Recent content by Cloud Strife

Yup, that's exactly the reason. Those flights can be cancelled or moved around at very short notice depending on need, so it's the best way to do things. Usually the flights aren't cancelled as such, just that the schedule will be rearranged for the day. Given the slow pace of life up there...

Generally speaking, electric ferries are somewhere between 15-20% cheaper (some sources suggest 30%!) in terms of "fuel" costs, while being around 80% cheaper in terms of ongoing maintenance. In terms of the initial purchase price, they're roughly around 50% more expensive. So, in the long term...

To be honest, there's absolutely no reason to use anything other than electric on short routes now. In Denmark, Molslinjen launched Nerthus in 2025, and she can carry up to 188 cars and 600 passengers on an 80 minute route without problems. The only issue can be access to power, as CalMac's...

Oh, the FSB absolutely do control Russia. For all the talk of Putin being a dictator, he would be gone tomorrow if he lost the support of the FSB. Other than that, I agree with your assessment that it's a mafia-type structure, even down to the killing of anyone who steps out of line. They're...

KLM are very quietly building up a pretty decent amount of flights to Amsterdam from the UK, often with some very reasonable connection times in AMS. For instance, take Humberside-Exeter. They can offer you a 4 hour journey via Amsterdam, which actually beats the train by 90 minutes or so. The...

This is why, at least in England and Wales, the best advice is never to cooperate with anyone in a 'uniform' without legal representation present, beyond what the law requires you to do. That used to be an issue in the past, but now it's pretty easy and seamless to get a new card that it...

I think it's generally a good move, as long as sound is provided. It certainly would help to eliminate cases where someone has been falsely told that they will just have to pay the fare or other misrepresentations by revenue staff.

There is surprisingly very little demand for Scotland-Wales flights. Even awkward and lengthy journeys like Aberdeen-Cardiff are only served by KLM via Amsterdam.

I managed to end up having to go through security in the middle of the night in Zurich! I was staying in the airside transit hotel, couldn't sleep and passport control to the Schengen areas was closed, so after looking through the D gates and finding nothing of interest, I went off to the E...

I believe the Captain of that flight was a former fighter pilot, which undoubtedly helped a lot with being able to prioritise tasks and skipping parts of checklists in an emergency situation. Either way, the work of both pilots on that flight was textbook, even down to the FO (and pilot flying)...

When I was doing it within Europe, I was pretty much left to decide by myself how to approach things. Usually the travel was about meeting potential partners, so no-one really cared about how I did things. My usual rule was to try and book flights that would leave in the early evening, so I...

Easyjet to Bristol pretty much caters for the South Wales traffic too. If you're absolutely determined to fly into Cardiff, Aer Lingus do a connection via Belfast.

It's not unusable, it just doesn't have the required linkspan. The Stena HSS used highly custom infrastructure, including linkspans, and so when the service ended, this was torn out. If someone was to put a linkspan in there, nothing would stop it being used again. Holyhead has the physical...

It wasn't just the Channel Tunnel, but the general price war on the Dover-Calais route. It was originally expected that the Channel Tunnel would finish off all but one of the ferry operators, but what happened was quite the opposite: the ferries fought back with vicious price promotions, while...

It's almost certainly going to be asset stripped. At a minimum, I'd expect them to sell off the planes and lease them back, as their fleet is worth around 5 billion pounds at the moment. I could also see them ditching their slots at premium airports (Gatwick, Amsterdam, etc) to raise even more...