Gulliver

A POST on this blog from earlier this month talked about how airlines are sweeping the issue of pilot fatigue under the carpet. The London School of Economics had surveyed some 7,000 European captains and first officers—around 14% of all commercial pilots in the region—on various issues. Although most said that airline managers take safety seriously, they have a blindspot when it comes to tiredness. Close to 60% of pilots said that they and their colleagues were often fatigued and half said that their employers do not pay enough heed to the issue.

AS A rule, when Gulliver first arrives at a hotel, he would prefer not to have to deal with another human. There are three main reasons for this. The first is that he is, by nature, cantankerous. The forced jollity of the initial exchange with a receptionist does not come easily after an exhausting trip. The second, perhaps not unrelated, is the fear that a porter might latch on to him and insist on showing him to his room. What is it about Gulliver’s demeanour that suggests he is incapable of counting room numbers sequentially, or is unable to identify which of the two chambers in his room is the toilet?

EVEN when all other orders evaporate, at least Boeing can rely on one important customer for its jumbo jet: the president of the United States. That was the gist of a post that Gulliver wrote earlier this year on the travails of the 747, a once-popular aircraft that has fallen foul of today’s aviation economics.

Gulliver may have spoken too soon. Today, Donald Trump seemingly announced that he would cancel an order to develop a new jumbo, due to come into service in 2024, to ferry around whomever is then the leader of the free world. In a tweet, Mr Trump wrote: “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion.

MUCH remains unknown about Lamia Airlines flight 2933, which crashed into the hills of Colombia on November 28th, killing 71 of the 77 people on board (see article in this week’s print edition). Fans of Chapecoense, a Brazilian football team, must wait to hear the full story of how a chartered plane carrying 22 of their players and several staff members failed to arrive safely. (Only three players are among the survivors.) Many Brazilian reporters covering the crash knew one of the 21 journalists on board, and are starting to ask why these lives were lost in such devastating circumstances.

THE phoney war between home-sharing websites and Barcelona seems to have come to an end. After months of sparring between the parties, this week Barcelona levied fines of €600,000 ($636,000) each on Airbnb and HomeAway, which it says have been offering to rent properties that do not have a tourist licence to holidaymakers. The firms had already been fined a nominal amount last year. HomeAway says it will pay the fine; Airbnb is appealing.

Airbnb says that it is “part of the solution” in Barcelona. That depends on which problem it thinks it is addressing. Barcelona is a cramped town.

OVER the past year, cities around the world have begun to crack down on illegal Airbnb listings, threatening the home-rental firm’s seemingly unstoppable expansion. As regulation bites in some of its most important markets, so Airbnb is looking for new ways to grow.

Last week, the company announced the launch of Trips, a service through which locals can offer guided tours and other experiences to travellers. It will start modestly, offering 500 things to do across 12 cities: London, Miami, Nairobi, Havana, Florence, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Detroit, Seoul, Paris and Cape Town.

OVER the past couple of years America’s three biggest carriers, Delta, United and American, have each unveiled a fare class below economy. The new designation, known as “basic economy” to the airlines and derided as “last class” by their customers, is an attempt to compete with the low fares on profitable no-frills carriers such as Spirit and Frontier.

From the airlines’ initial announcements, it seemed that the sacrifices passengers would have to make in order to secure last-class fares would be modest. The most notable was the inability to select seats when booking a flight.