Aviation Industry in Europe Bridles Over Flight Shutdown and Demands Safety Reassessment

Told ya.

While the lockstep MSM were accepting official pronouncements at face-value and covering trivial anecdotal aspects of the air-travel shutdown in Europe (Oh look, someone's stuck in an airport! Oh my God, could this ash cause cancer? Let's speculate endlessly!), they missed the growing backlash among airlines in Europe and elsewhere about what some see as an overreaction to the volcanic-ash problem.

See my earlier posts, including the one headlined "Second Guessing on Shutdown of Air Traffic in Europe," in which the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, which represents Asian carriers, asked whether the shutdown was a "massive overreaction of supercautious politicians and bureaucrats who are more concerned about their own liability ..."

In Brussels today, European airlines and airports went public with their misgivings about the extent of the reaction to the Iceland volcano. They want the situation reassessed.

[Update -- According to a report in tomorrow's Financial Times, "Lufthansa, which says it is losing $34 million a day from the crisis, said it was 'scandalous' for authorities to have imposed the ban on what appeared to be limited data from computer images, rather than flights testing safety."]

"This is not sustainable. We cannot just wait till this ash cloud dissipates," the European Union transport commissioner, Siim Kallas, said at a press conference in Brussels.

Meanwhile, the statement from the Airports Council International Europe is below.

First, let me state again that volcanic ash is a grave peril to aircraft (see earlier post on the 1982 incident near Indonesia when volcanic ash shut down all four engines on a British Airways 747, which landed safely but severely damaged). No one is arguing for unsafe flying. If an aircraft were to go down because of flying through ash, the impact of the disaster would be incalculable, first of course on victims on the flight, but also on European aviation in general. On the other hand, there is growing concern that the Brits, who tend to have hair-triggers these days in response to perceived peril, overreacted -- followed then by the rest of the Europeans.

At any rate, here is the statement from ACI (Europe):

"Brussels, 18 April -- For the fourth consecutive day, airlines and airports
across Europe are facing the unprecedented closure of almost all the continent’s
air space, due to the threat of volcanic ash dispersion. The situation has resulted
in the total standstill of intra-European mobility by air, coupled with a huge ripple
effect on long-haul aviation to the US, Asia and elsewhere. With over 63,000 flights canceled since Thursday, many millions of passengers affected so far and
a devastating impact for the aviation industry, the consequences are now
expanding to the wider economy given the reliance of businesses on aviation.
While Europe’s airlines and airports consider safety to be an absolute priority,
they are questioning the proportionality of the flight restrictions currently
imposed. The eruption of the Icelandic volcano is not an unprecedented event
and the procedures applied in other parts of the world for volcanic eruptions do
not appear to require the kind of restrictions that are presently being imposed in
Europe.

AEA and ACI EUROPE support the efforts initially deployed by the European
Commission, EUROCONTROL, air navigation service providers (ANSPs) and
national authorities to gain control of the threat posed to safety, but call for an
immediate reassessment of the present restrictions at European level.
Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus, Secretary General AEA said “Verification flights
undertaken by several of our airlines have revealed no irregularities at all; this
confirms our requirement that other options should be deployed to determine
genuine risk. For example, the FAA has a world-established process of identifying
clear no-fly zones. Airlines must be able to fly where it is safe to fly and make
decisions accordingly. It is what our passengers demand of us.

Olivier Jankovec, Director General ACI Europe commented, “With 313
airports paralyzed at the moment, the impact is already worst than 9/11. More
than 6.8 million passengers have been affected so far and European airports
have lost close to €136 million. Many thousands of passengers are still stuck at
airports because of this situation. While safety remains a non-negotiable priority,
it is not incompatible with our legitimate request to reconsider the present
restrictions.”


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Are Germans, Dutch Bridling at UK Response to Ash? They Test the Skies Themselves

Are the Germans and Dutch thinking about going off the reservation in the response to the volcanic ash situation, which so far has been largely dictated by NATS, the for-profit British company that controls air space into and out of the UK?

(The NATS Web site is, astonishingly, still offline. Just as astonishingly, the company blames "heavy Web traffic" for not being able to keep its Web site up in a national emergency!)

Obviously, volcanic ash is a very serious flight concern, but I'm picking up grumbling here and there, including from Lufthansa, that just maybe the Brits may have overreacted in shutting the whole system down and keeping it shut for days. There is no indication of when flights in Europe might resume, as the Iceland volcano keeps erupting.

Today, Lufthansa flew 10 airliners (without passengers) from Munich to Frankfurt at altitudes between 10,000 and 26,000 feet. The planes were undamaged, Lufthansa said.

KLM also flew test flights at various altitudes without incident.

On Lufthansa's Web site, the following statement appears. Do I detect a note of pique in the first sentence? (italics are mine):

"Like all other airlines, Lufthansa must comply with directives issued by ministries and air traffic control. Many European airports have closed. In Germany, the airports in Berlin, Bremen, Cologne, Dortmund, Dresden, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Hof, Leipzig, Munich, Muenster/Osnabrueck, Nuremberg and Stuttgart have shut down. All arrivals at and departures from these airports have been canceled until further notice.

Lufthansa has canceled all flights worldwide scheduled until Sunday, April 18th, 1800 UTC (8pm local German time). Passengers whose flights have been canceled are kindly asked not to travel to the airport."


Stand by as Euro-politics, rivalries, old resentments and economics enter the picture!

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Stop Bothering Us! Company That Runs British Air Transport Goes Offline in a Crisis

The for-profit company that operates air transportation in Britain, the National Air Traffic Services, NATS, has astonishingly gone offline in the current, worsening crisis.

Huh?

As you can see here, the company is saying that "due to heavy Web traffic, the normal site is currently offline." Instead, a "holding page" is provided for general updates on the chaos. Air travel "restrictions," as the company puts it, remain in effect at least until 7 a.m. tomorrow. By "restrictions," NATS evidently means, um, total shutdown of the system.

A cynic might say that this is what you get when you take a vital government function like managing your national air-transportation system and sell it off to a profit-making corporation that, evidently, hasn't invested in the minimal technology to keep the public informed in an emergency, when "heavy Web traffic" would certainly be most expected. The biggest shareholder in NATS is the British government (49 percent), with most of the rest owned by a group including British Airways, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic and others.

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By the Numbers: The Air Travel Mess Today in Europe

From Flightstats.com, a look at the mess in air travel today in Europe. (Click to enlarge).

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Volcanic Ash and Airplanes: 4 Engines Gone on a 747 in 1982

The best-known incident of an airliner imperiled by volcanic ash occurred in 1982 on a British Airways flight from London to Aukland. The plane, a 747, flew into an ash cloud spewed up by a volcano in Indonesia and lost all four engines.

Famously, the 747 captain, Eric Moody, in a masterpiece of British understatement, got on the intercom after the engines flamed out and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress."

Moody and his two flight officers (747s carried an engineer back then) managed to glide the plane in a descent from 37,000 feet to 12,000 feet, for about 15 minutes, before they got an engine restarted. The plane landed safely in Jakarta. The engines were severely damaged.

Here's an interview with the now-retired Moody yesterday by the BBC. It's well worth listening to.

It was nighttime when the 747 entered the ash cloud, and the pilots were unaware of the ash problem. Volcanic ash is dry and is not typically picked up on radar.

There was another volcanic-ash incident involving a 747 in 1989, when a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Anchorage flew into an ash cloud from the erupting Mount Redoubt. It lost all four engines and landed safely, though with severe damage to the engines and fuselage.

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Second-Guessing on Shutting Down Air Traffic in Europe

Was this really necessary? And what happens if the Iceland volcano continues to erupt and spew ash for days or weeks?

As airports in England, France and elsewhere in Europe remain closed today because of volcanic ash in the skies, some skepticism is arising about the decision to shut down air travel in western Europe. The UK, where the days of the Battle of Britain are a fading memory, is no stranger to hysterical over-reaction to air-travel threats, of course.

In Britain, the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) rejected assertions that it had overreacted. "Safety is our main priority and volcanic ash is a serious threat to aircraft," a spokesman said, according to the Times of London.

NATS, which operates commercial air traffic in the UK, is a private corporation. It would seem in general that a private corporation, exposed to civil liability, would be cautious in deciding when planes could fly under potentially hazardous conditions in the skies.

Air traffic in England and Wales remains shut down till at least 7 a.m. Saturday and possibly beyond. Some international flights have been allowed to operate in Northern Ireland and Scotland as the ash cloud drifts southeast beyond the British Isles. Twenty airports in France, including those in Paris, also remain closed till tomorrow morning at 7, and possibly beyond.

In Iceland, the volcano continued to erupt today. "It is more or less the same situation as yesterday, it is still erupting, still exploding, still producing gas," University of Iceland professor Armann Hoskuldsson told Reuters. "We expect it to last for two days or more or something. It cannot continue at this rate for many days. There is a limited amount of magma that can spew out."

Obviously, aircraft are in danger flying through particulate-heavy volcanic ash.

But what exactly is the science here, and where do politics intrude, if at all?

This today from the Sydney-based Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, a pretty strong voice in international air travel. CAPA, which represents airlines and others with obvious financial interests in keeping planes flying, bluntly describes the reaction in Europe as "paranoia." Here's the statement:

"Much of European airspace is closed for today at least. Within Europe the scene is casual chaos. Not only are travelers and flights grounded in several major European city, but it will take days to restore schedules, even if the scare is called off today. And in points as far away as Australia and Argentina, aircraft bound for Europe have been grounded too.

Is this a massive over-reaction of super-cautious politicians and bureaucrats who are far more concerned about their own liability – while suffering none of the financial carnage that this will cause the airlines and their feeding chain? Or is it a genuinely serious event that justified shutting down most of Europe's airspace. ...

If the closures continue for up to three days, the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) estimates some six million passengers will be affected - probably forfeiting their flights; as an "Act of God," the volcano's impact nullifies insurance claims for canceled flights.

EUR120 million was wiped off the value of Ryanair and Aer Lingus yesterday, with their share prices each falling 1.4% yesterday in what was otherwise a healthy day for European stock markets.

British Airways and easyJet fell 0.2% and 0.3% respectively, while Nordic airline stocks suffered, with SAS and Norwegian falling 3.9% and 3.2%, respectively. Aeroflot was 2.1% lower."


Here is the latest NATS statement on the Icelandic volcanic eruption, posted at 02:30, Friday 16-Apr-2010:

"The cloud of volcanic ash continues to cover much of the UK and the eruption in Iceland continues. Following a review of the latest Met Office information, NATS advises that restrictions will remain in place in UK controlled airspace until 19:00 (UK time) today, Friday 16-Apr-2010, at the earliest.

However, flights in Northern Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland to and from Glasgow and Prestwick may be allowed up to 1300 (UK time) today, subject to individual coordination. North Atlantic traffic to and from Glasgow, Prestwick and Belfast may also be allowed over the same period.

We will review further Met Office information and at 0830 (UK time) we will advise on the arrangements that will be in place until 0100 (UK time) on Saturday, 17 April.

In general, the situation cannot be said to be improving with any certainty as the forecast affected area appears to be closing in from east to west. We continue to work closely with airports, airlines, and the rest of Europe to understand and mitigate the implications of the volcanic eruption.""

An earlier (14:00, 15-Apr-2010) NATS statement noted, "in line with international civil aviation policy, no flights other than agreed emergencies are currently permitted in UK controlled airspace…We continue to work closely with airports, airlines, and the rest of Europe to understand and mitigate the implications of the volcanic eruption."

Back to the CAPA statement:

"The question is, what happens if Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier volcano keeps on erupting - for days, or weeks? The Vatnajokull eruption in Iceland in the 1990s (a similar event under a much bigger glacier) led to minimal disruption, apart from a short period when the eruptions began, with aircraft routed around the area. It certainly did not lead to region-wide closures of air space. Such has the paranoia around safety and security grown since September 11.

Recovery in the key trans-Atlantic business market (the lifeblood for many European and US long-haul airlines) is still elusive, while short-haul premium demand within Europe continues to contract. Airlines finances, particularly in Europe, remain fragile, and airline managements will be hoping the ash – and the attendant paranoia – settles quickly.

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United Pilots Signal Better Fit With Continental Than US Air

Dunno, an unkind person might say that United Airlines management is peddling the company like a Lincoln Tunnel hooker, but at least the pilots feel that a hookup with Continental Airlines would work better than one with US Air.

The latest speculation is that United and Continental are in talks. Again! This comes less than a week after reports that United and US Airways are talking merger.

Continental is regarded as a well-run airline, and the betting here is that in any merger Continental would be on top, even though it's smaller. (I'd say US Airways would, too, if the talks between United and US Air were to result in a merger, though the United pilots are very skeptical about any link with US Air)


Anyway, here's a statement from Wendy Morse, a United captain who is chairman of the United council of the Air Line Pilots Association International:

"It has been our long-standing position that the pilots of United Airlines would support a merger if such a transaction would benefit the careers and futures of our pilots.

"Several media outlets have reported today that United and Continental have reopened merger talks. For United’s pilots, Continental, rather than US Airways, represents a more logical merger partner for United Airlines. In light of the recent reports of merger discussions between United Airlines and US Airways, it is our belief, along with many analysts, that a merger between United and Continental would contain less route overlap and greater attainable synergies. These factors would contribute to the protection of pilot careers, lead to long-term security for both airlines’ pilot groups and produce a stronger overall enterprise.

"We have been down this path before, and we have a long-standing working relationship with the pilots of Continental. We would parlay this relationship to help make a merger between United and Continental viable for both pilot groups, as well as toward the success of the combined operations."


###

Heads-Up On Air Travel to/from Europe

[UPDATE 6 pm London time: Air travel chaos in Europe could continue through tomorrow, says the Times of London in this update on the situation. Paris airports closing later tonight.]

If it's not one thing it's another.

An erupting volcano in Iceland spewed ash into the atmosphere and has shut down airports in western Europe, including Heathrow. All flights in Britain have been grounded.

The eruption in Iceland occurred at a volcano over a glacier at Eyiajjallajokull in the southern part of the country. There was a previous significant eruption at that spot in 1821. It's near a much bigger volcano, Mr. Katla, and there is some worry that a second eruption could occur there.

The mess is ongoing as the ash drifts south across the UK. If you're flying to or from western Europe, you need to carefully check flight information.

Here's some useful information on the eruption from the Weather Channel.

Here's the report in the Independent newspaper with some information on the path of the ash-cloud, and the closing of UK airspace to all except emergency flights.

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Copping a Smoke Undetected on Flight 663?

That's a pretty good folo in the Times today on the Arab diplomat who made alarm bells ring loud after he ducked into the lavatory to cop a smoke on United Flight 663 from Washington to Denver on Wednesday night.

This, by the way, is a federal crime right off the bat. Then, when confronted at his seat by an air marshal, he shot off his fool mouth about maybe lighting up a bomb in his shoe. Heh-heh.

Everyone agrees, what a moron. What a shame this nitwit has diplomatic immunity, because a couple of months in jail would give him occasion for contemplation about the realities of aviation terrorism.

And everyone with any sense also agrees with Kip Hawley, the former TSA chief, that the security response to this incident was exactly as it should have been. By all indications, there was a bomb threat on that airplane.

(By the way, those fighter jets that were scrambled to "accompany" the flight after the incident was reported had a secondary mission, after escort. If things happened to go very, very wrong on board, they were up there to shoot that plane down if so ordered.)

But I'm still wondering. According to the accounts, the fact that this guy had been smoking his pipe in the lavatory was determined only after a flight attendant, followed by another passenger, used the lav and reported that it smelled of tobacco smoke.

What about those lavatory smoke detectors that the airlines always warn you not to be "disabling or tampering with"?

Did the lavatory smoke detector on that airplane not work? If not, shouldn't this be an issue for the FAA to follow up on?

Do airplane smoke detectors work? In some states, you can't even sell a house till the local fire department comes to certify that all of your $12 home smoke detectors are working.

You shouldn't be able to fly an airplane full of people without the same level of assurance.

[UPDATE: The "comments" link below shows 0 comments, but it's wrong. Click it for a useful comment from a reader who clearly knows what he or she is talking about, saying the smoke detectors are for dense smoke and/or fire, not casual tobacco smoke. Noted.]

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Hiding Use of Private Jets

USA Today ran an excellent piece today by ProPublica saying that private jet owners benefit from a special new deal with the FAA that allows them to keep secret their use of private planes.

Usually, any passenger flight, commercial or private, is listed by the FAA. Using online flight-tracking sites, anyone can identify the owner of record for any flight on any given day.

Unfortunately, the main article posted today by USA Today failed to note that its owner, the Gannett newspaper company, was one of the beneficiaries of the deal, though it does name the publishing company that owns the Albuquerque Journal and Sam Zell, the chief of the Tribune newspaper publishing company. The Gannett connection is mentioned in the sidebar, however.

Of Gannett, the ProPublica article says: "Gannett, the media company that owns USA Today, which published a version of this article in collaboration with ProPublica, has blocked its corporate jet. Company spokeswoman Robin Pence said Gannett shields its flights mostly for competitive reasons, such as when it looks at possible acquisitions and investments. Security in a post-9/11 environment also is a concern, she said."

Here's the link to the article as ProPublica, the interesting non-profit news organization, sent it out.

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As United, US Air Talk Merger, the Passenger Squeeze Is On

Lots of baloney is being sliced as United and US Air talk merger.

Keep this in mind: Since 2000, the domestic U.S. air transportation system, at least as measured by available seating capacity on the major airlines, has shrunk by 20 percent. That's the equivalent roughly of one major airline disappearing.

In the last two years, airlines have been shrinking capacity as much as they can as demand sagged with a deteriorating economy.

As demand grows again, the airlines want to devise a permanent system in which most seats are always full on most flights -- and any merger between United and US Air would be done with that idea in mind. From the airlines' point of view, that's the only guarantee of sustained profitability.

For well over a year, most seats have been full on most flights anyway, as airlines routinely reported so-called load factors (the percentage of available seats sold) well into the 80 percent levels.

That number is creeping up.

In March, United planes flew with a whopping 85 percent of seats full on domestic flights, and 83.2 percent full on international flights.

At the same time, United shrank domestic seating by 5.3 percent and international by 6.1 percent, compared with March 2009.

In March, US Airways flew with 84.8 percent of domestic and 83.2 percent of international seats full, while shrinking domestic capacity by 4.7 percent (and adding 6 percent to international capacity).

They'll be shoveling a lot of stuff about "synergies" in any merger scenario, but if it happens, this much will be assured: Airplanes, already more full than at any time in the history of commercial aviation, will become fuller.

The media will focus mostly on the corporate/Wall Street story, which certainly is important.

But the travelers' story is that passengers will have fewer choices; we'll be more miserable and cramped. And we'll get to pay more for the privilege.

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Ryanair and Its Pay-Toilets Claim

I'm endlessly amused by the way online "news" reporting can lift a half-assed report and make it worse in the re-telling and re-telling.

For well over a year, Michael O'Leary, the publicity-savvy CEO of the European budget airline Ryanair, has regularly rattled reporters' chains and obtained publicity for various schemes, among them his pee-in-the-sky proposal to install pay toilets on the Ryanair fleet.

The latest flush of publicity rests on very thin ice, as usual. British newspapers, which love to rush breathlessly into print with smirky stories that turn out to be not fully reported, have tossed out the pay-toilets claim once again.

Here's an example of the caliber of reporting that these stories rely on, from the Guardian: "However, O'Leary confirmed that he will ask Boeing to look at putting credit card readers on toilet locks for new aircraft. 'We are serious about it,' said O'Leary, who has acquired the nickname Michael O'Really within aviation circles for some of his more outlandish claims. ..."

Nothing new here and in an even shakier report in the Daily Mail newspaper in London. The typically half-baked Daily Mail story begins: "Ryanair has confirmed that it is pushing ahead...". Right, and I confirm that I am pushing ahead with my plans to win the Nobel Prize.

Absolutely nothing is new from the last time O'Leary got copious attention for his airline's toilets. O'Really has merely again repeated that he is exploring the idea of pay toilets. He has "confirmed" that he will ask Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, to "look at" a possible method of installing credit-card readers on lavatory doors.

Boeing, of course, has no such technology, and has announced no plans to develop it with O'Leary or anyone else. Never say never, of course, but as has been pointed out previously when O'Leary went off on this subject, the European Union has fairly detailed rules about requiring public restrooms under various circumstances. Flying a planeload of people without access to a bathroom unless they have a credit card is a proposal that's likely to attract some attention in Brussels.

Last spring, O'Leary discussed the pay-toilet scheme in a press conference in which he was widely ridiculed. Among his statements that day: "Our passengers can choose to pay a pound for the toilet, no one's forcing them to." ... "They’ll learn to go to the toilet before boarding, and they’ll go after landing ..." and "We don’t want to charge our passengers more, we want them to use toilets less. It’s about changing customer behavior."

Since then, O'Leary has admitted that the idea had no chance of flying, but on other occasions he has insisted it would work, and said that any European Union rules requiring free pay toilets under specified conditions could be overcome.

Meanwhile, the U.S. carrier Spirit Airlines has announced that it plans to start charging for using overhead bins on airplanes. That's real and outrageous enough, though the Spirit charge comes bundled with priority boarding access. Other airlines have to be looking at this stunt with great interest -- though keep in mind that Spirit is best known for very cheap fares and very limited service.

But I don't know anyone in the aviation industry who thinks O'Leary's pay-toilets are anything but a publicity stunt. And I have seen absolutely no reporting yet that takes this "story" beyond airy speculation.

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'No Fly' List Expanding

The 'no fly' portion of the terrorist watch list, which had about 2,000 people on it two years ago, now has about three times that number.

Watch the news media stumble over this information, since in general media accounts have inaccurately reported on the terrorist watch list for many years.

The 'no fly' list, which many reporters commonly confuse with the much-bigger 'selectee' list, contains names of people posing known terrorist threats who are not allowed to board an airplane.

So far, from what I have been told by people familiar with the way the watch lists operate, no one on the no fly list has tried to fly. So it isn't entirely clear just how it works if someone on that list shows up at an airport. They are not necessarily arrested, but the police are alerted. [Over the years there have been a few "false positive" hits on the no-fly list, when people have been detained at airports because they have been mistakenly flagged as being on the list. But these have been cases of either mistaken identity or outright checkpoint incompetence).

The news media always get this confused. The no fly list is one thing. The selectee list is quite another. That portion of the terrorist watch list has 20,000 to 50,000 actual identities on it, but that list is an unholy mess. It's an amalgam of numerous intelligence and law enforcement data banks, some so obsolete and half-baked that names like Jack Anderson are on it. Jack Anderson, the famous muckraking columnist, died five years ago. His name evidently migrated onto a list of people to be watched because Anderson was deeply hated by Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover. Until recently, anyone named Jack Anderson (including an eight-year-old boy) has been stopped for additional security inspections at airport checkpoints.

If you share a name with one of the names, aliases, identities or half-baked data entries with anyone on the selectee list, you're likely to have been delayed at checkpoints for extra questioning. This year, the TSA is supposed to be perfecting a procedure, called Secure Flight, for greatly reducing the so-called false positives on that list, which has about 500,000 various data entries altogether. That's the reason airlines now ask for your birthdate and gender when you book, to help narrow the false hits against that list.

The selectee list is an acknowledged mess of tangled data. But from what I have been told, the "no fly" list is deadly serious. Anyone on it is bad business, and it's probably good news that it's been expanded.

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Baja Earthquake Rattles Los Angeles

As if there isn't enough trouble south of the border, an earthquake reported at 7.2 magnitude struck the region around Mexicali in upper Baja California around 3.40 p.m. today Pacific time.

Damage reports in the Mexicali region are just starting to come in.

The earthquake rattled buildings in Los Angeles and San Diego, but so far there are no reports of damage in Southern California.

About 20 million people felt the quake in Mexico, Southern California and southwest Arizona, according to the initial report in the Los Angeles Times.

Aftershocks are expected throughout the region.

Here's the current U.S. Geological Survey-Caltech seismic report.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Mexicali. Mexicali is near the border about 100 miles east of San Diego.

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Skyservice, Canadian Charter Airline, Abruptly Shuts Down

The Canadian charter carrier Skyservice Airlines abruptly shut down yesterday and went into bankruptcy receivership. The shut-down left about 3,000 customers stranded in the Caribbean and Mexico, though arrangements are being made with other charter operators to get them home.

Skyservice was forced into receivership yesterday owing $8.8 million to its partner Sunquest Vacations. Here's a bulletin from Sunquest to its customers who have booked on Skyservice.

By the way, Skyservice Business Aviation, which operates private jet charters, says it is not affiliated with Skyservice Airlines. Skyservice Business Aviation says it continues to operate normally.

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Bush League in Tucson

[Tucson Electric Park at the end of spring training. Photo by Chris Sharkey]

After 63 years, major league baseball spring training comes to an end today in Tucson, Arizona. Its death was caused by the greed of Major League Baseball, the corporate giant, and by the gullibility of local officials who think that building expensive stadiums for the benefit of sports teams is a prudent use of taxpayer money.

The next-to-last game was played yesterday between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers at the $38 million Tucson Electric Park, built by Pima County at taxpayer expense and opened in 1998 as the spring-training home for the brand-new Arizona Diamondbacks and the Chicago White Sox. Both teams signed 15-year contracts to play at the new ballpark.

The White Sox blew town at the end of spring training last year. The Diamondbacks skulked out of the stadium yesterday at the end of the final game, which they lost 4-2 to the Rangers.

The last spring training game in Tucson will be played today, between the Colorado Rockies and the Diamondbacks, at Rockies' spring home, the venerable 1937 Hi Corbett Field, a little gem of a stadium that was originally the spring training home of the Cleveland Indians, who played there from 1947 through 1992, after which the Rockies moved in.

At the end of the game today at Hi Corbett (a report will follow), both the Rockies and the Diamondbacks will be gone. Next spring, the teams will play at a new $100 million stadium and training facility (built by taxpayer money, natch) near Scottsdale in the Phoenix suburbs -- 110 miles up the Interstate from Tucson.

Ha-ha, loyal Tucson has been told: No baseball for you!

The issue here is not so much the Rockies' departure from good old Hi Corbett Field, though that's a crying shame. The issue is the cheesy way the Diamondbacks are leaving town, having enjoyed taxpayer largess at Tucson Electric Park, which many consider to be the finest spring-training stadium in major league baseball.

Yesterday's final game at TEP, as it is known, was played under glorious sunny skies with the temperature in the 80s. Conspicuously lacking was any overt acknowledgment by the local apparatchiks that the team they had built the new stadium for was leaving the premises for good after the 9th inning, leaving county taxpayers with $22.7 million to pay off in debt from the stadium.

Shhh, the apparatchiks seemed to believe. Don't let's embarrass the Major League Baseball panjandrums down there counting the money under the stands before they skip out on the rent.

Instead, the loudspeaker boomed: "The Pima County Board of Supervisors welcomes you to today's game!" and then the announcer gamely described some other local attractions to be seen by visitors, including the abandoned Titan II nuclear missile site, now a museum, 20 miles down the Interstate.

In the local paper, one county supervisor, Ramon Valadez, was quoted as saying that the Diamondbacks' leaving before the contract expired was "an abuse of the public."

But at the ballpark, the only real acknowledgment came from a well-known stadium beer vendor who calls himself Scooter the Beerguy. At the end of the 7th inning, Scooter the Beerguy set down his box at the foot of the stands near the dugout on the first-base side and wailed to the fans: "We've had 13 great years here, and they can't take that from us!" He took a big bow in a rousing ovation.

Uh, I have some news for you Scooter. They can take it away and they did.

[Scooter, by the way, declines to give his real name. Instead, he hands you his business card, which lists his Web site.]

The only other real acknowledgment that the deal had gone sour and the end was imminent came from the stadium organist. Between innings in the 9th, a bouncy rendition of "Camelot" in a 2-4 beat issued from the loudspeakers.

When the game ended, I expected at least some overt acknowledgment from the Diamondbacks team itself that it was leaving town. Maybe the team would take to the field for a final wave. You know, say goodbye and many thanks to the fans who built the ballpark for them.

Nope. The Texas Rangers team took to the field, its management apparently aware that a certain moment had occurred and a certain respect might be due to the fans. The Texas Rangers have some manners.

Behaving like the bush-leaguers that they are, the Arizona Diamondbacks turned their backs and disappeared into the dugout, then into the bowels of the stadium where the money is counted. They were a no-class outfit to the end.

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Air Travel Fell 5.3 Percent in 2009, DOT Says

The U.S. Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics says today that the number of scheduled domestic and international passengers on U.S. airlines and on flights to and from the United States on foreign airlines declined in 2009 by 5.3 percent from 2008, dropping to 769.6 million.

The declines were biggest in the first half of last year. Traffic picked up markedly through the second half of the year, though.

The report says that:

--U.S. airlines carried 5.2 percent fewer domestic passengers in 2009 and 6.3 percent fewer international passengers than in 2008. Passengers to and from the United States on foreign carriers decreased 4.8 percent compared with 2008.

--Total passengers on U.S. airlines and on foreign airlines to and from the United States declined from the same month in 2008 in 10 of the 12 months. The largest decline, 12.4 percent, took place in February. During the first six months of 2009, the number of passengers declined 9 percent from the same period in 2008. During the last six months, the decline was 1.4 percent.

--Southwest Airlines carried more total system passengers in 2009 than any other U.S. airline for the third consecutive year. American Airlines carried more international passengers to and from the United States in 2009 than any other U.S. or foreign carrier for the 20th consecutive year.

--More total system passengers boarded planes in 2009 at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International than at any other U.S. airport, and more international passengers boarded planes at New York John F. Kennedy than at any other U.S. airport.

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'Fly Girls' and Some Myths About 'Stewardesses'

Photos: The 2003 revised edition of "Coffee, Tea." Donald Bain and his oeuvre. Fantasy image of stewardesses in the so-called golden era.

Any time someone evokes the so-called golden era of airline flying and focuses on stewardesses -- as does this TV reality show that I that haven't seen -- you can be sure you'll be hearing about a famous 1967 book, "Coffee, Tea or Me?" that is widely believed to have been written by two saucy, sexy stewardesses. The book, a spectacular best-seller, created the template for the image of the racy, jet-setting airline stewardess as globe-trotting party girl in endless pursuit of rich men and good times.

However, the memoir (along with three "Coffee, Tea" sequels) was actually written by an American Airlines PR guy in New York City named Donald Bain. After the initial success of "Coffee, Tea," he became a prolific author, not only of fictional sexy "memoirs" of career girls like stewardesses, nurses and schoolteachers, but also of mystery thrillers such as the "Murder She Wrote" series. That series was, famously, adapted for TV.

Naturally, the "Murder She Wrote" books were published with the "author" identified as "Jessica Fletcher," who was, of course, the fictional character in the books, and the character played in the TV series by Angela Lansbury.

Don Bain wrote 'em all himself.

Over the years, I've spoken and corresponded with Don a number of times, including right after he came came forward in 2003 as the actual author of "Coffee, Tea or Me," which was first published in 1967 under the names of the two stewardesses, Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones, neither of whom actually existed. Instead, two Eastern Airline stewardesses who had been merely talking about writing a book about their experiences were hired by the publisher to tour the country promoting "their" authorship of "Coffee, Tea" in print and, especially, on television.

The stewardess book was a sensation, as I've said, even though it was actually pretty tame -- suggestive rather than salacious. Back in 1967, the late and seldom-lamented Look Magazine said breathlessly that the book "Gives the lowdown on stewardesses; reads like a footnote to 'Human Sexual Response."

It did nothing of the sort. It was more like a romp and a caper.

The "revised" edition published by Penguin in 2003 still carried the names of Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones on the cover as the authors, but this time Don Bain finally took credit. "--with Donald Bain," it said on the cover under the two fictitious stewardess names.

Don, a real gentleman, spilled the Bains, or beans, in his 2002 autobiography "Every Midget Has an Uncle Sam Costume."

He told me back then that the "Coffee, Tea" project got started when he was a young PR guy (with the standard literary aspirations) at American Airlines in New York. He was already a fairly regular business traveler.

An editor at a publishing house introduced him to two Eastern Airlines stewardesses who thought they together might be able to write a book about their escapades. The editor thought Don might want to be the ghostwriter for the two women. But when Don sat down with them, they didn't have much to offer besides a few anecdotes.

"I realized they didn't have enough to sustain a book, and I was going to have to use an awful lot of my own imagination," he told me then. Nevertheless, he was inspired by the idea. So he created a "memoir" out of whole cloth.

The book shot onto the best-seller list, and the two stewardesses were delighted to go on the road to publicize it as the authors -- even though their real names were not on the cover. Bedazzled by fame, "one of them legally changed her real name to the one I had given her on the book," Bain told me.

Don had the fictional stewardesses dedicate "their" book to himself in in the first edition. He also dedicated the three "Coffee, Tea" sequels "to Donald Bain, without whom this book wouldn't have been possible." As his writing career took off in the ghostwritten faux-memoir genre, each successive book, including the ones about racy nurses, was oddly dedicated to "Donald Bain."

"I always wondered if somebody was going to look at them all and say, 'Who is this guy who all these young women are dedicating books to?'" he said.

Back then, Don greatly admired flight attendants (at the time they were almost all female and young) for their grit, their poise under stress and their determination to succeed in male-dominated environment, in an era when newspaper held-wanted adds still were segregated under separate headings for "Male Help Wanted" and "Female Help Wanted."

When "Coffee, Tea" was re-released in 2003, this time with his name on the cover under the fictional authors', he wrote this in honor of flight attendants:

"Thanks for being on the front line of air-travel security. You have my undying gratitude for the tough job you do so admirably, and for allowing me to have had fun writing about an earlier era in air travel and your role in it."

I've written about Don several times over the years. Now that those purported golden days are being evoked again, even by real modern-day flight attendants in a reality show on television, it's not a bad idea to keep the record straight.

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Again, a Bush Shows How Not to Behave in a Foreign Country

Proving you can take the frat boy out of the White House but you ... uh, you still got a frat boy around, George W. Bush shook some Haitian people's hands on a road trip with Bill Clinton -- and then like a great big slob wiped his hand on Clinton's shirt.

The look on Clinton's face is priceless in the annals of ex-presidents on parade. Here's the video and text link.

Bush, the self-styled cowboy who was actually afraid of horses and couldn't ride, is famous for being obsessively concerned about germs. Which of course is not actually a cowboy characteristic.

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Virgin America Fare Sale

Virgin America introduced a major fare sale last night with, for example, round-trip fares between New York and Los Angeles for just over $300 when you add in the fees. But hurry, hurry, hurry (as the carny barkers used to say), because these fares come with lots of availability and other restrictions.

Details from the Virgin America announcement:

Book by March 29. Fly with 14-day advance purchase April 6 through June 20 and August 24 through November 17. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
San Francisco Las Vegas $59*
San Francisco Los Angeles $59*
San Francisco San Diego $59*
Seattle San Francisco $79*
Seattle Los Angeles $99*
Boston San Francisco $129*
Boston Los Angeles $129*
Washington, D.C. (Dulles) San Francisco $129*
Washington, D.C. (Dulles) Los Angeles $129*
Fort Lauderdale San Francisco $129*
Fort Lauderdale Los Angeles $129*
New York (JFK) Los Angeles $139*
New York (JFK) San Francisco $139*

Book by March 29. Fly with 14-day advance purchase August 19 through November 17. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
San Francisco Orlando $199*
Los Angeles Orlando $149*
Seattle Orlando $199*
San Diego Orlando $199*

And here's the fine print:

* All coach fares are one-way and require a 14-day advance purchase. Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable. Tickets must be purchased by 11:59 pm PDT 03.29.10. For service to and from Orlando, travel must occur between 08.19.10 and 11.17.10. For all other service travel must occur between 04.06.10 and 06.20.10 or 08.24.10 and 11.17.10. Blackout dates are 05.28.10, 05.31.10, 09.03.10, and 09.06.10. Higher sale fares in effect on Fridays, and Sundays. Seats are limited, subject to availability, and may not be available on all flights. Flight may not operate daily during off-peak periods. Changes or cancellations can be made for a $75 fee if changes are made on Virgin America’s website (www.virginamerica.com) or a $100 fee through all other channels, including the call center and at the airport, plus any increase in fare, if applicable. Passengers who "no-show" without a change or cancel prior to the scheduled departure time will forfeit the amount of the fare. In addition, any future flights booked in the same reservation will also be canceled and the fare will be forfeited. Tickets purchased from Virgin America through the reservation call center will cost an additional $15 per passenger per itinerary. Any added cost associated with purchasing tickets from Virgin America through our reservation call center will be non-refundable. Fares do not include passenger facility charges of up to $9 each way, September 11th security fees of up to $5 each way and a federal segment tax of $3.70 per domestic segment. ... Fares will not be honored retroactively or in exchange for any wholly or partially used ticket. Fares, routes, fees and schedules are subject to change without notice. Virgin America will accept one piece of checked baggage up to 70 pounds for $25 for each ticketed passenger. The fee per passenger for each additional checked bag up to 50 pounds from the second (2) to the tenth (10) is $25. Additional fees apply to baggage exceeding these weight limitations, and other baggage restrictions may apply.

Whew, sounds like one of those TV ads where the announcer races through the fine print at 300 words a minute.

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