Mark Boulton

16 Responses to “Getting the basics right”

1. 
   Peter Holloway said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 9:46 am

   From one grumpy ‘old’ man to another. I agree! With the prices they charge for park­ing we should expect a free decent cuppa and free wifi. 

   Let us know what it’s like on the other side…

2. 
   Ken Gray said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
3. 
   Richard said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 11:12 am

   Yep, find a cof­fee shop, atleast places like that have the decency to not do some­thing stu­pid like charge for it!

4. 
   AJ said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 11:46 am

   The prob­lem is that there’s no cof­fee shops near Bris­tol air­port! There’s not a lot there at all

5. 
   David said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 1:12 pm

   Don’t get me star­ted on Bris­tol Air­port .… too late!

   I once spent about 11 hours in Bris­tol Air­port. I’d just checked in to fly home when there was a bomb scare. They got every­one out of the ter­minal onto the mar­gin of the run­way where we stood around. Then they even­tu­ally shipped us by bus to the old ter­minal build­ing at the other end of the field where we were packed like cattle until the ter­minal re-opened hours later. 

   They did give out bottled water but there weren’t enough chairs or toi­lets. For­tu­nately they opened up a con­fer­ence room they use for press brief­ings so I got a seat in there and someone hacked the DVD/Projector and put a movie on. 

   When they even­tu­ally let us out we had to re-queue for the check-in then re-queue for secur­ity. By the time the flight took off (after mid­night) Bel­fast City air­port was closed so we flew to Inter­na­tional then got a bus (40 mins) to get to the City to find my car and drive another 45 mins home. 

   At the start of the ordeal I wondered why any­one would want to blow up Bris­tol Air­port. By the end of the night I under­stood completely.

6. 
   brad said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 1:14 pm

   Decent tea is get­ting easier to find at US air­ports (they’ve always had good cof­fee, but the tea selec­tion in the past con­sisted of a wide vari­ety of tisanes and a few satchets of black tea that tasted like cob­webs), but I’m amazed at the spotty avail­ab­ilty of wifi, even in major air­ports. I often travel to Wash­ing­ton DC and have had no luck get­ting wifi in National Air­port, at least not in the depar­ture lounge where I’m usu­ally wait­ing for my plane back to Canada.

7. 
   Nate said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 4:34 pm

   Wifi in US air­ports is spotty and unre­li­able at best. The greatest suc­cess I’ve had is in the lounges private lounges, wait­ing for inter­na­tional flights. T-Mobile wifi isn’t bad, but that of course it comes with a price. And it can’t be easy for air­lines to cre­ate good wifi when you have the air­ports fight­ing against it. 

   http://wifinetnews.com/archives/007102.html

8. 
   Ryan said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 4:39 pm

   I assume you paid for the wifi there. That’s prob­ably the reason it will remain crap. Unfor­tu­nately, they just don’t have to do any better.

9. 
   Steve Williams said on: November 22nd, 2006 at 5:40 pm

   Have had the same prob­lem with Bris­tol air­port myself. Like you it was an early start for a cli­ent meet­ing in Spain — but I stayed a few days and got some work done in the beau­ti­ful sun­shine, rather than fly­ing straight back. 

   I refuse to pay for wifi at air­ports on prin­cipal — it should be free, even if lim­ited only to email. I could have con­nec­ted via my phone, but instead I chose to do a little pho­toshop comp work whilst I drank my coffee. 

   I’m pretty sure the BA Lounge at Bris­tol has free wifi, if you can stand their prices and ridicu­lous stance on reli­gious symbols!

10. 
    Khoi Vinh said on: November 24th, 2006 at 3:38 am

    Wi-fi should be bet­ter in air­ports, and it should be free, too. Those points I wouldn’t argue with. But I have to say, I kind of enjoy it when I’m not able to log onto the net in situ­ations like that. It’s a nice break from the grid of being online. My the­ory is that I really don’t need to be wired all the time.

11. 
    Jon Waring said on: November 24th, 2006 at 10:02 am
12. 
    Flat said on: November 24th, 2006 at 6:08 pm

    Google are ment to be test­ing free inter­net in air­port but i’m guess­ing the tea might be to much of an ask

13. 
    Narayan said on: November 26th, 2006 at 4:32 pm

    As someone who has put over 100K miles into busi­ness travel this year, let me add another voice to this cabal of grumpy old men: 

    Any air­port con­struc­tion since, oh, the late 80’s to early 90’s should really take into con­sid­er­a­tion AC power every­where, par­tic­u­larly at gates. The only out­lets one finds in some air­ports are the ones in the middle of long hall­ways, prob­ably placed there so that jan­it­ors would have a place to plug in vacu­ums and floor pol­ish­ers. The end res­ult is vag­a­bond busi­ness trav­el­ers set­ting up camp in the most ridicu­lous loc­a­tions, just to get another hit off the ol’ elec­tron pipe. 

    If I can’t find AC power, I don’t bother with the wifi in the air­port, since it just takes away com­puter time from my flight.

    Don’t get me star­ted on DC power avail­ab­il­ity on airplanes…

14. 
    wonderful electric said on: November 28th, 2006 at 5:28 pm

    Wel­come to Bris­tol Air­port. I used to think Cardiff Air­port was ter­rible but at least it doesn’t make aspir­a­tions to being a major airport. 

    And only you could com­plain about going to a cli­ent meet­ing in Spain ;-)

15. 
    jonny516</script> said on: December 6th, 2006 at 7:22 am

    jonny837</script>

16. 
    jonny199</script> said on: December 6th, 2006 at 7:29 am

    jonny172</script>