I'm going to Belfast on Thursday to give a talk and then traveling around a bit, meeting up with friends and playing tunes. I'm flying Easy Jet and found their "get ready for your trip" email today stating that their rules are one piece of handbaggage only, INCLUDING a laptop or handbag. WTF! I have to take both the pipes and the laptop (and obviously put keys and passport and stuff somewhere. Not sure where). I'm not sure how to manage this, since neither one of these can really be checked.
Anyone have any clever ideas?
I miss the days when the airlines weren't total c**ts.
This is indeed a nut buster. But I did manage to get a banjo from edinburgh to cairo last Friday without it seeing the inside of the hold (in a hard case an all). Had to wing it at edinburgh a little and I asked the lass on the CI desk if I could carry it to the gate where it could be tagged and put in the hold with me collecting at the bottom of the stair in amsterdam.
The service air people at the gate got in a real panic and told me it would need to be tagged straight through to cairo (FT) as this was the wrong type of aircraft for that, but then the paper work side was so much that they tried asking the cabin crew who of course said no problem and popped it in the forward locker, once in amsterdam nobody batted an eyelid. Just goes to show the only problems with instruments/hand luggage is in the UK. I fly KLM when I can so by nature they are more flexible than ryanair.
Ryanair are by and large a bunch of inflexible numbnuts but I seem to remember when checking out Ryanair flights to dublin to collect my DB banjo that you can pay extra for instruments or fragile goods but in the end I flew airlingus, check out their website to see if they still offer this service. The other thing you can ask whether you can carry the pipes to the gate and pick up at the stairs in belfast, still goes in the hold but not the luggage conveyer, this is normal practice on small planes for the bulkier items of hand luggage, just an idea but worth a shout.
Good point. You can print out your talk on paper - old fashioned and quaint I know! This and your passport can go in the pipe case. You can then take a small suitcase or rucksack for the hold - which you will probably have to pay for.
Oh and check the dimensions of your pipe case comply with the carry on allowance for Ryanair. I think they are particularly sh*tty about that.
Did you know that apparently these budget airlines reckon they make 500 million ( add your favourite unit of currency ) on the extras they charge on top of the deceptively low ticket price ?
On the other had BA cabin crew are on strike, so nobody ( or airline ) is perfect.
Cheers guys. Michael's prediction that the main purpose of the laptop will be to log on here is probably bang on. Which I can do just easily (well, not quite, but close) on my mobile phone. I guess the most straightforward thing to do would be to print the talk and put the powerpoint on a USB stick.
I hate the budget airlines, to be fair. But the prices the non-budget ones charge to go from Glasgow to Belfast are insane, upwards of £200. Then I might as well just take the car on the ferry (same price, more or less) and save myself the whole damned hassle. And if I'd flown BA, I'd be pretty f**cked right now.
Have you noticed that some of the non-budget airlines are starting to do the same stupid things as the budget ones, like charge you for checking luggage.
Well they have to charge one way or t'other for the service, don't they. I mean it may be stating the bl**din obvious but it takes a lot of fuel, wages, servicing, capital cost of planes etc. to stick up up in air and project you to Belfast. Why do people object now for paying for the convenience of air travel??
By that I mean, no one ever had trouble before all these restrictions came in filling up a 737 AND allowing passengers to have two carry-ons. They kinda of screw you by restricting your carry-on items in a rather extreme way and requiring you to pay to put things in the hold.
how ironic; and to think you can go half way round the world, direct to Dublin with a pleasant stop over in Abu Dhabi on Etihad, no problem with baggage, get off, walk down the hallway, get on Aer Lingus straight to Shannon in some ridiculously short time, off you get into your car; and straight to the pub. Easy peazy.
Spear, can't your tallk powerpoint presentation and your word doc just fit on a memory stick? Don't they provide laptops at the conference? then you can log on here via an internet cafe.
Trouble is that passengers are price sensitive - you can get them on the plane by charging basically bus fare, but you can't pay the expenses. So you sort of have to play these games, because if people realize that it's actually very expensive to fly, they won't do it.
This actually represents a flaw in the classic Adam Smith competition-makes-things-better model. It does, but in this case there's one significant variable, price, and everything else is irrelevant. So the more competition you have, the lower prices go, and the lower service and amenities go to compensate. (The BA strikes are of course also part of this - trying to cut labor costs causes strikes, which are a loss of service) On the other end, if you're not price-sensitive, they compete on things like lie-flat beds, service, meals, and so forth - but you pay through the nose for it. There doesn't seem to be a middle point, although from the complaints a lot of people wish there were.
So in this particular market, it's not hard to see that more competition makes the whole package more miserable for everyone.
Any computer geeks here know how to upload a powerpoint attachment to an email which Google mail and assorted university email servers (yes...three of them... I'm that lame) all say is too big to be an attachment?
If you're using a unix-like system (Mac/linux) you can use gzip to compress it. From the command line (aka Terminal), find your way to the file (put it in your home folder, that'll make life easy) and type gzip MyPresentationName.ppt - it'll take longer to type it than it will to compress the file. You'll end up with a file called MyPresentationName.ppt.gz, which will occupy a lot less space on your hard disk. Probably that'll be enough to get it through one of your email channels. At the other end, you'll want to unzip it: gunzip MyPresentationName.ppt.gz will accomplish this.
There's probably a way to accomplish this goal on a Windows machine as well, but I wouldn't know about it.
Well, we've established you don't need a laptop, just a memory stick. All you need to now is get a sufficiently large piece of carry-on luggage to put in the pipes and whatever else you'll want for your trip.
When I was in the US last summer it was noticeable how many people had large pieces of carry-on luggage, filling the overhead lockers so that it was quite difficult finding enough space for my bouzouki in its banjo case.
Some people can be so demanding and unreasonable !
If you right click on the desktop then go to New, there's an option to make a new compressed folder, complete with a cute zip. You can then drag files into the folder to compress them.
Emily I'd break the pipes down and put them and the laptop (I hope it's a mac by the way) into a cabin case and take it into the cabin with you.
If you only playing sessions, and want to practice, then prehaps you could get by with just taking your whistle, the chanter, bellows and bag & laptop in a cabin case, wedge a cork, or the head of a small rodent/BNP member/republican, into the stock cup. All the best
I'm not following this. If you are needing help to send this presentation are you also going to need help picking it up at the other end and getting it onto the computer that it will be presented from? Why not just put it on a CD or DVD and a memory stick ? You would be a hard pushed to find a computer used for presentations that did not take one of those.
I think I say in my member profile something like "looking for new and ingenious ways to make my life needlessly complicated." So yes.
At first I wanted to figure out a way to get laptop and pipes on a flight but a few people pointed out that the laptop is unnecessary if I email the presentation and/or use a memory stick. It has the added advantage of hauling around less sh*t. I like traveling light (which isn't easy with pipes). In any case the conference organizers want us to email the powerpoints to them anyway. I'm going to do both just to have backups.
Tom, if I blocked the stock cup with the head of a Republican I'd have to listen to him screaming invective about the health care bill any time I took the pipes out. That would put a damper on any session.
Be aware that it can be expensive carrying an instrument on board these days. Air France/KLM recently made me check in my on-flight bag and only carry my fiddle and in addition charged a special musical instrument fee. The checked bag and fiddle fee came to over $300
I believe that Ryan Air let you book an extra seat for your instrument and that can negate the instrument fee. It would also allow you to have additional carry on luggage as the pipes wouldn't count. The pipes will not get an allowance in the hold though.
this has all been cringe-inducing but very useful. i believe i will now take up the penny whistle, just to get over the trauma of even thinking of hauling the fiddle any place. such times we live in.
car travel is so much easier, how am i to give it up in light of all the above hassle?
Flying! Stress!
Flying! Stress!
I'm going to Belfast on Thursday to give a talk and then traveling around a bit, meeting up with friends and playing tunes. I'm flying Easy Jet and found their "get ready for your trip" email today stating that their rules are one piece of handbaggage only, INCLUDING a laptop or handbag. WTF! I have to take both the pipes and the laptop (and obviously put keys and passport and stuff somewhere. Not sure where). I'm not sure how to manage this, since neither one of these can really be checked.
Anyone have any clever ideas?
I miss the days when the airlines weren't total c**ts.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
Gaffer tape. Tape the laptop bag to the pipes case = one piece of baggage. Voila!
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Jerry O'Donnell
Re: Flying! Stress!
This is indeed a nut buster. But I did manage to get a banjo from edinburgh to cairo last Friday without it seeing the inside of the hold (in a hard case an all). Had to wing it at edinburgh a little and I asked the lass on the CI desk if I could carry it to the gate where it could be tagged and put in the hold with me collecting at the bottom of the stair in amsterdam.
The service air people at the gate got in a real panic and told me it would need to be tagged straight through to cairo (FT) as this was the wrong type of aircraft for that, but then the paper work side was so much that they tried asking the cabin crew who of course said no problem and popped it in the forward locker, once in amsterdam nobody batted an eyelid. Just goes to show the only problems with instruments/hand luggage is in the UK. I fly KLM when I can so by nature they are more flexible than ryanair.
Ryanair are by and large a bunch of inflexible numbnuts but I seem to remember when checking out Ryanair flights to dublin to collect my DB banjo that you can pay extra for instruments or fragile goods but in the end I flew airlingus, check out their website to see if they still offer this service. The other thing you can ask whether you can carry the pipes to the gate and pick up at the stairs in belfast, still goes in the hold but not the luggage conveyer, this is normal practice on small planes for the bulkier items of hand luggage, just an idea but worth a shout.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Solidmahog
Re: Flying! Stress!
Hi TSS, not ideal but you can break down the pipes, put them and your laptop in a small backpack and put the case in the hold. Have a good time.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by bogman
Re: Flying! Stress!
Leave the laptop. I bet you'll only use it for logging on here anyway.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by ...
Re: Flying! Stress!
Good point. You can print out your talk on paper - old fashioned and quaint I know!
This and your passport can go in the pipe case. You can then take a small suitcase or rucksack for the hold - which you will probably have to pay for.
Oh and check the dimensions of your pipe case comply with the carry on allowance for Ryanair. I think they are particularly sh*tty about that.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: Flying! Stress!
Did you know that apparently these budget airlines reckon they make 500 million ( add your favourite unit of currency ) on the extras they charge on top of the deceptively low ticket price ?
On the other had BA cabin crew are on strike, so nobody ( or airline ) is perfect.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Flying! Stress!
Cheers guys. Michael's prediction that the main purpose of the laptop will be to log on here is probably bang on. Which I can do just easily (well, not quite, but close) on my mobile phone. I guess the most straightforward thing to do would be to print the talk and put the powerpoint on a USB stick.
I hate the budget airlines, to be fair. But the prices the non-budget ones charge to go from Glasgow to Belfast are insane, upwards of £200. Then I might as well just take the car on the ferry (same price, more or less) and save myself the whole damned hassle. And if I'd flown BA, I'd be pretty f**cked right now.
Have you noticed that some of the non-budget airlines are starting to do the same stupid things as the budget ones, like charge you for checking luggage.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
Well they have to charge one way or t'other for the service, don't they. I mean it may be stating the bl**din obvious but it takes a lot of fuel, wages, servicing, capital cost of planes etc. to stick up up in air and project you to Belfast. Why do people object now for paying for the convenience of air travel??
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by the wounded hussar
Re: Flying! Stress!
Or maybe that should be the inconvenience of air travel - given the amount of time spent in airports checking in, hassle etc.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by the wounded hussar
Re: Flying! Stress!
So why not actually have, you know, decent service?
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
Your from Glasgow aren't you? how about Stranrear to Belfast ferry.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Bernie
Re: Flying! Stress!
By that I mean, no one ever had trouble before all these restrictions came in filling up a 737 AND allowing passengers to have two carry-ons. They kinda of screw you by restricting your carry-on items in a rather extreme way and requiring you to pay to put things in the hold.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
In retrospect, yes. I could have gone as a foot passenger on the ferry. Hindsight is 20/20.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
how ironic; and to think you can go half way round the world, direct to Dublin with a pleasant stop over in Abu Dhabi on Etihad, no problem with baggage, get off, walk down the hallway, get on Aer Lingus straight to Shannon in some ridiculously short time, off you get into your car; and straight to the pub. Easy peazy.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Flying! Stress!
Spear, can't your tallk powerpoint presentation and your word doc just fit on a memory stick? Don't they provide laptops at the conference? then you can log on here via an internet cafe.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Rudall the time
Re: Flying! Stress!
Trouble is that passengers are price sensitive - you can get them on the plane by charging basically bus fare, but you can't pay the expenses. So you sort of have to play these games, because if people realize that it's actually very expensive to fly, they won't do it.
This actually represents a flaw in the classic Adam Smith competition-makes-things-better model. It does, but in this case there's one significant variable, price, and everything else is irrelevant. So the more competition you have, the lower prices go, and the lower service and amenities go to compensate. (The BA strikes are of course also part of this - trying to cut labor costs causes strikes, which are a loss of service) On the other end, if you're not price-sensitive, they compete on things like lie-flat beds, service, meals, and so forth - but you pay through the nose for it. There doesn't seem to be a middle point, although from the complaints a lot of people wish there were.
So in this particular market, it's not hard to see that more competition makes the whole package more miserable for everyone.
Enjoy your trip, Spear!
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Flying! Stress!
Why not just e-mail your info ahead and spare yourself the trauma of having to carry a memory stick.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Solidmahog
Re: Flying! Stress!
A recent BBC (comedy programme) survey said that people who take internal flights should have to walk back.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by gam
Re: Flying! Stress!
'Internal flights' - Glasgow to Belfast. Now's that's a tricky proposition and perhaps best to stay well away from it!
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by the wounded hussar
Re: Flying! Stress!
"recent BBC (comedy programme) survey said that people who take internal flights should have to walk back."
In this case you'd have to swim.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
Any computer geeks here know how to upload a powerpoint attachment to an email which Google mail and assorted university email servers (yes...three of them... I'm that lame) all say is too big to be an attachment?
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
gaffer tape and a carrier pigeon?
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: Flying! Stress!
If you're using a unix-like system (Mac/linux) you can use gzip to compress it. From the command line (aka Terminal), find your way to the file (put it in your home folder, that'll make life easy) and type gzip MyPresentationName.ppt - it'll take longer to type it than it will to compress the file. You'll end up with a file called MyPresentationName.ppt.gz, which will occupy a lot less space on your hard disk. Probably that'll be enough to get it through one of your email channels. At the other end, you'll want to unzip it: gunzip MyPresentationName.ppt.gz will accomplish this.
There's probably a way to accomplish this goal on a Windows machine as well, but I wouldn't know about it.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Flying! Stress!
How about sending one of the items in the mail, not email but regular mail.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Gringo
Re: Flying! Stress!
Stick it on some webspace - that's what I do with files - and then email a link to it (and write down the link somewhere!).
I use sendspace.com if you don't already have your own webspace.
Works a charm and gets round the problem of bounced emails.
If you have an ipod you could just take the presentation as a file, plus use that app that does pipes and then you don't need any hand luggage at all.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Mark Harmer
Re: Flying! Stress!
Well, we've established you don't need a laptop, just a memory stick. All you need to now is get a sufficiently large piece of carry-on luggage to put in the pipes and whatever else you'll want for your trip.
When I was in the US last summer it was noticeable how many people had large pieces of carry-on luggage, filling the overhead lockers so that it was quite difficult finding enough space for my bouzouki in its banjo case.
Some people can be so demanding and unreasonable !
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: compressed zipped folder -Windows
If you right click on the desktop then go to New, there's an option to make a new compressed folder, complete with a cute zip. You can then drag files into the folder to compress them.
# Posted on March 22nd 2010 by Slightly Mad Scientist
Re: Flying! Stress!
(Full set of pipes)*(hand luggage) != (ultra-cheap airline)
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by Alex Wilding
Re: Flying! Stress!
http://free.mailbigfile.com/index.php?referer=www
Couldn't be simpler
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by ...
Re: Flying! Stress!
That is an awesome site, Michael. Simple enough for the computer illiterate.
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
good in'it. I use it all the time.
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by ...
Re: Flying! Stress!
Aye. Save me from the post I was about to write asking for "zipping files for eejits on a Mac" instructions.
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
*saved... past tense
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
Emily I'd break the pipes down and put them and the laptop (I hope it's a mac by the way) into a cabin case and take it into the cabin with you.
If you only playing sessions, and want to practice, then prehaps you could get by with just taking your whistle, the chanter, bellows and bag & laptop in a cabin case, wedge a cork, or the head of a small rodent/BNP member/republican, into the stock cup. All the best
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by Steamwilkes
Re: Flying! Stress!
I'm not following this. If you are needing help to send this presentation are you also going to need help picking it up at the other end and getting it onto the computer that it will be presented from? Why not just put it on a CD or DVD and a memory stick ? You would be a hard pushed to find a computer used for presentations that did not take one of those.
Do pipers just like to make things complicated ?
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by David50
Re: Flying! Stress!
I think I say in my member profile something like "looking for new and ingenious ways to make my life needlessly complicated." So yes.
At first I wanted to figure out a way to get laptop and pipes on a flight but a few people pointed out that the laptop is unnecessary if I email the presentation and/or use a memory stick. It has the added advantage of hauling around less sh*t. I like traveling light (which isn't easy with pipes). In any case the conference organizers want us to email the powerpoints to them anyway. I'm going to do both just to have backups.
Tom, if I blocked the stock cup with the head of a Republican I'd have to listen to him screaming invective about the health care bill any time I took the pipes out. That would put a damper on any session.
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flying! Stress!
ha, democrats - repuplicans - unionists
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by ...
Re: Flying! Stress!
Be aware that it can be expensive carrying an instrument on board these days. Air France/KLM recently made me check in my on-flight bag and only carry my fiddle and in addition charged a special musical instrument fee. The checked bag and fiddle fee came to over $300
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by hossboss
Re: Flying! Stress!
I believe that Ryan Air let you book an extra seat for your instrument and that can negate the instrument fee. It would also allow you to have additional carry on luggage as the pipes wouldn't count. The pipes will not get an allowance in the hold though.
# Posted on March 23rd 2010 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: Flying! Stress!
this has all been cringe-inducing but very useful. i believe i will now take up the penny whistle, just to get over the trauma of even thinking of hauling the fiddle any place. such times we live in.
car travel is so much easier, how am i to give it up in light of all the above hassle?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by full measure