Slowly the times begin to change for us frequent travellers. More and more airports are now considering our needs to do something usefull for our economy without spending a small fortune in tax free shopping. A couple of days ago I was in Ottawa airport: they offer free WiFi throughout the terminals, as well as specific seats with power outlets. Schiphol Amsterdam Airport recently allowed passengers to use free WiFi for an hour, which is a huge improvement over the $12/hour they used to charge for any use of WiFi. Trouble of Amsterdam is that power outlets are only very slihtly provided, so you reguraly have to depend on the ones placed at the oddest places for cleaning purposes. Seattle Airport also provides free WiFi throughout the airport since a year now, still completely depending on the odd power socket in the terminals placed there for the cleaning crews.

This progress is a very good sign. It allows us frequent travellers to do something usefull in our travel time without the need to pay a lot for WiFi access. In my opinion, the airport just has become a better place to work.

Initially the experience is quite good: when you are required to show your boarding pass, you just show your phone and the problem is solved. Both security and customs allow the digital boarding pass without any problems. There was one exception: Swiss themselves. Their airline counter couldn't scan the GSM screen, making them to write down the ticket number by hand. Not the best solution when you want to process a large volume of passengers.

Nonetheless as a concept it is a great solution: you get your ticket without the need to have a printer somewhere. Especially abroad internet is easier to get than a printer. So this might be the future of boaring passes.

One of the things of any kind of mass-transit is that when you get in or out, a lot of people generally have the same idea. In trains it is a bit easier than in planes, but the idea is the same: everybody has to be squeezed through a door, finds his/hers route and finally get a place to seat (if available). This always was a bit stressfull moment, because it invloves a lot of people in a small space all trying to move in a short time.

Recently, I discovered a worrying trend: some people are more occupied with their phone than with getting on with what they are doing. You probably know what I mean: people who are getting in or out, still being glued to their webbrowser or movie on their phone. They walk around a airport or trainstation without even looking away from their phone. Getting in is like watching for a second and back to the phone again. They don't mind the people around them that have a higher pace in life and get blocked.

To me and a lot of fellow passengers this kind of behaviour is frustrating: these people really slow down the line when getting out. People really should pay more attention to their environment instead of their phone....

Oddly enough, most people don't turn off their phone during take-off and landing. Personally I attribute this to unfamiliarity with the device: most people don't realize that simply pressing the power-button doesn't turn off the phone. What does happen is that the phone will enter a sleep-mode, which still can be active for GSM-signals. Even when phones are put into flight mode, they still might be harmfull during take-off and landing. To guarantee a safe take-off and landing, you really need to turn a phone off completely.

Oddly enough, the way to turn off a phone has become a defacto standard. By pressing the power button for a couple seconds (usually around 4 seconds) the phone will ask you to initiate a shutdown procedure. This will guarantee that your phone will not pose a threat to the plane while flying.

However, one issue is still not resolved: I need to have electricity to work as well. Airports are designed in a horrible way when it comes to working: there are no tables, no power plugs in convenient places, no nothing. That is annoying. It is a form of insensitivity that frustrates me. Even modern airports like Heathrow completely ignore my needs as a travelling business person. I like to work, and to (keep on) doing that throughout my travel I require electricity. People will seek it, making them do anything to get it, like this:

So airport management, please provide us with some power in a convenient way.

Today, a lot of my fellow passengers found out the hard way that it is pretty smart to bring your own entertainment with you. The crew could not get the in-flight entertainment system to work properly, so almost the entire aircraft was stuck with 1 single movi with horrible sounde, for 10 hours. The only exceptions were the people that brought their own movies, which were about 5 of us on an entire flight. Most of those 5 did not anticipate on having to support themselves for the entire flight, leaving them all with a drained battery halfway through the flight. I was the only one who managed to squeeze over 10 hours of movies out of my batteries, making me the only one not really being affected by this problem.

Such a search requires a lot of time, not because of the slowness of personell, but because many people make a huge mess of their hand luggage. You see collosal balls of wires and adapters comming out of handbags. Putting them back in is challenging. People have a lot of asorted stuff in their bag, including rain jackets, umbrellas and groceries. I timed it: searching such a persons takes about 10 to 15 minutes. Some took 25 minutes.

My bag is extremely organized: everything is strapped together and put in small bags. You can open a bag, inspect and put back in again quite easily. I was through the checkpoint in 5 minutes, including some smalltalk with the security officer.

So my request to fellow passengers is simple: get organized! This is modern air-travel, people do care how disorganized your junk in your bag is. Organize your luggage, it saves all of us a lot of tim at check-in.

Due to this schedule, I missed one news item I would like to have captured. I caught up with it due to a post in a LinkedIn group, but nonetheless, I would liked to have picked up on it quicker. It made the national headlines, so a tighter schedule would allowed me to pick it up.

The item was about the tragic death of my high-school chemistry teacher. A man I spoke to 2 months before on a reunion of our school. It was a man who meant a lot to me during those years: he talked to every authority to help me skip one entire year because it clearly would be a waste of time. He was a man who showed me that work could be so much more than just making a living: he absolutely loved chemistry and the enthousiasm and playfullness he brought to work about the things he taught, also taught me that choosing the right job could bring me much more fullfillment than just a monthly paycheck. A wise lesson since now, almost 20 years later, it is a personal requirement to love my job and the things I do on a daily basis. A man who also shared the love for the little ironies of life, like a school handing out calculators as a gift that clearly do not follow the rules of calculus. But he also was the man who put a piece of cake (inluding lighted candle) on your desk during a chemistry exam, just because he remembered it was your birthday. A man who loved and respected his students and inspired, sometimes even challenged, many of us to do more that just showing up. A truly remarkable man who lived by his principles and still was cheerful each and every day.

Hans, you inspired many of us and will be missed...

My personal goal is to increase the number of teleconferences with respect to physical travels. Besides the cost aspect, a teleconference is much less stressfull and better for my family-life.