Taylor on Travel

It may not be wise to begin a blog on holiday, but departure gives a chance for gratuitous comment on Heathrow. Naturally, I agree with everyone in the industry that the queues are a disgrace for which BAA is solely responsible. Who would not condemn this foreign-owned monopoly for profiteering at the expense of queue-weary travellers forced to surrender their bottles of Evian?

Except I was through security at Terminal 3 within 15 minutes. The trouble was I still spent two hours at the airport standing in queues. Why? Security at the entrance to departures is just one element of the queuing.

For a start you queue at check-in. In fact, I queued to join the queue for self-service check-in – a nice touch. You queue to join the security queue and then queue to show your boarding pass before joining the security queue proper – a good way to keep those average queuing times down.

Having negotiated security, at Terminal 3 you join the shoe x-ray queue, and from there it’s straight into the passport queue. If I was Michael O’Leary I would probably hire a wheelchair to be whisked through, especially since Ryanair passengers pay for this service.

If there is still time you can queue for a coffee or proceed to the till queue at Boots or WH Smiths. God forbid you need to shop at both. No sign of queues at the toilets yet, but they must come.

Thankfully I had a chance to stretch my legs during a sprint to the gate before joining the queue to show my boarding pass, where I then joined the American Airlines security queue – a 20-minute wait this one, followed by full bag and pocket-emptying and a demonstration that all electrical equipment was in working order. Then there was just the queue to board. All I can say is it beats being blown up.

News of the forthcoming departure of former MyTravel managing director John Bloodworth from the Thomas Cook Group raised some eyebrows. It left the merged company with not one former MyTravel face at the top.

But without impugning the departing UK and Ireland head in any way, it makes sense. After all, this is a merger in name only. Thomas Cook has taken over a previously distressed group and is incorporating those parts that complement its own. MyTravel chief executive Peter McHugh and his team have done their job, having salvaged the former UK number-two and given the banks that took control a return on their money.

It is a curious feature of the consolidation at the top of the trade that, while this merger is truly a takeover, the takeover of First Choice by TUI is truly a merger. How often is it that one company buys another and then puts its affairs in the hands of the chief executive and chief financial officer of the company it just bought?

British Airways has some tricky legal work ahead if it is to see off the class-action cases it faces in the US after admitting colluding with rivals over fuel surcharges on passengers and cargo. But it may take some comfort from news that it is not alone. The European Commission has slapped a Euro329 million fine on six companies and a trade association found guilty of acting as a cartel.

One expects better of zip and fastener manufacturers. Japan’s YKK group received the biggest fine, Euro150 million. But Coats of the UK must pay more than Euro122 million.
What’s worse, these guys should have seen it coming. It’s the second cartel exposed in haberdashery in three years. Some of the same firms were fined for fixing prices on needles and pins in 2004.

The EC says the zip conspiracy has been going on for more than 20 years and collusion went up to the highest level. Managing directors and board members were aware the conduct was illegal, but continued anyway – and that is not my opinion, it’s the view of the EU competition commissioner.

So it’s button flies from here on in.

The system for boarding US Amtrak trains is strange. You’ve bought your tickets in advance, so that is no problem, and you can walk up to a station counter without much of a queue anyway – at least that has been my experience in Seattle and Portland.

But thereafter it appears everything is geared to making the experience as much as possible like taking a flight. So there is a check-in luggage service – indeed, this is a requirement at major stations – necessitating passengers arrive half-an-hour before their train.

Then the queuing kicks in – first the queue for a boarding pass with your carriage number, handed over when you produce your ticket and handwritten in felt tip on a strip of card. This is followed by the queue at the gate to the platform.

Only on the conductor’s order do you move to the queue at the door of your carriage where an attendant checks your boarding pass and assigns you a seat – which you will sit in. Slip into another and the guard will have you out in no time.

No matter - the seats make up for everything, putting some airline business-class seats to shame. I would kill for the same kind of legroom on my return flight to London.

The last Thursday of the month in Portland is, well, Last Thursday. For 15 blocks along Alberta Street in the east of the city musicians appear on every corner and car park and even on the occasional porch.

There is bluegrass and country, punk and rock, driving drum and bass, a budding Jimmy Hendrix and percussion of all kinds. Refugee stalls from Glastonbury and Camden clutter the sidewalk and behind, cafes and restaurants offer menus from cheap to chic.

The Rough Guide suggests tourists take care this side of town so I dare not think what the Michelin Guide might say. But the crowd is more Brighton than the Bronx and the atmosphere tremendous. What a shame if UK visitors are deterred by guidebooks for the tremulous.

What is disturbing about Portland is the level of homelessness. The numbers on the street in the downtown district defy belief. Most are young.

There is clearly money to spend in the city. Half the central district is currently dug up to extend the streetcar system, there is a fair number of prestige high-rise places and the older buildings look well maintained. So there is no excuse. Where are the facilities for the homeless?

The dates for delivery of BA’s 24 Boeing 787s are interesting. BA says it will take delivery between 2010 and 2014, but expect it to be closer to 2014.

Until this week it was widely understood from Boeing that, with orders for more than 700 747s on the books, the manufacturer could not deliver on any fresh orders until 2014 at the earliest. That timetable was confirmed to me by a senior Boeing spokesman days before BA's announcement.

Could BA have placed a provisional order for the 787s some time ahead of announcing its decision? Certainly, the Boeing guys I met a week before BA unveiled its order were pretty confident the aircraft would be flying in BA colours.

Press coverage suggested the carrier’s choice of the Airbus A380 superjumbo alongside the 787 was a blow to Boeing, which is touting a new stretched version of its 747 as a rival to the 550-seat A380.

But why would a leading European carrier pass up the political benefits of investing in a few of the latest models from the Europe Union’s aircraft manufacturer? Just as there are cost benefits to a low-cost carrier maintaining a single-model fleet, there are political and cost benefits to an airline with a worldwide network keeping politicians onside and manufacturers competing.

What chance of cutting airport security queues through enhanced technology? We can expect to see some of the Advanced X-Ray machines on trial at a Heathrow transfer centre at major airports by next summer.

These produce clearer images of the insides of cabin bags - with scans from more than one angle - although this may not end the need to remove laptops from bags.

But the widespread belief that technology will provide the answer to security delays could be misplaced according to a review of current developments in USA Today.

It reports the Backscatter X-Ray technology that sees through passengers’ clothes is slow and inadequate when used with the privacy filter required to spare blushes. An electromagnetic wave version of the same machine has potential, but is only likely to be used in place of a hand search – so hardly a time-saver.

What of the handheld bottle scanner? It won’t remove the need for existing restrictions on liquids in carry-on luggage – it will just mean mums won’t be forced to taste their baby’s milk or juice.

Trace Portals or “puffers” designed to detect miniscule amounts of explosive or bomb-making ingredients on clothes have been dogged by problems and the US Transportation Security Administration now has no plans to buy more of the machines. It has previously announced its intention to install more than 430 at US airports.

That leaves the ShoeScanner, installed at Orlando International and other major US airports to speed up checks on the footwear of fast-track passengers. Unfortunately, the TSA has discovered the machines are incapable of detecting shoe bombs, which is a bit of a handicap.

Expect airport security to remain people-heavy for a while yet.

Boeing's delay of its 787 launch should hardly be a surprise. Having put back the maiden flight to November-December, meeting the May delivery date for the first Dreamliner was always going to be a challenge.

I was told two weeks ago that it would take a team of test pilots flying round the clock to log sufficent time in the air for the aircraft to be certified within a record time of five months. A further delay in production was always going to scupper that.

But why the insistence until the last minute that everything would be on time when it must have been clear inside the company that it would not?

And it's good to see an over-used management technique compromised - that of blind insistence on a deadline that is unmeetable - rather than anything else.

All smiles at Airbus and Singapore Airlines as an A380 finally heads to Singapore for its commercial launch next week, albeit 19 months late. But behind the bally-hoo, how do the figures stack up?

Airbus has orders for 189 A380 Superjumbos, which at about £165 million apiece makes for a tidy sum. But whereas the manufacturer originally estimated it would break even by selling 250 of the aircraft, it has since conceded it needs to shift 420. Indeed, that number dates from a year ago and may now be higher.

Sixteen carriers have taken the plunge with the A380. But take out Emirates, which has ordered 55, and the order book does not look so strong - 15 airlines signing up for 144 aircraft. These include cash-rich Middle East carriers Qatar and Etihad, Australia's Qantas, and European giants BA, Lufthansa and Air France. Leasing company ILFC has taken ten.

Where are the other 231 orders going to come from? The A380's major customers will largely be big, profitable, hub-and-spoke carriers with good credit facilities. Some of these have yet to come forward, but not too many.

And are the US carriers, out of restructuring but fearing recession at home, really likely to place orders with Airbus rather than with Boeing - especially ahead of a US Presidential election and amid allegations of unfair state subsidies and insider trading?

Of course, all doubts may be swept away as more people have a chance to experience flying with 554 fellow passengers . . .

Reports of toxic fumes in aircraft cabins are inevitably a worry, so it's reassuring to hear pilots' union Balpa insist its members remain happy to fly the BAe 146 in spite of stories of crew suffering headaches and collapsing.

Balpa compiled a dossier of 770 reports of cabin-fume incidents over 20 years and the Committee on Toxicity that examined the evidence concluded it "supported further investigatiom of neuro-psychological impairment in commercial pilots".

A separate study by a neuro-psychologist at University College London found pilots from airlines including BA had suffered memory lapses, fatigue and dizziness. Of course, none of these need be attributable to toxic fumes, but the CAA concedes "there are incidents where fumes enter cabins".

Flybe has been unlucky that media attention has settled on its fleet of BAe 146s, since it inherited the aircraft from BA and planned to phase them out by February. But the response of the Department for Transport could be more helpful.

When I spoke to the DfT, it could not specify the date when the further study would begin, let alone when it might be published. In the meantime, the department's atttude appears to be in sharp contrast to Government policy on airport security, which is to shoot first - sorry - prohibit passengers from carrying a second cabin bag until further notice.

Obviously, a risk of being blown out of the air must be taken seriously. But if there is the smallest risk of flight crew being overcome by fumes, isn't that worth taking seriously too?