The Frontier Saga

You will no doubt have seen stories in the mainstream media about how flying from Bellingham is cheaper than flying from YVR. I can attest to that. We have just booked a trip to Denver - and the cost is less than a third than it would be flying from Vancouver. So far so good.

Now for the bad news. The flight is on Frontier Airlines. They fly one plane out of Bellingham four times a week  (M W F Sa) to their hub in Denver. The last time I went that way I connected to another Frontier flight to Kansas City. I recall that clearly since we sat in the plane on the ground because a hatch wouldn't close and they had to send for a replacement door. Took over an hour, but at least we were still hooked up to gate power. We got an apology, nothing more. On the way back the departure was scheduled for the early hours of the morning. I was concerned when I got to the gate to see that the plane had not yet arrived there. It never did. About an hour after it was supposed to depart there was a cancellation announcement. And a bit of a rush on the gate agents. They did indeed rebook people but that takes time. No doubt others did clever things on their smartphones, or went to Starbucks to use their free wifi. I stood in line. Eventually I got to talk to an agent, who - after quite a bit of wrangling - came up with a flight on Alaska that evening which connected through Seattle with one to Bellingham. And some vouchers.

The vouchers are the crux of the story. There were several printed on boarding card stock which bought meals at the airport - breakfast, lunch and dinner. And one that was torn from a printed piece of paper with the title "Electronic Travel Certificate"

Because that is hard to read, here is the bottom section, at full size

For a long time the memory of spending the entire day at Kansas City Airport (there is no transit there or a cheap way to get to any city centre) was enough to deter me from using this voucher. But the chance to use it to cut another $200 from the upcoming trip to Denver seemed good.

But if you compare what you see on the payment screen of the FlyFrontier.com site (note the difference to the reference on the voucher FrontierAirlines.com - though that makes no difference to what you see) the wording in front of you is significantly different

The voucher says "when you get to the Add Payment screen" there is no tab with "Add Payment" - but it is easy to work out that the one above is intended. It then says"check mark Voucher" but that is not on this screen. You actually have select "Electronic Travel Certificate". I have to confess that I do not immediately associate a piece of copy paper with some computer printing and hand written scrawl with those words - but as I have pointed out that is on the top of the slip of paper. I was still looking for "voucher" - another screen away. 

So yes indeed, the screen on which I needed to enter my information was there all along, I just couldn't see it where the ETC had told me it ought to be. 

Being wise after the event, I should then have taken a deep breath. But like all airline ticket screens, the validity of the fare you are offered is time limited. You can't go away and come back later and expect the same low price to be available. (The Frontier website has timed out several times on me as I have been writing this.) There is some pressure to "buy now", and I succumbed to it thinking I had little time left. Equally there is a link on the payment page to the terms - which are much more extensive than those printed on the ETC. I now have had time to review those and my expectation that I could use the ETC after I had entered the credit card information was not possible. 

Now all of this could be an unfortunate accident. But I do not think so. I think these systems are carefully designed. Just like gift certificates, and - come to that - reward miles. All of these customer loyalty systems are designed to create a good impression, but their success depends on many of them not being used. That is why Aeroplan miles expire. That is why AirMiles are pushing hard for you to switch to AirMiles Cash from AirMiles Dream rewards. The overhang of frequent flyer miles was enough to push some airlines into bankruptcy.  I am sure Frontier Airlines management are only too aware of this. So the ETC has all kinds of caveats set about it in the expectation that it may well not be used. And not to make it too easy and straightforward for those who are not frequent flyers to actually figure out what is required of them in the time allotted. 

So when someone gives you a gift card (I got a Starbucks card from 1-800 GOT JUNK yesterday) or a voucher for future travel - do your homework first. It is supposed to make you feel better. It doesn't have to be actually useful. I do not go to Starbucks very much. Except in places like airports where they may be the best of a poor range of choices (as in Kansas City airport).  I did get to use two of my three meal vouchers - then the Alaska flight was called, on which of course the dinner voucher was useless. 

As is this Electronic Travel Certificate now. It expires on 10 September, is not transferrable, and it is not likely I will have a trip that way before then.

Perhaps I was expecting too much that I could get some more value of a cut price airline like Frontier. And also explains why the very nice lady I spoke to at Frontier was very patient, very polite but totally unflinching. I expect she hears the same story every shift. More than once. 

   

  UPDATE 

Not long after I posted this story, I also posted a link to it on Twitter. Then I got these replies - the way TweetDeck works the one on the bottom arrived just before the one on the top

So I Direct Messaged as requested. Since Tweets like those above are in the public domain, and what follows was not, I will summarize. I was told that I would get a refund of the $200 by adjustments made at Frontier. 

ANOTHER UPDATE

That was six days ago so I sent another DM. And after a further exchange of DMs, two emails arrived with new booking references for the same seats on the same flights.  Essentially they cancelled my erroneous booking, refunding the full amount, and immediately made a new one for the same travel, applied the ETC voucher and then charged my credit card with the balance. Good. I just wish that the "very nice lady" I spoke to had done that in the first place. 

Cell phone hijack attempt

I got a txt message this morning that appeared to come from Mobilicity

"You are about to receive new settings to your device, to ensure your Samsung SGH-T999V is functioning correctly please accept them. Do not reply to this message."

and sure enough the reply button was disabled.

The slightly incorrect English was a bit odd, but the real warning sign was that bit about my device. I do not have such a thing and the message came on my old Nokia smart phone. Surely, I thought, my service provider knows what device I am using to access its network. The second message did not even have Mobilicity in the From: field but Service Provider. It read

"Select 'Save' from 'Options' to configure al settings. Access points: MoWAP Web settings: Homepage

I did no such thing, but I did call 611. After the usual long wait, I got to speak to someone - probably on the other side of the globe, who knows. But he confirmed that the message did not come from Mobilicity.

Why someone would want to capture my home page, I cannot guess, but I suspect much darker motivations.

Like the old Sarge on used to say on Hill Street Blues "Let's be careful out there."

No, your iPad isn't possessed

There was a very strange and disturbing event yesterday. My partner's iPad screen started shaking - and random apps seemed to open and close with astonishing rapidity including filling in webforms with random gibberish. It was even hard to get the thing to turn off as the usual "swipe to turn off" would not work. I just held the power button down until it turned off.

While it is not impossible for someone to take over an iPad, the circumstances would have to be very unusual. And my partner is not the sort of person to fall for any of the gimmicks I found with a quick Google search. I have just come back from a visit with the genius bar at the Apple store, and they confirmed that what I had done was right.

With any computer (and most peripherals) performing oddly, power down (and unplug from the wall if asapropriate) will often reset things. Known in the trade as the "cold boot". Most people leave their systems running - just closing the lid of the laptop or closing the iPad smart cover. Its easy to get an app to out of the way by using the close fingers gesture or the home button, but neither actually closes the app. If you use four fingers to swipe upwards you can see how many apps are running. And in this case it was a lot. So close them by holding a finger on the app icon until it wobbles and a "no entry" sign appears on the top left corner. Then tap the icon. It is good practice to shut apps when they are not being used as it frees up resources, and reduces the chance of conflicts.

The genius also ran a diagnostic which showed which app had been crashing. That I uninstalled and replaced with another that does the same thing. It was only a game, after all. To uninstall an app simply hold the icon on the main screen (not the one revealed by the four finger swipe). Once again the icons all wobble and the "no entry" sign appears. Hold the app icon and then follow the prompts.

The strange behaviour was caused simply by overload of the touch screen interface - and probably a conflict between open apps. Clean up is easy and straightforward.

UPDATE

Or so we thought. The problem re-emerged a few days later - when there were only two apps open. So I once again backed up the iPad to the cloud and went back to talk to another genius. By the way, do not use Google to locate the Oakridge store - that's in California. Do it carefully on the apple.ca address to make sure you get Vancouver BC! This time they said they would reset the iPad to its original condition. I was asked not to restore the backup until I was sure that this had worked. Just as well, because it didn't, which proved we had a hardware problem - not a software conflict. This time my partner took the iPad in herself - and found that they had set aside a brand new iPad, with my name on it, just in case.  

The BBC, LSE and North Korea

The are a number of institutions in Britain that I find I still care about deeply. One is the London School of Economics, as I am an alumnus and therefore continue to get news of and from the school. The BBC was part of my life since early childhood. It was then the only broadcaster. (Though my Dad, as a former radio technician in the RAF, could never resist twiddling knobs to bring in stations like Hilversum.) I still regard it as a better and more reliable source than most other mainstream media and I only wish the CBC was half as good. But the Beeb is by no means perfect. These two have recently collided. The rest of this blog item is a copy of an email I got over the weekend from the LSE. It seemed to me that my readers might not otherwise get quite the same view of these events.

BBC Panorama programme on North Korea and LSESU Grimshaw Club

You may be aware of current media reports on a BBC Panorama programme on North Korea, due to be aired this evening in the UK, and its link with a visit to North Korea, which took place in March 2013, in the name of the Grimshaw Club, a student society at LSE.

We wanted to forward on to you an email on this subject that was sent by the School to all current staff and students at LSE on Saturday 13 April, to show you the concerns that the School has raised with the BBC over its conduct and the steps that LSE has taken to deal with the matter.

Yours sincerely

The LSE Alumni Relations Team

---

All School email (sent to all current LSE staff and students on Saturday 13 April 2013)

The School wishes to alert all staff and students to a serious development which may affect them personally in future. This relates to the conduct of the BBC in respect of a Panorama programme entitled North Korea Undercover, which is due to be shown next Monday evening, 15 April.

The programme has been produced using as cover a visit to North Korea which took place from 23-30 March 2013 in the name of the Grimshaw Club, a student society at LSE. The School authorities had no advance knowledge of the trip or of its planning.

The visiting party included Mr John Sweeney, Mr Alexander Niakaris and Ms Tomiko Sweeney. In advance of the trip it was not known to the rest of the party that they were three journalists working for or with the BBC. Their purpose, posing as tourists, was to film and record covertly during the visit in order to produce the Panorama programme.

LSE’s chief concerns are twofold. First, at no point prior to the trip was it made clear to the students that a BBC team of three had planned to use the trip as cover for a major documentary to be shown on Panorama. BBC staff have admitted that the group was deliberately misled as to the involvement of the BBC in the visit. The line used was that “a journalist” would join the visit. BBC staff have argued that this lack of frankness in denying the genuine members of the group the full details was done for their own benefit in the event of discovery and interrogation by North Korean authorities. It is LSE’s view that the students were not given enough information to enable informed consent, yet were given enough to put them in serious danger if the subterfuge had been uncovered prior to their departure from North Korea.

BBC staff asserted in a meeting with LSE management on 9 April 2013 that the BBC had undertaken its own risk assessment in advance of the trip, which had been approved at the highest level. LSE believes that a reasonable assessor of risk, or indeed any parent contemplating their child’s involvement in such an exercise, could only have concluded that the risks taken were unacceptable.

Our second major concern relates to information that came to light after the meeting on 9 April. This is that John Sweeney gained entry to North Korea by posing as a PhD student. The North Korean authorities allege that he described his occupation for entry control purposes as “LSE student, PhD in History” and gave his address as that of LSE - including a specific office room number which is actually used by a genuine member of LSE staff. Students report that the North Korean guides during the visit repeatedly addressed him as “Professor” and that he actively went along with that. John Sweeney graduated from LSE in 1980 with a BSc in Government. He is not an LSE student. If he has a PhD in History (or anything else), it is not from LSE. He does not work for the LSE.

We have no information about how Mr Niakaris or Ms Sweeney may have described themselves in order to gain entry to North Korea, but no description of them as current LSE students or staff can have been accurate.

While this particular trip was run in the name of a student society, the nature of LSE’s teaching and research means that aspects of North Korea are legitimate objects of study in several of our academic disciplines. Indeed, LSE academics work on aspects of many politically sensitive parts of the world, including by travel to those locations. It is vital that their integrity is taken for granted and their academic freedom preserved. The BBC’s actions may do serious damage to LSE’s reputation for academic integrity and may have seriously compromised the future ability of LSE students and staff to undertake legitimate study of North Korea, and very possibly of other countries where suspicion of independent academic work runs high.

Finally, LSE is aware of grave concerns about the actions of the BBC raised by at least two students who took part in the visit and the parents of one.

In light of all of the above, the Chairman of LSE asked the BBC on 10 April to withdraw the planned programme and issue a full apology to LSE for the actions of BBC staff in using the School and its good reputation as a means of deception. This endangered the students and could endanger academics in the future.

LSE deeply regrets that, earlier this afternoon, the Director-General of the BBC has refused the Chairman's request.

LSE is fully supportive of the principle of investigative journalism in the public interest, and applauds the work of journalists in dangerous parts of the world. We cannot, however, condone the use of our name, or the use of our students, as cover for such activities.

The School stands ready to discuss with any student or member of staff who so wishes how best to address the possible difficulties which the actions of the BBC may entail for them in future.

  

Canada's new Office of Religious Freedom

Apparently, Canada  - or rather our Prime Minister - is deeply concerned that Christians abroad are getting a rough deal and we should have a specific office to do something about that. I have linked to a CBC story that tries to explain how that will work.

Basically the concern is that some countries - mainly those in "the third world" - persecute Christians. There is nothing in the article that singles out states that have a formal religious component in the governance system. Indeed the only country that is identified is Pakistan.

The CBC story also picks up on the concerns of organizations that represent people who do not profess any religion.

Ambassador Bennett made clear at his first news conference Tuesday that if people face persecution for their lack of belief, they could expect his office to speak out.
"All people of faith and, again, those who choose not to have faith, need to be protected, their rights need to be respected," he said. "That's what this office is about."

Good. So here is a very big job Mr Ambassador. There is a very large and very powerful country to the south of us that persecutes atheists. The constitution of the United States is supposed to uphold a complete separation of church and state. That is because the founding fathers were mostly dissenters. People who objected to the position of the Church of England as the official state church where the monarch replaced the role of the Pope. To get an idea of what it was like to be a heretic in Henry VIII's kingdom, have a read of the recent great historical novels by Hilary Mantel.

What has been happening in the United States is that the conservative Republicans have been very successful in persuading Christians - who used to stay away from politics for fear of being tainted by its less desirable characteristics - to vote and become active in pursuing faith based policies. It is for this reason that issues like abortion and same sex marriage continue to dominate debate, even though the vast majority of Americans have views that these issues have been settled, and in the case of abortion, by a very old Supreme Court decision (Roe v Wade).

Some of the great successes of the Christian right are symbolic. Replacing E Pluribus Unum on the currency with In God We Trust, for instance. But others are direct assaults on civil liberties, such as the prevention of atheists from holding public office in many states. Here are the ten scariest places in the US to be an atheist. No, they don't burn people at the stake.

Bennett ought to be making representations at the highest levels that the Land of the Free should not be denying freedom to its own citizens. Freedom From Religion being as important as Freedom of Religion.

I will be very surprised indeed if a Harper appointee who was formerly  "dean of Augustine College, a small, private Christian liberal arts college in Ottawa, where he taught the history of Christianity there and who was completing a part-time degree in theology" actually does anything at all for atheists in America. But I will be watching.  And I hope he lives up to the commitment he made.

Two tweets

Serendipity at work I think - but Peter Ladner points out the Seattle's art scene attracts rich donors more than Vancouver's does - but at the same time our richest 1% are doing very nicely thank you

And just to make that work better - here are the two links

Ladner http://ow.ly/hcwmZ

which points to Crosscut which observes 

"Canadian arts get far more public subsidy than ours, but an awkward amount – not enough to create excellence, but enough to discourage private donations. That funding is also unstable,"

Hillsdon http://feedly.com/k/124yX9t

which points to new data from StatsCan 

"The cutoff to be included in Canada's one per cent was $201,400 in 2010. That was a 37 per cent increase from where the cutoff was in the first year of the survey, $147,500 in 1982.

The data also shows the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider. In 1982, the median income of Canada's one per cent was $191,600. That was seven times higher than the $28,000 median for everybody else.

By 2010, that ratio had widened to 10 times, from $28,400 for everybody else to $283,400 for the one per cent.

The report uses 2010 constant dollars, so it's an apples-to-apples comparison. The 99 per cent of people were actually taking in much less than $28,000 in 1982, but in terms of buying power, their share is essentially the same today as it was then.

Review: Blackbird Theatre: Don Juan

This new adaptation of Moliere's classic play ended its month long run at the Cultch last night. So why write a review of it? Because it will be at Richmond's Gateway Theatre in April. And not enough people went to see it - we got tickets thanks to a half price offer, and there were people in the line up for the box office who easily got good seats without booking ahead. I am sad to say there were quite a few empty seats in the balcony - and quite a bit of movement before the performance when it became clear that better views would be available. Gateway has much better sightlines from every seat than Cultch's Historic Theatre - and prices there vary by date rather than location.

It was a small cast but there are lots of characters, achieved with very clever use of masks - and one or two odd accents. Similarly one small set but very clever lighting that was most satisfactory when DJ is dragged off to hell at the end. No that isn't really a spoiler because we are all familiar with the story, which also got got turned into the opera Don Giovanni. As Director/Adapter John Wright notes he has "borrowed freely from all that came before us and interwoven the ancient with the modern". It would be a spoiler if I told about how that happens - and the audience lets you know by its appreciation of familiar material in unfamiliar places. Peter Jorgensen (Don Juan) and Simon Webb (Sganarelle) are the only cast members who have one character throughout - and Sganarelle gets more stage time and a lot more business than the eponymous lead - and steals the show. His performance alone is worth the (full) price of admission. But there is one scene, when the Don actually seduces two women, back to back, at the same time which is not only hilarious but utterly convincing. 

I think that if you have read this far, you would do well to book now, on line, at the link above. More about the Blackbird Theatre Co.