Travel Niche Blog

According to CNN Travel News a Canadian pilot paid a visit to the toilet and found himself locked out of the cabin.

The Jazz airlines plane was on a flight from Ottawa to Winnipeg. With 30 minutes remaining, the pilot was seen frantically banging on the cabin door by passengers. The crew had to remove the door from its hinges to let the unfortunate pilot back onto the flight deck.

A spokeswoman for Jazz said that at no time had the plane or passengers been in any danger.

There must have been a few red faces on the cabin deck though!

Thompson travel have announced they are closing their Glasgow based call centre after 7 years, shedding 450 jobs in the process.

When the call centre opened in 2000, it was viewed as a major investment allowing people to book holidays directly via the telephone instead of using a high street travel agents. This year though, less than 5% of people who booked a holiday package with Thompson used the call centre.

The rapid growth of the internet to book holidays has been cited as the reason for the closure of the call centre. According to the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta), nearly a quarter of package holidays were booked via the internet in 2004, compared with 5% using call centres.
The high street travel agents will probably remain for the foreseeable future though. It seems that the growth in online bookings has mostly been fuelled by people switching from using call centres to the internet. The habits of the high street shoppers are slower to change though!

I always thought that switching on a mobile phone on a plane would cause it to fall uncontrollably to the ground.

I was absolutely horrified once on an internal Air Egypt flight when shortly after take-off a few people started using their mobiles and ignored the stewards and stewardesses requests to swith them off. In any case we made it back to Cairo safely!

Now it seems that Ryan Air will follow Air Egypt’s lead by allowing passengers to make mobile calls during certain flights. Calls will be charged at a rate of just over $2 a minute.
The specially modified planes have low-power repeaters that require the minimum of signal output from mobiles, reducing the likelihood of any interference with the sensitive navigational systems.

I have to say though that our flight from Luxor to Cairo went OK without any special equipment. I’m wondering if the need for a ban on mobile phone usage is exaggerated somewhat - but I guess for the airline industry it’s a case of safety being a top priority - except for Air Egypt, in my opinion!!!

Air Berlin are offering free travel guides in Adobe Pdf format for the tourist destinations of:

Almeria
Amsterdam
Antalya
Athens
Barcelona
Belfast
Berlin
Bournemouth
Budapest
Catania
Cologne
Copenhagen
Crete
Dresden
Faro
Glasgow
Hamburg
Helsinki
Ibiza
Lamezia Terme
Leipzig
Lisbon
London
Madrid
Malaga
Mallorca
Manchester
Milano
Moscow
Munich
Murcia
Paris
Rome
Santiago de Compostela
Stuttgart
Sylt
Valencia
Vienna
Zurich

To choose a free tourist guide for the above cities, simply follow the links, enter your gender and age and you can download a free tourist guide with  city maps and popular tourist attractions and venues.

It’s been announced that the supermarket chain Lidl will be offering cheap plane tickets along with groceries.

Starting from the beginning of September, Lidl shoppers in the UK will be able to buy discounted plane tickets from Stansted, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast and Bournemouth airports. The flights will be with Air Berlin to the holiday destinations of:

• Berlin - Tegel airport
• Düsseldorf
  
• Copenhagen
• Majorca
• Milan
• and Vienna

The tickets will be sold as £19 vouchers, which will be exchanged at the airport for £69 one way tickets; a saving of £50 on a single flight. You’ll have to be quick though as the special promotion only lasts for one week, starting September 5th and ending September 12th.

It seems that Turkey has been hit by multiple bomb attacks in the last 48 hours. Near simultaneous blasts occurred in the popular tourist destinations of Istanbul and Marmaris yesterday, and today an explosion occurred in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya.

In the explosion in Antalya, two people were reported to have died at the scene, with another later dying in hospital.

The blast occurred in the Iskender region of Antalya, in the middle of a shopping precinct popular with foreign tourists. According to the Hurriyet Times, one of those killed was from eastern Turkey and many are not ruling out that he could have been one of the bombers.

The timing of the bombs couldn’t be worse for Turkey as it heads into the peak of the tourist  season.

Police are reportedly looking for two more people in connection with the Antalya bombing.

The Guardian online newspaper has published an excellent list of travel websites that have revloutionised the travel industry.

Lastminute.com is of course number one on the list as are easyjet and expedia.

The article doesn’t just list the travel sites though, there are background informations as to the history of the site and why they have become important.

If you are interest ed in travel and the influence of the internet on it, then the article is well worth a read:

Websites that changed the travel world.