In Transit: Red buses come to Jo'burg

Travel news for people on the move

Nothing shouts "tourism" quite like a open-top red double-decker bus cruising the streets - and now Jo'burg has its own fleet of them, thanks to the arrival of tour operator City Sightseeing.

The company, which operates in more than 100 cities, has started a tour in the CBD, which covers Gandhi Square, the Roof of Africa at the Carlton Centre, the James Hall Transport Museum next to Wemmer Pan, the Apartheid Museum and Gold Reef City, through the Mining District up to the Origins Centre at Wits University and across to Braamfontein and Constitution Hill.

The buses operate on a hop-on, hop-off basis.

The top deck of a bus has long been one of the best ways to get to know a place a little better. The pace is sedate enough to allow you to absorb the passing show while the elevated perspective - you are at about first-floor height, after all - gives you a deeper and better view of the city.

There are 12 stops on the route and the buses operate from 9am-5.30pm daily. Tickets are R150 (R120 online) and are available at www.citysightseeing.co.za , on the bus itself using a credit card or from the City Sightseeing Tour Office, which is inside Gold Reef City. Phone 0861 733 287 for more information.

KNP beefs up security

SECURITY at entrance gates to the Kruger National Park is being beefed up as part of the ongoing war against rhino poachers. More rangers are being deployed to policing and security roles at all the main entrances and will help with search and seizure duties where necessary. The rangers have received lessons in customer care and have also been trained to handle sniffer dogs.

How to bust a baggage handler

CANADIAN musician Dave Carroll was on a United Airlines aircraft at Chicago O'Hare when a passenger yelled "Hey, they're throwing guitars about out there."

One of those guitars was Carroll's $3500 Taylor, which was badly damaged. When United refused to cough up for its baggage handlers' antics, Carroll wrote a song called United Breaks Guitars, which went viral and left plenty of red faces at the airline.

Not everyone is lucky enough to see their baggage being abused, however. Until now: UK tech company Cambridge Consultants has invented an electronic device called DropTag, which will help travellers prove when their bags have been roughly treated. DropTag, which can be attached to any kind of bag, contains a motion sensor which recognises when luggage is dropped or handled without care, sending a message to the owner's cellphone.

According to The Telegraph, users are able to set the parameters between tracking general movement and what the paper calls "catastrophic drops".

Sadly, DropTag is not yet widely available but its makers expect it to retail for as little as R70 if the company finds financial backing to mass-produce it.

Airline Briefs

British Airways is to re-introduce three extra flights per week to its current twice-daily London-Johannesburg route from May, boosting its services on this route to a total of 17 flights per week.

Malaysian budget carrier Air Asia X has set-aside "quiet zones" - rows 7-14 on its Airbus aircraft - where children younger than 12 will not be allowed to sit. The rule will be enforced on all the carrier's flights to China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Australia and Nepal.

The move - a result of complaints from travellers about noisy kids - follows a plan by Malaysian Airlines to ban children from the top deck of its Airbus A380 aircraft.

Air France is collecting old uniforms from cabin crew and ground staff and having them recycled into car insulation at a specialised recycling plant. The airline has collected 30 tons' worth of old uniforms, enough to equip 1350 vehicles with insulation material.

Kenya Airways has joined hands with the Born Free Foundation to help raise funds for anti-poaching campaigns and wildlife conservation in Africa.

Lufthansa Cargo planned to fly 1000 tons of red roses from Africa and South America to stock up Germany's florists in time for Valentine's Day.