By 2013, the EU will stop confiscating your lunch:
Liquids, gels and aerosols will instead be run through a new generation of explosives scanners able to screen them for harmful materials. Getting these machines up and running will be very expensive, and the technology is not yet foolproof. But nothing in aviation security is foolproof, and anything is better than the chaotic confiscation policies now in place.
Why are the Europeans always one step ahead of us?
... The 3-ounce container rule is silly enough -- after all, what's to stop somebody from carrying several small bottles, each full of the same substance -- but consider for a moment the hypocrisy of TSA's confiscation policy. At every concourse checkpoint you'll see a bin or barrel brimming with contraband containers taken from passengers for having exceeded the volume limit. Now, the assumption has to be that the materials in those containers are potentially hazardous. If not, why were they seized in the first place? So why are they dumped unceremoniously into the trash? The agency seems to be saying that it knows these things are harmless. But it's going to take them anyway, and either you accept it or you don't fly.
Smith also, bless him, acknowledges another problem with the US enforcement regime: "The maximum allowable container size is actually 3.4 ounces, by the way, or a hundred milliliters."
In other aviation news, United is eating Continental. That will cause American to eat USAirways, leaving only three major airlines in the US, and a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index climbing to heaven. Lovely.
Via reader MB, one of the best beers in the world has been sold to a pair of beer-loving entrepreneurs:
Fritz Maytag, the washing machine heir who launched the microbrewery movement, has sold Anchor Brewing Co. in San Francisco to a pair of Bay Area entrepreneurs who plan to preserve and expand the iconic brand.
No terms were disclosed for the sale of the 70-person Mariposa Street brewery and distillery that traces its roots to the Gold Rush, when local brewers produced a heady elixir known as steam beer.
In 45 years at the helm of Anchor Brewing, Maytag helped spark a revival in the craft of making beer by hand and inspired thousands of entrepreneurs to follow him in creating small, artisanal breweries.
Judging by the reactions of people in my class to a case we read on the Boston Beer Co., it's likely that overseas readers don't appreciate what Maytag did for beer lovers. Within a few hours of Chicago there are dozens of craft breweries, including Tyranena and, of course, Goose Island, two of the best in the world. Only Japan has anything like the American craft-brew culture, but sadly they don't export it. Neither do most of the craft brewers; their batches are too small even to ship farther than the next state over. So, in Chicago, I get to have a Mad Hatter, and in Raleigh I get to have a Angry Angel; but throughout this fine, beer-loving nation, we'll still have Anchor Steam.
You might see a news story like this:
Chicago would be headquarters to the largest airline in the world if United Airlines successfully consummates a deal with Continental Airlines.
Where to base the world headquarters of the merged entity is one of many potentially thorny "social" issues that have been resolved as the two airlines move rapidly toward a deal that could be completed as soon as next week, said people close to the situation.
The implications make my brain hurt. This would be tremendous for Chicago, at the expense of making O'Hare a fresh kind of hell for Conited (Uninental?) travelers. But United would gain a major hub in Houston to compete with American's in Dallas, and would solidify its Asia-Pacific lead even while essentially conceding the North Atlantic to oneworld. (For the record, I will continue to fly American regardless. The article mentions that US Airways, twice to the altar but never wed with United, may jump into American's arms instead.)
Then there was this, via Sullivan, which has to be a first in American history, in Philadelphia yet:
Veteran Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.) last Thursday accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters, a powerful bloc in the district.
"I outed him as a straight person," Josephs said during a fund-raiser at the Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant, as some in the audience gasped or laughed, "and now he goes around telling people, quote, 'I swing both ways.' That's quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality. This guy's a gem."
Kravitz, 29, said that he is sexually attracted to both men and women and called Josephs' comments offensive.
"That kind of taunting is going to make it more difficult for closeted members of the LGBT community to be comfortable with themselves," Kravitz said. "It's damaging."
Add to all this the increasing likelihood (though still well below 50%) that Nick Clegg could become Britain's prime minister in two weeks, and I think it will be a fretfully long night. (In a good way. If I were a UK citizen, I'd vote Lib-Dem this time. Seriously.)
Above Siberia, 9:34 JST
I actually can see Russia from my window:
Over Great Bear Lake, N.W.T., 16:20 MDT
Note the first: A westbound 13-hour flight seems a lot shorter than a 9-hour flight the other direction. We left Chicago a little more than four hours ago, which equals the flying time from Chicago to San Francisco, the farthest place you can go within the Lower 48. It doesn’t feel that far. The sun confounds perceptions of time: we took off at 1pm and we land at 3:30, chasing the sun across the Canadian permafrost most of the way. I get to Shanghai at 7pm. My clock at home will say 6am. My brain will not have a clue.
Note the second: It turns out that flight attendants covet the Chicago-Tokyo route. Our cabin crew includes a husband-and-wife team, both of whom have worked for American longer than 30 years. The husband told me that the Chicago-Beijing route starting at the end of this month has become the most-sought trip for flight attendants; he expects he’ll be able to bid for it in a couple of years. Let me repeat that: when he has 40 years with the airline he might get on the Chicago-Beijing route.
First, a housekeeping note. This is the one of three entries posted after the fact. Almost always, a post time you see on The Daily Parker accurately records when I first posted the blog entry. At this writing I’m on an airplane over Canada’s Northwest Territories, so the post time shows when I took notes about the entry that follows. This all may seem, as my dearest friend might say, “a bit Asperger’s-y.” Perhaps. Another very close friend blogs retrospectively, because she wants her entries to correspond in time to when the experiences happened. I think either is fine as long as it’s consistent. Otherwise, it’s almost like lying to yourself.
(We now rejoin the blog already in progress.)
If you have to fly out of O’Hare, you really can’t beat mid-morning on Tuesday. It took me 11 minutes from the time my cousin dropped me at Terminal 3 to check two bags through to Shanghai and get through security. Eleven minutes. Yes, I have Platinum status, but there weren’t any lines I could see at anywhere else. Always do things when no one else is doing them, someone once told me. Good advice.
In a moment of stupidity I forgot they would feed me on the plane, so I got lunch. The stupidity compounded itself by suggesting that, since I was heading to China, maybe I should skip the usual Terminal 3 two-item combo from Manchu Wok and get something impossible to get in Shanghai, like, say, a Quarter Pounder. Understand, the last time I ate at McDonald’s, ridiculous comparatives hadn’t been invented yet, so all we could say was “it was a long time ago.” I think I last had a Quarter Pounder during the Daley administration. The first one.
I think they’ve changed the recipe. The Quarter Pounder and small fries I had didn’t taste anything like I remembered. What happened to the salt? Where was the grease? What kind of cardboard bun was this? (At least they still make cardboard buns.) What a disappointment. I wanted my last meal in the United States for two weeks to be something quintessentially American, and obviously fattening and hypertensive. Instead I got what tasted like...well, it didn’t taste like anything, actually. Then American Airlines added to my culinary confusion by serving me a quite tasty beef filet in garlic ginger sake sauce with wild mushrooms paired with a decent Australian cabernet.
What is America coming to, when airline food is better than McDonald’s?
Truly stunning news from Russia this morning, with devastating repercussions for Poland:
A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders crashed in a heavy fog in western Russia on Saturday morning, killing everyone aboard.
... Among those on board, according to the Web site of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, were [President Lech] Kaczynski; his wife, Maria; former Polish president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski; the deputy speaker of Poland’s parliament, Jerzy Szmajdzinski; the head of the president’s chancellery, Wladyslaw Stasiak; the head of the National Security Bureau, Aleksander Szczyglo; the deputy minister of foreign affairs, Andrzej Kremer; the chief of the general staff of the Polish army, Franciszek Gagor; the president of Poland’s national bank, Slawomir Skrzypek; the commissioner for civil rights protection, Janusz Kochanowski; the heads of all of Poland’s armed forces; and dozens of members of parliament.
The crash fits the strict definition of tragedy, as have so many air crashes involving VIPs:
A press secretary for ... the governor of Smolensk, said the landing took place under very bad visibility, and Russian air traffic controllers advised the crew to land in Minsk, but the crew decided to land anyway. The Polish news channel TVN24 reported that moments before the crash, air traffic controllers had refused a Russian military aircraft permission to land, but that they could not refuse permission to the Polish plane.
And unbelievable irony:
[Kaczynski] had been due in western Russia to commemorate the anniversary of the murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II. The ceremonies were to be held at a site in the Katyn forest close to Smolensk, where 70 years ago members of the Soviet secret police executed more than 20,000 Polish officers captured after the Soviet Army invaded Poland in 1939.
The crash quite literally decimated the Polish government. Poland has some difficult days ahead.
Update: Author and pilot James Fallows explains why this is a tragedy in the literal, Greek-dramatic sense I meant above.
It turns out, all that pollen covering my car happened in part because of the really pleasant winter we had in Raleigh this year. Really:
The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources' Air Quality Division measured a sample of air Wednesday that had 3,524 pollen grains per cubic meter at its Raleigh office.
The count normally falls between 1,000 and 1,500 in the spring. The previous peak was on March 27, 2007, when air quality staff over at DENR measured 2,925 pollen grains per cubic meter.
The jump in pollen has made this a stuffy, sneezy, eye-itching spring for pollen-allergic Triangle residents.
Be grateful, however, you're not in Winston-Salem. The pollen count there was measured at 9,632 grains per cubic meter on Tuesday, according to DENR.
Despite the predicted thunderstorms tonight, predicted pollen levels remain "very high" (only because "OMFG" isn't an official pollen level).
Apparently, though, it's worse elsewhere:
The Spirit of Stupidity:
The next obsession, at least for passengers of Spirit Airlines, may be cramming items under airplane seats. The Florida discount carrier said Tuesday that it would charge customers as much as $45 each way to place bulky items in overhead bins, in an effort to get people on and off its planes faster. Other airlines will watch Spirit's experiment.
Carry-on bags didn't become the primary source of luggage for passengers until carriers introduced fees for infrequent fliers and then raised them to $25 to check a first bag and $35 for a second item. United, among the first to adopt the fees, has seen the volume of checked bags fall for 25 consecutive months, said Cindy Szadokierski, United's vice president of airport operations planning and United Express.
Every major U.S. airline except for Southwest Airlines has introduced such fees since 2008, and no wonder. The 10 largest U.S. carriers collected $739.8 million in baggage charges during the third quarter of 2009, double prior-year totals, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Being a oneworld loyalist, I doubt I'd ever fly Spirit Airlines. But if I had to fly a route they served that American didn't, I'd rather pay a competitor $50 more than pay them $25 to carry on a bag. I suspect many people will make a similar calculation.
Then there's the possible fraudulent element. If Spirit airfares show up on aggregators $10 less than competing fares, but really you have to spend $25 extra just to board the plane, doesn't that seem, well, wrong?
This greeted me on my return to Raleigh today:
This is from pine pollen, which forecasters predict will be miserable for a couple of weeks. It covers everything, all over, everywhere down here. Another view of my formerly-silver car:
I wish those trees would stop having sex on my car.