnificent steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art before some of the more sensible people in town managed to haul it down to a basketball arena in South Philadelphia and then, under pressure, install it in a less prominent spot near the Art Museum.

And don't let anyone tell you that a visit to Philadelphia should include a stop at the 9th Street Market, more commonly known as the Italian Market, in South Philadelphia. The last time I was there it looked more like a souk in Yemen, but without the charm, selection, sophistication, sanitation and fresh produce.

Here's some ungrammatical local hype on the Philadelphia 9th Street market -- and yes, on the side of that building, that's a kitsch mural of the late Mayor Attila the Hun himself. Incidentally, Rizzo was still another of those tough-guy warriors who somehow managed to avoid combat -- unlike, say, the actual Attila the Hun. Rizzo the Hun was in the pre-World War II Navy for less than a year before he was discharged under circumstances that have never been adequately explained.)

[If you're visiting Philadelphia, don't say I didn't warn you about that grossly overhyped street market. Here is an excerpt from a travel review of the market on TripAdvisor.com last year: "The thing we were most surprised and disappointed about was how small the "Italian Market" area was, and how many vacant stores there were. The worst thing about it was the filth - the streets and sidewalks were absolutey filthy with trash, as well as a lot of dead pigeons. ..."]

But back to Rocky:

In Philadelphia, the Rocky statue/movie prop, now installed on a sidewalk near the Art Museum, at least out of the way of the grand view, is notable for its utter lack of irony.

On the other hand, there's a gem of a story in today's Times about a Rocky Balboa statue in Serbia, where there appears to be a new culture, perhaps politically derisive, that evokes American kitsch iconography, perhaps ironically.

The nuance of it all! Makes me actually think that maybe Serbia might be worth a visit, if that's the way they're thinking about stuff there these days.

Also, the photo caption on the Times's Serbian Rocky statue picture, which begins with the words "Yo Adriatic!" is itself worth a special Pulitzer Prize.

And by the way, the word "Yo" does not come from hip-hop culture. In Philadelphia, it has always been the way to begin most exclamatory and many interrogatory sentences.

###

The Morning News: Dumb Sheriffs Contest

Just when you conclude that Phoenix's Joe Arpaio (see previous posts) is the dumbest sheriff in America, another invincible doofus comes along to challenge him for the title. From Smokinggun.com.

See also the always invaluable Snopes.com for some sensible background.

[Update Nov. 12 -- More on this nonsense from Salon, as desperately dumb-ass television news programs get a whiff.]

###

Brazil: Another Fatal Air Crash

Another fatal air crash killed at least 8 people today in Sao Paulo. It was the fourth aviation crash in a week. Details, my Brazil blog.

###

Travel Photo of the Week

Uh ... I'll wait.

###

The Morning News: Shoes

Here, from pilot Patrick Smith in today's Salon, is one of the more sensible columns I've read in a while on the various follies of airport security.

Smith doesn't hammer hard-working and generally decent T.S.A. screeners in general, though as experience has taught me, any organized group of people will contain about 10 percent half-wits, and he's got one in here.

And I couldn't agree more about PBS which, except for some of the Frontline reports, is starting to look and sound an awful lot like ... ugh, network television. And don't get me started on WNYC radio and its prissy daily local output.

The Morning's Airline News: Fresh Hell Ahead

In a year in which record delays, cancellations and passenger-strandings have been accompanied by robust profits, airlines are busily planning to pack more people in. Doug Parker, the CEO of US Airways, which reported a $117 million profit for the third-quarter, crows here that airlines need to exercise more "capacity restraint" and get rid of "excess capacity."

Excess capacity?

Domestic airlines are already flying with all seats full on most routes. US Airwars, for example, filled a record 81.6 percent of its seats in the first nine months of this year. US Air, alone among the major carriers, doesn't break out its seats-filled figures domestic vs. international, but domestic load-factors (the percentage of seats filled) typically exceed international ones.

At over 80 percent systemwide, it's considered that nearly every flight is full.

The airline industry wants us all to get used to it. The planes -- where coach cabins are torture chambers after a few hours -- are going to be full, all the time. You don't like it? Tough, say the airlines. Whaddya gonna do, drive 1,500 miles each way?

Here is what the airlines have learned in this worst year ever for customer service: We're treating them like cattle and we're making more money at it! [Of course, cattle get fed and there are laws governing humane transport of cattle]

We're in a seasonal lull right now, and the system is working fairly smoothly. But wait till the holiday season starts next month. You know, when all the cheap-ticket leisure travelers and kiddies return, now laden with packages for Christmas at grandma's?

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

By the way, Kate Hanni's Coalition for Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights now has 21,000 active members. And they all take notes.

###

The Morning News: Heckuva Job, FEMA

Is there no idiocy to which this government will not descend? From today's Washington Post, on the F.E.M.A. press conference on the California wildfires.

Naturally, it took Fox News no time at all to make a very fine ass of itself speculating about the cause(s) of the wildfires.

Jayzus, when you can't even cover a fire ...

[Update: Oct. 28 -- Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, unlike his lamebrain predecessor and lamebrain boss, at least recognizes a disaster when he sees one. "I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government," said Chertoff, who evidently does not watch the news very much. Meanwhile, let's just note that Vice Admiral Harvey E. Johnson, the F.E.M.A. deputy director, probably shouldn't be looking for that fourth star.]

[Update: Oct. 30 -- Vice Admiral Johnson, it is reported, is retired, which means he failed to get that fourth star previously. And he's a retired Coast Guard admiral, which is to an actual admiral roughly what a Salvation Army colonel is to an actual colonel.]

###

L.A. Observed

I'm not going to post one of those dramatic fire photos from the raging wildfires in Southern California because we all know what fires look like.

While trying to follow the wildfire story yesterday and today -- a story about an area I have some knowledge of and affinity for -- something occurred to me.

You know what's really, really dead? No, not newspapers. The Los Angeles Times Web site is right up to date, though very slow -- an indication that the publishers are unprepared for the sudden surge in demand. And that front-page map of the fires today on the front page of the New York Times was the first I have seen that seems to recognize that this story has a ferociously strong element of geography to it.

You know what's dead? Television news is what. You can readily link to any of the Southern California television stations. All of the major ones, like this and this, are covering the fires full-time, and I simply cannot figure out what is going on from them (though this one in San Diego, at least has a Web site with useful text information if you don't have the six hours needed to sort out the story on the live TV feed).

Click on most of these TV newscasts and try to figure the story out in a reasonable time, while sitting through tediously repetitive commentary on the already well-known, accompanied by dramatic video of ... smoke and fire. Smoke and fire without context and, for the most part, without intelligible geography. The same clips over and over, without context.

I could take Los Angeles local television for about 15 minutes before going back online to text, thank you very much. Sorry, up-to-the-minute TV. You're over. You're a cheap visual tumble in the news hay.

I just don't have the time to sit here waiting for you to get around to telling me the story.

Business travelers looking at a trip to Los Angeles or San Diego this week already know where to go for the usual information on flights and the like.

But this is an intensely local story, and the most basically local sources are excellent. Try some like the "Here in Malibu" blog, which is posting reporting at its most local -- and useful. It's linked to at LA Observed, which has other useful local links and, as its motto partly states, "a sense of place." Today it's carrying one of the few great photographs from this story, via the Los Angeles Times, showing eight firefighters zipped in body-bag-like protective fire "huts" as flames race over them on an Orange County ridge. That photo commands attention.

But please, let's have fewer photos in general where text and graphics are needed: We know what fire looks like. We know what grieving homeowners look like. We know what a burned-down mansion looks like.

How about running something more useful and fascinating, given the raw geography of Southern California. How about more good locator, regional and topographical maps instead?

Yeah, I know, the newspaper design people don't like maps much, and love photos of flames and crying victims instead. The design people also don't particularly like words.

But the design people should be asked to wait whence they came, in the Lifestyles on Parade section, till the fire burns out and those of us who care manage to figure out, in context, what the hell happened, where, and why, in Southern California.

###

This Being Sunday, Phoenix Paper Genuflects

The Gannettoids in Phoenix, vigilantly policing the First Amendment with the tenacious competence of Barney Fife, make sure that the Special Prosecutor who created the national embarrassment over the weekly New Times (see posts below), gets respectful treatment today in the "Arizona Republic." He "will not stand to see his reputation tarnished," the Gannettoids assure Phoenix. (Can an entire metropolis be said to giggle?)

After all, the Gannettoids might get in trouble some day (though why is anyone's guess, since the authorities always give extra points for chronic genuflecting) -- and they sure do not want any authority mad at them.

Oh, and speaking of risible piety, check out this from the same paper's editorial today:

"We are gratified that the outlandish attempt to punish an alternative weekly newspaper for the crime of offending the sensibilities of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has ended. The Republic often is leery of New Times' style of free-for-all journalism. But, in this appalling overreach of government intrusion, both the New Times and the public were grievously wronged."

Egad: The 'Republic' often is leery of ...!

###

Phoenix Loon Platoon: 'Never Mind'

Why you! ... Evidently the derision got too heavy for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe (Pinky) Arpaio and the stooges in the prosecutors office. The desert loons have now dropped charges against the weekly Phoenix New Times, including a subpoena that demanded the names, browser I.D.s and browsing histories of every single person who visited the New Times Web site since 2004.

Here's some more derisive reaction.

Next year, sensible Phoenix-area voters will toss this asinine Arpaio character out of office, and Phoenix will take its place without restriction as one of the coolest cities in the U.S., even at 115 degrees in July.

###

By the Time You Get to Phoenix...

...You could be under subpoena, if you click this news link from the weekly Phoenix New Times. For those of you who don't want to end up in pink uniforms in the Desert Loon's jail, here's a link from the Gannettoids at the timid Arizona Republic, Phoenix's daily paper, which blandly reports that New Times is "at odds" with the sheriff and various worthies in the county prosecutor's office.

At freakin' odds! Jayzus! Do sentient creatures edit these newspaper stories?

Last night, the sheriff's boys arrested two editors from New Times, which (unlike the local Gannett paper) has a long tradition of aggressively investigating the astonishingly weird (and worse) activities of the Desert Loon.

As noted here yesterday, Sheriff Joe (Pinky) Arpaio and the Keystone Kops in the Maricopa County prosecutor's office issued a subpoena to New Times seeking the names and Web browsing histories of every single person who visited the online edition of New Times since 2004.

How, oh how, does a really nice place like Phoenix -- home of great weather, superb restaurants, magnificent scenery, a public radio station way better than that preternaturally prissy station in New York City -- manage to elect these invincible goofballs?

Meanwhile, the great battleships of the Mainstream Media are slowly responding with their 5-inch guns, instead of their 16-inchers, popping out little 800-word summaries about this truly astonishing sequence of events -- a free press under brazen assault; editors hauled off to jail in the night.

Every one of these great bastions of the First Amendment ought to prominently post live links to Phoenix New Times on their own Web sites (here's another one, reporting that the editors were released from jail today) -- so that 10 or 20 million people could stand up against this stunningly anti-American assault on the First Amendment. There can't be that many pink jail suits in all of Arizona.

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Sheriff Joe Wants to Know Where You Go (Online)

I love Arizona enormously, but I find the Phoenix area a little spooky, and it has nothing to do with the heat, or at least the heat as defined by temperature. Here's one big reason.

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World Pilots Group to Brazil: Suspend Prosecution, Wait for Evidence

My Brazil blog is down (Blogspot informs me it will "review" whether it's a spam blog or not and get back to me in 4 days, as if 4 days means squat, which is one major reason this blog will soon appear in a new, reliable and professional format). Here's a new statement on the scapegoating of the U.S. pilots. The statement is from the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations.

That group, by the way, has consistently been inexcusably far behind on developments. In referring to "possible criminal prosecutions" for example, it is evidently unware that the criminal trial of the American pilots and four Brazilian controllers has in fact been under way for a month in Sinop, the regional city nearest the crash site in the Amazon.

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T.S.A.: Shoes News

The long-awaited GE shoe-scanner got the boot yesterday from the Transportation Security Administration.

The machine was designed to allow members of the Clear version of the Registered Traveler program to pass through security without having to remove their shoes and put them on the belt.

Clear, which has opened lanes at 10 airports and is expanding, has about 68,000 members. They pay $99.95 a year for a biometric I.D. card and a special lane to expedite the checkpoint process. The shoe-scanner, developed by GE in a partnership with Clear, was the first in what Registered Traveler program operators envisioned as an assortment of new technology, including a machine that would allow laptops to remain in their cases.

Here's the text of the T.S.A. announcement on nixing the GE shoe-scanner:

"TSA and GE agreed in July on a series of specifications that needed to be met before a GE shoe scanner would be authorized for widespread use in U. S. airports. The specifications covered minimum requirements for explosives and weapons detection. The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, Transportation Security Laboratory, and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have concluded the tests.

The results were as follows:

The shoe-scanning feature on the machine presented for testing on August 20 does not meet minimum detection standards. While significant improvements were made, (in fact a new machine was submitted) the shoe scanner still does not meet standards to ensure detection of explosives.

GE’s been apprised of these results and TSA and GE have agreed to continue working together. TSA and its partners at the laboratory stand ready to further test the GE shoe scanner feature upon completion of additional detection capability enhancements to meet the agreed upon security requirements.

The machine currently in use in Orlando does not meet minimum detection standards and several additional security measures are required by TSA to mitigate the shortfalls of the shoe scanner feature. Accordingly, the prototype shoe scanner used in Orlando will be discontinued, effective October 10. It had been hoped that an acceptable scanner would be available, but given that the lab prototype does not meet all standards, TSA will not authorize the shoe scanner feature for security purposes in any of the airports where it is currently deployed and awaiting use. The GE Kiosks may be used to read biometric cards associated with the Registered Traveler program but will not provide a security benefit."

For more information on Registered Traveler click here.

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