Flying can be stressful! Follow these do’s and don’ts from Travel.MSN to help everyone have a more enjoyable flight.
Carry a bottle of waterless hand sanitizer. Germs can live up to four hours on objects such as armrests and door handles. If you can’t get to running water and soap, use the goop!
When the airport is crowded and seating limited, put your bags on the ground, not on the seat beside you. You may want to create a containment zone around you, but unless you bought a ticket for your bags, other passengers get priority.
Don’t linger in the aisle. The aisle isn’t a meeting place or a storage area – the crew and other passengers need to get by. Get your gear stowed and yourself in your seat as quickly as you can.
Don’t put your essentials in the overhead bin. It’s disruptive to the crew and other passengers when someone keeps leaping up to rummage through their bags. Put all the things you know you’ll need during the flight in a small bag under the seat in front of you.
Share your armrest. ‘Nuff said.
Use your backrest carefully. Sitting in an upright seat can be uncomfortable and confining. But, don’t fling your backrest down – you’re just making the person behind you miserable. Try to take it slow – the closer the seats are crammed together, the more cautious you should be. If there is such a thing as a mealtime, put your seat up so the person behind you doesn’t have your head in their food.
Don’t pound, push, kick or pull the seat in front of you while sitting, entering or exiting. It makes people crazy.
Don’t glare at crying children and their parents. It won’t help, and the parents are likely mortified already. Why not give the kid a smile, or a toy?
Parents: don’t play your kid’s dvd with the sound. Everyone can hear the squawking of the cartoon characters. Use headphones for your child.
Don’t hog the loo. The dozens or hundreds of your fellow passengers are in the same boat as you – drinking water to stay hydrated and sitting too long…now’s not the time to perform a makeover.
Watch your liquor. Not only can you get drunker faster on a plane than on the ground, but dehydration can lead to massively cruel hangovers. Spare everyone, especially yourself, by moderating your consumption.
Don’t yell at the crew or staff. Whatever the problem, shouting won’t help.
When all else fails, keep yourself busy. If your flight is crowded, uncomfortable and rage-inducing, amuse yourself. Read a dumb novel, listen to some Britney, eat great chocolate.
With the fees of luggage rising for every airline it’s more important than ever before to master the art of packing lightly.
The best way to pack only what you will really need is to lay out everything you think you’ll need and then scrutinize every piece one by one before it makes it into your luggage.
Here are some rules on The Fine Art of Packing
According to CNN.com
“The crash was at least the fifth major airline accident in the world this year, following crashes of planes flown by Colgan Air, Turkish Airlines, Air France and Yemenia Airways. A US Airways pilot managed to land his plane safely on the Hudson river in New York City in January, with no major injuries, after the plane lost power.
But aviation safety expert John Wiley said there is no reason to fear air travel in general, and no single airline or aircraft is particularly dangerous.”
The latest setback for Boeing Co. in the company’s effort to roll out their long-anticipated 787 jetliner has hit: they’ve yet again had to delay their first test flight of the new aircraft. The company says they need to reinforce certain areas of the plane – so, to be honest, waiting does seem like the best plan. However, shockingly, Boeing stocks dropped over 4 dollars midday. This is the latest knock to the company that has been struggling through the recession.
The 787 is built for fuel efficiency and is said to be the next generation of aircraft. It was originally supposed to be launched in 2007. Read more…
The race is on for searchers to locate the black boxes from Air France flight 447, as their locator beacons are only active for 30 days. However, preliminary evidence has been released by the airline which shows that, in the minutes leading up to the crash, two key computers malfunctioned and the plane was not flying at its ideal speed.
The data provides a chronology, albeit cryptic, of what happened in the minutes before the plane’s failure.
3am (BST) – The pilot reports hitting tropical turbulence, data says the plane had passed through “tall, dense cumulonimbus thunderclouds.”
Apparently at this stage, the plane’s speed was “erroneous.” Every plane has an ideal speed at which to travel through difficult weather, and AF 447 was not traveling at that speed – it is unknown at this point, however, if the plane was traveling too fast or too slowly.
3:10am – Pilot is presented with a series of error messages in the four minutes leading up to the disaster.
The auto-pilot system was disconnected, either by the pilot or automatically. (Auto-pilot shut down when the system is faced with a serious error.)
It is possible the pilot disconnected the system to try to manually avoid a dangerous cloud zone – at this high altitude, this maneuver is extremely dangerous.
At this same time, another emergency backup system switched on – this system allows the plane to keep flying using minimum power, but reduces stability.
3:12am – Two vital computers, which provide information on altitude, speed and flight direction, stopping working correctly.
3:13am – Electricity breakdowns in two principal and auxiliary flight computers.
3:14am – Final message: “cabin in vertical speed,” which suggests a sudden loss of cabin pressure. It is unclear whether this loss of pressure was because the plane broke apart in midair, or if the loss of pressure caused the plane to break apart. (The theory that the break broke apart in the air is lent credence by a Spanish pilot who was in the area who claims to have seen an “intense white flash” in the air.)
Sources close to the investigation argue that some of the details in the chronology are false, namely the fact that the computers providing info on altitude, etc, malfunctioned.
Searchers are continuing to scour the area for debris, and more information on what happened. Read more…
An Air France overnight flight from Paris to Rio de Janeiro has disappeared off radar, and is presumed crashed in the Atlantic Ocean. 228 people were on-board the Airbus 330. The plane was last heard from when it encountered severe turbulence and thunderstorms, when it reported some electrical faults and loss of cabin pressure.
It is unusual for a modern airliner to disappear over open ocean without notification, although there is no evidence of hijacking or terrorism. Read more…
In-flight food is notoriously bad, and for the most part airlines have given up trying to feed their passengers. However, transatlantic flights are a different matter – you really do need to eat. Fortunately, Lufthansa has announced a partnership with Ritz Carlton chefs to provide fine-quality meals on their transatlantic flights.
It is very difficult to reproduce restaurant quality meals on a flight because some elements must be prepared as early as 24-hours in advance. With new equipment in their kitchens, Lufthansa plans to bring such dishes as butternut squash risotto cakes with porcini mushroom sauce and Parmesan-crusted halibut to flying food-lovers. Read more…
In a case of life imitating art (if you can call that Sam Jackson flick “art”), a Qantas flight was grounded when four snakes traveling in the cargo hold escaped and could not be found. The snakes had been stored in a “appropriate case,” and it is unclear how they escaped. However, the plane was subsequently taken out of service and fumigated to prevent future incident (it was verified beforehand that the snakes were not an endangered species). Read more…
Computer animation of the entire flight path of US Airways 1549, overlayed with air traffic control audio. The whole thing takes only about 2 minutes. Really gives you a sense of how little time there was to react.
Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, got his ass handed to him in a tongue-in-cheek customer complaint letter from a passenger on his airline. The passenger had been served “food” (pictured above) and, well, did not enjoy it. Here’s the first bit:
Dear Mr Branson
REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008
I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.
Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.
Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].
I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?
PLAY
