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.

Auf wiedersehen, sleeper trains

A leaked internal document reveals Deutsche Bahn may halt all sleeper train services in Germany at the end of next year.

If you like the idea of rolling across Europe in the relaxed comfort of your bed, it looks like you've got just one year left to do it - in Germany at least.

Deutsche Bahn, the German rail operator, has reportedly signalled that it may end all city night line trains in December 2016. No more overnight trains.

US-EU trade war looming over airline emissions

This week the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban US airlines from participating in the EU's emissions cap-and-trade scheme. It is just the opening shot in what is likely to be a nasty trade war between the two blocs over the coming months. The winner will determine whether 72 million tonnes of CO2 are emitted into the Earth's atmosphere over the next eight years.

While international climate talks have stalled the EU has pushed ahead with its own unilateral action on climate change, the keystone of which is the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Under the scheme industries with heavy emissions are capped on the amount of greenhouse gases they can produce, and if they want to emit more they must buy credits from others who are using less than their cap. The scheme is already up and running, but starting in January airlines will be included. The decision to include airlines in the scheme was taken back in 2008.

This will mean all airlines that fly in or out of the EU must purchase carbon permits. The plan has not met with significant resistance from the European airline industry, but it has met ferocious resistance from American, Indian and Chinese airlines. US Airlines have challenged the law at the European Court of Justice, but the court has already indicated it will rule against them. So the airlines have now turned to the US Congress, and they have found a receptive ear.

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?

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.

Europe versus the volcano

As you're jetting around the world this week, Americans, think of us poor souls in Europe, trapped in our respective cities. We're now in the 5th day of the flight ban caused by the giant ash cloud covering Europe, and many are the stories of the "ash refugees" spread across not just Europe, but the entire world. I have a colleague trapped in Norway, my father's stuck in the US, and I have friends stuck in Southern France, Spain, Ireland, Bangkok, you name it.

The stories of people making long and bizarre treks across Europe via ground transport have been numerous. Saturday night I went to a friend's going-away party in Antwerp, and people there were full with stories about how they had made last-minute arrangements to get to Belgium by train after their flights were canceled.

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…)

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??