That Was The Week That Was 27 November-December 1st
Flights to Nowhere
This year we have had a lot of talk about ghost flights, and flights where tickets were sold, but the flight was never going to happen. Yes, both of these examples come from Australia, to which we will return in a minute.
But what if the flight ticket was sold to a place that does not exist? The world is full of fictional countries: Wakanda; Ruritania; Freedonia, and many, many more. There are a series of logistical problems with that. Does it have an airport? What is its code? Which airlines would fly there anyway? You have to hope that the logistics questions would stop major errors.
More likely, and indeed not infrequently, people think they are going to London and land in London, Ontario. Paris, instead of Paris, Texas. Melbourne, Florida, not Melbourne. There is only one city on every continent other than Antarctica: Rome, or Roma, as it is in both Europe and Australia. For no reason I can fathom, I have never heard of that ticketing mix-up, but you would not write it off.
Again, there are systems in place that should stop that being too big a problem, or at least can provide a means of getting back to your intended destination.
The real problem is if you want to go somewhere that exists but seems to have disappeared from the map? That is much more problematic. There is the airport, ready to receive its scheduled flight, its passengers and on-wards connections but whoops, the map does not show it existing anymore. That is even worse than the perennial US news programmes’ SNAFUs with locating non-US cities and indeed countries, on a map. Again, it is to be hoped that whilst CNN appears to think that France is in Spain, the aircraft is likely to still get you to France, if that is where you are ticketed to go.
No, the real problem is when those that should know better do not. This is an on-going issue for some. To go back to Australia for a moment, Tasmania, Australia’s seventh state, is a small island in the southeast of the country. Small, in this case meaning more than twice the size of Belgium. It boxes above its weight for some things – footballers and cricketers for a start, but also food and mass shootings. That one can forget Tasmania is embarrassing, but not unusual. Nonetheless, you would hope that if you were writing a major review of the relative success of the various states of Australia, your map would extend down below Victoria.
The European Single Market turned 30 this week, the week that was. Politico proudly published an in-depth study on what that might mean and what issues lay ahead. It is full of fancy graphics and maps. Oh, wait, maps… Europe may have lost one member state recently, the 28 becoming 27, but Politico obviously knows more than we do. Forget Frexit, forget Nexit, worry about Maltexit. Where is Malta on their maps? What secret has Politico let out of the bag?
So if you have a ticket to Malta, or want to fly from Malta, you will be pleased to know that the Commission this week also released its next attempt to bring common sense to the rights passengers have in the post-Covid world. It attempts to merge the rights of passengers on multi-modal journeys for example. It also brings those on a package travel journey into the same regime. It looks to increase information too. We wish them well with that last one, particularly for journeys to countries that seem to have disappeared off the map.