Category Archives: Travel websites

Hello to Travel Rants

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So Flightmapping’s blog has finally pulled back from the stand, and the engines are roaring in preparation for take-off. But somewhere in the front of the cabin, there’s a passenger who just won’t shut up about his travel experiences. Don’t get me wrong, he’s behaving himself and pretending to keep an eye on the hostess who’s giving a safety demonstration he’s heard a thousand times before, but he really just wants to get back on his soapbox. At least he gets to smile at the eye candy – and no, not said hostess in front of him, but all those other aircraft lining up for take-off behind him.

So it looks like Darren at Travel Rants and myself have plenty in common. Take a look at what he says about Gordon Brown’s new air tax swindle. We both agree that he’s conned us by calling APD an environmental tax, and then stuffing the cash straight into some over-paid and under-performing NHS administrator’s back pocket. Like me, he doesn’t like to drive – ok, he’s one better, he doesn’t drive – but we both like to use public transport, and yes, that DOES include planes!

So if ever I need any further inspiration to fuel my rants, I think I know where to look. I’m sure we’ll be speaking again soon.

Now, please keep your tray tables upright. If you find a sudden increase in blood pressure due to reading anything I’ve said here, please do remember that a large amount of it is either obviously tongue in cheek, or deliberately provocative. Please bear this in mind, even if you are a regular reader of my rantings.

Have a nice flight :)

James

Flightmapping out of action

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Well as if this week hasn’t been eventful enough already, we seem to be having a problem with our server right now.

By the look of things, this is a DNS issue, as some traffic (about a third of the usual levels) seems to be getting through, we certainly can’t see, or edit, the site ourselves.

I am not sure of the reasons for this – it looks like some gremlins have buzzed into our server, but I don’t know if it has anything to do with clock changes.

As soon as I find out anything else, I will post and update. Our blog sites are totally un-affected, as they are hosted elsewhere.

James

UPDATE: This problem was due to a DNS issue with our hosting company. It was fixed on Sunday afternoon (25th March).

Stung by Flybe, trod on a hornets’ nest

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We ran an article on Flightmapping last week about dropping adverts for Flybe, because they has asked for all affiliate marketing activity to be suspended. The reason for this was quite clearly stated – they were approaching the financial year end, and the budget had reached its limit.

Then they told us that it was all a mis-understanding, they just wanted affiliates (sites like ourselves) to cool things down a bit, and actually we could carry on advertising them, but could we just tone down any suggestion about them being short of cash?

We made a few small changes to the story, but they then wanted us to go further, explaining exactly how we’d made this mis-understanding, and adding some general comment about what a nice airline they were.

Unfortunately, we just can’t do that, and our commercial arrangements with them are suspended by mutual disagreement, with immediate effect.

For further details about this (from the perspective of the affiliate industry), please see my personal blog post on the subject.