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Cash is still the king amongst British people

An increasing number of Britons prefers to use cash over cards when they are traveling abroad. This is owing to the fear of falling victim to fraudsters. According to a survey, lead by insurance services company CPP, almost 60 per cent of people prefer to take cash on holidays when they go abroad. More people are worried about deceptive fraudulent activity when they travel. Roughly 80 per cent of people are concerned about how vulnerable they are when they are paying for goods or using cash machines. However CPP said the fear is exaggerated as Apacs data prove the fact that actual fraud abroad accounts for only 39 per cent of UK card theft and fraud.

CPP offers insurance on sundries, including wallets, payment cards and mobile phones to third parties, which they can market to their customers while they are traveling abroad.  CPP confirmed that it received 7,000 cases of stolen credit and debit cards between the period of June 2007 and July 2008. More than a quarter of these cases happened in Spain, which was more than double the amount that happened in France that had the next highest volume of reports.

CPP said only a quarter of travelers surveyed took the time to notify their bank that they will be away. Similarly, only a quarter checked receipts against card statements. CPP is also confident that awareness about card fraud abroad is growing. However, it is concerned that consumers are not taking the basic security steps.

World’s third best airline operates just one plane

British airline, Palmair European, has just one plane, a 34- year old Boeing 737.Flying only two flights a day, it carries merely 70,000 passengers a year. The airline has an employee, who while sitting on a kitchen table, plans out seating plans.

Yet when best experience and value for money is the criteria applied, David (Palmair European) bagged the third place beating the Goliaths (Walsh’s BA and Branson’s Virgin Atlantic) who were among other 64 contestants. In the ‘Which’ poll, it also earned the distinction ‘best for short-haul’.

Boss David Skilicorn was delighted with the results and said: “We are just little Palmair with a little Boeing 737. Those who want more legroom get it and families who want to sit together can. This is made possible by removing seats so that the 130 passengers can avail more leg room and that too at no extra charge.”

The workforce comprises 25 crew and 25 support staff. The 51 year old airline provides services to 14 European destinations. Spain, Tenerife, Portugal, Corfu and Croatia are also on their destination chart. At Dorset, each and every passenger is greeted by Tersia Rossello, prior to seeing them off.

US President’s visit makes the UK flight schedule go haywire

US President flew to London for a stopover. Unfortunately, he will be remembered by about 40,000 travellers for an unsavoury visit, for it resulted in cancellation of 68 flights. Most of the 40,000 travellers faced either cancellation of their flights or delays at Heathrow Airport owing to the VIP’s visit. Certainly an annoying situation by any means!

According to the confirmation of BAA (the Airport owner), 36 outgoing and 36 arrivals, mostly British Airways were subjected to cancellation on June 15, when President Bush arrived and the following day when he left.

BAA stated in a statement: “BAA, the airlines and other business partners at Heathrow did every thing possible in their power to minimise disruption at the airport during George Bush’s presidential visit. In spite of our best efforts some disruption did occur, for which we apologise to affected passengers.” Perhaps, any other disruption in the Presidential visit would have certainly affected the Heathrow Management adversely, but thankfully that did not happen!.

British Airways’ Terminal 5 starts operations

The British Airways’ Terminal 5 has stated working fro June, 4. The £4.3bn building had collapsed on its debut on March 27. The BA chief executive Willie Walsh while announcing increase in the number of flights from T5, informed that state-of-the-art baggage system was working better than the system at Terminal 4. He is confident that it will not trigger another baggage fiasco.

BA’s flights to eight destinations, including New York, Cape Town, Beijing and Cairo will be operated from Terminal 5. The terminal will funnel additional 7,000 passengers and 4,000 bags.  Walsh informs that about 3 million people would be going through the terminal and many of them already had good experience of it. He described the media focus on T5 as completely misplaced.

Walsh would have lost his job when the disastrous collapse of the terminal building on the day of launch had resulted in cancellation of 500 flights and the loss of 24,000bags. He himself took over the charge of T5 operations after sacking two executives responsible for the debut.The T terminal will handle 48,000 bags, an increase of 8,000; and carry 50,000 passengers each day. Rest of the Heathrow services will be transferred in two stages in August and October, 2008.