The International Airline Transport Association's World Passenger Symposium is taking place in Dublin this week and 400 aviation and technology specialists are discussing how they can make the passenger experience better.  

The major topic of the event is the the long winded New Distribution Capabilities NDC,   The industry has been working off legacy systems, some as old as 40 years, and now needs to update, upgrade and skill up for the future giving passengers a lot more of what they are used to, like more choices, personalisation and speed.

What does it mean for passengers, this picture of an Aer Lingus breakfast is a good example of NDC.  You can order your breakfast online, while making an air booking, and the breakfast will be delivered to your seat. This service by Aer Lingus is so popular that the only limitation to it is galley space on the aircraft.  

NDC is a set of standards for all distribution systems,  Global Distribution Systems GDSs and other providers to ensure that all systems can operate together.  It will use API and XML to bring together all the elements of a booking and make it faster, easier and more user friendly both for the travel agent, airline and for passengers.  

The following video will give you an example of what NDC will offer. 

This year is the peak of solar activity and the Northern Lights are expected to be easily seen from a lot of places right up to spring.  In fact they appeared on Wednesday night over the Inishowen Peninsula and Adam Rory Porter of Buncrana Camera Club took some great pictures which you can see on his Facebook page.

Getting to see the Northern Lights is much easier than is used to be. There are number of companies in Ireland doing trips to both Norway and Iceland that, weather permitting will allow you to see the solar activity.

The easier way to find out the likelihood of seeing the lights according to Adam is check out the KP Index on SoftServeNews.com and a KP Index of higher than 5 gives a likelihood that you will see the light s by naked eye. Watch cloud cover on meteo-mc.fr.

Coming up in this month on the 11th October the Travel Department have a trip to Iceland for three nights and it cost from €599 including direct flights from Dublin and four-star hotel accommodation.

On October 18 there is a six night trip to Iceland and to Northern Norway and that has been reduced to 799pps. So you have a chance of seeing the lights in two countries and that trip will operate again on Oct 27 with some variances. Wallace Travel will also be doing trip to Iceland next year.

If you wait until January you can have the amazing experience of cruising the Northern Norway fjords in search of the Northern Lights.  Thomas Cook will have a special trip with a flight from Belfast to Tromso where you will join the famed Hurtigruten ship to cruise to Kirkenes and back and spent six days in the Arctic Circle.  The price is from €1,289pps thomascook.ie/cruise, (01) 514 0336.

Other Irish companies arranging trips to the see the Northern Lights are RoryMcDyerTravel.ie and Project-travel.ie. Rory McDyer has been taking people to the Arctic Circle for a good number of years and has lots of options for going. 

The Northern Lights don’t just appear in Norway and Iceland but all across the northern atmosphere, so if you were in Canada or Russia you can see them too.

Closer to home and less expensive is a trip to Bristol or Bath, the twin cities of the Avon.  I recently visited both for a weekend and really enjoyed the different cities.  In Irish Times magazine today. Bristol is edgy and exciting and Bath is stately and demure. 

Highlight of Bristol is:

Street art tour with John Nation who was his youth worker and has now devoted his time to encouraging street art and being deeply involved in the turnaround of Bristol. Last year the city of Bristol invited 30 artists from around the world to transform a grim concrete 1970s street with their art.  The results are amazing and Nelson Street will never be the same.  Seenoevil.com is the website where you will see their work.  Conor Harrington from Ireland also has a wall and I love his period piece which is called The Duel of Bristol.
Highlight of Bath is:
This month get a feel for Bath as October is the month of the GreatBathFeast.com and there are foodie events and activities on.  Lots of high profile celebrity chefs are coming to town and you will be able to taste lots of goodies.


http://www.rte.ie/radio1/marian-finucane/programmes/2013/1005/478518-marian-finucane-saturday-5-october-2013/?clipid=1326032

It was great to meet so many travel bloggers last night at the Guinness Storehouse and feel the enthusiasm for travel.  Failte Ireland made a short video of the evening, see if you can spot yourself.  Enjoy the convention - two full days of work and fun.

Welcome to Dublin, sorry about the weather, but that's Ireland, you never know what to expect.  So be prepared.  It will be wet, sunny, windy and the temperatures changes from hour to hour.n
Tonight we will be welcoming you to an spectacular event in the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin to kick off your conference.  The Storeshouse is an stunning place of industrial architecture from the 19th and 2oth centuries.  There will be some amazing music and delicious food from artisenal producers. To give you a taste of some of the music you can expect, here is a video of some Irish teenagers singing a well known hit in Irish at  Colaiste Lurgan in Galway, this summer.  All the production was done at the college and it is a terrific achievement to get a few hundred teenagers to be involved and obviously love what they are doing in our native language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A6__HssHW8


So, welcome to Dublin TBEXers, see you tonight at the Storehouse - Joan