Spy on the Coast

Three of next month’s races will take place in Madrid and the Mijas Cup on 28th February has now been cancelled

The announcement follows a meeting in Madrid last week between the municipal company that runs the ‘Hipódromo’, Recursos Turísticos Mijas, and the LAE to discuss 2013’s racing schedule.

At that meeting, the LAE offered just six summer meetings to Mijas and a further limited number in winter and September, a plan the municipal firm disagreed with, due to its destabilising the “economic rhythm” of the facility, and consequently has said it has had to scrap its February schedule.

According to the Mijas representative, Lourdes Burgos, the move not to award more ‘State races’ to the ‘Hipódromo Costa del Sol’ might result in up to seven people losing their jobs.

“Hopefully, next year the situation might improve. It’s a fine racecourse, it’s great to have on our doorstep, and could and should be a money-spinning attraction”.
 

At Panoramic Villas we are pretty much constantly flying here, there and everywhere.  Not too many weeks go buy that one of the staff is not subjected to the debacle that is boarding an aircraft, even when we have paid extra to do it...speedily!

So here we go a few complaints about the services we pay extra for ...which frankly are a mess and don´t work well enough in a few airlines we have used in the past weeks.

Here goes...

MONARCH

 Us Vantage card holders really do need to stand up and board...First!  Vantage customers spend a lot of money with you and then everyone stands up and pushes to the front at the same time irrespective of whether they are Vantage or not .

Please make sure everyone sits down and lets the Vantage customers have an advantage.  This means your staff  getting a grip, announcing clearly (and often) the order in which people will board, starting with Vantage customers!

EASY JET 

Speedy boarding ...really?   It’s a joke!   A cattle market.  Everyone rushes to the front and no one hears your announcements !

Apparently this has been crapped and you are now allocating seats.  About time!

RYANAIR

Now we REALLY are talking crazy!

Yes, they are probably cheaper but WOW it’s a circus.  Just please allocate everyone a seat , stop the cattle run to the plane , people sitting on the aisle seats trying frantically to discourage other passengers from sitting next to them when the flight is FULL  anyway so it’s no use sitting on 3 seats to stop people sitting next to you.

Just give us a seat so we know where we are sitting.

OK, so we have no magazine baskets on the seat backs so the airline doesn´t have to clean them but that’s no good  for your passengers.  There is nowhere to put your magazine, glasses, ipad... you name it, you can’t store it.  If you want to keep it with you, you have to hold it.

Be basic, be cheap but give us a seat!  

Till next time ...Speedy boarding !!!!!

 satellite change over

Fortunately since the loss of the other channels we have had no further losses over the Christmas period. In fact we seem to find that many people are of the opinion “well that is it we are OK, it has gone very quiet, no need to worry.”The reason why it has gone very quiet is due to the fact that SES (satellite operators for Astra) has been on skeleton staff throughout the Christmas period. Contrary to that we have had feedback from SES that they have to complete all their work by end of January.

You may have seen details from a BBC blog outlining that any changes they are going to make will be 2^nd quarter of 2013. However once again, in contradiction to this other sources tell us that the BBC does not have any control over which satellite they go on and when. This is all decided upon by SES. And even if they did hang out until then that does not count for the ITV channels and the other FREESAT channels.