Category: Airlines

Exciting Twitterday at Travolution’s #travsummit

There was a really hilarious video about airline surcharges, but now it’s taken away from Youtube [ed July 2010]

Originally I was planning to attend the Travolution Travel Summit in London today. However, some wonderful guests from Down Under had booked in my hotel, so I couldn’t afford to hop over to London, but in between I could have a look into the stream and sometimes throw in a thought or question.

As Twitter is the trend in conferences nowadays – you see rows and rows of people with laptops, blackberries and Iphones Twittering away- you almost don’t have to attend them in Real life.

Just sift through under 1,000 tweets at Search.Twitter.com/#travsummit and you know almost all.Note my clever little trick in altering the number of Tweets in the search url from 50 to 100. So you have only to scroll through 10 pages of Tweets. Also remind that after a certain period Twitter seems to flush its search caches.

Some notes from the #travsummit stream some of which I have to check out more in depth:

  • On a personal note, if I would have attended, I would have been torn between Looking and listening, posting Tweets and making photos. At the next conference I will attend, I will be making photos only. I missed catching the faces today.
  • The word boring is becoming Cool. “Just keep your eyes on the ball” as Bill Marriott says it in an recent interview with startup Hoteliers Magazine and do what you are good at is a wise advice in the present economic circumstances
  • Everybody points to USG (User Generated Content), but it is my experience that only 40% of my guests produce USG in the form of writing into my guest book and only 5% write a review online.
  • Google top 5 tips for conversion: -No doubt. -Simple check-out. -Limit steps. -Limit warnings. -Quarantine check-out (thinking about redesigning my hotel website).
  • Travellers typically make 12 searches on 22 websites over 29 days before making their first booking says Google.
  • Home Away vacation rentals is growing very fast.
  • MS demonstrated an interesting huge new touchscreen Surface. Go see the Demo video taken at Sheraton Hotels and Resorts. European price approx UK PND 11,000.
  • Together with Photosynth (also from MS) Surface has some cool features

Other Travel Bloggers:

  1. Jeremy Head is one of the first posting about the summit at his Blog Travel Blather Travolution Summit: 7 things I learned today
  2. Worldreviewer is a good second who posts about the summit.
  3. Stephan Ekbergh posted about it
  4. Ben Colclough of Trailbeater posted about it
  5. I almost forgot Hotelblogs who devoted several blog posts on the summit:Business Leaders on Stage, Update from Ailines, Innovators in Digital and online Travel and some more

Latest Update April 22, 2009 17,00 hr … It took me almost 12 hours to find the video back. And at Travolution you will find more coverage. Rest my post further:-)

#Schiphol: Turkish Airlines 737 Crashes with 135 Passengers on Board: Few Casualties – Correction 10 dead 60 Injured

turkish-airlines-plane-crash-at-schiphol

Published 12.19hr PM

Approximately 11.3110.31hr AM local time a plane of Turkish Airlines crashed shortly before landing on Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (AMS).

According to an eyewitness and this picture there was no sliding or skidding. The plane didn’t have enough speed and literally fell out of the air. Immediately passengers started to leave the plane.

There are some bodybags, probably 4 to 5 dead and many wounded people.

Off course Twitter was among the first to bring this news. See: Search Twitter #Schiphol.

Update 1:
Amsterdam University Hospital reports 7 heavy wounded passengers. Dutch Television Live coverage

Update 2:
At a press conference at 01.00hr PM it was announced there are 9 dead and 50 passengers injured. Some of them heavy.

Update 3:
Reportedly 4 crew and 2 pilots among the dead and 4 passengers as a 10th dead was confirmed at at Amsterdam University Hospital.

There is an English language Blog: Schipholcrash.web-log.nl.

Here is a link to traffic control radio shortly after the crash:

Here is a sketch of the crash location:

turkish-airline-crash-location

Update 4:
According to CNN Twitter was the first to spread the news. And here a link to IReport with some photos:

Pop Top by Public: Never Lose Your Luggage again

Pop Top by Public 01

When, after a long flight, you are awaiting a bit groggily at the airport luggage check out for your luggage to appear, it can happen that your suitcase travels three times the carousel without you noticing it. At least that has happened to me. That won’t happen anymore when you apply the “Pop Top personalize your luggage idea” of Public, a British design studio working in a range of fields from graphic design to product design.:

Pop Top by Public 02

PopTop is a new type of hard-shell luggage. Using a matrix of multi-coloured dots to create a glossy surface graphic, the further one gets away from the piece, the clearer the image becomes. Lines will initially be limited to a few designs, but PopTop hope to make a web-based design-it-yourself range in the future. Public was charged with delivering the concept as well as a PDF presentation to take to retailers.

Love the idea.

Bye Bye KLM Royal Dutch Airline?

Always when I want to process some of my pending posts I stumble on something that draws my attention: This time a photo of a beheaded KLM airplane:

Wow KLM Airplane

Which made me think:”How long will this National Pride of The Netherlands live as a separate brand after the take over by Air France?”

I found the duly photo shopped photo on Core77: Things that oughtn’t be Flying, which found it on Zedomax , but I can´t find the corresponding post at Zedomax.

Fly in an Airplane Bathroom Seat and Earn Yourself US $ 2 Mio.

Toilet Seat

I am glad I don’t have to fly a lot and certainly not in an airplane bathroom, but the USA is world famous for its frivolous litigating and this is just another example in my opinion:

According to Associated Press, via MSNBC, a New York citizen is suing JetBlue Airways Corp. for more than $2 million because a pilot ordered him to give up his seat and to spend part of his flight on the the toilet for more than three hours on a 5 hours flight from San Diego to New York. The man was traveling on a “buddy pass”, a voucher that airline employees can give to relatives and friends. Probably not the most expensive ticket.

I am curious whether the guy will succeed and also whether the Airline employee will remain his friend and/or keep his/hers job…..

Bathroom Seat with Apple Paper Dispenser

As a chair aficionado, – look at my Chair Blog and Chairblog | Tumblr where I collect some design chairs and some unusual seats and had the ones shown here -, I am sure the flight was not very comfortable, but also not worth this prize money.

All Purpose Commode

Finally I am curious what amount Pam Babcock, the woman, who was glued to her friend’s toilet, see also Discover Magazine for two years, is going to claim. If you apply the claim formula of the New Yorker’s 3 hours glued to his airplane toilet seat and calculate her hours glued to hers, she may be claiming over US $ 4 Bio!

After fighting with her boyfriend, 35-year old Pam Babcock locked herself in the bathroom of the couple’s mobile home and refused to leave… for the next two years. When her boyfriend, Kory McFarren, finally called the authorities to report that “there was something wrong with his girlfriend,” they found that she was physically stuck to the toilet seat—her skin had not only attached but, according to the initial reports, appeared to have “grown around” the seat. The cops eventually pried the seat off the toilet with a crowbar and sent the woman—seat attached—to a hospital in Wichita, where they were finally separated.

Updates

The News is spreading now: Here is the Video News Clip: