The best way to Oslo is a direct flight from Newark on one of Continental’s new Boeing 767‘s but on this particular trip it was not available. The Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Airbus 330 followed the instrument landing system approach into Stockholm early Tuesday morning with just 500 feet visibility and only a three-hundred foot ceiling. This is when all of us appreciate the ILS the most. Something I noticed that morning for the first time was that each gate at the airport had a sign showing the exact latitude and longitude of it’s location. I have never noticed that anywhere else in the world and not sure how they use the information. Since all planes have GPS these days, perhaps it is a way to confirm to the crew that they are at the right gate.
The 9:00AM SAS Boeing 737 to Oslo took off at 9:00AM and landed in Oslo (the best airport in the world in my opinion) on time at 9:50am. The 10:06 Flytoget (airport train) left the airport at 10:06. Timely trains and planes in Europe are just how they are. Seems like the U.S. should be able to do that also. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics tracks flight performance in great detail. For example, in September at JFK in New York, 23% of all flights were late. I am sure there are studies on why things run late in the U.S. I suspect it is a combination of labor rules, over commitment of routes, and poor integration of information systems. Some flights are actually early but then the plane sits on the tarmac waiting for a gate. This is now a decades old problem where the flight arrival system does not communicate with the gate scheduling system. When a plane leaves California for a 4+ hour flight to New York, it knows within a few minutes what time it will arrive but the systems can not communicate in order to accommodate an early arrival.
The good news is that the air safety record is superlative and, even though there is a lot to complain about, it is truly amazing what airlines can do. On the one hand, fifteen hours from home to the hotel in Oslo is a very long time, on the other hand it is quite amazing. Imagine what the vikings would think about getting from Norway to the U.S. in 8 hours! A visit to the Viking ship museum helps to understand what travel must have been like for them one thousand years ago.