Tag: Gulliver

TODAY is a very special day for Gulliver, for it is ten years to the very day since his column at The Economist opened for business. Since then, much has changed in the world of travel. A barrel of oil is now worth a tad over $60, instead of around the $100 mark as in April 2008. Old friends such as Monarch Airlines of Britain, Continental, NorthWest and US Airways of America and Air Berlin of Germany have long been consigned to the dustbin of history due to bankruptcies and mergers. Airbus’s A380 superjumbo, the largest passenger airliner ever built, somehow managed to go from the future of aviation to its past in less than a decade. 

But 2,911 posts since Gulliver started to blog for The Economist (after he had escaped from the tiny Lilliputian people that…Continue reading

WHEN migration from Europe to Australia first got going in the nineteenth century, it would take several months to get there by ship. Even by the end of the second world war, the trip still would take over 30 days. But in 1947 Qantas, Australia’s flag carrier, cut the time it took to fly between the two to a matter of days when it opened a new air service between London and Sydney called the “Kangaroo Route”. Even so, the trip was slow and expensive compared to today’s flights. The original “Kangaroo route” took four days and nine stops, and cost at least £525 per passenger—equal to two and half years’ wages for an average worker. Now the same trip, via Dubai or another Asian hub, takes less than 24 hours and costs less than a week’s pay.

Qantas hopes that a new non-stop service between Britain and Australia will again revolutionise the economics of flying between the two countries. On the morning of March 25th, the first scheduled nonstop flight from Perth to London landed…Continue reading

NEARLY every day new stories hit the headlines about misbehaving flyers who get drunk on flights, turn violent or try to bring weapons or unusual animals on board. But it is not just the behaviour of passengers that now appears on a downward slide, but that of crew as well.

Last week videos were posted to Weibo, a Chinese social-media platform, that appeared to show an orgy of at least six people in a hotel room. Reports followed that the participants were flight attendants for China Eastern Airlines, a Chinese flag-carrier, or possibly its subsidiary Shanghai Airlines. In a statement apparently issued by the company, it denied that its flight attendants were involved and suggested that the creators of the video were seeking to damage its reputation. According…Continue reading

ALMOST one year ago to the day, Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost carrier, announced plans to begin serving Ukraine. The eastern European country had been a glaring hole in the airline’s route network, deliberately avoided because of the anti-competitive advantages afforded to Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), the flag carrier based in Kiev, the capital city. A new infrastructure minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, brokered the deal between Ryanair and Boryspil Airport, Kiev’s main gateway and home base of UIA. But it collapsed within months. Now, Ryanair, the government and the airport are trying again.

On March 23rd Ryanair announced that it will launch ten routes to Kiev and five to Lviv in October. The most recent move marks a scaling up of Ryanair’s original plan. The airline never lost interest in serving Ukraine, but said its business confidence was “dented by the Kiev experience”. Continue reading

IN THE 1950s—when the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a cartel of airlines, used to set fare levels and service quality on international routes—there were few differences between major carriers. One way to persuade passengers to choose one airline over another was to offer better meals as entertainment on board. And so an arms race to serve fancier food on transatlantic flights began. It came to an end in 1958, when SAS, a Scandinavian carrier, was fined $20,000 by IATA for serving open sandwiches that, contrary to IATA’s rules, contained overly fancy ingredients such as ox tongue, lettuce hearts and asparagus. The quality of food on board flights has fallen greatly since. Liberalisation of the aviation industry in the 1980s and 1990s, with IATA losing its power over fares, has meant that most carriers now compete on price rather than service quality. 

But there are signs that some airlines in America may be getting into a new arms race—or, put another way, a food…Continue reading

IN ANCIENT times, traders on the Silk Road connecting China with Europe rarely ventured into the northern Caucasus region that is now home to Georgia. Diverting from established routes through Armenia and Anatolia to the south served little purpose unless conflict made the trackways impassable. Today, advances in transport and logistics mean that geography is less of a hurdle for traders. But friendly relations are just as important. Having signed free trade agreements with China and the European Union, Georgia is keen to pitch itself as a trade and transit hub for President Xi Jinping of China’s One Belt One Road initiative. A new rail line passing through the city adds to its appeal, halving the time it takes to carry freight from China to Turkey. Foreign direct investment by Chinese companies has ballooned.

Hualing Group, the largest such investor, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing real estate, logistics infrastructure, and sea and ground transport facilities in the country. Its attention…Continue reading

GULLIVER recently wrote about a pet that suffered a grizzly end after it was not permitted to fly. Spirit Airlines refused to allow a hamster on board as an emotional-support animal and it ended up being flushed down an airport toilet. But sometimes it is more dangerous for an animal to be permitted to ascend to 35,000 feet. Particularly, it seems, if it is flying on United Airlines.

On March 12th, on a flight from Houston to New York, a United Airlines flight attendant knowingly stowed a French bulldog in the overhead compartment, where it died, the family that owned the dog alleges. United quickly apologised to the family for what it called “a tragic accident that should never have occurred, as pets should never be placed in the overhead bin.” The airline promised an investigation “to prevent this…Continue reading

THERE has been much chatter among frequent flyers in London this week about a front-page splash in the Financial Times claiming that British negotiations with America to replace the EU-US Open Skies Treaty are in trouble:

The US is offering Britain a worse “open skies” deal after Brexit than it had as an EU member, in a negotiating stance that would badly hit the transatlantic operating rights of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. British and American negotiators met secretly in January for the first formal talks on a new air services deal, aiming to fill the gap created when Britain falls out of the EU-US open skies treaty after Brexit, say people familiar with talks.

The talks were cut short after US negotiators offered only a standard bilateral agreement. These typically require airlines to be majority owned and controlled by parties from their…Continue reading

Last summer, Uber at last started allowing its customers to tip their drivers. There was nothing actually preventing them from tipping before. At the end of the ride a passenger could have pulled out his wallet, fished around for change and handed the driver a few dollars. But it would have seemed absurd to do so, when everything else about the transaction was handled through a few taps of the app. The app didn’t enable tipping, so riders didn’t tip.

All of this highlights the conundrum for hotel housekeepers. Increasingly, people book hotel rooms through their computers or phones. They pay, and often pre-pay, with their credit cards. They get around town with app-based ride-hailing. There’s a good chance they don’t even carry cash. And yet to tip the housekeeper—or the bellhop or concierge—there’s no option but cash.

It is probably no coincidence, then, that tips are tight for housekeepers. According to the New York Times, fewer than…Continue reading

THE cruise industry sells itself as a relaxing way to travel, a world away from the hassle, queues and crime of travelling on land. Yet not all holidays look like the brochure, and cruises are no exception. Earlier this month one such voyage, nicknamed the “cruise from hell”, came to a resounding end in Melbourne, Australia. Dozens of brawls had broken out on board the Carnival Legend, a ship owned by the world’s largest cruise firm, many of which had apparently been instigated by a family group of 23. It appears that the crew struggled to control the situation. One video seems to show crew members kicking a passenger on the ground. Another passenger told reporters that she had heard the captain respond to the violence by saying, “What do you want me to do about it, throw them overboard?”

Carnival, the cruise firm that operated the ship, says that it is investigating what happened. But this is far from an isolated incident. In fact, less than two weeks ago,…Continue reading