Chiswick

With a number of trips to Sydney scheduled this year for work purposes I was thrilled to find Matt Moran & Peter Sullivan's newly opened Woollahra restaurant, Chiswick on Sibella Court's instagram this morning. 

If these pictures are anything to go by I think we will definitely be in for a treat!!  Has anyone been there yet??  I would love to hear about it!!

You can visit their website HERE and read more about this divine restaurant with its surrounding vegetable garden HERE...

xx
Anna

India Aviation - It's Incredible and That's Not Good

The contrast is like day and night. In the span of 24-hours I have written about two countries with vastly different views of the importance of aviation to their national future; Turkey and India.

In my story in today's International Herald Tribune, I interview folks who are agog over the rapid growth and ambitious plans of the formerly overlooked Turkish Airlines. Of Turkish, Ralph Anker of anna.aero writes Istanbul is "the most diverse hub in Europe."

While Turkey keeps sending its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to soothe trouble spots around the world maybe he ought to plan a stop in New Delhi and explain that when a nation's aviation system becomes a global laughing stock, you got problems baby!

IATA boss Tony Tyler, photo courtesy IATA

Oh, never mind, Tony Tyler already did.

Okay, so the incredibly handsome and dapper Tyler didn't put it exactly that way. He's a gentleman after all. But in a speech to India Aviation 2012 conference in Hyderabad he got thisclose calling the situation in India "critical" and saying, "I am not here to point fingers or apportion blame. The state of today’s Indian aviation industry is the result of a number of factors."

A number of factors, indeed. Let's just recap.

• Over the past year pilots flying for Air India, Spice Jet and IndiGo were charged with falsifying their flight hours
•  Air India battled additional charges that its pilots had broken "bottle to throttle" regulations. 
• Kingfisher canceled flights by the hundreds as regulators examine whether the airline is safe. 
• Practically every Indian airline is losing money
• A government audit showed inadequate training and flight monitoring are endemic to all Indian airlines 
• The Indian carriers are so unreliable as business partners, the Star Alliance boss, Jaan Albrecht told me in December, the global airline network would not be looking to add an Indian member in the near future.

All of this suggests the booming demand for air travel has outpaced Indian airlines' abilities to safety operate. That's the airlines' problem. What the government does about it becomes the problem of the Indian travelers who - like the rest of the world - are developing an appetite for mobility. It's also a problem for the growing number of visitors intrigued by or doing business in Incredible India.

Tyler's speech, which you can read here, presented a four-pronged plan of action and a call for a unified national aviation policy. It is all well couched in niceties of course. 

But if you ask undiplomatic me, it is terrible that a country with so much to offer can be languishing so far behind the pack in aviation. 
In fact, it's incredible.

Throttle to Bottle - Some Runway at Chilean Vineyard

Spend too much time at the big airports as I do, and its easy to slip into believing that behemoth centers of people-moving is what flying is all about. It's not.

On a beautiful, sunny summer day here in the southern hemisphere, I was reminded how wonderful it is to power down by visiting two small airfields in Chile where flying remains true to the poetic narratives of Antoine Saint Exupery, Richard Bach, Ernest K. Gann and others.

Today, I spent the afternoon at the Club de Planeadores de Vitacura in Santiago, Chile - an 82 year old club for sailplane flying. While a steady breeze kept the windsock erect, the motorless aircraft were towed skyward where they proceeded to fly around the mountain valleys and return noiselessly to the runway with a dramatic left hand descending spiral.

I sat in the wooden stands for a long time, enjoying the aerial ballet before realizing - even sitting in the bleacher should be treasured. Observation areas at airports are a barely-surviving acknowledgement that flying is a treat for those on the ground as well as in the air.  

My trip to Chile includes visiting a number of Chilean vineyards; the magnificently picturesque and historic Errazuriz Wine Estate in Aconcagua Valley and the fabulously hospitable De Martino Winery and ViñaTarapaca both in Isla de Maipo. 

Look, I like wine as much as the next gal, but I was really captivated by the asphalt runway at Viña Tarapaca which allows the owner, a pilot, and arriving visitors to see the remarkable landscape of the vineyard and estate from the air before being taken by horse-drawn carriage around the fields and ushered into the tasting room to appreciate the products. 

I know, I know, bottle to throttle and all that. At Viña Tarapaca they have a solution; 18 guest rooms for sleeping it off.

Drinking or not, flying or not, the 18-year old, 2000-foot airfield, on a parallel path with grape laden vines and framed as it is by boughs of blooming wisteria is 100 percent in keeping with the romance of aviation - the good, old fashioned, Robert Redford-and-Meryl Streep-go-flying-Out-of-Africa-kind of romance.

If I'm lucky, this July I'll be invited once again to participate in the annual fly-in at Danbury Municipal Airport, a red-white-and blue affair if there ever was one. It will be another reminder that no matter how dreary and unpleasant aviation news can be, there's a whole other world of flying still to be celebrated. What do you say we drink to that? 

Mayday on Air France Flight to Israel

It is easy to imagine the terror of the 130 people on board Air France Flight 2240 on Wednesday when flying at 28,000 feet, some passengers reported hearing a constant beeping noise in the cabin. Unable to determine what was causing the sound and fearing for the worst, flight attendants told the pilots there was an unidentified item on the plane that could be a bomb. The pilots declared a Mayday and the plane landed at Basel/Mulhouse Airport on the France-Switzerland border according to Flight Radar 24 which tracks the flight here. But for twenty uncertain minutes these travelers did not know what was going to happen. 

Even after landing, the drama continued as the A320-200 with registration F-GKXF was brought to an isolated area of the small airport where passengers were evacuated and the airplane searched. Then, and only then, did police discover what was causing the panic, the alarm was ringing on a Blackberry device a passenger had failed to turn off on departure. 

Air France officials were unavailable for comment but they'll be paying a significant amount of money for the diversion. There's not only fuel that was wasted on that flight and on ferrying an empty replacement aircraft from Paris to Basel, but passengers had to be accommodated overnight and were 18 hours delayed on their trip. For their assumed panic, some might file a legal claim against the airline. (Don't laugh, its been done successfully in the past.) 

Whether the airline will try to recover some of those costs from the passenger is obviously unknown. But if row 5 is in premium class, executives may prefer to let the infraction slide.
This question of whether portable electronic devices present a threat to the safety of air operations has been extremely squishy. I'm among the few who keeps hammering the point that  this is an issue that will sooner or later end in tears. But I'm not alone in that belief. Just ask Boeing.

For the most part, however, the message from airlines and regulators has been ambiguous - leading passengers to treat the subject rather like religion. Their belief or non belief defines their behavior. 

We don't know what prompted the Blackberry owner on Air France Flight 2240 to keep the device powered up, could be simple forgetfulness. But I could bore you with stories of how many times I've seen passengers openly defy the flight attendants and then you'd bore me right back with your own experiences. Let's just let it rest with these words, Alec Baldwin.

Readers, you know an accident is never the result of one thing. Air disasters lie at the end of an unbroken chain of events. Each individual occurrence may appear trivial - like tossing a powered Blackberry into the overhead bin. Sometimes though, otherwise benign happenings spiral into chaos. The best example to date is Wednesday's event on Air France. Mark my words, though, it is not the last.

Thanks to Jan Paul Peters for help on this post.

Collaboration at Rosebery

Last Thursday night I attended the fabulous opening party of Megan Morton's School, Propery and Photo Studio, Koskela's new store and Kitchen by Mike.  A collaboration within one amazing warehouse space in Rosebery, Sydney.  I don't think I've ever seen anything as big as this place and if you are in Sydney or if you are visiting Sydney in the future then this is a must visit.   

Here are a few {smudgy and not great} photos I snapped on my iphone at the opening party.  Unfortunately I didn't take enough photos but if you want to see more then head over to Lucy at The Design Files as she has posted some better photos of the space.  Briar from Sunday Collector has also posted some great pictures HERE!! 

By the way, the food was DIVINE - I highly recommend eating at Kitchen by Mike!  You won't be disappointed!!!  The address is 85 Dunning Avenue, Rosebery.

xx
Anna

When a Celebrity Clunk on the Head Becomes a Bright Idea

At first glance it might not seem that President Obama and kid-rocker Justin Bieber have much in common. But both men had just a tad too much altitude going through the doorway of aircraft and - boom! the celebrity noggins got a good crack while the paparazzi snapped photos.

Yep, it is fun to put America's president and its most adorable heart-throb together in the same sentence and call them klutzes, but there's more to the story.

Ask the flight attendants who work on the smaller regional airplanes how often their passengers get an owie! for failing to mind their noodles on entering the airplane and you'll hear an astonishing number. Ninety seven percent said they've seen passengers crack their heads, three-quarters of them said the injury involved bleeding, bruising or a bump and more than half of the flight attendants surveyed said they've seen it happen dozens of times.

In the comments section of the survey, conducted by JDA Aviation Technology Solutions - one flight attendant wrote, "Passengers hitting their heads has been discussed with our Director of Safety and the flight attendant management before, but it is another "Que Sera, Sera Whatever Will Be, Will Be".

Photo courtesy Ron Whipple

Ron Whipple, an air transport specialist, who has 9,000 hours flying the Saab 340 told me he lost count of how many times he banged his head on the door frame during his 18 years of flying for American Eagle. "Luckily, I had my hat on most of the time," he said with a laugh, "so I didn't get really hurt." 

So there is a problem knocking around out there, but getting any attention paid to it is undermined by the fact that no one takes this kind of injury seriously - up to and including sometimes, the person injured.

Asking the Regional Airline Association for the number of skulls cracked while boarding got me nowhere.  Kelly Murphy, the industry's media representative said, it "does not keep reports of this nature."

So to quantify the problem, JDA had to ask the folks most likely to know, pilots and flight attendants who work for the regional carriers that are moving 430,000 passengers around America each and every day. Based on these interviews and a lot of what seems to be common sense, it has come up with a low-tech solution that borrows heavily from the baby's crib in the nursery. JDA has created a upholstered bumper that wraps around the upper edge of the hard metal airplane door frame - and here's the brilliant new take - they want to sell ad space on the thing as demonstrated in the company photo below.

Note the head guard being demonstrated on this airplane. Photo courtesy JDA

Now, one would think that given the airline industry's rush to find newer, better, wilder sources of revenue, which I reported in today's New York Times, selling ad space at  passengers' eye-level while simultaneously delivering the message that the airline values the cranium above your seat as much as the posterior that's in it, would be an easy sell. But one would be wrong.

Bill Norwood, the executive in charge of the head guard project says the regional airlines loved the idea when it was presented at their annual meeting in Nashville last year but the orders aren't exactly rolling in, even though JDA is offering to give the head guards away. What the company wants is a cut of what advertisers pay to have their message embroidered above the lowered heads of a half million travelers.

The whole project makes me think of that old cartoon in which someone gets knocked out cold and awakens with a light bulb going on symbolizing a brilliant idea. If that someone was a high ranking airline executive, well, maybe then....

Globe is Shrinking and So Are Some Airlines

Spanair and Hungary's Malev are kaput. Like reluctant shadows, Cyprus Airways, Air Zimbabwe and India's Kingfisher lurk nearby. 

The list of airlines in bankruptcy or struggling  with life critical issues would consume my precious word count, so let's just say, "Hello American, Qantas, Air India."

Airline profits worldwide were down 55% in the last quarter of 2011, according to the International Air Transport Association even while more people travel in planes and fewer seats are empty.  IATA's chief Tony Tyler described 2011 as "a year of contrasts."

It is time to acknowledge the era of the national flag airline is over. Air travel is global and the carriers are too. 

There's an upside and a downside to that and you can credit/blame the newcomers in the space, airlines in the Persian Gulf and Asia. 
Even as I type these words, I know I'll be ticking off many of the executives of legacy carriers who have been crying about the unfair competition these airlines present. 

Today Royal Jordanian reported it is cutting service to five destinations and I can't help but wonder if this also a result of the rise of the supra-national airlines; Turkish, Emirates, Qatar, Singapore and others who's growth is responsive to the increase in global travel and feeding it at the same time.  These airlines' success cuts into the bottom line of all but the best-managed legacy airlines. 

The industry's "old boys" can get as torqued about the arrival of the upstart carriers as they want. This competition is not going away. The game is changing and the survivors will learn how to play by new rules or find themselves grounded for good.

Fear of Flying - A Glass is Half Full Approach

My friend and fellow aviation and travel writer Harriet Baskas reports on a survey that shows the majority of travelers think air travel is stressful. Not exactly surprising news, but the results of the HNTB study could help the aviation industry enhance how it interacts with its customers, which I suppose is the goal.

What ticks travelers off? Oh, you know, the obvious; invasive security, long lines to check bags, that sort of thing.
Here at FLYING LESSONS, I'm proposing that we take a glass-is-half-full approach to getting where we're going by concentrating on all the great experiences we have in transit because I know we have them. So, with this post, I'm asking you to contribute your stories of pleasant surprises you have experienced in your travels by air, which I will publish in a future post.

To encourage you to sit down and send your favorite "It happened to me while flying" story, I will award a really great prize - a cherry red, Ethiopian Airways business class amenity kit - to the person who tells the very best tale. Send your story to me at flyingphotographs@gmail.com. (You are welcome to, but you don't need to send any photographs, your story will do.)

I'll start.

Several years ago my friend Darren Gaines was visiting in Connecticut and we were going to travel together to Washington to attend the ISASI annual dinner. Wanting to show him the beautiful beach in my community, I stopped by the inn where he was staying and took him for a walk along Long Island Sound. But I misjudged the time and as a result we were very late getting to the airport. Don't you know, we missed our flight.

Well, 99.9% of the time that means eating the ticket and buying a new one, but on this day in May, the sun was shining over the heads of both Darren and the Delta ticket agent who waited on us. With a drawl that cannot be native to the town in Ohio where Darren lives, he explained our situation to the woman behind the desk and she promptly booked us on the next flight to Dulles, no charge, no lecture, no problem.

Darren and I made our way to the gate, boarded the plane and were on our way as if I had not totally screwed up. An earth-shattering, life-altering experience? Nope, but the kind that can turn the sunshine on full blast for the rest of the day and serve as a reminder that an airline cannot exist without planes and airports and complex ticketing systems no more than it can exist without the traveler.

That ticket agent got that. And so too, did the airline that made it possible for her to push a few buttons and re-accommodate us hassle-free. For this, Delta deserves a prize, but they've already got amenity kits.

That's my story. What's yours?

Send it to flyingphotographs@gmail.com.

Taking a (Web) Page from Wikipedia's Book

Spirit Airlines is nothing if not clever, as I reported in The New York Times back in 2011 when this airline was alone among U.S. carriers in deciding to turn the baggage fee concept on its head. It not only charged to check a bag, it also charged for carry-ons. See what I mean? Verrrry clever.



Now, taking a page from the campaign of Wikipedia, Google and other popular Internet sites regarding proposed regulations of the web, Spirit has plastered an advisory on its home page about new government regulations that apply to airlines and it is urging passengers to make their voices heard in Washington.




Beginning this week, the U.S. Department of Transportation says airlines must include federal taxes when quoting the price of an airline ticket. Spirit's website alert was half of a two pronged effort to enrage airline passengers about the rule. It also send an email to its customers. But if Spirit thinks air travelers feel about their service providers the way that users of the Internet feel about Wikipedia and Google, maybe it's not as smart as I thought.

Photo courtesy Spirit Airlines

The reaction I've seen to Spirit's campaign is befuddlement. And once the issue is explained, befuddlement quickly turns to boredom. Spirit has misread the modern traveler if it thinks passengers care one whit more than the bottom line; "What is it gonna cost me to get from A to B? Question mark. Period.

Impulse travel is an increasingly popular activity a global phenomenon conceived and incubated by airlines that made travelers believe they could fly somewhere for pocket change. (See the music video by three Irish ladies for a hilarious example.) Its a deal with the devil though - a bait and switch that has travelers holding their noises while buying their tickets and boarding their planes.

Like Ireland's Ryanair, and others, Spirit advertises fares so low, low, low, the only way it can make money is by tacking fees, fees, fees to the price, price, price. the new law doesn't change that, it only adds the federal taxes and puts them right up front so would-be travelers can see them right away.

Rest assured, seat selection, ticket confirmation, checked bags and all those other add-ons will still hike up the ticket price. So my advice to Spirit is, Find a business model that eliminates that frustrating practice before you ask air travelers to carry your water because until you do, you and your airline buddies are in this fight on your own.