Gadling

Last week saw two airplanes that were headed to the Greek island of Lesbos have to circle above the Aegean Sea for 40 minutes because an air traffic controller was asleep.

The flights affected were an Olympic Airlines plane and a Slovakian Airlines plane, both of which tried several times to raise the control tower but couldn't. No one there would answer.

The woman who should have been there later acknowledged that she had overslept.

You'd think they would have a contingency if a worker oversleeps, but apparently not. The airplanes eventually landed with the help of computer assistance. The sleeping controller has been suspended for three days.

The Houston Chronicle is reporting that a Southwest Airlines employee has been smuggling cocaine onto flights between Houston and Baltimore.

The employee, Carthon Lee Merrick, who lives in the greater Houston area, is a baggage handler for the airline.

According to a federal indictment, he's being charged with conspiring to possess with intent to distribute.

The indictment says that since 2001 Merrick has used his Southwest airlines flying privileges to make 388 smuggling trips between the two cities. He was finally nabbed earlier this year coming off a flight in Houston, where authorities found him in possession of $79,122 in cash.

He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, and could get life in prison.

Southwest Airlines isn't commenting.

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What other strange things have been found on planes?

This weekend I was in Prague, happy to be reminded, thanks to signs hung in pretty much every bar and cafe window, that it's once again burčák season!

Huh? you say.

From now into November, most drinking holes outside of seedy herna, or gambling, bars will be offering burčák, which is barely fermented wine.

If Beaujolais is the French answer to early wine, burčák -- pronounced, more or less, bore-chuck -- is the Czechs', though you really can't compare the two. Some describe burčák as having a taste much like orange juice. The white version is cloudy in the glass (to me it looks like pear juice), and while I don't get a lot of orange taste, it definitely reminds one of fruit. It's sweet, somewhat refreshing, and very drinkable.

That's why you've got to be careful: It's very easy to overdue it on a drink that taste good and doesn't appear to be that alcoholic (hey, it's only partially fermented, right?)

Don't let burčák's sweet taste and benign appearance fool you. Glasses are still around 5-8 percent alcohol (though fully fermented wine usually hovers around 11-12 percent). And burčák is one of those odd drinks (actually, I can't think of another one like it) that actually gets more alcoholic as it sits on the table. It is fermenting right in front of your eyes. So the pitcher that you gamely order up is going to be more alcoholic by the time you reach the bottom.

But that's only one reason to be careful. Really, it is not a good idea to have so much of this stuff, uh, fermenting in your stomach. Now, people will tell you that it is a myth that burčák continues fermenting in the blood stream. Maybe it is scientifically impossible. But I know what my stomach feels like a few hours after 4-5 good-size gasses of the stuff. It's unsettled, to put it mildly.

I don't want to imply that burčák is some kind of unique drink; many European countries mark the early grape harvest with their own versions. In Germany, where I live, feder weisen, which is quite similar to burčák, is currently in most establishments. But burčák does have a unique taste, and if nothing else it's a reminder of how, in Europe at least, we mark the change in seasons less by meteorological and arboreal observation as by the food and drink that begins showing up in the places where we like to eat and drink.

The stuff is here one day, and gone before you know it.

For those of you who read Jeremy's dispatch from JetBlue's new Terminal 5 at JFK airport back in August, here's an update: The airline pushed back opening the new wing.

It was to open this week, but JetBlue has announced that it won't be ready until toward the end of the month. The Associated Press is saying Oct. 22 is the day.

The reason? The airline says it wants to give the vendors who will operate in the terminal a little extra time to prepare and set up. It denies that it is behind schedule on the actual construction and finalizing of the terminal.

The new terminal is attached to Kennedy's old TWA terminal that closed in 2001.

Here's an arresting fact: When Heathrow airport in London is operating at full capacity, a plane takes off every 90 seconds. Today, departures are coming every two minutes.

While that might not seem like much of a change, it is the result of a serious computer glitch at the UK's central air traffic control system, which is sending delays rippling through most of Britain's airports.

The hardest hit so far has been London's Luton airport, where departures are on halt and arrivals are being delayed. So far, the BBC is reporting that the airport has had to cancel seven flights.

Other airports affected by the computer glitch are Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton, Gatwick, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester.

What exactly is wrong? It's hard to say, though the BBC is reporting that it has something to do with the malfunction of computers that deal with planes that are at higher altitudes.

Authorities say they hope to have the computer problem fixed by tonight.

London's Underground is a marvel, yet it relatively cramped spaces -- they don't call it the Tube for nothing -- means that temperatures can often rise down below even on a typically cool, damp British day.

London Mayor Boris Johnson today unveiled a new Underground train model, which for the first time will come with air conditioning.

The new trains are to debut on the Metropolitan line in 2010 and will get phased in on other lines up until 2015.

"I can assure passengers who will use them that we hope, rather than arriving at their destinations drenched in perspiration, they will emerge cool as cucumbers and ready to enjoy all that the capital offers," Johnson tells the Associated Press.

Why the Metropolitan line first, you might ask? The plan is to gradually replace many of the existing subway cars, starting with the city's oldest subway lines first.

It seems that the fiasco of Heathrow's Terminal 5 opening earlier this year was really just the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

Heathrow, a "national disgrace," according to some of its officials, finds itself in the crosshairs of London's Lord Mayor Boris Johnson, who has a team at city hall preparing plans to build a new major airport closer to the city that would close Heathrow for good.

You're thinking: He must be joking.

He's not.

Heathrow has been something of a punch line for years now, especially in the UK, where it's known for its abysmal lines, delays and general dreariness. Now a task force is drawing up a proposal to build a new hub in nearby Kent, directly on the high speed line that links London with continental Europe. Four to six runways could be built on a tidal estuary in the Thames River, Johnson says. Passengers could get to central London in as little as 35 minutes and not much longer than that if they're heading to France.

Will this really happen? Hard to tell. We'll certainly be hearing more about this. Officials figure a new airport could be built in six years. But so far they're studying island airports such as Hong Kong's to see if it can be done. No price has been pinned to this idea yet, and one of the question marks is just how much officials are going to have to pay Heathrow owner BAA.

A few deadlines, though, seem like they'll keep this idea from simply languishing on the shelf. At the end of the year the British government is to decide whether to permit a third runway to be built at Heathrow. And, of course, you have the 2012 Olympics.

Look for short haul airlines to object to the plan: If passengers have easy ground connections to continental Europe, they're not going to need many puddle hoppers.

In Part 1 of Gadling's conversation with novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux, the author of the recent Ghost Train to the Eastern Star talked about growing older and the importance of the return journey.

In Part 2, America's most famous travel writer takes on India, China, Russia and Georgia, considers his past work and gives his own assessment on the impact of his seminal travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar.

Your earlier travel books, like Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonia Express, were continuous trips, taken from point A to point B, and I think the narratives reflect that. But your Pillars of Hercules trip was taken in two parts. Dark Star Safari had some elements of a second trip to Africa in there. Ghost Train is not a continuous trip. Does that change the way you travel, not going continuously? Does it make it hard seeing a trip as a whole journey?

I think of it as a whole journey. But try to stay away from home for more than three months. It's really hard. First, bills start piling up. Things go wrong. You're needed. You can't be out of touch for more than three months. That's about the limit. After three months you have a lot of people screaming.

Earlier in my life I did. I've been away for as much as four or five months at a time. To be alone, to be away from a family or away from the responsibilities of life, the bills and whatever -- it was very difficult.

With Ghost Train, I broke it up. When I got to Vietnam, I went to China and from China to Tokyo. Tokyo is quite near Honolulu, believe it or not. So I flew home to Honolulu. I actually had a colonoscopy appointment and did all those things. A little time past and I returned to Japan and resumed the trip. That actually seemed to work out quite well. I hadn't gone very far, I was still sort of on my trip [in Hawaii], and then I went and finished the trip. I could have done it the way I did before, but I actually spent more time on this trip. With the Railway Bazaar I was gone about 3 1/2 months. This was more like six months of travel.

India was major section in The Great Railway Bazaar, and it's a major section in Ghost Train. You were confronted with ostensibly a much different India this time around, but I got the sense that you feel the truth of India has remained relatively unchanged.

I think so. My sense is that in India, the rituals, the pieties, the religion, the beliefs of the people, which are deeply held in most cases, are the things that make India itself, and at the same time prevents it from becoming something else.

In China, it's different. I can only talk about India by comparing it to China because China has been transformed. China has been able to modernize but at the expense of losing its soul and many of its traditions. But there is something in Indian life that is perpetually backward looking, and as modern as a place that they are trying to make India, it has this link with the past. It's as though China has severed its link to the past.

Take foot binding. If foot binding had been an Indian tradition instead of Chinese, they'd still be binding feet in India. But binding has been abandoned in China. A lot of traditional things that are good, bad and indifferent are still practiced in India, some more widely than others. But they've abandoned those things in China. I think this is why India is such a fascinating place to visit. When you are looking at India, a lot of it is still the old India. A lot of old China is disappearing.

A lot of people who go to India miss that, it seems. They talk about India in terms of either quick healing devotion or IT. You juxtaposed that during your visit to Bangalore: one minute you're in an ashram and another you're in a massive call center. That seems to be the two kind of ways people see India.

Earlier this month I posted on a faux controversy involving an Australian flight attendant for an airline called Jetstar who was in hot water after "posing as a pilot." What she really did was occupy the captain's seat while he went to the restroom, something only slightly beyond what is done normally (flight attendants sit in the cockpit all the time when one of the pilots takes a bathroom break, though they're usually not allowed in the captain's seat).

Now I read in today's Berliner Zeitung a story that really does seem to warrant disciplinary action (if it's true).

A Turkish pilot for an airline called Anadolujet has been fired for letting a 15-year-old take control of the aircraft while he went to use the bathroom!

Well, that's at least the official line the airline is giving. The captain says he merely let the boy sit in his seat while he went to the restroom; the co-pilot was actually the one in control of the plane.

How did the teen even get into the cockpit? He was apparently a plane junky, had practiced on a flight simulator, and asked if he could observe the captain and ask him questions. The pilot agreed and invited him back to the cockpit.

The captain landed in trouble after he snapped a picture of the kid sitting in his seat. You guessed it: the picture went on the Internet.

I'd like to think the captain wasn't so stupid as to actually let this kid fly the plane when he was away (in other words, I don't buy the airline's official complaint). Still, it probably wasn't smart for him to even let the kid take his seat. Snapping a photo of the whole thing was just dumb.

Feel that you're entitled to a food voucher if your flight is delayed more than four hours? A hotel voucher for longer delays? The right to demand off the plane if it sits on the tarmac for hours on end? You're not alone.

Canada agrees.

The U.S.? Well, such provisions are still languishing in that factory of do-nothingness called Congress.

Canada earlier this month passed a passenger bill of rights that guarantees travelers all of the above. It likely escaped your notice, as most things inevitably do if they happen in Canada, but it has some industry watchers in the U.S. hopeful that Congress might soon get the moxie to follow suit with its own PBOR.

The Canadian measure ensures food vouchers for delays of four hours, and hotel vouchers if the flight delay reaches eight hours. Perhaps the best right it ensures can be exercised during those all-too-common delays that magically occur once you're on the plane. In Canada, if you have boarded and the flight remains grounded for 90 minutes, you can demand off the plane.

The driving force behind the Canadian PBOR is pretty much the same behind the U.S. version: Growing frustration over flight delays, many weather-related, that kept passengers locked in planes for hours on end in recent years without access to food or water.

What's holding up a U.S. bill? Some in Congress have been trying to get one through, but as a rider to a larger measure tied to the reauthorization of the FAA. That reauthorization bill has been stalled in committee, with Congress continuing its funding of the administration through payment extensions, none of which have carried with them demands for a PBOR.

When will the FAA -- and, hopefully, a PBOR -- be sorted out? Looks like a new Congress early next year might be the best bet to breath some life into this long awaited measure.