Smokeless Cigarettes

On 21^st September 2009 Ryanair, always with an eye to extracting more money from its customers , introduced the completely ludicrous ‘smokeless cigarettes’ as the budget airline returned to the days of puffing away on flights by allowing passengers to get their nicotine fix from smokeless substitutes that don’t inconvenience fellow passengers.   Nicotine-loaded cigarettes are odourless and smokeless and so it would seem also pointless.  I think smokers agree with me on this point because despite the hard sell on every flight I have never seen anyone buy them.

As an experience flying has mostly deteriorated in quality since the 1960s except in one important area where there has been massive improvement.  In the 60s passengers that smoked were still allowed to light up a cigarette on board which meant that because of the way airplanes recirculate air in the cabin everyone else had to as well.

To be fair they did all have to sit at the back of the aircraft, a bit like Dante’s Inferno, and puff away together but after a couple of hours there was a horrible acrid odour of stale tobacco and the entire cabin smelt like an unemptied ash tray.  Actually it wasn’t just cigarettes but pipes and cigars as well and this was so bad that even the cigarette smokers complained about this.  Pipes and cigars were banned in 1979 but a ban on cigarettes had to wait for another ten years.

Missed Airline Flights

I suppose that a concern shared by all travellers is the inconvenience of missing the airport check-in deadline.  I was a victim of this distressing calamity when travelling to Venice on 4th April 2005 when a serious hold-up on the motorway due to an accident caused a delay that meant missing the check-in by five minutes.

Five little minutes!  And with no margin of error allowed we had to pay an extra £80 to get the next flight and then sit in a bar for nearly four hours waiting.  Well, on reflection then, perhaps it wasn’t that bad after all.

Actually there were quite a lot of very cross people in the bar that day who had missed their flights because of the hold-up and we all wondered why the police hadn’t been of more assistance in helping the traffic to move in what they must appreciate is a time sensitive area.  I resolved to write a letter of sharp rebuke to the Essex Constabulary upon my return but of course after a few days away it seemed so much less important when I got back home and I never quite got around to it.

My Travel Tips for Flying Budget Airlines

Despite the fact that over forty million people fly with Ryanair every year, it has been voted the world’s most disliked airline and issubject of more complaints than any other airline in the EU.   This is so unfair!  If people want a flight for £1 what realistically do they expect.  I read somewhere that the airline works on a profit margin of £5 per passenger so of course there has to be some additional charges for passengers.

One of the biggest complaints is about hidden extras and let’s be fair outrageous sharp practices in an endeavour to massage the cost of a service would be castigated in any other service industry (rather like a restaurant adding washing up, cleaning the floor and the cost of electricity to a meal bill) and Ryanair must have an office full of staff dreaming up the next scam but they are not alone because all low cost airlines do exactly the same thing.  Outwitting the scammers is all part of the fun of a Ryanair flight and here are my top tips:

Find the cheapest flight in the first place.  The best way to do this is to set an evening aside to search the web site for the very best deals.  This takes some time because Ryanair don’t make this easy; there is no site facility for prompting the cheapest flights so you just have to keep speculating with dates and destinations until you find something interesting.  And unless you really do want somewhere specific then be prepared to go anywhere because this is where some of the real bargains are.  In 2006 I went to Pula in Croatia for £15 return and then to Friedrichshafen in Germany for £13, both times including all the taxes and fees.  I had never heard of these places before I flew but they were both excellent places to visit.  Later I went  to Santander in Spain for £10 and in February 2008 I  achieved my cheapest ever deal for £8.02 return to Baden-Baden in Germany (and that included £8.00 credit card booking fee!)

Don’t take hold luggage.  This saves a lot of money on a return flight and with 10 kilograms allowed free as cabin baggage this is a much more sensible option.  Let’s face it most of us take far too much luggage with us when we go away for a couple of days anyway, I know I have taken clothes with me that I have never worn and I have been working hard to make sure that I now only take what I know I will need rather than a bag full of contingency items.  Last year I did a fortnight’s holiday to Greece with only hand luggage!  Also if you take hold luggage you have to queue up in a rugby scrum to get your bags checked in and this a complete no-brainer because what sane person would pay £35 or so to spend an hour in a queue when they could be in the bar instead?

Don’t buy a Priority Boarding Pass.  This is a complete con and saves more money on the return flight.  On a recent flight to Haugesund in Norway there were only forty passengers and two chumps had bought priority boarding!  Think about it sensibly for a moment, there is a seat for everyone on board anyway, have you ever seen anyone standing on an airline flight? No of course not.  All of the seats are exactly the same and an average flight is about two hours.  Unless you are seven feet tall and really need the extra leg room how can it possibly matter where you sit?

Don’t buy travel insurance from Ryanair.  I am not suggesting that you don’t buy travel insurance at all just shop around a bit because there are much better deals available elsewhere.

Don’t exceed your baggage allowance.  If you really must book in hold luggage you need to be really careful about this because going overweight is a real dumb thing to do and the penalty is an extortionate £20 per kilo and they are really, really strict on this because it is a fantastically good earner and the staff earn a bonus for catching anyone with overweight bags.  If when your bags are weighed and the allowance is exceeded my advice is to take some clothes out of the bag and wear them instead.  This might be a bit uncomfortable for a few minutes and make you look fat but it’s worth remembering that you don’t pay excess baggage charges for being obese!

Don’t buy food and drink on board.  Have a good breakfast at home before you set off and have a drink in the duty free bar before flying.  I agree that this one might be a bit more difficult but bear in mind that Ryanair now charges nearly £3 for a cup of tea!  That’s a ¼ of a litre of lukewarm water and a cheap tea bag.  You can probably get about 500 tea bags for £3 at a Supermarket, even more if you go to Aldi!

Don’t queue up too early and rush to go through the departure gate.  This one doesn’t save you any money but it can really piss people off because this is about getting the first seat on the plane, even those you have rashly purchased priority boarding con cards.  While everyone pushes and shoves about in the queue it is much less stressful to hang about at the back and go through the gate last, now, admittedly this only really works when there is a bus transfer to the plane, but get on the bus last and stand by the door and then purposefully get off first when the doors are opened and without looking left or right at the moaning minnies on either side be one of the first on board the aircraft.  This really gets people complaining I can tell you especially when they have been standing on that bus for five or ten minutes or so.

Once on board try and get a seat in the first available row because this does have a bit more legroom.  If the plane isn’t full it is normal practice to stop passengers sitting in the first few rows to balance up the weight in the plane but still take the first available row because once the aircraft is airborne it is possible to move into these bigger leg room seats for the duration of the flight.

Always sit down in an aisle seat, spread yourself out and don’t make eye contact with other passengers looking for a seat because this deters them from climbing over you to get to the window seat.  If the plane isn’t full there is a good chance that you will have an empty seat next to you and a lot more personal space.  This one works especially well when there are two of you because it makes it doubly difficult for people to push past.

Whatever you do, do not sit next to children.  I realise that you cannot prevent them sitting close by if they get on after you but by looking as child unfriendly as possible this can deter parents from sitting next to you with their loved ones.  The problem is that there is nothing for them to do you see so they quickly become bored and a pain in the ass to fellow travellers.  If you fly with a full price airline kids get fun packs and crayons and when they get fed up with that there are cartoons on the in flight TV to amuse them but with Ryanair all there is to read is the emergency evacuation procedure stuck on the back of the seat in front and that doesn’t keep a child amused for very long.

Keep an eye out for lost loose change.  Because the seats are so cramped a lot of people spill coins from their trouser pockets when they buy food and drink and they are quite unaware of it.  When you leave the plane look carefully on the floor and at the backs of the seats and you will be surprised just how often you find money.  I once paid £20 for a return flight to Riga and I found £2, that’s a 10% discount on the fare.

These simple tips will make flying with Ryanair a lot more rewarding and might help reduce the unjustified number of complaints that are made.  I hope so.

The Curse of Mobile Phones

“It’s a strange thing, but people in Britain still whisper when sharing a confidence face to face, but give them a mobile phone, a seat in a railway carriage and a sexually transmitted disease then they will share the information with everyone” – Bill Bryson.

On 10^th March 1876 Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call and now no one can stop using the infernal contraption.

I know that they are a useful addition to modern life but I went to London for a couple of days this week and on my return train journey I had the misfortune to select a seat in a carriage full of serial mobile phone users.  I am grateful for mobile phones of course but I wish people would have the good manners to use them considerately and have a thought for other people when they do so.  In virtually every public place you go now people are shouting into mobile phones and there are few things more irritating than being compelled to eavesdrop on one half of a conversation.

The worst place of all is on the train where dozens of commuters insist daily on competing with each other to have the loudest conversation which all end at exactly the same time with the words “Just a minute I’m going into a tunnel, hello, hello, HELLO, HELLO…”, followed by frantic animated redialing, a repeated conversation and another tunnel, followed by….

The only place that it is safe from mobile phone madness is in an aeroplane and I have been distressed to learn that soon this last sanctuary will be removed because Ryanair are proposing imminently to allow their use on board; I can imagine it now “Just a minute I’m going into some turbulence, hello, hello, HELLO, HELLO…”, followed by frantic animated redialing, a repeated conversation and more turbulence, followed by….

This will only add to the customary indiscipline of airline passengers.  I have noticed that almost as soon as a plane lands there is a clattering of seat belts being unbuckled before the seat belt light goes off, impatient rummaging through the overhead lockers to retrieve bags and the intensely irritating sound of mobile phones being switched on and the beep-beep of text messages being delivered.

Why can’t people do as they are told? You are not supposed to switch on mobile phones until in the terminal building, why can’t people wait?  These are two-hour flights to central Europe not a five-year mission to Mars!  One man even made a phone call simply to say ‘I’ve landed’, so what? was the recipient of the call going to run a flag up or turn a cartwheel or something.

Travel Inspiration

On 5 March 1496 King Henry VII of England gave the explorer John Cabot letters patent with the following charge:

…free authority, faculty and power to sail to all parts, regions and coasts of the eastern, western and northern sea, under our banners, flags and ensigns, with five ships or vessels of whatsoever burden and quality they may be, and with so many and with such mariners and men as they may wish to take with them in the said ships, at their own proper costs and charges, to find, discover and investigate whatsoever islands, countries, regions or provinces of heathens and infidels, in whatsoever part of the world placed, which before this time were unknown to all Christians

Henry VII might have got John Cabot started but when it comes to my own foreign travel three men have changed my life: Bill Bryson, Tim Berners-Lee and Michael O’Leary.  Let me explain:

When I was a boy in the 1950s and 1960s family holidays came once a year and were rotated tri-annually between a caravan in Norfolk, a caravan in Cornwall and a caravan in Wales.  I’m not being ungrateful because these holidays were great fun and in those days it was all that my parents could afford.  To be perfectly honest the very idea of going to Europe was faintly absurd, I knew of people who had been to France or Spain of course (or said that they had) but I always regarded them as slightly eccentric and wondered if they were telling the whole truth!  As for going further than Europe I might as well have made plans to go to the moon!

Despite these severe limitations on travel opportunities I developed a desire to see interesting places after visiting them through the stories that my father used to tell me.  He was a well read and an educated man who passed on to me his love of history and geography.  The family house was never short of books and encyclopaedias and he always had an abundance of time to enjoy them and share their stories with me.  Through his inspiration I learnt about Paris, Rome, Athens and Madrid and travellers like Marco Polo and Captain Cook and I vowed that one day I would see these places for myself.

As I grew older I became even more aware of the wider world and in my teenage years started to think ambitiously about overseas travel, a bit like George Bailey in ‘A Wonderful Life’, and I promised myself that one-day I would travel.  Really travel.  Since then I have been here and there but I hadn’t really travelled until those three men changed my life.

Bill Bryson is my favourite author (not counting people like William Shakespeare of course, and I am sure that Bill wouldn’t mind that), because his books make me laugh and he has put fun into travel and reawakened for me the teenage dreams that I used to have of endless globetrotting to far off interesting places.  His books made me want to be an independent traveller, to make my own arrangements and to discover the places that I had always wanted to see but was never quite sure how to go about it.

And then I discovered the Internet and the World Wide Web and this opened up vast new horizons for me and I thank Tim Berners-Lee for that.  It is quite likely that I will be technically challenged on this point so just to be clear the Internet and the World Wide Web are not the same thing: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks and the Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. Anyway the technical details do not really matter, what it means to me is access to information and unlimited travel opportunities.

In the 1970s and the 1980s for most people it was only really possible to travel if using the services of a High Street Travel Agent because only they had the necessary network of connections to the big holiday companies and overseas hotels.  And then the Web came along and opened up vast new horizons.  Suddenly it was possible to delve into previously unknown dimensions and start to think about the unthinkable – arranging your own overseas holidays directly and bypassing the travel agents.

That was all well and good but how was one to get to these new locations and the opportunities that were opening up?  The answer came thanks to Michael O’Leary and Ryanair.  Low cost air travel!  That was what I was waiting for and thanks to St Michael that is what now makes European travel available to us all.  I like the 1p flights and have set out to take advantage of them for as long as they are available and see as much of Europe as I possibly can.

A Life in a Year – 21st September, Smokeless Cigarettes

On 21^st September 2009 Ryanair, always with an eye to extracting more money from its customers , introduced the completely ludicrous ‘smokeless cigarettes’ as the budget airline returned to the days of puffing away on flights by allowing passengers to get their nicotine fix from smokeless substitutes that don’t inconvenience fellow passengers.   Nicotine-loaded cigarettes are odourless and smokeless and so it would seem also pointless.  I think smokers agree with me on this point because despite the hard sell on every flight I have never seen anyone buy them.

As an experience flying has mostly deteriorated in quality since the 1960s except in one important area where there has been massive improvement.  In the 60s passengers that smoked were still allowed to light up a cigarette on board which meant that because of the way airplanes recirculate air in the cabin everyone else had to as well. 

To be fair they did all have to sit at the back of the aircraft, a bit like Dante’s Inferno, and puff away together but after a couple of hours there was a horrible acrid odour of stale tobacco and the entire cabin smelt like an unemptied ash tray.  Actually it wasn’t just cigarettes but pipes and cigars as well and this was so bad that even the cigarette smokers complained about this.  Pipes and cigars were banned in 1979 but a ban on cigarettes had to wait for another ten years. 

A Life in a Year – 16th April, Croatia, Šukosan and Kod Guste

For almost a year I had seen Ryanair flights advertised to Zadar in Croatia but in all of that time it was impossible to find available seats but then suddenly there they were and only £20 return which seemed like an absolute bargain that was not to be missed.   It cannot possibly be financially sustainable to offer flights at even less than the current UK taxation levels so I have reached the conclusion that this period of unavailability must have been a time when the airline collected data on numbers of potential passengers and then used this to negotiate subsidies with the Croatian authorities to bring a guaranteed number of tourists into the country. We flew on 16th April 2008 and uUnusually for Ryanair there was a delay of about an hour for which no explanation was offered but at least it prevented them from playing the ‘landed on time’ fanfare on arrival at Zadar.

It was dark but the drive to the nearby village of Šukosan just outside the city was easy with a nice straight road and with just a little difficulty in the dark finding the location of the Apartmani Vilma, which was tucked away behind the main road on a quiet residential street.  This was a curious place, not really a hotel at all but more like somebody’s house with some rented rooms attached.  The owner had been waiting for us to arrive and showed us immediately to a clean and adequate room.  Her English was quite poor but she managed to provide directions to a restaurant and because it was getting late we rushed back into the village to find it. 

Luckily we got lost and missed it but eventually chanced upon an alternative establishment, the Kod Guste, that was full of local people all enjoying substantial plates of food, mostly of fish.  It was located on the side of the harbour and was catering for working people who were consuming large amounts of alcohol and smoking heavily.  Being used to smoke free restaurants these days this seemed unusual and after an hour or so inside it needed a brisk walk along the waters edge to try and remove the smell of stale tobacco that was clinging on to our clothes before returning to the room.

Breakfast was a really bizarre experience that was served in the owner’s own living accommodation under the attentive eye of her man mountain son and various other members of the family who kept popping by to watch us drink cold tea and eat an uninspiring continental breakfast.  This was a very self-conscious experience and feeling like a specimen under a microscope we finished quickly, returned to the room, packed, checked out and set off for the city of Zadar.

A Life in a Year – 4th April, Missed Airline Flights

I suppose that a concern shared by all travellers is the inconvenience of missing the airport check-in deadline.  I was a victim of this distressing calamity when travelling to Venice on 4th April 2005 when a serious hold-up on the motorway due to an accident caused a delay that meant missing the check-in by five minutes.  Five little minutes!  And with no margin of error allowed we had to pay an extra £80 to get the next flight and then sit in a bar for nearly four hours waiting.  Well, on reflection then, perhaps it wasn’t that bad after all.  Actually there were quite a lot of very cross people in the bar that day who had missed their flights because of the hold-up and we all wondered why the police hadn’t been of more assistance in helping the traffic to move in what they must appreciate is a time sensitive area.  I resolved to write a letter of sharp rebuke to the Essex Constabulary upon my return but of course after a few days away it seemed so much less important when I got back home and I never quite got around to it.

A Life in a Year – 20th March, Ryanair and Michael O’Leary’s Birthday

Despite the fact that over forty million people fly with Ryanair every year, it has been voted the world’s most disliked airline and issubject of more complaints than any other airline in the EU.   This is so unfair!  If people want a flight for 1p what realistically do they expect.  I read somewhere that the airline works on a profit margin of £5 per passenger so of course there has to be some additional charges for passengers.

One of the biggest complaints is about hidden extras and let’s be fair outrageous sharp practices in an endeavour to massage the cost of a service would be castigated in any other service industry (rather like a restaurant adding washing up, cleaning the floor and the cost of electricity to a meal bill) and Ryanair must have an office full of staff dreaming up the next scam but they are not alone because all low cost airlines do exactly the same thing.  Outwitting the scammers is all part of the fun of booking a Ryanair flight and here are my top tips:

Find the cheapest flight in the first place.  The best way to do this is to set an evening aside to search the web site for the very best deals.  This takes some time because Ryanair don’t make this easy; there is no site facility for prompting the cheapest flights so you just have to keep speculating with dates and destinations until you find something interesting.  And unless you really do want somewhere specific then be prepared to go anywhere because this is where some of the real bargains are.  In 2006 I went to Pula in Croatia for £15 return and then to Friedrichshafen in Germany for £13, both times including all the taxes and fees.  I had never heard of these places before I flew but they were both excellent places to visit.  Last year I went  to Santander in Spain for £10 and in February this year I have achieved my cheapest ever deal for £8.02 return to Baden-Baden in Germany (and that included £8.00 credit card booking fee!)

Don’t take hold luggage.  This saves £20 on a return flight and with 10 kilograms allowed free as cabin baggage this is a much more sensible option.  Let’s face it most of us take far too much luggage with us when we go away for a couple of days anyway, I know I have taken clothes with me that I have never worn and I have been working hard to make sure that I now only take what I know I will need rather than a bag full of contingency items.  Last year I did a fortnight’s holiday to Greece with only hand luggage!  Also if you take hold luggage you have to queue up in a rugby scrum to get your bags checked in and this a complete no-brainer because what sane person would pay £20 to spend an hour in a queue when they could be in the bar instead?

Don’t buy a Priority Boarding Pass.  This is a complete con and saves another £6 on the return flight.  On a recent flight to Haugesund in Norway there were only 40 passengers and two chumps had bought priority boarding!  Think about it sensibly for a moment, there is a seat for everyone on board anyway, have you ever seen anyone standing on an airline flight? No of course not.  All of the seats are exactly the same and an average flight is about 2 hours.  Unless you are 7′ tall and really need the extra leg room how can it possibly matter where you sit?

Don’t buy travel insurance from Ryanair.  I am not suggesting that you don’t buy travel insurance at all just shop around a bit because there are much better deals available elsewhere.

Don’t exceed your baggage allowance.  If you really must book in hold luggage you need to be really careful about this because going overweight is a real dumb thing to do and the penalty is an extortionate £15 per kilo and they are really, really strict on this because it is a fantastically good earner.  If when your bags are weighed and the allowance is exceeded my advice is to take some clothes out of the bag and wear them instead.  This might be a bit uncomfortable for a few minutes and make you look fat but it’s worth remembering that you don’t pay excess baggage charges for being obese!

Don’t buy food and drink on board.  Have a good breakfast at home before you set off and have a drink in the duty free bar before flying.  I agree that this one might be a bit more difficult but bear in mind that Ryanair now charges £2.15 for a cup of tea!  That’s a ¼ of a litre of lukewarm water and a cheap tea bag.  You can probably get about 200 tea bags for £2.15 at a Supermarket, more if you go to Aldi!

Don’t queue up too early and rush to go through the departure gate.  This one doesn’t save you any money but it can really piss people off because this is about getting the first seat on the plane, even those you have rashly purchased priority boarding con cards.  While everyone pushes and shoves about in the queue it is much less stressful to hang about at the back and go through the gate last, now, admittedly this only really works when there is a bus transfer to the plane, but get on the bus last and stand by the door and then purposefully get off first when the doors are opened and without looking left or right at the moaning minnies on either side be one of the first on board the aircraft.  This really gets people complaining I can tell you especially when they have been standing on that bus for 5 or 10 minutes or so.

Once on board try and get a seat in the first available row because this does have a bit more legroom.  If the plane isn’t full it is normal practice to stop passengers sitting in the first few rows to balance up the weight in the plane but still take the first available row because once the aircraft is airborne it is possible to move into these bigger leg room seats for the duration of the flight.  This is guaranteed to get people really worked up!

Always sit down in an aisle seat, spread yourself out and don’t make eye contact with other passengers looking for a seat because this deters them from climbing over you to get to the window seat.  If the plane isn’t full there is a good chance that you will have an empty seat next to you and a lot more personal space.  This one works especially well when there are two of you because it makes it doubly difficult for people to push past.

Whatever you do, do not sit next to children.  I realise that you cannot prevent them sitting close by if they get on after you but by looking as child unfriendly as possible this can deter parents from sitting next to you with their loved ones.  The problem is that there is nothing for them to do you see so they quickly become bored and a pain in the ass to fellow travellers.  If you fly with a full price airline kids get fun packs and crayons and when they get fed up with that there are cartoons on the in flight TV to amuse them but with Ryanair all there is to read is the emergency evacuation procedure stuck on the back of the seat in front and that doesn’t keep a child amused for very long.

Keep an eye out for lost loose change.  Because the seats are so cramped a lot of people spill coins from their trouser pockets when they buy food and drink and they are quite unaware of it.  When you leave the plane look carefully on the floor and at the backs of the seats and you will be surprised just how often you find money.  I once paid £20 for a return flight to Riga and I found £2, that’s a 10% discount on the fare.

These simple tips will make flying with Ryanair a lot more rewarding and might help reduce the unjustified number of complaints that are made.  I hope so.

A Life in a Year – 10th March, The Curse of Mobile Phones

On 10^th March 1876 Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call and now no one can stop using the infernal contraption.

I know that they are a useful addition to modern life but I went to London for a couple of days this week and on my return train journey I had the misfortune to select a seat in a carriage full of serial mobile phone users.  I am grateful for mobile phones of course but I wish people would have the good manners to use them considerately and have a thought for other people when they do so.  In virtually every public place you go now people are shouting into mobile phones and there are few things more irritating than being compelled to eavesdrop on one half of a conversation.  The worst place of all is on the train where dozens of commuters insist daily on competing with each other to have the loudest conversation which all end at exactly the same time with the words “Just a minute I’m going into a tunnel, hello, hello, HELLO, HELLO…”, followed by frantic animated redialing, a repeated conversation and another tunnel, followed by…. 

The only place that it is safe from mobile phone madness is in an aeroplane and I have been distressed to learn that soon this last sanctuary will be removed because Ryanair are proposing imminently to allow their use on board; I can imagine it now “Just a minute I’m going into some turbulence, hello, hello, HELLO, HELLO…”, followed by frantic animated redialing, a repeated conversation and more turbulence, followed by….

This will only add to the customary indiscipline of airline passengers.  I have noticed that almost as soon as a plane lands there is a clattering of seat belts being unbuckled before the seat belt light goes off, impatient rummaging through the overhead lockers to retrieve bags and the intensely irritating sound of mobile phones being switched on and the beep-beep of text messages being delivered.  Why can’t people do as they are told? You are not supposed to switch on mobile phones until in the terminal building, why can’t people wait?  These are two-hour flights to central Europe not a five-year mission to Mars!  One man even made a phone call simply to say ‘I’ve landed’, so what? was the recipient of the call going to run a flag up or turn a cartwheel or something.