How many busloads of passengers does it take to fill a Boeing 747? Ask the Frankfurt Airport.
With all the innovations and conveniences brought to modern airports, it’s inexplicable to me why airports in some of the most developed countries on the planet remind one of the Third World. Many travelers often complain about London’s Heathrow, but I find Frankfurt no less frustrating.
I realize there are not enough gates with jet bridges, and some airlines prefer “remote” gates because their use is cheaper, but I can’t remember flying through Frankfurt and not being taken to or from a plane by bus at least once. As of this week, I’ve had 111 takeoffs and landings at that airport.
As much as I hate the buses, by now I’m used to the prospect of having to put up with them, especially for flights to certain destinations. Most of the time, such flights are flown on narrow-body aircraft, such as Boeing 737 and Airbus 320, which can be filled with just two busloads.
This week, however, I experienced boarding a United Airlines Boeing 747 by bus. I was sure the flight wouldn’t leave on time, and I was right. I can hardly wait for the expansion of Terminal 1 to be completed.
What’s even harder for me to understand is why there aren’t enough gates with jetways at the much newer Munich Airport. I was also disappointed by the transfer experience there this week. With 52 takeoffs and landings, this was the first time I had to change terminals. I arrived at Terminal 1 — courtesy of another bus — and it took me about 45 minutes to reach Terminal 2. The signage was very poor, and the shuttle bus between the terminals runs only once every 20 minutes.
U.S. airports may have their problems, but when was the last time you were taken to the plane by bus?
How many times have you been jerked around at an airport and made to wait in several long lines after a flight delay or cancellation forced a change to the rest of your itinerary? Chances are, that happened abroad. For all their faults, U.S. airlines handle irregular operations better than their foreign peers.
I’ve always wondered why airport agents in the United States — whether at check-in counters, gates or even business lounges — can do almost anything a passenger needs, including rebooking, rerouting and reissuing tickets, while agents in other countries are much more specialized, and thus less helpful.
Rather than make sense of that reality, I’ve found a way to work around it: Whenever possible, I make sure that my tickets are issued by a U.S. carrier. That doesn’t mean that I don’t fly on foreign airlines — in the era of code-sharing, global alliances and other partnerships, that limitation is no longer an issue…
Continue reading about U.S. airlines handle disruptions best
Iraq may not be among Western travelers’ most desired destinations quite yet, but some of the world’s leading airlines have decided that flying to the war-ravaged country can be profitable, so they are returning there after a 20-year absence.
Although two of Europe’s major carriers — Austrian Airlines and Turkish Airlines — have been serving Iraq since 2008, their re-entry in that market was viewed as only moderately significant at the time, and none of their peers followed suit.
Austrian chose Erbil, the capital of Kurdish northern Iraq, which was never nearly as violent as the rest of the country. Turkish began flying to Baghdad, as well as Erbil, but Turkey is not a European Union member. Neither carrier has a truly global network to connect Iraq with many other countries on different continents…
We all think we know that for a flight to depart and arrive on time, dozens of people have to do their jobs perfectly. It seems, however, that the only time we truly appreciate that is when something goes wrong and we feel the consequences long after landing.
In an attempt to encourage more people to travel — particularly overseas — I’ve been trying to dissuade them from believing the common perception that travel is a hassle. With online check-in and the ease of achieving elite airline status, thanks to unprecedented promotions this year, you can avoid long lines at the airport and almost breeze onto the plane.
That’s how I feel most of the time. United Airlines pioneered priority boarding through a separate red-carpet line for its premium passengers a few years ago, and all its agents strictly observe the policy…
Continue reading about Lufthansa agent’s ‘mistake’ stacks up
At about 9 p.m. last Monday, Delta Air Lines Flight 9 was over eastern Canada on its way back from Cairo. At the same time, Delta Flight 9 took off from New York en route to Los Angeles. That doesn’t make sense to you? Well, it does to the airline industry.
The flight taking off was the “continuation” of the flight that hadn’t yet landed because of a five-hour delay. Delta sells Cairo-Los Angeles as a “direct” flight with a stop in New York, but in reality, that journey consists of two separate flights that have nothing in common except for number 9.
The first one goes from Cairo to New York on a Boeing 767 aircraft, and the second from New York to Los Angeles on a Boeing 737. The arrival of the first leg is evidently not a condition for the departure of the second…
