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Saudi Arabia wealth fund in talks to acquire national airline Saudia: Report

Press Room — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 07:52:17 +0000

Boeing 787 Dreamliner Saudi Arabian. Aircraft to Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Fiumicino (Italia), Nov. 11, 2021

Massimo Insabato/Archivio Massimo Insabato/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images

Saudi Arabia’s behemoth sovereign wealth fund is in talks to buy the kingdom’s national airline Saudia, Bloomberg reported over the weekend, citing people familiar with the matter.

The reported move for the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which oversees $925 billion in assets, would track with its goals to invest heavily in tourism and transport assets, as it aims to turn Saudi Arabia into a tourist hub and diversify its economy away from oil.

According to the initial report, the acquisition would see the PIF take over the airline’s ownership from the government to increase its efficiency and ability to make profit. It could then either be privatized or merged with Riyadh Air, a separate airline owned by the PIF and launched in March 2023 to compete with other more established Gulf airlines.

Founded in 1945, Saudia has a fleet of 144 aircraft — 93 Airbus planes and 51 made by Boeing — and flies to more than 100 destinations, according to its website.

It is not yet known how the airline would be valued. Talks are said to be in early stages, and could be delayed or axed altogether, Bloomberg reported.

These Senior Skiers Are Still Chasing Powder in Their 80s and 90s

Press Room — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 12:10:47 +0000

It was a bluebird morning at the Alta Ski Area and Carol Bowling, 76, was looking for fresh powder.

Her husband, Nick, 83, and his cousin Bob Phillips, 84, shouted over the whir of the chairlift, deciding where to go. “Something like this is skiable,” Mr. Phillips said of the black diamond run below the lift.

At the top, the trio tightened their boots and waited for a few more friends. It was a Wednesday in late February at the Utah resort, one of the oldest in the country. The morning was cold and crisp with a few inches of new snow.

It was time to ski. The group headed down Devil’s Elbow, a winding intermediate run. Mrs. Bowling found her powder, cutting left from the trail into the pine and spruce trees. The two men stayed together in the open, carving wide S-shaped turns.

When they reached the bottom, it was almost 11 a.m. — time to meet up with Alta’s seniors ski club, the Wild old Bunch.

‘It’s not the age that will limit you.’

The Wild old Bunch (with a lowercase “o” to de-emphasize the “old”) started in 1973 and has around 115 members. A few depart each year, some to the deep powder of the afterlife and others to an old age without skiing. Jan Brunvand, 90, suffered a scary fall his first day this season and decided 85 years on skis was enough. But fueled by baby boomers, the group’s rolls stay strong.

“It’s hard to believe 90-year-olds can ski that well until you see them do it,” said Dr. Brett Toresdahl, an associate professor of sports medicine at the University of Utah, who sees plenty of older skiers — in his practice and on the slopes. “You’d assume that it’s foolish for them to continue skiing, but when done carefully and wisely, it can be a great way for them to stay healthy and be in community.”

Some inevitable effects of aging increase the risk of ski injuries. Bone density and muscle mass decrease; reaction time slows and balance falters. Dr. Toresdahl said that when he treats an older skier, it’s most often for a fracture.

But that’s not to say older skiers get hurt more often. They don’t seem to, Dr. Toresdahl said. A series of unspoken rules among the Wild old Bunch help see to that: Only ski on clear days. Ski on weekdays, when the crowds are smaller. Ski familiar territory, where you know the hidden rocks and shady patches from decades of experience.

The Wild old Bunch agree on another reality of skiing with age: Training is necessary. “We work out the rest of the year so that we stay in shape for skiing,” said Mrs. Bowling, who got two trampolines for her local gym so she and her husband could jump back and forth in the off-season.

Keeping fit eases some of the risks, but nobody can ski forever. “It’s not the age that will limit you, but your cardiovascular health,” said Dr. Gina Fernandez, an assistant professor at Dartmouth’s medical school who specializes in geriatrics. She steers older skiers toward workouts for strength and stability, but her biggest advice concerns mind-set: Know your limits.

‘It makes me live longer.’

On the slopes, members of the Wild old Bunch ski in small groups or on their own. Around 11 a.m., they gather mid-mountain at the one round table at Alf’s Restaurant for hot drinks, doughnuts and gossip. On a recent Wednesday, 12 skiers pulled up chairs. The friends caught up about upcoming surgeries (one spotted his orthopedist across the room) and boasted about visits from grandchildren.

They also talked about gear. Fredi Jakob, 90, started skiing in leather boots on straight skis made of hickory in 1951. He pulled out his phone and passed around a black-and-white photo: a young couple in front of a mountain, beaming. “We went skiing on our honeymoon in 1957,” he said. “It was 28 below zero, but we didn’t care.”

In the decades since their first runs, the group has witnessed changes to the sport far beyond composite skis and polyurethane boots. Many of them learned to ski before high-speed lifts and overnight snow grooming — or $189 day passes.

Alta is a favorite among older skiers in part because of its senior-friendly policy: Anyone over 80 skis free. Taos Ski Valley, in New Mexico and Mammoth Mountain, in California, have similar rules, and a number of resorts offer steep discounts. For retirees on fixed incomes, that can be a lifeline to the sport that still defines them.

When Matt Kindred, 82, worked as a landscaper and a river guide in the Grand Canyon, he’d regularly do 45-mile backcountry trips on skis. In recent years, he’s slowed down, thanks to a long list of ailments: a major stroke, prostate and colorectal cancer, two hip replacements. “The worst was the colorectal cancer, because I had to ski with a colostomy bag,” he said. “I had to try hard not to crash, because if I did, it would be such a mess.”

But the challenge is part of the point. “I have to work at it. It makes me live longer,” he said. “Besides, I have to keep up with my wife.”

These days, he sticks to the easy trails. He’s weak on his right side and carefully gripped the safety bar on the ski lift. Above a grove of groomed greens, he waved goodbye to his wife, Becky Hammond, 61, who was headed to the blues midway up the mountain. Then Mr. Kindred’s bent figure slowly, steadily worked down the slope

‘I wouldn’t be skiing much without this group.’

Several other resorts host clubs for older skiers: the Over the Hill Gang at Copper Mountain in Colorado, the Silver Griffins at Bromley in Vermont.

“I wouldn’t be skiing much without this group,” Fran Ando, 92, said of 70+ Ski Club, a national group that goes on trips across the United States and beyond. Last summer, she skied with the club in New Zealand; this February, she joined them in Salt Lake City.

At home in Torrance, Calif., her agility makes her an outlier. “The people I started skiing with have all either died or quit skiing,” she said, relaxing at a group happy hour after a day skiing at Brighton, another resort outside Salt Lake City. “Many of my friends are through this group now.”

Aging often means isolation. And that can take a toll on our overall well-being, said Dr. Ashwin Kotwal, an assistant professor of geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. “Our social connections are tied to all sorts of physical health conditions,” he explained, from memory to heart disease.

So it’s significant that older skiers describe a version of aging in community that starts on the slopes and extends to the rest of their lives. Members of the Wild old Bunch regularly get together for birthday parties and summer cookouts; and every Wednesday evening, a rotating cast comes together for dinner at a nearby Olive Garden, where they’re joined by former skiers and non-skiing spouses.

The groups also offers members a way to stay true to their former selves: Once a skier, always a skier.

“Inside of every old, beat-up body on the ski slope is a 16-year-old kid,” said Mr. Phillips, who skis with hearing aids and a knee brace. “And while you keep slowly falling apart, the 16-year-old is still in there.”

United Airlines Flight Missing an External Panel Lands Safely

Press Room — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 03:52:25 +0000

A United Airlines flight that took off on Friday morning from San Francisco International Airport landed in Oregon missing an external panel, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The panel was found to be missing after the plane, a Boeing 737-800, landed safely at its scheduled destination at Rogue Valley International Medford Airport in Oregon and parked at a gate, United Airlines said in a statement. It was unclear when or how the panel went missing.

According to the airline, there was no indication of any damage to the plane during the flight, and the aircraft did not declare an emergency on its way to the Medford airport.

“We’ll conduct a thorough examination of the plane and perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service,” the airline said. “We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred.”

The plane was carrying 139 passengers and a crew of six, according to United Airlines. No injuries were reported.

The plane has been in service for more than 25 years, and it was from a previous generation of 737 aircraft, according to Airfleets.net, a website that tracks aircraft information.

The airport briefly paused operations to inspect the runway, and resumed flights after no debris was found on the airfield, Amber Judd, the director of the Medford airport, said in an email.

Boeing referred questions about the flight to United Airlines. The F.A.A. said it planned to investigate the episode.

The discovery of the missing panel on Friday came as Boeing has faced heavy scrutiny in recent weeks after a door-sized section blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 Alaska Airlines flight in January just minutes after it had taken off from Portland, Ore. There were no major injuries during the flight, but the frightening episode, which was recorded on video, prompted government officials to look into quality control at Boeing.

After the January flight, the F.A.A. began a six-week audit of Boeing, which found “multiple instances” in which the plane maker had failed to follow through with quality-control requirements.

Since then, there have been a number of issues with flights on Boeing aircraft.

On March 8, a United Airlines flight that had landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston rolled into the grass as the plane, a Boeing 737, exited onto the taxiway, according to the F.A.A.

In February, a Madrid-bound American Airlines flight, a Boeing 777, diverted to Boston Logan International Airport with a cracked windshield shortly after it had departed from Kennedy International Airport in New York.

Boeing Directs Airlines to Check 787 Cockpit Seats After Latam Incident

Press Room — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:49:15 +0000

Boeing has told airlines to check the cockpit seats of its 787 Dreamliner plane, the company said on Friday, after a Latam Airlines plane suddenly plunged on a flight to Auckland, New Zealand, on Monday, injuring passengers.

The drop in altitude appears to have been caused when a flight attendant hit a switch on a seat that sent a pilot into the plane’s controls, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing unnamed U.S. industry officials. Aviation regulators are investigating the incident and have not released any findings.

In a statement, Boeing said it had reminded airlines of a safety memo from 2017 that instructed them on how to inspect and maintain switches on flight deck seats.

“The investigation of Flight LA800 is ongoing and we defer to the investigation authorities on any potential findings,” the company said. “We are recommending operators perform an inspection at the next maintenance opportunity,” it added.

The Latam plane’s harrowing drop was documented in video footage captured by passengers. The plane fell abruptly and then quickly recovered, one passenger, Brian Jokat, said, likening it to “coming over the top of a roller coaster and heading down.”

The drop left at least one passenger in critical condition; 11 other people were also transported to hospitals in Auckland after the plane landed there. All told, dozens of passengers suffered injuries, most of them minor.

Regulators, airlines and travelers have been intensely focused on the quality and safety of Boeing planes since a Jan. 5 incident in which a panel sheared off a Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 plane, forcing pilots to make an emergency landing. In 2018 and 2019, two 737 Max 8 planes crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing nearly 350 people.

In a note to its 787 flight crews, American Airlines said it had “identified a potential hazard” with the horizontal power control switches on the top back of pilot seats.

The note, which was reviewed by The New York Times, said that the airline’s technology operations team “will be ensuring that these switches are properly secured” and asked 787 captains “to brief all pilots, flight attendants and flightdeck jumpseat riders on your flight of the importance of not using the switch on the top back of the pilot seat when the seat is occupied.”

In an image of the back of a seat that is included in the note, it appears that the switch has a cover.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement on Friday that it would assemble a panel of experts to review Boeing’s messages to airlines about the switch, including the 2017 memo, and provide feedback to the company. “The agency will continue to monitor the situation closely,” it said.

The 787 Dreamliner, a two-aisle jet, is one of Boeing’s most important planes. Its three models can carry 248 to 336 passengers, according to Boeing, and is used by airlines on international and transcontinental flights.

Latam’s plane was flying from Sydney, Australia, to Auckland and was scheduled to carry on to Santiago in Chile, where the airline is based. The company said in a statement on Friday that it was working with investigators.

Mark Walker contributed reporting.

Aspen’s Slopes Draw Skiers and Influencers to the Colorado Town

Press Room — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 09:41:21 +0000

The influencers were not in Aspen to ski. In their Barbie-pink ski suits and matching Moon Boots, they rode the Silver Queen gondola to the top of the mountain, smiling and jumping for their cameras and social media feeds. Soon they would get back on the gondola and ride down, perhaps to pose for more content with a glass of Champagne at Ajax Tavern at the resort base.

They did not care that after almost two weeks without snow in what was already a below-average year, a storm had finally come through, replenishing the mountain’s steep slopes and giving skied-out bump runs new life.

But the rest of us did.

I had come to Aspen in early February to ski Aspen Mountain’s newest terrain, an area called Hero’s that, as you look uphill, sits on the mountain’s left shoulder and offers 153 new acres of skiing, most of it rated double-black diamond. It is the first big development on the mountain since the Silver Queen gondola opened in 1986.

“There are not new ski resorts being built in North America,” said Geoff Buchheister, the chief executive of Aspen Skiing Company, over lunch at the Sundeck near the top of the mountain. “You have to innovate.”

First the snow had to fall, though. When I had skied the area with Mr. Buchheister and a group of Ski Co. execs a few days before, conditions had been, well, “sketchy.” The snow was hard and slick as we made our way through the trees to a steep, mogul-covered slope called Loushin’s that tested my resolve, and the newly sharpened edges of my skis.

But now, those hard, skied-off bumps were pillowy and the glades at the bottom offered a chance to dance through the trees. My companion and I did a few laps, skiing the Powerline chute and one called Here’s To …, both of which led to a series of glades, then hit Walsh’s, a more wide-open slope. We pretty much had the slopes to ourselves.

From Pandora’s to Hero’s

The expansion has been a long time coming. “When we moved here 18 years ago, they were already talking about putting in a lift,” said Pete Louras, 74, who retired to Aspen with his wife, Sam, 72, in 2005 and is a 100-days-a-year skier. This past summer, they watched from their living room as helicopters put pieces of the chairlift in place.

For decades the area had been accessible only through a backcountry gate. As far back as the 1980s, some ski patrollers were suggesting turning it into inbounds terrain, referring to it as Pandora’s, for the mythic woman who unleashed the evils of the world. The resort first put it in its 1997 master plan under that name.

Some local skiers objected, saying the area would change if it were opened as inbounds skiing. (“It has,” Mr. Buchheister said, adding that there were more people skiing it and that moguls built up faster.) There were also ownership issues, as the resort sits on a patchwork of White River National Forest, private land and mining claims. Environmental impact studies were needed.

Finally, in 2021, the expansion was approved and work began on what was still called Pandora’s: A road and trails were cut, power was brought in and the woods were thinned to create those glades.

Mr. Buchheister moved to Aspen in March of last year, lured in large part by the idea of working with James Crown, the chief executive of Henry Crown & Company, which owns, among other things, Aspen Snowmass and Alterra Mountain Company, the ski resort conglomerate and purveyor of the multimountain IKON pass. “He was a really compelling mentor,” Mr. Buchheister said.

Then, on June 25, his 70th birthday, Mr. Crown died in a crash at the Aspen Motorsports Park racetrack in nearby Woody Creek, stunning the Ski Co. and the local community.

Against that backdrop, Pandora’s became Hero’s and the slopes have been named for locals like the ski patrollers Cory Brettman, who died in an avalanche in the area, and Tim Howe, who was known as “El Avalanchero.”

The slope under the new lift is named Jim’s, for Mr. Crown.

Good, hard skiing and lots of partying

Tucked at the end of the Roaring Fork Valley, Aspen Snowmass is far enough away from major cities to not draw big weekend crowds. It accepts the IKON pass, but limits the number of days for many passholders and requires reservations. It can also be dizzyingly expensive to stay and dine in town. One night at dinner, my mediocre pork belly tacos were $38.

The resort is unusual in that it comprises four separate mountains with distinct personalities. Friendly Buttermilk has nothing but beginner slopes and terrain parks. The bruiser, Snowmass, where 40 percent of visitors ski, sprawls across 3,300 acres, with a mix of slopes and open terrain, appealing to all levels of skiers. Much smaller, Aspen Highlands and Aspen Mountain, both with a kind of throwback simplicity, have only intermediate and expert runs.

When asked what makes Aspen different, Mr. Buchheister said, “Aspen is an experience that’s quality based. We capture the essence of skiing.”

Especially when skiing Aspen and Aspen Highlands, that feels true. There are no fancy new lifts or glitzy base lodges, just good, hard skiing.

But equally true is that, as the influencers made clear, many people come to Aspen with no intention of skiing. And why not? There’s the Aspen Art Museum with its new building by the star Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. There are stores from Gucci, Valentino, Prada and more. There’s the brainy Aspen Institute with its Bauhaus campus (and quite a good new restaurant, West End Social, at the Aspen Meadows resort). There is Veuve Clicquot Champagne at seemingly every turn, including bottles on ice in mid-mountain restaurants.

In fact, local legend has it that Cloud Nine, a seemingly unassuming restaurant on the slopes of Aspen Highlands, sells more of the stuff than any other outlet in the world, though much of it is said to be sprayed on patrons at the restaurant’s 1:30 p.m. seating, not sipped. People told me of sybaritic partying, with women taking off their layers of ski clothing and dancing in their sports bras.

I had discounted this tale until, toward the end of a snowy day at Aspen Highlands, we came upon the modest wood cabin that houses Cloud Nine. A dance remix of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” was pumping at a volume that seemed to make the whole place shake. Gliding by, I turned and looked in one of the restaurant’s picture windows, to see a woman in a black sports bra and ski pants gyrating on a table.

A hedge against global warming?

Though it was not originally planned with climate change in mind, Hero’s has the advantage of sitting high up on the mountain and facing north, which, Mr. Buchheister said, should help mitigate the effects of global warming, because both the altitude and the aspect mean snow will stay in place longer.

That could be a significant advantage, as climate change threatens the future of the snow sports industry. Auden Schendler, the chief of sustainability for Aspen One, the parent company of the Ski Co., said the area has lost 30 days of winter since 1980. “Spring runoff happens earlier and it happens quicker,” he said.

Mr. Schendler now rejects much of corporate environmentalism as “complicity.”

“If you made a list of all the practices of businesses trying to be sustainable, they would be the things that the fossil fuel industry would do to look like they were acting on climate change, but not disrupting the status quo,” he said.

Making that argument from a luxury ski resort where many visitors fly in on private planes, is an irony not lost on Mr. Schendler, who said that the way to cut down on private flights would be to charge a carbon tax at the airport — something he has asked the F.A.A. for permission to do. But in the meantime, “Aspen’s power is the media play. We have wealthy and influential guests who are really into skiing and the outdoors.”

Packed and loud

One afternoon, as the ski day ended, we joined the river of people coming down Little Nell toward the bottom of the gondola, and took off our skis to the thunka-thunka beat of dance music from the patio at Ajax Tavern.

Eric Adler, 39, a restaurateur from La Jolla, Calif., and his wife, Gretchen, 37, have been coming to Aspen since 2010 and now bring their three children to ski there once or twice a year. Compared with Aspen, other ski resorts “feel like Disneyland,” Mr. Adler said, with everything built and controlled by the mountain’s developer. Aspen, he said, is “a more authentic experience, the people are real.”

In search of that authenticity, we made our way to Buck, a tiny subterranean bar on nearby Cooper Avenue, where people leave their ski gear at the top of the stairs before descending. When we’d stopped by on a previous night, we’d been warned away by a man coming up the stairs. “It’s packed and loud,” he said.

But sometimes, after a day of skiing, packed and loud is what you want. There was craft beer and an excellent margarita and on all eight televisions around the room a Phish concert was playing, which felt ski-town appropriate. And everyone kept their shirts on.

what to do along new bullet train route

Press Room — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 05:26:33 +0000

Japan is launching a new high-speed bullet train, or shinkansen, extension on Saturday that will make an under-the-radar prefecture far more accessible to travelers.

The coastal Fukui Prefecture is some 185 miles west of Tokyo. The new train will pass through the city of Fukui, the town of Awara and other places guidebooks rarely mention, before reaching the port town of Tsuruga, adding some 78 miles to the Hokuriku Shinkansen’s existing Tokyo-to-Kanazawa service.

Once it begins on March 16, the route will open a door to a part of Japan — known for dinosaurs, Zen meditation and soothing hot-spring baths — where few international travelers go.

Jurassic Japan

Of all the stops on the new extension, Fukui makes the best base for visiting the sights of the prefecture.

Dinosaurs are one of the area’s main draws, from the robotic replicas at Fukui Station to the local mascot, a smiley, green dino named Juratic, whose face is emblazoned on souvenirs throughout the city.

There is good reason for that. Close to 80% of Japan’s dinosaur fossils were discovered in Fukui, something the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Katsuyama does an excellent job of detailing in Japanese and English.

Just under an hour from Fukui Station on the trundling Katsuyama-Eiheiji rail line, the cavernous museum houses a collection of remains and exhibits on the existence and demise of dinosaurs, plus life-size animatronics of a menacing Tyrannosaurus rex and a long-necked herbivore. Fossil digs in the connected Katsuyama Dinosaur Park add a hands-on element that’s especially well-geared for families.

Finding Zen and hot springs

On the local train back to Fukui, travelers interested in learning about Zen Buddhism can hop off at Eiheijiguchi Station to go to Eiheiji, a temple and monastery founded in the 1200s by the legendary Zen priest and scholar Dogen.

Travelers with a couple of hours can explore the temple buildings, but it’s also possible to plan an overnight temple stay that includes options for zazen meditation sessions and traditional plant-based Buddhist meals.

A Geisha walks through a performance hall in Awara, Japan.

Buddhika Weerasinghe | Getty Images News | Getty Images

With an extra day in Fukui, another option is to take the new shinkansen to Awara for a spot of traditional pampering. Like many small hot spring towns in Japan, the reason most people visit Awara is to spend a night at a ryokan inn, where they soak in mineral-rich baths, slip into yukata gowns, unwind in tatami mat guestrooms and indulge in kaiseki-ryori dinners featuring a photogenic array of small in-season dishes.

But there is plenty to do in Awara beyond baths and ryokans, with hands-on experiences like glassblowing and ceramics at Kanaz Forest of Creation — a 200,000 square-meter forest home to art installations and walking trails. Rural areas also have orchard-picking — strawberries in the spring and blueberries, grapes and Asian pears in the summer.

The end of the line

The new shinkansen service ends in the town of Tsuruga. Arguably, there’s less to linger for here, but those with a few hours to spare can visit a few standout sights accessible via the town bus.

Suishouhama Beach, near the town of Tsuruga.

Arief Juwono | Moment | Getty Images

The Kehi-no-Matsubara beachside pine grove is a nationally designated site of scenic beauty.

Also along the coast is the Port of Humanity Museum, which details how Jewish refugees from Poland and Lithuania arrived in Tsuruga in the 1940s after being granted special visas by Japanese diplomat Sugihara Chiune. It’s estimated that Sugihara saved several thousand Jews from Nazi concentration camps.

Travelers can also follow the footsteps of the 17th-century haikuist Matsuo Basho, who visited Tsuruga’s Kehi Jingu shrine to see the autumnal full moon during a journey immortalized in the haiku-punctuated travelogue “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.”

Kehi-no-Matsubara in Tsuruga, Japan.

Mixa | Getty Images

The shrine has been rebuilt several times since Basho’s visit, but the version he saw certainly left an impression. “The air of the shrine was hushed in the silence of night,” he wrote, “and the moon through the dark needles of pine shone brilliantly.”

While Basho left Tsuruga plodding slowly south, today express trains run from Tsuruga down to Kyoto in just under an hour, or southeast to Nagoya in 90 minutes. Travelers can also reboard the new shinkansen for the three-hour ride back to Tokyo.

Help! Air Canada Ruined Our Trip to Ireland but Won’t Take the Blame.

Press Room — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 21:16:30 +0000

Dear Tripped Up,

Last September, my husband and I left our kids with their grandparents and set off to Ireland. Our $2,132 itinerary took us from Minneapolis to Toronto to Dublin on tickets booked on United Airlines through Expedia but ultimately operated by Air Canada, a United partner. We had boarded our connecting flight in Toronto (and I was already dozing in my seat) when the captain announced an operator had crashed the jet bridge into the starboard engine. We were given hotel vouchers and told we would be rebooked for the next day. Checkout time came and went without a word, so we went to the airport and were told to call Air Canada customer service. An agent booked us a flight for that evening, and we printed out boarding passes at an airport kiosk. But when we tried to board, we were told the boarding passes were invalid. Eventually, we were offered two options for the next day: Fly to Dublin via Newark, or return to Minneapolis. We cut our losses and went home after staying the night in Toronto at a hotel. But United refunded us only $1,087, barely half of what we paid. Air Canada did reimburse us for the second hotel and other expenses, but we believe the airlines owe us not only a full refund, but also 400 Canadian each ($295 apiece) under Canadian law for denied boarding. Both refused. Can you help? Michelle, Edina, Minn.

Dear Michelle,

I found the 58-page dossier you sent along with your story to be quite convincing. (It also convinced me that either you or your husband is a lawyer, which turns out to be true.)

I skipped over Expedia, since your trip had already started, and reached out to United and Air Canada — as you flew on an airline’s partner, it’s a code share arrangement. A spokeswoman for United, Erin Jankowski, quickly sent me a statement noting that the refund you received from United was as per Air Canada’s instructions and referred all other questions to it.

Air Canada, on the other hand, took almost two weeks to get back to me, and its response was underwhelming.

“Our records indicate these customers were not denied boarding in Toronto,” wrote Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the airline. “Instead, it appears that following the cancellation of their original flight to Ireland they opted to return to Minneapolis from Toronto rather than go to Dublin following the delay. Once that was identified, we did rebook the customers on a flight back to Minneapolis.”

No compensation, no word on the $1,045 still missing from your refund and no explanation as to how you were turned away at the gate for your second flight and yet “not denied boarding.”

Air Canada did offer you and your husband a credit worth 1,200 Canadian dollars toward a future flight, Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote to me, “to account for the impact on their travel plans and experience.”

There was no response to my direct question asking why your boarding passes did not work the second night. In fact, it isn’t even clear from Mr. Fitzpatrick’s initial statement that Air Canada believed you even tried to board, despite the boarding passes you included in the dossier sent to me and the two airlines.

I wrote back with more pointed questions, thanks to what I learned after reading up on the Canadian Transportation Agency’s air passenger protection regulations and speaking with Tom Oommen, the director general of the C.T.A.’s Analysis and Outreach Branch.

“We have what I would call a very complete holistic system of consumer protection for airlines,” he said. For example, when flight disruptions occur for reasons within an airline’s control and the airline cannot get passengers onto another of its own flights within nine hours, it must book the passenger on any airline, including competitors it does not have agreements with, a requirement that the United States does not impose.

Mr. Oommen also noted that if a passenger is stuck midway through a trip and is not happy with the options to continue on, the airline must offer to rebook that passenger “on a flight back to their point of origin free of charge and refund their entire ticket.”

He wouldn’t specifically comment on your case, but that is exactly what happened to you. (The only exception to these rules is when the disruption is not within the airline’s control, Mr. Oommen said, but when a mechanical problem is caused by an airline employee or contractor, “it’s hard to make that argument.”)

There are also many circumstances in which Canada requires airlines to compensate passengers — between 400 and 2,400 dollars — for flight delays, cancellations and denied boarding within the airline’s control. There is an exception for when such issues have safety implications, which could apply to the first night’s engine damage, but not, it seems to me, for the second night’s nonfunctioning boarding passes. That sounds a lot like denied boarding.

This time, you heard back before I did, and forwarded me several emails from Air Canada, including one that said the carrier had approved a cash payment of 400 dollars per traveler. Then Mr. Fitzpatrick emailed me to say you would receive a full refund.

So you got what you asked for, but of course you would rather have gone to Ireland. And what happened, exactly, when Air Canada refused to board you in Toronto? Mr. Fitzpatrick told me United had canceled your ticket before you even got to the gate.

I found that confusing — the boarding pass bears an Air Canada ticket number, and you had not even spoken to United that day. So I got back in touch with United’s Ms. Jankowski, who looked into the situation further and found that “United canceled the tickets after sending messages to the operating carrier, Air Canada, informing them that the tickets had not been properly reissued to the rescheduled flight.”

Apparently, somewhere in the interfacing bowels of the two carriers’ systems, your Air Canada boarding pass was invalidated by United, and neither airline contacted you. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Fitzpatrick later confirmed that second flight left with empty seats.

When you decided to just go home, the Air Canada representative at the airport said you had to call United. The process to untangle the mess and get you booked on a flight back to Minneapolis required hours and six different United customer service representatives and supervisors.

Your experience is a good reason for all of us to avoid code shares unless they are necessary — such as when an itinerary includes flights operated by different airlines.

All this because you originally booked Air Canada flights as United code shares — a choice you found on Expedia. When I recently ran a Minneapolis-to-Dublin search on Expedia for a week in April, the first two choices that appeared were the same route via Toronto with no price difference, one booked directly on Air Canada and the other as a code share on United. Assuming you saw the same thing last year, I bet that if you had booked the Air Canada choice, you would have made it to Ireland, albeit a day late. All the more reason to book directly, with one airline.

There is one final mystery: Why wouldn’t Air Canada admit this was a case of denied boarding, and follow the required C.T.A. regulations? Yes, your case doesn’t precisely fit the agency’s official definition, which is written to describe overbooking or changes in aircraft, but if an airline erroneously cancels a passenger’s ticket after it has already printed a boarding pass, and you are stopped at the gate, what is that?

I presented this as a theoretical situation to the Mr. Oommen of the C.T.A.

“Classic denied boarding is what you’re describing,” he said.

That means you could file for an additional 400 dollars each for this second incident, and put that toward a new flight to Ireland — say, on Aer Lingus, direct or through Chicago.

If you need advice about a best-laid travel plan that went awry, send an email to TrippedUp@nytimes.com.

Handmade Porcelain Painted With Brooklyn Blossoms

Press Room — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 16:51:37 +0000

For over 20 years, Melissa Goldstein worked as a magazine photo editor. While researching imagery, she developed a fascination with Scandinavian ceramics, 17th-century botanical illustrations and Japanese woodblock prints dating back to the 1500s. It wasn’t until she moved to Brooklyn and began rehabilitating the overgrown garden behind her brownstone that she began combining her interests: “[My brand MG by Hand] was the merging of my research, the garden and making things for my family,” Goldstein says of the fine English porcelain ceramics she now sells in select shops and online. In 2008, the artist began hand-making everyday dinnerware in her home studio in Carroll Gardens, decorating the pieces with floral motifs in a cobalt stain. Black irises, poppies and flowering quince from her garden adorned vases, shallow banchan dishes and scalloped serving trays. Her new Poppy and Cherry collections, which were fired in a gas kiln for 12 to 15 hours, channel Dutch Delftware while depicting local flora. “I have a wall that separates my garden from my neighbor’s, and I’ve interwoven quince in it,” Goldstein says. “I’m very into blooming trees.” From $65, mgbyhand.com.

Read This

A New Book Collects the Writings of Dorothy Dean, a Fixture of ’60s New York

Dorothy Dean, the writer, socialite and Warhol Factory regular, was a central figure of bohemian New York in the ’60s and ’70s. But despite her circle of famed confidants, she died in relative obscurity in Boulder, Colo., in 1987. Nearly a decade later, the writer Hilton Als recounted Dean’s life story for The New Yorker: She was the first Black high school valedictorian at White Plains High School in New York, a graduate of both Radcliffe College and Harvard, the first female fact checker at The New Yorker, part of a clique of white gay men she called “the Lavender Brotherhood” and a tough-as-nails bouncer at the nightclub Max’s Kansas City. Now, a new book compiles a selection of Dean’s unpublished writing and letters along with her newsletter of biting film reviews called the “All-Lavender Cinema Courier.” Titled “Who Are You Dorothy Dean?,” the book is edited by the Paris-based filmmaker Anaïs Ngbanzo and published by the press she founded in 2020, Éditions 1989, which focuses on biographical books and artists’ writings. On March 19 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Ngbanzo will also bring Dean’s acerbic humor to the stage with “Dorothy,” a play adapted from her correspondences with the artist Rene Ricard, the model Edie Sedgwick and the music journalist Lisa Robinson. “Who Are You Dorothy Dean?,” about $23, editions1989.com.

For nearly 100 years, the linen company Matouk has focused on making Egyptian cotton bedding. Today, the company will launch its first clothing line with a collection of pajama sets made in Italy. Available in silky sateen and percale cotton, the long-sleeved sets will come in a selection of prints from the interiors company Schumacher, like the graphic, almost floral Levi, the polka-dot Celine and the botanical Pomegranate as well as solid colors and crisp white. All can be customized at the cuff or pocket with 20 monogram styles in 45 colors embroidered at Matouk’s factory in Fall River, Mass. You can also mix and match patterns, colors and trims; virtually any bedding fabric seen on their website can be turned into pajamas. “If there’s a special combination that a customer wants, we’ll happily make it,” says the creative director Mindy Matouk. “Some of my favorite moments have happened walking the factory floor and spotting a design that someone else dreamed up.” The collection is online now, and starting April 4 it will also be available at the brand’s newly opened House of Matouk on New York’s Upper East Side. From $475, matouk.com.

Visit This

A Sound Artist Finds Inspiration in Feline Figurines

When the British sound artist Oliver Beer was preparing for his first solo show in the United States in 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art allowed him to test the acoustic quality of thousands of vessels in its collection. Beer had been placing microphones inside hollow objects and amplifying the sound within to make them “sing.” While at the Met, he became fascinated by an ancient Egyptian cosmetic jar in the shape of a cat. This discovery led to a feline obsession that culminated in a new exhibition opening this month at Almine Rech’s TriBeCa gallery. Beer has created a “cat orchestra” from 37 of the hundreds of jugs, teapots and vases he has collected. The figures range from the elegant (a floral ceramic from Cornwall) to the kitschy (an absinthe pitcher in the shape of a cat playing the mandolin), and were sourced from places as disparate as France and Thailand, with a few replicas of historical artifacts found in places like Benin or pre-Columbian Mexico. Viewers can take part in the performance by pressing the keys on a custom-built keyboard that activates the individually tuned containers whenever it’s not playing an original composition by the artist. For the exhibit, Beer also created 12 “resonance paintings” using another of his signature techniques: The artist lays a flat canvas over a speaker (in this case, hooked up to a microphone-rigged cat), whose vibrations shake ultrafine pigment into intricate shapes. “These are more complex than any of the ones I’ve done in the past,” says Beer. “I’ve got so much control now: I choose a different cat and change the note.” “Resonance Paintings – Cat Orchestra” is on view at Almine Rech in TriBeCa, New York, from Mar. 14 through Apr. 27, alminerech.com.

Covet This

A New Athleisure Line Inspired by ’80s Tracksuits and Clerical Garb

“Athletes and clergy members have a lot in common,” says Louis Charles Aka, a Paris-based political adviser turned creative director. “They share a strong discipline and a mostly ascetic way of life, and they both wear distinctive uniforms.” Aka’s affinity for the clothes of both professions has influenced his brand, Clerica, which launched in December with a collection of T-shirts and tracksuits. Aka, who grew up in Ivory Coast before attending Catholic schools in Paris and Provence, France, recalls going to church with his grandmother and admiring the priests’ cassocks. His father, a financier, passed on to him a love of soccer, and the athletic uniforms of the ’80s and ’90s had an impact on Aka’s personal style. “All the key figures around whom I grew up, many of them politicians, spent their lives in suits from Monday to Friday and wore tailor-made tracksuits on the weekends,” he says. These inspirations came together in Clerica’s first release, which includes three styles of hand-painted T-shirts. One features an imaginary sports water called Liberia; another, a bowl of ginger-and-spinach soup (said to enhance an athlete’s performance); and a third, a woman’s face with a running track reflected in her sunglasses. The top and bottoms of a tracksuit are made of a silk blend with a white and navy colorway that nods to a clerical collar. From about $82, clerica-paris.com.

New York’s Hudson Valley is known for charming main streets jammed with cute shops, but in the northern reaches of the Catskills, some of the most compelling design stores are well off the beaten track. A.Therien, in Cairo, is a design studio sitting at a remote crossroad in a whitewashed barn next door to a butcher shop. Inside, the creative director Stephen Ellwood, the shop’s owner, offers a mix of vintage textiles, recently unearthed George Platt Lynes photographs, 19th-century stoneware and art books.

About an eight-minute drive away in Freehold, there’s the by-appointment-only Hort and Pott (short for Horticulture and Pottery), the live/work space of Todd Carr and Carter Harrington, where the décor changes dramatically by the season. In spring, that means an indoor-outdoor storefront filled with daffodils, fritillaria and branches of quince, forsythia and cherry to take home, as well as faux-bois concrete planters, slipware dishes and Easter-table-ready bud vases. Pidgin, in the teeny rural town of Oak Hill (population: 324), is home to the poet and collector Kostas Anagnopoulos and his shop stocked with globally sourced antiques and new finds. Among Anagnopoulos’s favorite items: a mother-of-pearl-encrusted bento box, pillows sewn from 100-year-old Portuguese grain sacks and olive oil from his family’s orchards in Greece.

From T’s Instagram

A Night With New York’s Lesbian and Bisexual Backgammon League

This 31-year-old spent $20,000 to travel after he was laid off

Press Room — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 12:36:09 +0000

Peter Lancaster in Argentina.

Courtesy of Peter Lancaster

Forget the “quarter-life crisis.” These days, millennials are turning to the “quarter-life sabbatical.”

Amid the waves of mass layoffs, people are choosing to repurpose their unemployment into soul-searching, and many are extending their time away from the cubicle to travel the world.

Peter Lancaster, 31, was laid off from his technology job in California in May last year. Although he was sad to leave a job he loved, it was finally an opportunity for him to take a real break and enjoy life a little.

By the end of June, he sold most of his belongings, put the rest in storage, handed his cat to a friend and left for his first destination — Mexico City.

For the next eight months, Peter traveled to eight different countries: Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Guatemala, Japan, Ecuador and Brazil. He said he spent about $20,000 during that time.

His plane tickets and transportation ended up being his highest expenses.

While Colombia and Guatemala were the most affordable destinations, Argentina and the Galapagos Islands were the most expensive, he added.

Here are six things he learned during his adventure abroad.

Be flexible

The biggest principle Peter stuck to while traveling overseas was staying flexible and knowing that plans can change along the way.

About six months into his travels, Peter met and fell in love with his girlfriend Alejandra, or as he likes to call, his “pp” (short for “Peruvian Princess”).

His initial plan was to stay in Peru for four days, but after meeting Alejandra, he extended it to six weeks.

“I met her in Peru — in Cusco. I was doing laundry and she saw that I was struggling, so she helped me out and then we decided to get drinks,” he told CNBC Make It.

Peter and Alejandra taking a stroll in Argentina.

Courtesy of Peter Lancaster

“You think you would want to make an itinerary, but truthfully, your plan changes so much with who you meet,” he said. “Be open minded to change your motive from seeing as much as possible to maybe just spending time with somebody for a bit.”

“It’s a lot easier to be flexible when you have a ‘to be determined’ timeline,” he added.

Pack lightly

“I never had more than a week’s worth of clothes,” he said. “Downside is that I had to find a laundry place, but upside is that you can move around so easily.”

For the first three weeks, he only traveled with a small backpack. Along the way, he was able to purchase items he needed.

Carrying less allowed him to be more agile when plans inevitably changed.

Be friendly

After first landing in Mexico City, Peter began to be homesick. “I wanted to go home because I was like: ‘oh, it’s going to be a long journey,'” he said. “But then then I started making friends and got comfortable real quick.”

Peter Lancaster with his tour group in Guatemala.

Courtesy of Peter Lancaster

For most of the trip, he chose to stay in hostels as a way to save money, as well as to meet fellow travelers.

“Just start talking to people,” he said. “Everyone’s really approachable and thinking the same thing.”

Travel smart

When traveling around foreign countries, it is important to maintain a level of caution.

“I think it’s always good to just have a mentality that a lot of people might be trying to rip you off,” Peter said. When making purchases or decisions, he suggests: “Take your time.”

If something is too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

“Especially in a foreign country, use the buddy system,” he said.

Locals can usually tell if you are a foreigner, which can put you in a compromised position. So it’s important to be always aware of your surroundings and the situation.

Enjoy local cuisine

“I don’t understand people that like go travel and eat burgers and pizza,” he said. “Going to McDonald’s is more expensive than some of these local places.”

During his time abroad, Peter made it a point to enjoy the local cuisine, which added to his travel experience.

More to life than work

On Feb. 29, Peter returned to the United States feeling happy with everything he had experienced.

“If I had an unlimited budget, I’d probably keep going, but I felt like I just I saw everything and I was ready to work,” he said.

“I feel content… it’s just nice to have time off and have like a different routine than going to work,” he said.

Peter Lancaster at the

Courtesy of Peter Lancaster

5 Retreats to Reconnect With Nature

Press Room — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 17:49:41 +0000

“Just make your world the world,” said Mr. Smiley as he walked along a new 6.2-mile nature trail on the inn’s rewilded golf course. “If you make small daily changes like curbing waste and ditching plastic, you’ll feel good.”

Deep River, Ontario

“I think the climate crisis can cause people to feel such paralysis, like it’s almost too little, too late,” said Shannon MacLaggan, who created Anupaya Cabin Co., with her husband, Pete, as a wilderness retreat and incubator for climate action in 2021. “There are massive esoteric concepts about how to tackle global warming, but this is something tangible and applicable.”

The 12-acre property (nightly rates from $232), along the upper Ottawa River, has a lodge, private beach and eight renovated cabins, each with a kitchen, grill, fire pit and porch views of the Laurentian Mountains. Anupaya invites every guest — inner-city youth groups receive a 50 percent room discount — to join the environmental movement in whatever way they can.

That might mean participating in cleanups through the hotel’s One Pound Promise initiative (60,000 pounds of waste have been collected so far), foraging workshops, planting fruit trees and berry bushes, or learning to grow and harvest food in the garden, where guests are often found pulling invasive plants and picking salad ingredients. Visitors can also work on trail management projects with the local Friends of Rivière du Moine nonprofit, or do trail maintenance at nearby Four Seasons Conservancy. “The whole reason we started Anupaya is to remind people how a part of nature we all are,” Ms. MacLaggan said. “If you love something, you feel a sense of responsibility toward it.”

Anupaya is introducing more formal volunteer opportunities in 2024. The Sustainable Saturdays initiative, to run from May to November, will offer free two-hour educational sessions on composting, starting a medicinal garden, raising chickens and more.