It hasn’t been a good week for the airlines. There’s the ongoing and unresolved row between British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh and the UNITE union, resulting in strikes, chaos at Heathrow Airport and thousands of passengers stranded; the German ban on Ryanair charging credit card fees; and the extraordinary case of the woman who was left sleeping on a plane for three hours because she was allegedly too short for the cabin staff to see her. One positive announcement was the results of the 2010 World Airline Awards, although there wasn’t much joy for European or American Airlines.
Lewis Pugh at Mount Everest / Photo: BBC News
Mount Everest has also been in the news a lot this week. Jordan Romero and mountaineering legend Apa Sherpa both set world records for their climbs; Romero was the youngest person to scale the mountain (aged 13) and Sherpa increased his own remarkable record to 20 successful summits over 20 successive years. Romero’s ascent has caused some controversy, but congratulations from HouseTrip to both.
Meanwhile, in a village near Everest base camp, Lewis Gordon Pugh, the British activist known as one of the world’s top cold-water swimmers, completed a 1km swim in waters of 2 degrees Celsius. At an extraordinary altitude of 17700 feet, Pugh took 22 minutes 51 seconds to complete the swim, wearing only a swimcap, googles and a pair of Speedos. Which is a much better advertisement for British athletics than the slightly freakish mascots for the London 2012 Olympics.
Everest certainly looks cold in this very cool World Touristiness Map, which has been the talk of the travel blogs this week. It might come in useful if you’re hoping to avoid the crowds when you go on holiday this year. You might also want to look at Kayak’s new “Explore” feature that allows you to see where you can afford to go on your transport budget.
World Touristiness Map / Photo: bluemoon.ee
If you’re into user-generated travel reviews and smartphones, the new Trip Advisor app will be right up your street; although Trip Advisor and its parent group Expedia might be a little worried about the growing momentum for Apple’s iTravel project, an all-encompassing travel suite for the iPhone.
Finally, it appears that many parents have found a novel way to save money for their holiday. Rather than pay premium prices during school holidays, they simply lie on behalf of their children. Good luck to ‘em.
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