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A US Navy plane went into a Hawaii bay. Underwater video shows its tires are touching a coral reef

Tires from a large airplane that's been stuck in a Hawaii bay for more than a week are resting on parts of a reef, according to video the U.S. Navy released Wednesday as it figures out a plan to remove the aircraft. There were no injuries to the nine people who were on board when the plane...
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extensive damage to endangered coral reef hammerhead breeding ground. aircrat difficult to extract without further damage
 
I had a lovely day yesterday...I suspected it would be stressful, LCY-ZHR-GVA with a 40 minute layover. We were late leaving London so I was automatically booked on a flight 2 hours later, no great problem. Zurich is a horrible airport...there is no one at the "information" desks to help with missed connections, you have to use the phone. You have to scan your boarding pass to get a code to use the free wifi...the machines are difficult to find when you are running through an airport and need to rearrange a rental car. It was snowing at Zurich...I think for the first time ever. There were only 4 de-icing trucks. We were pushed back and waiting in the queue for them and the plane wouldn't start, so we had to be pushed to a stand for a jump start...so we missed our position in the queue...then all 4 trucks ran out of de-icer...so we arrived 3.5 hours late in Geneva and of course my bag is not on the carousel. Fortunately, as a seasoned traveller, I was first in line at the Swissport desk and yes, the bag is in Zurich. It's now 9 hours later, and it's still not showing on their tracking, so I'm not sure whether to drive to Geneva to meet the first flight of the day to collect the bag as I don't trust them to deliver it to my village in France...I guess I will need to buy some underwear and t-shirts, and shoes suitable for snow at least. I am going to have to drive to the boulangerie for me croissants as my shoes are not up to waling 500m in 6" of fresh snow...I thought about wearing the boots that are in my bag, but they would trigger the metal detector. :rolleyes:

Swiss are a shit airline (and I know they are unrelated to the old Swissair).

Swiss efficiency is a myth.

:mad: rant over, and I know, first world problems.
 
Swiss are part of the Lufthansa Group, so not just Swiss efficiency is a myth, but German too; just this week had a couple going Bologna-Munich-Helsinki on Lufthansa, the Bologna-Munich was an hour late, meaning only 25 mins to connect, they had no baggage and the Munich-Helsinki was one of the last flights leaving Munich that night, so it could have waited a few minutes, but no. And then Lufthansa booked them on the last flight out of Munich, going to Copenhagen arriving at midnight then an 0630 on to Helsinki, with a promise that there would be someone at Copenhagen who will have booked and paid for a hotel, yeah, right. There were two Finnairs direct from Munich the following morning that they should have been booked on, but Luftie wouldn't as that would cost them money as they are not in Star Alliance. They ended up paying their own hotel in Munich and buy space on the Finnair, rather than arriving for meetings in Finland wrecked after travellling all night. This kind of shit seems to be happening far more frequently lately. Hope you get your stuff back in good time pseudonarcissus
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Swiss are part of the Lufthansa Group, so not just Swiss efficiency is a myth, but German too; just this week had a couple going Bologna-Munich-Helsinki on Lufthansa, the Bologna-Munich was an hour late, meaning only 25 mins to connect, they had no baggage and the Munich-Helsinki was one of the last flights leaving Munich that night, so it could have waited a few minutes, but no. And then Lufthansa booked them on the last flight out of Munich, going to Copenhagen arriving at midnight then an 0630 on to Helsinki, with a promise that there would be someone at Copenhagen who will have booked and paid for a hotel, yeah, right. There were two Finnairs direct from Munich the following morning that they should have been booked on, but Luftie wouldn't as that would cost them money as they are not in Star Alliance. They ended up paying their own hotel in Munich and buy space on the Finnair, rather than arriving for meetings in Finland wrecked after travellling all night. This kind of shit seems to be happening far more frequently lately. Hope you get your stuff back in good time pseudonarcissus
Click to expand...
Thanks Bahnhof Strasse , I’m back at the airport to see if there is an update, and to find out about the process. I’m flying to London on Monday, then Rio next Saturday…I hope I see my stuff again. I suspect it’s in the airline’s interest to send it to landfill with the liability limitations.
Anyway, I have a toothbrush and new underwear…and most importantly, new, dry, shoes.

On Monday I will see how good my work travel insurance is.
 
Bags do get lost completely, a very good friend is senior at Emirates in London, although she is Brazilian, every year they have a staff auction of crap taken from bags that never got back to their owners, Ray Bans for a fiver, SLR cameras for £20 and so on, so I guess there's quite a few bags lost forever, though not to my knowledge ever have to any of my punters. You can claim for essential items that you need to buy, quite a hefty amount so long as you're not taking the piss.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Bags do get lost completely, a very good friend is senior at Emirates in London, although she is Brazilian, every year they have a staff auction of crap taken from bags that never got back to their owners, Ray Bans for a fiver, SLR cameras for £20 and so on, so I guess there's quite a few bags lost forever, though not to my knowledge ever have to any of my punters. You can claim for essential items that you need to buy, quite a hefty amount so long as you're not taking the piss.
Click to expand...
I’ve started an inventory..it was a complex trip, so I packed carefully. I stupidly put my new GPS for the rowing boat on the bag..but the clothes come to £3k pretty quickly..I have client visits with lawyers and insurance companies, then a conference. A lot of stuff was from the sales, but if I don’t get in back on Monday, I’ll have to buy a new suit and a couple of shirts and smart shoes, and at this time of year that’s well over £750.
(I’ll probably bump into clients of yours next week).
 
A friend who went to Vietnam for a month had her luggage lost on the way out. So she had to buy replacement clothing on day one to cover her entire stay. Her luggage never turned up either.
 
pseudonarcissus said:
I’ve started an inventory..it was a complex trip, so I packed carefully. I stupidly put my new GPS for the rowing boat on the bag..but the clothes come to £3k pretty quickly..I have client visits with lawyers and insurance companies, then a conference. A lot of stuff was from the sales, but if I don’t get in back on Monday, I’ll have to buy a new suit and a couple of shirts and smart shoes, and at this time of year that’s well over £750.
(I’ll probably bump into clients of yours next week).
Click to expand...
I’m at the airport on my way to London. There’s no sign of the bag since been scanned on arrival at Zurich. I’ve had missing bags before, but never this missing. I guess I have to buy a new suit, shirts and shoes in the morning…and get onto the insurance company. 😡
 
pseudonarcissus said:
I’m at the airport on my way to London. There’s no sign of the bag since been scanned on arrival at Zurich. I’ve had missing bags before, but never this missing. I guess I have to buy a new suit, shirts and shoes in the morning…and get onto the insurance company. 😡
Click to expand...
Well, we got to the end of the runway at GVA and LCY closed because of the weather..back to the terminal..hassle with the duty free as we had to go completely out of the secure area and start again. Then rebooked on a 9:00 flight to LHR…great..very handy for my hotel in Greenwich.

Today I went shopping..new suit from Marks and Sparks ..nice chat with my shirt maker..but the star was the manager of the Paul Smith sale shop on Avery Row. I bought lots of socks..then lost the bag on the underground. He found Prosecco for me when I repurchased. I’ve been buying half my clothes there since the early 90s and they are lovely
 
An RAF Airbus A400M Atlas does occasional training flights near to where I work, I think they must be practicing final approaches into Exeter and go arounds as they seem to do a few loops and then disappear home.

Today was one of those days so was quite fun to watch from the corner of my eye
 
Well, as a postscript to my baggage travails, the bag was located early Wednesday in Zurich, delivered to Geneva the same day and then forward to me permanent address, arriving at home in Rio de Janeiro yesterday...I'm still in London. Swiss/Lufthansa pulled a bit of a blinder...just a delayed baggage/insurance claim to go.
 
On the Madrid route at least, Iberia keeps offering me business class upgrades for €60 each way when the 24-hour free check in opens. I guess it makes sense to try to flog any remaining business class seats so close to the flight but, with sister airline BA it’s never been less than £151. Given that they are basically the same company and that economy ticket prices between the two are broadly similar, the difference in price is remarkable. Is it that BA doesn’t need the money as badly, or that they expect to sell most of the remaining business class seats in the last few hours, I wonder? Or perhaps IB gives you next to fuck all Avíos and tier points for such cheap upgrades…
 
T & P said:
On the Madrid route at least, Iberia keeps offering me business class upgrades for €60 each way when the 24-hour free check in opens. I guess it makes sense to try to flog any remaining business class seats so close to the flight but, with sister airline BA it’s never been less than £151. Given that they are basically the same company and that economy ticket prices between the two are broadly similar, the difference in price is remarkable. Is it that BA doesn’t need the money as badly, or that they expect to sell most of the remaining business class seats in the last few hours, I wonder? Or perhaps IB gives you next to fuck all Avíos and tier points for such cheap upgrades…
Click to expand...

I would guess they’re at risk of overselling economy so want to avoid having to bump you - or someone else - to business class for free.

So you’ve paid for example €100 to fly to Madrid in economy and they can get another €60 out of you for moving to business. They can then sell your vacated economy seat at a premium for €200 to a traveller purchasing at the last minute.

I doubt Avios or tier points come into it much, more hard cash. Iberia have increased revenue by €260 in this example, which impacts the key metric of revenue per passenger kilometre.

Why BA are charging more is interesting. Less likely to oversell? Want to disincentivise proactive upgrades? Perhaps they feel the price is right for the market if they have a wealthier customer base / more transfer traffic & corporate accounts that more likely to fly business?
 
You get the same Avios and tier points on BA as you do on Iberia. No idea how they come up with the upgrade offers when you are checking in though, one thing with that, and probably doesn’t concern most of you, once you have paid for that upgrade your ticket becomes totally non-changeable, so if there is any risk at all that you may need to change it that could end up as very expensive as you’ll lose your ticket and need to buy a brand new one at that day’s rate.
 
How comparable are the BA and Iberea business offerings? In economy I'd genrally say BA is significantly better although I'll be honest that's comparing long haul BA with long haul Iberea, I don't think I've ever done short haul Iberea?
 
kalmatthew said:
How comparable are the BA and Iberea business offerings? In economy I'd genrally say BA is significantly better although I'll be honest that's comparing long haul BA with long haul Iberea, I don't think I've ever done short haul Iberea?
Click to expand...
On short haul flights, I would actually say IB has become better than BA in some ways. And as a plus they use some A330s in certain routes, so you can even get a lie-flat long haul business class experience for your bucks.
 
Tbf both BA and Iberia are fucking terrible, same company, IAG.

MAD-TFS business class it it 2-2, but there are three seats either side, the premium paying for business is the middle seat is free.

They crossed out my seat number at the gate and said I would need to deal with it on board. Once on they asked if I would mind sitting 8 rows back, ‘as we have a staff member who wants to travel in row 1’. - ehrm, no, fuck off, does that work for you? Cheeky cunt, a family of three and they then suggest that we take the unused middle seat. All so one of their staff can sit in row 1, it wasn’t that full, there was a seat for him in row 4. Fucking piss poor, which seems to be across the board at IAG airlines. BA was forced to drop ‘The world’s favourite airline’ as their slogan, when that happened they should have had a hard look at themselves, instead they went head to head with EasyJet.
 
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