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Tuesday
Tuesday we went to the aquarium in Eilat. One of the key exhibits is the underwater observatory; they've bult a sizable complex under water so instead of putting the fish in tanks, you effectively put the people in the tank. It was pretty nifty. I had mixed results photographically. (I experimented with both regular and "night" settings on the camera, of course disabling the flash for all of it.)
We had to check out of the hotel before going but we didn't leave for the airport until after 4:00, which posed a bit of a problem. Fortunately for us, one family in our group planned to stay an extra day in Eilat and then head to Petra, and they had had a difficulty wiht the hotel that resulted in them being given a suite, so they offered to store our luggage for those few hours. The tour organizers couldn't have anticipated that, of course, and I think this timing was the one bit of bad planning in this trip. The norm, I suppose, is to check bags at the hotel desk, but there are two problems there: first, our guide told us that just a few days earlier he'd heard from another guide that airport security was searching all such bags (that counting as a bag being "out of your control"), which would have been time-consuming, and second, it's not clear the hotel was prepared to store 22 peoples' worth of bags from a two-week trip.
The family with the suite also had a large balcony and they were willing hosts, so lots of us hung around there for the hour or two before it was time to go. Then it was time to load up a bus to drive approximately across the street to the Eilat airport. (It's tiny; I wouldn't have noticed its presence if we hadn't used it.)
Getting home was not so straightforward. If you ever find yourself faced with the prosposct of flying Israir, you might want to make other plans.
Our main flights home were Continental, but getting from Eilat to Ben Gurion airport required a commuter flight. Driving would have been faster. The itinerary showed that we would have about three and a half hours to wait at Ben Gurion; in reality we barely had time to sit down for a sandwich. Not all of that was Israir's fault (more on that later), but a fair bit of it was.
When we landed and (after a disproportionate wait) got the luggage, several bags were missing (including mine). How does a tiny airline leaving a tiny airport lose luggage? After a while we learned that the plane had been overweight and they had removed some luggage without good-enough plans for recovery. Two smarter algorithms they could have used: (1) remove the bags that have to be there latest (everything was tagged), or remove the biggest bags to inconvenience the fewest people. Nope. :-) (I thought my larger bag was large until I saw some of the monster bags others had. I'm pretty sure most of them violated the airline size limits.)
It took more than an hour for Israir to do the paperwork for five missing bags. This paperwork involved a form that each of us could have filled out in three minutes; however, we were not allowed to fill them out at all, let alone in parallel. Each of us had to be interviewed by the one Israir representative, who filled out the form (slowly). They said they would have our bags there by two hours before our departure for the US, which is cutting it close due to security and customs. You can't even begin the check-in process until you have all your bags, so the five of us were pretty much stuck. The airport was mobbed, by the way.
Eventually we got our bags and got into line after line. By the time we got through our flight had begun boarding; it was 11:15PM and we hadn't eaten since lunch (which was small because we were going to have all this time in which to have dinner). There was a kosher McDonald's on the way to the gate so I ate that. I haven't had a Big Mac in probably 15 years; this one wasn't anything special, but it was food.
Here is the series of lines as best I remember it. First, if you're due VAT refunds (sales taxes), you get your forms stamped. This has to be done first because they can require you to produce the goods; they didn't. Then you get into the passport-check line, where (I presume) customs interviews you individually about where you've been, what you did, whether there's any possibility that anything in your bags wasn't your idea, and so on. They put a sticker on each of your bags, which is required for subsequent steps. Then you get into the first security line, where they X-ray your bags. If there's anything they don't like or if you fit a profile ("woman traveling alone" is apparently a profile to screen on) or if they haven't met their screening quota, you get pulled out into another line where they go through your bags. In my case they didn't like the date jam I had bought (and of course put in checked luggage); eventually they decided it was ok and I got to repack my bags. (They take things out; putting them back in while the line backs up behind you is your problem.) One family of four had all eight of their bags searched; we never learned what the problem there was.
I should clarify that I have no problem whatsoever with airport security being careful. None at all. I wish the machine wee a little better-oiled, but that's an implementation detail.
Once through all of that you can go to the ticket counter and check your bags. We had already been given boarding passes, so none of us had ever held a ticket or e-ticket for the flight. Remember that; it'll be important later.
After that you go through regular airport security (metal detector, X-ray of carry-ons, etc). After that, finally, you are allowed to proceed to your gate, assuming you can show a passport and ticket (not boarding pass). Err, what? So there was a delay there while the guard said "I need a ticket" and I said "here is every piece of paper I have been given relating to this flight", and eventually a supervisor came over and waved me through. I have no idea what that was about. I'm also not sure what happened to other members of my group; we were pretty split up by then. (I had followed one family through; they hadn't had problems and when I got stopped I called to them to ask what they'd shown. They were already too far away to hear, though.)
There are four border-related checks when flying internationally: getting out of your own country, getting into the destination country, getting out of the destination country, and getting into your own country. I had always assumed that the hardest one would be one of the "getting in" steps, not getting out of the destination. :-)
I once again had a middle seat on the long flight. Thanks, Ayelet, for waiting until the last minute to book tickets and then not spreading the misery around. They fed us dinner on the plane (around 1:00AM local time), which I hadn't expected, and breakfast.
We had to go through immigration in Newark (not Pittsburgh), so we had to retrieve our bags, present declarations of everything we'd bought and what it cost (I kept records as I went; I wonder what the less-organized people did), potentially have our bags searched, and then re-check our bags and go through TSA security. They just waved our group through, barely looking at the forms and touching none of the bags; I guess that's an advantage of travelling in a group. I expected those of us carrying food to be searched (it was a specific question), but fortunately we weren't. From there we walked right onto the plane for Pittsburgh (allowing only an hour and a half between arrival and take-off was cutting it close). After a delay for de-icing (when it comes to maintenance take all the time you need, IMO) we were off.
(By the way, it took Continental less time to serve up all of the bags for the 500 people on the cross-Atlantic trip than it did fos Israir to serve up the non-delayed bags for abut 40 people.)
Our flight to Israel basically went southeast from Newark and flew across the Atlantic, the Iberian peninsula, the Mediterranean, and into Tel Aviv. The flight home took a northern route, flying over central Europe and past Iceland and Greenland and coming down through Canada and New England. I assume the short answer is "prevailing winds"; I'm curious what the slightly-longer (as opposed to long) answer is.
So, we made it home -- a little more worn than I had expected, but everyone and all the luggage made it through, and I caught a ride home with the nice people who'd taken me to the airport two weeeks earlier. The cats and I were happy to see each other when I got home. Dani was already off to work, so it was several more hours before I saw him.
We had to check out of the hotel before going but we didn't leave for the airport until after 4:00, which posed a bit of a problem. Fortunately for us, one family in our group planned to stay an extra day in Eilat and then head to Petra, and they had had a difficulty wiht the hotel that resulted in them being given a suite, so they offered to store our luggage for those few hours. The tour organizers couldn't have anticipated that, of course, and I think this timing was the one bit of bad planning in this trip. The norm, I suppose, is to check bags at the hotel desk, but there are two problems there: first, our guide told us that just a few days earlier he'd heard from another guide that airport security was searching all such bags (that counting as a bag being "out of your control"), which would have been time-consuming, and second, it's not clear the hotel was prepared to store 22 peoples' worth of bags from a two-week trip.
The family with the suite also had a large balcony and they were willing hosts, so lots of us hung around there for the hour or two before it was time to go. Then it was time to load up a bus to drive approximately across the street to the Eilat airport. (It's tiny; I wouldn't have noticed its presence if we hadn't used it.)
Getting home was not so straightforward. If you ever find yourself faced with the prosposct of flying Israir, you might want to make other plans.
Our main flights home were Continental, but getting from Eilat to Ben Gurion airport required a commuter flight. Driving would have been faster. The itinerary showed that we would have about three and a half hours to wait at Ben Gurion; in reality we barely had time to sit down for a sandwich. Not all of that was Israir's fault (more on that later), but a fair bit of it was.
When we landed and (after a disproportionate wait) got the luggage, several bags were missing (including mine). How does a tiny airline leaving a tiny airport lose luggage? After a while we learned that the plane had been overweight and they had removed some luggage without good-enough plans for recovery. Two smarter algorithms they could have used: (1) remove the bags that have to be there latest (everything was tagged), or remove the biggest bags to inconvenience the fewest people. Nope. :-) (I thought my larger bag was large until I saw some of the monster bags others had. I'm pretty sure most of them violated the airline size limits.)
It took more than an hour for Israir to do the paperwork for five missing bags. This paperwork involved a form that each of us could have filled out in three minutes; however, we were not allowed to fill them out at all, let alone in parallel. Each of us had to be interviewed by the one Israir representative, who filled out the form (slowly). They said they would have our bags there by two hours before our departure for the US, which is cutting it close due to security and customs. You can't even begin the check-in process until you have all your bags, so the five of us were pretty much stuck. The airport was mobbed, by the way.
Eventually we got our bags and got into line after line. By the time we got through our flight had begun boarding; it was 11:15PM and we hadn't eaten since lunch (which was small because we were going to have all this time in which to have dinner). There was a kosher McDonald's on the way to the gate so I ate that. I haven't had a Big Mac in probably 15 years; this one wasn't anything special, but it was food.
Here is the series of lines as best I remember it. First, if you're due VAT refunds (sales taxes), you get your forms stamped. This has to be done first because they can require you to produce the goods; they didn't. Then you get into the passport-check line, where (I presume) customs interviews you individually about where you've been, what you did, whether there's any possibility that anything in your bags wasn't your idea, and so on. They put a sticker on each of your bags, which is required for subsequent steps. Then you get into the first security line, where they X-ray your bags. If there's anything they don't like or if you fit a profile ("woman traveling alone" is apparently a profile to screen on) or if they haven't met their screening quota, you get pulled out into another line where they go through your bags. In my case they didn't like the date jam I had bought (and of course put in checked luggage); eventually they decided it was ok and I got to repack my bags. (They take things out; putting them back in while the line backs up behind you is your problem.) One family of four had all eight of their bags searched; we never learned what the problem there was.
I should clarify that I have no problem whatsoever with airport security being careful. None at all. I wish the machine wee a little better-oiled, but that's an implementation detail.
Once through all of that you can go to the ticket counter and check your bags. We had already been given boarding passes, so none of us had ever held a ticket or e-ticket for the flight. Remember that; it'll be important later.
After that you go through regular airport security (metal detector, X-ray of carry-ons, etc). After that, finally, you are allowed to proceed to your gate, assuming you can show a passport and ticket (not boarding pass). Err, what? So there was a delay there while the guard said "I need a ticket" and I said "here is every piece of paper I have been given relating to this flight", and eventually a supervisor came over and waved me through. I have no idea what that was about. I'm also not sure what happened to other members of my group; we were pretty split up by then. (I had followed one family through; they hadn't had problems and when I got stopped I called to them to ask what they'd shown. They were already too far away to hear, though.)
There are four border-related checks when flying internationally: getting out of your own country, getting into the destination country, getting out of the destination country, and getting into your own country. I had always assumed that the hardest one would be one of the "getting in" steps, not getting out of the destination. :-)
I once again had a middle seat on the long flight. Thanks, Ayelet, for waiting until the last minute to book tickets and then not spreading the misery around. They fed us dinner on the plane (around 1:00AM local time), which I hadn't expected, and breakfast.
We had to go through immigration in Newark (not Pittsburgh), so we had to retrieve our bags, present declarations of everything we'd bought and what it cost (I kept records as I went; I wonder what the less-organized people did), potentially have our bags searched, and then re-check our bags and go through TSA security. They just waved our group through, barely looking at the forms and touching none of the bags; I guess that's an advantage of travelling in a group. I expected those of us carrying food to be searched (it was a specific question), but fortunately we weren't. From there we walked right onto the plane for Pittsburgh (allowing only an hour and a half between arrival and take-off was cutting it close). After a delay for de-icing (when it comes to maintenance take all the time you need, IMO) we were off.
(By the way, it took Continental less time to serve up all of the bags for the 500 people on the cross-Atlantic trip than it did fos Israir to serve up the non-delayed bags for abut 40 people.)
Our flight to Israel basically went southeast from Newark and flew across the Atlantic, the Iberian peninsula, the Mediterranean, and into Tel Aviv. The flight home took a northern route, flying over central Europe and past Iceland and Greenland and coming down through Canada and New England. I assume the short answer is "prevailing winds"; I'm curious what the slightly-longer (as opposed to long) answer is.
So, we made it home -- a little more worn than I had expected, but everyone and all the luggage made it through, and I caught a ride home with the nice people who'd taken me to the airport two weeeks earlier. The cats and I were happy to see each other when I got home. Dani was already off to work, so it was several more hours before I saw him.
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I assume the short answer is “prevailing winds”; I’m curious what the slightly-longer (as opposed to long) answer is.
the slightly-longer answer, unless i’m much mistaken, is to the question “why do the winds prevail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PrevailingWinds) in that particular way?”, and you may find these articles informative:
In a nutshell: winds in the northern hemisphere swirl counter-clockwise. Airplane pilots try to fly along great circle routes when possible; when planning transcontinental flights, they choose routes that enable them to be assisted by the wind whenever possible.
-steve
p.s. welcome back!
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no subject