Preparing for a flight: A very complete guide
A detailed guide to preparing for a flight: before you book, booking your flight, what to do once you’ve booked and in the days leading up to your flight.
flying
Finding your way in Schiphol Airport Amsterdam
Flying out of Schiphol? Read here all the steps to finding your way in Schiphol easily, and lots of ideas for things to do at Schiphol Airport while you wait for your flight.
Sustainable travel tips: Part 2 – Land or sea
Sustainable travel tips: reducing your carbon footprint when traveling. Part 1 was about air travel; this part covers travel by land or sea.
Sustainable air travel: What you can do
Have you ever been offered to buy a carbon offset when you booked a flight? If so, did you buy it? We all know that flying is bad for the environment. According to Our World in Data, aviation produces about 2.5% of all CO2 emissions, a greenhouse gas which contributes to global warming. Making it…
Aviodrome Lelystad, an aviation museum
For a fearful flyer like me, airplanes hold a certain fascination. It can seem an absolute miracle that something so big and heavy can actually get off the ground. And then, of course, there are flying enthusiasts. Those fortunate people actually enjoy their time aloft, taking pictures out the window or just dropping off to…
Flying EasyJet: a review
For years I’ve assumed that all budget airlines in Europe are essentially the same. Not so! Click to read my review of EasyJet.
Prague Airport tour and a teeny-tiny airplane
Despite my fear of flying, I jumped at the chance to take a Prague Airport tour, including a flight in a small airplane. “Face your fear” and all that. Read all about it here!
Gifts for flight attendants: an experiment
Cabin crew members have an important role and show remarkable patience. Here’s a story about my experiment with bringing gifts for flight attendants.
Flying into Skavsta? Nyköping is worth a look.
Budget airlines seek out secondary airports because the landing fees are lower. Skavsta airport, an hour outside of Stockholm, is one of these: both Ryanair and Wizz Air fly to Skavsta. Most visitors get on the express bus to Stockholm straight from their plane. That is a mistake. While I had booked a cheap Ryanair…
Emirates A380 Economy Class Review
On my recent visit to Dubai on Emirates Airline, I was pleased to discover that I’d be flying on a plane I’d only seen from a distance before: the enormous Airbus A380. The A380 The A380 is a behemoth of a plane. Like Boeing’s 747, it just doesn’t look like it should be able to…
5 Tips for Helping a Fearful Flyer
You’ve boarded a plane and found your seat, stowed your things and buckled up. The plane makes its way onto the runway and, after a short wait, the acceleration for take-off begins. You’re reading the book you brought along and don’t pay any attention to what the plane is doing, but, as it speeds up, something…
Flying Aeroflot
If you’re an American of a certain age, as I am, the name Aeroflot will conjure certain images. Aeroflot was the airline of the “commies,” and it was considered one of the worst airlines in the world. We Americans didn’t fly Aeroflot. Partly because we didn’t, in general, visit the Soviet Union. They were the…
A Special Encounter on a Puddle-jumper
The puddle-jumper Traveling from Martinique to the US involved three separate flights for me, and the first of these was on a Liat Airlines “puddle-jumper.” First, a 15-minute jump from Martinique to St. Lucia, then a half-hour jump to Barbados. If you know me, you know that fear of flying is an ongoing issue for…
Is flying safe?
While I wrote this several years ago, I think this question is still something fearful flyers wonder: is it safe to fly? I read an article at Renegade Travels that looked at some statistics and declared that flying is indeed still safe, despite how it looks in the news. The author is right, of course, even…
The stress of airline pricing
A few days ago, I managed to book an extremely low airfare to go visit my daughter in San Francisco. I found out about the fare by using Skyscanner, where you can input your destination and the dates you want to travel and receive updates whenever the fare goes up or down. So while I…