Tag: Gulliver

WHEN the dream of a smooth flight turns into the nightmare of an airliner crash, understanding what went wrong is sometimes straightforward. That was the case with a Malaysia Airlines flight which crashed in the summer of 2014, killing 298. This week Dutch and Australian investigators conclusively showed that it was shot down by a missile fired by Russian armed forces. But in other cases it is much harder to apportion blame. Such is the complexity of civil aviation that air-crash investigators spend years sifting through wreckage, recordings and data logs to work out what went wrong. Often technological, human and environmental faults are the main culprits. But another factor can be argued to have caused many of the world’s deadliest air disasters so far this year: economic sanctions.

The crash of a Cuban airliner on May 18th, which killed 112 people, is one example. America’s trade embargo on the island hurts civil aviation as much as it affects the rest of the economy. Cubana, the flag-carrier, is allowed to request American export licences…Continue reading

OVER the past year, there have been myriad stories in the press about airlines mistreating passengers. Last April David Dao, a passenger on a domestic United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville, was violently dragged off the plane to accommodate crew for another flight. This month United hit the headlines again when a Nigerian passenger accused it of racial discrimination after she was thrown off a flight. But among the sea of shocking headlines about how flight crews abuse passengers, it is easy to forget that the reverse occurs far more frequently.

A new study published earlier this month shows just how common the harassment of flight attendants by flyers is. The Association of Flight Attendants, the union representing American cabin crew, asked more than 3,500 flight attendants from 29 airlines about their experiences. In the past year alone, one-third of flight attendants said that they have experienced verbal sexual harassment by passengers and one-fifth said that they have experienced the physical…Continue reading

GULLIVER’S regular readers might be interested in an article in this week’s print edition about Boeing’s partial victory in a case at the World Trade Organisation, brought in retaliation for subsidies that the European Union is alleged to have given Airbus, its European planemaking rival. 

On May 15th the WTO’s final appeals body upheld parts of a previous ruling, finding that the European Union wrongly provided subsidies to Airbus to develop new aircraft. That, it concluded, had hit sales of Boeing’s jets. As soon as the WTO gives the go-ahead America will have the right to impose retaliatory tariffs on EU imports. Trade experts warn they could be the highest in the WTO’s history.

But this could have unintended consequences for Boeing, which now receives 55% of its revenues from outside its home territory of America:

The administrations…Continue reading

ON MAY 11TH a Nigerian woman filed a lawsuit against United Airlines for removing her and her two children from a flight after a fellow passenger complained of her smell. Queen Obioma accuses the airline of singling her out “because of her black race and Nigerian citizenship”.

The incident took place two years ago on a flight from Houston to San Francisco. This was the second leg of Ms Obioma’s trip with her children from Nigeria to Canada, where the youngsters were scheduled to begin school. Ms Obioma’s business-class seat was occupied by a white man, according to the suit. She asked him to move but he refused, she claims, and a flight attendant persuaded her to sit elsewhere. Shortly afterwards, she says, the other passenger went to the cockpit—presumably to complain about her—and then blocked her as she tried to get from the toilet to her new seat. When she finally took her seat, she recounts, a crew member asked her to step…Continue reading

ON MAY 11TH a Nigerian woman filed a lawsuit against United Airlines for removing her and her two children from a flight after a fellow passenger complained of her smell. Queen Obioma accuses the airline of singling her out “because of her black race and Nigerian citizenship”.

The incident took place two years ago on a flight from Houston to San Francisco. This was the second leg of Ms Obioma’s trip with her children from Nigeria to Canada, where the youngsters were scheduled to begin school. Ms Obioma’s business-class seat was occupied by a white man, according to the suit. She asked him to move but he refused, she claims, and a flight attendant persuaded her to sit elsewhere. Shortly afterwards, she says, the other passenger went to the cockpit—presumably to complain about her—and then blocked her as she tried to get from the toilet to her new seat. When she finally took her seat, she recounts, a crew member asked her to step…Continue reading

ON MAY 14th, the United States and United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced a deal that should, at least in theory, put an end to their long-simmering dispute over what airlines in America allege are unfair subsidies provided by the Gulf state to its two major airlines. When news of the agreement emerged on three days earlier, both sides quickly claimed victory. American representatives claimed that the UAE had admitted that it had unfairly subsidised its flag carriers and had agreed not to add further so-called fifth-freedom flights, which are routes to the United States that do not originate in the UAE. (Breitbart News ran a triumphant story under the headline “Trump’s America First Agenda Wins Trade Dispute With United Arab Emirates.”) Meanwhile, the UAE ambassador to the United States argued essentially the opposite, stating that he was…Continue reading

IN THE past, coach travel was seen as somewhat glamorous. That is perhaps an odd legacy of a Clark Gable film from 1934 called “It Happened One Night”, about a romance between two passengers travelling on a crowded bus travelling from Florida to New York. But now many people look down on it as something used only by time-rich, money-poor people—at best by students going on a Greyhound bus across America for the summer on the slimmest of budgets; at worst by homeless people who “carry all their stuff in plastic bags”, as one of Gulliver’s interviewees unsympathetically put it.

But when Gulliver went on a Flixbus coach in Germany recently, he was very surprised to find business travellers on board:

On the firm’s flagship route from Nuremberg to its hometown of Munich, winding between snow-capped peaks and picture-book villages in Bavaria, its bus passengers look distinctly affluent. Many on board play on tablets to pass the time; shirts and ties are common. One discerning traveller reads The…Continue reading

AIR FRANCE likes to present itself as a cut above other European airlines. Offering fancy French food and free champagne in economy class on long-haul flights, the company’s strategy is to justify its high ticket prices by offering a premium service. But facing intransigent unions at home and competition from abroad, the airline’s financial fizz is rapidly going flat. 

A drawn-out fight with its unions has toppled the boss of its parent group, Air France-KLM, yet again. On May 4th Jean-Marc Janaillac, its chief executive, resigned after its workers voted against a pay rise of 7% over four years. His predecessor, Alexandre de Juniac, left two years ago after two executives had their shirts violently ripped off by a mob of angry workers over a restructuring plan. The latest resignation is more serious because investors are also losing their rag. Air France-KLM’s shares have halved in value since January; over the same period those of rival carriers such as IAG and Ryanair have risen.

Air France’s trade unions are demanding an…Continue reading

WHEN a hacker gets hacked, hackers hack back. That is exactly what an attendee at a hacking conference in Berlin in 2003 did when the keycard-operated lock of his hotel room got hacked. On returning to his hotel room, he found that his laptop had been stolen, but there was no evidence of forced entry. So how did the thief get into the room? Two of his colleagues spent more than a decade trying to answer that question. Now they have succeeded—and in the process they have exposed a security vulnerability that leaves millions of hotel rooms susceptible to theft.

Tomi Tuominen and Timo Hirvonen of F-Secure, a cyber-security firm, devised a hack that they say allows them to create a master key that mimics the guest keycards produced by VingSecure, a manufacturer of hotel locks. According to F-Secure, the affected software is used in more than 40,000 hotel…Continue reading

WHEN the Gulf carriers trumpet a new route, it tends to be one that goes to a major city with an international reputation. The big three—Emirates of Dubai, Etihad of Abu Dhabi and Qatar Airways—usually put on a good show to celebrate new flights to places such as  London, New York or Beijing. And so many brows were furrowed when on May 1st Akbar al Baker, Qatar Airways’s chief executive, arrived with his jamboree in Cardiff to make noise about his airline’s first flights to Wales’s capital.

Those who know British geography well know that Cardiff is the very opposite of a great metropolis. Although it is the capital of Wales and its biggest city, with just 360,000 inhabitants it is overshadowed by London’s 9m 150 miles to the east. Last year its airport handled less than 1.5m passengers, a fraction of the 8m or so who went via Bristol Airport, its main rival just across the River Severn. Cardiff Airport has struggled commercially in recent years. In 2013 it was…Continue reading