Air Berlin's 'poor but sexy' collapse

The airline is suffering from the same fate as the city for which it was named – exuberant over-expansion flying in the face of economic reality.

On the outskirts of Berlin, hidden among closed motorways and unused train tracks, lies Germany's national embarrassment.

Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, originally scheduled to open as the German capital's first real properly sized airport in 2010, has been beset by delays and still sits unused today. As I discovered when I visited the site for a radio piece on Deutsche Welle two years ago, construction has actually finished and the airport is ready to go. But a fatal engineering flaw involving exhaust fans means it cannot open, and there is no solution in sight.

Customs, security and immigration - learn it, live it, love it

I have many irrational pet peeves, and many seem to involve air travel. One of the most silly may be my disproportional irritation when people use the word 'customs' when they really mean immigration or airport security. But as silly as this little hang-up is, it actually does make a big difference not only to public policy but also to your rights and plans as a traveler. And yet I hear people confuse these three things very often when they're telling their travel stories, even frequent travelers. I'm in Switzerland this weekend visiting my father, himself a very frequent traveler, and I was just explaining the difference to him. So I thought it might be helpful to write a blog post about it.

Customs, immigration and airport security checks are three distinct processes you may encounter at an airport or border crossing. Sometimes you may have to go through all three, other times you just encounter one or two and other times you won't go through any. It all depends on which countries you're traveling between. For instance, when you travel between Belgium and the UK you go through immigration, but not customs. When you travel between Belgium and Switzerland you go through customs, but not immigration. If you're flying between Belgium and Finland you would only go through security, the same as you would if you were flying between Florida and California. Confused yet? Here's a quick guide.

Taxi drivers blockade Brussels Airport

In this land of the surreal, nothing surprises me any more. So it hardly phased me this morning when I read in the local paper that last night 200 taxi drivers blockaded Brussels Airport because an unlicensed taxi driver had been grazed by a bullet during a high-speed police chase. 'Still, something isn't right about this story,' I thought. But I figured I must have been not understanding the French article correctly.

But no, it turns out the story really is that bizarre. Last night police were making routine checks for unlicensed taxi drivers near the airport (who are notorious for swindling tourists by charging them three times the normal fare when they pull up to their hotel). According to the local paper La Derniere Heure, when the police signalled for one 28-year-old driver to stop he instead accelerated to speed away. The police officer jumped on the hood of his car, but the driver still didn't stop.

The police officer was then carried 2km (1.2 miles) along the road, clinging to the car for dear life. He fired into the car toward the dashboard, smashing the screen and forcing the driver to stop. A fight erupted and the police officer fired a shot that grazed the driver's shoulder. They then took him into custody.

European airports to end restrictions on liquids in 2013

If Europeans were just starting to accept as a permanent part of reality the fact that you can't bring liquids onto a plane, they're going to feel like they've stepped back in time come April 2013 when the restrictions on liquids in airplanes is lifted in Europe.

Yesterday EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas confirmed to MEPs in Strasbourg that the EU will begin the transition back to the era of cruising the skies with as much liquid as you want in two months. The first phase will begin on 29 April this year, when travellers coming from outside the EU but connecting flights within the union will be able to keep liquids purchased at the original airport of their departure in their carry-on luggage. This should end the confusing situation where travellers were being told in countries outside the EU that they could carry their purchased liquids all the way to their final destination, only to have it confiscated at the EU airport they were transferring through. This is only the first step toward an eventual complete end to the ban two years later.

Snow Chaos: Should Western Europe prepare for colder winters?

I've been at home in the US for the past five days, and boy am I glad I got out of Europe when I did. I decided to head home for Christmas earlier than normal this year because I had a lot of holidays left to take - normally I head home two or three days before Christmas. On Friday morning I woke up to get ready for my flight to find a winter wonderland outside my window. But though the heavy snow caused a delay in my train to the airport, somehow my flight to New York wasn't delayed at all

But apparently after I left that snow just didn't stop falling. It's kept coming and coming, grounding airports in Europe to a halt from London to Milan. Brussels Airport was set to shut down yesterday after they found they had run out of de-icer fluid, but then apparently they found some more. But Heathrow Airport and Charles de Gaul are still ground to a halt as they grapple with the snow and cold. The busiest airport in Europe has now become "Hotel Heathrow" as stranded travelers have been camping out for the fourth day in a row, sure to miss Christmas with their families. The same scene has been seen at London, Paris and Brussels' international train stations, as high-speed lines have been ground to a halt. I sure feel lucky to have gotten here to spend Christmas with my family, but I can't say the same for my friends stuck in London, Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris.

The travel chaos is prompting many questions in Europe, but perhaps the most important is this - is this a freak act of nature, or an example of egregious poor planning by these Western European airports?

EU to crack down on Schengen border violations

Today the European Commission announced a crackdown on member state compliance with the Schengen passport-free area rules, and during the press conference I couldn't help but smile to myself. The other week I had a bit of a rant with my friends after I encountered a British woman on a airport shuttle bus in Prague who didn't know what Schengen was. Since then the joke has been that I'm obsessed with Schengen. So naturally, I had to write a blog entry about the new proposal.

So, the Prague airport story. I was taking the airport shuttle to the airport and we were just pulling in to terminal 1 (the "international" terminal with flights to the US, China, etc) when an announcement came on saying that this terminal was for non-Schengen countries, and the following terminal would be for Schengen Area countries. I had my headphones on but I could see that there was a woman a few seats away from me with a confused expression on her face asking her neighbour something. By the time I took my headphones off we were already on our way to terminal 2, but I could then hear that the woman was frantically asking people what Schengen was. Apparently her neighbour, also a Brit, had reassured her "Oh Schengen means EU. You're going to London? Then terminal 2, definitely."

Should the EU reimburse ash-stricken airlines?

Things are slowly returning to normal here in Europe, with air travel resuming across the continent. Thousands of passengers are still stranded in various destinations, but already the finger-pointing has begun for this enormously costly fiasco. And all of the chaos and recrimination has some asking the question - would a pan-EU aviation authority have averted this mess?

Flights have just gone back to 100% operation this afternoon. But the embarrassing reality is that they are not resuming because the ash has suddenly disappeared, but because a continued air travel ban was no longer economically sustainable. Now everyone is holding their breath to see if one of them falls out of the sky. So far, so good.

It's looking increasingly likely that an investigation will conclude that the flight ban, the biggest disruption in the history of civil aviation, was an unnecessary overreaction. If that is indeed the case, then the fight over who should shoulder the burden for the enormous losses the airlines have suffered is going to become fierce. A heated argument was developing yesterday between Ryanair and the EU over whether the ultra-budget airline would reimburse passengers for the hotel and meal costs they incurred while stranded by the volcanic ash cloud. CEO Michael O'Leary told Irish newspapers yesterday that it would refuse to comply with EU rules requiring airlines to reimburse passengers for these costs in the event of flight delays or cancellations.

Nudie Pics at the Airport?

I’ve just touched down in London after a whirlwind tour through the US, and I think I’ll be happy to not see another plane again for a long while. Flying back from Chicago to London I could already see the effects of the attempted Christmas terrorist bombing – what looked like full cavity searches for every person coming into the US. And from what I read this morning it sounds like we’ll all be shooting naked videos of ourselves at Heathrow within a few weeks time. Welcome to the new age of air travel.

I flew Air Canada back and forth to the US, despite major misgivings given their abysmal reputation for delays. My initial reluctance proved well founded. Out of four flight legs each was delayed by at least two hours. I say this after every time I fly them but this time I mean it – never again!

As I was transferring through the airport in Montreal I could see down through the glass wall into the entranceway for people transferring to flights to the US – and it was a madhouse. There was a massive hall of pat-down stations. Every single person flying to the US is now getting a full body search, and there was a queue stretching back for what seemed like miles as each person entered this massive hall to be individually meticulously searched. Lucky for me, those flying away from the US didn’t have to do that (though I’m not sure I understand the logic there…)

Auf wiedersehen tempelhof

Berlin's historic Tempelhof Airport, which has been on death row for awhile now, has finally run out of appeals. The airport, which was the site of the Berlin airlift of 1948-49, is slated to be shut down to make room for the desperately needed intercontinental airport being built. Though a grass roots campaign had been formed to save the airport because of its historical claims to fame, a referendum vote yesterday in Berlin failed to save it, because not enough Berliners turned up. The referendum didn't receive enough turnout to make it valid, evne though the people who did show up voted by a ratio of 3 to 2 to block the airport's closure.

Other than the airlift, the airport has some other claims to fame. Orville Wright tested one of his flying machines on the grounds, and Adolf Hitler later built the largest building in Europe there (which has curiously caused the Israeli press to dub it "Hitler's Airport").

So many hijackings

Last night my coworkers and I had a little office outing to Bryant Park for one of the HBO movie nights. They were showing Bullitt, made in 1968, apparently some kind of milestone in the action movie genre for its groundbreaking car chase. I found myself staring at the screen in bewilderment, wondering why anyone would voluntarily subject themselves to this movie, but that’s just me. Action movies, not really my thing.

Anyway at one point in the movie the detective, played by Steve McQueen, has to arrest this guy on an airplane which is about to take off. The control tower tells the plane to return to the loading dock and have the passengers disembark. As they’re leaving the plane McQueen boards and heads toward the criminal. The criminal proceeds to stand up, run to the back of the plane, open the back door, jump out and run out onto the tarmac. McQueen gives pursuit, and the criminal pulls a gun out of his pocket and starts shooting at him. For some reason McQueen seems to have forgotten he has a gun, or chooses not to use it. He proceeds to chase the main through the airport, which seems to be operating normally even though there’s a gun-wielding maniac running around the tarmac.

Now by this point in the movie I was willing to suspend my disbelief. After all the whole thing made absolutely no sense. But this seemed ludicrous. How did he get on the plane with a gun? How was he able to open the back hatch? Why isn’t the airport being evacuated? Why are planes still taking off??