\n Complaints from international visitors to the United States
\n about hostile treatment by immigration officials have
\n prompted them to clean up their act, the official in charge
\n of border controls has said. The complaints, many from
\n Britons travelling for business or pleasure have forced the
\n agency to institute a code of conduct to ensure officers
\n treat visitors with respect. Complaints had come from
\n all over the world, but the department was particularly
\n struck by the number from Britain. One of the major
\n issues is said to be the handcuffing, detention and
\n deportation of some potential visitors who had committed
\n “minor technical visa violations” previously, such as briefly
\n or unwittingly breaching a 90 day permission to stay. “While
\n we must — and will — secure our border against terrorists,
\n we must treat all travellers professionally and courteously,”
\n said the agency.\n <\/p>\n
\n But meanwhile…\n <\/p>\n
\n By subjecting most visitors to scans of their faces and
\n fingers, the United States will this week expand a mass
\n surveillance system that threatens freedom and race
\n relations, a privacy watchdog says.\n <\/p>\n
\n Now most visitors entering the United States will have to put
\n each index finger in turn on a glass plate that
\n electronically scans it, and to have a digital photo taken.\n <\/p>\n
\n The United States says its US-VISIT program — already in
\n place for travellers requiring visas and now being rolled out
\n more widely — will add an average of just 15 seconds to
\n entry checks and will enhance security.\n <\/p>\n
\n It says the biometric data will be stored in databases, along
\n with personal information such as full name, date of birth,
\n citizenship, sex and passport number, and can be accessed by
\n border, consular, immigration and law enforcement officials.\n <\/p>\n
\n London-based rights group Privacy International said in a recent
\n report that the scheme relied on flawed
\n technology and opaque, error-strewn watch lists on which
\n innocent people could find themselves wrongly identified as
\n security threats.\n <\/p>\n
\n Ryanair are advertising jobs: http:\/\/www.careerjet.co.uk\/jobs_ryanair.html
\n We at Globetrotter Towers are idly wondering whether benefits
\n include free flights located in the bathroom.\n <\/p>\n
\n New routes added<\/b> Ryanair airline announced last month
\n it would begin flying on Oct. 31 to Riga from London,
\n Frankfurt, Germany, and Tampere, Finland, after the Latvian
\n government cut airport taxes in an attempt to lure more
\n tourism and make Riga International Airport a regional
\n hub. It is Ryanair's first venture into one of the
\n 10 new European Union member states. Commentators have
\n wryly noted that it is not clear who is most excited about
\n the new route into Riga, travellers into Riga or Latvians
\n looking to travel out. Uhh… didn't Michael O
\n Leary say that Ryanair would not be expanding into the new EU
\n accession countries?\n <\/p>\n
\n No unions, please <\/b> Ryanair is about to get into
\n another spat, this time with SAS. Ryanair is not
\n unionised and promises to pay more than union rates if its
\n employees negotiate their contracts directly with the company
\n rather than join unions for collective bargaining. Most
\n SAS workers do belong to a union. Swedish trade union
\n HTF recently handed out sick bags to passengers flying on
\n Ryanair from Nykoping, what Ryanair refer to as Stockholm,
\n some 160 km south west of Stockholm as part of a wider
\n campaign organized by the International Transport
\n Workers' Federation (ITF). The white bags were printed
\n with claims that Ryanair staff had to work longer and for
\n lower pay than rivals. Speaking at a Stockholm press
\n conference, Chief Executive, Michael O'Leary said that
\n Ryanair paid more on average to staff and that its rules on
\n the maximum hours staff could work were the strictest in the
\n industry. “We are an embarrassment to a lot of trade unions,”
\n he went on to say. According to O’Leary, Ryanair staff
\n earn an average of EUR50,582 a year, more than staff at
\n airlines where staff are unionized, O'Leary added.
\n O'Leary also said Ryanair would sue Swedish newspaper
\n Dagens Nyheter unless it retracted reports critical of some
\n aspects of Ryanair's safety record.\n <\/p>\n
\n Yet more pay as you go service<\/b> Ryanair has been
\n looking for ways to introduce new services they can use to
\n boost revenues while keeping fares low. Their latest
\n attempt is to introduce in-flight entertainment such as
\n movies, chart videos, cartoons and sitcoms on all its
\n flights, but passengers will have to pay GBP£5, EUR7
\n (USD$9) per flight if they want to access movies, cartoons
\n and television shows on the portable units, which will not be
\n built into seats as on full-service carriers. Ryanair
\n said the system will be trialled initially on five Stansted
\n based aircraft from November. If successful, it will
\n gradually be rolled out across the airline's entire fleet
\n over the winter. Ryanair needs three percent of its
\n passengers to use the units to cover its costs. Each
\n plane will initially carry 24 entertainment units which would
\n be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. The
\n units, which look like a small laptop, are the brainchild of
\n former aircraft baggage handler Bill Boyer who sold the idea
\n to his then employer, Alaska Airlines.\n <\/p>\n
\n Boyer later founded APS, based in the industrial city of
\n Tacoma, south of Seattle. Ryanair is now APS's biggest
\n customer.\n <\/p>\n
\n The entertainment units are Ryanair's latest push to tap
\n new sources of non-ticket revenue. Ryanair passengers are
\n also charged for drinks and food. “At the moment the ice is
\n free, but if we could find a way of targeting a price on it
\n we would,” O'Leary earlier told an airlines conference.\n <\/p>\n