I have always liked duty-free shops; one of the minor deceptions of travelling internationally is the idea that you can save $5 or $6 on a bottle of vodka and somehow stick-it to one tax collecting authority or another. It is, like so many other rather petty transactions a touch deceptive; alcohol pricing is such […]
Well, it has been an interesting week; a collapse of a substantial UK-based charter carrier Globespan, the on/off drama of the British Airways cabin-staff strike, the looming possibility of baggage handlers on strike in the UK and the general malaise of the airline industry has made interesting reading and thinking. The Globespan collapse was notable […]
The second part of the equation is, of course, money. Aircraft are extremely expensive to operate, airline seats are extraordinarily perishable, and the margins are extremely tight. However, while margins are tight, they are potentially hugely profitable, and it is this risk/reward ration that attracts new entrants each year. Simply put, a charter operators will […]
There are enormous differences between charter flights and scheduled flights, and sometimes we all forget to take these into account when we book travel. Simply because a flight is regularly “scheduled” does not make is a “scheduled flight”; it is simply a charter flight that operates on with regularity. Similarly, a scheduled airline, operating a […]
All travel must come to an end, and it is now over a week since I returned from my journey from Odessa to Tbilisi and Baku. I have missed posting, and have not done so for a couple of reasons; firstly, of course, is the requirement to work when one returns after a two-week absence, […]
What a remarkable trip. A journey like this, while simple today, would have been almost impossible only twenty years ago when this part of the world was an integral part of the Soviet Union. To travel within the USSR required a degree of planning and cooperation that left most tourists visiting only the main, keynote […]
Twenty-four hours in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku really isn’t enough, but as the morning dawned grey and drizzly, and with the whole of the city to see and a day in which to do it, I ignored the elements and waited for Aydin. Aydin co-owns, among other enterprises, a travel company in Baku and […]
I made it, and I think I’m going to like Baku, the interesting capital of Azerbaijan,once I get it figured out. Arriving at the Heydar Aliev International airport in Baku is a really interesting experience. The terminal is wonderful, with no expense spared, the immigration lines efficient and quite friendly, baggage retrieval speedy and a […]
In the end, it was a bit of an anticlimax, as we slid slowly and very neatly into the small port of Poti. Small the port maybe, but it is a hive of activity, with a miscellany of the world’s tramp steamers here loading and unloading a cornucopia of loads. Ships from Antigua, Majuro in […]