Globaliser

I think it'll be worth planning on the assumption that many/most will be closed during the day. I have already seen one email this week specifically mentioning the cancellation of a matinee performance on 6 May because of the coronation (but not the evening performance). I imagine that the biggest driver behind the decision will be whether staff want to watch; if many do (as I expect), then it just won't be viable for places to open. I doubt that the Bank Holiday on 8 May will be a major problem in your plans. You'll have to plan around whatever changes there are, but they should be relatively minor. There are already Bank Holidays on 1 May and 29 May, and this one will be additional.

Honestly? What airline is this? What? Have you never experienced this? And there we were, thinking that you were a seasoned traveller and all.

ISTR that these tags are typically used at stations where check-in is quite manual, and the check-in agents know when they're closing the flight and not accepting any more passengers. The last bag to go down then has this tag put on it, so the baggage handlers know that they can close the last can (if that's what they're using) and take the bags out to the aircraft, and that they don't have to wait for any more bags to come down from check-in. I don't know why one bag (ie yours) and that handler were waiting by the aircraft side, but one guess is that it was a bit like an aircraft-side marker to similar effect, just in case anything else did turn up before they closed the hold door.

Yes. If there is an emergency, those inside also need to be able to see out to assess where there may be danger. A good illustration of this is the shades at the doors on some aircraft types. These are fitted upside-down (compared to the usual), so that to close them you need to slide them up from below. This means that if there is a hard touchdown in an emergency situation, the forces acting on the shade will tend to open them rather than close them. At the doors, this is more critical than in passenger rows. Some regulators are more strict than others about requiring and enforcing procedures to have the shades open for take-off and landing. Passenger comfort considerations like keeping the aircraft cooler are secondary, but having the shades down while the aircraft is parked does help with this.

This does depend on who the regulator is, and also on any airline-specific policies.

One thing that I think can't be relied on any more is the assumption that a flight that is advertised and on sale is a flight that the airline actually intends to operate and for which the airline actually wants to take bookings. That used to be a reasonable assumption, but at present I think that both of these things can be very doubtful unless the flight is in the near future. One phenomenon that I have seen quite a lot is a flight that is on sale but only in the most expensive booking class in each cabin, which is typically only bookable using a fully-flexible fare. That's sometimes an indicator that the airline is very iffy about whether the flight will operate, and it wants to discourage people from booking it unless they too are very iffy about whether they will take the flight. Things that we used to be able to infer from availability and fares simply can't be taken for granted any more. One clear absurdity, though, was really the existence of $200 round-trip fares for journeys like DTW-FLL. On any view, that was irrationally cheap as a fare level that you could rely on (ie at any time other than in crazy sales etc). I've said this before - but today, that might not even pay for the fuel needed to transport you that distance.

In that area, I've experienced rough seas. In that area, I've experienced calm seas. What relevance or help is it to know what others have experienced in the past? It doesn't tell you anything about whether you will have rough or calm seas if you do the cruise next year. As a wise man once said, predictions are very difficult - particularly about the future. If this is a serious concern for your husband, then maybe a cruise is not actually a good idea? You can get rough seas anywhere.

Caution: That is not an official website, the information on it may not be reliable, and it would be unsurprising if in due course it becomes one of those misleading channels that charges you too much for something that can be done cheaply through an official channel. The official EU website concerning ETIAS is here: https://travel-europe.europa.eu/etias_en

The prime (or master) reservation record will (obviously) show all the flights in the booking, regardless of which airline(s) you're booked on. In addition, any individual airline's reservation record often includes the previous flight/journey and the following flight/journey, even if those flights/journeys are on a different airline and the prime record is held by a different airline or reservation system. This is because the airline may need to know where you've come from, or where you are going to, so it could be important for the airline to have ready access to this information.

Is this for mid-September 2023? If so, nobody has a clue what it's going to be like by then. That might as well be in the middle of the next century so far as planning for airport chaos (or non-chaos) is concerned. It's probably not worth looking into this again until August.

I think that any travel ideas that might involve Avanti are best not planned at this stage. Without going into the ins and outs of Avanti's problems ("disaster" is certainly apt, but the problems are rather more complicated than this), the headlines are as follows: Avanti's contract was due to expire this month. There was widespread speculation about the chances that the government would take over the running of the operation (as it did some time ago on the East Coast Main Line), but Avanti's contract has been extended for six months. It is possible that Avanti may get its house in order and get a contract extension. It is also possible that the government simply needs six months to plan for taking over the operation. Or there could even be a new private-sector franchisee (although this is unlikely). To avoid both Avanti and London, I'm wondering whether there might be some route that uses LNER and Cross-Country services. Although personally, I would be changing my plans to be in London on coronation day. It's likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime event for many people. However scaled-back the event is, it will be a very special day to be here.

I expect that it should be Spain. If you were to fly from London to Italy, you'd apply to Italy as that's your first port of entry, even though you would overfly some or all of Belgium, France and Germany on the way to Italy. So even if you were to cross French waters without stopping between Southampton and Tenerife (which I actually doubt), I expect that the same would apply.

It's not that simple. Whether any railway line is affected by a strike depends on who's striking and against which company, and whether operations on that line are affected by that specific strike. For example, there are Tube lines that rely in part on National Rail tracks and signalling, so if National Rail signallers are on strike, those parts of those Tube lines may be affected (but other parts unaffected). The same also applies to some parts of the Elizabeth Line. So there can be disruption to TfL services even if there is no strike against TfL companies as such. Also, AIUI the Elizabeth Line is run by a different operating company from those that run the traditional Tube lines. So even if Tube drivers are on strike, Elizabeth Line drivers may not be on strike. The best thing to do is to go to reliable sources of information close to the time, such as TfL's own page: https://tfl.gov.uk/campaign/strikes

A reliable blogger says that the 3 November 2022 Tube strike has been postponed until 10 November 2022: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/national-rail-and-london-tube-strike-dates-changed-58337/

All other things being equal, I'd definitely prefer the pair of non-stops simply because they're non-stops. I have a lurking fondness for the 777 for - how shall I put this? - its over-engineered structural integrity, but if in business class this really wouldn't be a big factor. This is from the point of view of someone for whom air travel is a means of getting from A to B, and who wouldn't go much out of the way just for differences in service levels (but would do so for operational excellence). However, it would be relevant to me that this itinerary is all on oneworld. I'm assuming that the second line here was intended to read "14 Sep", as in your first itinerary.

It's not just Heathrow. I think there are also e-gates at both Gatwick and London City. The latter has recently expanded its immigration area so as to install many more e-gates than there used to be. Together with a fair wind on the journey, it meant that I was unlocking my front door at about the time that my flight had been scheduled to arrive.

Not necessarily. As with so many things in the industry, it depends. This is why when doing I was doing that UK --> Sweden --> Sweden journey, I had to collect my bag at Stockholm and then re-check it for the domestic flight. At any rate, the main point is that it is not true that "The US airports are the exceptions". The arrangement seen in the US is actually very common all over the world.

I think that this is unfair on the US. A international --> domestic connection will often require you to collect your bags and clear them through customs personally at the connecting point, for obvious reasons. My regular destination countries of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all require this. I've even once had to do it on a UK --> Sweden --> Sweden connection.

I see this as operated by Skywest (United Express).

Presumably you're flying outbound on 28 or 29 October 2022? Denver is a single-terminal airport although it has more than one concourse. It looks likely (based on the last few days) that both UA212 and UA5791 will be on concourse B. At Toronto, both UA5791 and AC896 (the operating flight number of UA8681) should be at Terminal 1. Looking at the last few days, it also looks likely that the flights will arrive at and depart from the same "finger" of that terminal. Inbound, if you're flying on 13 November 2022, there will be a terminal change at JFK from Terminal 4 to Terminal 8. What someone else will have to help with is whether you'll have to take your bags between terminals yourself, or whether you will be able to drop them off again immediately after you exit from customs at T4 even though they're going to an airline that operates at a different terminal. (I'm assuming that the bags will be through-tagged as you're presumably on a single ticket despite it being an interline connection.) At DFW, the past few days suggest that your flights could well arrive and depart from different terminals. But you would only have to get yourselves between terminals, as your bags will get transferred by the airline there, and the shuttle train is IME usually pretty efficient.

That's very different from "they do not have a way to call them from the states". I think my international calling card (bought from and branded by a large supermarket here) allows me to call a US landline for 0.5p per minute plus a 4p call set-up charge. No computers are involved. I would be surprised if there is nothing similar that is readily available in the US.

And why can't you call them from the US? All of their respective websites give their phone numbers.

If we have an additional holiday for the coronation, a pushed-out story today makes it sound more likely that it'll be Monday 8 May than Friday 5 May. The story is a slightly esoteric one about local authorities complaining that a holiday on 5 May could interfere with vote counting after the (local) elections that are scheduled to take place on Thursday 4 May. I wouldn't normally expect to see such an issue reported in this way unless someone been trying to make the point but has got fed up with not being listened to. If the holiday is on Monday 8 May, then it's also an open question as to whether that will be done by moving the holiday on Monday 1 May back by a week, or whether we will end up having three Monday holidays in the same month, on 1, 8 and 29 May.

Ignore the names. That's just marketing. The different fares have different restrictions. Just as in economy, cheaper fares are generally more restrictive. Business class is no different. If you go to JAL's website and price a ticket for a long way out, you'll get to see a chart showing the marketing names. If you click on "Business special", for example, you'll see the main rules. Then you can compare these rules with those for more expensive fares.

If the answers to those questions are "very" and "yes", then frankly the OP ought to be cancelling the cruise and going to Paris alone. No organised day tour from a Le Havre port call can give you any kind of overview, let alone a nice one. All you'd really be able to say is that you saw some famous buildings through a window as you drove by.