Bambi Vincent – Page 5 – Pickpocket Bob Arno

Airlines: disclosure and liability

On February 11, I flew Delta 110 from Buenos Aires to Atlanta. Before the plane pulled away from the gate and after several minutes’ delay, the pilot announced that someone had dropped a Kindle between a seat and the wall, and that it had fallen inside the airplane wall through a panel, and that it would now be necessary for mechanics to come onboard to extract the Kindle because it was unsafe to fly with it inside the wall among various wiring. The pilot predicted that this would cause a delay of at least two to three hours. He sounded disgusted.

While other passengers groaned, I glanced at the wall next to my window seat and saw that a panel beside the seat in front of me was loose and gaping open. A dropped item could easily slip inside the panel and disappear into the wall.

What concerned me was the repercussions of the long delay; not only my own missed connections, but everyone else’s as well. I thought of all the potentially missed jobs (or weddings, or whatever events passengers might be flying to), and the financial and emotional havoc that would be wreaked.

The Delta pilot had specifically implied that the delay was a passenger’s fault. His tone, as well as his words, made this clear. No. The delay would have been Delta’s fault, due to poor maintenance. The wall panels are meant to be securely fastened to the walls, not gaping open.

In the end, it was announced that the Kindle had been “fished out.” Now the captain explained that he had to enter everything into his log book before the plane could take off. The flight was delayed only about 30 minutes.

Interestingly, I received a (random?) survey email from Delta two days after the flight, asking me to comment on my recent flight. I described the Kindle incident and mentioned that I had taken photos of the loose panel in front of my seat. 11 days later, still no comment from Delta.

What if the Kindle had not been “fished out”? What if the flight had been delayed those three hours, causing missed connections, late arrivals, etc.? Would the planeload of people be led to believe that a single clumsy passenger was to blame? Or would Delta step up and admit that its poor maintenance of the plane had allowed a customer’s personal property to cause a safety concern, thereby delaying all 150 (or however many) of us?

Any aviation lawyers out there care to comment on Delta’s liability in a hypothetical situation like this?

Would Delta have been bound to announce that the Kindle entered the airplane wall because a vent panel had not been properly attached? Would the airline then have to make good on everyone’s rebookings, hotels, and other expenses of the delay? If a plane can’t fly with an object inside the wall, is Delta then flying unsafe equipment? There were at least two loose panels on the plane: the Kindle passenger’s, and the one in front of me. How many more? On how many planes? What if a Kindle falls into the wall while a plane is in flight?

Delta? What do you say?

planes travel

Creative shelving

My brother-in-law, the self-proclaimed Swedish Okie and country bumpkin, is a book collector. This is only one of his meticulously organized bookcases.

Though his library is vast, most books fall into his narrow fields of interest: art, design, travel, photography, and ancient civilizations.

He has many books on home design, like Designer Apartments, Contemporary Houses, and editions from the Interiors and Conran series. I recently noticed with amusement that he has a copy of Sherlock Holmes shelved among them.

brother-in-law claes

Hotel oddity #13

Hotel hypocrisy. This is certainly not unique to the Delta hotel in Newfoundland, but that is where I was struck by the pretense and posturing of those righteous signs in bathrooms about saving water and saving the planet. What the hotel industry really wants is to save on labor costs.

I’m all for living lightly on our Earth, taking only what’s needed. I believe in the conservation of resources. But some hotels, the Delta St. John’s included, make it impossible to save water. The shower has no flow regulator.

To get hot water, you must run full volume. And in my room, the water pressure was fierce. Far more water than I need or enjoy. Much more than necessary down the drain. Certainly enough to wash an extra towel or two.

hotel odd

Where does your pickpocketed stuff go?

Jewelry, watches, pens, wallets… Ever wonder where all that pickpocketed stuff goes? Think Mrs. Pickpocket is decked out in your stolen pearls and Swatch, shopping with your credit card? Not likely.

Rarely, we’ve heard of thieves who return personal items, or credit cards. But how do the pickpockets and bag snatchers usually get rid of the goods?

You’ve heard of thieves’ markets…

Last week, Bob and I went scouting at El Rastro, the borderless Sunday market in Madrid, known for thick crowds and said to be crawling with pickpockets. Stalls and stands line street after street, block after block, hawking new and used goods, antiques, hardware, CDs, and everything else imaginable. We were pushed along with the crowd like a slow-moving river clogged with debris.

Thiefhunting is a warm-weather sport. We prowled halfheartedly in the frigid January morning. It was just above freezing and we, like everyone else, wore scarves and gloves and coats that pretty much hid pockets; only purses seemed to be possible targets.

From the wide main street lined with framework stalls sprouted side streets with wares spread on rickety tables and blankets on the ground. One of these streets was particularly crowded.

Progress was painfully slow down the middle of the street and along the sides people couldn’t move at all. The mobs were like misshapen circles pushed together—each circle a tight cluster facing inward, heads bent down.

Pickpocketed stuff

It was some time before we were able to get near enough to see what all the bent heads were looking at. Cloths were spread on the cobblestones, arrayed with the illicit sellers’ goods. Some specialized: only camera and phone batteries, SIM cards and memory chips; only power adapters.

Others displayed a meager mishmash of pens, thumbdrives, power adapters, pearls, glasses, earphones, battery chargers, watches, rings…

Strangely, we didn’t see any digital cameras, and very few mobile phones.

Many of the vendors flaunted an innocent decoy item—a pair of pants, a jacket—which they pretended to offer for sale. A few nervous men appeared to have only several items for sale, furtively flashing them from underneath their shirts.

For the most part, these sellers are not thieves—they’re fences—receivers of stolen goods. It also must be said that not all the goods are necessarily stolen.

As we pushed among knots and clots of shoppers, a wave of near-silent activity rolled in from somewhere above us. A spotter had given a signal. All the vendors scooped up their cloths full of booty and stuffed the bundles into backpacks or plastic bags. Merging into the crowd, they became invisible—an anonymous fragment of the whole.

With the sellers suddenly gone, the clumps of onlookers broke up and the congealed crowd became a flowing river. For a moment, holes were left where each seller’s cluster had stood.

One man was caught and questioned, backpack at his feet. Later, we saw him standing miserably, locked behind an iron gate with his police captors.

As with a school of fish, it goes without saying that one will be snagged, buying the others time. With the patrolling officers out of action, cloths were spread on the street again and the cycle continued.

fence Madrid pickpocket spain thieves

Bedbugs’ growing defenses against pesticides

Bedbug on fingertip. Â© 2010 Lenny Vincent

Very bad news on the travel front. Seems bedbugs are here to stay. The Wall Street Journal reports on a comprehensive genetic study of bedbugs that shows how they’ve evolved defenses against today’s pesticides. The more poison we throw at them, the more weapons they develop to fight it. Thicker shells, detoxifying enzymes, and adapted nerve cells, all of which are passed along to succeeding generations.

And if this news isn’t disturbing enough, WSJ kindly provides visuals enough to give a frequent hotel guest like me nightmares between the 600-thread-count sheets.

Though I’ve written how a cautious entomologist deals with hotel stays, I must admit that I simply throw caution to the wind and bury my head in the sand. I don’t want to look. I can’t look. I slip into hotel beds some 200-250 nights a year—I can’t afford to be obsessed. Yet… ick. I get the creeps just thinking of them.

By the way, if cooties give you the shivers, don’t watch the WSJ slideshow, either.

3/11/17: Edited to add a great resource, more than you ever wanted to know about bedbugs, on the site of nonprofit org Tuck, which is devoted to sleep.

bed bugs hotel travel

Russian gas-guzzler scam #3

Unlike the Russian gas scams in my previous two posts, this one is recent, perpetrated by Russians in America. They’d steal a car—say, a Mercedes—take it to a shop, and completely gut it. Then they’d abandon the still-pristine but empty body on the side of a road.

Eventually the shell of the car would be picked up and sold for pittance at auction. And there to buy it would be one of the Russian crew. The body came with a clean title after a legal purchase. And you know what happened next. The car went back to the shop where all its innards were replaced and a good-as-new Mercedes would be legally exported to Russia.

This was an easy scam. So easy that the crew got lazy and left one too many stripped-down bodies on the same road. And that’s how they were caught.

As told to me by an elderly Russian couple, along with this story, and this one.

Russia scam

Russian gas scam #2

Around the same time as Russian Gas Scam #1, a resident in one of those gigantic apartment buildings—I’ll call him Boris—found a way to warm his home for free throughout the frigid winters. Each apartment had its own coin-operated gas heater. For each coin dropped into the meter, the gas would come on for a set period of time to heat the home. Every month, the gas company would come collect the coins from the meter boxes.

Boris’s box was always empty; yet, his apartment was warm. It took a long time before the coin collector got suspicious, and even longer before the gas company showed up to ask questions. Finally, the gas company begged Boris for his secret, promising free gas for life if only he’d tell.

Simple, Boris said. He carved coins out of ice. They melted, evaporated, and left no evidence.

As told to me by an elderly Russian couple, along with this story, and an upcoming one.

Russia scam

Bangkok scam

Barely five minutes after hitting the streets of Bangkok, a jolly, friendly fellow approached. Conservative and 50ish, the short man put himself head-on into our path and opened with a warm greeting and big smile.

“Hello! First time in Bangkok?”

“Hi, nope.”

“Oh, I am teacher!” The man gestured vaguely as if his school were right around the corner. “Where are you from?”

“Sweden,” Bob replied.

“Oh, guess where I go on Monday—AmsterDAM! And guess why—honeyMOON!” He put his palms together and gave a little bow.

“Congratulations!” Bob and I said.

“Where you go now?”

“MBK market.”

His face falls. “Oh, I’m sorry, it is closed today. Holiday!”

“Well, we’ll just walk around then. Goodbye!”

Short and sweet. He didn’t persist, like most of his ilk. But the man was a scammer of the gentlest kind. MBK market, a huge mall not far from our encounter, was certainly not closed, and neither was it a holiday. The man simply wanted to reroute our day. He wanted to take us to a tailor, a gem shop, or a souvenir shop he knows of (his “brother’s,” of course), where he’d collect a little commission just for bringing us.

A jackfruit seller in Bangkok wrestles open the huge fruit, then laboriously picks out and trims the delicious yellow part.

While this is a fairly harmless scam, it can lead to serious disappointment. I heard about several visitors who were detoured from their intended destinations by their taxi drivers, thereby losing perhaps their only opportunity to visit the Grand Palace, or the floating market, or wherever they were headed.

Sound naive? To quote myself:

Cynicism is an unnatural state for a traveler who has come far to experience a new land and unfamiliar customs. We’re prepared to accept our local hosts, however alien or exotic they seem to us. After all, it’s their country. We want to like them. Yet, we don’t know how to read these foreigners, even though they may seem just like us. We can’t always interpret their body language, their facial expressions, their gestures. We’re at a distinct disadvantage as tourists and travelers, due to our nature as much as our innocence.

—Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Scams

I’ve heard of this tout scam being reversed to the visitor’s advantage. Let a taxi or tuk-tuk driver take you to three shops and collect his commissions. In exchange, the driver should be at your service for the rest of the day.

Bangkok scam Thailand

Airport teargas box

Arlanda airport, Stockholm—When I first saw this box from a distance, I took it to be some sort of dispenser. As in, get your teargas here. On closer inspection, I realized the locked box was a place to deposit your voluntarily forfeited pepper spray.

airport Sweden travel

PICKPOCKETS, CON ARTISTS, GANGSTERS, THIEVES, AND TRAVEL