Mobissimo

It's not an easy time being a small airline these days.  Fuel is super expensive, the recession is looming, and airlines were always bad choices as an investment or venture - just to many problems:  unions, fuel, consumer pricing, huge maintenance costs.  Aloha Airlines, which we searched here on Mobissimo is gone.  Competition forced them into bankruptcy, more here via Reuters.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Aloha Airgroup Inc, parent of Aloha Airlines Inc, is shutting down on Monday, days after filing for bankruptcy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition.

The company, which employs about 3,500 people, had emerged from bankruptcy protection about two years ago.

According to the Journal, the closely held carrier said marketing partner United Airlines, a unit of UAL Corp (UAUA.O: Quote, Profile, Research), and other airlines are "prepared to assist and accommodate Aloha's passengers who have been inconvenienced."

Yes, the media has picked up on the greatest things in Poland and Spain since Trabbies and jamon serrano, that's right, their very own Mobissimo travel sites. Check the pic below for youself and click here for the full story.

NYC.  Full of celebrities packed onto one small island, well probably even one small area that being Greenwich, West Village, and Soho.  Yep, I myself am more of a west sider, hanging out with Lebron at the Waverly, Gisele at Duvet, Kanye and the Mercer, I am right in the thick of it.  Well, actually these people were all in the US Weekly I was reading at the time.  So how to get in?  You still getting the auto-message from the subMercer?  Tim and the Beatrice Inn still not letting you through?  Here's a great article about what a high-profile establishment means.

I was walking around the Village when I stumbled upon the Beatrice Inn. It's been there since 1926. I've passed it before, but never went inside. I took a couple pictures and made a note to go back for dinner sometime. But after an eye-opening Google session, I realize that I won't be going back to the Beatrice Inn, because I seriously doubt the bouncers would allow me inside.

Yes, the Beatrice Inn has bouncers. It's exclusive. It's uber-hip. A celebrity hot spot. But long before Lindsay Lohan started going there to make out with hunky guys, it was a family business run by Elsie and Ubaldo Cardia, and then their children, Aldo and Vivian. It was a neighborhood place where regulars dined nightly. As for celebrities, Jane Jacobs ate there, but today she'd never make it past the proverbial velvet ropes--she was not very fashionable.

Hyderabad has a new airport. Some pilots do not know about it. Some pilots miss landing at the new airport. Some pilots make huge mistake. This via the The Times of India.

HYDERABAD: In a slip-up barely hours after the Shamshabad airport opened for business, a KLM flight from Amsterdam, which was supposed to land at Hyderabad, skipped the airport and flew across the country — first to Delhi, and then to Mumbai.

While you could say that guide books are all virtually the same and that you usually pick one based on how much you like the content or the personality of the writer, Eyes Open from Ideo are a bit different.  Looking at the traveler in an focused lens, shopper, mingler, etc, the guide book is divided as such.  While you may say that you might bridge many of the lenses, there you go, now you have a reason to read the whole book.  More here via Gadling.

I love the idea behind the new guidebook series Eyes Open by design company Ideo. Rather than busy themselves with the rote regurgitation of sights of interest, restaurants and hotels, Eyes Open seeks to help travelers shift their attention towards really looking and immersing themselves in their surroundings. The series recently launched with its first two entries, New York and London, with additional cities to follow in the near future.

Well, it was a matter of time, mobile phone calls are allowed on a commercial airline.  I don't quite understand how you can get service at 35k, but Emirates is giving it a run.  More here via BBC.

Dubai-based airline Emirates has become the first commercial airline to allow passengers to make mobile phone calls during flights.

Emirates said the first permitted mobile phone call was made on a flight between Dubai and Casablanca.

The aircraft, an Airbus A340, is fitted with a system which stops mobiles from interfering with a plane's electronics.

Emirates plans to extend the system to more aircraft and later this year add BlackBerry and other data services.

I have nothing against cabs.  London black cabs are great, comfy, roomy, tho the upright position isn't super relaxing.  NYC cabs are roomy, fast, and now have a TV screen and auto-debit payments options.  Paris/Nice most of the cabs, well Nice are MBZs, so that always nice, much the same in most Islamic countries like Morocco and Egypt.  Japan's are old school, but super clean and loaded with tech features.  Buenos Aires has the familiar black cab, non-descript, nothing super special.  Does the common taxi need to be improved?  Ford thinks so, here's more about their new concept cab via Gridskipper.

Ford premiered a new design for New York City's fleet of yellow cabs at this week's New York Auto Show. The press release for the Ford Transit Connect Taxi concept says the new cab is "a fresh take on taxis." The updated on/off duty sign sounds pretty cool: it's described as a "space-age looking flat-panel unit, mounted horizontally above the Taxi concept's roof, [that's] lit on all four sides -- green if the cab is available, orange if it's occupied."

Well, it was a matter of time.  Landing the world's largest passenger airplane at the world's busiest airport.  Imagine customs this much worse, more here via BBC.

The Airbus A380 super-jumbo has completed its first European commercial flight after a plane from Singapore landed at London's Heathrow airport.

Singapore Airlines is the first carrier to operate the new double-decker aircraft on revenue-earning services.

Flight SQ308 arrived at Heathrow 15 minutes before its 1505 GMT schedule.

Phuket is a tourist hell, but still very nice place.  A Swedish tourist has been found murdered and the killer is being sought in a massive manhunt.  More here via The Bangkok Post.

(BangkokPost.com) - Tourism and Sports Minister Weerasak Kowsurat has arrived in Phuket to inspect the scene of the murder of a Swedish female tourist on Mai Khao beach on Sunday night.

The deputy governor of Phuket province, Worapot Rattasima, said initial reports point to the murderer being a local who lives near the crime scene. Police are treating this as a very serious case and are doing all they can to track down the murderer.

The dead victim has been identified by police as 27-year-old Charotta Hanna.

Well, this one surprises no one, but one would have hoped that the Italians could keep their national airline afloat, but much like Sabena and the Netherlands, Italy takes one on the chin.  This one pretty brutal, the offering price is a mere dime.  More here via the Telegraph.

The sale marks the end of a tortuous process for the carrier that began at the end of 2006 when Romano Prodi, the former Italian prime minister, put it up for sale - declaring it was "out of control". Suitors including Aeroflot and Texas Pacific ran the rule over Alitalia but decided against bidding.

When Air France first announced "exploratory talks" 15 months ago, Alitalia was worth 95.4 cents a share. Yesterday's deal, struck after an 11-hour board meeting, saw the shares valued at just 10 cents against its closing price last Friday of 53 cents.

Yet another first for Mobissimo, read more here via BusinessWire.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mobissimo (www.mobissimo.com), the world’s most comprehensive travel search engine, today launched its newest travel search site, serving online travel markets in Italy (www.it.mobissimo.com). Mobissimo is the first U.S. travel search engine to launch in Italy with local content specifically geared to Italian users.

Much more than a simple translation, Mobissimo’s new Italian site is seamlessly “Italian” and extends the reach of the travel search engine. Mobissimo’s Italian site includes fares and offers from local travel agencies, consolidators, hotel operators and all the major and low-cost airlines that are pertinent to users in Italy.

Well, I give it to you all, fashion, travel, fine dining, exclusives.  Here's a little more about Lauren Conrad's mixed attempts at a fashion line, more here via New York Magazine.

Attending last night’s Lauren Conrad Collection show at L.A.'s Fashion Week felt a lot like being dropped into the middle of an episode of The Hills — potentially juicy, questionably styled, ultimately a bit plotless, and yet strangely amusing.

So I've been to the favelas of Rio, yes dangerous, but they have some pretty cool parties there and 'security' is always pretty tight, i.e. gringos have their own area, but the dance floor is open, so I can pop it and lock to my heart's content.  Anyway, this isn't new at all, there have been favelas tours for years, and while the operators make a profit, part goes to the community, and visitors make contributions to the communities and get a first hand experience in an area where they would only be regarded as a walking ATM.  However, there is another side, a person's home, regardless of income is not a zoo, so it begs the debate whether or not such tours are really necessary.  You make the call, more here via NY Times.

MICHAEL CRONIN’s job as a college admissions officer took him to India two or three times a year, so he had already seen the usual sites — temples, monuments, markets — when one day he happened across a flier advertising “slum tours.”

“It just resonated with me immediately,” said Mr. Cronin, who was staying at a posh Taj Hotel in Mumbai where, he noted, a bottle of Champagne cost the equivalent of two years’ salary for many Indians. “But I didn’t know what to expect.”

Cruises, either you like them or no.  They're not for everyone, but sometimes they are just the ticket.  Get it?  Ticket.  High five*  Here are some things you'd never think about, but will help you out tremendously, this via Cruise Mates.

Packing for a cruise can be more complicated than a typical land vacation, for reasons the uninitiated probably never thought about. For example, did you know that almost all cruise ships are built in Europe? This means most power outlets are round sockets and 220 volts.

Other things to ponder: How does one define "formal" for a cruise to Barbados? And what if you get assigned to a cabin next to the anchor drop?

Fear not, for we have assembled a list of cruise-exclusive packing tips offered to us by our loyal and experienced CruiseMates readers:

8 hour layover.  You've already eaten at Burger King - twice.  You been browsing the newstand for over an hour.  The Nora Roberts book you brought was already finished, alas, my kingdom for an internet connection.  Well, yes, T-Mobile and the like have pay for use, but free is always good.  DIA has such a gift, but is censoring what you can peruse.  More here on the China-fication of DIA via the Gadling.

I am all for free Wi-Fi access at airports and hotels (it's one of my major travel pet peeves when it is not available, but that is perhaps for another column). However, when you offer something like this to the masses gratis, in America at least, there seems to be a requisite level of prudishness that comes with it.