Revolutionary marching music during takeoff and landing? In-flight propaganda newspapers that appear to have been published with The Print Shop? Condensation—nay, fog—hovering inside the cabin?

You just may be aboard North Korea’s Air Koryo. Business Insider has select information and photos from flights on “the only airline in the world deemed bad enough to earn a 1-star rating from leading airline reviewer SkyTrax.”

(Yes, I, too, am shocked that SkyTrax awarded two stars to Ryanair, an airline so unapologetically cheap, its CEO alleges he’s considered “standing seats,” pay toilets, and getting rid of copilots on his fleet.)

(link via Coudal Partners)

Frequent flyer miles are boring, for in general they only get you more time on an airplane. David Owen, in this week’s New Yorker, notes that “highly personable British kazillionaire” Richard Branson has a better frequent-flyer reward, at least for folks who travel a lot and who aren’t brain-softened by his airline’s pink and purple mood lighting:

One of Branson’s many companies, Virgin Galactic, has built its own spaceship[.] The company expects to begin taking non-astronauts into space a year from now. (Tickets are two hundred thousand dollars, or two million Virgin Atlantic frequent-flier miles, for a three-hour trip.)

Now that’s a frequent-flyer reward.

Proposed improvements to airport security are on their way but will a tiered screening system work? The vision is to have three screening lanes at the airport based on risk profiles built from “data that the government and the airlines are already collecting about passengers.”

One lane would be for trusted travelers. For the fee they’ll likely pay for that status, they’ll get to keep on their shoes when they march through the metal detector. Another lane would be reserved for “risky” travelers, who would get body scans and maybe an interview with a behavioral expert. Everyone else would gather in a third lane for, er, a middling level of screening.

Right. Here’s how I picture this going down: Under the narrowed eyes and burning stares of the two goodly queues, someone pulled into the “presumed terrorist” lane is going to severely injure his civil liberties. Next idea!

(link via Daring Fireball)

Traffic. Crowds. The weather. Delays. Sitting on the tarmac at LaGuardia for no apparent reason. Huddled masses, yearning for armrest space. Ah, the joys of holiday air travel.

But now I have at least one thing to look forward to: free in-flight Wi-Fi.

Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, was on my flight from Miami to New York City tonight. I knew this because I overheard a gaggle of TSA employees at Miami International Airport whispering that she’d just gone through security and was more polite than they’d expected.

“She has really nice shoes,” said one.

“She was wearing too much makeup,” said another.

I never did see Ivanka or notice her on the flight, although the next day a coworker on the same flight said, “Did you know who was on our flight last night?”

And I said, “Ivanka Trump?”

And he said, “Yeah! She was sitting in first class and got into a white stretch limo at JFK.”

The pilot of my severely delayed flight from O’Hare to La Guardia this afternoon tried to liven up the crowd with some humor (?) over the midwest:

Pilot

For those of you on the right-hand side of the aircraft: a partial view of Toledo, Ohio.

Passengers

[silence; stunned indifference]

And I was born in Toledo. But I was also sitting on the left-hand side of the plane. Booo.

There was a family sitting near me on my flight from Denver to New York City this afternoon, Mom and Dad a row back and their two young daughters sitting next to me, TALKING VERY LOUDLY TO EACH OTHER. It was like a one-joke Saturday Night Live sketch that went on too long. I thought at first they were kidding, but, no, they were ALL-CAPS LOUD. And they weren’t angry, they were chatting about the banalities that people usually do on planes, only VERY LOUDLY, like:

Mom

[Hands magazine to older daughter.] COLLEEN, READ THIS ARTICLE ON BEARS. IT’S REALLY INTERESTING.

Colleen

[15 minute pause as she reads the article, quietly.]

Mom

WELL, WHAT DID YOU THINK?

Colleen

I NEVER KNEW THAT ABOUT BEARS!

And:

Brenda

THERE ARE OLIVES ON MY SANDWICH.

Colleen

MOM, ARE THERE SUPPOSED TO BE OLIVES ON BRENDA’S SANDWICH?

Dad

BRENDA, I THINK YOU HAVE MY SANDWICH.

Holy cats it was annoying. I got no sleep because I kept getting shouted awake.

Due to a plane bedeviled by mechanical troubles, I was stuck late this afternoon at the Toledo Express Airport for two hours and 25 minutes. At one point, I was literally the only person in the main gate area, which leant an otherworldly, 28 Days Later atmosphere. As I eventually did, I learned the other three people on my flight back to Cleveland had retreated through security to the check-in area to await further updates. Realizing I’d miss my connecting flight in Cleveland, I phoned Continental, but they weren’t much help in booking another flight tonight, instead temporarily signing me up for a crack-of-dawn flight in to Newark tomorrow. I was fully prepared to stay overnight at my parents’ house in Cleveland.

By remarkable coincidence, as I deplaned in Cleveland, I overheard that the flight right next door was nearly finished boarding for LaGuardia. Without comment, I handed my now-invalid boarding pass to the check-in woman there, just to see what would happen.

“This isn’t for this flight,” she said after glancing at it.

“Can it be?” I replied, exuding all the charm I could muster through my weariness.

After a flurry of typing at a computer, she printed me a boarding pass and rushed me on board to take one of two remaining seats. I got to be that jerk who boards late and inevitably has a seat at the rear so the other passengers can form a gauntlet of annoyed glances and frowns. I don’t know what sort of strange magic that gate lady cast to get me on board so quickly, but I later noticed the stub of my boarding pass listed my first name as Abraham.

As my flight from Los Angeles descended low over Queens, someone seated near me let slip a silent but violent fart, the nosehair-singeing smell of which lingered over row 32. Without a word, the young lady to my left pulled a perfume sample card from her Vogue and fanned the air vigorously over our shared armrest. Although not responsible for this airborne toxic event, I was stymied to clear my name and peerless personal odor.

My fashion-reading seatmate was good looking in the L.A. sense—militantly fit, hypertan, bottle-blonde and Ugg-booted—so no one would believe it could have been her. And anyway, girl farts smell like a floral bouquet with cookie basket gift-set from FTD. Or so I’ve heard.

I thought of saying something to defuse the situation, something like “Sweet Jesus! Is there a dead cat stuffed with month-old meatballs in the overhead bin?” But as I learned in grade school, He Who Smelt It Dealt It, so commentary was out. On the other hand, remaining silent on such obvious olfactory malfeasance could just as easily implicate me.

I could not win and was too tired to care, but sensible enough to breathe only through my mouth until I deplaned to the slightly fresher air of New York.

Dude, I totally saw Tom Waits tonight, 20 feet away from me at the United arrivals area of San Francisco International Airport. He was loading his own gear into a Virgin shuttle van (Virgin Airlines? Virgin Records?). He’s much more gaunt in real life than I imagined. Before I could whip out my camera, he had climbed into the van and was off to points unknown. Instead, I offer you this photo of the 737 wing at takeoff from LAX.

I sat next to a minor celebrity on my flight out to Long Beach, California this afternoon. He was a 50s-ish fellow with a moustache who looked like what a younger brother of Robert DeNiro would look like, only skinnier and taller.

He started with the usual seatmate small talk, the Q&A that can worry me when I wonder whether it will carry on throughout the flight. Yes, I live in New York. Yes, I’m going to Long Beach on business. My business? Real estate.

I learned he’s a lawyer and splits his time between homes in Los Angeles and Cranford, New Jersey, which he described as being famous for the fact that the Ashton Kutcher/Bernie Mac movie Guess Who was filmed there. I found out that he too has a Sony Ericsson T610 and that he too thinks the reception is appalling (inability to get signals inside buildings, etc.) and that he too wonders why he hasn’t yet bought a new phone.

But his minor claim to fame was, as he confided to me, that he’s the guy with the ad on the back cover of the Long Beach yellow pages.

So the first thing I did after arriving at my hotel was to slide open the nightstand drawer and flip over the phone book. Sure enough, there was Mr. Moustache in the requisite Lawyer Standing In Front Of A Wall Of Important-Looking Books photo. Judging by the tie width, shininess and design, and a lack of gray in the hair and moustache, I estimated it was taken in the mid ’80s. But I definitely still recognized him there, cellphone troubles years away, under the headline PROVEN RESULTS!, with notes that he has 32 years trial experience and accepts major credit cards.

I left work an hour early today to catch my flight out of La Guardia back home to Cleveland for Thanksgiving vacation. Why is it all hell breaks loose at work the day I try to leave on vacation? It was in preparation for the last four real estate networking events my division is planning, which someone scheduled in four corners of the U.S. within a nine-day period following Thanksgiving. I imagine you’ll be reading about those.

The flight, meanwhile, was non-eventful for a La Guardia flight, which is to say 15 minutes late boarding, an hour late taking off and crowded. For dinner, my Mom, Dad and sister got some pizza, other finger food and wine at a place in downtown Akron. It’s always good to see the family, especially with my sister Dana done with her multiyear stay in Ireland and temporarily living with my folks.

Storms back east delayed my flight home from California about four hours, so the redeye scheduled to depart at midnight took off around 4 a.m. Pacific time. Airport innards have the most soul-sucking atmosphere anywhere, so I waited outside as long as I could stand to, enjoying the fresh air and watching the red-alerted cops bitch at drivers lingering in the drop-off/pick-up zone.

I checked myself into the airport at midnight and found a quiet spot in a near-deserted gate area, in a corner between a wide pillar and a windowed wall, where I formed a little nest. I put on my light jacket for warmth, used my backpack as a pillow and curled up on the hard carpet. I slept fitfully under repeated PA warnings about liquids and gels. I listened to Sarah McLachlan on my iPod and through my floor-level window watched the nightshift on the tarmac empty trash. At one point, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and thought someone was making off with my stuff or looking to challenge my territory, but it was only a young lady plugging her cell phone charger into the outlet above the one I’d commandeered for my iPod.

Although I don’t think the recently foiled terror in the UK was responsible for the delays, it certainly didn’t help. Inefficiencies lingered. The airports recommended passengers arrive two to three hours early due to heightened security. TSA grunts at Ontario were hand-searching every piece of checked baggage, right next to the airlines’ check-in areas, and confused lines snaked all around. When I arrived at JFK the gate areas were a bazaar of the weary and desperate. I could relate. I tried to muster an understanding smile but my face was too tired.

Traffic advanced haltingly on Harlem River Drive and I arrived home after the long cabride in a stupor. I feel asleep unexpectedly and woke around 7 p.m., disoriented and shaky, like Han in Jedi, freshly thawed from carbonite.

My joy in flight is childlike. I board a plane in New York City. I sit and watch VH1 Classic, Mythbusters and two episodes of Band of Brothers. I get off the plane. Now I’m in Southern California, surrounded by desert, mountains, palm trees, oddly vivid sunlight and hot, dry air that makes me sweat only if I move. None of that stuff is in New York! That’s a neat trick.

Here’s a new tip for airlines wishing to improve their on-time schedule. Let’s say a flight is bumped back an hour beyond the ticketed time. Instead of listing “Delayed” on the board and on record, list “New Time.” It’s all in the marketing! You didn’t want that 1:30 departure time, anyway; 2:30 has a much better ring to it. 1:30 is so “one hour ago.” It’s not a delay; it’s a new and improved time!

American Airlines pulled this stunt for my flight out of Miami this afternoon, then made us board the airplane and sit another hour for unexplained reasons. (I think it was because of high winds. According to Reuters, it wasn’t because of the well-publicized TSA ineptitude today at LaGuardia’s Delta Terminal, which supposedly only affected outgoing flights.) The icing on the cake was our captain’s apology for the “one-hour delay,” as if the hour before that one had disappeared in the three-cornered winds of the Bermuda Triangle

But when the cabin door was secured, the fun had only just begun. An hour after takeoff, we learned we had a Crying Baby On Board, and by the tiniest nuance of human voice, you could tell the child was responsible for its tantrum and not external forces like colic or inner ear pressure. You know how we’ve been told to never shake a baby? This one needed shaking like James Bond’s martini. That site I just linked to lists suggestions for coping with a crying baby. Here’s another tip: if you follow the “walk the baby around holding him/her close to you” tip, don’t do it repeatedly on a 757 full of cranky passengers after it’s obvious the child will not be silent as long as it has an audience. The baby screamed up and down the aisle, distressing people in its wake and causing able bodied men to catch each other’s eyes with a primeval look, the same look the guys on Flight 93 had, one that said wordlessly, “If we rush the mother now, we can take her down and the child.”

After an hour of crying, the Gods of Comedic Timing saw to it that the baby fell asleep followed shortly by a bing! and a flight attendant slamming onto the cabin PA system to tell us that the captain had turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. Lo and behold the baby woke up and relaunched its fit and I think at least a few people were wondering why the captain couldn’t illuminate some sort of “eject baby” sign so everyone on the left side of the plane could look out his or her window and watch a blanketed bundle arc gracefully over Delaware.

When the plane landed, the baby ceased its reign of terror. During our grim shuffle onto the jetbridge, someone turned on that soft departure music some airlines play over the PA. It’s usually generic New Age noodling, but this time I swear it was Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” played so quietly I could just make out the distinctive glockenspiel. It’s a lullaby of a song but with depressive-voiced lyrics referring to anarchy, chronic injury and death. It also includes the refrain, “No alarms and no surprises/Silence, silence,” which was about right.

Kicking off the busiest travel week of the year comes news that if you’re flying into LaGuardia, JFK or Newark airports, there’s essentially a one-in-three chance your flight will be delayed, which gives those airports the worst on-time arrival records in the nation.

Yesterday, New York Senator Chuck Schumer issued results from a study based on Bureau of Transportation statistics that revealed, based on the nation’s 33 largest airports:

From January through September 2005, 33% of flights to LaGuardia were delayed, making it 32nd out of 33. In 2004, 27% were delayed and it was ranked 31st, and in 2003 LaGuardia had 24% of flights delayed and was ranked 29th. JFK had a similarly disappointing record. From January through September 2005, a full 30% of flights arrived late, placing it 31st among the nation’s 33 large airports. But in 2004, JFK had a 24% of flights delayed with a rank of 25th, in 2003 it has only 20% of flights delayed and ranked 23rd. Newark has consistently posted worst or second to worst. Now it is ranked 33rd of 33 with 34% of arrivals delayed.

In a related local note, Cleveland is the 10th busiest route both into and out of LaGuardia, and so far this year has had 30.3% delays on inbound flights and 25.2% outbound. (In general, the stats for delayed departures from LaGuardia, JFK and Newark aren’t quite as bad as the stats for delayed arrivals.)

But overall, the pokiness has been worsening and it can’t be chalked up solely to elements such as weather; the survey makes an accusation: “there is something structurally wrong with how the FAA and air traffic control are managing the traffic in the New York City area.”

Something for me to think about while my plane sits on the runway at LaGuardia this Wednesday, which is when I depart for Cleveland to visit my family for Thanksgiving.

I rose before dawn to catch my car to JFK for my 8:30 a.m. flight to Long Beach, California for the industrial real estate conference my company is producing. I took Jet Blue, which I’d never done before, appreciating the personal TV built into every seatback and the continual proffering of brand-name snacks and beverages (Terra Blues potato chips, Planters smoked almonds, Arizona iced tea) to mask the fact that we weren’t getting any lunch. There were only 30-some people on the flight and each got his or her own three-seat row to spread out and relax, or sleep, as I chose to do for a few fitful hours.

I’d never been to California before today and although it was my own fault for not flying in a day early or staying a day later to see the sights, I made the most of my airplane-hotel-airplane trip. It was sunny but unseasonably cool in Long Beach, the airport for which has some of its luggage carousels located outside. I walked around the area of the Marriott and it was a typical business park area with soulless office buildings. I marveled at the tall, skinny palm trees sprouting everywhere and looking perfectly ridiculous, the ostriches of the plant world.

At the corner of Clark and Spring, a small strip mall that I would have normally passed by without notice caught my attention because it was called Time Square and the typography on its signage seemed to have been frozen, like Walt Disney, in 1966.

I stopped at Pop’s, a local greasy spoon specializing in the unlikely combination of hamburgers and teriyaki, the menu split 50/50. I got a hamburger and fries for an unbeatable $4.60—the burger was big and bursting with pickles, fresh-cut purple onion slices, lettuce and tomato and not-so-secret thousand-island sauce. The heap of fries were thick cut, crisp and piping hot, fresh from the fryer. I ate at a fire engine-red fiberglass table and listened to classic tunes from the ’60s, like “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James & the Shondells and Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.”

The conference began at 4 p.m. with roundtables for the few dozen people that showed up in the hotel’s ballroom, after which we retreated to the pool for beer, cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. I chatted with a cute L.A. girl who was from an architectural firm and resembled Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles, only with not-as-big hair.

My boss told me I needed to write an introduction for one of the event speakers he was introducing at the conference tomorrow, so I went back to my room and composed it—longhand. Note to self: Bring laptop to future conference events. I was in bed by 8 p.m., the whoosh of airplanes landing a few hundred yards away from my hotel room window lulling me to sleep.