YatTravel

PortAPocket wallets help fliers get through airports securely

Airports are cashless communities. Road warriors rarely carry a lot of cash through them, and even casual travelers rely on their plastic to get them trough a trip. The continued opposition to requiring taxicabs to accept credit cards by many of the cabbies in New Orleans demonstrates how little these folks know about the customers they're servicing.

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Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) (wikimedia commons photo)

The "hub" model of airline operations is commonplace, but it's a double-edged sword from a security perspective. Passengers are screened at the "spoke" airport, but then can roam the hub freely since they're "in the system," ostensibly in what TSA oddly calls the "sterile" area. News that a man entered the "sterile" area at EWR on Saturday raised fifteen kinds of hell as an entire terminal in a hub airport had to be emptied of passengers:

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KLM "Cityhopper" Regional Jet

My trip home from Helsinki which began on 5-Dec was a bit more complicated than planned, thanks to multiple cancellations of flights because of aircraft mechanical issues.

I wrapped up the training I was doing for Hitachi Data Systems on Monday, 14-Dec, and was scheduled to fly home the next day. My original itinerary was to be a reverse of the outbound trip: an early-morning flight from Helsinki (HEL) to Amsterdam (AMS), then AMS to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta (ATL), with a final hop from ATL to Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans (MSY). This trip was off to a bad start from the beginning.

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This was the view from my room at the Sokos Hotel Tapiola Garden, yesterday (Saturday) morning:

This is a concert hall at Tapiola Garden.  My hotel is on one side of this big reflecting pond, then this cultural complex and a shopping mall next door.

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Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport

I'm teaching in Helsinki this week, so the flight plan is New Orleans to Atlanta, Atlanta to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Helsinki.

The flight to ATL was a bit bumpy. This happens on about half of my MSY-ATL (or return) flights. The air gets choppy over Alabama, sometimes to the point where the flight attendants have to shut down their service in the main cabin of the plane. My platinum status with Delta means I'm usually upgraded for this leg when I buy the ticket or within a day or two after purchase. This flight was no exception. Other than the bumps, the flight was what you'd expect for an hour.

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25 daily flights:

Delta Air Lines will cut more flights at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in February.

Delta said Tuesday that the cuts will eliminate direct service to Montreal, Oklahoma City, Okla., Providence, R.I., Des Moines, Iowa and the Tri-Cities area of Tennessee.

I suspect this has more to do with the merger. Northwest hub operations out of Memphis probably make a lot of the flights at CVG redundant.

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