Globaliser

All other things being equal, I'd definitely prefer the pair of non-stops simply because they're non-stops. I have a lurking fondness for the 777 for - how shall I put this? - its over-engineered structural integrity, but if in business class this really wouldn't be a big factor. This is from the point of view of someone for whom air travel is a means of getting from A to B, and who wouldn't go much out of the way just for differences in service levels (but would do so for operational excellence). However, it would be relevant to me that this itinerary is all on oneworld. I'm assuming that the second line here was intended to read "14 Sep", as in your first itinerary.

It's not just Heathrow. I think there are also e-gates at both Gatwick and London City. The latter has recently expanded its immigration area so as to install many more e-gates than there used to be. Together with a fair wind on the journey, it meant that I was unlocking my front door at about the time that my flight had been scheduled to arrive.

Not necessarily. As with so many things in the industry, it depends. This is why when doing I was doing that UK --> Sweden --> Sweden journey, I had to collect my bag at Stockholm and then re-check it for the domestic flight. At any rate, the main point is that it is not true that "The US airports are the exceptions". The arrangement seen in the US is actually very common all over the world.

I think that this is unfair on the US. A international --> domestic connection will often require you to collect your bags and clear them through customs personally at the connecting point, for obvious reasons. My regular destination countries of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all require this. I've even once had to do it on a UK --> Sweden --> Sweden connection.

I see this as operated by Skywest (United Express).

Presumably you're flying outbound on 28 or 29 October 2022? Denver is a single-terminal airport although it has more than one concourse. It looks likely (based on the last few days) that both UA212 and UA5791 will be on concourse B. At Toronto, both UA5791 and AC896 (the operating flight number of UA8681) should be at Terminal 1. Looking at the last few days, it also looks likely that the flights will arrive at and depart from the same "finger" of that terminal. Inbound, if you're flying on 13 November 2022, there will be a terminal change at JFK from Terminal 4 to Terminal 8. What someone else will have to help with is whether you'll have to take your bags between terminals yourself, or whether you will be able to drop them off again immediately after you exit from customs at T4 even though they're going to an airline that operates at a different terminal. (I'm assuming that the bags will be through-tagged as you're presumably on a single ticket despite it being an interline connection.) At DFW, the past few days suggest that your flights could well arrive and depart from different terminals. But you would only have to get yourselves between terminals, as your bags will get transferred by the airline there, and the shuttle train is IME usually pretty efficient.

That's very different from "they do not have a way to call them from the states". I think my international calling card (bought from and branded by a large supermarket here) allows me to call a US landline for 0.5p per minute plus a 4p call set-up charge. No computers are involved. I would be surprised if there is nothing similar that is readily available in the US.

And why can't you call them from the US? All of their respective websites give their phone numbers.

If we have an additional holiday for the coronation, a pushed-out story today makes it sound more likely that it'll be Monday 8 May than Friday 5 May. The story is a slightly esoteric one about local authorities complaining that a holiday on 5 May could interfere with vote counting after the (local) elections that are scheduled to take place on Thursday 4 May. I wouldn't normally expect to see such an issue reported in this way unless someone been trying to make the point but has got fed up with not being listened to. If the holiday is on Monday 8 May, then it's also an open question as to whether that will be done by moving the holiday on Monday 1 May back by a week, or whether we will end up having three Monday holidays in the same month, on 1, 8 and 29 May.

Ignore the names. That's just marketing. The different fares have different restrictions. Just as in economy, cheaper fares are generally more restrictive. Business class is no different. If you go to JAL's website and price a ticket for a long way out, you'll get to see a chart showing the marketing names. If you click on "Business special", for example, you'll see the main rules. Then you can compare these rules with those for more expensive fares.

If the answers to those questions are "very" and "yes", then frankly the OP ought to be cancelling the cruise and going to Paris alone. No organised day tour from a Le Havre port call can give you any kind of overview, let alone a nice one. All you'd really be able to say is that you saw some famous buildings through a window as you drove by.

Big cruise ships do not have Paris as a port. Only river cruises can call at Paris. Any big ship cruise line that pretends that it has Paris as a port is flat out lying to you. It's usually Le Havre, as WatchHill says. To get a feel for what you know is "quite a distance", this is comparable to being on a ship that docks at Philadelphia, and contemplating a day trip to Washington DC "to get a glimpse". It's a waste of time and effort, particularly as Paris really needs a month or more just by herself. FWIW, the same goes for trying to do Paris as a day trip from London. That is also a waste of time and effort.

I do. No need to stress about this one. And definitely no need to have checked in at the airport by 11.00 am. I too would plan on the basis that Wednesday 30 August is a normal day, but it often happens that the week that includes a holiday Monday is a little quieter than normal weeks.

I wonder whether it's the other way around. Here are some extraordinarily broad generalisations to illustrate this: A non-stop flight from B to A is generally more valuable and priced higher than an itinerary that connects at C. The same goes for a non-stop flight from C to A, compared to an itinerary that connects at B. So the airline may expect to get $1,000 for a cash ticket for a non-stop flight from B to A, or from C to A. It may also expect to get only $800 for a cash ticket for a B-C-A or a C-B-A itinerary. In general, although some people will choose a connecting itinerary to get a lower fare, they won't play silly games to do so, especially as the silly games can cost extra money. In practice, this means that some people at B will be happy to fly B-C-A to get a lower fare compared to flying B-A non-stop. But very few people at B will fly from B to C and then fly C-B-A to get the lower fare - not least because they have to pay an additional fare to fly B-C. So for those buying cash tickets, the choice in this scenario is $1,000 non-stop or $800 with a connection - something that we all routinely see. When someone redeems an award flight, in substance the airline collects money for it. The mechanism may be different for different airlines and different award schemes, but in substance something like that will happen even if the airline remains the operator of its award scheme and is simply cancelling mileage liability on its books through the award ticket. Therefore, every award flight ticket has a value to the airline. Suppose that the value to the airline of an award ticket from B to A (by any route) is $900. It's then not hard to see why the airline might make an award seat available to B-C-A while not making one available for C-A - even if it has to pay $50 to the airline operating B-C for the economy seat used to make that connection. In real life, of course, this is much more complicated, not least because value calculations also change as the time before departure reduces. The present value of a 20% chance of selling a $7,000 cash ticket over the next year may be regarded as exceeding the $1,000 that could be taken for a cash ticket now. And so on.

I think that KLM is currently flying non-stop from Southampton (note spelling) to Amsterdam most days.

Taxi from Waterloo to St Pancras. With cruise luggage, I wouldn't try to get on the Northern Line at Waterloo, or to change at Euston. If you really want to do a Tube route from Waterloo to St Pancras with luggage, then I think that it would be better to take the Jubilee Line eastbound to London Bridge, and then Northern Line to Kings Cross St Pancras from there. There should now be step-free access at both ends and a step-free change in the middle.

What are Virgin's terms and conditions for a paid seating request? Do they allow you to carry over the paid fee to a new flight, or do they say that you have to pay again if you change your flight? The important thing, though, is to make sure that you have confirmed reservations on your new flight. Seat allocations are of secondary importance.

Possibly yes, according to this Points Guy article - https://thepointsguy.com/news/eu-flight-compensation-law-applies-to-domestic-flights/ . I have no experience with this situation personally, and would be curious to see how it would work in practice, especially if the delay is related to security and/or immigration, and no fault of the airline(s) itself. If the misconnect really has nothing to do with the airline, then I agree this would be dubious. But a misconnect is much more likely to be the result of a delay. I was thinking primarily of the duty of care rather than the lottery win of cash compensation, because that should put some pressure on the airline to reroute (including via interline if necessary) to get the passenger moving, and if that really can't be done and a nightstop is needed, then the airline should be picking up the bill. It does irritate me a bit when so much that is written about 261/2004 is about cash compensation, when in practical terms the duty of care is much more important. But then I suppose it goes hand in hand with a buying culture that prioritises dollar signs over every other consideration.

Is it 3 hours exactly, or is it 3:35? I can see a routine connection (about 6 days a week) that arrives at 1355 and departs at 1730. If that is your connection, then you've got even more time to play with. And there's a later BOS-RDU flight most days of the week (again, about 6) if you miss the 1730. Plus there may well be more schedule changes before May. And you should be protected by 261/2004 if you miss the connection.

Presumably because he thinks that he's asking for too much if he sticks to what the meter says. Black cabs are acutely aware that the appeal of services like Uber is primarily on the basis of price. The longer-term sustainability of that model is highly debateable, but everyone in the business has to deal with current circumstances. Anyway, whatever the reason, it's happening too often for it to be a mere fluke.

Personally, I would give £5, less if the driver was a grumpy git ! One of the recent structural changes to taxi fares is that they now basically allow for what the drivers used to expect by way of a tip. This has been brought about by the fact that all taxis are now required to accept card payment, which itself has become almost universal now for everything since the beginning of the pandemic, and the increase in the limit for contactless payments from £30 to £100. That means that for almost all journeys passengers just tap and go, seldom leaving any tip. What has become quite common in parallel is the "negative tip": a taxi driver who insists on taking less than is actually on the meter. Obviously, if the meter says £65 and the driver tells you he only wants £60, then he really only wants £60, not £60 plus a tip.

It seems like some possible good news may yet come. Today's email says that Blue Note "will not sail in the January-February window, but a fall sailing from the West Coast is being considered". So I suppose it's a case of watching this space.

There are several security checkpoints, but they are not organised according to destination. Their location means that they may tend to see different mixes of passengers, but that's just because of the relationship between check-in desk allocation, gate allocation (especially the dual-purpose Schengen/non-Schengen gates) and natural passenger flow, and sometimes just due to the time of day (because long-haul flights are not evenly spread across the day). AIUI, you can in theory pretty much clear security at any checkpoint, and then work your way around to the correct area for your departure gate, whatever your destination. The time taken to clear security at any individual checkpoint can vary from day to day or even hour to hour, depending on staffing levels. There are plenty of horror stories about people flying directly to non-European destinations who have had to wait in security queues for several hours. As FreestyleNovice says, it's all a bit hit-and-miss at the moment.

I hadn't yet thought about that, but it seems like a good idea: I'll let my family and friends know that they'll have to pay us more if they want to stay with us that weekend. 🙂

I'm not quite sure why this would be? AIUI, the main bottleneck for passengers is a lack of security screeners. As there's now centralised security at Schiphol, that's going to affect everyone in the queue regardless of their destination. Although I understand that you can game the system a bit by using a different checkpoint that's less backed-up and then get yourself around the terminal airside.