Tag: Travel and Transportation

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DIA de-icers get faulty training : Airlines & Aerospace

DIA de-icers get faulty training : Airlines & Aerospace : The Rocky Mountain News
This is a report that aired this evening on CBS 4 News and was put together by Brian Maass.

This is appalling to me.  I fly a lot, including in the winter, and rely on de-icers to make sure that my flight is safe.  I also rely on the airlines and Federal Air Administration to ensure that my flight is safe.

Because they were not checking up on their contractor, Servisair, they passed everyone by giving them the answers.  That is not acceptable.  It shouldn’t take an investigative report from the CBS affiliate in Denver to uncover this.

The company should be checking up on their instructors, including planting people in the class, to make sure they are following the rules.  In addition, the FAA and the airlines (who hired Servisair to de-ice planes) should do independent checks to ensure that make sure Servisair is doing their job.

I must let you know Servisair was appalled by what they saw on the tape and suspended and eventually fired the person who administered the tests and called everyone back to take a refresher course and re-take the tests.  But to me, it is a little late.

Let’s just hope that there are no problems this year with de-icing planes.

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Holiday Inn – Midtown, Grand Island, Nebraska

I am on some travel for work and I am in the metropolis of Grand Island, Nebraska.  Overall, the town is really nice and the hotel I am staying at, Holiday Inn – Midtown, is ok.
It is only ok, because when I am traveling for business and personal reasons, one of the big things I look for is a hotel that has good internet access.  Well it has been a struggle with this one.

It has been extremely slow, both the wired and wireless connections.  It is just taking forever to get to pages and anything to load.

They must have a real limited bandwidth or a bunch of people downloading music at the same time.  What they need to do is to study and look at what they have so that it won’t be a negative experience in the future.

The rest of the hotel is good and the front desk staff was helpful.

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DIA looking to ease security lines

9NEWS – Article – DIA looking to ease security lines
The problem is not the lines or the people in the lines, it is the people that are hired by the Transportation Security Administration  to watch the monitors and make sure that nothing bad is getting on.

Most of them are rude and have a power complex.  They have power over you.  They can make your life hell.

In one experience I had going through DIA security, there was a couple from Denver who spoke very little english and they were going on a visit to their former home in Bulgaria.

To try and communicate with them, the TSA person just spoke louder.  She never tried to slow down and speak calmly and try to understand where these people were coming from.  It was quite rude. Continue reading “DIA looking to ease security lines”