Ho John Lee’s Weblog

I’m quite pleased that the British authorities managed to foil the attempt to blow up multiple airliners last week. On the other hand, I’m probably not alone in wondering how long-haul business air travel is going to work out.

If a ban on all liquids, gels, and personal electronics stands, a lot of air carriers will need to start competing on in-flight service again. In recent years, I normally bring my own water, food, work, entertainment, and a change of clothes for air travel to China and India. On a trip to India, it’s about 30 hours in transit, which is a lot of time to watch the 6 movies that United usually rotates each month, along with putting in a full day or so of work. I usually fly United since their Asian routes are all based here, but I wouldn’t want to rely on them for food, water, and entertainment. Might be time to book on Singapore Airlines, which flies with a huge video- and audio-on-demand library and Nintendo video games, never seems to run out of food or water, and consistently provides attentive cabin service.

Overnight, British authorities arrested 21 suspected terrorists planning to blow up several airliners on Continental, United, and American by mixing liquid explosives carried onboard in hand luggage.

At the moment, all liquids are banned from hand luggage, except for baby formula and medicine.

All in all, it sounds like great work by the UK authorities, although this quote leaves me wondering a little (since they’ve only arrested 21 so far):

“A senior U.S. counterterrorism official said authorities believe dozens of people — possibly as many as 50 — were involved in the plot.”

More from Counterterrorism Blog here, here, and here

I’ve been on flights through bumpy weather many times, but am happy to have missed this one. The nosecone (which houses the radar) came off, and there were cracks and holes in the wings and windshield.

‘’I could not see anything through the front windows because they were shattered. So I checked side windows when I tried to land the plane.'’

All 200 passengers, including 177 elementary school kids, were uninjured.
Link, with video. (Reuters)

I usually fly on United Airlines, but today I ended up booked on ANA from San Francisco to Tokyo. I haven’t tried ANA in several years, so it was interesting to see how their service compared. On this trip I was also upgraded to business class at the last minute as the flight was oversold in coach. This flight was on a 777-200.