High-Speed Rail Is Not The Whole Story

Much is being made of high-speed European rail as a model for the United States. Last week U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood was in Spain, trying out its AVE high-speed trains.

Which is all well and good, in my view. But it’s important to remember that high-speed rail in Spain is part of a network of mass transportation choices.

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Australia Deals Sensibly With Cruise Ship Flu

There’s nothing like the threat of infectious disease to test the courage and compassion of humanity.

Responses range from the saintly self-sacrifice of Father Damien among the lepers to the burning of Chinatown in Honolulu under fear of bubonic plague. And that’s just Hawaii.

In Australia, authorities recently had to figure out what to do about a cruise ship, the P&O Pacific Dawn, with three staff members recovering from swine flu. There was talk of a full-blown quarantine — refusing to allow any passengers off the ship.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Passengers were allowed to disembark at Brisbane and, after being screened, are being asked to quarantine themselves at home. It looks as if the rest of the passengers will be allowed off in similar fashion in Sydney.

That’s a very cautious approach, and a humane one. There are already hundreds of confirmed cases of swine flu in Australia, but nobody in that country has died. This flu spreads easily, but does not seem at this point to be any more deadly than an ordinary flu.

Contrast Australia’s behavior with that of China, which was quarantining Mexican visitors on no other grounds than their nationality.

Civil liberties are often threatened in pandemics, and often to no public health benefit. If swine flu does end up posing a serious threat, panic will not serve us well.

No Tourists? Blame The Weather Forecast

Tourism is down and there must be someone to blame. The governor of Nevada blames the president. The British beach resort of Bournemouth blames weather forecasters.

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JetAmerica Has An Eye On Hartford

My friend Tom points out that JetAmerica President John Weikle mentioned Hartford as a potential expansion city in an interview with The Toledo Blade.

Whether this means Bradley International Airport or a smaller airport in the region is not entirely clear. Weikle’s last venture into airlines, Skybus, claimed it flew to Hartford, but actually used Westover Metropolitan Airport in Chicopee, Mass.  So far, though, JetAmerica seems to be picking more established airports.

There’s a fair amount of skepticism out there about JetAmerica, and it’s particularly well-expressed on The Cranky Flier blog. Whether the airline will survive long enough to get to Hartford, whatever it means by Hartford, remains to be seen.

Best Credit Cards For Use Overseas

If you haven’t seen it yet, USA Today had a piece last week about the best credit cards to use overseas. Capital One still comes out on top, and I still keep one expressly for use in foreign exchange transactions.

Lessons From A Man Overboard

On May 24, 18-year-old Bruce O’Krepki went overboard from the top deck of the Carnival Fantasy into the Gulf of Mexico. This was widely reported.

Witnesses say he jumped. This detail was much less widely reported.

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JetAmerica: Son Of Skybus?

A new ultra-no-frills airline with ties to the short-lived Skybus will begin flying in July, mostly between secondary airports in the eastern half of the country.

JetAmerica will start flying July 13 between Newark, N.J., and four cities: Lansing, Mich.; Melbourne-Vero Beach, Fla.; South Bend, Ind.; and Toledo, Ohio. It will also fly from Toledo and Lansing to Melbourne-Vero Beach. Flights between Toledo and Minneapolis-St. Paul are scheduled to begin Aug. 14.

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Hurray For In-Flight Wi-Fi, Next Time

Last week I finally boarded a plane with on-board wi-fi but the magic moment sputtered out. I didn’t even fire up the netbook to try it out.

For one thing, I was whipped — groggy and cranky on the final leg of an 18-hour, four-airport, red-eye journey from Kauai to Hartford.  For another thing, it cost too much.

Delta charges $9.95 for a wi-fi connection on flights of less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. I was heading from Atlanta to Hartford, a flight that takes two and a half hours. But with the ban on using electronic devices during takeoff and landing, I’d get less than two hours of connection time. At more than $5 an hour, it just didn’t feel worth it.

I might have shelled out on the earlier flight from Honolulu to Atlanta, had wi-fi been available, but therein lies another issue. Delta’s Gogo Internet service from Aircell doesn’t work over the ocean because the signal comes from land-based towers.

So, anyway, I expected to be happier about this. Maybe next time.

First Class Is Dead. Long Live First Class

Qantas is suspending first-class service on three of its long-haul routes.

It’s a sure sign of the times, but is it the first step toward the transformation of major airlines toward one-class service? I don’t think so. What’s happening here is, I think, more of an evolutionary shift.

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White Powder, Doughnut, Bradley International, Huh?

As unseemly as it for some lazy-ass, pajama-clad blogger to complain about the work of reporters who go out and actually gather the news, I have this to say about a report from WTNH-TV about a white powder at Bradley International Airport:

Huh?

Here’s the three-sentence story, headlined Donut disturbance at Bradley, in its entirety:

Windsor Locks (WTNH) – A suspicious while powder that caused concern at Bradley International Airport turned out to be a breakfast snack. The discovery of the powder Friday morning sent emergency crews into action and even delayed a few flights, an airport spokesman told News Channel 8. But the situation calmed quickly when it was discovered the powder came from a donut.

OK, so what happened there exactly? Whose doughnut was it? What was it doing, exactly? What action did emergency crews take? Did the doughnut survive this action? Are powdered doughnuts on the no-fly list? What about  glazed? (And the word is spelled “doughnut,” no matter what Dunkin’ Donuts says.)