Just Pay the Freight......Please?

Air fares to Australia from the United States have traditionally been some of the highest in the world thanks to the nonstop duopoly that has existed in the market since Pan Am first ran the trip with the 747SP. Eliminating oh-dark-hundred red-eye fueling stops in Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji or other such places was a premium folks were willing to pay and oh, how the airlines knew it. Until now.

Fact: For many reasons the global economy is dramatically down, business travel is both downgraded and down in general while discretionary travel feels virtually dried up.

Fact: Airlines “net” their revenues down to what’s left over after taxes and non-airline related surcharges and fees. Their argument is that the total fare is not what it seems.

Fact: Customers tend to look at the total outlay, regardless of who gets the money. Few are willing to pay extra to the airline just to match the government fees.

Oh, how the airlines know it. British Airways recently offered fares between New York and London for $156 each way which included nearly all government surcharges and also included two free nights in a central hotel. Competing airlines of course were forced to match the deal.

For its trouble British Airways got virtually nothing, paying out nearly every penny to the authorities and possibly on the hook to the hoteliers in to the bargain. Why? “The plane was going anyway,” meaning they won’t scrap underperforming flights that probably have other traffic booked already. They also hope to either break even or not lose as much as they could have and still secure repeat business in the future.

"Just pay the freight, please?" they beg. It's better to lose a shirt instead of the wardrobe. And flying to Australia now is literally a perfect storm disaster for the airlines and windfall for customers.

Stepped up competition to the South Pacific has certainly helped in addition to the sour economic outlook. If one doesn't mind going back to the good ol' days and stopping in Tahiti or Fiji, Air Tahiti Nui and Air Pacific, respectively, will happily pick up some extra sales. Otherwise, where there were once only two nonstop airlines, today Delta, Qantas, United, V-Australia and Air New Zealand all field nonstops to Australia or New Zealand. Each is absolutely begging for business with firesale rates to Down Under destinations. Since early this year Qantas, the way out in front leader in the marketplace, has had its hands full, changing its rates almost daily, swinging from $229 to $505 each way that I've seen so far.

The economy is in terrible shape. New competition is flooding the market with more seats than the market needs even in good times and some of those airlines (G'day, Qantas!) have massive new aircraft like the A380 to fill. These are the best of times....

Hotels, restaurants and car rental firms are of course equally in the basement. Two years ago roundtrip coach fares were approaching $2000, a total investment that today can easily cover the entire cost of the trip. My own ticket down and back, including Auckland, one domestic New Zealand leg and a flight across "The Ditch" to Sydney came in at barely half that. What?!

Gotta go!

Why The Red Snow

"Why?" It was a simple question, yes, but one from a place of incomprehension rather than of curiosity. A co-worker wanted to know what could possibly be of such interest as to use valuable vacation days in going to Auschwitz. And in February, no less. Time off was not to be “wasted” (her word) visiting a WW-II concentration camp.

Auschwitz compels. It demands attention as if witnessing a horrific tragedy in real time. Time away from the daily grind relaxing is good, of course but I wanted to see the camp at its worst, to reaffirm the value of life in as fulfilling a way as any sun-drenched vacation is regenerating.

It was cold the day we toured two of the three main camps, the original Auschwitz and the larger Birkenau barely a mile to the west and made famous in such films as “Schindler’s List” and “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.” The sun shone brightly, however, here in southern Poland, not far from the Czech and Slovakian borders. The sharp winter air seemed quite still as if afraid to stir up harsh memories and scattered ashes.

Easily the most sinister building on Earth stood before us, its central train access port yawning wide as if it were the very mouth of Hell. Inside, where Auschwitz was largely intact the Birkenau camp was indeed stripped of the majority of its buildings. A few bunkhouses remained while the four crematoriums were mere piles of rubble, left as they were the day the camp was abandoned.

The affect was stupefying. Slack-jawed at the expansive visage of a partially destroyed camp the mind begs to know what it was like in full operation. Vintage, grainy black and white photos only imply the true scale of horrors when viewed and imagined in living color. Chilly winds whistled through the rickety barracks and also the barbed wire still surrounding the grounds. The cold concrete of the train platform and the tracks themselves echoed in our steps the cries of the victims gone before while the watchtowers leaned menacingly inward, still daring one and all to put a single toe out of line.

Nine days before the Soviet Army arrived in the area the camp was evacuated in January of 1945 and attempts made to destroy the evidence. Some 60,000 prisoners were forcibly marched 35 miles in mid-Winter at least partly along what is today Route #933 to Wodzislaw Slaski (Loslau), there to be boarded on trains to other camps. In three days roughly 15,000 died on the way from abuse, exhaustion, exposure, murder and starvation, blood marking the death of those eliminated for being unable to keep pace, their essence absorbed into the snowy winter soil.

A satellite image of Oswiecim today shows an unnatural square, a symmetrical scar between the villages of Plawy and Brzezinka, the original Polish for “Birkenau.” If viewed in "Map" mode a single railhead peels off to the west jus above Plawy from the main line, as if serving no purpose but in actuality the end of the line like no other on Earth. It marks the failure to obscure the truth as indelibly as the atrocities here and elsewhere are etched in memory. And it begs the question: What path will others walk? I know what I have gained.

I have sacrificed a few days in the sun to be touched by the souls of the blood red snow.

Gotta go.

A Fistful of Firsts in France

It was the Summer of 1976 and time to fly home from Germany for a family reunion. We were booked on TWA’s Paris to Washington/Dulles service in both directions with connections at the shining new airport north of the city, Charles de Gaulle. Oh, how this was going to be a fun day for this young aviation enthusiast!

In the first of many firsts our originating flights were on Air France and included flying on easily the strangest thing with wings I had ever seen in my life. The unimpressed, seen-‘em-all gate agent informed us it was a French “Caravelle,” a short-to-medium range bird seating 80 passengers with Rolls Royce engines, perfect for a typical intra-European service.

The pioneering Caravelle featured a host of cutting edge designs, including the first “clean wing” concept by having the engines located in the back. Not seeing the engines wasn’t nearly as jaw-dropping, though, as the triangle shaped windows that distorted images around the edges like a magnifying glass! This strange magic may not have looked like a typical airplane but it sounded and flew like one, landing us safely at Charles de Gaulle, the mother lode of all firsts.

Aeroports de Paris set the bar early for cutting edge designs that deviated from mere bunkers with bridges. The terminal was a living test bed for the future with its bundt cake design, glass-encased escalators suspended in mid-air and tunnels dipping under live taxiways only to rise again to seven attending satellites. This new gateway to Paris was indeed striking although the arresting form did not translate in to efficient function and, as we know, was not repeated.

Once Mom was settled at the TWA gate with time to spare before boarding, we took off back down the tunnel to savor actually being under an active taxiway. The tunnel itself offered new things for us as well, such as the longest moving sidewalk we had ever seen, the smooth walls with indirect lighting from underneath the tiled flooring and those hypnotic advertising “eggs” with images flashing on either side.

When we got to the other end and made to go thru security back to our gate the agents asked us for our passports. Oops. Seems we’d re-entered the country on our sight-seeing dash thru the tunnel. Neither spoke the other’s language but wayward international passengers have been in the airport worker’s job since Lindbergh. “Mom,” is a universal word and us frantically pointing up the tunnel was all they needed to fetch our more than miffed mother with the documents needed to process us back “out” of France in time to catch our flight to Washington.

TWA offered “Strange Magic” by E.L.O. on its popular hits channel but the strangest and most wonderful magic of all was the Caravelle and that mesmerizing bundt cake terminal at Charles de Gaulle.

We couldn’t wait to do it again!

Gotta go!