Kew Gardens have been voted the top visitor attraction in Britain at the British Airways magazine travel awards.

I thought I was dreaming a minute ago. On BBC’s Breakfast, Michael O’Leary from Ryanair and Willie Walsh of the holding company that owns British Airways and Iberia were standing side-by-side having a go at the government about APD.

CD Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. It’s a good month for Brazil and British Airways, while fans of Star Trek are also celebrating

CD Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. This month, Burma and British Airways’ two new initiatives get the thumbs up but the futureisn’t quite so rosy for Trip Advisor and the Travel Bookshop

The next football world cup is in Brazil in 2014. This winter Brazil will begin a three year campaign to encourage us to visit their country. Using the world cup as bait, they hope to build on the 167,000 of us that visited their country last year.

We are barely into the bank holiday and already the airline sales are starting. It’s a little early as they usually start about the middle of September. Is it because they are nervous about passenger numbers during the slow Autumn period?

Last Friday saw the end of the consultation period for APD, Air Passenger Duty. Airlines, airports, industry boffins have all put in their two pennyworth so is there any consensus?

The announcement by British Airways and Unite today that they had reached agreement about their long running dispute will please all travellers. One hurdle remains. The union members have to vote in favour of it in a secret ballot.

From tomorrow British Airways is increasing by £10 the fuel charge that it is levying on all economy class fares on medium and long haul flights. Domestic flights and short haul ones are unaffected this time. It means that if you’re flying to Australia you’ll pay a fuel surcharge of £98 on your ticket and a trip to the east coast of the US will incur £85 surcharge. And I suppose if BA is introducing this, then its stable mate, Iberia will follow as well. And other airlines will follow in one way or another.

Just after the news comes out that the proposed 22 day strike that would affect anyone flying to Spain or over Spanish airspace has been called off, up pops British Airways (BA) to remind us that life isn’t plain sailing. Or even plain flying! Once again there has been a strike ballot. Once again, the vote has overwhelmingly been for strike action.

Some time ago, CD-Traveller, mentioned that a number of airlines were testing bio-fuels in the hope that they could replace traditional aviation fuel to power their flights. Now it has been announced that Lufthansa will be the first airline to use a blend of vegetable oil and kerosene in one of the engines of its twin engine Airbus 321’s on scheduled passenger flights. From next April on the Hamburg-Frankfurt route only, information can be gathered on how this fuel will perform in a normal aviation role instead of the testing that has occurred so far. It will help to see what the effects of this mixture are on the engine over a long period. Will it require less or more maintenance for example? That it is in only one engine and contributes only half of the fuel for that engine suggests that growth in this area will be slow and carefully managed.
But is it really an alternative?

Yesterday the Financial Times reported on the meeting of the Airports Operators Association (AOA) at which the chairman of British Airways, Martin Broughton, said that some of the security checks we have to endure at airports were a waste of time. We had them because the Americans insisted yet they were not carried out on domestic flights within the US. Forgive me if you tired of this story already. The BBC, then ITN and Sky made it their lead story for most of yesterday and by 7am today there are 866 articles on the web about it. Broughton has obviously struck a chord.
But which checks are unnecessary?

There aren’t many of us that go to Argentina despite the fact that for some of us there are strong links. With names like Peurto Madryn (Port Madryn) there are clues to the number of Welsh who settled there in the nineteenth century. From next March it will be easier to go there as British Airways will be launching a direct service from London. This week, the Argentinian Minister of Tourism, Enrique Meyer, was over here to help announce the service. Declaring that 2011 will be the year of Argentina might be a bit ambitious but then with even a modest increase in tourists from the UK, it could be the start given the range of holiday options that Argentina offers.

August and September may get rather miserable for some of us. We have the continuing saga at British Airways, Spanish air traffic controllers have voted overwhelmingly to strike and Greek lorry drivers also threatened that they would refuse to deliver fuel. Luckily, that strike is now over. Aer Lingus cabin crew are being balloted on a work-to-rule. Rome airport will have a strike there for 4 hours on 9th September. There is a French and an Indian general strike both on 7th September and one in Spain on 29th September. Two weeks ago we had the French air traffic controllers on strike. Even pilots in Sweden had a brief strike in July and another in June.
So what will it mean for us?

The media are fixated by best and worst lists, top 10 lists and anything that seems to imply a rating. Some are just the works of individuals, some have research behind them and some are people adding their thoughts to a website. And if one person says this destination is the best thing since sliced bread do you believe them?
In their July issue Which? have published the results of their survey into short-haul airline routes based on what their members think

Let’s start with the good news.
It could be that the Icelandic volcano which has caused so much grief to air travellers over the last 2 months has stopped erupting. Experts say that the volcano has gone quiet. It would be nice if it was quiet for the next 100 years.
Just after I left the largest US trade travel conference, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that it hoped that the I-94 green/white forms that visitors have to fill in would be done away with by the end of the Summer. This means that you will only have to complete the ESTA requirements online.

Yesterday the recriminations began to grow more loudly in the wake of the closure of airspace over much of Northern Europe for yet another day. It seems that the blame culture has taken over from the culture of it being just one of those things. Fate my mother used to call things which were outside her control. It was the fault of this body or that.
So the Met Office is being blamed for its forecasting of the wind movements. NATS (responsible for airspace over Britain) is being blamed for their computer modelling. Eurocontrol (responsible for co-ordinating the use of airspace over Europe) is accused of being too cautious, governments because they haven’t reacted quicker, the Spanish Government (as EU president at the moment) because they didn’t call a meeting of EU transport ministers more quickly and the fairies at the bottom of the garden because, well who knows.

Today begins the second British airways cabin crew strike. Talking seems to have got nowhere. The only difference is that more passengers should get away over this four day strike than last time according to BA. As ever, see for the latest on whether your flight is still scheduled to go. http://www.britishairways.com/travel/strike-ballot/public/en_gb?refevent=HOME_URGENT_CENTRE
The unions have also announced the days of the national rail strike. It lasts 4 (seems a very popular number) days starting from the first working day back after Easter, April 6th. The strike will be over two 4 hour periods from 6-10am and again from 6-10pm. It will make life difficult for commuters into the major cities. At the moment it is expected only about 25% of services will run and for those coming back after an Easter break it could be a long journey. The good news is there will be talks next week so maybe this strike won’t take place.
See http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/2010/dispute.html for details

I was quite surprised to find yesterday that the first local school had just broken up for Easter. In my mind it was still weeks away but in fact Good Friday is only 2 weeks tomorrow.
After the winter we have had it wouldn’t surprise any of us if bookings to the Spanish resorts and warmer areas was the main appeal but personal finances being what they are, some of us will think of taking no breaks at all. And for those that do go, there could be quite a few handicaps to going away. First there are the railways. The RMT union is considering scheduling a nationwide strike because of what it says are safety issues that may occur when Network Rail lays off staff. . You probably need to be an expert to know if safety was an issue. Needless to say, Network Rail says there is no problem and you have to wonder whether if safety was the issue, the union wouldn’t have called the strike as soon as it legally could. By striking at Easter, the cynical amongst us begin to wonder.

UPDATE: 18th March. BA has announced that there will be extra flights as more volunteers have come forward than they expected so do check on the link below to see if things have altered since the original flightplan was drawn up.

BA has announced the standby measures it has put in place to get passengers away during the 3 day strike planned from March20th-22nd. You can see the details and how you might be affected at http://www.britishairways.com/travel/strike-ballot/public/en_gb?refevent=HOME_URGENT_CENTRE.
Only about 850 flights out of the 1,950 scheduled to fly will be cancelled. From Gatwick all long haul and about half of the short haul flights will fly. From Heathrow about 60% of long haul will fly but only about 30% of short haul. All affected passengers will be contacted by BA.

This coming week is the week we should celebrate tourism. Throughout England & Wales (Scotland had theirs this week) it is British Tourism Week. The National Trust throws opens its properties for free entry next weekend and events are staged across the two countries. Events like the illumination of Hadrian’s Wall and any of over hundreds of others are what should be attracting our attention. (www.britishtourismweek.com) But all the media seem to be concentrating on is BA with the tabloids having great fun with their headlines. Little mention will be made of tourism being worth £114 billion to the UK or that it is our fifth largest industry

Firstly, the good news. the Lufthansa strike was called off last night as pilots and management agreed to talk to each other again. It may mean that some aircraft are out of place this morning so check with Lufthansa to see if there are any problems.
The first bit of bad news is that British Airways’ cabin crew members of Unite have voted overwhelmingly for strike action. You might remember that they voted for action before Christmas but BA management won a court action which said the ballot hadn’t been operated properly. (see CD-Traveller 21 January and 15 December). No dates have been announced for the strike and it may be significant that Unite have said that they want to talk to BA management first. (For a view from the inside see Ian’s comments at the end of the piece on 21st January.)
The second piece of bad news is that, from today, French air traffic controllers start a 4 day strike which will affect flights throughout French air space. About 50% of flights in and out of Paris Orly are expected to be cancelled and a quarter through Paris Charles de Gaulle. The strike coincides with French school holidays.

The decision before Christmas by the courts to view the 12 days strike by the union Unite at BA (see CD-Traveller 15/12/09) as illegal meant that it was nearly inevitable that there would be another strike ballot. That has been announced for next week.
Last time the criticism of the length and timing of the strike almost made the public strong supporters of the BA management since the cabin crew or Unite were seen as deliberately trying to ruin people’s Christmas. This time maybe the union and the cabin crew have learnt from that PR debacle.

Some people were trapped on Eurostar trains for 12 hours and claim they were told nothing. It has been said that one driver even locked himself in his engine cab. Allbury Travel went into liquidation yesterday (they own Libra and Argos Holidays) and passengers claim they were kept in the dark. On Thursday when flyGlobespan went into liquidation I was at Glasgow Airport and there was no information at their desk in the airport. When there was the terminal 5 debacle earlier this year, one major complaint was the delay of both British Airways and BAA to come and talk to passengers.
What is clear in that each of these cases information was not given to the passengers quickly enough for them to feel that that they were kept up to date.

UPDATE 17 December: the courts have ruled the strike illegal because the balloting of union members had not been correctly carried out. This means that the 12 day strike cannot now take place.

The carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas, takes on a new meaning this year since it coincides with the number of days of strike action at British Airways. And I won’t be the last to wonder whether the number was particularly chosen by the strikers in order to ram home the iniquity of goodwill to all men excepting for British Airways passengers.
I’m not concerned in taking sides in this argument. For one thing I don’t know enough since all I see and hear is the propaganda from either side. My interest is in the passengers. Over 12 days, some 7000 flights might be axed. That could easily involve over a million passengers

British Airways has announced its list of 10 destinations that it thinks will influence you to decide where to go on your holidays next year. In any list like this you have to bear a couple of things in mind, the first being that BA flies to all the destinations it suggests and therefore that may have influenced the list. Secondly it is subjective. We don’t know how these places got on the list. Probably some “expert” decided or it coincided with a new or improved service to that destination by BA. I could be completely wrong there but, as I said, who knows. Still it is interesting to se whether our ideas match those of BA.

The list is Cape Town, Istanbul, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Punta Cana (Dominican Republic), Dubrovnik, New York, Stockholm, the Maldives and Delhi.

“I don’t believe people fly because they like the idea of flying.”

That came out of the mouth of Willie Walsh, the head of British Airways in an interview with BBC’s “Costing the Earth” on Radio 4. I listened to it twice because the first time I wasn’t sure that I really heard it but it was still on the repeat so why these intriguing words?

We are used to the no frills airlines charges us for just about anything that they can come up with but up until now we haven’t faced fees from UK traditional airlines.

Now BA has joined the club.