Denver Sings "Happy Birth-DIA"

Denver International Airport at 15 -- looking back and looking ahead

Sometime at the end of February 1995, I flew out of Stapleton International Airport en route to, I think, Honduras. I returned to the new Denver International Airport, which had opened on February 28 while I was away. If an airport could have had a new-car smell, DIA would have had it. As I look at the original version photo below (which might or might not pop up on your screen in its entirety), I count 16 small masts or antennae atop the main terminal's distinctive Teflon tents -- one for each year and one for good luck.

After much ridicule and a hiccupy debut, DIA has matured into the fifth-busiest airport in the national and ninth-busiest in the world. Thirty thousand airport, airline and government workers and 140,000 passengers a day are under those Teflon tents and on the concourses. Many modifications have been made over the last 15 years: The central feature in the main terminal has been a dancing fountain and various kinds of gardens. The platforms on both sides of the terminal on the baggage-claim level have been widened (originally it was a challenge to wheel a SmartCart or a big piece of luggage around the concrete pillars,) and a roof now covers the platforms, because the original design didn't take into account summer's strong sun and random fall/winter/spring snows.

One thing that hasn't changed but continues to puzzle me one of the exits from the train level to the terminal, which has not been used for 15 years, always has a human security presence. Why on earth didn't they erect a gate? Other changes are obvious: a different mix of transportation entities with booths on the perimeter of the terminal, the post-9/11 addition of unsightly but mandatory security checkpoints complete with snaking lines of passengers cluttering the floor of the grand space and the great emptiness of the ticket counter areas, especially on the west side, since many passengers now print their own boarding passes and also checking as few bags as possible.

On the airside, there are now six runways taking up just a fraction of the airport's 54 square miles of land. That huge tract, annexed by the City and County of Denver for the airport, also boasts an enormous array of solar panels, a bison herd (a safe distance from the runways, of course) and 27 oil and natural gas wells.In contast to airports constructed decades ago and now hampered by congested metropolitan areas, DIA has lots of room under the big Western sky.

Back to the terminal, where increased passenger traffic and security needs not contemplated two decades ago, there's a proposal to move checpoints to the current ticketing areas. That would free up the main terminal space, which would them be restricted to passengers and also be more aesthetic with the TSA's hardware and mazes of passengers heading for the screening stations. There's a debate about whether new, upscale eating and retail in a repurposed main terminal would be a success or a fiasco. There's also a question as to whether an airport hotel that has been on the drawing board, at least conceptually, from the beginning is viable, and whether a lightrail extension to DIA is worth the cost of construction.

The Denver City Council, airport officials and consultants, who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to study the options, are charting DIA's course for the next 15 years and beyond. Stay tuned.

Mexico City Airport Connection Alert

Mexico City Airport - Avoid making connections here if you can. The airport is poorly signed and confusing, and with its vulnerability to fog/smog, flights can be delayed. Continental flies nonstop Houston-Huatulco, but only once or twice a week in the spring/fall shoulder seasons.

Note: For more details on specific connection issues at Mexico City's Benito Juarez Airport, see comments below. I will say that once a traveler has a concept of the layout (one very long terminal area with international gates at one end), it is easier than arriving clueless and depending on poor signage and misleading information. But I still believe that the first time around, it's good to have a little spare time.

Earthquake and Chilean Tourist Destinations

Reflections on Chile; broad-stroke news of current conditions

I created this blog in Santiago, Chile, during the 1996 Society of American Travel Writers convention there. The earliest posts are about the Santiago-Valparaiso area more or less in the center of this long skinny country, Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia in the far south and fascinating Easter Island (Isla de Pascua in Spanish) 2,300 miles out in the Pacific Ocean. Natural disasters (and man-made ones too) are heart-wrenching to begin with, but learning of tragendies in places I have visited adds a special poignancy.

It was with a mixture of sadness and relief that I read the following Chile Turismo summary sent to me by Gina Morgan who handles public relations and marketing for the Remota Lodges in the country.

Desert – The north of Chile was not affected by the quake and has not reported any damage.

Easter Island – Easter Island, which lies 2,300 miles off the cost of mainland Chile, a 5.5 hour flight from Santiago, was not affected by the quake. Initial tsunami warnings have been lifted and all operations are normal.

Santiago and Central Region - Santiago’s airport suffered structural damage to the passenger terminal, however no damage was reported to the runways and the airport is expected to reopen later this week. Electricity and phone lines have been restored in Santiago and the city’s public transportation including its metro is fully operational. Valparaiso and Viña del Mar have also reported damage. The annual Viña del Mar International Music festival which was underway has been suspended.

Lakes and Volcanoes – The northern part of the Lakes and Volcanoes region, around the city of Concepcion and the Bio Bio River, was most affected by the quake. Authorities are still working on assessing the full damage. Basic essential services including water, electricity and telecommunications are gradually being restored. The southern part of the Lakes and Volcanoes region was not affected by the quake. Operations in popular tourist towns including Pucon, Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt are normal.

Patagonia – The far south of the country was not affected by the quake and has not reported any damage.

Chile is a country with a history of seismic activity. The country’s preparedness, including its strict anti-seismic building codes, the rapid emergency response from the government as well as the help from a number of organizations can be credited for managing the situation and help minimize the damage. The country’s tourism infrastructure has, overall, fared well, reporting little damage.

Author Wayne Bernhardson, who has written Moon Guidebooks about Chile and Argentina and therefore has good contacts down there, has posted some more detailed news here and here on his blog, Southern Cone Travel.

When I visited briefly in 2006, Valparaiso, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, still showed evidence of a catastrophic earthquake a century earlier. The quake that struck in August 1906 killed nearly 3,000 people, and many buildings still bore cracks and scars. The fatalities appear to be far fewer, but I cannot imagine how an even more powerful quake might have affected the colorful buildings of this beauitfully located and very historic harbor city. I also wonder about the vineyards and whether the vines will be adequately watered and the wineries whose cellars are stacked with barrels and bottles of wine. I wonder whether the ski lifts at Portillo and Valle Nevado were affected. And of course, I am concerned about the Chileans who lost their homes and their livelihoods, for whom the effect on tourism is of relatively minot concern. The world reached out to Haiti with aid. The casualty toll was higher, CNN was there 24/7 for weeks and the country far more impoverished to begin with. I wonder what the world has in its reserves for Chile.

Give the Chileans a bit of time to take care of basic infrastructure needs and get aire service back to normal, and then put this beautiful country on your to-visit list. It's late summer in the Southern Hemisphere now. Harvest season is coming. And ski season will follow. Donate to relief efforts if you can, plan on visiting -- or at least buy some Chilean produce and order some Chilean wine to help the economy.

FYI: 110 ML > 3 ounces

Dear Diary: experienced Transportation Stupidity Agency actions -- again

6:10 a.m. - Left home. Husband dropped me off at Boulder's Walnut Street bus station.

6:19 a.m. - AB bus to Denver International Airport left on time.

7:35 a.m. - AB arrived at DIA a few minutes early

7:37 a.m.- No line at American Airlines check-in. Got boarding passes for Denver-Dallas, Dallas-Mexico City and Mexico City-Huatulco flights. Carry-on only.

7:42 a.m. - No lines at security. Hooray! Took off shoes and jacket. Removed laptop from case. Sent small roll-aboard, laptop case and two bins, one with one-quart plastic bag with small liquids/gels, through Xray. Security screener squinted through clear plastic at small container of contact lens solution, lipstick, small bottle of liquid makeup, small stick of deodorant and small tube of toothpaste and small tube of sunscreen.

7:43 a.m. - Screener removed tube of sunscreen, purchased in some country that is on the metric system, examined it more closely and declared quietly but triumphantly (and ungrammatically). "This is 110 milliliters. Three ounces is 100 milliliters." I didn't know that before, but now I do -- and you do too. You're welcome.

7:44 a.m. - Supervisor confiscated my 110 ML tube of sunscreen that probably had 30 ML of liquid left. He helpfully suggested that I could mail the offending object home if I chose (the post office at the airport, of course, was not yet open) or return to the airline counter and check my bag with the leftover sunscreen in it.

7:45 a.m. - Grabbed my stuff, my previous good mood dampened by Transportation Security Agency nonsense -- again.

7:55 a.m. - Arrived at the gate with enough time to write this post, courtesy of the much-appreciated free WiFi at DIA.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, don't you feel safer knowing that this agency of the Department of Homeland Security is on the job?

Dear President-Elect Obama......

US Airlines Recycle Just 20% of Their Trash

Unhappy ending for the 880 tons of newspapers, aluminum cans, plastic cups and more annually generated by airlines

When flight attendants roam up and down the aisle with large trash bags to collect passengers' discards, I've always wondered whether someone somewhere sorts it, or whether it just ends up in landfills. Responsible Shopper, a consumer watchdog website, has issued a new report cleverly called “What Goes Up Must Go Down: The Sorry State of Recycling in the Airline Industry.”

I wish it had been otherwise, but their disheartening finding is that of the more than 880 million tons of waste that carriers generate annually, only 20 percent is recycled while, the organization says, fully 75 percent could be. Delta, Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic and Southwest are doing the best job of recycling and United and US Airways, the worst.

Lookout Landfills, Here It Comes!

According to research published by the Natural Resource Defense Council, airlines annually throw away 9,000 tons of plastic, enough aluminum cans to build 58 Boeing 747 jets, and enough newspaper and magazines to cover a football field some 700 feet deep. The council says that energy savings from recycling this waste "would represent a contribution by the airlines to reducing their environmental impact in the face of the considerable climate impact of jet fuel, including 600 million tons of carbon dioxide per year pumped into the atmosphere by commercial jets alone."

According to the Responsible Shopper report, airlines could recycle nearly 500 million more tons of waste each year (including 250 million tons of in-flight waste) than they do. Furthermore, no airline recycles all the major recyclables: aluminum cans, glass, plastic, and paper, and no airline has a comprehensive program for minimizing or composting food waste or waste from snack packages. It is probably out of embarrassment that no airline provides good public information about their recycling program, or reports out on progress in relation to any stated goals. In addition, the report says, that all airlines provide over-packaged snacks and meals (below), and not one is working with manufacturers to reduce this waste.

It doesn't have to be this way. A lifetime ago, I worked for Swissair in New York. Even then, the carrier had a contract with pig farmers near Zürich to take all the food waste. But then, the Swiss always seem to do things better than most of the rest of the world. When I think of how little flight attendants have to do on most domestic flights in these times of hardly any food service and minimal snack service, it doesn't seem to much to ask them to bring two trash bags down the aisle, one for recyclables and one for landfill-bound trash.

 The List

Ranked from best to worst with even the best receiving only a B- grade for current recycling efforts and future plans:

•  Delta Airlines
• Virgin America
• Virgin Atlantic
• Southwest Airlines
• Continental Airlines
• Jet Blue
• American Airlines
• British Airways (I'm not sure why this British flag carrier is on the list either)
• Air Tran
• United Airlines
• US Airways

Proactivity

Green America and Responsible Shopper have a call to action too. They are asking passengers respectfully ask flight attendants whether materials on their specific flights are being recycled, and go online to report their findings. The recycling report also contains a list of the airlines and their contact information for anyone who wants to contact them directly.

Responsible Shopper's lead researcher, Victoria Kreha, has some advice for passenger wanting to be proactive, "For concerned consumers looking to spend their travel dollars wisely, airline waste may be the ultimate example of ‘what goes up must come down.’ The good news is that airlines are starting to pay attention to recycling; the bad news is that they have a long way to go to improve the situation. Fortunately, airlines can overcome any of the challenges to creating in-flight recycling programs, including employee education and involvement, knowledge of the type of waste produced, and a time- and space-efficient system.”

I'm not about to preach about the environmental benefits of recycling, even though airlines practice pathetically little of it, better waste management has the potential of creating jobs nationwide, since according to Colorado Recycles, recycling creates six times as many jobs as landfilling. High time for airlines to step up to the recycling plate.

Results of Tavel Magazine Readers' Poll on Skiing

Results of Condé Nast Traveler's 13th Annual Ski Poll announced

A ski poll is nothing at all like a ski pole. The former is a travel magazine's annual survey that ranks "the best places to ski and stay in North America" An "unprecented" 32,633 Condé Nast Traveler readers who took part in this year's survey. Frankly, I always take these reader polls with a grain of salt. Big Western resorts always "win" because more people visitthem. The big, fancy hotels generally rank high, not necessarily because everyone who selected them has stayed there, but because many people recognize a name-brand luxury chain and vote for it. The results are interesting nonetheless.

The magazine's press release explained: "Readers were asked to evaluate resort towns on the following criteria: Terrain and Conditions; Lifts and Lines; Town Ambience; Dining; and Après-ski/Activities. The ski hotels were rated based on: Location; Rooms; Service; Dining and Food; and Design. The awards appear in the December issue (on newsstands November 25) and are derived from the Condé Nast Traveler Readers Choice Survey." Whistler Blackcomb, BC, was voted Best Ski Resort Town, with an overall score of 90.7 and top scores in Après-Ski/Activities and Local Dining. Other top scorers in specific categories are:

• Top Terrain: Big White, BC (95.3)
• Top Lifts and Lines: Deer Valley, UT (92.1)
• Top Aprés-ski/Activities: Whistler/Blackcomb, BC (93.2)
• Top Local Dining: Whistler/Blackcomb, BC (90.3)
• Top Local Ambience: Jackson Hole, WY (94.0)

The Top 10 Ski Resorts are the usual suspects:

1. Whistler Blackcomb, BC

2. Telluride, CO

3. Deer Valley, UT

4. Aspen, CO

5. Jackson Hole, WY

6. Sun Valley, ID

7. Vail, CO

8. Beaver Creek, CO

9. Park City, UT

10. Sun Peaks, BC

Ranked as the Best Ski Hotel for 2008 is the Post Hotel & Spa in Lake Louise, AB, with an overall score of 93.3 and the top score for Food (94.9). There's something funny about the Pan Pacific Mountainside leading in three categories but not appearing at all on the overall top-10 list. Make of that what you will. Both are in Whistler/Blackcomb. Other category leaders are:

• Top Location: Pan Pacific Whistler Mountainside, Whistler/Blackcomb, BC (100)
• Top Rooms: Pan Pacific Whistler Mountainside, Whistler/Blackcomb, BC (96.1)
• Top Service: Four Seasons Resort, Jackson Hole, WY (95.1)
• Top Food: Post Hotel & Spa, Lake Louise, AB (94.9)
• Top Design: Pan Pacific Whistler Mountainside, Whistler/Blackcomb, BC (96.1)

According to the poll, the Top 10 Ski Hotels overall are as follows:

1. Post Hotel & Spa, Lake Louise, AB

2. Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre, Whistler/Blackcomb, BC

3. Four Seasons Resort, Jackson Hole, WY

4. Stein Eriksen Lodge, Deer Valley, UT

5. Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch, Beaver Creek, CO

6. Four Seasons Resort, Whistler/Blackcomb, BC

7. Little Nell Hotel, Aspen, CO

8. Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, Vail Valley (Edwards), CO

9. Sundance Resort, Sundance, UT

10. St. Regis Resort, Aspen, CO

Vail Names Trail After Lindsey Vonn

Ski areas have traditionally honored important people in their development and notable competitors by naming trails after them. Consider Sun Valley, with Gretchen's Gold (Gretchen Fraser, 1948 Olympic gold medalist) and Christin's Silver (Christin Copper, 1984 Olympic silver medalist and two dozen World Cup victories) both on Seattle Ridge, and Picabo's Street (Picabo Street, 1998 Olympic gold medalist, World chamnpionship gold, World Cup downhill title) down on the Warm Springs side.

Vail has renamed the International Trail and now calls it Lindsey's in honor of Lindsey Vonn's two medals in the just completed 2010 Winter Games. How appropriate, since the run was used to contend the women's speed events during the 1989 and 1999 World Alpine Ski Championships.

And yes, I know that other ski areas have honored other competitors who trained on their slopes. Sun Valley is just the won -- I mean one -- that came to mind when I saw the photo of the new trail sign honoring Vail's big winner during the '10 Games.