IAGblog Podcasts

Still planning a vacation and need ideas? Uptake.com's Alison Osborne is an Austin native and paints a picture of warm and friendly outdoors in Texas' capital. And there's a lot to do at night. Austin is famous for its music scene. Every night there are live music acts to enjoy. Alison also talks about the food - from TexMex to BBQ. Austin sounds amazing!

ATW's Perry Flint talks about the current downturn and provides some intriguing insight. Has air travel changed forever? Has the premium travel sector shrunk forever? Has it gone the way of the three martini lunch and the personal assistant? We might be in the midst of a fundamental shift in air travel and the implications for the industry are far reaching.

In another of our series about vacation ideas for the summer, Uptake.com lodging editor and expert Nancy Brown takes us on a 6 day road trip through Oregon. Full of details and ideas, the podcast left us with a desire to go looking for a deal right away. And lots of places to eat!

Air India is in trouble - it has little cash and cash flow is draining what's left. Massive excess employment, sticky fingers from the government down the management and a typical state owned culture have all played their part. Devesh Argawal explains what's going on.

Steven Frischling knows his travel. A frequent traveler and the founder of TheTravelStrategist.com, Steven explains what's wrong with airlines. He praises PanAm and singles out Southwest for praise. He then walks us through his experiences with Alitalia in detail. The human touch is what makes service work. There are some firms that get it - but many (most?) don't.

Richard Aboulafia and Scott Hamilton were in Paris at the show last week and share their views of how the show went. In between the laughs, there are some serious questions about Airbus' orders, Qatar's threats and the general industry malaise. It was not a happy show - but Airbus did get to score a lot of PR news.

San Francisco is the most beautiful American city. Everyone wants to go there. Cat Lincoln is a Writer and Online Media Marketing Consultant who specializes in travel, beauty, style, and green topics - based in San Francisco. Cat takes us around her hometown - watch out for the cold, but enjoy the outdoors, the ferry rides, Napa and Muir Woods and don't forget the food and wine. After listening to this podcast we bet your next move is to a booking engine to see what deals there are!

UAVs must have high persistence to be of optimal value. Especially smaller UAVs used by soldiers on an "over the next hill" basis. A 30 minute UAV does not help much - but 2 hours would be very useful. Powering these devices is complicated. Ron Stearns, research director at G2 Solutions, explains all about what why persistence is important in ISR. And why fuel cells are going to play a critical role in the UAV business.

The man must be crazy. To overcome his fear of flying, Mark Malkoff is living on an AirTran jet for a month - yes, a month. He might walk on the tarmac for a bit. But no airport access, or hotels. Just that airplane seat. Late at night he gets to choose any seat he likes - or whichever row he wants.

Mark points out that he could not manage to do this project with in-flight Wi-Fi. Its the GoGo service that helps him endure.

Its something he does - lived in an Ikea for a week. Visited every Starbucks in Manhattan in a day. He's a comedian when he's doing these character building tests. At the end of the month he will probably have spent 286 hours flying. That should be enough to most people off flying forever.

As you think about planning summer travel, there's always this one item...kids. Of course they have to go along - its education on the run after all. Get some advice on this from Whit Honea, vacation travel editor at Uptake.com.

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