Out of the way

In the last episode I was hoping to get on a plane to Alamty. It didn't work out quite like that, but it is OK...

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On my way home, slooowwwlllyyyy. Sometimes in a long trip, I get down.

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I changed one of the most important documents I have...

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I am suppoesd to be asleep. I have to be up early tomorrow. But I was at two great conferences recently, and squeezed in some travel...

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While waiting on the phone for British Airways ...

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I have been flying, been in an earthquake, and of course British Airways lost my baggage again...

I had some fun. I caught up with friends, and I had a hard time too.

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I spent a few days in Paris. Lovely place, of course. Hung out with friends - lovely people. Went to Xtech - lovely conference. But why was there no internet??

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A few good things happened in Japan. A few more in Australia...

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The nice thing about a blog is that I get to control exactly what is in it. I also take the blame for anything stupid I say, which makes sense. I resisted writing a blog for a long time. I tried it briefly a couple of times in the late 90's, when there were no real tools, but then spent so much of my time writing for work that I stopped doing it for pleasure. But it's nice to write things when I feel like it. Sadly, I often don't for a lack of time (too many oother things to do) or because I am far away from the computer. I guess that means that people aren't overburdened by reading it.

I'm trying to write some articles. It takes time, which is why I am still doing it late on Saturday night. They're fun, but hard work. And then I hand them in and they get edited. On rare occasions something I write gets published where other people read it. Most recently an article on the mobile web was published by .Net, an english magazine that the general public can actually read.

I got a copy from a friend who had seen it. Naturally, it had been edited a little by the magazine. It may have contained a spelling error, or some tortured sentece they wanted to simplify. Mostly they did a good job, actually improving the way things were said. But a couple of the changes rankled a bit with me. One of them was a question of style - I had written about a scruffy guy looking for a cheap bed on his mobile, which they left alone, and then

the girl with the heavy make-up and the cute little phone could actually be cursing the Web site that won't let her change her river cruise ticket for a Trabant hire-car in Budapest.

It came through the editing process as a girl looking at celebrity gossip in some magazine. It might be true that English readers weren't going to know what a Trabant is, or that the example seemed crazy. But the net effect was to drive a stereotype that I actively tried to avoid. My writing is not free of stereotypes, But I try to avoid some of them for one reason or another.

The other was more serious, and the sense of the edited version was almost directly opposite to what I had written, and something I was very unhappy to see. I immediately asked for a correction, and was told that they would indeed provide one in issue 150, for which I am grateful.

But they could have shown me the text before publishing it. As I said when I submitted the article, I would have liked to review any changes - precisely for this reason. Instead, some number of people will see my name (and picture) next to something that I regard as a stupid thing for anyone to say, and of those people I suspect a good number won't actualy read the correction. If I didn't know that there is quite a lot of confusing or even sloppy journalism around, and people are used to it happening, I would be more upset. But there is not a lot I can do about it.

In theory I can take legal action, pointing out that associating some statement with me is detrimental to my reputation. Since they published text that made it seem like I think Internet Explorer is a good browser, it is probably an easy enough case to make. But it probably isn't that important, and a published correction given rapidly and in good grace is probably better than arguing about it. And arguing about things in court that don't have some clear material importance is only good for lawyers.

So, back to writing some more pieces. One is on the mobile web, again. But they ask for camera-ready copy, in other words presumably all errors are my fault, and they aren't planning to sub-edit it. The other one will probably get sub-edited - I hope that if they make changes I get to see them this time.

I have lost my bag a couple of times recently in travelling. It happens, but the difference in circummstances was just incredible. In one case I was totally appalled, and in the other I was very impressed.

The first time was flying US Airways. I had been marked on their random selection of passengers to watch (you can see this on your boarding cards), so every time I went through security on that ticket I got the full extra treatment. Taken off to one side and checked super-"thoroughly" (unfortunately despite taking a lot more of my time they didn't actually do a very good job :-( ). The final part of the flight was meant to be Puerto Rico to Madrid via Philadelphia. Unfortunately the flight out of Puerto Rico was a couple of hours late. (Surprisingly, given the appallingly disorganised check-in system, they had the plane ready to depart almost on time. But then something held us on the tarmac for a couple of hours). The result was that I missed my Madrid flight, and had to spend a night in Philadelphia.

They offered a $10 voucher for food at a hotel, and accommodation in the hotel itself. Only problem was, there was nowhere to spend the $10 voucher at the hotel. So I simply didn't eat until the next day. $10 for a 20-hour layoer isn't really that great anyway, in a hotel where a coffee costs $4.

I looked up their site and discovered that while it is horribly unhelpful, the one thing they say is that they will reroute delayed passengers, if flights are available (read "cheaper than your original"). So the next morning I went to the airport. I was not able to do what I was returning to Europe for, and my next stop would have been Boston, so I asked to be re-routed directly. The first helpful person I dealt with in the entire journey did indeed manage to change my flight. At the last minute he even asked me if I had any baggage checked, which I did. He looked at my ticket and baggage check, but I had already been told that getting my bag out of the container was a process of manually looking for it that the airline would prefer not to do.

When I arrived in Boston, my luggage had indeed not made it. The people at the luggage desk said that it was possible it hadn't been taken off the flight.

The security implications of that are quite a worry. A passenger who is marked down for extra surveillance changes route, to avoid catching a trans-atlantic flight. But their luggage is simply left on the plane. This is, as far as I know, illegal. It is certainly a fundamental failure of security process, at the most basic level. Disrespect for passengers, safety, the airline itself, and the security regulations that have supposedly been strengthened since US Airways was chosen as a target airline on 11 september 2001 (presumably because at that time they were not very good at security) on this scale was, to me, incomprehensible.

My bag was last heard of in Madrid. It definitely did arrive there. The next thing that US Airways told me was that the bag was lost. They asked me for an address to send a claim form, and offered me a toothbrush and some soap. They did not actually have a form at the lost luggage office that I could fill in, or so they claimed. Given the apparent aversion to providing any other kind of helpful service, I actually believed them.

That was apparently the entirety of their efforts to retrieve the bag. I have received no further compensation, they do not know where my bag is, they have not contacted me, and they apparently do not even have a system that I can use to contact them from outside the US. They took an amazingly bad decision through pure laziness (they had 8 hours from when I changed flights to when the plane that would fly ot Madrid arrived - the first time they could start loading it), swept it under the carpet along with the things I needed, and have seemingly decided to pretend it never happened. Meanwhile I was left in Boston in February, in a blizzard, with nothing but the clothes I had on the plane, and a toothbrush. 0 points out of 10 for efficiency, service, security.

A total failure on every level is hard to achieve - it requires a culture where virtually nobody cares about what they are doing. Which makes me wonder if it extends to things like aircraft maintenenance and safety training - other airlines have been known to simply not do maintenance in tight economic circumstances. Either way, I do not want to be relying on US Airways for anything again.

Recently I flew to North Carolina, from Oslo. It was one of those trips with two dfferent tickets. I flew SAS Oslo-Copenhagen-New York, and then I had a short time to clear customs, change terminals and check in to a different airline for another flight.

My flight out of Oslo was delayed about 15 minutes, which meant I had to go directly to the second flight, arriving as one of the last passengers after they had announced the flight was closed. On arrival at New York I was called over the Public Address, and informed that my luggage hadn't arrived. They asked me to go to the Luggage desk when I celared customs, which I did. (I have never seen this before - my previous experiences have always been that when it didn't turn up I had to wait half an hour to check, then go to the desk myself).

I was shocked by their courtesy and professionalism. After the US airways experience I am less than normally easygoing about my luggage, and I have lower expectations. But with no prompting they gave me enough cash to cover my immediate needs, asked me where I owuld be staying and where I lived normally, for a temporary and a permanent phone number (US Airways were not even capable of reccording a non-US number), and checked when and where I would be going next in the unlikely event they couldn't deliver my luggage in the next 3 days.

The efficiency was amazing. I had plenty of time to make the connection, I had cash in my pocket, I had an overnight kit (T-shirt, proper toiletries), they had been incredibly polite, helpful and proactive, and I had a website address where I could track my baggage.

Since I was flying to a different city, I expected it would take a while to get my bag. I was called at 9pm, and happened not to be where I was staying, so the delivery driver offered to come back later. He had trouble finding the place, had trouble getting hold of me, but he made the effort and my bag was delivered sometime after 1 am, with all the courtesy and efficiency that one expects at 10am on a quiet day.

SAS, thank you. Missing a tight connection can occur. Knowing that I would be waiting for my bag, ensuring that I could promptly get on with what I was doing, and that I got it as soon as possible, is a credit to the organisation and to the actual people involved. I have forgotten the names of the people at US Airways who were so useless. I don't know the names of the people who were so helpful and courteous at SAS, but to each annd every one of you, many thanks. It is a little extra effort that minimised the incovenience to a pleasant experience.