J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by fft100

bloody yale locks. just had to get a schlusseldienst to drill through my front door lock... :cry: :cry:

sorry ise, but i will have to pick you up on this. Winter tyres are not a legal requirement in Germany. And therefore the car rental companies do not include them in the standard price. For example, if we pick www.avis.de and choose a golf for 29 dec to 5 jan (1 week) in Frankfurt or Munich, we find a price of 305 euro + in the list of possible extras, a set of winter tyres for 125 euro (just under childrens seats). Just checked www.sixt.de for Munich and winter tyres are also in the list of extras at 16 euro a day for tyres and 6.50 a day for chains.

If you rent a car in Austria then i believe they are standard (have been when i rent).

Therefore, it is something to watch out for if, as the OP was planning, you decide to rent a car in germany.

And, i am not sure it is against the law to charge for something that is a legal requirement. look at childrens seats in rental cars.

When looking at prices, dont forget to check what you get and the price of extras. The price quoted in Germany may be for the vanilla version and if you are going anywhere near a ski resort then you will also need winter tyres and snow chains (legal requirement in places). These can set you back another 20+ euros a day.

If you can fly into Austria instead of Germany then worth doing a price comparison as when i have hired there before the cars are winterfied (or whatever its called) automatically until the end of March.

Also worth noting that some companies charge a large extra wedge for pickup at an airport in Germany (either Avis or Budget wanted 19% when i checked yesterday - at first i thought it was the mwst, but no....). So, if travelling light and you want the car for an extended period, its worth checking out the difference if you pick up the car at an office in town, instead of at the airport.

I knew i should have checked first before saying 40. Apparently 21 :-( Though some of those could be on loan elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL_Airways

However, there could be some winter impact as they flew into Geneva, Grenoble, Chambery. That would affect some individual skiers, and i also read elsewhere that other winter tour operators (not part of xl group) used these XL flights as well.

And for us anoraks out there here is a full list of the 21 with history.
http://www.ch-aviation.ch/aircraft.php?search=set&airline=XLA&al_op=1

Thats probably enough about aircraft.

i remember reading a few weeks ago that IATA had about 40 airlines (worldwide) on a financial watch.

As someone mentioned above, always use a credit card to buy tickets / holidays / whatever, or get some good travel / holiday insurance.

Late booking may not be as easy this winter. If airlines do go under, then capacity will be reduced. I think the XL group had about 40 planes. I havnt looked at the accounts, but would guess that they were leased. I dont see other companies taking up the leases in the current climate (even if their banks let them !), so that is a lot of seats taken off the market.

wrt Alitalia, if that goes under, then thats another large chuck of seats out of the market in Europe, and i am fairly certain that their alliance partners will be liable to fly the people who have already booked with Alitalia and dont have insurance - maybe not that direct a route and not neccesarily on the day they booked.

Eurostar / Eurotunnel will not be able to take up the capacity as it looks likely they will have to run at reduced schedule/capacity due to the fire. last time it took 6 months to carry out repairs to the tunnel.

On the plus side, since less people will be able to get to the resorts, lift queues will be reduced, there could be some real bargains on the appartments / hotel side...
and maybe the price of beer might even come down !

uh uh... Boots, IMHO, are possibly the most important part. Many, many years ago, (i think i may have even been with the mod), i hired boots that were too small. Didnt really realise til lunchtime, but ploughed on regardless. That evening as the boots came off, my feet didnt look good. And for the next 3 days i didnt ski and watched various toenails turn black and drop off....

The moral is that if you dont feel happy with the boots, stop, go back to the shop and change them. I have done that a few times since. They dont seem to mind. What feels ok in the shop may feel different in use.

nice to know that i am not the only one who has problems with drags. been skiing for quite a few years and still crap though reds arent a problem, but have to admit to scanning piste maps before i start in the morning to try to make sure i dont end up in a dead end where there are no options except for a drag lift.

And until you see the drag, its not always possible to know just what its level of difficulty is going to be. some of them could feature in a channel 4 series.

The ones that go up 45 degree slopes on small tracks with severe drops and then change directions whilst going downhill just give me the pure w*ll**s. Have fallen off in places which i would rather not think about....