- Ryanair has a very limited presence here with a flight to Stansted out of Toulon-Hyères; across most of this season they’re also flying Marseille-Dublin twice weekly. Nice airport refused their demand, some years ago, for a special deal on landing fees. Recently, as some readers have noticed, the Irish low-cost carrier has had some unfavourable publicity with a Channel 4 documentary alleging that it cuts corners on training, safety procedures and passenger identity checks and that cabin and flight crew are overworked. As would be expected, these claims have been rejected by the company. Nevertheless the charges are being investigated by the French government.

Ryanair is famously indifferent to how it is viewed by passengers. It has now introduced a charge of £5.00 or its equivalent for checked-in baggage (£2.50 if it is checked-in online or by telephone). Passengers travelling together are not allowed to pool their baggage allowance. Handling companies are told to be very strict in applying regulations. A reader has written: “Checking in for a Ryanair flight from Toulon-Hyères, I had my correctly sized hand luggage disallowed because it was 11 kilos, not 10 which is the limit. I offered to remove a file to reduce the weight but was told that would mean I had two pieces of hand baggage which is forbidden. You don’t get this kind of nonsense with easyJet.”

- This column’s comments on the drawbacks of Toulon-Hyères were confirmed by another reader who said “the car park is too small and too expensive - at €9 a day - for what it is”. Since mid-April, by the way, Jetairfly has flights on Friday and Sunday to Brest; the same carrier also serves Brussels.

- British Airways has added a fifth daily flight to Heathrow out of Nice which will be continued through next winter. With two flights to Gatwick, that means BA serves London seven times a day. Readers in the western Var may like to know that on Saturday they have a flight to Heathrow out of Marseille (other flights are to Gatwick). Travellers using BA in the UK will now find that conventional check-in facilities are no longer available for domestic flights. Passengers must either log on to ba.com or go to a self-service kiosk. The carrier has also hiked its fuel surcharge on long-haul flights from £30 to £35 each way. Air France has followed with a similar surcharge increase of €7 each way.

- London’s underground is a horror but a convenient way of getting about. But watch out across the next few months. The 107-year old City and Waterloo line is closed for renovation until September 1st and there will be weekend disruptions across the summer on the Piccadilly, Northern, Central and Victoria lines. Helpfully, Kay Groark has mentioned a useful British Tourist Authority online bulletin about events in the British capital. It’s at www.visitlondon.com

- Mike Kray warns that as easyJet now boards all flights from a single check-in desk at Nice’s Terminal 2, if you don’t keep an eye on the time you could end up being denied boarding, as he was when waiting to go to Liverpool. “Nobody called us,” he says. We took up his case with Stéphane Fargette, the carrier’s PR man in France. He had little sympathy for Mike: “As he says, you’ve got to watch the clock and give yourself plenty of time.”

- Delta has now started its summer service from Nice to Atlanta which offers a wide range of onward flights from the city of Coca Cola to many other US destinations. One of us was there a few years ago and found it a fascinating place though hot and sticky in the summer. At the press conference to launch the flight Delta’s people were resolutely upbeat as they announced that the carrier - which made a loss of over $5 billion in 2004 - was embarking on “the biggest expansion in its history”. Sounds like something out of the case files of Debtors Anonymous - and see our letters pages.

- Nice-Côte d’Azur Airport is France’s single biggest car rental market, ahead of both Orly and CDG. Not surprisingly, complaints from customers are quite frequent. A couple of tips: when you drop off a car always insist on an acceptance slip - and you have to insist very firmly. That way you won’t get charged for a spare wheel possibly nicked by a previous hirer. If you’ve not got that acceptance signature, you might even get charged for a wheel missing from an identical vehicle. This is the Côte d’Arnaque - the rip-off Riviera - remember ... And if you get a parking ticket while driving a rental vehicle tell them at the drop-off point and it’ll cost you less than if they have to chase you up later.

- The executive lounges at Nice-Côte d’Azur are now open to all - even fliers with low-cost carriers - at a charge of €25. Sounds a bit steep? Well, if you’ve got a long wait you could recover that in free booze and snacks as well as doing your waiting in comfort and with access to a wide range of magazines and newspapers.

- Worried about bird flu, chikungunya and such like? There’s a mass of clear and practical information on health matters for travellers at www.who.int/ith

- And finally some uncheering news: in 2005 the number of passengers killed in air crashes doubled over the previous year’s total to 1050. Most of these happened with dodgy Third World airlines - exactly the kind of carriers found on the EU’s recent black list of companies to avoid. Incidentally, these include “Comair”. Jocelyne Gram of BA in Nice was quick to tell us that this was not the company of the same name which operates a BA franchise in South Africa. Indeed not. One of us flew Johannesburg-Durban with them some time back. Excellent. The bad Comair from the DRC has the code OH, the good Comair has MN. 

From Reporter 115 - June/July 2006

- Flying to Stansted from Toulon? Ryanair has announced fare reductions on many of its European routes and is allowing passengers with hand baggage only to check in online, thus avoiding queues. But travellers turning up with bags to be put in the hold will now pay €3.75 per item. Of course, queues of any length are rare at Toulon Airport which makes it an attractive point of departure for some. As well as Stansted, this coming season it has low-cost services to Brussels (Virgin Express and Jet Air) and Rotterdam (Transavia). One snag for those without cars: bus links from the airport are poor and taxis pricey.

- There’s always been significant interest within our community in travel to Australia. Two drawbacks: it’s a pretty grim journey whichever class you’re in, and there’s not much to do about that, and it’s rather expensive. Of course, there are often interesting promotional fares: Singapore Airlines is currently offering return flights to Sydney at €799 for those in the 18 to 30 age group. But what about this? Using the new giant A380 airbus, Emirates will be launching later this year no frills return flights to Australia from Stansted at €570. There’ll be minimal service – in fact, catering will largely be on the good old Oz principle of BYO (Bring Your Own). Drinks and films will be on a pay-as-you-go system. The carrier will also be offering return flights to New York at €210. Keep an eye on the Emirates website to find out when these flights start.

- SN Brussels Airlines is resuming its flights from Nice to Brussels. Good news for travellers to Africa where it has 14 destinations out of the Belgian capital though not, sadly, any in South Africa.

- You can’t say we’re cut off from the rest of Europe here. Nice-Côte d’Azur Airport now has 65 regular destinations across the continent. Last year total passenger numbers reached 9.75 million – of which 56% were flying to destinations outside of France.

- Wherever you’re flying to it can be a particularly stressful experience if you’re handicapped. The European Parliament has now approved a law requiring free assistance to be offered to travellers with mobility problems. This is the responsibility of the airport who have to sort out cost questions with the airlines. Nobody’s ever been charged for a wheelchair in Nice as far a I know but Ryanair got into trouble some time back for slapping an £18 charge on wheelchair users, now withdrawn.

- I’ve mentioned Big Apple Greeters a couple of times in this column since I made their acquaintance back in 2002. This is how it works: you contact their office by e-mail or telephone and you say you’d like to have a guide to show you a particular area of New York. I spent a fascinating day in the Flushing district of Queens. Reader Vincent Roch has recently used the Greeters and e-mailed his impressions: “I was in New York with my girlfriend. Before leaving I’d contacted the Greeters via the Internet and booked to be shown Harlem. We had a wonderful guide – Gertrude, a veteran New Yorker who spoke marvellous French. She was able to show us all sorts of things we wouldn’t even have known about without her. As we went around she told us a lot about New York in general. It’s an amazing system. You get a guide absolutely free and they even give you a four dollar MetroCard to get about.” To find out more about how you could get to know a district in any of the five boroughs log on to the Greeters’ website: www.bigapplegreeter.org.

- In his money column this time Phil Heinlein notes that standard TGV fares have risen recently. In the UK trains are more expensive than here and fares have just been hiked by around 10%. Take a train from King’s Cross to Edinburgh and you’ll be paying £220 ... By the way, Brian Horgan writes to advise anyone planning a train journey in Britain to log on to www.traintimes.org.uk.

- Finally, the New Year brought good news for local bus travellers (that’s in the Alpes-Maritimes). Many routes are now included in the TAM network which has a standard fare of €1.30, whatever the distance travelled. This has brought welcome reductions – for example, a one-way journey from Nice to Sophia Antipolis used to cost €7.80 ... now it’s the standard €1.30. There are also excellent season ticket deals for commuters. The intention of this measure is to get more people using public transport. For full details of the TAM network see www.cg06.fr.

- Are you a Passenger of Size? That’s US airline jargon for a bulky traveller whose girth means discomfort for his or her neighbour(s) during the flight. Several American carriers
– including American, Northwest, Continental and low-cost Southwest – now exercise the right to ask such passengers to pay for two seats or to accept to be bumped to a later flight with more space available. Trade commentators say that European airlines are likely to follow suit. If this concerns you start shedding weight now. Attentive readers of this column (see Reporter, n° 105) will recall that Denmark’s Maersk Air, which flies Nice-Copenhagen, offers seats in three sizes – for titch, normal and fatso.

From Reporter 114 - Apr/May 2006
 

August, Heathrow, bmi, Luton, Theft

- August was a grim month for those not keen on flying, with several fatal crashes in which 380 people died. A couple of points are worth noting: none of the accidents involved a major scheduled carrier (nobody died in the Toronto incident, something to be largely put down to the high standards of aircraft maintenance and crew training at Air France). The carriers to avoid are, especially, charter companies and above all those based in Third World countries. Of scheduled airlines flying into Nice only one - Turkish - seems to routinely get a low safety rating. The basic message seems to be stay away from dodgy charter carriers.

And note this: major lowcost airlines - easyJet, Ryanair, for example - have very modern fleets and have excellent safety records. The EU plans to issue in a relatively near future a black list of companies to avoid

- Watch out if you're flying to Heathrow with bmi and then, on another ticket, to another destination with bmi or one of its Star Alliance partners. Such passengers are no longer processed by bmi and so must recheck their baggage and make their own way between terminals. If they miss a connection there's no compensation. According to a spokesman, "This is part of our new business model." That's alright then ... BA, in contrast, offers full transit service to two-ticket travellers flying on with them or another One World carrier. Sensible.

- Luton was for long not a very agreeable airport to fly through. Recently its new departure lounge, apron extension and boarding gates were officially opened. Catering facilities have been notably upgraded and there's a much more varied range of retail outlets. Returning travellers have told this column that using London Luton is now a real pleasure.

- According to a UK government survey, 38% of British visitors to Spain reported having been the victims of theft; that was true of only 14% who had travelled in France.

- Be careful when being photographed for your new biometric passport: according to UK government guidelines (paralleled elsewhere, in Germany for example), subjects should not smile, have hair hanging over their face or wear a hat; they should adopt "a neutral expression" so as not to confuse the biometric scanner.

- Not too clear about the money in Latvia or Lebanon, Slovenia or Sri Lanka? All's made clear at http://finance.yahoo.com/currency. And a good source of info on cheap flights is at www.skyscanner.net.

From Reporter 112 - Dec 2005

- Another “awful August” caused by strikes at Heathrow with an inevitable knock on effect at Nice-Cote d’Azur. How did local BA staff handle things? Despite some negative reports in the press, after the totally unexpected cancellations during the second half of Thursday, they did very well, assisting stranded travellers and not just with information. The main conference room in the airport’s business centre was taken over where passengers could rest and be fed and watered. Many BA staff volunteered to come in to help try to book people on other carriers and to explain compensation procedures. We say well done!

- Anyone planning travel over the next few months should budget for further fare supplements to cover increasing fuel costs. To take the example of British Airways: the carrier has now hiked the supplement to £48 (pounds note, not euros) on long-haul flights and to £16 on short-haul journeys. All other major airlines are doing the same. Meanwhile, Michael O’Leary, motor mouth boss of Ryanair, says he will “never” accept fuel supplements. This from the man who introduced the “wheelchair levy”! Let’s wait and see ...

- And we won’t have to wait very long. Ryanair is coming to the Côte d’Azur. As from October 30, the low-cost (and no frills at all) carrier will have a daily flight to Stansted from Toulon-Hyères. Call the airport for details. You have to book online.

- Another low-cost start-up serving Nice has quickly bitten the dust. At the end of July – just ten months after its launch – EUjet, based at Manston in Kent, ceased operation. Many thousands of intending travellers were left with worthless reservations. I own up to once feeling “confident about the future” of the carrier. (See Reporter, n°107). More on this next time.

- Good news and bad news from Swiss International which flies three times daily from Nice to Zurich (80 minutes in the air). They’ve now reintroduced free food and drink on European flights. Less encouragingly, they’re in dispute with their pilots who complain that excessive working hours could impair their concentration.

- News, too, from SAS. They’re now offering one-way tickets at half the return fare and they’ve scrapped weekend stay requirements for all fares.

- BA is dropping its flights to Birmingham and Manchester (CitiExpress) at the end of October, leaving these destinations from Nice to Jet2.com and bmibaby respectively.

- At Luton, easyJet has introduced common check-ins serving all destinations. They say this should cut waiting times as all queues will be of the same length. Flights now open 2 hours before departure rather than 3 as present. A self-service check-in facility is also being introduced.

- A number of readers have called with queries about U.S. entry requirements for citizens of countries who benefit from the visa-waiver rule. This is the situation as of now:     As from June 26th this year travellers entering the US must have a machine-readable passport; also – note – children must have their own passports.
    All passports issued on or after October 26th this year must contain a digital photograph; this does not apply to existing passports.
    As from October 26th, 2006 all newly issued passports will have to contain biometric information. Again, existing passports – as long as they are machine-readable –will remain valid.
    For more detailed information see www.amb-usa.fr.

- A familiar figure has disappeared from the airport: Jacques Trouvé retired recently as KLM’s man here (or, lately, Air-France-KLM’s man). He’d been en poste, with one short break, for an amazing 47 years and was well known to countless local Dutch residents. As more than one said to us, “he looks like a Dutchman.” M Trouvé was always helpful to this column and we wish him well in retirement.

- Sometimes airlines fail to offer satisfactory service. That Nancy Wilson had found to be the case with Zoom on her trip to Toronto earlier this year. She outlined the reasons for her dissatisfaction in our last issue. It has to be said the company knows how to deal intelligently with a complaint. She has received an apology and a full reimbursement. Zoom offers scheduled flights to major Canadian destinations via Paris and the UK. This column would be interested to hear from readers who have travelled with them.

From Reporter 111 - Oct/Nov 2005

- “No gentleman,” said Lord Curzon, rather a long time ago, “ever goes on a bus.” As a non-driver but frequent user of buses I long ago got his point (me, I’ve never claimed gent status). Anyway, my fellow proles will have rejoiced that many intercity bus fares covering twenty-three communes in the Alpes-Maritimes have been standardised at €1.30 as the routes themselves have been grouped under the umbrella brand of ligne d’Azur. To see if this concerns you log on to www.lignedazur.com.

No such good news from London, though, where tube fares have just been hiked by 4% … and bus fares by 13%.

- Talking of public transport, I’m a longterm fan of the New York subway, easily the best way to get about the city. However, a recent fire, thought to be arson, means that lines C and A will be out of commission for up to a year.

Talking of New York, a reminder of Big Apple Greeters. This voluntary organisation will offer you a guide to any part of the city you choose who will show you more than standard guidebooks talk about. A couple of years ago I explored Flushing with a remarkable retired engineer called Arnold Strauch. Guides come free! Contact details on page 32.

- If you’re thinking of going to New York think twice about taking Delta. The company’s 2004 results were the equivalent of what my old Irish grandma used to call “a graveyard cough”. They posted a loss of $5.2 billion … Airline collapses can be very sudden. Of course, they code share the JFK route with Air France but to avoid trouble I’d prefer to go with BA via London. Another apparent basket case is Swiss, successor to Swissair, which is in dire financial straits and has cut its staff, fleet and services.

- Air One, a well-established low-cost carrier based in Italy, has very attractive fares to Rome. Visitors to the city, especially first-timers, may like to note that there’s now a coffee bar on the roof of St Peter’s Basilica. Classy place to quaff an espresso. Also the Rome police warn that the area in and around St Peter’s is one of the worst for pickpocketing and other petty crime.

- I noted earlier that Ireland is now second to Finland as the most expensive country in the EU. However, there’s some consolation in the fact that the Economist recently rated it as having the world’s best life-style. Hmm … is all I can say. The UK came in at 27th, the US was 13th; bottom of the list was … Zimbabwe. And if you’re off to the Emerald Isle note that all roadsigns – indicating distances and speed limits – are now metric.

- I met an angry man at a Monaco seminar recently. He’d flown from Los Angeles to Nice via Heathrow (BA, so a sensible fellow). However, arrived here he’d found his bags had been rifled. Of course, things are made easy for thieves since the Transport Security Administration (TSA) in the U.S. has advised travellers not to lock their bags – or they may be broken open for checking. In fact, there are now “approved” locks for which the TSA has master keys. For details of availability see www.magellans.com.

- Finally, if you fancy a cheapo cruise book now for Stelios’ first easyCruise sailing from Monaco on April 29th. Prices are as low as £57 (€83) a week. Despite earlier reports, there are no discounts for passengers who agree to clean their own rooms. For details see www.easycruise.com.

- At last! Some years ago I was chatting to a girl who worked in the tourist office at Mount Cook in the south island of New Zealand. It turned out that her fiancé – a yachtie – was based in Antibes, a long and expensive journey away. As we talked, it emerged that fares to NZ ex-France were currently lower – and quite substantially – than in the opposite direction. So why couldn’t young Cap’n Haddock buy his girl a ticket here and post it to her? Because that would have run afoul of the International Air Transport Association’s “fare construction” rules. It was forbidden to buy a ticket in one country for use by a passenger in another so as to benefit from a fare differential.

That’s now history – well, in theory and, hopefully, in practice. Online ticket sales make it very difficult to enforce such rules and IATA has now scrapped these restrictions. Today a French travel agent would be allowed to issue a ticket for the future Mrs Haddock to travel from Mount Cook to Nice-Côte d’Azur with no probs. A welcome reform. 

From Reporter 108 - Apr/May 2005

Entering the USA - EasyJet and bmi schedule changes - Economy class to Sydney - EUJet to Kent, Jet2 to Manchester, Air One to Rome - V-Bird is dead - No smiles on UK passports - Another Monaco helicopter crash - Nice cabbies - Peaceful Netanya 

- The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service (CBP) has introduced, with effect from September 30th, the obligatory fingerprinting and photographing of travellers from over twenty countries who previously benefited from the visa-waiver programme; from the end of October citizens of these states are also required to have machine-readable passports — if not, they will need a visa. Countries concerned include Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the U.K. Some problems can be expected: according to official figures around 30 per cent of the French lack machine-readable passports.

On a more positive note the CBP has urged its staff to be polite and good humoured at all times — this follows mounting complaints about rudeness by immigration staff, especially from Brits. In my experience the politest officials at JFK are those in Terminal 7, used by British Airways.

- EasyJet has scrapped its early morning flight to London for the winter season. This means flying BA is the only way to get a full business day in London, returning to Nice in the evening. Their first flight out is at 7h40; their last flight back from Heathrow at 20h10. And some good news for the carrier’s staff. They’re getting new uniforms, designed by Julien MacDonald; nobody, surely, will regret those frumpish dresses the women have worn for the last decade.

- Tom Batsford wrote to ask about “the best Economy class” from Nice to Sydney. Well, where price is concerned he should ask around, locally and of U.K. consolidators like Ebooker and Trailfinders. Over the Christmas-New Year period, he should note, bargains are hard to come by. As to comfort, if you’re flying up the back my old favourite Malaysia wins hands down with a seat pitch of 34 inches; most other carriers offer 31-32 inches.

- British Midland — bmi — has a single flight to Heathrow this season, leaving at 20h45, arriving at 21h55. Worth noting: they’ve moved back to Terminal 1 after trying out Terminal 2.

- Newcomer Eujet is flying from Nice to Manston in Kent, with daily early afternoon departures on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In our next issue, I’ll be reporting on the carrier and the airport.

- Jet2’s announced service to Manchester will not now begin this winter.

- Off to Rome? Alitalia looks a bit dodgy these days so you could try Air One — an Italian carrier now into its eighth year of activity and which is offering some good fares. A return flight on its twice daily service to Rome costs 39 euros plus taxes.

- The underground railway link between London and Heathrow Terminal 4 will be closed for building work for up to two years from January 7th. Passengers going to the terminal should alight (as they always put it) at Hatton Cross station and pick up a shuttle bus. Service to other terminals will not be affected.

- The low cost gravediggers are out again! This time the German carrier V-Bird — which flew from Nice to Maastricht and Niederrhein — has gone out of business. They had the distinction of sending us more press releases than any other single airline. Their demise, however, was only announced on their website.

- Don’t smile please! That’s the official order if you’re getting a new U.K. passport. In your photograph you shouldn’t wear dark glasses, have your hair in your eyes, or be smiling. All these things make it more difficult for scanning machines to confirm identities. And some good news: as from now, those 75 and over get their U.K. passports for free.

- Paul Mifsud asks for advice about obtaining money when travelling outside the Eurozone. The basic message is make a minimum use of credit cards. Payment for purchases and withdrawals carry charges of between 2.3 and 2.9 per cent; withdrawals also bear a fixed commission of around 3 euros. Go for currency — ordered from a reputable exchange dealer here — or travellers cheques.

- Remember that helicopter crash last summer when a Heli Air Monaco Squirrel came down in the sea with the loss of five lives, including two Brits? One of the victims was the mother of Sunday Times executive Sarah Smith. Ms Smith took a lesson from this personal tragedy: “When people travel they should always leave details of their personal insurance easily accessible to family or friends. My mother hadn’t done that and that caused us a lot of trouble at a difficult time.” Sounds sensible.

- No need to labour the point here that Nice taxi-drivers — and especially those at the airport and Nice train station — can be difficult to deal with. The Chamber of Commerce, which manages the airport, continues to hand out guidance sheets to passengers, alerting them to their rights. A driver can normally only refuse a fare if the client is drunk, accompanied by an animal (and the cab has a “no animals” sign) or with excessively bulky baggage. He must agree to go to any destination within a 40 kilometre radius and for all fares over 15.24 euros he must provide a fully filled out receipt. Tips are entirely voluntary. A driver must help a passenger with baggage, if necessary, and at all times “show courtesy”. Good to hear … but we still learn of rude and truculent cabbies who give the city a bad name. Is there a solution?

In the spring of last year I wrote about Netanya in northern Israel, a very attractive seaside town which is twinned with Nice. At that time, given the security situation, tourists were few and far between. That’s now changed, and, like it or not, it’s the Israelis’ wall which has turned things round. After several years of carnage (of which Arab residents were sometimes among the victims) this year there hasn’t been a single bombing. For a peaceful stay in Israel, Netanya is the ideal place to go.

From Reporter 106 

easyJet hand baggage - Going down - Airline fuel costs - Thomsonfly - Inflight catering - Air passenger compensation - French TGV=no smoking

- I’ve heard some criticism in the past about easyJet’s rigid limits on hand baggage. No longer. The company now says travellers can go on board with as much baggage as they like. Only restriction: individual bags shouldn’t measure more than 55cmX40cmX20cm (that’s the same as with BA’s Club World). EasyJet insists they don’t intend, as Ryanair might do, to ban hold baggage entirely.

- I’ve warned more than once about the risk of booking flights with new small low-cost airlines (Aeris, Goodjet, Jet Magic and suchlike) but disaster can befall big carriers too. We’ve seen Sabena and Swissair go belly up; on my recent trip to Copenhagen I found people in the trade pulling long faces about SAS. And what of Delta? Its NCE-JFK flight, which carried over 100,000 passengers last year, is a public success (and makes money). But in the U.S. the third largest of American carriers has huge problems. Says CEO Gerald Grinstein, “Delta is uniquely vulnerable and as now structured cannot survive.” I wouldn’t be surprised if within two years another U.S. carrier is serving the route out of Nice.

- The rising cost of fuel is being passed on to passengers. BA and Virgin Atlantic were first off, hiking long haul return fares by £12 or the equivalent; for the moment BA’s short haul fuel supplement — on Nice-London, for example — remains at £5 on a return fare.

- I’m glad to report that Thomsonfly seem to have got out of its mess in Coventry. As I understand it, the dispute over its terminal at Coventry Airport was due to some ham-fisted action by German management which upset the local authority (odd — Germans can usually cope with the red tape merchants). Anyway, a High Court judge has now thrown out a suit filed by Warwick district council and hopefully we should hear that things are working normally. We report this since over the summer readers called in to ask about the situation. It wasn’t easy to answer them. The carrier’s outsourced PR operation, despite requests for updates, failed to provide any information.

- I’ve always thought (like the management at Maersk) that inflight catering, at every level, needs to be taken seriously. A lot of carriers have cut back in this area. But not SN Brussels (successor to Sabena). The company is actually upgrading its meal service in Economy. Says, shrewdly, CEO Peter Davies: “More and more executives are having to fly up the back. We have introduced better catering.” That’s not it seems, the path chosen by Swiss. Reader Kevin Hollis says, tersely, “service to Geneva terrible … you pay for your coffee … never again … thanks for easyJet”.

- It looks as if EU plans to increase compensation to passengers for delayed flights won’t be realised. The new regulations — due to come into force early next year — are being referred to the European Court of Justice which is likely to reject them. According to a spokesman for the low-cost carriers, the new measures could have brought fare hikes of up to 400 per cent!

- And a couple of ground-based points to finish. From December smoking will be forbidden throughout all TGV trains. In reply to Kim Wahl whose American cousin “had a terrible time on the A8, driving it for the first time”, there’s all the lore you need in the English version of www.autoroutes.fr.

From Reporter 105

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