I’ve never seen that before – all the airlines I’ve been on have 1-socket systems. Maybe it is a charter thing?

Interesting!

Flybe fly IOM-JER but there is a stop en-route in LCY. It can also be pricey.

The connection IOM-LPL is fairly cheap with Emerald (I got a ticket for £37 rtn incl tax recently).

IOM-LPL; LPL-JER could be a cheaper alternative perhaps?

typical eh!

I get delayed all the time and you two scamps experience aerial perfection!

Seriously though, when I moved to the Isle of Man in 1998 we didn’t have BA. It was all Manx Airlines. They weren’t bad, but were quite pricey.

The BA “takeover” was welcomed at first. All the advantages….booking from IOM to NYC with 1 ticket, earning BA miles, booking online, checking in at a self service machine to beat the queues in the morning…even lower fairs.

It hasn’t materialised. Sometimes we can get good deals booking on ba.com to somewhere via LGW or MAN. Other times it is cheaper to book IOM-UK first, then book a connecting flight separately. Odd? You can’t book IOM-LHR fares for some reason – I know you’d have to connect at MAN, but so what? When flying from LHR I’d like to do that rather than transit from LGW.

BA miles…pah. 125 per sector! I don’t usually bother collecting them any more. Would take 48 return flights to qualify for one “free” flight.

Booking online…yeah, that’s a nice facility alright.

Self Service Machines…nope, not available.

Lower Fairs….more specials, which I like, but the average fair is pretty much the same I should think.

I’ve had to remove my shoes (and belt) about 10 times in the past month. Seems to be a fact of life these days.

And yet after having my clothing pored over by a security guard with 20 GCSE’s and 10 A-Levels, I could go and buy a bottle of whisky or a sharp pointy thing like a souvenir Eiffel Tower.

Sooooo effective!

And this pre-occupation with X-rays and metal detectors….isn’t that technology 50 years old? Are you telling me that those machines can really detect everything they need to?

And how about when I get plastic cuttlery with my inflight meal. Then we land in a foreign country, refuel and take off again. I get another meal – with metal knife and fork. Purlease….this is deeply pathetic.

Oh, and then there’s the seeming 50% or more of airliners with the old fashioned non-reinforced cockpit doors. Hardly a swift retrofit programme, eh? If it was something more important than security, like perhaps having to change the engine or something, I bet the whole fleet would have been done by now.

An Abatrageur is someone who exploits the differences in systems. A debt abatrageur exploits different interest rates. I know a few as clients. They make a LOT of money. Is a “security” abatrageur any different????

But hey, I get charged money for the extra “security” which means I can expect to benefit from it, surely?

I bought the Sun, something I wouldn’t normally do.

At the end of the day, we all know almost for a fact, that airport security is bad. It always has been and there has been only a slight imporvement since 9/11. And yet the authorities have made life inconvenient for travellers and the airlines have levied “security surcharges”. They have achieved nothing much, apart from annoying people.

I think that is a very newsworthy state of affairs. It may have been sensationalist, but at least it got the point across.

I didn’t rate Emirates when I flew with them recently. The economy class was poor – less personal space than other airlines such as Qantas or BA. Business seats looked OK, but probably not as good as Qantas or BA (old fashioned seats). First Class looked very similar to business, hardly worth paying extra for from what I saw.

To be honest, all major airlines are very similar if you’re in economy.

My job is advising companies how to protect themselves from litigants and other creditors. It’s a crying shame that we need such protection these days, but there you go. It’s a crying shame that users like danairboy feel hard done by when they surely intend no more than some lively banter about the airline world.

But this forum is provided to us with no upfront charge. Accordingly we cannot expect the publisher to have a team of lawyers on call to defend it. So the rules set by the moderators need to be tough. It’s the price we pay for having this forum.

Stay, Danairboy. There’s no ill will toward you. Just bear in mind what I said.

Again Mongu, your description of the zambia avaition and political scene is very accurate and spot on! As a Zambian iam glad to see that some people have their facts right about Africa! Well done!

No worries! It’s nice to find somebody else who knows about the Zambian scene.

And guess where the name “mongu” came from?

I never lived in Zambia, but have been there a lot. I’ve flow to Kitwe Southdowns (is it closed now?), Ndola, Chingola, Mfuwe, Livingstone, Mongu and of course Lusaka.

I’m supposedly (though, to be honest, I’m trying to worm out of it) going to Livingstone in January. What is the best way? The last time I went there (easily 5 years ago) I flew from LUN with Zimbabwe Express Airlines on an ATR-42. The time before that it was a coach trip from Lusaka, an experience I don’t want to repeat. Somebody mentioned that you can now fly direct from JNB – is that so?