low cost airline

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pages: 278 words: 83,504

Boeing Versus Airbus: The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business by John Newhouse

Airbus A320, airline deregulation, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Boeing 747, Build a better mousetrap, corporate governance, demand response, high-speed rail, legacy carrier, low cost airline, MITM: man-in-the-middle, upwardly mobile

Over time, the A320 gradually gained the advantage because it is a newer airplane and, for various reasons, increasingly in favor with low-cost carriers. That is important, because those carriers, plus various leasing companies, are buying the new airplanes. The strapped legacy carriers are buying very little new equipment. Instead, some of them are cutting back. Well before reforming its fare structure, Delta decided to delay the delivery of 10 new Boeing aircraft and cancel options for 113 others. Some of the low-cost carriers are more austere than others. There is a spectrum of passenger comfort and services. JetBlue, with reserved seating and seats with monitors showing twenty-four channels of direct satellite TV, lies at the gentler end.

Both are exceptionally successful, having exceeded the most optimistic forecasts of their respective companies. The 737 is older and has been steadily improved over the years. But the A320, a newer, slightly larger, and more comfortable aircraft, is outselling the 737, not least in the low-cost market that Boeing had monopolized. In December 2004, the surge in orders for A320’s from low-cost carriers caused Boeing to shake up its sales force and replace its chief salesman, Toby Bright. The biggest revenue earners are airplanes with 200 to 300 seats. For many years, Boeing had this so-called middle market largely to itself with the 757, a long, single-aisle airplane, and the double-aisle 767.

The stakes could hardly be higher, especially for Airbus. It had begun to take too much for granted. FOR MOST of the past twenty years, a tooth-and-claw battle for the single-aisle-airplane market has held center stage in the Airbus-Boeing saga. It set Airbus’s A320 family against Boeing’s 737’s. The success of low-cost carriers such as Southwest and JetBlue in the States, along with easyJet and others in Europe, raised the stakes. For Boeing, an especially bad patch began in 1998, when British Airways, until then an unswervingly loyal Boeing customer, decided against the 737 and instead bought fifty-nine Airbus A320 and A319 aircraft, with options for fifty-nine more.


pages: 141 words: 40,979

The Little Book That Builds Wealth: The Knockout Formula for Finding Great Investments by Pat Dorsey

Airbus A320, barriers to entry, book value, business process, call centre, carbon tax, creative destruction, credit crunch, discounted cash flows, intangible asset, John Bogle, knowledge worker, late fees, low cost airline, Network effects, pets.com, price anchoring, risk tolerance, risk/return, rolodex, search costs, shareholder value, Stewart Brand

Southwest still has a cheaper cost structure than any of the majors—not exactly a hard thing to do, really—but it faces competitors like JetBlue and AirTran that have been able to get access to newer planes and cheap slots at second-tier airports. Also, the declining financial health of the majors made it easier for low-cost airlines to gain scale—the big airlines were struggling so hard to stay afloat that they could not spare the resources to crush upstarts. So, new low-cost carriers have been able to copy important parts of Southwest’s secret sauce and match it on cost. Dell, meanwhile, is still the lowest-cost manufacturer of PCs, but its advantage has shrunk considerably as competitors like Hewlett-Packard have retooled their businesses to cut costs, and high-cost operators like IBM have sold their PC businesses to more savvy owners like Lenovo.

This generally does happen eventually, but it can take a lot longer than one might expect. It’s worth understanding why that often takes a fair amount of time, during which the originator of the low-cost process can make a lot of money. I won’t beat a very dead horse by going over the process-based cost advantages enjoyed by Dell and low-cost carriers like Southwest Airlines. We’ve all heard both stories a million times. Dell cut out distributors, sold direct to buyers, and kept inventory very low by building personal computers (PCs) to order. Southwest flew only one type of jet, minimized expensive ground time (fast turns, in airline jargon), and cultivated an employee culture that rewarded thrift.

Perhaps my very favorite example of a well-regarded CEO being humbled by brutal industry dynamics is David Neeleman at JetBlue. Neeleman had an impeccable track record when he founded JetBlue. Before that he had started up the only airline attractive enough to be purchased by the famously acquisition-shy Southwest Airlines, and then he helped launch a low-cost carrier in Canada while waiting for his noncompete agreement with Southwest to expire. When JetBlue launched, Neeleman’s planes were brand-new and featured in-seat satellite TV and leather seats. Because new planes invariably have lower costs than older planes—they need less maintenance and they’re more efficient—JetBlue’s financials looked great just after going public, with 17 percent operating margins and a solid 20 percent return on equity.


pages: 308 words: 99,298

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe by Denis MacShane

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Corn Laws, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, fixed income, Gini coefficient, greed is good, illegal immigration, information security, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, labour mobility, liberal capitalism, low cost airline, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, post-truth, price stability, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reshoring, road to serfdom, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Thales and the olive presses, trade liberalization, transaction costs, women in the workforce

One of the most spectacular outcomes of the reforms leading to the creation of the Single Market has been the fall in the costs of air travel and the rise of low-cost airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair, as well as many other smaller low-cost services that allow direct air links to many different cities and regions in Europe. Previously, national airlines like British Airways or Alitalia or Air France jealously guarded their national markets to keep prices and profits as high as possible. In addition, low-cost airlines can be based in Britain, like EasyJet, but fly from different locations inside the EU, not just back and forth to the UK.

The EU has all but abolished those monopoly privileges. There is also a broad so-called Open Skies Agreement signed between the EU and the US in 2007 which allows airlines from Europe, including Britain, to fly to the US and Canada. The European Common Aviation Area extends to Norway and Iceland, and as a result there are some interesting low-cost carriers now offering cheap flights from the UK to North America. Britain has pushed for the creation of the ‘Single European Sky’ to allow airlines to choose the best, most-effective route irrespective of national borders and control system so as to save on fuel costs and speed up trips. All these arrangements are ultimately under EU law and in consequence the final arbiter in case of dispute is the European Court of Justice.

The worries over the impact of UKIP on the Conservative vote that many believe impelled David Cameron to hold the 2016 plebiscite have disappeared, as has any serious parliamentary political challenge to Mrs May. Can she rise above party passions and see the wider national interest? A massively complicated set of negotiations lies ahead to extricate Britain from dozens of tightly interwoven agreements with other EU nations, covering everything from aviation landing rights for low-cost airlines to agricultural subsidies or involvement in European-wide policing and anti-terrorism measures and common climate change agreements. Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, declared it was impossible for all these complex negotiations to be successfully terminated in the space of two years before the next European Parliament elections in May 2019 – the deadline desired by Theresa May.


Central Europe Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Defenestration of Prague, Fall of the Berlin Wall, flag carrier, Frank Gehry, Gregor Mendel, Guggenheim Bilbao, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kickstarter, low cost airline, messenger bag, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Peter Eisenman, place-making, Prenzlauer Berg, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rubik’s Cube, Skype, trade route, urban renewal, white picket fence, young professional

Airlines National carriers take you to and from a host of world cities, and a web of low-cost carrier routes connects across Western Europe. The rule of thumb is the further east you go, the fewer regional airports there are. Central European national airlines (Slovakia has none): Adria Airways (JP; www.adria-airways.com) Slovenia Austrian Airlines (OS; www.aua.com) ČSA (OK; www.czechairlines.com) Czech Republic LOT Polish Airlines (LO; www.lot.com) Lufthansa (LH; www.lufthansa.com) Germany Malév Hungarian Airlines (MA; www.malev.hu) Swiss International Air Lines (LX; www.swiss.com) The following low-cost carriers offer the biggest selection of flights to and from Central Europe: Air Berlin (AB; www.airberlin.de) Germany-based, serves Western Europe (including Italy, Spain, Austria), North America and Southeast Asia.

GETTING AROUND Air If you’re travelling without checked luggage, booking at least two weeks ahead and willing to travel to alternative airports, European air flights can be quite affordable. Both national and low-cost carriers fly within the region; check the prices of both. For a list of major airlines Click here ; for carriers with more limited service, see the specific destination chapters. Germanwings and Air Berlin have the most extensive intra–Central European networks. Note that smaller nations, such as Hungary, have no internal flights. WHAT’S THAT BAG WORTH TO YA? Beware when booking low-cost carrier seats; extra costs add up super fast. Most charge fees for checked luggage and impose strict weight limits with oversize penalties.

Information The tourist office (www.freiburg.de; Rathausplatz 2-4; 8am-8pm Mon-Fri, 9.30am-5pm Sat, 10am-noon Sun Jun-Sep, 8am-6pm Mon-Fri, 9.30am-2.30pm Sat, 10am-noon Sun Oct-May) is well stocked with hiking and cycling maps to the region. Getting There & Around Freiburg shares EuroAirport (www.euroairport.com) with Basel (Switzerland) and Mulhouse (France). It buzzes with low-cost carriers. The Airport Bus (www.freiburger-reisedienst.de) runs almost every hour (adult/child €20/10, 55 minutes) . Fast trains connect Freiburg to Basel (€23, 45 minutes, hourly) and north to Frankfurt (€61, two hours, hourly) and beyond. Cut across the Rhine to France’s cute Colmar.


pages: 400 words: 88,647

Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better With Less by Jaideep Prabhu Navi Radjou

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bretton Woods, business climate, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, circular economy, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Computer Numeric Control, connected car, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, fail fast, financial exclusion, financial innovation, gamification, global supply chain, IKEA effect, income inequality, industrial robot, intangible asset, Internet of things, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, low cost airline, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Benioff, megacity, minimum viable product, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, planned obsolescence, precision agriculture, race to the bottom, reshoring, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, smart grid, smart meter, software as a service, standardized shipping container, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, value engineering, vertical integration, women in the workforce, work culture , X Prize, yield management, Zipcar

Such business models include: software as a service (SaaS) in computing; power by the hour in aircraft engines; massive open online courses (MOOCs) in education; hub-and-spoke and yield management models in airlines; online retailing; and cloud computing. By flexing their assets, airlines such as Southwest Airlines, easyJet and Ryanair have created a new, low-cost market segment for flyers within the US and Europe, and have succeeded in challenging long-haul incumbents. First, the low-cost carriers rebased the existing airline business model by maximising the time that their most valuable assets – their aircraft – spend in the air, and reducing the time they spend on the ground. Second, they use a hub-and-spoke model that maximises reach while minimising the typical journey distance. Third, they use new digital technology to understand, anticipate and influence consumer behaviour and ticket pricing to squeeze as much revenue as possible from their main, perishable resource: seats on flights.

Although an Expliseat costs more than rival products, each seat can be assembled and installed within minutes and can be used 100,000 times without deteriorating. Furthermore, its ergonomic design and lower bulk provide an extra 5 centimetres of legroom and better shock absorption. Although Expliseat’s economy-class seats may not match the $400,000 business-class seats for comfort, low-cost airlines are eager to offer something extra for those on a tight budget. Design for next-generation customers Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, an international design and consulting company, challenges designers to “invent for the future consumer”. For example, Carrefour, one of the world’s largest retailers, hired InProcess, an innovation consultancy, to reinvent the iconic 1960s shopping trolley still in use to serve the needs of today’s customers better.13 InProcess’s ethnographers studied how customers with different demographic profiles actually did their grocery shopping, from the time they entered a store to when they went through check-out, loaded and unloaded their cars, and stored their groceries in their homes.

MacArthur Foundation 14 John Deere 67 John Lewis 195 Johnson & Johnson 100, 111 Johnson, Warren 98 Jones, Don 112 jugaad (frugal ingenuity) 199, 202 Jugaad Innovation (Radjou, Prabhu and Ahuja, 2012) xvii, 17 just-in-time design 33–4 K Kaeser, Joe 217 Kalanick, Travis 163 Kalundborg (Denmark) 160 kanju 201 Karkal, Shamir 124 Kaufman, Ben 50–1, 126 Kawai, Daisuke 29–30 Kelly, John 199–200 Kennedy, President John 138 Kenya 57, 200–1 key performance indicators see KPIs Khan Academy 16–17, 113–14, 164 Khan, Salman (Sal) 16–17, 113–14 Kickstarter 17, 48, 137, 138 KieranTimberlake 196 Kimberly-Clark 25, 145 Kingfisher 86–7, 91, 97, 157, 158–9, 185–6, 192–3, 208 KissKissBankBank 17, 137 Knox, Steve 145 Knudstorp, Jørgen Vig 37, 68, 69 Kobori, Michael 83, 100 KPIs (key performance indicators) 38–9, 67, 91–2, 185–6, 208 Kuhndt, Michael 194 Kurniawan, Arie 151–2 L La Chose 108 La Poste 92–3, 157 La Ruche qui dit Oui 137 “labs on a chip” 52 Lacheret, Yves 173–5 Lada 1 laser cutters 134, 166 Laskey, Alex 119 last-mile challenge 57, 146, 156 L’Atelier 168–9 Latin America 161 lattice organisation 63–4 Laury, Véronique 208 Laville, Elisabeth 91 Lawrence, Jamie 185, 192–3, 208 LCA (life-cycle assessment) 196–7 leaders 179, 203–5, 214, 217 lean manufacturing 192 leanness 33–4, 41, 42, 170, 192 Learnbox 114 learning by doing 173, 179 learning organisations 179 leasing 123 Lee, Deishin 159 Lego 51, 126 Lego Group 37, 68, 69, 144 Legrand 157 Lenovo 56 Leroy, Adolphe 127 Leroy Merlin 127–8 Leslie, Garthen 150–1 Lever, William Hesketh 96 Levi Strauss & Co 60, 82–4, 100, 122–3 Lewis, Dijuana 212 life cycle of buildings 196 see also product life cycle life-cycle assessment (LCA) 196–7 life-cycle costs 12, 24, 196 Lifebuoy soap 95, 97 lifespan of companies 154 lighting 32, 56, 123, 201 “lightweighting” 47 linear development cycles 21, 23 linear model of production 80–1 Link 131 littleBits 51 Livi, Daniele 88 Livi, Vittorio 88 local communities 52, 57, 146, 206–7 local markets 183–4 Local Motors 52, 129, 152 local solutions 188, 201–2 local sourcing 51–2, 56, 137, 174, 181 localisation 56, 137 Locavesting (Cortese, 2011) 138 Logan car 2–3, 12, 179, 198–9 logistics 46, 57–8, 161, 191, 207 longevity 121, 124 Lopez, Maribel 65–6 Lopez Research 65–6 L’Oréal 174 Los Alamos National Laboratory 170 low-cost airlines 60, 121 low-cost innovation 11 low-income markets 12–13, 161, 203, 207 Lowry, Adam 81–2 M m-health 109, 111–12 M-KOPA 201 M-Pesa 57, 201 M3D 48, 132 McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) 84 McDonough, William 82 McGregor, Douglas 63 MacGyvers 17–18, 130, 134, 167 McKelvey, Jim 135 McKinsey & Company 81, 87, 209 mainstream, frugal products in 216 maintenance 66, 75, 76, 124, 187 costs 48–9, 66 Mainwaring, Simon 8 Maistre, Christophe de 187–8, 216 Maker Faire 18, 133–4 Maker platform 70 makers 18, 133–4, 145 manufacturing 20th-century model 46, 55, 80–1 additive 47–9 continuous 44–5 costs 47, 48, 52 decentralised 9, 44, 51–2 frugal 44–54 integration with logistics 57–8 new approaches 50–4 social 50–1 subtractive method 48 tools for 47, 47–50 Margarine Unie 96 market 15, 28, 38, 64, 186, 189, 192 R&D and 21, 26, 33, 34 market research 25, 61, 139, 141 market share 100 marketing 21–2, 24, 36, 61–3, 91, 116–20, 131, 139 and R&D 34, 37, 37–8 marketing teams 143, 150 markets 12–13, 42, 62, 215 see also emerging markets Marks & Spencer (M&S) 97, 215 Plan A 90, 156, 179–81, 183–4, 186–7, 214 Marriott 140 Mars 57, 158–9, 161 Martin Marietta 159 Martin, Tod 154 mass customisation 9, 46, 47, 48, 57–8 mass market 189 mass marketing 21–2 mass production 9, 46, 57, 58, 74, 129, 196 Massachusetts Institute of Technology see MIT massive open online courses see MOOCs materials 3, 47, 48, 73, 92, 161 costs 153, 161, 190 recyclable 74, 81, 196 recycled 77, 81–2, 83, 86, 89, 183, 193 renewable 77, 86 repurposing 93 see also C2C; reuse Mayhew, Stephen 35, 36 Mazoyer, Eric 90 Mazzella, Frédéric 163 MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry) 84 MDI 16 measurable goals 185–6 Mechanical Engineer Laboratory (MEL) 52 “MEcosystems” 154–5, 156–8 Medicare 110 medication 111–12 Medicity 211 MedStartr 17 MEL (Mechanical Engineer Laboratory) 52 mental models 2, 193–203, 206, 216 Mercure 173 Merlin, Rose 127 Mestrallet, Gérard 53, 54 method (company) 81–2 Mexico 38, 56 Michelin 160 micro-factories 51–2, 52, 66, 129, 152 micro-robots 52 Microsoft 38 Microsoft Kinect 130 Microsoft Word 24 middle classes 197–8, 216 Migicovsky, Eric 137–8 Mikkiche, Karim 199 millennials 7, 14, 17, 131–2, 137, 141, 142 MindCET 165 miniaturisation 52, 53–4 Mint.com 125 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 44–5, 107, 130, 134, 202 mobile health see m-health mobile phones 24, 32, 61, 129–30, 130, 168, 174 emerging market use 198 infrastructure 56, 198 see also smartphones mobile production units 66–7 mobile technologies 16, 17, 103, 133, 174, 200–1, 207 Mocana 151 Mochon, Daniel 132 modular design 67, 90 modular production units 66–7 Modularer Querbaukasten see MQB “mompreneurs” 145 Mondelez 158–9 Money Dashboard 125 Moneythink 162 monitoring 65–6, 106, 131 Monopoly 144 MOOCs (massive open online courses) 60, 61, 112, 113, 114, 164 Morieux, Yves 64 Morocco 207 Morris, Robert 199–200 motivation, employees 178, 180, 186, 192, 205–8 motivational approaches to shaping consumer behaviour 105–6 Motorola 56 MQB (Modularer Querbaukasten) 44, 45–6 Mulally, Alan 70, 166 Mulcahy, Simon 157 Mulliez family 126–7 Mulliez, Vianney 13, 126 multi-nodal innovation 202–3 Munari, Bruno 93 Murray, Mike 48–9 Musk, Elon 172 N Nano car 119, 156 National Geographic 102 natural capital, loss of 158–9 Natural Capital Leaders Platform 158–9 natural resources 45, 86 depletion 7, 72, 105, 153, 158–9 see also resources NCR 55–6 near-shoring 55 Nelson, Simon 113 Nemo, Sophie-Noëlle 93 Nest Labs 98–100, 103 Nestlé 31, 44, 68, 78, 94, 158–9, 194, 195 NetPositive plan 86, 208 networking 152–3, 153 new materials 47, 92 New Matter 132 new technologies 21, 27 Newtopia 32 next-generation customers 121–2 next-generation manufacturing techniques 44–6, 46–7 see also frugal manufacturing Nigeria 152, 197–8 Nike 84 NineSigma 151 Nissan 4, 4–5, 44, 199 see also Renault-Nissan non-governmental organisations 167 non-profit organisations 161, 162, 202 Nooyi, Indra 217 Norman, Donald 120 Norris, Greg 196 North American companies 216–17 North American market 22 Northrup Grumman 68 Norton, Michael 132 Norway 103 Novartis 44–5, 215 Novotel 173, 174 nudging 100, 108, 111, 117, 162 Nussbaum, Bruce 140 O O2 147 Obama, President Barack 6, 8, 13, 134, 138, 208 obsolescence, planned 24, 121 offshoring 55 Oh, Amy 145 Ohayon, Elie 71–2 Oliver Wyman 22 Olocco, Gregory 206 O’Marah, Kevin 58 on-demand services 39, 124 online communities 31, 50, 61, 134 online marketing 143 online retailing 60, 132 onshoring 55 Opel 4 open innovation 104, 151, 152, 153, 154 open-source approach 48, 129, 134, 135, 172 open-source hardware 51, 52, 89, 130, 135, 139 open-source software 48, 130, 132, 144–5, 167 OpenIDEO 142 operating costs 45, 215 Opower 103, 109, 119 Orange 157 Orbitz 173 organisational change 36–7, 90–1, 176, 177–90, 203–8, 213–14, 216 business models 190–3 mental models 193–203 organisational culture 36–7, 170, 176, 177–9, 213–14, 217 efficacy focus 181–3 entrepreneurial 76, 173 see also organisational change organisational structure 63–5, 69 outsourcing 59, 143, 146 over-engineering 27, 42, 170 Overby, Christine 25 ownership 9 Oxylane Group 127 P P&G (Procter & Gamble) 19, 31, 58, 94, 117, 123, 145, 195 packaging 57, 96, 195 Page, Larry 63 “pain points” 29, 30, 31 Palmer, Michael 212 Palo Alto Junior League 20 ParkatmyHouse 17, 63, 85 Parker, Philip 61 participation, customers 128–9 partner ecosystems 153, 154, 200 partners 65, 72, 148, 153, 156–8 sharing data with 59–60 see also distributors; hyper-collaboration; suppliers Partners in Care Foundation 202 partnerships 41, 42, 152–3, 156–7, 171–2, 174, 191 with SMBs 173, 174, 175 with start-ups 20, 164–5, 175 with suppliers 192–3 see also hyper-collaboration patents 171–2 Payne, Alex 124 PE International 196 Pearson 164–5, 167, 181–3, 186, 215 Pebble 137–8 peer-to-peer economic model 10 peer-to-peer lending 10 peer-to-peer sales 60 peer-to-peer sharing 136–7 Pélisson, Gérard 172–3 PepsiCo 38, 40, 179, 190, 194, 215 performance 47, 73, 77, 80, 95 of employees 69 Pernod Ricard 157 personalisation 9, 45, 46, 48, 62, 129–30, 132, 149 Peters, Tom 21 pharmaceutical industry 13, 22, 23, 33, 58, 171, 181 continuous manufacturing 44–6 see also GSK Philippines 191 Philips 56, 84, 100, 123 Philips Lighting 32 Picaud, Philippe 122 Piggy Mojo 119 piggybacking 57 Piketty, Thomas 6 Plan A (M&S) 90, 156, 179–81, 183–4, 186–7, 214 Planet 21 (Accor) 174–5 planned obsolescence 24, 121 Plastyc 17 Plumridge, Rupert 18 point-of-sale data 58 Poland 103 pollution 74, 78, 87, 116, 187, 200 Polman, Paul 11, 72, 77, 94, 203–5, 217 portfolio management tools 27, 33 Portugal 55, 103 postponement 57–8 Potočnik, Janez 8, 79 Prabhu, Arun 25 Prahalad, C.K. 12 predictive analytics 32–3 predictive maintenance 66, 67–8 Priceline 173 pricing 81, 117 processes digitising 65–6 entrenched 14–16 re-engineering 74 simplifying 169, 173 Procter & Gamble see P&G procurement priorities 67–8 product life cycle 21, 75, 92, 186 costs 12, 24, 196 sustainability 73–5 product-sharing initiatives 87 production costs 9, 83 productivity 49, 59, 65, 79–80, 153 staff 14 profit 14, 105 Progressive 100, 116 Project Ara 130 promotion 61–3 Propeller Health 111 prosumers xix–xx, 17–18, 125, 126–33, 136–7, 148, 154 empowering and engaging 139–46 see also horizontal economy Protomax 159 prototypes 31–2, 50, 144, 152 prototyping 42, 52, 65, 152, 167, 192, 206 public 50–1, 215 public sector, working with 161–2 publishers 17, 61 Pullman 173 Puma 194 purchasing power 5–6, 216 pyramidal model of production 51 pyramidal organisations 69 Q Qarnot Computing 89 Qualcomm 84 Qualcomm Life 112 quality 3, 11–12, 15, 24, 45, 49, 82, 206, 216 high 1, 9, 93, 198, 216 measure of 105 versus quantity 8, 23 quality of life 8, 204 Quicken 19–21 Quirky 50–1, 126, 150–1, 152 R R&D 35, 67, 92, 151 big-ticket programmes 35–6 and business development 37–8 China 40, 188, 206 customer focus 27, 39, 43 frugal approach 12, 26–33, 82 global networks 39–40 incentives 38–9 industrial model 2, 21–6, 33, 36, 42 market-focused, agile model 26–33 and marketing 34, 37, 37–8 recommendations for managers 34–41 speed 23, 27, 34, 149 spending 15, 22, 23, 28, 141, 149, 152, 171, 187 technology culture 14–15, 38–9 see also Air Liquide; Ford; GSK; IBM; immersion; Renault; SNCF; Tarkett; Unilever R&D labs 9, 21–6, 70, 149, 218 in emerging markets 40, 188, 200 R&D teams 26, 34, 38–9, 65, 127, 150, 194–5 hackers as 142 innovation brokering 168 shaping customer behaviour 120–2 Raspberry Pi 135–6, 164 Ratti, Carlo 107 raw materials see materials real-time demand signals 58, 59 Rebours, Christophe 157–8 recession 5–6, 6, 46, 131, 180 Reckitt Benckiser 102 recommendations for managers flexing assets 65–71 R&D 34–41 shaping consumer behaviour 116–24 sustainability 90–3 recruiting 70–1 recyclable materials 74, 81, 196 recyclable products 3, 73, 159, 195–6 recycled materials 77, 81–2, 83, 86, 89, 183, 193 recycling 8, 9, 87, 93, 142, 159 e-waste 87–8 electronic and electrical goods (EU) 8, 79 by Tarkett 73–7 water 83, 175 see also C2C; circular economy Recy’Go 92–3 regional champions 182 regulation 7–8, 13, 78–9, 103, 216 Reich, Joshua 124 RelayRides 17 Renault 1–5, 12, 117, 156–7, 179 Renault-Nissan 4–5, 40, 198–9, 215 renewable energy 8, 53, 74, 86, 91, 136, 142, 196 renewable materials 77, 86 Replicator 132 repurposing 93 Requardt, Hermann 189 reshoring 55–6 resource constraints 4–5, 217 resource efficiency 7–8, 46, 47–9, 79, 190 Resource Revolution (Heck, Rogers and Carroll, 2014) 87–8 resources 40, 42, 73, 86, 197, 199 consumption 9, 26, 73–7, 101–2 costs 78, 203 depletion 7, 72, 105, 153, 158–9 reducing use 45, 52, 65, 73–7, 104, 199, 203 saving 72, 77, 200 scarcity 22, 46, 72, 73, 77–8, 80, 158–9, 190, 203 sharing 56–7, 159–61, 167 substitution 92 wasting 169–70 retailers 56, 129, 214 “big-box” 9, 18, 137 Rethink Robotics 49 return on investment 22, 197 reuse 9, 73, 76–7, 81, 84–5, 92–3, 200 see also C2C revenues, generating 77, 167, 180 reverse innovation 202–3 rewards 37, 178, 208 Riboud, Franck 66, 184, 217 Rifkin, Jeremy 9–10 robots 47, 49–50, 70, 144–5, 150 Rock Health 151 Rogers, Jay 129 Rogers, Matt 87–8 Romania 2–3, 103 rookie mindset 164, 168 Rose, Stuart 179–80, 180 Roulin, Anne 195 Ryan, Eric 81–2 Ryanair 60 S S-Oil 106 SaaS (software as a service) 60 Saatchi & Saatchi 70–1 Saatchi & Saatchi + Duke 71–2, 143 sales function 15, 21, 25–6, 36, 116–18, 146 Salesforce.com 157 Santi, Paolo 108 SAP 59, 186 Saunders, Charles 211 savings 115 Sawa Orchards 29–31 Scandinavian countries 6–7 see also Norway Schmidt, Eric 136 Schneider Electric 150 Schulman, Dan 161–2 Schumacher, E.F. 104–5, 105 Schweitzer, Louis 1, 2, 3, 4, 179 SCM (supply chain management) systems 59 SCOR (supply chain operations reference) model 67 Seattle 107 SEB 157 self-sufficiency 8 selling less 123–4 senior managers 122–4, 199 see also CEOs; organisational change sensors 65–6, 106, 118, 135, 201 services 9, 41–3, 67–8, 124, 149 frugal 60–3, 216 value-added 62–3, 76, 150, 206, 209 Shapeways 51, 132 shareholders 14, 15, 76, 123–4, 180, 204–5 sharing 9–10, 193 assets 159–61, 167 customers 156–8 ideas 63–4 intellectual assets 171–2 knowledge 153 peer-to-peer 136–9 resources 56–7, 159–61, 167 sharing economy 9–10, 17, 57, 77, 80, 84–7, 108, 124 peer-to-peer sharing 136–9 sharing between companies 159–60 shipping costs 55, 59 shopping experience 121–2 SIEH hotel group 172–3 Siemens 117–18, 150, 187–9, 215, 216 Sigismondi, Pier Luigi 100 Silicon Valley 42, 98, 109, 150, 151, 162, 175 silos, breaking out of 36–7 Simple Bank 124–5 simplicity 8, 41, 64–5, 170, 194 Singapore 175 Six Sigma 11 Skillshare 85 SkyPlus 62 Small is Beautiful (Schumacher, 1973) 104–5 “small is beautiful” values 8 small and medium-sized businesses see SMBs Smart + Connected Communities 29 SMART car 119–20 SMART strategy (Siemens) 188–9 smartphones 17, 100, 106, 118, 130, 131, 135, 198 in health care 110, 111 see also apps SmartScan 29 SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) 173, 174, 175, 176 SMS-based systems 42–3 SnapShot 116 SNCF 41–3, 156–7, 167 SoapBox 28–9 social business model 206–7 social comparison 109 social development 14 social goals 94 social learning 113 social manufacturing 47, 50–1 social media 16, 71, 85, 106, 108, 168, 174 for marketing 61, 62, 143 mining 29, 58 social pressure of 119 tools 109, 141 and transaction costs 133 see also Facebook; social networks; Twitter social networks 29, 71, 72, 132–3, 145, 146 see also Facebook; Twitter social pressure 119 social problems 82, 101–2, 141, 142, 153, 161–2, 204 social responsibility 7, 10, 14, 141, 142, 197, 204 corporate 77, 82, 94, 161 social sector, working with 161–2 “social tinkerers” 134–5 socialising education 112–14 Sofitel 173 software 72 software as a service (SaaS) 60 solar power 136, 201 sourcing, local 51–2, 56 Southwest Airlines 60 Spain 5, 6, 103 Spark 48 speed dating 175, 176 spending, on R&D 15, 22, 23, 28, 141, 149, 152, 171, 187 spiral economy 77, 87–90 SRI International 49, 52 staff see employees Stampanato, Gary 55 standards 78, 196 Starbucks 7, 140 start-ups 16–17, 40–1, 61, 89, 110, 145, 148, 150, 169, 216 investing in 137–8, 157 as partners 42, 72, 153, 175, 191, 206 see also Nest Labs; Silicon Valley Statoil 160 Steelcase 142 Stem 151 Stepner, Diana 165 Stewart, Emma 196–7 Stewart, Osamuyimen 201–2 Sto Corp 84 Stora Enso 195 storytelling 112, 113 Strategy& see Booz & Company Subramanian, Prabhu 114 substitution of resources 92 subtractive manufacturing 48 Sun Tzu 158 suppliers 67–8, 83, 148, 153, 167, 176, 192–3 collaboration with 76, 155–6 sharing with 59–60, 91 visibility 59–60 supply chain management see SCM supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model 67 supply chains 34, 36, 54, 65, 107, 137, 192–3 carbon footprint 156 costs 58, 84 decentralisation 66–7 frugal 54–60 integrating 161 small-circuit 137 sustainability 137 visibility 34, 59–60 support 135, 152 sustainability xix, 9, 12, 72, 77–80, 82, 97, 186 certification 84 as competitive advantage 80 consumers and 95, 97, 101–4 core design principle 82–4, 93, 195–6 and growth 76, 80, 104–5 perceptions of 15–16, 80, 91 recommendations for managers 90–3 regulatory demand for 78–9, 216 standard bearers of 80, 97, 215 see also Accor; circular economy; Kingfisher; Marks & Spencer; Tarkett; Unilever sustainable design 82–4 see also C2C sustainable distribution 57, 161 sustainable growth 72, 76–7 sustainable lifestyles 107–8 Sustainable Living Plan (Unilever) 94–7, 179, 203–4 sustainable manufacturing 9, 52 T “T-shaped” employees 70–1 take-back programmes 9, 75, 77, 78 Tally 196–7 Tarkett 73–7, 80, 84 TaskRabbit 85 Tata Motors 16, 119 Taylor, Frederick 71 technical design 37–8 technical support, by customers 146 technology 2, 14–15, 21–2, 26, 27 TechShop 9, 70, 134–5, 152, 166–7 telecoms sector 53, 56 Telefónica 147 telematic monitoring 116 Ternois, Laurence 42 Tesco 102 Tesla Motors 92, 172 testing 28, 42, 141, 170, 192 Texas Industries 159 Textoris, Vincent 127 TGV Lab 42–3 thermostats 98–100 thinking, entrenched 14–16 Thompson, Gav 147 Timberland 90 time 4, 7, 11, 41, 72, 129, 170, 200 constraints 36, 42 see also development cycle tinkerers 17–18, 133–5, 144, 150, 152, 153, 165–7, 168 TiVo 62 Tohamy, Noha 59–60 top-down change 177–8 top-down management 69 Total 157 total quality management (TQM) 11 total volatile organic compounds see TVOC Toyota 44, 100 Toyota Sweden 106–7 TQM (total quality management) 11 traffic 108, 116, 201 training 76, 93, 152, 167, 170, 189 transaction costs 133 transparency 178, 185 transport 46, 57, 96, 156–7 Transport for London 195 TrashTrack 107 Travelocity 174 trial and error 173, 179 Trout, Bernhardt 45 trust 7, 37, 143 TVOC (total volatile organic compounds) 74, 77 Twitter 29, 62, 135, 143, 147 U Uber 136, 163 Ubuntu 202 Uchiyama, Shunichi 50 UCLA Health 202–3 Udacity 61, 112 UK 194 budget cuts 6 consumer empowerment 103 industrial symbiosis 160 savings 115 sharing 85, 138 “un-management” 63–4, 64 Unboundary 154 Unilever 11, 31, 57, 97, 100, 142, 203–5, 215 and sustainability 94–7, 104, 179, 203–4 University of Cambridge Engineering Design Centre (EDC) 194–5 Inclusive Design team 31 Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) 158–9 upcycling 77, 88–9, 93, 159 upselling 189 Upton, Eben 135–6 US 8, 38, 44, 87, 115, 133, 188 access to financial services 13, 17, 161–2 ageing population 194 ageing workforce 13 commuting 131 consumer spending 5, 6, 103 crowdfunding 137–8, 138 economic pressures 5, 6 energy use 103, 119, 196 environmental awareness 7, 102 frugal innovation in 215–16, 218 health care 13, 110, 208–13, 213 intellectual property 171 onshoring 55 regulation 8, 78, 216 sharing 85, 138–9 shifting production from China to 55, 56 tinkering culture 18, 133–4 user communities 62, 89 user interfaces 98, 99 user-friendliness 194 Utopies 91 V validators 144 value 11, 132, 177, 186, 189–90 aspirational 88–9 to customers 6–7, 21, 77, 87, 131, 203 from employees 217 shareholder value 14 value chains 9, 80, 128–9, 143, 159–60, 190, 215 value engineering 192 “value gap” 54–5 value-added services 62–3, 76, 150, 206, 209 values 6–7, 14, 178, 205 Vandebroek, Sophie 169 Vasanthakumar, Vaithegi 182–3 Vats, Tanmaya 190, 192 vehicle fleets, sharing 57, 161 Verbaken, Joop 118 vertical integration 133, 154 virtual prototyping 65 virtuous cycle 212–13 visibility 34, 59–60 visible learning 112–13 visioning sessions 193–4 visualisation 106–8 Vitality 111 Volac 158–9 Volkswagen 4, 44, 45–6, 129, 144 Volvo 62 W wage costs 48 wages, in emerging markets 55 Waitrose, local suppliers 56 Walker, James 87 walking the walk 122–3 Waller, Sam 195 Walmart 9, 18, 56, 162, 216 Walton, Sam 9 Wan Jia 144 Washington DC 123 waste 24, 87–9, 107, 159–60, 175, 192, 196 beautifying 88–9, 93 e-waste 24, 79, 87–8, 121 of energy 119 post-consumer 9, 75, 77, 78, 83 reducing 47, 74, 85, 96, 180, 209 of resources 169–70 in US health-care system 209 see also C2C; recycling; reuse water 78, 83, 104, 106, 158, 175, 188, 206 water consumption 79, 82–3, 100, 196 reducing 74, 75, 79, 104, 122–3, 174, 183 wealth 105, 218 Wear It Share It (Wishi) 85 Weijmarshausen, Peter 51 well-being 104–5 Wham-O 56 Whirlpool 36 “wicked” problems 153 wireless technologies 65–6 Wiseman, Liz 164 Wishi (Wear It Share It) 85 Witty, Andrew 35, 35–6, 37, 39, 217 W.L.


Southeast Asia on a Shoestring Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

active transport: walking or cycling, airport security, Alfred Russel Wallace, anti-communist, British Empire, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, clockwatching, colonial rule, flag carrier, gentrification, Global Witness, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, large denomination, low cost airline, Mason jar, megacity, period drama, restrictive zoning, retail therapy, Skype, South China Sea, spice trade, superstar cities, sustainable-tourism, the long tail, trade route, urban sprawl, white picket fence, women in the workforce

* * * Air Airports & Airlines Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA; Code MNL; 02-877 1109) The country’s recently upgraded flagship airport is in flux – see the boxed text below for important arrival/departure information regarding terminals. The Philippines’ primary low-cost carrier, Cebu Pacific, serves an ever-growing list of Southeast Asian cities, including Bangkok, Brunei, Jakarta, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, Saigon and Singapore. The other low-cost airlines flying to/from NAIA are local carrier Zest Air, Singapore’s Jetstar Asia and Tiger Airways. The country’s flagship carrier, Philippine Airlines (PAL), also serves many Southeast Asian destinations. Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (Clark Airport; code DMIA; www.clarkairport.com) Clark Airport is near Angeles, a two-hour bus ride north of downtown Manila.

Tourism Malaysia (www.tourismmalaysia.gov.my) KL Sentral ( 2274 5823; 9am-6pm); Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA; 8776 5651; International Arrival Hall, Sepang); Putra World Trade Centre ( 2615 8188; Level 17, 45 Jln Tun Ismail; 9am-6pm Mon-Sat) Getting There & Away Kuala Lumpur is Malaysia’s principal international arrival gateway and it forms the crossroads for domestic bus, train and taxi travel. Air For details of international airlines, Click here. Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA; 8777 8888; www.klia.com.my; Pengrus Besar) is the main airport, 75km south of the city centre at Sepang. AirAsia ( 8775 4000; www.airasia.com) flights arrive and depart from the nearby Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT; 8777 8888; www.lcct.com.my), while Firefly ( 03-7845 4543; www.fireflyz.com.my) and Berjaya Air ( 2145 2828; www.berjaya-air.com) flights use Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport ( 7845 8382) in Subang, about 20km west of the city centre. Boat Ferries sail to Tanjung Balai on Sumatra (one way RM145, 3½ hours, 11am Monday to Saturday) in Indonesia from Pelabuhan Klang (Port Klang), accessible by KTM Komuter train from KL Sentral or by public bus (RM3.50) from Klang bus stand by Pasar Seni LRT station.

If you have more time than money, catch the Airport Coach ( 8787 3894; www.airportcoach.com.my; one way/return RM10/18) to KL Sentral (one hour); it can also take you onwards to any central KL hotel from KLIA and pick up for the return journey for a round-trip total of RM25. The bus stand is clearly signposted inside the terminal. Taxis from KLIA operate on a fixed-fare coupon system. Purchase a coupon from a counter at the arrival hall and use it to pay the driver. Standard taxis cost RM67.10. Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) Skybus (www.skybus.com.my; one-way RM9) and Aerobus (one-way RM8) depart every 15 minutes from 4.30am to 12.45am and take an hour. From LCCT, prepaid taxis charge RM62 to Chinatown or Jln Bukit Bintang (50% more from midnight to 6am). Buy your coupon at the desk near the arrivals hall exit.


Germany by Andrea Schulte-Peevers

Albert Einstein, bank run, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, call centre, capitalist realism, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, company town, computer age, credit crunch, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Google Earth, haute couture, haute cuisine, Honoré de Balzac, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, low cost airline, messenger bag, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Eisenman, place-making, post-work, Prenzlauer Berg, retail therapy, ride hailing / ride sharing, sensible shoes, Skype, trade route, urban planning, urban renewal, V2 rocket, white picket fence

There’s a regular flea market (Hohen Ufer; 8am-4pm Sat) behind the Historisches Museum, along the Leine River Canal near Die Nanas. Return to beginning of chapter Getting There & Away AIR Hanover Airport (HAJ; 977 1223; www.hannover-airport.de) has many connections, including Lufthansa ( 0180-380 3803), and the low-cost carriers Air Berlin ( 01805-737 800; www.airberlin.com) to/from London-Stansted and TuiFly ( 01805-757 510; www.tuifly.com) to/from Newcastle in Great Britain. The S-Bahn (S5) takes 18 minutes from the airport to the Hauptbahnhof (€2.80). CAR & MOTORCYCLE Nearby autobahns run to Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin, with good connections to Bremen, Cologne, Amsterdam and Brussels.

If you follow Grosse Gildewart south, it becomes Rolandsmauer, where you find Lagerhalle ( 338 740; www.lagerhalle-osnabrueck.de; Rolandsmauer 26; 8pm-1am Mon, 6pm-1am Tue-Thu, 6pm-2am Fri & Sat, 9.30am-11pm Sun; ), a culture venue, cinema and bar with everything from readings through film to live jazz or rock. Cultcha seekers of all ages simply drink, snack or play pool here, too. Outside is a board listing other places to go to in Heger-Tor-Viertel, inviting exploration of the quarter. Return to beginning of chapter Getting There & Away The low-cost carrier Air Berlin (www.airberlin.com) is among those with services to Münster- Osnabrück airport (FMO; www.flughafen.fmo.de). The airport is 30km southwest of the centre, and reached by Schnellbus X150 (€9, 40 minutes), which leaves the airport almost hourly between 3.30am and 11pm Monday to Friday, from 8.10am Saturday and from 10am Sunday.

Return to beginning of chapter GETTING THERE & AWAY Air Bremen’s airport ( 559 50; www.airport-bremen.de) is about 3.5km south of the centre and has flights to destinations in Germany and Europe. Airline offices here include Air Berlin ( 0421-552 035) and Lufthansa Airlines ( 01803-803 803). Low-cost carrier RyanAir (www.ryanair.com) flies to Edinburgh and London Stansted. Return to beginning of chapter Boat Hal Över Schreiber Reederei ( 338 989; www.hal-oever.de, Martinianleger, Schlachte 2) operates scheduled services along the Weser between April and September. Boats from Bremen to Bremerhaven (one-way/return €14.80/23.80, 3½ hours), with numerous stops en route, depart at 8.30am every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and 9.30am on Sunday.


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Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Thomas Ramge

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, Apollo 11, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, banking crisis, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, conceptual framework, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, gig economy, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, inventory management, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land reform, Large Hadron Collider, lone genius, low cost airline, low interest rates, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market design, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, Parag Khanna, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price anchoring, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, random walk, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, statistical model, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, universal basic income, vertical integration, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator

Of course, it’s important to understand not only whether a given industry sector has efficiency opportunities but also whether a particular firm, by focusing on efficiency, can improve its relative position. Most traditional airlines may recognize their inefficiencies and see the advantages of the low-cost carrier model exemplified by JetBlue and Ryanair, but they lack the ability to reform themselves due to a variety of factors, from existing obligations to ossified organizational structures. The second important factor is time. Relative efficiency improvements almost always result in an advantage that’s only temporary as other firms catch up.

Similar efficiency gains were realized through the optimization of every process within a firm, whether it was called Taylorism, Six Sigma, or lean management. Whether a focus on efficiency is a suitable strategy largely depends on two factors. First, are there existing inefficiencies within an industry that can be eliminated? The traditional network airline business model, for example, was wasteful enough that more efficient, low-cost airlines could take over a substantial share of the air-travel market. By contrast, modern large supermarket chains are so comparatively efficient in their operations that new entrants (including digital start-ups—remember Webvan?) have had much less opportunity to disrupt them. Of course, it’s important to understand not only whether a given industry sector has efficiency opportunities but also whether a particular firm, by focusing on efficiency, can improve its relative position.


Switzerland by Damien Simonis, Sarah Johnstone, Nicola Williams

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, bank run, car-free, clean water, financial engineering, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, the market place, trade route, young professional

Its translucent skin looks best when lit up, which only happens during games, every week or so. Take tram No 14 to get there. Getting There & Away AIR EuroAirport (%061 325 31 11; www.euroairport.com) serves Basel (as well as Mulhouse, France and Freiburg, Germany). Located 5km north in France, it has several routes to London on Swiss International Air Lines and low-cost carrier easyJet, with direct flights to many continental cities, including Alicante, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Madrid, Naples, Paris and Rome. BOAT An enjoyable, if slow, way to travel to/from Basel is via boat along the Rhine. The landing stage is between Johanniterbrücke and Dreirosenbrücke.

The two main scheduled carriers are British Airways (% 0845-773 3377; www.ba.com) and Swiss International Air Lines (%0845-601 0956; www.swiss.com), which both have services leaving from Heathrow and London City airports. Ticino carrier Darwin Airline (%+41 (0) 800 177 177 international toll free; www.darwin-airline.com) flies from London City Airport (to Bern and Lugano only). Several low-cost carriers travel between the UK and Switzerland, including easyJet (%0870-600 0000; www.easyjet.com) and Helvetic (%020 7026 3464; www.helvetic.com). Note that if you travel Air Berlin (%0870 738 8880; www.air LAND Bus Eurolines (www.eurolines.com), via local operator Alsa+Eggman (%0900 573 747 per min Sfr1.50, Geneva%022 716 91 10, Zürich%043 366 64 30; www .alsa-eggmann.ch), operates services on about 35 Continental Europe ROAD TOLLS The number of low-cost flights has mushroomed in recent years.

Note that if you travel Air Berlin (%0870 738 8880; www.air LAND Bus Eurolines (www.eurolines.com), via local operator Alsa+Eggman (%0900 573 747 per min Sfr1.50, Geneva%022 716 91 10, Zürich%043 366 64 30; www .alsa-eggmann.ch), operates services on about 35 Continental Europe ROAD TOLLS The number of low-cost flights has mushroomed in recent years. If you book very early – and are lucky – you might find flights for as little as €22 each way (plus taxes). Air Berlin (%www.airberlin.com) flies to Zürich from dozens of destinations in Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Beware that you need to book very early with this particular low-cost carrier to get the best deal. easyJet (www.easyjet.com; France %08-25 08 25 There’s a one-off charge of Sfr40 to use Swiss motorways and semi-motorways, identified by green signs. The charge is payable at the border (in cash, including euros) or from Swiss tourist offices abroad (see p322). The sticker (vignette) you receive upon paying the tax can also be bought at post offices and petrol stations.


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Berlin by Andrea Schulte-Peevers

Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Google Earth, indoor plumbing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Prenzlauer Berg, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Skype, starchitect, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal

Not to mention, it helps min-imise your carbon footprint. Getting to the city is easy as well. Flights, tours and rail tickets can be booked online at www.lonelyplanet.com/travel_services. Return to beginning of chapter AIR Lufthansa, practically all other major European airlines and low-cost carriers (including Air Berlin, easyJet, Ryanair and Germanwings) operate direct flights to Berlin from throughout Europe. With few exceptions, travel from outside Europe involves a change of planes in another European city such as Frankfurt or Amsterdam. Your best friend in ferreting out deals is the internet.

Check directly with the airline or a travel agent to make sure you understand how a fare (and ticket you may buy) works and be aware of the security requirements for international travel. Shop carefully. The details given in this chapter should be regarded as pointers and are not a substitute for your own careful, up-to-date research. * * * Many airlines now guarantee the lowest fares on their own websites, so check these out as well. To get the skinny on which low-cost airlines fly where, go to www.whichbudget.com and then book tickets on the airline website. Airports Berlin has two international airports, reflecting the legacy of the divided city. The larger one is in the northwestern suburb of Tegel, about 8km from the city centre, the other in Schönefeld (off Map), about 22km southeast in the former East Berlin.

There’s no surcharge for night trips but bulky luggage costs an extra €1 per piece. A ride from Alexanderplatz to Zoologischer Garten costs about €13. For a nifty fare calculator or to order a cab online, see www.taxi-in-berlin.de. * * * SMART TRAVEL Flying has become second nature in this era of low-cost airlines and few of us stop to consider using alternative travel methods and doing our bit for the environment. Yet, depending on where you’re based, getting to Berlin without a plane is easier and more comfortable than you might think. Coming from London, for instance, you could catch the Eurostar after work, switch to a German night train in Brussels and be in Berlin for breakfast.


Italy by Damien Simonis

active transport: walking or cycling, airport security, bike sharing, Bonfire of the Vanities, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, company town, congestion charging, dark pattern, discovery of the americas, Frank Gehry, haute couture, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Kickstarter, Kinder Surprise, large denomination, low cost airline, Murano, Venice glass, pension reform, period drama, Peter Eisenman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, retail therapy, Skype, spice trade, starchitect, sustainable-tourism, trade route, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce

Getting There & Away AIR Falconara airport (Raffaello Sanzio Airport; AOI; 071 2 82 71; www.ancona-airport.it, in Italian), although it’s expanded in recent years, is still without some services (such as, oh, restaurants). Flights arrive from Munich, Dusseldorf, London, Rome, Florence and Moscow, along with a few more obscure locales like Timisoara and Majorca. Major airlines that fly into Ancona include Lufthansa, Alitalia and Ryanair. Click here for more information on low-cost carriers such as Ryanair. BUS Most buses originate at Piazza Cavour except for a few to Falconara and the Portonovo bus, which originate at the train station. See the table below for destinations. CAR & MOTORCYCLE Ancona is on the A14, which links Bologna with Bari. The SS16 coastal road runs parallel to the autostrada and is a more pleasant toll-free alternative if you’re not looking to get anywhere fast.

Return to beginning of chapter GETTING THERE & AWAY Air Capodichino airport (NAP; off Map; 081 789 62 59; www.gesac.it), 7km northeast of the city centre, is southern Italy’s main airport, linking Naples with most Italian and several major European cities, as well as New York. Serviced by a number of major airlines, including Alitalia and British Airways, the airport also hosts a number of low-cost carriers. Among the latter is easyjet which connects Naples to several European cities, including London, Paris (Orly) and Berlin. Boat Naples, the bay islands and the Amalfi Coast are served by a comprehensive ferry network. In Naples, ferries and hydrofoils leave for Capri, Sorrento, Ischia, Procida and Forio from Molo Beverello in front of Castel Nuovo; hydrofoils for Capri, Ischia and Procida also sail from Mergellina; longer-distance ferries for Palermo, Cagliari, Milazzo, the Aeolian Islands (Isole Eolie) and Tunisia leave from the Stazione Marittima.

Return to beginning of chapter AIR High seasons are generally June to September, Christmas and Easter, although it depends in part on your destination. Shoulder season is often from mid-September to the end of October and again in April. Low season is generally November to March. Airports & Airlines The country’s main intercontinental gateway is the Leonardo da Vinci Airport (Fiumicino; 06 6 59 51; www.adr.it) in Rome, but many low-cost carriers land at Rome’s Ciampino Airport ( 06 6 59 51; www.adr.it) – Click here for more details. Regular intercontinental flights also serve Milan’s Malpensa Airport ( 02 7485 2200; www.sea-aeroportimilano.it), which is located 50km from the city. Plenty of flights from other European cities fly to regional capitals (Click here for more information).


pages: 496 words: 131,938

The Future Is Asian by Parag Khanna

3D printing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Basel III, bike sharing, birth tourism , blockchain, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, death from overwork, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, energy security, European colonialism, factory automation, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, flex fuel, gig economy, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green transition, haute couture, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, Internet of things, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, light touch regulation, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, machine translation, Malacca Straits, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, mortgage debt, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, Parag Khanna, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, prediction markets, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, smart cities, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Vision Fund, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

Two decades on from the 1997 financial crisis, trade and investment liberalization and supply-chain integration have spurred robust economic growth on the back of record volumes of foreign investment with global linkages spreading beyond India, China, Japan, and Australia to the Gulf countries, Europe, the United States, and even Latin America. ASEAN’s members have committed to a 2025 master plan to harmonize standards for banking, telecoms, and e-commerce, by which time Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam may change their time zone to align with Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Manila. Air Asia and a dozen other low-cost carriers have made intraregional travel affordable for the masses, leading to waves of tourists visiting one another’s countries and taking cross-border jobs with the growing number of large pan-Asian companies. In the coming years, major new transport and trade corridors such as a high-speed railway network from Kunming in southern China through Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia to Singapore will knit China ever more closely to Southeast Asia.

Since 2016, Paris has actually declined as a destination for Asians. South Korea remains the top destination for Chinese tourists (despite the recent ban on Chinese visiting the popular Jeju Island), while Chinese also swarm through Japan and Australia and sent a record 1.5 million tourists to Russia in 2017. With visa restrictions drastically reduced and low-cost airlines flourishing, Asians are discovering their own region in record numbers. India’s inbound tourism is growing by double digits annually and just crossed 10 million visitors. It’s hard not to spot Japanese and Israelis from Himachal Pradesh to Goa. Indian destination weddings are a business boon for Dubai, Bangkok, and Bali.


pages: 126 words: 32,936

Berlitz: Sardinia Pocket Guide (Berlitz Pocket Guides) by Apa

car-free, centre right, low cost airline

For gay events in Sardinia check out www.associazionearc.eu or www.movimentomosessualesardo.org. Getting There By Air. An increasing number of low-cost airlines now fly direct to Sardinia from the UK and other European destinations. Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) has regular flights from Stansted to Alghero. EasyJet (www.easyjet.com) flies from Stansted to Cágliari and from Gatwick and Bristol to Olbia. Scheduled airlines have been forced to cut the costs of flights to compete with low-cost airlines. British Airways (www.ba.com) flies direct to Cágliari from Gatwick and from Heathrow to Olbia. There are no direct flights from long-haul destinations.

Moreover, each region retains its culinary specialities, from elaborate home-made bread and pastries to suckling pig slowly roasted and served on a bed of myrtle leaves. Tourism Today Much, of course, has changed since Lawrence's day. Since the 1960s the international jet set have been flocking to the Costa Smeralda, mere mortals to less famous resorts on low-cost airlines. Brochure descriptions of Sardinia as ‘a slice of the Seychelles’ or ‘Italy's Caribbean’ are not complete hyperbole. It would be hard to find a concentration of such enticing beaches anywhere else in the Mediterranean. The sands are white, the waters come in every conceivable shade of blue and green and the wind-sculpted rocks, cliffs, dunes and marshes provide stunning and continually shifting vistas.

There are no direct flights from long-haul destinations. Passengers from the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia can fly to Rome or Milan and take one of the many connecting flights to Sardinia, but it's worth comparing the cost of a cheap flight to London, and then a charter or flight with a low-cost airline to Sardinia. By Ferry. Sardinia is well connected to Italian mainland ports. Ferry services operate to the island from Civitavecchia, Fiumicino, Naples, Livorno, La Spezia and Genoa; also from Palermo and Trapani in Sicily. The main ferry companies operating services to the mainland are Tirrenia (www.tirrenia.it) and Moby (www.moby.it).


pages: 726 words: 210,048

Hard Landing by Thomas Petzinger, Thomas Petzinger Jr.

airline deregulation, Boeing 747, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, centralized clearinghouse, Charles Lindbergh, collective bargaining, cross-subsidies, desegregation, Donald Trump, emotional labour, feminist movement, index card, junk bonds, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Michael Milken, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, postindustrial economy, price stability, profit motive, Ralph Nader, revenue passenger mile, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, strikebreaker, technological determinism, the medium is the message, The Predators' Ball, Thomas L Friedman, union organizing, yield management, zero-sum game

Likewise, Southwest’s service, though stripped down and basic, was impeccably consistent and iridescently friendly. Crandall was concerned to learn that some businesses had begun requiring employees to travel at the lowest fare available, regardless of the level of service it required them to endure. Of all these low-cost carriers, People Express was, in early 1985, the greatest threat by far. But People Express was also perhaps the most vulnerable. Barbara Amster of the American pricing department considered People Express “the guys with the Southwest Airlines philosophy but without the brains of Southwest.” More aptly, perhaps, Don Burr and People Express had all the great ideas of Herb Kelleher and Southwest Airlines but lacked their discipline.

Crandall had not forgotten: Crandall 4/23/93 interview. 18. nearly 1,500 departures: “Revenue Control: Mining Gold at the Margin,” by Samuel M. Fuchs, Airline Executive, Jan. 1987. 19. assigned to Barbara R. Amster: Amster 4/29/93 interview. 20. had to be eradicated: Crandall 4/23/93 interview; “American on the Offensive,” Financial World, Feb. 20, 1985; “American Tries to Muscle In on the Low-Cost Carriers,” by Reggi Ann Dubin, BW, Feb. 4, 1985. 21. Crandall was concerned: Crandall remarks to 1985 Fall Planning Conference, American Airlines, draft dated Sept. 26, 1985. 22. “brains of Southwest”: Amster 4/29/93 interview. 23. “devised the fare”: Carty 4/29/93 interview. 24. new pricing strategy: “American Airlines Slashes Fares on Many Routes; Industry Stock Prices Slip as Rival Carriers Follow,” by Laurie P.

As points of connection, these hubs competed vigorously with one another; whenever passengers had the choice of hubs through which to reach their destination, fares remained moderate. The story was different for people who started or ended their journeys in a hub city. These hapless passengers were forced to pay monopoly prices—until a low-cost airline such as Southwest was finally drawn into the market. Then a battle ensued, and fares were quickly brought under control. Fares had become purely market-driven, as sensitive to supply and demand as a Middle Eastern bazaar. Airline prices no longer bore the slightest relation to the cost of providing the service, which was why a 300-mile trip beginning and ending at a hub airport might cost three times that of a 1,000-mile trip through a hub airport.


pages: 288 words: 66,996

Travel While You Work: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Business From Anywhere by Mish Slade

Airbnb, Atul Gawande, business process, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, content marketing, crowdsourcing, digital nomad, Firefox, Google Chrome, Google Hangouts, Inbox Zero, independent contractor, job automation, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Lyft, Multics, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Salesforce, side project, Skype, speech recognition, turn-by-turn navigation, uber lyft, WeWork

If you're not a fan of Skyscanner or want to try something else, here are some other sites that aggregate airfares and allow you to book through them: Google Flights Explorer: www.worktravel.co/gfe Kayak: www.worktravel.co/kayak Hipmunk: www.worktravel.co/hipmunk Look up low-cost airlines separately Southwest and Virgin America don't appear in Skyscanner's fare listings, and there are a few other airlines (like JetBlue) that don't appear on other aggregator sites. There might be a direct flight with one of those airlines, so check to see if that's the case. Here's a Wikipedia list of all the low-cost airlines: www.worktravel.co/lowcost. And this site will give you a list of routes from low-cost airlines if you enter your starting location and final destination (Europe only): www.worktravel.co/lowcostguide.

If you're still keen on some kind of guidance for when to book flights… this Reddit thread shows the progression of ticket prices from two weeks to four months prior to departure date, and it suggests that between four and eight weeks before departure is a good time to book: www.worktravel.co/whentobook1. And this study shows that prices start dropping at the three-month mark, with the cheapest tickets ranging from three weeks to ten weeks in advance: www.worktravel.co/whentobook2. Choose the best seats on your flight Most airlines will allow you to choose your seats (although the low-cost airlines will often charge a fee for doing so). But beyond knowing whether you're an aisle kinda guy or a window-obsessed gal, how do you decide which part of the plane to pick? (If you've never thought or worried about this before, ignore this section and go on as you were. There's no point in adding to your list of frustrations and worries when it comes to flying.)

(Bear in mind that for some reason you're NOT allowed to take outside food onboard an AirAsia flight. But everyone does anyway, and no one seems to get into trouble for it.) Listen/look out for your gate announcement and don't dilly-dally when you hear/see it. And consider buying a Speedy Boarding ticket for low-cost airlines. Essentially, you want to be on the plane putting your bag in its overhead compartment ASAP. Keep a pen handy for writing out your landing card/customs form on the plane. Conclusion A while ago I met up with a reader when we were both living in Valencia. He asked me if I was happier since quitting my job and becoming a digital nomad.


Lonely Planet Cancun, Cozumel & the Yucatan (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, John Hecht, Sandra Bao

Bartolomé de las Casas, carbon footprint, colonial rule, Day of the Dead, illegal immigration, income inequality, low cost airline, mass immigration, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, traffic fines

Getting There & Away Air Cancún’s Aeropuerto Internacional de Cancún ( 848-7200; www.asur.com.mx; Carretera Cancún-Chetumal, Km 22) is the busiest in southeastern Mexico. It has all the services you would expect from a major international airport: ATMs, money exchange, rental-car agencies. Cancún is served by many direct international flights and by connecting flights from Mexico City. Low-cost carriers Viva Aerobus (www.vivaaerobus.com), Interjet (www.interjet.com) and Volaris (www.volaris.com) all have service from Mexico City. The following is just some of the dozens of carriers with flights to Cancún. For a more complete list, see the airport website. Aeroméxico ( 287-1860; www.aeromexico.com; Av Cobá 80; R-1) Direct flights from New York.

Getting There & Away Air Mérida’s tiny airport is a 10km, 20-minute ride southwest of the Plaza Grande off Hwy 180 (Av de los Itzáes). It has car rental desks, an ATM, a currency-exchange office and a tourist information booth. Most international flights to Mérida are connections through Mexico City. Nonstop inter-national services are provided by Aeroméxico and United Airlines. Low-cost airlines Interjet and Vivaaerobus serve Mexico City. MayaAir runs prop planes to Cancún. Aeroméxico ( 800-021-4000; www.aeromexico.com) Flies direct from Miami. Interjet ( 800-011-2345, in USA 866-285-9525; www.interjet.com) MayaAir ( 987-872-3609; www.maya-air.com) United Airlines ( 926-3100, in USA 800-900-50-00; www.united.com; Paseo Montejo No 437, at Calle 29) Flies nonstop from Houston.


Lonely Planet Cancun, Cozumel & the Yucatan (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, John Hecht, Lucas Vidgen

Bartolomé de las Casas, carbon footprint, colonial rule, Day of the Dead, illegal immigration, low cost airline, mass immigration, off-the-grid, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, traffic fines

Lonely Planet offsets the carbon footprint of all staff and author travel. Air Most visitors to the Yucatán arrive by air. Direct flights normally originate from an airline's hub city and connecting flights often go through Mexico City. Mexico’s flagship airline is Aeroméxico. Its safety record is comparable to major US and European airlines. Domestic low-cost carriers provide service mostly from Mexico City. MayAir runs prop planes that stop in Cozumel, Cancún and Mérida. Airports & Airlines The majority of flights into the peninsula arrive in Cancún or Mérida. The Yucatán's major airports: Aeropuerto Ángel Albino Corzo (%961-153-60-68; www.chiapasaero.com; Sarabia s/n) Aka Tuxtla Gutiérrez; serves San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas.

Tourist Information Center ( GOOGLE MAP ; %999-924-92-90; cnr Calles 60 & 57A; h8am-8pm) On the southwest edge of the Teatro Peón Contreras, this office always has an English speaker on hand. 8Getting There & Away Air Mérida’s Aeropuerto Internacional de Mérida (Mérida International Airport; %999-940-60-90; www.asur.com.mx; Hwy 180 Km 4.5; gR-79) is a 10km, 20-minute ride southwest of the Plaza Grande off Hwy 180 (Avenida de los Itzáes). It has car-rental desks, an ATM, currency-exchange service and a tourist information booth. Most international flights to Mérida make connections through Mexico City. Nonstop international services are provided by Aeroméxico and United Airlines. Low-cost airlines Interjet, VivaAerobus and Volaris serve Mexico City. Mayair operates prop planes to Cancún and Cozumel. Aeroméxico (%toll-free 800-021-40-00; www.aeromexico.com) Flies direct from Miami. Interjet (%in USA 866-285-9525, toll-free 800-011-23-45; www.interjet.com) Serves Mexico City, where you can catch connecting flights to New York, Miami and Houston.


Lonely Planet Southern Italy by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, Google Earth, Kickstarter, Kinder Surprise, land reform, low cost airline, mass immigration, Murano, Venice glass, Pier Paolo Pasolini, place-making, post-work, Skype, starchitect, urban decay, urban sprawl, women in the workforce

Tourist Information Office (map; %081 40 23 94; www.inaples.it; Via San Carlo 9; h9am-5pm Mon-Sat, to 1pm Sun; gR2 to Via San Carlo, mMunicipio) At Galleria Umberto I, directly opposite Teatro San Carlo. 8Getting There & Away AIR Naples International Airport (Capodichino) (%081 789 62 59; www.aeroportodinapoli.it; Viale F Ruffo di Calabria), 7km northeast of the city centre, is southern Italy’s main airport. It’s served by a number of major airlines and low-cost carriers, including easyJet, which operates flights to Naples from London, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin and several other European cities. BOAT Fast ferries and hydrofoils for Capri, Ischia, Procida and Sorrento depart from Molo Beverello (map; mMunicipio) in front of Castel Nuovo; hydrofoils for Capri, Ischia and Procida also sail from Mergellina.

Nowadays the hottest topics on everyone’s mind are the island’s continued economic struggles and conflict over Sicily’s role as a major gateway for immigrants from northern Africa. 8Getting There & Away AIR A number of airlines fly direct to Sicily’s two main international airports, Palermo’s Punta Raisi (PMO) and Catania’s Fontanarossa (CTA). A few also serve the smaller airports of Trapani (TPS) and Comiso (CIY). Alitalia (www.alitalia.com) is the main Italian carrier, while Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) is the leading low-cost airline serving Sicily. BOAT Hydrofoils and car ferries cross the narrow Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland ports of Villa San Giovanni and Reggio di Calabria. Sicily is also accessible by ferry from Naples, Genoa, Civitavecchia, Livorno, Salerno, Cagliari, Malta and Tunis.


pages: 178 words: 52,637

Quality Investing: Owning the Best Companies for the Long Term by Torkell T. Eide, Lawrence A. Cunningham, Patrick Hargreaves

air freight, Albert Einstein, asset light, backtesting, barriers to entry, buy and hold, carbon tax, cashless society, cloud computing, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, discounted cash flows, discovery of penicillin, endowment effect, global pandemic, haute couture, hindsight bias, legacy carrier, low cost airline, mass affluent, Network effects, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, price elasticity of demand, proprietary trading, shareholder value, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, supply-chain management, vertical integration

In Germany, for example, despite global consolidation of industries from paint to beer, markets remain fragmented and competitive thanks to tenacious family-run mid-size firms. Other share donators are companies with entrenched cost or management structures that impair adaptability. The airline industry provided many examples: older airlines shackled by legacy costs, aging fleets, and the old hub-and-spoke business model fell prey to low-cost airlines delivering much cheaper point-to-point travel. Obviously, having sizable share donators among competitors does not in itself make a company great, but the advantage is worth analyzing and can add value to quality companies that are able to capitalize on it. To assess the likely future stability of a given industry, we will always look at its history.

Many companies that pursue low production costs achieve lowest-cost status – for a time. The more routine low-cost tactics give only short-term advantages because they can be copied. For example, pallets – portable wooden packing platforms – were first used for stocking merchandise in deep-discount retailers but are now a common sight at many supermarkets. Low-cost airlines like Southwest pioneered shorter aircraft turnaround times, but traditional airliners soon followed suit. In contrast, low-cost squared companies construct a business model, organization, and culture that drives low cost in each step of every process throughout the operation. The depth of cost consciousness adds protection that ordinary cost-minimization tactics do not.

The leading examples are private label retailer alternatives to branded products, such as those offered by pharmacies and grocers. By offering similar products at lower prices, chains steer consumers to focus on price rather than quality. Once the switch occurs, customers tend to stick with the private label. Other examples are the low-cost airline industry pioneered by the likes of Ryanair as an alternative to major carriers such as British Airways and open source software, such as Linux, as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Good-enough value propositions can be difficult to protect against. On the downside, risk is greater when products are distributed through influential middlemen that command customer respect, such as retailers creating private labels.


pages: 850 words: 254,117

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

affirmative action, air freight, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, bank run, barriers to entry, big-box store, British Empire, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, cross-subsidies, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversified portfolio, European colonialism, fixed income, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, global village, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, informal economy, inventory management, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, late fees, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, payday loans, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price discrimination, price stability, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, rent control, rent stabilization, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, surplus humans, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, transcontinental railway, Tyler Cowen, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now

According to the Wall Street Journal: The new low-cost carriers in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are largely avoiding competition with incumbent full-service airlines. Instead, they are stimulating new traffic by adding cheap, no-frills flights to secondary cities that, for many residents, had long required day-long bus rides. Largely as a result, the number of airline passengers in these countries has surged. The newfound mobility has opened up the flow of commerce and drastically cut travel times in areas with poor roads, virtually no rail service and stretches of harsh terrain.{262} One low-cost airline offers flights into Mexico City for “about half the price of the 14-hour overnight bus ride.”{263} In Brazil and Colombia it is much the same story.

The newfound mobility has opened up the flow of commerce and drastically cut travel times in areas with poor roads, virtually no rail service and stretches of harsh terrain.{262} One low-cost airline offers flights into Mexico City for “about half the price of the 14-hour overnight bus ride.”{263} In Brazil and Colombia it is much the same story. In both these countries, new low-cost airlines have reduced bus travel somewhat and greatly increased air travel, as the total number of people traveling has grown. Planes and buses are obviously very different technologically, but they can serve the same purpose and compete against each other in the marketplace— a crucial fact overlooked by those who compile data on how large a share of the market some company “controls.” Those bringing anti-trust lawsuits generally seek to define the relevant market narrowly, so as to produce high percentages of the market “controlled” by the enterprise being prosecuted.


pages: 618 words: 159,672

Fodor's Rome: With the Best City Walks and Scenic Day Trips by Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.

call centre, Donald Trump, flag carrier, gentrification, glass ceiling, haute couture, haute cuisine, Honoré de Balzac, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, low cost airline, Mason jar, mega-rich, messenger bag, Murano, Venice glass, retail therapy, starchitect, urban planning, young professional

Third-party carriers may have a price advantage. For travel within Italy and around Europe, a number of low-cost airlines can get you where you need to go, often at cheaper rates than by train. Because there are too many of these carriers to name, the best advice is to check out a useful website called Sky Scanner (www.skyscanner.net) which will scan all the major airlines and most of the low-cost airlines for you and give you the dates and companies with the most affordable rates. Keep in mind that low-cost airlines offer no-frills service. Any extras, such as meals, fast check-ins and boarding, extra luggage, and even slightly overweight luggage will cost you.

It’s 30 km (19 miles) southwest of the city, on the coast. It has been enlarged and equipped with computerized baggage handling and has a direct train link with downtown Rome. Rome’s other airport is Ciampino (CIA), on Via Appia Nuova, 15 km (9 miles) south of downtown. Ciampino is a civil and military airport now used by most low-cost airlines that fly both nationally and internationally. There are no trains linking the Ciampino airport to downtown Rome but there are a number of shuttle buses running daily. Airport Information Ciampino. 06/65951 | www.adr.it. Leonardo da Vinci Airport/Fiumicino. 06/65951 | www.adr.it. Transfers Between Fiumicino and Downtown When approaching by car, follow the signs for Rome and the GRA (the ring road that circles Rome).

Any extras, such as meals, fast check-ins and boarding, extra luggage, and even slightly overweight luggage will cost you. Make sure to read all the fine print when booking a flight with a low-cost airline, especially the rules pertaining to boarding and luggage. The least expensive airfares to Rome are priced for round-trip travel and must usually be purchased in advance. Airlines generally allow you to change your return date for a fee; most low-fare tickets, however, are nonrefundable. Airline Contacts Alitalia. 89/2910, 0870/544–8259 in U.K., 06/65643 in Rome, 06/65640 Lost Baggage Claim | www.alitalia.it. American Airlines. 800/433–7300, 06/66053169 in Rome | www.aa.com.


Fodor's Barcelona by Fodor's

Albert Einstein, call centre, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, haute cuisine, low cost airline, market design, Suez canal 1869, urban renewal, urban sprawl, young professional

Nonstop flights from London to Barcelona are 2¼ hours. Regular nonstop flights connect the eastern United States with Barcelona. Flying from other cities in North America usually involves a stop. Flights from the United Kingdom to a number of destinations in Spain are frequent and offered at competitive fares, particularly on low-cost carriers such as Ryanair or easyJet. Beware of low-cost flights to “Barcelona” that, in fact, land in Girona, a 45-minute taxi ride north of Barcelona; often the taxi (or even the bus) costs more than the flight. Iberia operates a shuttle, the puente aereo, between Barcelona and Madrid from around 7 AM to 11 PM; planes depart hourly, and more frequently in the morning and afternoon commuter hours.

Airport Information: Girona–Costa Brava Airport (Afores s/n, | Vilobí d’Onyar | 17185 | 972/186600 | www.girona-airport.net). Reus–Barcelona Airport (Ctra. N240 [Km 4], | Reus | 43206 | 977/772204 | www.reus-airport.es). Carriers Besides the major Spanish carrier Iberia, Girona Airport serves a large number of charter and low-cost airlines, many of which are centralized under a single telephone number with the name Service Air. Airlines and Contacts: Air Europa (Afores s/n, | Vilobí d’Onyar | 17185 | 972/474014 | www.aireuropa.com). Iberia (Pl. Marqués de Camps 8 | Girona | 17004 | 972/474192). Monarch (Afores s/n, | Vilobí d’Onyar | 17185 | 972/474017 | www.monarch.com).


pages: 176 words: 43,283

Insight Guides Pocket Turkey (Travel Guide eBook) by Insight Guides

gentrification, Kickstarter, low cost airline, retail therapy

It has one terminal and four runways and is currently linked with İstanbul only by frequent Havaist and İETT buses (23 routes; 30–90mins depending on traffic and destination), but will eventually be connected with the city by several metro lines. Istanbul Atatürk Airport closed to scheduled passenger flights in April 2019. The low-cost carrier Pegasus Airlines (www.flypgs.com), together with regional airline (Anadolu Jet), use Sabiha Gökçen Airport (www.sgairport.com) at Pendik, about 46km (25 miles) from the centre of İstanbul on the Asian shore. Transport from here is slow, with buses to the city centre (6am–10pm, 1–2hr depending on traffic); the green E10 bus to Kadiköy connecting directly with ferries across the Bosphorus to Eminönü and E9 bus to the Tavşantepe metro station; or taxis which can be very expensive.

The national carrier, Turkish Airlines (THY, www.turkishairlines.com), provides direct services across the globe, including London Gatwick and London Heathrow to İstanbul Airport, as well as domestic services. From the UK, British Airways (www.britishairways.com) from London Heathrow, and Atlas Global (www.atlasglb.com) from London Stansted fly direct to İstanbul Airport, and low-cost carriers such as Pegasus Airlines (www.flypgs.com) provide flights throughout the year to Sabiha Gökçen Airport. By land. Travelling from other European cities to İstanbul by train is long (about 72 hours from London), but enjoyable if you have sufficient time. Trains from Europe arrive at Sirkeci Station in Eminönü, in the heart of old Constantinople.


pages: 261 words: 79,883

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek

Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Black Swan, business cycle, commoditize, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, hiring and firing, John Markoff, low cost airline, Neil Armstrong, Nick Leeson, Pepsi Challenge, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route

At first Kelleher called King’s idea a dumb one, but by the end of the evening King had successfully inspired him with his vision and Kelleher agreed to consider coming on board. It would take four years, however, before Southwest Airlines would make its first flight from Dallas’s Love Field to Houston. Southwest did not invent the concept of a low-cost airline. Pacific Southwest Airlines pioneered the industry—Southwest even copied their name. Southwest had no first mover’s advantage—Braniff International Airways, Texas International Airlines and Continental Airlines were already serving the Texas market, and none was eager to give up any ground. But Southwest was not built to be an airline.

Without a sense of WHY, Song and Ted were just another couple of airlines. Without a clear sense of WHY, all that people had to judge them on was price or convenience. They were commodities that had to rely on manipulations to build their businesses, an expensive proposition. United abandoned its entry into the low-cost airline business just four years after it began, and Delta’s Song also took its last flight only four years after it launched. It is a false assumption that differentiation happens in HOW and WHAT you do. Simply offering a high-quality product with more features or better service or a better price does not create difference.

Everyone knew what VW stood for—power to the people. It brought its cause to life in products that were all about quality that the average person could afford. In a single swoop of German ingenuity, VW had been put completely out of balance. This is not like Dell coming out with an mp3 player or United starting the low-cost airline Ted. In those cases, we had no idea what the companies’ WHYs were. Absent any knowledge or feeling for their WHY, we couldn’t bring ourselves to buy products from them that went anything beyond WHAT they do. In this case, VW has a clear WHY, but WHAT they produced was completely misaligned. They failed the Celery Test.


Scandinavia by Andy Symington

call centre, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, connected car, edge city, Eyjafjallajökull, full employment, glass ceiling, Kickstarter, low cost airline, mass immigration, New Urbanism, North Sea oil, out of africa, period drama, retail therapy, Skype, the built environment, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, urban sprawl, walkable city, work culture , young professional

Getting There & Away Air Stockholm Arlanda Airport ( 797 60 00; www.arlanda.se) Stockholm’s main airport, 45km north of the city centre, reached from central Stockholm by bus and express train. Bromma Stockholm Airport ( 797 68 00) Located 8km west of Stockholm, used for some domestic flights. Stockholm Skavsta Airport ( 0155-28 04 00) 100km south of Stockholm, near Nyköping, mostly used by low-cost carriers such as Ryanair. Västerås Airport ( 21 80 56 10) About 100km northwest of Stockholm on the E18 motorway, this tiny airport is used by Ryanair. Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS; 0770-72 77 27; www.sas.se) Network serves 28 Swedish destinations from Arlanda airport and has international services to Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki and a host of other European cities including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, Berlin, Dublin, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hamburg, London, Manchester, Milan, Moscow, Paris, Rome, St Petersburg and Zagreb.

The main international Norwegian airports are: Gardermoen (Oslo), Flesland (Bergen), Sola (Stavanger), Tromsø, Værnes (Trondheim), Vigra (Ålesund), Karmøy (Haugesund), Kjevik (Kristiansand) and Torp (Sandefjord). Dozens of international airlines fly to/from Norwegian airports. Airlines that use Norway as their primary base include the following: Norwegian (www.norwegian.com) Low-cost airline. SAS (www.sas.no) Widerøe (www.wideroe.no) A subsidiary of SAS. Land Norway shares land borders with Sweden, Finland and Russia. FINLAND Buses run between northern Norway and northern Finland with most cross-border services operated by the Finnish company Eskelisen Lapin Linjat ( 016-342 2160; www.eskelisen-lapinlinjat.com) .

The major Norwegian domestic routes are quite competitive, meaning that it is possible (if you’re flexible about departure dates and book early) to travel for little more than the equivalent train fare. Four airlines fly domestic routes: DOT LT (www.flydot.no) Small planes with flights to Oslo from Røros and Fagernes. Norwegian (www.norwegian.com) Low-cost airline with extensive network throughout the country. SAS (www.sas.no) The largest route network on mainland Norway and the only flights to Longyearbyen (Svalbard). Widerøe (www.wideroe.no) A subsidiary of SAS with smaller planes and a handful of flights to smaller regional airports. Bicycle Given Norway’s great distances, hilly terrain and narrow roads, only serious cyclists engage in extensive cycle touring, but those who do rave about the experience.


pages: 254 words: 81,009

Busy by Tony Crabbe

airport security, Bluma Zeigarnik, British Empire, business process, classic study, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, death from overwork, fear of failure, Frederick Winslow Taylor, gamification, haute cuisine, informal economy, inventory management, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, loss aversion, low cost airline, machine readable, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Paradox of Choice, placebo effect, Richard Feynman, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, scientific management, Shai Danziger, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, the long tail, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple

This has two broad components: focusing your efforts more effectively to make the most impact with your scarce resources, and capturing the attention of your distracted and overwhelmed consumers. This chapter looks at the first of these. Strategic Focus In 1993, Continental Airlines launched its new, low-cost airline, Continental Lite. It opened to great fanfare as a specific move to compete against highly successful low-cost competitors, such as Southwest Airlines. Continental had many advantages: It had a large and wealthy parent company; it was offering some of the cheapest fares in the industry; it could meet the frequency of other low-cost airlines; it could allow passengers to transfer between flights without having to collect their bags; and seats were pre-allocated.

Find ways to use your core strengths a lot more, then figure out how to deal with all the other stuff that has been filling so much of your time to date. It is only our core strengths that allow us to make our greatest contribution—to our organization, to our families and to the world. Trade-Offs I remember watching a documentary about Ryanair, a successful European low-cost airline based on the model of Southwest Airlines. The program was made in the early days of Ryanair. It was designed as a shocking exposé of the terrible customer service provided by the airline. It revealed passengers receiving little or no support from Ryanair after being stranded in obscure airports when their flights were canceled, unexpected charges and fines, and rude and militant staff.


Lonely Planet Colombia (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Alex Egerton, Tom Masters, Kevin Raub

airport security, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, Downton Abbey, El Camino Real, Francisco Pizarro, friendly fire, gentrification, glass ceiling, haute couture, land reform, low cost airline, off-the-grid, race to the bottom, sustainable-tourism, urban sprawl

SatenaAIRLINE (%1 800 091 2034; www.satena.com) The commercial carrier of the FAC (Colombian Air Force) services flights to the vast areas of the Amazon, Los Llanos and the Pacific coast; it lands at numerous small towns and villages that would be otherwise virtually inaccessible. VivaColombiaAIRLINE (%4 444 9489; www.vivacolombia.co) Medellín-based upstart low-cost carrier serving many of Colombia's main destinations. Bicycle Colombia is not the easiest of countries for cyclists, though the sport is wildly popular in certain regions (Boyacá, for example). Road rules favor drivers and you'll end up fighting traffic on main roadways. Never assume that a driver will give you right of way.

There are regular buses along the main highway from Bogotá to Bucaramanga and beyond. Cúcuta is a major entry point for travelers coming from Venezuela. Within the region intercity buses and minivans depart frequently. By plane, many cities, including Bucaramanga and Cúcuta, are increasingly served by low-cost airlines; and an airport in San Gil is supposedly opening in 2015. Boyacá The department of Boyacá evokes a sense of patriotism among Colombians; it was here that Colombian troops won their independence from Spain at the Battle of Boyacá. The department is dotted with quaint colonial towns; you could easily spend a few days bouncing between them.


pages: 372 words: 89,876

The Connected Company by Dave Gray, Thomas Vander Wal

A Pattern Language, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, Berlin Wall, business cycle, business process, call centre, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, complexity theory, creative destruction, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, disruptive innovation, en.wikipedia.org, factory automation, folksonomy, Googley, index card, industrial cluster, interchangeable parts, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, loose coupling, low cost airline, market design, minimum viable product, more computing power than Apollo, power law, profit maximization, Richard Florida, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, software as a service, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, two-pizza team, Vanguard fund, web application, WikiLeaks, work culture , Zipcar

Southwest focuses on long-term, win/win relationships with workers and their unions. But when United, Delta, and Continental launched low-cost airlines, they saddled the new ventures with existing systems. They had to use the same workers and deal with the same unions. They had to use existing planes and reservation systems. They had to operate out of the same centralized hubs. These attempts to gain cost advantages by using existing systems hampered the ability of the low-cost airlines to compete. LA Times writer Jane Engle said of United spin-off TED: I was disappoint-TED…At the gate, there was a forest of orange signs, offering cheery greetings such as “It’s a great day to be flying,” and “Ted is happy to see you.”

Before they will join, people and companies want to know they can trust the platform provider to support them and adjust over time to meet their needs. That’s a big leap. Failure to Invest in the Platform Building networks and the platforms to support them takes time and money. If you run out of cash before you reach critical mass, the platform will fail. People Express, another low-cost airline, launched in 1981 and initially grew very rapidly. Early success led the company to go on a buying spree, acquiring three airlines in its fourth year of operations. But People Express bit off more than it could chew. Three acquisitions in a row created a massive debt load. Labor struggles emerged with unions at the newly acquired companies.


pages: 537 words: 158,544

Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order by Parag Khanna

Abraham Maslow, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, Bartolomé de las Casas, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, crony capitalism, death from overwork, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Glaeser, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, facts on the ground, failed state, flex fuel, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, gentrification, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, haute couture, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, invisible hand, Islamic Golden Age, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Khyber Pass, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, land reform, Londongrad, low cost airline, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meritocracy, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, open borders, open economy, Parag Khanna, Pax Mongolica, Pearl River Delta, pirate software, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, Potemkin village, price stability, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, restrictive zoning, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, South China Sea, special economic zone, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas L Friedman, trade route, trickle-down economics, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

But European agro-technology ensures that Romania, something of a European Appalachia, can move from a peasant collective to a breadbasket for the region as well as a hub for low-cost industry beyond its trademark AK-47 assault rifles.4 Similarly, the EU’s threats of admission delays coaxed even perpetually schizophrenic Bulgaria to break up organized crime and human trafficking rings to qualify for billions in desperately needed subsidies.5 With the EU stamp of approval, Bulgarians are returning to work in refurbished factories, and Euro-hippies flock by car or on low-cost airlines to its Black Sea beaches. “Bulgaria is the new Costa del Sol!” a British tourist in Burgas chimed. Given the historical instability of the Balkans, the European empire will remain incomplete and vulnerable until the “Eastern Question” that vexed European statesmen a century ago is settled. Fortunately, the total population of the remaining western and southern Balkan countries—Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania—does not even add up to that of Romania, with no country larger in population than Manhattan.

Drug cartels make partnerships far more quickly across these borders than governments do, as evidenced by the growing drug transit through the vast Arauca province along the twelve hundred miles of Venezuelan border, and by Brazil’s growing cocaine consumption and shipments to Europe.2 In 2005, a low-cost airline flying from Brazil to European destinations was shut down once the tons of drugs that subsidized the cheap fares were seized. America’s militarized approach to the drug problem is hardly helping it win the war, something it clearly has not realized yet. The Pentagon’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) limits itself to naval assistance, border monitoring, and humanitarian relief in the hemisphere—except in Colombia, where several hundred military advisers operate commando bases from which they work side by side with the Colombian army on interdiction, disruption of trafficking networks, and counterinsurgency activity.

While in the West government is seen as stifling innovation, East Asian governments today are heavily reinvesting their massive capital liquidity in innovation. And as intra-Asian trade now exceeds transpacific trade, Asians can set their own rules.†49 There is no reason for Asians to leave Asia. Asian travelers today effortlessly hop on and off low-cost airlines to explore over a dozen distinct and inviting cultures. “East Asian nations are rooted in precolonial history, so we are far more stable than postcolonial African or Arab states. We see no reason for one’s prosperity to cause rivalry with others,” a Malay-Chinese historian argued during a small seminar of Southeast Asian academics at the University of Malaya.


pages: 401 words: 109,892

The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets by Thomas Philippon

airline deregulation, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrei Shleifer, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, central bank independence, commoditize, crack epidemic, cross-subsidies, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, flag carrier, Ford Model T, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, inventory management, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, law of one price, liquidity trap, low cost airline, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, money market fund, moral hazard, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Pareto efficiency, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, price discrimination, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, search costs, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, spinning jenny, statistical model, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, warehouse automation, zero-sum game

Firms included only if data for the corresponding country are available in STAN. Profit rates are from OECD STAN. As a result of the efforts of the commission, new airlines entered the market. Although the US pioneered the business model of low-cost airlines in the 1980s, they have mostly disappeared today. Even Southwest’s cost structure resembles that of other major airlines. Europe pushed in the opposite direction. Europe has had two powerful low-cost airlines for more than twenty years: RyanAir and EasyJet. RyanAir has priced aggressively at the low end of the market, forcing other airlines to adjust. You can see the impact of competition on profit margins of European airlines in Figure 8.3.

By the mid-2000s, many government officials had given up hope that Air France would reform itself internally. In 2007, younger and reform-minded cabinet officials decided to bring in outside competition.m EasyJet was allowed to enter the French market in 2008, and its market share grew quickly. Low-cost airlines such as Transavia, Hop, and Vueling now provide more than a third of all domestic flights within France and about half of flights to other EU countries. This is not to say that competition in French skies is completely free and fair today. Take-off and landing slots are heavily regulated. Paris has two airports.


Sweden Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, G4S, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, low cost airline, mass immigration, retail therapy, ride hailing / ride sharing, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, urban planning, walkable city, white picket fence, WikiLeaks

Bromma Airport (BMA; GOOGLE MAP ; %010-109 40 00; www.swedavia.se/bromma; Ulvsundavägen; dBrommaplan) Located 8km west of the city centre, Bromma is handy for domestic flights but services only a handful of airlines, primarily British Airways, Brussels Airlines and Finnair. Stockholm Skavsta Airport (Nyköping Airport (NYO); GOOGLE MAP ; %0155-28 04 00; www.skavsta.se/en; General Schybergs Plan 22, Nyköping; gFlygbussarna) Small airport 100km southwest of Stockholm, near Nyköping, served by low-cost carriers Ryanair and WizzAir. Boat The main ferry lines with routes from Stockholm are Silja Line ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %08-22 21 40; www.tallinksilja.com; Silja & Tallink Customer Service Office, Cityterminalen; h9am-6pm Mon-Fri, to 3pm Sat) and Viking Line, which operate a regular ferry line to both Turku and Helsinki in Finland.

Otherwise, a big day out here doesn't usually get much more exciting than taking a pleasant riverside stroll or having a picnic by the harbour. Although visitors to the city limits number in their tens of thousands each year, most people won't even know they've passed through – Stockholm's alternative international airport, Skavsta, popular with low-cost carriers, is located here. 1Sights & Activities On a fine day it's a nice idea to take a walk along the river or explore the Sörmlands archipelago, which extends more than 50km north of Nyköping, by canoe or boat. Enquire at Nyköpings Turistbyrå for suggested itineraries. F11 MuseumMUSEUM ( GOOGLE MAP ; %0155-21 18 98; www.f11museum.se; Flygspanarvägen 3; 30kr; h9am-noon Tue, 11am-4pm Sun; p) You don't have to be a planespotter to enjoy this excellent little volunteer-run museum which gives an insight into the F11 aircraft and pilots who flew reconnaissance missions from the former base at Skavsta between 1965 and 1979.

Après-dinner, folks tend to stick around for drinks at the bar. 8Information Nyköpings Turistbyrå ( GOOGLE MAP ; %0155-24 82 00; www.nykopingsguiden.se; Stora Torget 83; h8am-6pm Mon-Fri, 10am-4pm Sat & Sun) Has plenty of brochures and rents bikes (75/250kr per day/week). 8Getting There & Around Nyköping is 110km southwest of Stockholm on the E4 motorway. Nyköping’s Skavsta Airport ( GOOGLE MAP ; %0155-28 04 00; www.skavsta-air.se), 8km northwest of town, has flights to/from the UK and continental Europe with a variery of low-cost carriers. Flygbussarna (%0771-51 52 52; www.flygbussarna.se/en/; hcustomer service 8am-11pm) operates airport shuttle buses to meet most flights to/from Stockholm (139kr, 80 minutes). Local bus 515 runs regularly between Nyköping and Skavsta (42kr, 20 minutes); alternatively, catching a taxi with Taxi Nyköping Oxelösund (%0155-21 75 00; www.taxinyox.se/eng) into Nyköping will set you back about 230kr.


pages: 269 words: 74,955

The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World's Most Mysterious Air Disasters by Christine Negroni

Air France Flight 447, Airbus A320, Boeing 747, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Charles Lindbergh, Checklist Manifesto, computer age, crew resource management, crowdsourcing, flag carrier, low cost airline, Neil Armstrong, Richard Feynman, South China Sea, Tenerife airport disaster, Thomas Bayes, US Airways Flight 1549

He had a guaranteed job flying for his nation’s flag carrier, which served sixty destinations around the globe and operated the Airbus A380, the world’s largest airliner. His professional future was full of promise and so was his personal life. During cadet training he met and fell in love with a fellow student, Nadira Ramli, who became a first officer with AirAsia, a Kuala Lumpur–based low-cost carrier. Ramli, one year younger than Fariq, was so charming that she was selected by AirAsia to represent the company on a public relations and marketing campaign that included a drive across China in 2012. In March 2014, Fariq and Ramli were engaged to be married. While Zaharie was out of the cockpit, it would be Fariq’s job to tune the radio to the Ho Chi Minh air traffic control frequency.

From January to October of the following year, he underwent psychiatric treatment for reactive depression that a German medical examiner told the FAA had been triggered by excessive demands. By 2010, Lubitz was considered fit to continue his training, and so he did: ground school in Bremen, and then flight school in Phoenix, followed by jet training back in Bremen and a stint as a flight attendant. In 2013 he became a first officer on Lufthansa’s low-cost carrier GermanWings. In the spring of 2015, Lubitz would commandeer his own flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf and fly it into a mountain, killing himself and 149 others. The thirty-four-year-old captain, Patrick Sondenheimer, had left the cockpit to go to the bathroom after leveling the plane at thirty-eight thousand feet.


Germany Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, bank run, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, Boeing 747, British Empire, call centre, capitalist realism, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, company town, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Gregor Mendel, haute couture, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, low cost airline, messenger bag, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Armstrong, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Eisenman, post-work, Prenzlauer Berg, retail therapy, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, sensible shoes, Skype, starchitect, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, V2 rocket, white picket fence

Tourist Office (01805-101 030; www.bremen-tourism.de) There is a tourist office in the city centre (www.bremen-tourism.de; Obernstrasse; 10am-6.30pm Mon-Fri, 10am-4pm Sat & Sun) near Markt and another at the main train station (9am-7pm Mon-Fri, 9.30am-6pm Sat & Sun). Getting There & Away Air Bremen Airport (BRE; www.airport-bremen.de) is about 3.5km south of the centre and has flights to destinations in Germany and Europe. Airline offices here include Air Berlin (www.airberlin.com) and Lufthansa Airlines (www.lufthansa.com). Low-cost carrier Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies to Edinburgh and London Stansted. Boat Hal Över Schreiber Reederei (338 989; www.hal-oever.de; Schlachte 2, Martinianleger; office 9am-3pm Mon & Fri, to 5pm Wed) operates scheduled services along the Weser between April and September. Boats from Bremen to Bremerhaven (one way/return €15/25, 3½ hours), with numerous stops en route, depart at 8.30am every Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, and 9.30am on Sunday during peak summer months.

Offices include: Airport (Airport Plaza btwn Terminals 1 & 2; 6am-11pm) Hauptbahnhof (Kirchenallee exit; 8am-9pm Mon-Sat, 10am-6pm Sun) St Pauli Landungsbrücken (btwn piers 4 & 5; 8am-6pm Apr-Oct, 10am-6pm Nov-Mar; Landungsbrücken) Getting There & Away Air Hamburg Airport (HAM; www.flughafen-hamburg.de) has frequent flights to domestic and European cities, including on Lufthansa and most other major European carriers; low-cost carriers include Air Berlin and EasyJet. Despite their marketing hype, the ‘Hamburg’ services by Ryanair and Wizzair use Lübeck’s airport (Click here). Bus The ZOB (Busbahnhof, Central Bus Station; 247 576; www.zob-hamburg.de; Adenauerallee 78; ticket counters 5am-10pm Mon-Tue, Thu, Sat & Sun, to midnight Wed & Fri) is southeast of the Hauptbahnhof.

Information Tourist Office (Welcome Center am Holstentor; 01805 882 233; www.luebeck-tourismus.de; Holstentorplatz 1; 9.30am-7pm Mon-Fri, 10am-3pm Sat & 10am-2pm Sun Jun-Sep, 9.30am-6pm Mon-Fri & 10am-3pm Sat Oct-May) Sells the Happy Day Card (per 1/2/3 days €10/12/15) offering free public transport in Lübeck and Travemünde and museum discounts. Also has a cafe and internet terminals. Netzwerk (409 5552; Wahmstrasse 58; per hr €2; 10am-10pm Mon-Sat) Internet access. Getting There & Away Air Low-cost carriers Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) and Wizzair (www.wizzair.com) serve Lübeck airport (LBC; www.flughafen-luebeck.de), which they euphemistically call Hamburg-Lübeck. Destinations include Milan and Stockholm. Buses take passengers straight to Hamburg (one-way €10, 55 minutes), while scheduled bus 6 (€2.70) serves Lübeck’s Hauptbahnhof and central bus station.


pages: 79 words: 24,875

Are Trams Socialist?: Why Britain Has No Transport Policy by Christian Wolmar

active transport: walking or cycling, Beeching cuts, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, BRICs, congestion charging, Crossrail, Diane Coyle, driverless car, financial independence, full employment, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Network effects, railway mania, trade route, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, wikimedia commons, Zipcar

One of the ironies of the availability of new technology in transport, highlighted in chapter 5, is that its most potentially transformational use has largely been ignored. Modern information and communications technology allows for variable pricing, which means that parking or train tickets could be priced differentially according to the time of day or year. For that reason, the low-cost airlines are not always low cost – try booking a summer August Saturday on Ryanair or easyJet to a Mediterranean resort! Yet the most obvious use of this technology would be for road pricing. Roads are a scarce resource, which, as mentioned previously, are free at the point of use: a practice that makes any self-respecting economist tear their hair out.


pages: 313 words: 94,490

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, availability heuristic, Barry Marshall: ulcers, classic study, correlation does not imply causation, desegregation, Helicobacter pylori, Jeff Hawkins, low cost airline, Menlo Park, PalmPilot, Paradox of Choice, Pepto Bismol, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, telemarketer

Another example we discussed in Chapter 1 was Southwest Airlines’ proverb “THE low-cost airline.” Again, most Southwest staffers and customers know that Southwest is a discount airline. In that context, the proverb seems intuitive. It was only when Kelleher put teeth in the proverb—refusing to offer chicken salad to customers even if they really wanted it—that its meaning sank in. Before Kelleher, an average staffer’s guessing machine might have predicted, “We want to please our customers in a low-cost way.” After Kelleher, the guessing machine was refined to “We will be THE low-cost airline, even if it means intentionally disregarding some of our customers’ preferences.”


pages: 401 words: 93,256

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alfred Russel Wallace, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Brexit referendum, butterfly effect, California gold rush, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, confounding variable, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Firefox, Ford Model T, General Magic , George Akerlof, gig economy, Google Chrome, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, IKEA effect, information asymmetry, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Dyson, John Harrison: Longitude, loss aversion, low cost airline, Mason jar, Murray Gell-Mann, nudge theory, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Rory Sutherland, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, Veblen good, work culture

Highly successful publications such as the Week effectively take the world’s newspapers and make them digestible by removing a lot of extraneous content; McDonald’s deleted 99 per cent of items from the traditional American diner repertoire; Starbucks placed little emphasis on food for the first decade of its existence and concentrated on coffee; low-cost airlines competed on the basis of what in-flight comforts you didn’t get. If you want to offer ease of use – and ease of purchase – it is often a good idea not to offer people a Swiss Army knife, something that claims to do lots of things.* With the notable exception of the mobile phone, we generally find it easier to buy things that serve a single purpose.

Robert Cialdini has observed that, as you are closing a sale, the admission of a downside oddly adds persuasive power: ‘Yes, it is expensive, but you’ll soon find it’s worth it,’ seems to be a strangely persuasive construction – explicitly mentioning a product’s weakness enables people to downplay its importance and accept the trade-off, rather than endlessly worrying about the potential downside. If you are introducing a new product, it might pay to bear this in mind. When you think about it, it is rather strange how explicit low-cost airlines are about what their ticket prices don’t include: a pre-allocated seat, a meal, free drinks, free checked luggage – such deficiencies help to explain and destigmatise the low prices. ‘Oh, I see,’ you can say, when you see a flight to Budapest advertised for £37, ‘the reason that low price is possible is because I won’t be paying for a lot of expensive fripperies that I probably don’t want anyway.’


pages: 315 words: 99,065

The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership by Richard Branson

barriers to entry, Boeing 747, call centre, carbon footprint, Celtic Tiger, clean water, collective bargaining, Costa Concordia, do what you love, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, flag carrier, friendly fire, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, index card, inflight wifi, Lao Tzu, legacy carrier, low cost airline, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Tesla Model S, Tony Fadell, trade route, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, work culture , zero-sum game

Michael O’Leary, CEO of the Irish airline Ryanair, once described his ideal customer as ‘someone with a pulse and a credit card’ and in the same ‘Lunch with the Financial Times’ interview referred to the British Airports Authority as the ‘Evil Empire’ and the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority as a bunch of ‘cretins and twerps’. While nobody can question Ryanair’s incredible financial success (last time I checked the low-cost carrier had built a market cap of over $13 billion), being voted Europe’s ‘least liked’ airline by TripAdvisor subscribers is something that would not sit well with me no matter how good the bottom line looks. American property magnate Donald Trump is another controversial character who seems to be either loved or hated by the consumer and is perhaps most famous for his ‘You’re fired’ line, something he seems to delight in telling people on his TV show The Apprentice.

If you were born after 1960, Freddie’s name maybe doesn’t ring a bell as his ground-breaking Laker Airways was driven out of business in 1982, and even more sadly Freddie died in 2006 at the way-too-early age of eighty-three. A lifelong entrepreneur par excellence, Freddie was one of the greatest innovators of twentieth-century aviation and an utterly inspirational human being. Freddie invented what today we’d call a ‘low-cost carrier’ and in the process, made transatlantic air travel an affordable reality for a vast new cross-section of consumers. He was a swashbuckling hero whose larger-than-life personality, street smarts and indomitable good humour made him a standout leader in what at the time was a moribund industry desperately in need of someone to take it in a new direction.


pages: 124 words: 31,474

Berlitz: Norway Pocket Guide by Berlitz

low cost airline

The quickest way to the centre of Oslo is the Gardermoen Line Airport Express Train, Flytoget, taking 19 minutes and running six times an hour to the Central Station. There are also regular commuter trains operated by Norwegian State Railway, airport coaches and a taxi rank outside the airport (www.oslo.no). Ryanair and other low-cost carriers fly into Torp airport, near Sandefjord, 110km (68 miles) south of Oslo. Coaches are laid on to coincide with the flights and take approximately 2–2½ hours. There are also trains to Sandefjord with a bus shuttle to the airport (www.torp.no). Bergen Flesland is 20km (12 miles) south of Bergen.


pages: 226 words: 30,763

Lonely Planet Pocket Hamburg by Lonely Planet

gentrification, low cost airline, three-masted sailing ship

Flights, cars and tours can be booked online at lonelyplanet.com/bookings. Hamburg Airport Hamburg Airport (Flughafen Hamburg Helmut Schmidt; HAM; %040-507 50; www.hamburg-airport.de; Flughafenstrasse; dHamburg Airport) has frequent flights to domestic and European cities with Lufthansa and most other major European carriers. Low-cost carriers include Ryanair, Air Berlin, easyJet and Eurowings. There are also a handful of intercontinental flights, such as to New York and Dubai. Hamburg Hauptbahnhof & Altona Frequent trains serve regional and long-distance destinations from Hamburg. There are two mainline stations worth noting: Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station; www.hamburger-hbf.de; dHauptbahnhof) The main rail hub for northern Germany.


pages: 346 words: 101,255

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters by Rose George

American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anton Chekhov, Bob Geldof, Celtic Tiger, clean water, glass ceiling, indoor plumbing, informal economy, job satisfaction, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, land reform, low cost airline, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, Pepto Bismol, Potemkin village, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Steven Pinker, urban planning

I think of Ronnie Kasrils and I ask Makhanya whether there’s any South African sanitation champion equal to the former Minister for Toilets. She smiles sweetly. “It’s still us! With our teeth. With our false teeth.” On my penultimate day in South Africa, Trevor and I fly to Cape Town brain-squeezingly early on Kulula, yet another cheery low-cost airline. I don’t know who decided that low-cost airlines had to try to be funny, but they did and they do. The flight attendant says, “We have landed in Cape Town. If that’s not where you want to be, that’s your problem.” We do want to be here, partly to meet Trevor’s daughter, the presidential hopeful. We’re also here to meet Shoni, an old acquaintance who got in touch after hearing the radio interview.


pages: 3,002 words: 177,561

Lonely Planet Switzerland by Lonely Planet

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, bike sharing, car-free, carbon footprint, Eyjafjallajökull, Frank Gehry, G4S, Guggenheim Bilbao, Higgs boson, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, low cost airline, messenger bag, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, smart cities, starchitect, trade route

Etihad Regional Connections from Geneva, Lugano and Zürich to Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Asia and the United Arab Emirates. Eurowings (www.eurowings.com) German low-cost carrier flying from Zürich and Geneva to Europe and the UK. Flybe (www.flybe.com) Flights from Geneva and Zürich to Manchester, Birmingham and other UK cities. Helvetic Airways (www.helvetic.com) Budget Swiss airline, with flights from Zürich to Shannon (Ireland) and Bordeaux (France), and from Bern to Olbia (Sardinia) and Palma de Mallorca (Spain). Hop (www.hop.com) Low-cost carrier of Air France, with flights from Geneva to/from Biarritz and Calvi (Corsica). Jet2.com (www.jet2.com) Connections between Geneva and UK destinations London Stansted, Birmingham, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Leeds Bradford and Manchester.

Discounted tickets on this route start at Sfr78. EuroAirport (MLH or BSL; GOOGLE MAP ; %+33 3 89 90 31 11; www.euroairport.com) serves Basel (as well as Mulhouse, France and Freiburg, Germany). Located 5km north of the city, in France, it offers flights to numerous European cities on a variety of low-cost carriers. 8Getting Around Airport Bus 50 ( GOOGLE MAP ) runs every seven to 30 minutes from 5am to midnight between the airport and SBB Bahnhof (Sfr4.70, 20 minutes). Buy tickets at the machine outside the arrivals hall (bills, coins and credit cards accepted). The trip by taxi (%061 222 22 22; www.taxi-zentrale.ch) costs around Sfr40.


pages: 125 words: 35,820

Cyprus - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture by Constantine Buhayer

banking crisis, British Empire, business climate, centre right, COVID-19, financial independence, glass ceiling, Google Earth, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, lockdown, low cost airline, offshore financial centre, open economy, Skype, women in the workforce, young professional

The old country matters dearly. The Limassol-born British Cypriot magnate Theo Paphitis stated that “in the Diaspora, Cyprus has a second Cyprus abroad.” His friend, Famagusta-born Touker Suleiman, entrepreneur and fellow TV personality, is keenly attached to his Cypriot roots. Stelios Haji-Ioannou, whose Easy Jet low-cost airline revolutionized air travel, keeps returning. So many became high achievers that they featured in a special publication of “Greek Rich List.” Singer-songwriter George Michael (Giorgos Panayiotou) in his soulful song “Round Here” evokes his Greek-Cypriot father disembarking in London, “My daddy got here on the gravy train … it was 1957 and love felt the same.”


pages: 375 words: 109,675

Railways & the Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India by Christian Wolmar

Beeching cuts, British Empire, collective bargaining, colonial rule, James Dyson, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, Khyber Pass, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, Meghnad Desai, Ponzi scheme, railway mania, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, trade route, women in the workforce

That is an unforgettable experience and the railway journey my partner, Deborah Maby, and I took in early 2016 was very helpful in providing the backdrop. Consequently, the book ends with a description of the first section of our trip partly written by her. Despite the recent surge in road construction and the introduction of low-cost airlines, the very heavily used railways remain the backbone of the Indian transport system. Train travel in India is not an easy experience, even for the Westerner with ample funds, but do not be put off. First, you have to book the journey, which can be done online via the Indian Railways website; this, however, is full of confusing information and unnecessary complications.

The government wanted railways to provide the main method of long-distance travel, both for passengers and for freight, while its roads policy for the first few decades after the war was based on the target of connecting every village in the country to the network rather than on improving inter-urban routes. The first motorway was not built until the late 1990s, and even today many are little used because of high tolls. While there has been an expansion of flights in recent years, including the arrival of low-cost airlines, there is still a lack of capacity, and travelling by train remains by far the cheapest option. Several of the new railway lines were built for specific freight traffic, principally carrying minerals to ports, but there were also some remarkable additions of passenger routes. The most startling achievement was the construction of the Konkan line along the west coast south of Bombay, which had long been a missing link in the network.


pages: 361 words: 107,461

How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success From the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs by Guy Raz

Airbnb, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, business logic, call centre, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, East Village, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, fear of failure, glass ceiling, growth hacking, housing crisis, imposter syndrome, inventory management, It's morning again in America, iterative process, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, Justin.tv, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, pets.com, power law, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, side hustle, Silicon Valley, software as a service, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subprime mortgage crisis, TED Talk, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tony Hsieh, Uber for X, uber lyft, Y Combinator, Zipcar

In 1969, in fact, it got so bad that the company ran out of money, and the Southwest board of directors talked seriously about shutting down the airline. It was Herb’s willingness to “litigate for nothing and to pay all the court costs out of [his] own pocket” that kept the lights on. In keeping his day job for as long as he did, he gave Southwest the runway it needed to take flight as the newest (and only, at the time) no-frills, low-cost airline. Today, it carries more passengers than all but two airlines in the entire world. Herb didn’t give up his law practice until 1981, fourteen years af­ter the founding of Southwest Airlines, and he only did it at the request of the board of directors. Daymond John didn’t hang on for quite so long.

The knowledge that he could go back to Boston Consulting Group or some other management consulting firm whenever he wanted, made the insane decision (at the time) to start a craft brewery seem less crazy. For Sara Blakely, the billionaire founder of Spanx, selling fax machines was her fallback. For Mark Cuban, internet entrepreneur and Daymond John’s fellow shark, it was bartending. The founder of JetBlue Airways, David Neeleman, knew that if his idea for a low-cost airline that flew out of big markets didn’t take off, he could always go back to being a travel agent. These fallback plans offered varying degrees of psychological security to the brilliant founders who had them, but how much money they could make was far less important than the fact that they could at least be assured of making enough money to live.


pages: 403 words: 105,550

The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by Simon Clark, Will Louch

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, British Empire, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, dark triade / dark tetrad, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, fake news, forensic accounting, high net worth, impact investing, income inequality, Jeffrey Epstein, Kickstarter, load shedding, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, megacity, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, planetary scale, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, trade route, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks, young professional

* * * The afterglow from the Skoll conference boosted Arif’s public profile. But deep within Abraaj the cash crunch was worsening with each day that passed, compelling Arif to find ever more devious ways to raise money. A month after the forum, Arif’s team devised a new method, using shares of Air Arabia, a low-cost airline based in the UAE, as collateral to borrow money. The airline shares were rightfully owned by the investors in one of Abraaj’s funds but they were pledged to a bank as security for a $90 million loan. Instead of giving the borrowed money to the investors in the fund that owned the stock, Arif’s team took the money and used it to pay salaries, bonuses, and expenses.

In a few weeks, on June 30, 2016, KPMG was due to audit the $1.6 billion Abraaj Private Equity Fund IV, which Arif had been continuously raiding. The fund had to be full of money by the end of June but $194 million was missing. “Don’t see any other inflows,” Waqar wrote to Arif. “This must be on your mind.” Arif turned to friends in a very unusual place to overcome this predicament. He was a board member at Air Arabia, the low-cost airline, and he asked the company’s management team to lend him $195 million. Amazingly, they agreed. Abraaj received the Air Arabia loan on June 22, 2016, and Arif used it to fill Fund IV with money. This enabled him to give the impression to KPMG and investors that no money was missing from the fund.


pages: 382 words: 105,657

Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Airbus A320, airline deregulation, airport security, Alvin Toffler, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, call centre, chief data officer, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Donald Trump, flag carrier, Future Shock, interest rate swap, Internet Archive, knowledge worker, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, medical residency, Neil Armstrong, performance metric, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stock buybacks, too big to fail, Unsafe at Any Speed, vertical integration, éminence grise

A week after the new headquarters opened, the September 11 attacks caused a steep downturn in travel. Mulally’s commercial airplane business had to cut a third of its workforce. Airbus, its sales team led by a silver-tongued New Yorker named John Leahy, continued gaining ground. The A320 snatched away even rapidly growing low-cost airlines like JetBlue and EasyJet, which departed from Southwest’s model of using the 737 as the short-haul workhorse. In 2003, the European plane maker surpassed Boeing for the first time as the largest maker of commercial aircraft in the world, delivering 305 planes to Boeing’s 281. “We’re number two,” Mulally told a gathering of his top executives.

In the concourse, Isom explained how confident American was in the improvements made to the plane, and at the gate, when it was announced as a MAX flight, nobody ran. (In fact, some thrill seekers had specifically booked it.) Isom sat in one of the first rows himself when the plane took off, at 10:30 a.m., and landed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport two and a half hours later. Just another routine flight. A low-cost airline in Brazil, GOL, had been the first to bring back the MAX a few weeks earlier, and by midyear, the plane was in service with carriers worldwide, from United Airlines to Ryanair to Air Canada. The Boeing team working to recertify the plane grumbled that while Canadian regulators held their feet to the fire on the final design changes, Air Canada pilots had continued flying the plane without passengers to keep their licenses current.


pages: 133 words: 36,528

Peak Car: The Future of Travel by David Metz

autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, bike sharing, Clayton Christensen, congestion charging, Crossrail, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, disruptive innovation, driverless car, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Ford Model T, gentrification, high-speed rail, Just-in-time delivery, low cost airline, megaproject, Network effects, Ocado, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, Suez canal 1869, The future is already here, urban sprawl, yield management, young professional

Businesses in the private sector need to be realistic when projecting future demand since they bear the cost of over-optimistic forecasts. As a salutatory example, passenger numbers on HS1, the high-speed railway linking London to the Channel Tunnel, turned out to be only a third of the original forecasts of the private sector operator because competition from the low-cost airlines and the ferries had been underestimated. The operator became insolvent, the investors lost their money and the route had to be bailed out by the Department for Transport, which in turn made over-optimistic forecasts of demand. The threat of insolvency bears much more heavily on private sector entities than on those in the public sector.


Berlitz Pocket Guide Stockholm by Berlitz

centre right, congestion charging, low cost airline, Lyft, retail therapy

You can also rent a bicycle at Bike Sweden (Narvavägen 13-17, tel. 08-525 270 00; www.bikesweden.se), or join a guided bike tour around the city (Stockholm Adventures, Hamngatan 37, tel: 08-33 60 01; www.stockholmadventures.com). Budgeting for your trip The following are some approximate prices in Swedish kronor (kr) to help you plan your travelling budget. Flights. Low-cost airlines can cost as low as 600kr return from the UK to Stockholm; scheduled flights are more likely to be in the region of 1,500kr return. The earlier the booking the lower the price is likely to be. Hotels. In general prices for hostel accommodation start at around 300kr. Mid-range hotel rooms can be found for around 800–1,200kr but it’s not unusual for prices to be as high as 2,000kr and above for more high-end hotels (for more information, click here or click here).


pages: 143 words: 43,096

Tel Aviv 2015: The Retro Travel Guide by Claudia Stein

illegal immigration, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, machine readable, New Urbanism, Suez canal 1869, urban planning

Information is available on their website: http://mfa.gov.il/mfa/Pages/default.aspx 2.4.2 Departure Please make sure you are at the airport at least 3 hours before departure. Due to high-level security measures you will be interviewed about your stay before check-in, the luggage will be x-rayed and many times also manually inspected. If you fly home with a low-cost airline, the schedule might be really tight, and you have to calculate at least three hours lead time. At the moment, the check-in is located in the old terminal, but the flights are leaving from terminal 3. If you come to the airport by train, you will arrive in terminal 3, then you have to take a shuttle to terminal 1 and after check-in another shuttle back to terminal 3 from where all international flights are departing.


pages: 281 words: 47,243

Tuscany Road Trips by Duncan Garwood, Paula Hardy, Robert Landon, Nicola Williams

call centre, car-free, haute couture, low cost airline, Skype

Vatican (www.vatican.va) The Vatican’s website. 8 Getting There & Away AIR Rome’s main international airport, Leonardo da Vinci, better known as Fiumicino, is on the coast 30km west of the city. The much smaller Ciampino Airport (06 6 59 51; www.adr.it/ciampino), 15km southeast of the city centre, is the hub for European low-cost carrier Ryanair. MUSEUM DISCOUNT CARDS Serious museum-goers should consider: Classic Roma Pass (€36; valid for three days) Provides free admission to two museums or sites, as well as reduced entry to extra sites, unlimited city transport and discounted entry to other exhibitions and events. 48-hour Roma Pass (€28; valid for 48 hours) Gives free admission to one museum or site and then as per the Classic pass.


pages: 458 words: 134,028

Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes by Mark Penn, E. Kinney Zalesne

addicted to oil, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Biosphere 2, call centre, corporate governance, David Brooks, Donald Trump, extreme commuting, Exxon Valdez, feminist movement, Future Shock, glass ceiling, God and Mammon, Gordon Gekko, haute couture, hygiene hypothesis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, index card, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, late fees, life extension, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, mobile money, new economy, Paradox of Choice, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Renaissance Technologies, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Rubik’s Cube, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Superbowl ad, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, War on Poverty, white picket fence, women in the workforce, Y2K

Even more dramatic are the Mega-Commuters who don’t just drive or take the train, but fly to work. One European travel firm has predicted that by the year 2016, the number of people who work in the U.K. but live elsewhere—and not just northern France, but also Barcelona, Palma, Dubrovnik, and Verona—will reach 1.5 million. Low-cost airlines make this possible. In 1994, there were zero low-cost airlines; in 2005, there were sixty. Airlines like Ryanair, easyJet, and SkyEurope carried some 200 million passengers in 2003 alone. While Mega-Commuting is growing fast in Europe, the phenomenon is in its earlier stages in Asia. Some emerging discount airlines like Jetstar, Oasis, and AirAsiaX offer low fares, but they still have to compete with the dominant state-controlled airlines.


Rome by Lonely Planet

bike sharing, bread and circuses, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, double helix, G4S, gentrification, Index librorum prohibitorum, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, low cost airline, Murano, Venice glass, Pier Paolo Pasolini, retail therapy, Skype, urban planning

Survival Guide Transport GETTING TO ROME GETTING AROUND ROME Tours Ciampino Airport Train Bus Metro Bus & Tram Car & Motorcycle Bicycle Taxi Train Directory A–Z Business Hours Customs Regulations Emergency Electricity Gay & Lesbian Travellers Internet Access Legal Matters Medical Services Money Post Public Holidays Safe Travel Taxes & Refunds Telephone Time Toilets Tourist Information Travellers with Disabilities Visas Women Travellers Language Transport GETTING TO ROME Most people arrive in Rome by plane, landing at one of its two airports: Leonardo da Vinci, better known as Fiumicino, or Ciampino, the hub for European low-cost airlines. For details of budget airlines flying to Rome check out www.flycheapo.com. Domestic flights connect Rome with airports across Italy. As an alternative to short-haul flights, trains serve Rome’s main station, Stazione Termini, from a number of European destinations as well as cities across Italy.

Exit at EUR, following signs for the centro, to link up with Via Cristoforo Colombo, which will take you directly into the centre. All major car-hire companies are present at Fiumicino. Ciampino Airport Ciampino (CIA; 06 6 59 51; www.adr.it) , 15km southeast of the city centre, is used by European low-cost airlines and charter operators. It’s not a big airport but there’s a steady flow of traffic and at peak times it can get extremely busy. To/From the Airport The best option is to take one of the regular bus services into the city centre. You can also take a bus to Ciampino station and then pick up a train to Stazione Termini.


Fodor's Essential Belgium by Fodor's Travel Guides

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, bike sharing, blood diamond, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, Easter island, Ford Model T, gentrification, haute cuisine, index card, Kickstarter, low cost airline, New Urbanism, out of africa, QR code, retail therapy, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, starchitect, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, young professional

Charleroi is many people’s first glimpse of Belgium, usually while landing. The majority of European low-cost airlines soar into its airport on the northern fringe of the city. Yet most people never set foot here, preferring to catch a bus to the capital instead. It’s a shame. Sure, it’s not pretty, but there is great art, fascinating history, and a UNESCO-listed belfry to admire. And who doesn’t want to say they stayed in the “ugliest city in the world?” GETTING HERE AND AROUND AIR The confusingly named Brussels South Charleroi Airport sits on the edge of the city. This is where the low-cost airlines destined for Brussels land, and the entry point to Belgium for many people.


pages: 202 words: 62,199

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

90 percent rule, Albert Einstein, Clayton Christensen, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Sedaris, deliberate practice, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, impact investing, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, loss aversion, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, microcredit, minimum viable product, Nelson Mandela, North Sea oil, Peter Thiel, power law, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Thaler, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Shai Danziger, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, sovereign wealth fund, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, Vilfredo Pareto

These trade-offs weren’t made by default but by design. Each and every one was made as part of a deliberate strategy to keep costs down. Did he run the risk of alienating customers who wanted the broader range of destinations, the choice to purchase overpriced meals, and so forth? Yes, but Kelleher was totally clear about what the company was—a low-cost airline—and what they were not. And his trade-offs reflected as much. It was an example of his Essentialist thinking at work when he said: “You have to look at every opportunity and say, ‘Well, no … I’m sorry. We’re not going to do a thousand different things that really won’t contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve.’ ” At first, Southwest was lambasted by critics, naysayers, and other Nonessentialists who couldn’t believe that this approach could possibly be successful.


The Rough Guide to Jerusalem by Daniel Jacobs

centre right, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, Frank Gehry, gentrification, haute cuisine, Khartoum Gordon, low cost airline, Mount Scopus, Skype, Suez canal 1869, sustainable-tourism, trade route, urban planning, Wall-E

Very few firms offer Jerusalem city breaks as such, but any agent offering “tailor-made” tours can fix you up with a hotel and flight deal (specialist travel agents are listed on p.22). Flights from the UK and Ireland British Airways, BMI and El Al fly direct to Tel Aviv from London Heathrow, and El Al also run flights from Stanstead, as do Israel’s no-frills domestic carrier, Israir (though their flights are rather often subject to delay or cancellation). British low-cost airline Jet2 run flights from Manchester, and Thompsonfly, affiliated to package holiday firm Thompson, sometimes run flights from Luton and Manchester. From elsewhere in the UK or Ireland, you’ll need to take an indirect flight via London or a European hub such as Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Zurich. Indirect flights via Europe may also be a cheaper option from London.

Canadian youth and student travel firm. 18/06/09 11:36 AM By air By bus Israel’s main international airport, Ben Gurion (Tel Aviv), is located 50km west of Jerusalem near the town of Lydda (Lod). All international flights arrive at terminal 3, domestic flights at terminal 1 (terminal 2 is currently out of use, but may be used in the future for low-cost airlines). Banks, ATMs and car rental facilities are available in the arrivals hall. For further information about the airport, visit the Israel Airports Authority website at w www.iaa.gov.il/rashat. A cab from Ben Gurion into Jerusalem will cost around 250NIS (£42/US$60) and take around 45 minutes. Alternatively Nesher Taxis (see p.27), run a 24-hour sherut (minibus) service from outside the terminal buildings, leaving when full, or an hour after the first passenger arrives, and currently costing 50NIS (£8.50/US$12).


pages: 614 words: 174,226

The Economists' Hour: How the False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society by Binyamin Appelbaum

90 percent rule, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, battle of ideas, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, clean water, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, ending welfare as we know it, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, flag carrier, floating exchange rates, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, greed is good, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, Jean Tirole, John Markoff, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, Les Trente Glorieuses, long and variable lags, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, means of production, Menlo Park, minimum wage unemployment, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, Network effects, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, plutocrats, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, starchitect, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now

American airlines treated customers so poorly that the Obama administration introduced a “Passenger Bill of Rights” in 2009 to discourage some of the worst abuses. But poor service was the argument for deregulation. The theory was that people would trade less service for lower prices. And they did. “There hasn’t been a war in Europe for fifty years because they’re all too busy flying on Ryanair,” Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of that low-cost airline, boasted in 2011. “I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.”79 Deregulation also succeeded in transferring money from workers to consumers, a goal Kahn and others acknowledged privately at the time. “I’d love the Teamsters to be worse off,” Kahn said in an oral history recorded in 1981 but not made public until years later.

An Aer Lingus executive, dismissing the idea of deregulation, explained that Americans had an unhealthy obsession with low prices. “The important concept of public utility has been abandoned by these zealots and replaced by shortsighted consumerism,” he said.91 The zealots were hard to keep away: American charter airlines saw Ireland as a ripe market. In 1984, the Irish government proposed to criminalize the sale of low-cost airline tickets. The penalty for competing with Aer Lingus was to be two years in prison and a fine of 100,000 Irish pounds.92 The legislation finally exhausted the patience of Irish voters, who wanted to be shortsighted consumers. Chastened by the bill’s defeat, the government granted permission to Tony Ryan, a former Aer Lingus executive, to start Ireland’s second passenger airline.93 Ryan, who had spent years seeking approval from the Irish government, found it much easier to obtain permission from the British government to fly between Dublin and Luton, a little airport north of London.


pages: 342 words: 72,927

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? by Pete Dyson, Rory Sutherland

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Swan, Boeing 747, BRICs, butterfly effect, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, choice architecture, cognitive bias, cognitive load, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, demand response, Diane Coyle, digital map, driverless car, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, fake news, functional fixedness, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Greta Thunberg, Gödel, Escher, Bach, high-speed rail, hive mind, Hyperloop, Induced demand, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low cost airline, Lyft, megaproject, meta-analysis, Network effects, nudge unit, Ocado, overview effect, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, pneumatic tube, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Rory Sutherland, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, selection bias, Skype, smart transportation, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, systems thinking, TED Talk, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Veblen good, When a measure becomes a target, yield management, zero-sum game

They recommended the group purchase large stakes in lesser-known carriers, leading to an independent alliance known as Qualiflyer that would benefit from what everyone considered was ­Swissair’s superior expertise.21 Executives in these smaller, often loss-making airlines deferred to Swissair’s perceived knowledge of what to do. The result was that the board waved through one bad decision after another. It approved bold, risky acquisitions.22 It switched established routes to lesser-known carriers within the group, like Crossair and LaudaAir. It had no answer to competition from the new, low-cost carriers who were changing the market. The airline eventually ran out of cash, having failed to recover from being grounded after 9/11, and was acquired by Lufthansa in 2005. Board members were eventually charged with mismanagement. Reporting for the BBC at the 2007 trial of its executives, Imogen Foulkes said of Swissair’s failure: Something did die in Switzerland that day.


pages: 220 words: 75,651

The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman

airport security, low cost airline, Mercator projection, off-the-grid, out of africa, Rubik’s Cube

Usually the only consequence was a flat tire and a delay, and when tragedy did strike, its victims were poor, people whom no one but their immediate family and friends cared about. Brazil’s airline system was expanding by leaps and bounds—in fact, more people were starting to fly all over the world in places they hadn’t ever before; planes were becoming much more democratic. New low-cost airlines were popping up everywhere, not just in Brazil but in every country that had a burgeoning middle class, from Indonesia to Nigeria to India. But the underlying systems that made flying safe hadn’t caught up. In America the days of planes filled with sexy, eye-candy stewardesses were long gone, and planes themselves often felt like unkempt cattle cars.


pages: 219 words: 15,438

The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America by Warren E. Buffett, Lawrence A. Cunningham

book value, business logic, buy and hold, compensation consultant, compound rate of return, corporate governance, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, fixed income, George Santayana, Henry Singleton, index fund, intangible asset, invisible hand, junk bonds, large denomination, low cost airline, Michael Milken, oil shock, passive investing, price stability, Ronald Reagan, stock buybacks, Tax Reform Act of 1986, Teledyne, the market place, transaction costs, Yogi Berra, zero-coupon bond

In earlier years, these life-threatening costs posed few problems. Airlines were then protected from competition by regulation, and carriers could absorb high costs because they could pass them along by way of fares that were also high. When deregulation came along, it did not immediately change the picture: The capacity of low-cost carriers was so small that the high-cost lines could, in large part, maintain their existing fare structures. During this period, with the longer-term problems largely invisible but slowly metastasizing, the costs that were nonsustainable became further embedded. As the seat capacity of the low-cost operators expanded, their fares began to force the old-line, high-cost airlines to cut their own.


pages: 280 words: 82,393

Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes by Ian Leslie

Atul Gawande, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, call centre, data science, different worldview, double helix, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Isaac Newton, longitudinal study, low cost airline, Mark Zuckerberg, medical malpractice, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, Paul Graham, Silicon Valley, Socratic dialogue, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, work culture , zero-sum game

Scholars who study organisations have found that the worst, most unproductive workplace cultures are riddled with passive aggression. That’s why the most successful firms make a determined effort to get their internal conflicts out into the open. Carefully managed, conflict can bring co-workers closer together. Southwest Airlines might just be the most successful airline in history. In 2019, the Texas-based low-cost carrier celebrated its forty-sixth consecutive year of profitability, a unique record in a volatile industry. Southwest’s success is often explained with reference to its charismatic former CEO, Herb Kelleher, who co-founded the airline in 1967. Kelleher, who died in 2019, was a man of unquenchable bonhomie and he created a corporate culture in his image: Southwest staff are famous for their conviviality and quirky humour.


pages: 453 words: 79,218

Lonely Planet Best of Hawaii by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, bike sharing, call centre, carbon footprint, G4S, Kickstarter, land reform, Larry Ellison, low cost airline, machine readable, Maui Hawaii, Peter Pan Syndrome, polynesian navigation

In general, return fares from the US mainland to Hawaii cost from $400 (in low season from the West Coast) to $800 or more (in high season from the East Coast). Pleasant Holidays (%800-742-9244; www.pleasantholidays.com) offers competitive vacation packages from the US mainland. For discounted flights and vacation packages from Canada, check with low-cost carrier WestJet (%888-937-8538; www.westjet.com). All checked and carry-on bags leaving Hawaii for the US mainland, Alaska and Guam must be inspected by a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) x-ray machine at the airport. Airports The majority of incoming flights from overseas and the US mainland arrive at Honolulu International Airport (HNL; %808-836-6411; http://hawaii.gov/hnl; 300 Rodgers Blvd; W) on Oʻahu.


pages: 389 words: 81,596

Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required by Kristy Shen, Bryce Leung

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Apollo 13, asset allocation, barriers to entry, buy low sell high, call centre, car-free, Columbine, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, digital nomad, do what you love, Elon Musk, fear of failure, financial independence, fixed income, follow your passion, Great Leap Forward, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, index fund, John Bogle, junk bonds, longitudinal study, low cost airline, Mark Zuckerberg, mortgage debt, Mr. Money Mustache, obamacare, offshore financial centre, passive income, Ponzi scheme, risk tolerance, risk/return, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, supply-chain management, the rule of 72, working poor, Y2K, Zipcar

$32.20 $41.86 Total $2,656.92 $3,454 ASIA (Expenses for Japan) Category Cost in USD/Month/Couple Cost in CAD/Month/Couple Comments Accommodations $1,335.38 $1,736 Food $1,136.77 $1,477.80 26% groceries, 73% eating out Transportation $532.91 $692.78 Includes taxes on flights paid for with points, low-cost airline tickets, and local trains Activities $193.74 $251.86 Clothing/Toiletries/Data/Etc. $44.28 $57.56 Total $3,243.08 $4,216 SOUTHEAST ASIA (Expenses for Vietnam) Category Cost in USD/Month/Couple Cost in CAD/Month/Couple Comments Accommodations $591.93 $769.51 Food $516.97 $672.06 20% groceries, 80% eating out Transportation $451.28 $586.67 Activities $191.13 $248.47 Clothing/Toiletries/Data/Etc


pages: 339 words: 83,725

Fodor's Madrid and Side Trips by Fodor's

Atahualpa, call centre, Francisco Pizarro, glass ceiling, Isaac Newton, low cost airline, Pepto Bismol, traffic fines, young professional

They provide competition to the market’s main players, easyJet (www.easyjet.com) and Ryanair (www.ryanair.com). All these carriers offer frequent flights, cover small cities as well as large ones, and have very competitive fares. Attitude Travel (www.attitudetravel.com/lowcostairlines), Skyscanner (www.skyscanner.net), and Wegolo (www.wegolo.com) are comprehensive search sites for low-cost airlines worldwide. Contacts Air Europa (800/238–7672 in U.S., 902/401501 in Spain | www.air-europa.com). FlightPass (888/321–4737 | www.europebyair.com). Iberia (800/772–4642, 902/400500 in Spain | www.iberia.com). Transportation Security Administration (www.tsa.gov) has answers for almost every question that might come up.


pages: 295 words: 87,204

The Capitalist Manifesto by Johan Norberg

AltaVista, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, failed state, Filter Bubble, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Indoor air pollution, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, Minecraft, multiplanetary species, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, open economy, passive income, Paul Graham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, planned obsolescence, precariat, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sam Bankman-Fried, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Virgin Galactic, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey, X Prize, you are the product, zero-sum game

At the same time, such scams are getting so much attention, and causing such a strong market reaction, because they are exceptions. There is a built-in protection against crooks in the market: businesses are voluntary collaborations based on trust; no one wants to collaborate with someone who does not inspire trust. That is not always enough, because confidence tricksters use our limited information against us. Low-cost airlines continue to sell airline tickets with attractive flight times, which they then systematically change to an unearthly hour on Monday morning (didn’t you read the small print?). Unscrupulous loan sharks obscure their default interest rate and use the bailiff as if it were a branch of business.


pages: 292 words: 81,699

More Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky

a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Black Swan, Build a better mousetrap, business process, call centre, Danny Hillis, David Heinemeier Hansson, Dennis Ritchie, failed state, Firefox, fixed income, functional programming, George Gilder, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, lolcat, low cost airline, Mars Rover, Network effects, Paradox of Choice, Paul Graham, performance metric, place-making, price discrimination, prisoner's dilemma, Ray Oldenburg, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, slashdot, social software, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Superbowl ad, The Great Good Place, The Soul of a New Machine, Tragedy of the Commons, type inference, unpaid internship, wage slave, web application, Y Combinator

They don’t want to think they’re paying extra just because they’re not clever enough to find the magic coupon code. The airline industry got really, really good at segmenting and ended up charging literally a different price to every single person on the plane. As a result, most people felt they weren’t getting the best deal, and they didn’t like the airlines. When a new alternative arose in the form of low-cost carriers (Southwest, JetBlue, etc.), customers had no loyalty whatsoever to the legacy airlines that had been trying to pick their pockets for all those years. Camels and Rubber Duckies 273 And God help you if an A-list blogger finds out that your premium printer is identical to the cheap printer, with the speed inhibitor turned off.


Lonely Planet Mexico by John Noble, Kate Armstrong, Greg Benchwick, Nate Cavalieri, Gregor Clark, John Hecht, Beth Kohn, Emily Matchar, Freda Moon, Ellee Thalheimer

AltaVista, Bartolomé de las Casas, Burning Man, call centre, clean water, colonial rule, company town, Day of the Dead, glass ceiling, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, informal economy, language acquisition, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, New Urbanism, off grid, off-the-grid, place-making, Rosa Parks, Rubik’s Cube, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, traffic fines, urban sprawl, wage slave

International online booking agencies worth a look include CheapTickets (www.cheaptickets.com), Kayak (www.kayak.com), Expedia (www.expedia.com), Travelocity (www.travelocity.com), and for students and travelers under 26, STA Travel (www.statravel.com). Skyscanner (in the USA www.skyscanner.com, in Europe www.skyscanner.net) compares flights on different airlines including low-cost carriers. INTERCONTINENTAL (RTW) TICKETS If Mexico is part of a bigger trip encompassing other countries, the best ticket for you may be an open-jaw (where you fly into one place and out of another, covering the intervening distance by land), or a round-the-world (RTW) ticket (these can cost as little as UK£900 or A$2100), or a Circle Pacific ticket, which uses a combination of airlines to travel around the Pacific region.

Depending on the fare you get, flying can be good value on longer journeys, especially considering the long bus trip that is probably the alternative. Airlines in Mexico Aeroméxico and Mexicana are the country’s two major airlines. There are many smaller ones, often cheaper and often flying routes between provincial cities ignored by the bigger two. Low-cost airlines include Interjet, VivaAerobus, Volaris and also MexicanaClick (Mexicana’s no-frills subsidiary). The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) considers Mexico’s Civil Aviation Authority to be in compliance with international aviation safety standards. Fares Fares can depend on whether you fly at a busy or quiet time of day, week or year, and how far ahead you book and pay.

You’ll often save money if you pay for the ticket a few days ahead or if you fly late in the evening. Round-trip fares are usually simply twice the price of one-way tickets, though some advance-payment deals do exist. Typical one-way fares from Mexico City with nonbudget airlines to most Mexican cities are between about M$1300 and M$2100, depending mainly on distance. Low-cost airlines flying from Toluca, 50km west of Mexico City, may charge up to 50% less. Return to beginning of chapter BICYCLE Cycling is not a common way to tour Mexico. The size of the country, poor road surfaces, careless motorists and other road hazards (Click here) are deterrents. However, some riders rise to the challenge and cycling is increasingly popular among Mexicans, so you should find plenty of fellowship along the way.


pages: 1,510 words: 218,417

Lonely Planet Norway (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Donna Wheeler

car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, centre right, company town, energy security, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, low cost airline, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, North Sea oil, place-making, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, urban renewal

The main international Norwegian airports are Gardermoen (Oslo), Flesland (Bergen), Sola (Stavanger), Tromsø, Værnes (Trondheim), Vigra (Ålesund), Karmøy (Haugesund), Kjevik (Kristiansand) and Torp (Sandefjord). Dozens of international airlines fly to/from Norwegian airports. There are direct flights to Norway from East Coast USA and the UK. If coming from Australia or New Zealand, you'll need to connect via an airport in Asia, the Middle East or Europe. NorwegianAIRLINE (www.norwegian.com) Low-cost airline with an extensive and growing domestic and international network. SASAIRLINE (www.sas.no) The largest international network of Norway's carriers. Land Norway shares land borders with Sweden, Finland and Russia. Train travel is possible between Oslo and Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Hamburg, with less frequent services to northern and central Swedish cities from Narvik and Trondheim.

In addition, spouses (including gay partners), children aged two to 15, travellers aged under 26, students and senior citizens over 67 years of age may be eligible for significant discounts on some routes – always ask. Airlines in Norway Three airlines fly domestic routes. NorwegianAIRLINE (www.norwegian.com) Low-cost airline with an extensive and growing domestic network that now includes Longyearbyen (Svalbard). SASAIRLINE (www.sas.no) Large domestic network on mainland Norway, plus flights to Longyearbyen (Svalbard). WiderøeAIRLINE (www.wideroe.no) A subsidiary of SAS with smaller planes and a handful of flights to smaller regional airports.


Industry 4.0: The Industrial Internet of Things by Alasdair Gilchrist

3D printing, additive manufacturing, air gap, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, business intelligence, business logic, business process, chief data officer, cloud computing, connected car, cyber-physical system, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, DevOps, digital twin, fault tolerance, fulfillment center, global value chain, Google Glasses, hiring and firing, industrial robot, inflight wifi, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, inventory management, job automation, low cost airline, low skilled workers, microservices, millennium bug, OSI model, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, platform as a service, pre–internet, race to the bottom, RFID, Salesforce, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, smart transportation, software as a service, stealth mode startup, supply-chain management, The future is already here, trade route, undersea cable, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, web application, WebRTC, Y2K

After all, just like all closed groups, companies in industrial sectors are often blind to their shortcomings. They think this is the way we have always done this, and so has everyone else, so they don’t see a reason to change. However, getting constructive criticism from customers may be advantageous. An advantage of this is with the airline industry, before the advent of low-cost airlines, the customer experience was dreadful, checking-in was slow and tedious, as was boarding and the costs were high. However once a few pioneering airlines decided to cut costs they had to be sure that they would get enough passengers so they listened to their frequent flyers’ pet gripes, and low and behold they revolutionized not just the pricing structures but check-in, boarding, and flight-booking procedures.


Istanbul Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

car-free, carbon footprint, low cost airline, supply-chain management, the built environment, urban sprawl, yield management

There are also a number of cheap (one way €5) but very slow shuttle-bus services from hotels to the airport for your return trip. Check details with your hotel. Sabiha Gökçen International Airport The city's second international airport, Sabiha Gökçen International Airport (SAW, Sabiha Gökçen Havalımanı; %216-588 8888; www.sgairport.com), is at Pendik/Kurtköy on the Asian side of the city. It's popular with low-cost airlines. There are ATMs, car-rental and accommodation-booking desks, stands of mobile-phone companies, exchange bureaux, a mini-market, a left-luggage office and a PTT in the international arrivals hall. Taxi Taxis from this airport to the city are expensive. To Taksim you'll be looking at around TL100, to Sultanahmet around TL130.


Norman Foster: A Life in Architecture by Deyan Sudjic

air gap, Alan Greenspan, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, carbon footprint, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, interchangeable parts, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, low cost airline, Masdar, megacity, megastructure, Murano, Venice glass, Norman Mailer, Pearl River Delta, Peter Eisenman, sustainable-tourism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, three-masted sailing ship, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban renewal, white flight, young professional

With twenty-four million passengers a year, the airport is overwhelmed by people. The sculpture has been removed. There is no easy transition from the pavement; after the attack on Glasgow Airport by al-Qaeda sympathisers, the terminal entrance is a secure zone defended by concrete tank traps. And low-cost airlines that have started to treat their customers with contempt reduce the building to chaos. The fate of Stansted is a reminder of the tension between architecture and art, and the fulfilment that one can bring when measured against the other. Architecture engages with the real issues of everyday life, it directly touches millions of lives, and yet the architect’s connection with his work is eroded with time to almost nothing.


pages: 309 words: 100,573

Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections by Patrick Smith

Airbus A320, airline deregulation, airport security, Atul Gawande, Boeing 747, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, collective bargaining, crew resource management, D. B. Cooper, high-speed rail, inflight wifi, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, legacy carrier, low cost airline, Maui Hawaii, Mercator projection, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, New Urbanism, pattern recognition, race to the bottom, Skype, Tenerife airport disaster, US Airways Flight 1549, zero-sum game

Losses were in the billions, layoffs in the tens of thousands. For the most part, that bleeding has stopped, but while the entrenched old-timers were left to shed costs, reshape their business models, and return to profitability—a decade-long process that ultimately resulted in three mega-mergers—opportunistic low-cost carriers (LCCs) like jetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, and AirTran seized the opportunity. Unencumbered by high labor costs or the need to support complex fleets and decades-old infrastructures, these adaptable youngsters were able to offer streamlined service and irresistibly cheap tickets, rapidly winning over a huge segment of the domestic U.S. market.


pages: 372 words: 101,678

Lessons from the Titans: What Companies in the New Economy Can Learn from the Great Industrial Giants to Drive Sustainable Success by Scott Davis, Carter Copeland, Rob Wertheimer

3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, airport security, asset light, barriers to entry, Big Tech, Boeing 747, business cycle, business process, clean water, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, data science, disruptive innovation, Elisha Otis, Elon Musk, factory automation, fail fast, financial engineering, Ford Model T, global pandemic, hydraulic fracturing, Internet of things, iterative process, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, low cost airline, Marc Andreessen, Mary Meeker, megacity, Michael Milken, Network effects, new economy, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, random walk, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skunkworks, software is eating the world, strikebreaker, tech billionaire, TED Talk, Toyota Production System, Uber for X, value engineering, warehouse automation, WeWork, winner-take-all economy

The members of the engineering team amplified these competitive dynamics, as they wanted to get back to doing what they did best, pushing the technology envelope in new airplane development. Major technology shifts in the aviation world happen at a decadal pace, and in the early 2000s there were several vectors of technology that warranted exploration. High oil prices, as well as emerging competition from upstart airline competitors known as low-cost carriers (LCCs), had Boeing’s customers clamoring for greater fuel efficiency. Their concerns brought to the fore a new material used mainly in military aircraft and spacecraft production. The new material was carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite (CFRP), or just “composite.” Composite’s strength-to-weight ratio was significantly greater than that of traditional materials like aluminum, which translated to significant weight savings and by extension to fuel savings.


The Unusual Billionaires by Saurabh Mukherjea

Albert Einstein, asset light, Atul Gawande, backtesting, barriers to entry, Black-Scholes formula, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, buy and hold, call centre, Checklist Manifesto, commoditize, compound rate of return, corporate governance, dematerialisation, disintermediation, diversification, equity risk premium, financial innovation, forensic accounting, full employment, inventory management, low cost airline, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Peter Thiel, QR code, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, work culture

Failure to create and sustain moats using technology will result in loss of market share to industry leaders and, eventually, severe losses in the core business. As an example of this crippling loss, I reproduce a quote from Captain Gopinath, founder of Air Deccan, which was eventually sold to Kingfisher Airlines in spite of being the pioneering low-cost carrier (LCC) in India. In his book, Simply Fly (2012), Gopinath laments: ‘Given a little more time, Deccan could have weathered the storm and overcome the cash crunch but time was running out. I might have pulled it off had my IT system not collapsed. We had to bear in mind the welfare of four thousand employees; the public insurance funds and retail investors we had to answer to.’


Lonely Planet Norway by Lonely Planet

carbon credits, carbon footprint, cashless society, centre right, energy security, G4S, GPS: selective availability, illegal immigration, Kickstarter, low cost airline, mass immigration, North Sea oil, place-making, trade route, urban renewal, white picket fence

The main international Norwegian airports are Gardermoen (Oslo), Flesland (Bergen), Sola (Stavanger), Tromsø, Værnes (Trondheim), Vigra (Ålesund), Karmøy (Haugesund), Kjevik (Kristiansand) and Torp (Sandefjord). Dozens of international airlines fly to/from Norwegian airports. There are direct flights to Norway from East Coast USA and the UK. If coming from Australia or New Zealand, you'll need to connect via an airport in Asia, the Middle East or Europe. Norwegian (www.norwegian.com) Low-cost airline with an extensive and growing domestic and international network. SAS (www.sas.no) The longest established of Norway's carriers with a large domestic and international route network. Widerøe (www.wideroe.no) Local carrier that predominantly operates between smaller towns and cities, and also provides flights to the Lofoten Islands and the far north.

In addition, spouses (including gay partners), children aged two to 15, travellers aged under 26, students and senior citizens over 67 years of age may be eligible for significant discounts on some routes – always ask. Airlines in Norway Aside from tiny charter airlines and helicopter services, three airlines fly domestic routes. Norwegian (www.norwegian.com) Low-cost airline with an extensive and growing domestic network that now includes Longyearbyen (Svalbard). SAS (www.sas.no) Large domestic network on mainland Norway, plus flights to Longyearbyen (Svalbard). Widerøe (www.wideroe.no) A subsidiary of SAS with smaller planes and flights to smaller regional airports.


pages: 360 words: 101,038

The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax

Airbnb, barriers to entry, big-box store, call centre, cloud computing, creative destruction, death of newspapers, declining real wages, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, deskilling, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, game design, gentrification, hype cycle, hypertext link, informal economy, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, low cost airline, low skilled workers, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, new economy, Nicholas Carr, off-the-grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, Paradox of Choice, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the long tail, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, upwardly mobile, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture

One night over dinner, under a sky bursting with stars, Franceschi started to talk about what kind of products Modo & Modo could manufacture on its own, rather than importing the designs of others. The conversation shifted to a question about who would buy those goods, and then to the changing nature of the world, which had just emerged from the cold war into the heady dawn of globalization. International travel was not only less restricted but more accessible, thanks to low-cost airlines. Technology, including inexpensive cellular phones, websites, and e-mail, allowed independent thinkers to become entrepreneurs and pursue their dreams unbound by geography. Speaking late into the night, the three realized that a new global creative class was emerging, driven by curiosity and passion.


Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years by Richard Watson

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Black Swan, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, cashless society, citizen journalism, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, congestion charging, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, deglobalization, digital Maoism, digital nomad, disintermediation, driverless car, epigenetics, failed state, financial innovation, Firefox, food miles, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, hive mind, hobby farmer, industrial robot, invention of the telegraph, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, linked data, low cost airline, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, mass immigration, Northern Rock, Paradox of Choice, peak oil, pensions crisis, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, RFID, Richard Florida, self-driving car, speech recognition, synthetic biology, telepresence, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Turing test, Victor Gruen, Virgin Galactic, white flight, women in the workforce, work culture , Zipcar

Equally, why do we travel hundreds or thousands of kilometers to visit someone when we could make a phone call instead? These are a couple of the questions we will be asking with greater frequency in the future as the costs and consequences of physical human movement grow. This may strike some people as an odd thing to say, given that we are currently living in an age of low-cost airlines where distance is effectively dead, but we are on the cusp of a great shift caused by skyrocketing oil prices, increasing population, climate change and technology. In the spirit of becoming at one with one’s subject, I am writing this lying in bed (with a crisp white cotton pillow and duvet) onboard a Virgin Atlantic Airways flight from London to Sydney via Hong Kong.


pages: 337 words: 89,075

Understanding Asset Allocation: An Intuitive Approach to Maximizing Your Portfolio by Victor A. Canto

accounting loophole / creative accounting, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California energy crisis, capital asset pricing model, commodity trading advisor, corporate governance, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, equity risk premium, financial engineering, fixed income, frictionless, global macro, high net worth, index fund, inflation targeting, invisible hand, John Meriwether, junk bonds, law of one price, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, market bubble, merger arbitrage, money market fund, new economy, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Phillips curve, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, selection bias, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, statistical arbitrage, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, systematic bias, Tax Reform Act of 1986, the market place, transaction costs, Y2K, yield curve, zero-sum game

An elastic demand means little or no opportunity is available for excess profit unless you are the low-cost provider. Older airlines with unionized workforces have not been able to lower their cost structures, and thus the newer airlines with younger and less-costly structures have gained significant market share. The older established airlines have been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy while the low-cost airlines seem to thrive. The moral of the story, at least for investors, is clear: To identify industries likely to outperform the market in general, we must first decide whether demand for an industry’s product will rise or fall and then whether an industry has pricing power (be it on the demand or supply side).


pages: 340 words: 100,151

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It by Scott Kupor

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Blue Bottle Coffee, carried interest, cloud computing, compensation consultant, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, family office, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, index fund, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Lean Startup, low cost airline, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Paul Graham, pets.com, power law, price stability, prudent man rule, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, the long tail, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, VA Linux, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

global buyout industry raised about $450 billion: Joshua Franklin, “Global Private Equity Funds Raise Record $453 Billion in 2017: Preqin,” Reuters, January 4, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-privateequity-fundraising/global-private-equity-funds-raise-record-453-billion-in-2017-preqin-idUSKBN1ET23L; Christine Williamson, “Hedge Fund Assets End 2017 at Record $3.2 Trillion—HFR,” Pensions & Investments, January 19, 2018, https://www.pionline.com/article/20180119/ONLINE/180119827/hedge-fund-assets-end-2017-at-record-32-trillion-8211-hfr. concentration of venture-backed companies in the US public markets since 1974: Gornall and Strebulaev, “The Economic Impact of Venture Capital.” Chapter Three: How Do Early-Stage VCs Decide Where to Invest? “I knew nothing about airlines”: “Herb Kelleher: Father of Low-Cost Airline Travel Dies at 87,” BBC News, January 4, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46755080. Chapter Four: What Are LPs and Why Should You Care? Financing a whaling venture: Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins, “Whaling Ventures,” Harvard Business School Case Study 9-813086, October 2012 (revised December 9, 2013).


pages: 305 words: 98,072

How to Own the World: A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely by Andrew Craig

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, bonus culture, book value, BRICs, business cycle, collaborative consumption, diversification, endowment effect, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Future Shock, index fund, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, mortgage debt, negative equity, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, passive income, pensions crisis, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Russell Brand, Silicon Valley, smart cities, stocks for the long run, the new new thing, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Yogi Berra, Zipcar

Many companies are dealing with severe input-cost inflation and one of the easiest ways for them to keep their historical profit margin is, quite simply, to give you less for the same money in the hope that you won’t notice. If inflation is “zero” and we are worrying about deflation, then how come a London house can be as much as five or ten times what it was only a few years ago? How come my “low cost airline” flight this year has cost me the same as a British Airways business class fare a decade ago? How come a Picasso and a large ruby just broke records at auction? And how come nearly all stock markets are at all-time highs? The answer is because inflation numbers “are cooked like a thanksgiving Turkey”, to quote award-winning US financial newsletter writer, Byron King.


Discover Greece Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

car-free, carbon footprint, credit crunch, G4S, haute couture, haute cuisine, low cost airline, pension reform, sensible shoes, too big to fail, trade route, urban renewal

Getting There & Away AIR Most travellers arrive in Crete by air, usually with a change in Athens. Iraklio’s Nikos Kazantzakis Airport (www.heraklion-airport.info) is Crete’s busiest airport, although Hania (www.chania-airport.com) is convenient for travellers heading to western Crete. Between May and October, European low-cost carriers and charter airlines operate direct flights to Crete, mostly from UK and German airports. Aegean Airlines has year-round direct flights to Crete from London, Milan, Paris and Rome; coming from another destination requires connecting in Athens. Olympic Air serves Crete from Athens and Thessaloniki To reach Crete by air from other Greek islands usually requires changing in Athens, except for flights operated by Crete-based airline Sky Express (www.skyexpress.gr) .


pages: 363 words: 109,834

The Crux by Richard Rumelt

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air gap, Airbnb, AltaVista, AOL-Time Warner, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, biodiversity loss, Blue Ocean Strategy, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, creative destruction, crossover SUV, Crossrail, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, double entry bookkeeping, drop ship, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, financial engineering, Ford Model T, Herman Kahn, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Just-in-time delivery, Larry Ellison, linear programming, lockdown, low cost airline, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, meta-analysis, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, packet switching, PageRank, performance metric, precision agriculture, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, search costs, selection bias, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, software as a service, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stochastic process, Teledyne, telemarketer, TSMC, uber lyft, undersea cable, union organizing, vertical integration, WeWork

Over the period 1984–1992, Ryanair fought for share on the London–Dublin route, gaining passenger traffic, but it went bankrupt in 1992. The crux of the challenge was the staying power of the established players on the major routes. During the company’s restructuring, CEO Michael O’Leary visited the United States to look closely at low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines. There he saw a cost structure much lower than American Airlines and a clever strategy of not competing head-on but, instead, serving nonmajor airports on at least one side of a trip (for example, Chicago to Baltimore rather than to Washington, DC). Recalling that visit, O’Leary said: We went to look at Southwest Airlines in the US.


pages: 341 words: 107,933

The Dealmaker: Lessons From a Life in Private Equity by Guy Hands

Airbus A320, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, corporate governance, COVID-19, credit crunch, data science, deal flow, Etonian, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, flag carrier, high net worth, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, Nelson Mandela, North Sea oil, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, proprietary trading, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, traveling salesman

Such airlines tend to be start-ups, and so our policy was to lease them our oldest aircraft, factoring the risk we were taking into our financial calculations. Even then, there’s a risk because when an airline starts running into trouble, it often cannibalises its fleet for spares. AWAS had leased five Airbus A320–200s to Indian entrepreneur Vijay Mallya’s low-cost carrier Kingfisher Airlines. The company was perpetually suffering losses so we stationed someone at Kingfisher’s main hub in Bangalore to keep an eye on the aircraft and make sure nobody was taking them apart. Kingfisher finally ceased trading in 2013 when the Indian aviation authorities scrapped its domestic slots and international flying rights.


pages: 398 words: 105,917

Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism by Richard Brooks

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blockchain, BRICs, British Empire, business process, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Strachan, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, energy security, Etonian, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, Frederick Winslow Taylor, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, principal–agent problem, profit motive, race to the bottom, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, supply-chain management, The Chicago School, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks

And it was clear from what he presumably thought a reassuring remark, that ‘India will be one of the key engines of our future growth’, where the priorities of PwC’s world leader really lay. Even in the face of a scandal over which the bean counters would subsequently be found seriously wanting, they remained preoccupied by their own fortunes. Such cases began to draw increasing amounts of regulatory fire. Deloitte’s Brazilian arm was found to have been covering up fraud at low-cost airline Gol, and in 2016 was fined a record $8m by the US’s Public Company Accounting and Oversight Board for ‘materially false audit reports and attempting to cover up audit violations by improperly altering documents and providing false testimony’.27 The regulator’s director of enforcement described the case as ‘the most serious misconduct we’ve uncovered’.


pages: 366 words: 110,374

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever

anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, Brexit referendum, British Empire, colonial rule, company town, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Easter island, European colonialism, flag carrier, gentrification, glass ceiling, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, Kibera, low cost airline, megacity, off-the-grid, Pier Paolo Pasolini, place-making, ride hailing / ride sharing, spice trade, tech bro, trade route, walkable city, women in the workforce

It’s supposed to be fast, efficient, easy, but honestly, as I stare down yet another endless walkway, I begin to regret my decision. Don’t do this, man. Take a cab, especially if you have luggage.” Italian drivers do not expect a tip, but you may round up to the nearest euro. Rome has a second, much smaller airport, the one-terminal Ciampino Giovan Battista Pastine (CIA), which mostly serves low-cost airlines and their flights within the European continent. It’s about seven miles outside the center of the city, with metered taxis available for a 30 euro (US$34) flat rate, and direct bus connections to Rome’s centrally located Termini station, for 6 to 10 euros/US$5.50–$11 each way, with tickets available in the arrivals hall.


Egypt Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

call centre, carbon footprint, Eratosthenes, friendly fire, G4S, haute cuisine, Khartoum Gordon, late fees, low cost airline, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, sustainable-tourism, Thales and the olive presses, trade route, urban planning, urban sprawl

Of note: EgyptAir (www.egyptair.com) Member of Star Alliance. Tickets are cheap, and its international fleet is in good shape. No alcohol is served. Jetairfly (www.jetairfly.com) Low-cost carrier from Brussels. Meridiana fly (www.meridiana.it) Flights from Milan. Air Sinai (www.egyptair.com) From Tel Aviv. Buy tickets at the unmarked office at Ben Yehuda and Allenby. Run by EgyptAir. Alexandria has become a viable alternate airport, especially for low-cost carriers: Air Arabia (www.airarabia.com) Connects to cities around the Middle East and Milan. flydubai (www.flydubai.com) Also serves Middle Eastern cities. Sharm el-Sheikh is handy if you’ll be spending most of your time in Sinai and Jordan.


Egypt Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

call centre, carbon footprint, Eratosthenes, friendly fire, haute cuisine, Khartoum Gordon, late fees, low cost airline, off grid, place-making, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, sustainable-tourism, Thales and the olive presses, trade route, urban planning, urban sprawl

Tickets are cheap, and its international fleet is in good shape. No alcohol is served. Jetairfly (www.jetairfly.com) Low-cost carrier from Brussels to the Red Sea. Meridiana fly (www.meridiana.it) Flights from Milan, Naples and Rome. Air Sinai (www.egyptair.com) From Tel Aviv. Buy tickets at the unmarked office at Ben Yehuda and Allenby. Run by EgyptAir, but service was suspended at time of writing. Alexandria has become a viable alternate airport, especially for low-cost carriers: Air Arabia (www.airarabia.com) Connects Ciaor, Alexandria and Sohag to cities around the Middle East and as far east as India.


pages: 437 words: 113,173

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance by Ian Goldin, Chris Kutarna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Dava Sobel, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Doha Development Round, double helix, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental economics, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, full employment, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial robot, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Johannes Kepler, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahbub ul Haq, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, Max Levchin, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, open economy, Panamax, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, post-Panamax, profit motive, public intellectual, quantum cryptography, rent-seeking, reshoring, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, Snapchat, special economic zone, spice trade, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, uber lyft, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, working poor, working-age population, zero day

Between 1990 and 2014, the worldwide total of international tourist arrivals (defined as visits of at least one night) rose from 440 million to 1.4 billion visits, with China now the biggest source of travelers.36 Air traffic presents similarly stark evidence. Total passenger trips have leapt from some 500 million in 1990 to over 3.2 billion in 2014.37 And since 2011, international flights have outnumbered domestic.38 Many factors have driven this growth. One is the invention of low-cost carriers (Southwest Airlines, EasyJet, RyanAir, Peach and others) in North America, Europe and Asia, which broadened considerably the community of airborne commuters. But the bigger factor is the emergence of new hubs on the once-margins of the world, plugging those populations into the global circulation of jet-setters.


pages: 521 words: 110,286

Them and Us: How Immigrants and Locals Can Thrive Together by Philippe Legrain

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, centre right, Chelsea Manning, clean tech, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, digital divide, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, future of work, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, job automation, Jony Ive, labour market flexibility, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, moral hazard, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open borders, open immigration, postnationalism / post nation state, purchasing power parity, remote working, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Tim Cook: Apple, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, WeWork, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working-age population

Immigrants founded many longer-established UK companies too. The country’s most valuable technology company, Arm Holdings, which designs the chips in most smartphones and was bought by Japan’s Softbank in 2016 for £23.4 billion, was co-founded by Austrian-born Herman Hauser. EasyJet, Britain’s biggest – and Europe’s second-biggest – low-cost airline, was set up by a Greek entrepreneur, Stelios Haji-Ioannou. Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia arrived in the UK in 1972 at the age of thirteen as a refugee from Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda. Along with his family, he spent his first year in Britain in a refugee camp.16 He went on to found Euro Car Parts, which grew into the largest distributor of car parts in Europe, employing more than 12,000 people.


pages: 478 words: 126,416

Other People's Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People? by John Kay

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, call centre, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, currency risk, dematerialisation, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial thriller, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, Irish property bubble, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, loose coupling, low cost airline, M-Pesa, market design, Mary Meeker, megaproject, Michael Milken, millennium bug, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, NetJets, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, Peter Thiel, Piper Alpha, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, railway mania, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, Renaissance Technologies, rent control, risk free rate, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, Yom Kippur War

One side asserted the process was a racket operated for the benefit of large corporations, the other that consumers would be better served by the operation of a free market. There was substantial truth in both claims. A regulatory historian, Alfred Kahn, was appointed chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, where he accomplished the unusual feat of winding up the agency he headed. Rapid growth of low-cost carriers followed, first in the USA and then in other parts of the world. Many of the established firms, such as Pan Am and TWA, failed, but some successfully adjusted to the competitive environment, and new entrants came – and often went. Airline regulation today is focused narrowly on safety and related issues, and the industry has developed what is known as a ‘just culture’, which encourages an openness about failures and a combination of collective responsibility for integrity and competitive responsibility for service.20 The concept of ‘just culture’ is now gaining traction in other areas of commercial activity of public concern, such as medicine.


pages: 803 words: 415,953

Frommer's Mexico 2009 by David Baird, Lynne Bairstow, Joy Hepp, Juan Christiano

airport security, AltaVista, Bartolomé de las Casas, centre right, colonial rule, Day of the Dead, East Village, gentrification, glass ceiling, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, low cost airline, out of africa, Pepto Bismol, place-making, Skype, sustainable-tourism, the market place, urban planning, young professional

P L A N N I N G YO U R T R I P TO M E X I C O GETTING AROUND BY PLANE Mexico has two large private national carriers: Mexicana (& 800/531-7921; www.mexicana.com) and AeroMéxico (& 800/237-6639; www.aeromexico. com), in addition to several up-and-coming low-cost carriers. Mexicana and AeroMéxico offer extensive connections to the United States as well as within Mexico. Up-and-coming low-cost carriers include Aviacsa (www.aviacsa.com), Avolar (www.avolar.com.mx), Click Mexicana (www.click.com.mx), InterJet (www.interjet.com.mx), and Volaris (www.volaris.com.mx). Regional carriers include Aerovega (www.oaxaca-mio. com/aerovega.htm), Aero Tucán (www. aero-tucan.com), and AeroMéxico Connect (www.amconnect.com).

Local numbers for major airlines with nonstop or direct service to Acapulco are AeroMéxico (& 744/485-1600 inside Mexico), American (& 744/ 481-0161, or 01-800/904-6000 inside Mexico for reservations), Continental (& 744/466-9063), Mexicana (& 744/466-9138 or 486-7585), and US Airways (& 744/466-9257). AeroMéxico flies from Guadalajara, Mexico City, Tijuana, and Monterrey; Aviacsa (& 01800/711-6733) flies from Mexico City; InterJet (& 01800/01-12345) is a low-cost carrier that flies from Toluca, about an hour from Mexico City; Mexicana flies from Mexico City. Check with a travel agent about charter flights. The airport (airport code: ACA) is 22km (14 miles) southeast of town, over the hills east of the bay. Private taxis are the fastest way to get downtown; they cost $30 to $50 (£15–£25).


pages: 457 words: 126,996

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Story of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman

1960s counterculture, 4chan, Aaron Swartz, Amazon Web Services, Bay Area Rapid Transit, bitcoin, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, David Graeber, Debian, digital rights, disinformation, do-ocracy, East Village, Eben Moglen, Edward Snowden, false flag, feminist movement, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, gentrification, George Santayana, Hacker News, hive mind, impulse control, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, lolcat, low cost airline, mandatory minimum, Mohammed Bouazizi, Network effects, Occupy movement, Oklahoma City bombing, operational security, pirate software, power law, Richard Stallman, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, SQL injection, Steven Levy, Streisand effect, TED Talk, Twitter Arab Spring, WikiLeaks, zero day

Executives from technology companies seemed to be more curious and were, if nothing else, at least familiar with the fact that Anonymous was involved in a range of political movements. Sometimes they were even interested to learn about Anonymous’ role in the Arab Spring. Executives from financial and energy firms were frostier, while executives from other industries showed a curious mix of disgust and fear. One head of communications for a low-cost airline joked that she wished Anonymous would hack her company—the free publicity would be stellar. What was less expected was a query that I received about Anonymous’ potential contribution to the corporate world. TTI/Vanguard approached me to assess whether I could give a talk along these lines to its clients, which at any one time included Royal Dutch Shell, Northrop Grumman, Toyota, FedEx, and Expedia.


pages: 890 words: 133,829

Sardinia Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, haute couture, Honoré de Balzac, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Skype

Police stationPOLICE ( GOOGLE MAP ; %079 972 00 00; Via Fratelli Kennedy 1) Post officePOST OFFICE ( GOOGLE MAP ; Via Carducci 35; h8.20am-7.05pm Mon-Fri, 8.20am-12.35pm Sat) Tourist officeTOURIST INFORMATION ( GOOGLE MAP ; %079 97 90 54; www.alghero-turismo.it; Piazza Porta Terra 9; h8am-8pm Mon-Sat, 10am-1pm Sun) English-speaking staff and tonnes of practical information. 8Getting There & Away Air Alghero’s Fertilia airport ( GOOGLE MAP ; %079 93 50 11; www.aeroportodialghero.it) is 10km northwest of town. It's served by Alitalia (www.alitalia.com) and a number of low-cost carriers, including Ryanair (www.ryanair.com), which operates flights to mainland Italy and destinations across Europe, including Barcelona, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Madrid and Paris. Bus Intercity buses stop at and leave from Via Catalogna, by the Giardini Pubblici. Buy tickets at the ticket office in the gardens.


Canary Islands Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

AltaVista, call centre, carbon footprint, G4S, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, low cost airline, urban sprawl

Virtually everyone else is supposed to obtain (from a Spanish consulate in their country of residence) a work permit and, if they plan to stay more than 90 days, a residence visa. While jobs (especially in tourist resorts) aren’t that hard to come by, the procedures necessary to get your paperwork in order can be difficult and time-consuming. Transport Top of section GETTING THERE & AWAY Getting to the Canary Islands is a cinch. Low-cost carriers are plentiful from all over Europe, particularly from Germany, the UK and Spain. Flights, tours and rail tickets can be booked online at www.lonelyplanet.com/travel_services. Entering the Canary Islands Citizens of the European Union (EU) member states and Switzerland can travel to the Canary Islands with just their national identity card.


Ukraine by Lonely Planet

Anton Chekhov, Burning Man, call centre, carbon footprint, centre right, gentrification, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, low cost airline, megacity, Skype, stakhanovite, Suez canal 1869, trade route

Entering the Country Your passport must be valid for at least one month beyond your intended departure from Ukraine. It must be stamped with a visa if you need one. Entry is usually trouble free and border officials ask few questions these days. Immigration cards were scrapped in September 2010, so anyone claiming you still need one is up to no good or hasn’t heard about the change yet. Air Low-cost airlines have struggled to find their way into Ukraine, but this is likely to change once Lviv’s new terminal is built. This is sure to attract a budget operator with direct flights from major cities in Western Europe. Airports & Airlines Boryspil International Airport (KBP; www.airport-borispol.kiev.ua) Most international flights use Kyiv’s main airport, 30km southeast of the city centre.


pages: 537 words: 135,099

The Rough Guide to Amsterdam by Martin Dunford, Phil Lee, Karoline Thomas

banking crisis, gentrification, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, low cost airline, Nelson Mandela, place-making, plutocrats, spice trade, sustainable-tourism, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, young professional

There’s a good number of daily flights out of London – Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City – plus nonstop flights from many of the UK’s regional airports, including Birmingham, East Midlands, Cardiff, Southampton, Norwich, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds-Bradford, Humberside, Newcastle, Teesside, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Whichever route you choose, it’s hard to say precisely what you’ll pay at any given time: the price depends hugely on when you book and when you fly, what offers are available – and how lucky you are. However, flying to Amsterdam with one of the low-cost airlines between April and September, you’ll pay around £120 return travelling at convenient times at the weekend, including taxes, as opposed to £160 with one of the full-service carriers. Weekday travel will cost £50–70 with a budget carrier, £100 or so with a full-service airline. If you want more flexibility with your ticket you’ll pay more, as you will if you book at the last minute – economy return tickets from London to Amsterdam can cost anything up to £400.


pages: 493 words: 145,326

Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain by Christian Wolmar

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Beeching cuts, carbon footprint, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, creative destruction, cross-subsidies, Crossrail, financial independence, hiring and firing, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, low cost airline, railway mania, rising living standards, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, strikebreaker, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, union organizing, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, working poor, yield management

The very term ‘class’ came into circulation at this time; earlier forms of transport, such as the stagecoach and ships, had different terminology to distinguish between their types of passenger, for example, ‘inside’ and ‘cabin’ accommodation, or ‘outside’ and ‘deck’. Despite Gladstone’s 1844 legislation which had forced all railway companies to provide at least one cheap service each way per day, the trains were largely used by the middle and upper classes, much like aviation before the advent of the charter and low-cost airlines, while the poor were confined to an annual excursion to the seaside and the odd essential trip when they could afford the fares. The Midland, the most aggressively competitive of the big companies, set out to challenge that orthodoxy, seeing the potential of attracting the masses on to the railway by providing plenty of cheap accommodation.


pages: 497 words: 144,283

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

Chinese companies operate mines in Shan, pipelines cross through it, the yuan can be used as currency there, and mixed marriages are rising.*6 Carving through Southeast Asia is no longer about borders but about the management of flows and frictions. ASEAN’s businesspeople, workers, students, and tourists now ferry across the region in record numbers on the back of low-cost carriers such as AirAsia, which has done as much for regional integration as any diplomatic body. Demographic shifts guarantee that Asia’s blending will continue: The erstwhile “Asian Tigers” such as Singapore and Taiwan—to say nothing of much larger China and Japan—are aging, while Indonesia and the Philippines are full of youthful labor.


Lonely Planet Panama (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Carolyn McCarthy

California gold rush, carbon footprint, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Francisco Pizarro, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, land tenure, low cost airline, megaproject, off-the-grid, Panamax, post-Panamax, Ronald Reagan, Suez canal 1869, sustainable-tourism, trade route, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, women in the workforce

Most international flights arrive to Panama City’s Tocumen International Airport (www.tocumenpanama.aero), 35km from downtown. Located 5km southeast of the Costa Rican border, David’s Aeropuerto Enrique Malek ( 721-1072) frequently handles flights to and from San José. With frequent flights to the US and throughout Latin America, Panama’s national airline Copa (www.copaair.com) meets international standards. Low-cost airlines that provide international flights to Panama include American Airlines ( 238-4695; www.aa.com) , Avianca ( 238-4096; www.avianca.com) , Continental Airlines ( 238-4979; www.continental.com) , Delta Air Lines ( 238-4793; www.delta.com) , Grupo Taca ( 238-4116; www.taca.com) and Iberia ( 227-3966; www.iberia.com) .


pages: 543 words: 147,357

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society by Will Hutton

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, centre right, choice architecture, cloud computing, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, debt deflation, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, discovery of the americas, discrete time, disinformation, diversification, double helix, Edward Glaeser, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, full employment, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Dyson, James Watt: steam engine, Japanese asset price bubble, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, language acquisition, Large Hadron Collider, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, moral panic, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Neil Kinnock, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, plutocrats, power law, price discrimination, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, railway mania, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, tail risk, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, too big to fail, unpaid internship, value at risk, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, work culture , working poor, world market for maybe five computers, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Globalisation and inward migration kept inflation in check, while consumption grew every year, propelled by real-wage gains and equity withdrawn from the ever-buoyant property market. These were good times. New temples to shopping were built around the country in vast out-of-town malls – the Trafford Centre, Meadowhall and Bluewater became bywords for the new consumption religion. Low-cost airlines whisked the affluent British to holiday destinations all over Europe. Increasingly sophisticated electronic gadgetry – iPods, mobile phones, HDTV – became ever cheaper. Britain became a capital of live rock and roll music, with the summer beginning at Glastonbury and then punctuated by more events copying its template.


pages: 524 words: 155,947

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy by Philip Coggan

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, Apollo 11, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bletchley Park, Bob Noyce, Boeing 747, bond market vigilante , Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, Columbine, Corn Laws, cotton gin, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, driverless car, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, German hyperinflation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global value chain, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, hydraulic fracturing, hydroponic farming, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Jon Ronson, Kenneth Arrow, Kula ring, labour market flexibility, land reform, land tenure, Lao Tzu, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Blériot, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, M-Pesa, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, Murano, Venice glass, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, popular capitalism, popular electronics, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, TaskRabbit, techlash, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, V2 rocket, Veblen good, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, world market for maybe five computers, Yom Kippur War, you are the product, zero-sum game

The companies promise a regular timetable, so the planes must be flown whether or not they are full. Many of the pioneering names of the industry are no longer around; companies such as Pan Am, TWA, or BOAC, which merged into British Airways. (Their frailties earned them ironic nicknames such as Pick Another Airline Mate, Try Walking Across and Better On A Camel.) Low-cost airlines such as EasyJet, Ryanair, and JetBlue have eaten into the business of the traditional carriers. Non-Western carriers have emerged, such as Emirates, based in Dubai, and China Southern. Today, flying is a far less glamorous business for most passengers; a combination of cramped seats and extra charges for taking your own luggage.


The Rough Guide to Brussels 4 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) by Dunford, Martin.; Lee, Phil; Summer, Suzy.; Dal Molin, Loik

Berlin Wall, bike sharing, British Empire, car-free, Fall of the Berlin Wall, gentrification, glass ceiling, low cost airline, Peace of Westphalia, sustainable-tourism, trade route, urban planning

Flying from Ireland, there’s much less choice, but Ryanair charges very reasonable rates for flights from either Dublin or Shannon to Brussels-Charleroi. Travelling at convenient times at the weekend between April and September, fares are usually around £100 return (including taxes) with the low-cost airlines, £150 with one of the full-service carriers. Weekday travel will cost £50–60 with a budget carrier, and maybe £100 or so with a full-service airline. Of course if you want more flexibility with your ticket you’ll pay more, as you will if you book at the last minute – economy return tickets from London to Brussels can cost anything up to £400.


Spain by Lonely Planet Publications, Damien Simonis

Atahualpa, business process, call centre, centre right, Colonization of Mars, discovery of the americas, Francisco Pizarro, Frank Gehry, G4S, gentrification, glass ceiling, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, intermodal, Islamic Golden Age, land reform, large denomination, low cost airline, megaproject, place-making, Skype, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Winter of Discontent, young professional

Airports & Airlines The main gateway to Spain is Madrid’s Barajas airport (Aeropuerto de Barajas; nationwide flight information 902 40 47 04; www.aena.es), although many European direct flights serve other centres, particularly Barcelona’s Aeroport del Prat, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca and Valencia. Charter flights and low-cost airlines (mostly from the UK) fly direct to a growing number of regional airports, including A Coruña, Alicante, Almería, Asturias, Bilbao, Girona (for the Costa Brava and Barcelona), Ibiza, Jerez de la Frontera, Murcia, Reus and Seville. * * * THINGS CHANGE… The information in this chapter is particularly vulnerable to change.

Among the airlines that fly to and from Spain are the following: Aer Lingus (EI; in Ireland 0818 365000; ­www.aerlingus.com) Air Berlin (AB; 902 32 07 37, in Germany 01805 737800; www.airberlin.com) Air Europa (UX; 902 40 15 01; www.aireuropa.com) Air Nostrum (IB; 902 40 05 00; www.airnostrum.es) Alpi Eagles (E8; in Italy 899 500058; ­www.alpieagles.com) American Airlines (AA; in the USA 800 433 7300; www.aa.com) BMI (BD; 91 275 46 29, in the UK 0870 607 0555; www.flybmi.com) British Airways (BA; 902 11 13 33, in the UK 0870 850 9850; www.britishairways.com) Brussels Airlines (SN; 807 22 00 03, in Belgium 0902 516000; www.flysn.com) Clickair (XG; 902 25 42 52; www.clickair.com) Continental (CO; 900 96 12 66, in the USA 800 231 0856; www.continental.com) Delta (DL; 901 11 69 46, in the USA 800 221 1212; www.delta.com) EasyJet (U2; 807 26 00 26, in the UK 0905 821 0905; www.easyjet.com) FlyGlobeSpan (Y2; in the UK 0871 271 0415; ­www.flyglobespan.com) Germanwings (4U; 91 625 97 04, in Germany 0900 1919100; www.germanwings.com) Iberia (IB; 902 40 05 00; www.iberia.es) Jet2 (LS; 902 88 12 69, in the UK 0871 226 1737; www.jet2.com) Lufthansa (LX; 902 22 01 01, in Germany 01805 838426; www.lufthansa.com) Meridiana (IG; in Italy 892928; www.meridiana.it) Monarch (ZB; 800 09 92 60, in the UK 0870 040 5040; www.flymonarch.com) MyAir (8I; in Italy 899 500060; www.myair.com) Norwegian Air Shuttle (DY; in Norway 815 21815; www.norwegian.no) Royal Air Maroc (AT; www.royalairmaroc.com) Ryanair (FR; 807 22 00 32, in the UK 0871 246 0000, in Ireland 0818 303030; www.ryanair.com) Singapore Airlines (SQ; 902 01 25 14; ­www.singaporeair.com) Sky Europe (NE; 807 00 12 04, in Slovakia 02 3301 7301, in Hungary 06 1777 7000; www.skyeurope.com) Spanair (JK; 902 13 14 15; www.spanair.com) Sterling Airlines (NB; 91 749 66 43, in Denmark 70 10 84 84; www.sterlingticket.com) Swiss (LX; 901 11 67 12, in Switzerland 0848 700700; www.swiss.com) Thomson Fly (BY; in the UK 0871 231 4691; ­www.thomsonfly.com) Transavia (HV; 807 07 50 22, in the Netherlands 0900 0737; www.transavia.com) US Airways (US; 901 11 70 73, in the USA 800 428 4322; www.usairways.com) Vueling (VY; 902 33 39 33; www.vueling.com) Windjet (IV; 900 99 69 33; w2.volawindjet.it) Wizz (W6; 807 45 00 10, in Hungary 06 9018 1181; http://wizzair.com) Tickets The internet is increasingly the easiest way of locating and booking reasonably priced seats. This is especially so for flights from around Europe, regardless of whether you are flying with major carriers like Iberia or low-cost airlines. Full-time students and those under 26 sometimes have access to discounted fares, especially on longer-haul flights from beyond Europe. You have to show a document proving your date of birth or a valid International Student Identity Card (ISIC) when buying your ticket. Other cheap deals include the discounted tickets released to travel agents and specialist discount agencies.

Competing with Iberia are Spanair and Air Europa, as well as the low-cost companies Clickair (another Iberia subsidiary) and Vueling. Between them they cover a host of Spanish destinations. The busiest route by far, in spite of strong competition from the high-speed AVE train, is the Barcelona–Madrid puente (bridge). The UK low-cost airline EasyJet has a hub in Madrid and offers domestic flights to Oviedo, Ibiza and A Coruña. Ireland’s Ryanair also runs a handful of domestic Spanish flights, including Alicante–Zaragoza, Girona–Granada, Girona–Madrid, Madrid–Santander, Reus–Palma de Mallorca, Reus–Santander, Reus–Santiago de Compostela, Reus–Seville and Valencia–Santiago de Compostela.


Croatia by Anja Mutic, Vesna Maric

call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, friendly fire, G4S, haute cuisine, low cost airline, off-the-grid, starchitect

Police will not always take reports of ‘date rape’ seriously. Be careful about being alone with an unfamiliar man. Topless sunbathing is tolerated, but there are numerous nudist beaches. Top of section Transport GETTING THERE & AWAY Getting to Croatia is becoming ever easier, especially if you’re arriving in summer. Low-cost carriers have established routes to Croatia – you can now fly to Dubrovnik, Split, Zadar, Rijeka, Pula and Zagreb on a budget airline. A plethora of bus and ferry routes also shepherd holidaymakers to the coast. Flights, tours and rail tickets can be booked online at www.lonelyplanet.com/bookings. Entering the Country With an economy that depends heavily on tourism, Croatia has wisely kept red tape to a minimum for foreign visitors.


pages: 598 words: 172,137

Who Stole the American Dream? by Hedrick Smith

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbus A320, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, asset allocation, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, business cycle, business process, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, family office, financial engineering, Ford Model T, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, guest worker program, guns versus butter model, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, industrial cluster, informal economy, invisible hand, John Bogle, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Larry Ellison, late fees, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Maui Hawaii, mega-rich, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, Occupy movement, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, Ponzi scheme, Powell Memorandum, proprietary trading, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Renaissance Technologies, reshoring, rising living standards, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech worker, Ted Nordhaus, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Vanguard fund, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, Y2K

Pat O’Neill, who ended up making $50,000 plus, could count on an annual retirement of roughly $36,000, or about $3,000 a month—for the rest of his life. United Airlines was committed to that under its union contracts and the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Bankrupt Promises The crunch began in the 1990s. Low-cost carriers like Southwest Airlines began eating into United’s market share, and its profit margins slipped. In 1994, United’s finances were so shaky that management struck a grand bargain with its unions—management would trade 55 percent majority ownership in the company to its unions in exchange for their agreeing to $4.9 billion in pay cuts and reduced benefits.


pages: 597 words: 172,130

The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire by Neil Irwin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, currency peg, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, foreign exchange controls, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Google Earth, hiring and firing, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, Julian Assange, low cost airline, low interest rates, market bubble, market design, middle-income trap, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, Paul Samuelson, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, rent control, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, union organizing, WikiLeaks, yield curve, Yom Kippur War

Black humor notwithstanding, the Irish seemed to deal with the coming era of austerity—and even their loss of economic sovereignty—with greater acceptance than the Greeks had. In the Mediterranean nation that spring, protestors had staged a nationwide strike, tried to storm parliament, and firebombed a bank, leaving three dead. By contrast, there was no significant violence in the streets of Ireland, although the chief executive of the low-cost airline Ryanair upstaged the prime minister by showing up at an event to celebrate the opening of a new terminal at Dublin’s airport with a coffin covered by an Irish flag. He announced that the terminal amounted to a “nice welcoming lounge” for IMF officials. It probably helped that the Irish were fast losing confidence in their own elected officials.


France (Lonely Planet, 8th Edition) by Nicola Williams

active transport: walking or cycling, back-to-the-land, bike sharing, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, Columbine, company town, double helix, flag carrier, gentrification, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, haute cuisine, Henri Poincaré, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information trail, Jacquard loom, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Louis Blériot, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, Murano, Venice glass, pension reform, post-work, QWERTY keyboard, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, Sloane Ranger, Suez canal 1869, supervolcano, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, V2 rocket

See the boxed text for shops selling the town’s other gastronomic claim to fame, chocolate. Getting There & Away AIR Biarritz-Anglet-Bayonne airport ( 05 59 43 83 83; www.biarritz.aeroport.fr) is 5km southwest of central Bayonne and 3km southeast of the centre of Biarritz. It’s served by low-cost carriers including easyJet and Ryanair, as well as Air France, with daily domestic flights and flights to the UK, and regular flights to Ireland and other European destinations. Bus 6 links both Bayonne and Biarritz with the airport (buses depart roughly hourly). A taxi from the town centre costs around €15 to €20.

* * * Marseille’s biggest market, the daily Prado Market (Map; Castellane or Périer; 8am-1pm) stretches from the Castellane metro station along av du Prado to the Périer metro station, with a staggering array of clothes, fruit, vegetables and speciality items – and a flower market on Friday morning. Getting There & Away AIR Aéroport Marseille-Provence ( 04 42 14 14 14; www.marseille.aeroport.fr), also known as Aéroport Marseille-Marignane, is 25km northwest of town in Marignane. It has numerous flights to Europe and North Africa, including flights with low-cost airlines. BOAT Marseille’s passenger ferry terminal (Map; 04 91 39 40 00; www.marseille-port.fr; Joliette) is 250m south of place de la Joliette (1er). The Société Nationale Maritime Corse-Méditerranée (SNCM; Map; 08 25 88 80 88; www.sncm.fr; 61 bd des Dames, 2e; Joliette; 8am-6pm Mon-Fri, 8.30am-noon & 2-5.30pm Sat) links Marseille with Corsica (Click here), Sardinia and Tunisia.


Lonely Planet Iceland (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Carolyn Bain, Alexis Averbuck

Airbnb, banking crisis, car-free, carbon footprint, cashless society, centre right, DeepMind, European colonialism, Eyjafjallajökull, food miles, Kickstarter, low cost airline, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, post-work, presumed consent, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, undersea cable

Find a list of airlines serving the country at www.kefairport.is/English/Service/Airlines/. Icelandair (www.icelandair.com) is the national carrier, with an excellent safety record. Air Iceland (Flugfélag Íslands; www.airiceland.is) is the main domestic airline, but also flies to destinations in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. WOW Air (www.wowair.com) is an Icelandic low-cost carrier, serving a growing number of European and North American destinations. Sea Smyril Line (www.smyrilline.com) operates a pricey but well-patronised weekly car ferry, the Norröna, from Hirsthals (Denmark) through Tórshavn (Faroe Islands) to Seyðisfjörður in east Iceland. Boats run year-round between Denmark and the Faroe Islands; Iceland is part of the set itinerary from late March until October.


Sweden by Becky Ohlsen

accounting loophole / creative accounting, car-free, centre right, clean water, financial independence, glass ceiling, haute couture, Kickstarter, low cost airline, mass immigration, New Urbanism, period drama, place-making, post-work, retail therapy, starchitect, the built environment, white picket fence

Return to beginning of chapter GETTING THERE & AWAY Air Stockholm’s main airport, Stockholm-Arlanda (797 60 00; www.arlanda.se, www.lfv.se), is 45km north of the city centre and can be reached from central Stockholm by both bus and express train (Click here). Bromma Airport (797 68 00) is 8km west of Stockholm and is used for some domestic flights. Skavsta Airport (0155-28 04 00), 100km south of Stockholm, near Nyköping, is mostly used by low-cost carriers like Ryanair and Wizz Air. The SAS (0770-72 77 27; www.sas.se) network serves 28 Swedish destinations from Arlanda, and has international services to Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki and a host of other European cities including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, Berlin, Dublin, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hamburg, London, Manchester, Milan, Moscow, Paris, Rome, St Petersburg and Zagreb.


pages: 1,048 words: 187,324

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, Ella Morton

anti-communist, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, centre right, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, cosmic microwave background, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Day of the Dead, double helix, East Village, Easter island, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, germ theory of disease, Golden Gate Park, Google Earth, Haight Ashbury, horn antenna, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, index card, intentional community, Jacques de Vaucanson, Kowloon Walled City, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, mutually assured destruction, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, phenotype, Pluto: dwarf planet, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Tunguska event, urban sprawl, Vesna Vulović, white picket fence, wikimedia commons, working poor

Initially erected as promotional tools for stores, museums, and lodgings, the big things became attractions themselves. For many Australians, stopping for a photo in front of the Big Banana was a summer vacation ritual. There are over a hundred big things in Australia, but most look a little run-down these days. Low-cost airline flights are gradually replacing the great Australian road trip. Low-tech big things now evoke feelings of nostalgia—and a bit of cultural cringe. Big Mango 39 feet (11.9 m) Bowen, QLD Big Banana 16 feet (4.9 m) Coffs Harbour, NSW Golden Guitar 39 feet (11.9 m) Tamworth, NSW Big Boxing Crocodile 26 feet (7.9 m) Humpty Doo, NT Big Merino 49 feet (15 m) Goulburn, NSW Giant Koala 46 feet (14 m) Dadswells Bridge, VIC Big Prawn 20 feet (6.1 m) Ballina, NSW Big Pineapple 53 feet (16.2 m) Woombye, QLD Big Ned Kelly 20 feet (6.1 m) Glenrowan, VIC Big Galah 26 feet (7.9 m) Kimba, SA Also in Australia Litchfield Termite Mounds Adelaide River · What look like craggy tombstones are actually houses built by ants.


pages: 777 words: 186,993

Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani

"World Economic Forum" Davos, addicted to oil, affirmative action, Airbus A320, BRICs, British Empire, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, carbon credits, carbon tax, clean water, colonial rule, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, distributed generation, electricity market, farmers can use mobile phones to check market prices, flag carrier, full employment, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, global supply chain, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, knowledge economy, land reform, light touch regulation, LNG terminal, load shedding, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, market fragmentation, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, open economy, Parag Khanna, pension reform, Potemkin village, price mechanism, public intellectual, race to the bottom, rent control, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Silicon Valley, smart grid, special economic zone, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, unemployed young men, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

With the advent of Sam Pitroda’s telephone exchanges, PCO/STD community phone booths became ubiquitous across much of urban India. The computerization of railways was another effort the government made to reform infrastructure indirectly, without upsetting the reigning power equations and the hold of the bureaucracy. Captain Gopinath, the founder of Air Deccan, India’s first low-cost airline, has had a colorful life—after his stint in the army, he lived in a tent for a year on a patch of barren land he was trying to farm on, then tried his hand at growing silkworms, and eventually won awards for his eco-friendly agricultural practices. But he met his match when he went to Delhi to get an aviation license, and walked into a maze of red tape.


pages: 603 words: 182,781

Aerotropolis by John D. Kasarda, Greg Lindsay

3D printing, air freight, airline deregulation, airport security, Akira Okazaki, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, big-box store, blood diamond, Boeing 747, book value, borderless world, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, conceptual framework, credit crunch, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, digital map, disruptive innovation, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Easter island, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, financial engineering, flag carrier, flying shuttle, food miles, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frank Gehry, fudge factor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, General Motors Futurama, gentleman farmer, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, global supply chain, global village, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, hive mind, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, inflight wifi, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invention of the telephone, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, Joan Didion, Kangaroo Route, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, kremlinology, land bank, Lewis Mumford, low cost airline, Marchetti’s constant, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Network effects, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Calthorpe, Peter Thiel, pets.com, pink-collar, planned obsolescence, pre–internet, RFID, Richard Florida, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, savings glut, Seaside, Florida, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, spinning jenny, starchitect, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Suez canal 1869, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, tech worker, telepresence, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, thinkpad, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Tony Hsieh, trade route, transcontinental railway, transit-oriented development, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, walkable city, warehouse robotics, white flight, white picket fence, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

., Thaksin’s family-owned conglomerate, struck a deal with Malaysia’s Air Asia to launch Thailand’s first low-fare carrier. The new airline would go head-to-head at Suvarnabhumi with Thai Airways (owned by Thaksin’s government), which was set to sell nearly a quarter of itself to help pay for the airport. The egregious conflicts of interest staggered the planners. “I think it’s great Thailand will have a low-cost airline,” said one. “But what a shame it had to be owned by Thaksin.” His siblings confined their avarice to flipping real estate and dispens-ing favors. One miniscandal broke when the airport’s parking lot contractor claimed on tape that he’d paid Yarowet $250 million to win the contract. A second tape appeared in which he claimed he hadn’t paid her anything, and then he took the whole thing back.


Frommer's Mexico 2008 by David Baird, Juan Cristiano, Lynne Bairstow, Emily Hughey Quinn

airport security, AltaVista, Bartolomé de las Casas, centre right, colonial rule, Day of the Dead, East Village, gentrification, glass ceiling, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, low cost airline, Maui Hawaii, out of africa, Pepto Bismol, place-making, Skype, sustainable-tourism, the market place, urban planning

BY PLANE Mexico has two large private national carriers: Mexicana (& 800/531-7921; www. mexicana.com) and AeroMéxico (& 800/ 237-6639; www.aeromexico.com), in addition to several up-and-coming lowcost carriers. Mexicana and AeroMéxico offer extensive connections to the United States as well as within Mexico. Up-and-coming low-cost carriers include Aviacsa (www.aviacsa.com), Click Mexicana (www.click.com.mx), and InterJet (www.interjet.com.mx). Regional carriers include Aerovega (www.oaxaca-mio.com/aerovega.htm), Aero Tucán (www.aero-tucan.com), and AeroMéxico’s Aerolitoral (www.aeroli toral.com.mx). The regional carriers can be expensive, but they go to difficult-toreach places.

Local numbers for major airlines with nonstop or direct service to Acapulco are AeroMéxico (& 744/485-1625 or 01-800/021-4010 and -4000 inside Mexico), American (& 744/466-9232, or 01-800/904-6000 inside Mexico for reservations), Continental (& 744/466-9063), Mexicana (& 744/466-9121 or 486-7586), and US Airways (& 744/466-9257). AeroMéxico flies from Guadalajara, Mexico City, Tijuana, and Monterrey; Aviacsa (& 01800/711-6733) flies from Mexico City; InterJet (& 01800/01-12345) is a new low-cost carrier that flies from Toluca, near Mexico City; Mexicana flies from Mexico City. Check with a travel agent about charter flights. The airport (airport code: ACA) is 22km (14 miles) southeast of town, over the hills east of the bay. Private taxis are the fastest way to get downtown; they cost $30 to $50 (£17–£28).


Frommer's Egypt by Matthew Carrington

airport security, bread and circuses, centre right, colonial rule, Easter island, Internet Archive, land tenure, low cost airline, Maui Hawaii, open economy, rent control, rolodex, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, sustainable-tourism, trade route, urban planning, urban sprawl, walkable city, Yom Kippur War

In addition, most airlines week. offer online-only fares that even their TABA (TCP) This airport is currently phone agents know nothing about. only being used by direct charters from British travelers should check Flights European hubs. International (& 0800/0187050; KHARGA (UVL) This airport services www.flights-international.com) for one EgyptAir flight a week, on Sundays. deals on flights all over the world. Ticket price is LE400 ($73/£37). You • A number of low-cost airlines in may have a problem booking a seat—this Europe are now well known for is officially a government flight, but the their cheap flights to Egypt. Expect EgyptAir office in Kharga can do it. If crowded planes, little leg room, you run into problems in Cairo, phone and low, low prices. Dutch-based Mahmoud Shokri at the Kharga office Transavia (& 20/4060406; http:// (& 092/7921695). en.transavia.com/en) has taken a lot 05_259290-ch02.qxp 7/28/08 8:30 AM Page 21 GETTING THERE 21 “local” websites in 12 countries.


Lonely Planet London by Lonely Planet

Boris Johnson, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Babbage, congestion charging, Crossrail, death from overwork, discovery of the americas, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Etonian, financial independence, gentrification, haute couture, haute cuisine, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, market design, place-making, post-work, Russell Brand, Skype, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, urban renewal, Winter of Discontent

Most trans-Atlantic flights land at Heathrow (average flight time from the east coast is about seven to eight hours, 10 to 11 hours from the west coast; slightly more on the way back). Visitors from Europe are more likely to arrive in Gatwick, Stansted or Luton (the latter two are used exclusively by low-cost airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair). Most flights to continental Europe last two to three hours. An increasingly popular form of transport is the Euro-star between London and Paris or Brussels (Channel Tunnel train). The journey lasts 2¼ hours to Paris and less than two hours to Brussels, and takes visitors directly to/from the centre of each city.


Lonely Planet Iceland by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, banking crisis, capital controls, car-free, carbon footprint, cashless society, centre right, DeepMind, European colonialism, Eyjafjallajökull, food miles, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Lyft, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, presumed consent, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft

Find a list of airlines serving the country at www.visiticeland.com (under Plan/Travel to Iceland). Icelandair (www.icelandair.com) The national carrier has an excellent safety record. Air Iceland (www.airiceland.is) The main domestic airline (not to be confused with Icelandair). Also flies to destinations in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. WOW Air (www.wowair.com) Icelandic low-cost carrier, serving a growing number of European and North American destinations. Sea Smyril Line (www.smyrilline.com) operates a pricey but well-patronised weekly car ferry, the Norröna, from Hirtshals (Denmark) through Tórshavn (Faroe Islands) to Seyðisfjörður in East Iceland. It operates year-round, although winter passage is weather-dependent – see website for more.


pages: 388 words: 211,074

Pauline Frommer's London: Spend Less, See More by Jason Cochran

Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, British Empire, congestion charging, context collapse, David Attenborough, Easter island, electricity market, Etonian, Frank Gehry, glass ceiling, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Multics, Nelson Mandela, Skype, Stephen Fry, urban planning

P&O Ferries does France, too, with a run to Bilbao, Spain, every three days. Portsmouth, a harbor on the Southern English coast, is the country’s primary ferry port (mostly to France, but a few to Spain); obtain contacts for the latest operators at its website, www.portsmouth-port.co.uk. Given the proliferation of low-cost airlines, ferry travel has become an outdated and time-consuming way to travel and it’s mostly used by people who need to transfer cars. GETTING TO THE AIRPORTS: RAIL IT Transatlantic flights almost always land at either Heathrow, the world’s busiest international airport, or Gatwick, perhaps the most dissed; with a few minor exceptions, the other three airports (Stansted, Luton, and London City) serve flights from Europe, and they’re where the cut-rate flyers tend to go.


Lonely Planet Eastern Europe by Lonely Planet, Mark Baker, Tamara Sheward, Anita Isalska, Hugh McNaughtan, Lorna Parkes, Greg Bloom, Marc Di Duca, Peter Dragicevich, Tom Masters, Leonid Ragozin, Tim Richards, Simon Richmond

Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, crowdsourcing, Day of the Dead, Defenestration of Prague, Fall of the Berlin Wall, flag carrier, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, haute cuisine, low cost airline, mass immigration, pre–internet, Steve Jobs, the High Line, Transnistria, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl

Visas Tourist visas for stays of less than 90 days aren't required by citizens of the EU/EEA, Canada, the USA and Japan. Australians and New Zealanders still need a visa. 8Getting There & Away The majority of visitors to Ukraine fly – generally to Kyiv. Flights, tours and rail tickets can be booked online through Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com/bookings). Air Only a couple of low-cost airlines fly to Ukraine. Most international flights use Kyiv's main airport, Boryspil International Airport (%044 393 4371; www.kbp.aero). Lviv International Airport (LWO; %032-229 8112; www.lwo.aero) also has a few international connections. Ukraine International Airlines (www.flyuia.com) is Ukraine's flag carrier.


pages: 916 words: 248,265

The Railways: Nation, Network and People by Simon Bradley

Alfred Russel Wallace, back-to-the-land, Beeching cuts, book value, British Empire, classic study, clean water, Corn Laws, cross-subsidies, Crossrail, David Brooks, Etonian, high-speed rail, intermodal, joint-stock company, loose coupling, low cost airline, oil shale / tar sands, period drama, pneumatic tube, railway mania, Ralph Waldo Emerson, work culture

Each was to include day saloons as well as sleeping cars, to allow seated travel during waking hours. Catering cars were included too. Work began to build the 139 vehicles that would be needed. None of this took account of the competition. Just as the bodyshells of the carriages were taking shape, the first low-cost airlines began their remorseless ascent across Europe. What had always been a hazily optimistic business model for the Nightstars and provincial Eurostars now lay in shreds, and the project was halted in 1997. Formal abandonment followed two years later. In a rerun of the APT débacle, Britain’s railways now found themselves with lots of costly new rolling stock, built or half-built, for which there was no obvious use.


pages: 1,042 words: 266,547

Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham, David Dodd

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, asset-backed security, backtesting, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, book value, business cycle, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, carried interest, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, diversification, diversified portfolio, fear of failure, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, flag carrier, full employment, Greenspan put, index fund, intangible asset, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, land bank, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, Michael Milken, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, prudent man rule, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, secular stagnation, shareholder value, stock buybacks, The Chicago School, the market place, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, two and twenty, zero-coupon bond

Then the price of oil doubled again. The shares have declined 30% since our initial investment, and the profit outlook has dimmed. Still, the business franchise is intact. Nothing has happened that makes us believe the long-term value of our investment has diminished. In fact, during this period of adversity, other low-cost carriers are expected to cease operations. Lenders are likely to be cautious in funding possible new entrants, and consumers may wish to trade down to take advantage of Ryanair’s low fares. Over time, a company with this kind of cost advantage must take market share and earn attractive returns. The process I have just described is our attempt to cover the bases outlined by the authors of Security Analysis.


pages: 2,020 words: 267,411

Lonely Planet Morocco (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Paul Clammer, Paula Hardy

air freight, Airbnb, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, clean water, Day of the Dead, Dr. Strangelove, illegal immigration, low cost airline, Multics, Nelson Mandela, Norman Mailer, off-the-grid, place-making, Skype, spice trade, sustainable-tourism, trade route, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional

Without a clear role post-Independence, Marrakesh resumed its fall-back career as a caravanserai – and became the nation’s breakaway success. Roving hippies built the city’s mystique in the 1960s and ’70s, and visits by the Rolling Stones, Beatles and Led Zeppelin gave the city star power. In the 1990s private medina mansions were converted into B&Bs, just in time for low-cost airlines to deliver weekenders to brass-studded riad doors. Marrakesh was amid a major tourism boom in 2008 when the global financial crisis started to wreak havoc in European markets, which account for over 80% of the city’s visitors. Hot on the heels of this fiscal collapse, an Islamist militant disguised as a guitar-carrying hippie walked into Café Argana on the Djemaa el-Fna and planted two bombs that killed 17 people in April 2011.


Lonely Planet Chile & Easter Island (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Carolyn McCarthy, Kevin Raub

California gold rush, call centre, carbon footprint, centre right, Colonization of Mars, company town, East Village, Easter island, gentrification, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, land reform, low cost airline, mass immigration, New Urbanism, off grid, off-the-grid, place-making, QR code, rewilding, satellite internet, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, white picket fence

Getting There & Away Air Chile’s main air hub for both national and domestic flights is Aeropuerto Internacional Arturo Merino Benítez (Pudahuel; Click here; 690-1752, lost property 690-1707; www.aeropuertosantiago.cl). It’s 26km west of central Santiago. Lan ( 600-526-2000; www.lan.com), Aerolíneas Argentinas ( 800-610-200; www.aerolineas.com.ar) and low-cost airline Gol ( 1-888-0042-0090; www.voegol.com.br) run regular domestic and regional services from here. Major international airlines that fly to Chile have offices or representatives in Santiago: Click here for a complete list. For a list of Lan’s Santiago offices and sample one-way domestic airfares from Santiago, Click here.


Coastal California by Lonely Planet

1960s counterculture, airport security, Albert Einstein, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, Blue Bottle Coffee, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, company town, Day of the Dead, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, electricity market, Frank Gehry, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, Joan Didion, Khyber Pass, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, machine readable, Mason jar, McMansion, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, Steve Wozniak, trade route, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, white picket fence, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

Air Several major US carriers fly within California, although the expense involved only makes it worthwhile if you have to travel long distances in a hurry. Intra-California flights are often operated by regional subsidiaries, such as American Eagle, Delta Connection and United Express. Alaska Airlines and partner Horizon Air serve many regional California airports, as do popular low-cost airlines Southwest and JetBlue. Virgin America currently flies out of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. For airports, Click here. Bicycle Although it’s a nonpolluting ‘green’ way to travel, cycling coastal California’s roads demands a high level of fitness and the long distances involved make it difficult to cover much ground very fast.


Coastal California Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

1960s counterculture, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, bike sharing, Burning Man, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, company town, Day of the Dead, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, flex fuel, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, income inequality, intermodal, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, Lyft, machine readable, Mason jar, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, Peoples Temple, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, starchitect, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, trade route, transcontinental railway, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, Wall-E, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

In cities, when distances are too far to walk, hop aboard buses, trains, streetcars, cable cars or trolleys, or grab a taxi. Air Several major US carriers fly within California. Flights are often operated by their regional subsidiaries, such as American Eagle, Delta Connection and United Express. Alaska Airlines/Virgin America, Frontier Airlines, Horizon Air and JetBlue serve many regional airports, as do low-cost airlines Southwest and Spirit. Bicycle ACycling is a feasible way of getting around smaller cities and beach towns, but it’s not much fun in traffic-dense urban areas like LA. ASan Francisco, Napa, Arcata and Santa Monica are among California’s most bike-friendly communities, as rated by the League of American Bicyclists (www.bikeleague.org).


Lonely Planet Greek Islands by Lonely Planet, Alexis Averbuck, Michael S Clark, Des Hannigan, Victoria Kyriakopoulos, Korina Miller

car-free, carbon footprint, credit crunch, Easter island, eurozone crisis, G4S, haute couture, haute cuisine, low cost airline, Norman Mailer, pension reform, period drama, restrictive zoning, sensible shoes, sustainable-tourism, trade route, transfer pricing, urban sprawl

Iraklio’s Nikos Kazantzakis Airport (www.heraklion-airport.info) is Crete’s busiest airport, although Hania (www.chania-airport.com) is convenient for travellers heading to western Crete. Sitia is slated for expansion but for now only receives domestic flights. Between May and October, European low-cost carriers and charter airlines such as easyJet, Germanwings, AirBerlin, Fly Thomas Cook and Jet2 operate direct flights to Crete, mostly from UK and German airports. Aegean Airlines has year-round direct flights to Crete from London, Milan, Paris and Rome; coming from another destination requires connecting in Athens.


Greece Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

active transport: walking or cycling, Airbnb, capital controls, car-free, carbon footprint, credit crunch, haute couture, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, low cost airline, pension reform, period drama, sensible shoes, trade route, urban sprawl

The harsh German occupation lasted throughout WWII, with many mountain villages bombed or burnt down and their occupants executed en masse. 8Getting There & Away Air Most travellers arrive in Crete by air, usually with a change in Athens. Iraklio’s Nikos Kazantzakis Airport is Crete’s busiest airport, although Hania is convenient for travellers heading to western Crete. Sitia only receives a handful of domestic flights. Between May and October, European low-cost carriers and charter airlines such as easyJet, Germanwings, AirBerlin, Fly Thomas Cook and Jet2 operate direct flights to Crete, from all over Europe. Aegean Airlines (www.aegeanair.com) operates direct flights to Iraklio from many European airports, including London-Heathrow, Milan, Paris, Marseille and Rome.


The Rough Guide to England by Rough Guides

active transport: walking or cycling, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, bike sharing, Bletchley Park, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, car-free, Columbine, company town, congestion charging, Corn Laws, country house hotel, Crossrail, deindustrialization, Downton Abbey, Edmond Halley, Etonian, food miles, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, haute cuisine, housing crisis, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, John Harrison: Longitude, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Neil Kinnock, offshore financial centre, period drama, plutocrats, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, the market place, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, University of East Anglia, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl

London’s biggest and best-known airports – Heathrow and Gatwick – take the bulk of transatlantic and long-haul flights into the UK, though there are also three smaller London airports (Stansted, Luton and City) and a host of useful regional British airports, many of which are served by numerous low-cost airlines from mainland Europe and Ireland. Principally, in England these are Manchester and Liverpool in the northwest; Birmingham in the West Midlands; Bristol, Newquay and Exeter in the West Country; Leeds-Bradford and Doncaster-Sheffield in Yorkshire; Newcastle and Durham Tees Valley in the northeast; East Midlands; and Bournemouth and Southampton in the south.


Central America by Carolyn McCarthy, Greg Benchwick, Joshua Samuel Brown, Alex Egerton, Matthew Firestone, Kevin Raub, Tom Spurling, Lucas Vidgen

airport security, Bartolomé de las Casas, California gold rush, call centre, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, company town, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Day of the Dead, digital map, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, failed state, Francisco Pizarro, Frank Gehry, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, Joan Didion, land reform, liberation theology, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, megaproject, Monroe Doctrine, off-the-grid, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Suez canal 1869, sustainable-tourism, the long tail, trade route, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, urban sprawl, women in the workforce

Meanwhile, the FSLN government, fully aware of the potential of ecotourism in the country, has taken a real interest in environmental issues, even calling in the army to back up the nation’s underresourced park rangers. TRANSPORTATION Getting There & Away Air Nicaragua’s main airport is Augusto C Sandino in Managua (MGA; Click here). There are daily direct flights to a number of US cities, including Miami, Atlanta and Houston, while low-cost carrier Spirit airlines has a late-night service to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There are also direct regional services to San Salvador, San José, Tegucigalpa, and Panama, with connecting services to other Latin American destinations. It’s always worth checking flight prices to neighboring Costa Rica, a smooth bus ride away, as they can be substantially cheaper.


California by Sara Benson

airport security, Albert Einstein, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Blue Bottle Coffee, Burning Man, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Columbine, company town, dark matter, Day of the Dead, desegregation, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Frank Gehry, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, Joan Didion, Khyber Pass, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, machine readable, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McMansion, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Neil Armstrong, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, planetary scale, retail therapy, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, the new new thing, trade route, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Wall-E, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional

Several major US carriers fly within California. Flights are often operated by their regional subsidiaries, such as American Eagle, Delta Connection and United Express. Alaska Airlines and its partner airline Horizon Air have perhaps the most extensive intra-California networks. The most popular low-cost airline is Southwest. Click here for airline contact information. Return to beginning of chapter BICYCLE Although it’s a nonpolluting ‘green’ way to travel, bicycling California requires focused awareness and a high level of fitness. The distances involved make it hard to cover much ground. Cyclists must follow the same rules of the road as vehicles, but don’t expect drivers to always respect your right-of-way.


Lonely Planet France by Lonely Planet Publications

banking crisis, bike sharing, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, Columbine, David Sedaris, double helix, Frank Gehry, G4S, gentrification, glass ceiling, haute couture, haute cuisine, Henri Poincaré, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, Jacquard loom, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Louis Blériot, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Murano, Venice glass, ride hailing / ride sharing, sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, Suez canal 1869, supervolcano, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, V2 rocket

Information Tourist office ( 08 20 42 64 64; www.bayonne-tourisme.com; place des Basques; 9am-7pm Mon-Sat, 10am-1pm Sun) Efficient office providing stacks of informative brochures and free bike rental, plus guided city tours. Getting There & Away Air Biarritz-Anglet-Bayonne airport ( 05 59 43 83 83; www.biarritz.aeroport.fr) is 5km southwest of central Bayonne and 3km southeast of the centre of Biarritz. It’s served by low-cost carriers including EasyJet and Ryanair, as well as Air France, with daily domestic flights and flights to the UK, and regular flights to Ireland, Finland, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Bus From place des Basques, ATCRB (www.transdev-atcrb.com) buses follow the coast to the Spanish border. There are nine services daily to St-Jean de Luz (€3, 40 minutes) and Hendaye (€3, one hour).