I saw a post on a blog the other day that said the new TSA restrictions on travel were designed to make it appear that they were actually doing something when in reality every attempted terrorist attack since 9/11 has been stopped by other passengers on the plane and not by airport security.
BoingBoing have produced this great graphic summing up your chances of a terrorist attack (hat tip: Whaleoil).
It is also interesting to note how many people have been killed in the so call war on terror designed at stopping terrorism. The US has lost around 5,000 troops and there has been around 200,000 civilian deaths. That is a massive loss of life in the name of protecting 647 lives from terrorist attacks in ten years.
From flying over last night. The clouds below looked like fog, they were well below the other clouds, but had an impressive tinge to them as seen here.
Got up at 2am to head to airport to check in for flight.
Arrived at Auckland Airport at 3.30am, checked in.
Departed Auckland at 6.10am
Flight was extremely bumpy, for the first time ever got Motion Sickness two and a half hours into the flight… so did lots of other people on the plane including an air hostess.
Landed 20 minutes early at 7.50am
Got on bus into Melbourne Central, arrived at Southern Cross Station.
Walked to hotel, stopped at Mc Donalds for breakfast, checked into hotel.
Went for a walk to look at town, found Federation Square, watched street perfomer, met up with friend.
Went on tramp ride around the city
Went on river cruise down the Yarra
Went back to hotel at 4pm, fell asleep while mum went shopping
Got woken by mum at 7pm, went out for dinner
Got back to hotel, watched Sky News
Went zzz
Sunday:
Mum set alarm for 7am, she woke to me cursing at it.
Had breakfast at Hotel, was really busy, lots of hungry hungry hippos.. people.
Caught tram to Vibration Training place.
Caught train to Dandenong
Visited friends house
Got driven to Sunnyvale
Checked out these awesome Asian supermarkets… Think St Lukes but all Asian, had a sugar cane drink
Got driven back to Caulfield
Caught train back to city, got off at Parliament Underground Station not 100% sure where we were.
Went shopping
Caught tram to St Kilda beach
Had dinner at St Kilda beach
Caught tram back to town, which went on train tracks as well as roads… so cool.
Okay I am getting sick of having to explain what happened to just about everyone I see. So now I can just tell them to read my blog.
When I flew to Wellington last Sunday we had an engine failure. Well actually a complete APU failure. Luckly we were on Taxi and not in the air.
This is how it went down:
We were push backed from the terminal like normal. While the engines were being started they were doing the safety demonstrations. It was pretty obvious from the start that something was wrong with the engines because they were not making the normal engine starting noise. Halfway through the safety video all the power died in the aircraft. I mean the video stopped, the air con stopped, all the lights cut out, the engines stopped we came to a complete halt with no power or engines.
We sat for 20 mins parked sideways on the taxi way in front of the domestic terminal before we got pulled back to the terminal. All other aircraft had to detour around us by using the B runway. Thank god for that second runway at Auckland! Once we were pulled back they decided to jump start us off a ground power unit that they had to call over from the International Terminal on a truck!
We had no power, lights or anything for more then 40 minutes. Did I say we had no aircon. Also this was an Airbus A320 a medium range aircraft normally used on international routes. It has 170 seats and I can only assume that it was being used as a domestic aircraft because it was a long weekend and school holidays. We had about 40 kids on board which was fine for all of 5 mins and then the crying began! Once started again we made it safely and without incident to Wellington 50 minutes late. Fun!
The words money making rip off come to mind when reading about it. I am currently traveling on around 20 – 30 flights per year and I am never over my baggage weight allowance, in fact 90% of the time I am more then 50% under it. Although I do occasionally travel with two bags – always underweight.
I think Air New Zealand have figured out that not many people traveling domestically actually go over the baggage weight limit and have found another way to squeeze them for money. Only a few days ago it was announced that fairs would also increase.
To put it bluntly Air New Zealand want you to pay more for you ticket. Pay more for your bags. Provide less people behind the desk and expect more from you (ie you have to put your own bags on the baggage trolley).
What is next? A $1000 per ticket cost to fly to Wellington where you create your own ticket, act as your own security screener, fly the plane yourself, be baggage handler, air traffic controller, and ground crew. Customer Service yeah right!
