A female holidaymaker has accused a group of men of slinging homophobic slurs at her during a Ryanair flight. Laura Muldoon was flying from London Stansted to Seville, Spain, when she said the group called her a “miserable b***h”, a “dyke” and a “lesbo”. The social media manager for the Museum of London took a…
When the Boeing 737 Max aircraft returns to the skies, many passengers will seek to avoid it: that is the conclusion from an online survey in which 55 per cent said they would not be happy to fly on it. Only 23 per cent of the 1,378 self-selecting respondents in the Twitter poll said they…
The world’s best airlines for 2019 have been revealed. In the annual Skytrax World Airline awards, Middle Eastern carrier Qatar Airways came out on top, pushing last year’s winner Singapore Airlines into second place. Japan’s ANA All Nippon Airways, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific and Dubai-based Emirates rounded out the top five best airlines of 2019. We’ll tell…
British holidaymakers to Greece have been warned to protect themselves against West Nile virus this summer. West Nile virus is a rare mosquito-borne infection that can be fatal. In 2018, there were more than 300 cases of the virus in Greece, reports the UK Foreign Office (FCO). The number marked a steep uptick on previous years. We’ll tell…
Passengers on a United Airlines flight were left shuddering after an infestation of ants was discovered onboard. Travellers started to notice the creepy-crawlies while the service from Venice, Italy, to Newark, New Jersey was still taxiing on the runway. Charlotte Burns, a podcast editor onboard flight 169, called the experience “heeby-jeeby-goose-bumpy-get-me-a-gin-gross” while hilariously live tweeting about…
The Centre for Transport Studies at University College London (UCL) carried out an online survey of people with mental health conditions in order to establish the difficulties that people with mental health conditions have when travelling and to identify ways in which these can be overcome. There were 385 respondents to the survey, all of whom…
A man accidentally carried a snake onboard a flight from Florida to Hawaii. The 20-year-old passenger only discovered the reptile had stowed away in his bag when it slithered out of his rucksack once he’d arrived at a holiday rental property in Pukalani, Maui. About 30cm long and 63mm in diameter, the black racer snake was…
The boss of Ethiopian Airlines has rejected American accusations that pilots were partly to blame for the fatal crash of a Boeing 737 Max. Flight ET302 crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa on a journey to Nairobi on 10 March 2019. All 157 people died when the plane plunged into the ground; We’ll tell…
A United Airlines plane skidded off the runway after its tyres burst as it landed at an airport near New York. Some passengers suffered minor injuries when Flight 627 slid off the tarmac at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Saturday afternoon. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the Boeing 757-200’s left main landing…
Faster trains between Cardiff, Bristol Parkway and London could arrive next year – if a new train operator can overcome opposition to its plan. Grand Union has applied to run hourly trains between Cardiff and London, cutting the current journey time of around two hours to one hour 45 minutes. GWR currently has a monopoly…
Two weeks ago I wrote about how difficult it is, in the world of fluid pricing, to predict the best time to buy a plane ticket. I wrote that the standard model for air fares involves pricing starting relatively low and gradually increasing towards the departure date. But a respected former colleague of mine contacted…
There are some activities that are simply obligatory when you visit Cornwall. Lounging around on the beach. Rockpooling. Dipping at least one toe into the Atlantic. Eating a pasty. Driving around for hours trying to find the last car-parking space in St Ives. Getting lost on a back lane because you ignored all the warnings…
The concept of “overtourism” has gained so much traction over the last few years, it was even named as one of the Oxford Dictionary’s 2018 Words of the Year. Now, a new report has revealed the cities most at risk of the phenomenon over the next 10 years. The study, conducted by the World Tourism and Travel…
Two burly men wearing high-visibility jackets approached each other across the airport apron as though they were about to embrace. But as one lifted his arms high and the other moved in for a good rummage, it became clear that a security guard was frisking a baggage handler. As I gazed from the window of…
Bruges is the latest European city to introduce new regulations to tackle overtourism and avoid “disneyfication”. The city’s mayor is backing several measures, including a cap on the number of cruise ships and an end to all advertising campaigns encouraging daytrippers. Cruise liners docked in port will be limited to two at any one time,…