Spendthrift Shoestring

The Allure of a Deserted Train Station

Haiger, Germany.

Weekend Travel Stories: Massive Cruise Ships, Slovenia, Local Destinations

In the Globe and Mail on Saturday, Wallace Immen reports on the supersizing of cruise ships. He profiles the Carnival Splendor ship, which sleeps 3,600 and serves a whopping 60,480 slices of bacon in an average week. (That's 16.8 strips of bacon per person per week at full capacity. Everybody loves bacon, but that's a lot of bacon, right?)

The Splendor's capacity, it appears, is nothing compared to that of Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas ship, set to launch in 2009, which will be able to carry 6,400 passengers at a time. Having never taken a cruise—something that I should do at least once if I want to be able to credibly claim this profession of mine—the thought of being adrift with 6,399 other passengers strikes me as simultaneously overwhelming and somewhat exotic. More seriously, given the fact that cruising is vastly worse for the environment than flying, one does wonder how great a development these massive cruise ships are.

Jan Morris writes in the weekend FT an enthusiastic, impressionistic blur of a Slovenia feature. Since Slovenia checks so many of the obvious European travel boxes—Adriatic beach towns, stunning Alpine scenery, a hip and happening capital—I find it very odd that features like this are not more commonplace. Slovenia is also delightfully affordable, with the exception of the overpriced Ljubljana hotel market. A Slovenia farmstay brochure last summer included information on farms with nightly rates as low as €10 per person per night. (I wish I could link, but I'm away from home and don't have access to my paper files right now.)

Looking through the travel sections of a number of U.S. newspapers this weekend, the most notable shared feature is an embrace of local destinations and short trips. Clearly, this turn is meant to address the ongoing interest people have in traveling and exploring despite tough economic times. The New York Times' New York City special is one example. Another is the Buffalo News' "One-Tank Trip," which yesterday gave Hamilton, Ontario the day trip treatment courtesy of Dorothy Delmonte. The "One-Tank Trip" feature isn't new for the Buffalo News, but it's especially valuable for this particular moment.

Ukraine Gets More LCC Action

On Wednesday, Wizz Air announced a Kyiv-London Luton route from December on; today, the airline announced a slew of routes in and out of Ukraine: Kyiv-Cologne, Kyiv-Dortmund, Lviv-Dortmund, and Lviv-London Luton.

Back in December, I forecasted the discovery of Ukraine by LCCs in 2008. I'm just surprised that it's taken so long to happen, and that the development of routes has been restricted to a trickle. I guess there is the whole aviation-industry-in-trouble thing to contend with.

Now when will Ryanair and Wizz Air start flying into Chisinau? That's the question.

Three Departure Boards

Belgrade. May 2008.

Frankfurt. September 2008. (Better Frankfurt departure board image here.)

London Stansted. May 2008.

SkyEurope's September Stats

I neglected to compare SkyEurope's September stats to those of Ryanair and Air Berlin on Tuesday. Sorry.

The Slovak LCC filled 78 percent of its seats in September, down a striking 6.4 percent from last September's 84.4 percent load factor. That's quite a drop. Compare SkyEurope's 78 percent load factor to Ryanair's 84 percent and Air Berlin's 82.5 percent. SkyEurope's passengers carried sum rose a very modest 1.5 percent. Compare this to Air Berlin's 3.1 percent drop and Ryanair's astounding 20 percent spike in the number of passengers flown.

The one constant here is faltering load factors. And I have a feeling things aren't about to get better.

Print Crush: Vogue Entertaining + Travel

My latest print crush comes from Australia. Vogue Entertaining + Travel is big and bold, an oversize glossy that fuses the pleasures of high-end grub and travel. The default attention to trends and events in Australia makes it feel very fresh. The Australian restaurant scene is very exciting, and the magazine hits this point home again and again. If the cuisine scene in Australia doesn't excite you then you probably don't really like eating in the first place.

The Aug/Sept issue, which I picked up yesterday, is full of interesting features and enthralling nuggets. Most exciting are the bulletins relating to Aussie food and drink, like the news that Sydney's Toby's Estate has opened up a Melbourne outpost, or the tidbit that the fabulously named Elvis Abrahanowicz has opened a casual Argentinian diner-bar next to his extremely popular Bodega (in Sydney.)

There's also a splashy feature on Las Vegas by Michael Walters, with pretty pictures by Julien Capmeil. It reimagines Vegas as a home of old-fashioned kitsch, and points to the town's eco-friendly park and arts district. It's made me actually want to visit Las Vegas, something that the past decade and a half of hype and bluster has failed to do. Also of note: a food tour of Hyderabad by Matt Preston and a whirl through Melbourne's retail and restaurants, also by Matt Preston.

I shelled out $13.95 for a copy of the August/September issue, and I don't regret dropping the cash. In Australia, the magazine retails for AUD8.95 (about $6).

Air Berlin Vs. Ryanair: September Stats

In September, Air Berlin saw a modest drop in load factor to 82.5 percent from last September's 84.2 percent. The German airline carried 2.85 million passengers in September, down from last September's 2.95 million. These are the sorts of numbers one might expect to see as Germany and other European countries confront a financially insecure terrain. It will be interesting to see how Air Berlin weathers October.

Ryanair also witnessed faltering load factor in September, from 85 percent last September to 84 percent. The airline boosted their passenger numbers significantly, however, with a 20 percent increase. 5.23 million passengers flew Ryanair in September; the comparable number for September 2007 was 4.35 million. Again, October should be a telling month.

Tilly & the Wall As Interpreted by Some Taiwanese Grade Four Students

Tilly & the Wall, an indie band from Omaha, make good songs. I don't know much about them outside of the simple fact that they've made at least one stunning, perfect pop song, "Beat Control." This week, "Beat Control" surges in the UK Singles Chart, from Number 166 to Number 77. If there's any justice in the pop world, it will keep climbing. Here it is interpreted by a bunch of fourth graders in Taiwan.

Porter to Chicago!

On Wednesday, Canadian business airline Porter announced that they'll be flying between Toronto City Centre and Chicago Midway from November 12 onwards. They're already advertising in the Globe and Mail, taking out one of their typically cute ads—page A5, full-page no less. The airline will fly thrice daily from mid-November, increasing frequency to six times a day from January 8 onwards. Midway-Toronto City Centre flights will start at C$149 (under US$138) one-way, not including taxes.

Mike and I really need to plan a weekend in Toronto soon.

JetBlue, JFK's Terminal 6, and the Weakening of a Brand

I flew JetBlue last night from JFK to Buffalo, and it got me thinking.

It seems to me that JetBlue has never really recovered from the complete collapse it experienced over the course of several days in February 2007. For those who have forgotten the airline's spectacular meltdown during that fateful week, the events went something like this: a big winter storm hit the East Coast, huge numbers of flights were canceled, back-up crews and planes could not be found to accommodate the masses left without flights, and JetBlue's dispersed customer service agents wilted under the enormous pressure. To make things worse, planes full of furious and exhausted passengers remained on the runway for up to 11 hours. The whole thing amounted to a damning public relations catastrophe.

As fate would have it, I was supposed to take off to Santiago, DR on the first day of the meltdown for a long weekend with my sister. Obviously, we never made it.

JetBlue's initial response was very bewildered and disorganized, but they came around relatively quickly. The airline offered all affected customers a credit for twice the amount spent on any flight canceled during the period in question. So far so good. (I still haven't exhausted my credit. I will finally do so in December, on a roundtrip flight to Santo Domingo.)

Despite this response, which was the right thing to do for public relations reasons as well as on grounds of corporate responsibility, the airline has floundered in the public's estimation. Why is this? Without any hard evidence here, it's my sense that fares have not remained low. Over the last few months, I've found very few truly cheap fares on JetBlue. I should acknowledge one notable exception, a JFK-St. Maarten roundtrip my friend Miranda purchased, which I believe was well under $350. Aside from that, every time I've approached JetBlue to begin to think about planning a trip I've found disagreeably dear fares and have turned to other carriers.

There's also the emergence of Virgin America to consider. VA unquestionably one-ups JetBlue in the on-board entertainment field. (Not only is there live television, but you can order food and send dirty messages to that cutie in the row in front of you, too! Wheeeee, flying is fun!) Virgin America is also expanding slowly and, based on my anecdotal experience as a passenger, quite flawlessly.

Signs of crisis in the JetBlue brand are on display at JFK's Terminal 6. Frankly, the terminal is a sty. Go into the bathrooms and you'll see dust and dirt gathered along the floor. The public address system squawks. The food vendors serve low-quality grub. The Wi-Fi is nice, but it doesn't always work. JFK is the airline's biggest hub, its flagship. And Terminal 6 is neither exciting nor welcoming.

I feel like a scold. But more than that, I feel annoyed that an airline with such great potential has seemed to drop the ball. I recall that once upon a time I loved JetBlue. I loved its brand, and I loved the fact that it could fly me places for a reasonable fare. The soon-to-debut Terminal 5 is key for the airline. A beautiful reinhabitation of the iconic terminal has great rebranding potential and may help the airline get back on track. But it's only part of the deal. JetBlue needs to recapture that sense of effortlessness and freshness, and of course those verifiably, comparably cheap fares that attract customers in the first place.

Before finishing this post I did a cursory Google search for JetBlue in the news and I came across a post by Matt Phillips in the Wall Street Journal's Middle Seat Terminal Blog today about a tripling in per-passenger complaints about the airline to the Department of Transportation during August 2008 in comparison to August 2007.

JetBlue has to get cracking.