You may have gone through an airport where someone from the staff slaps on a sticker to the back of your passport. They are annoying, not very aesthetically pleasing, and a bit of a pain to remove. So, what are those passport security stickers for and when should you remove them?

You can find all the answers in the video above or read on for the highlights.

Where In The World

Passport security stickers are commonly used in Asian and Middle East airports. Though not as common as they once were, they are still frequently used by staff to indicate a passport has been checked at some point between check in and boarding. They reason is that some airports want extra diligence in making sure passengers have a valid passport (e.g. not expired) and a visa for their destination, if needed. To reduce any human errors multiple security staff will check your documents and bags. To confirm they have for the next officer, a sticker may be placed to show you were inspected at a given checkpoint.

Removing The Stickers

You’ll want to wait until you clear customs at your destination before removing any security stickers but don’t want too long after arrival. The adhesive gets harder with time to remove but you can make things easier on yourself by using a little bit of olive oil, shown here. Many countries, like the United States, have passport control regulations that can cost airlines a hefty fine if they let someone on without proper documents. So it is cheaper to employee a few additional security screeners and use stickers to double and triple check you have a valid passport than letting even one person have to be deported back on the airlines’ dime plus the fees they’ll have to pay on top.

The post What Are Those Stickers Some Airports Put On The Back Of Your Passport? appeared first on foXnoMad.

You’ve probably seen the images from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 where a section of the plane was blown out in mid-flight. Fortunately, the plane was able to make an emergency landing and aside from 3 minor injuries nobody else was hurt or killed. Still, this was a brand new Boeing 737 Max 9 – only in service for 3 months before this incident – but since the Max line of planes was introduced, there have been two fatal crashes.

What is going on with Boeing and should you be worried about flying in their planes?

Safe But Less Safe

Previous generations of Boeing 737s have a fatal accident rate of .2 per million flights while the 737 MAX have a 4 in million fatal accident rate, still safe, but twenty times more accident prone. The Boeing 737 line is the most popular passenger plane ever – beginning production in 1968 through the latest generation called MAX which began in 2017. Throughout much of that history Boeing was the dominant jetliner manufacturer. Boeing’s main rival Airbus wasn’t a serious rival to Boeing until the 1990s.

In the 2000s Airbus overtook Boeing in the narrow body aircraft market and today Airbus has 62% of the share of airliner backlog. Their main advantage: fuel economy.

Savings In The Sky

In the 2010s Airbus starting using a new engine design using with what’s known as high-bypass. Technical details aside, these are engines that are bigger than what was previously being used but 25% more fuel efficient. (And 35% quieter, a nice bonus.) Before this jetliner engines were made to be narrower thinking it would reduce wind resistance.

Over time airlines began gravitating toward these narrower, smaller capacity planes because they saved money on fuel. Those cost savings meant that airlines could run more flights versus the larger Boeing planes which burn more fuel. It’s easier to fill up smaller planes resulting in fewer empty seats. Again, economic benefits.

Boeing Plays Catch Up

Boeing isn’t able to put those newer more fuel efficient engines on their existing larger planes because the wings are too low for them to fit. This leads to the decision to make the Boeing MAX, their version of a narrow body jetliner to compete with Airbus. Building planes takes experience and Boeing didn’t redesign the 737 Max from scratch. The larger more powerful engines being placed on modified existing designs have lead to issues. Boeing had to put the new engines further forward on the wings of the MAX but combined with more thrust they have a tendency to pull the plane up more – in other words give it more lift.

To compensate, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was implemented. That’s basically a computer than detects when the nose of the plane might be going up too high and then forces the plane to pitch downward. Boeing engineers allowed the MCAS to be fed information from a single sensor with no redundancy because “they calculated the probability of a “hazardous” MCAS malfunction to be virtually inconceivable.”

The Federal Aviation Administration also agreed and did not adequately inform pilots about the MCAS in their manuals. Unfortunately in the case of Lion Air Flight 620 in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines 302 in 2019 that lead to two fatal crashes, killing 346 people. Boeing was later charged with fraud and ordered to pay compensation of 2.5 billion dollars for concealing information from the FAA.

Failures For Dollars

There were failures on the part of Boeing and the FAA, who overruled their own engineers in the regarding the 737 MAX 8 and there have been well documented quality control issues with the MAX 9 (the plane involved in the Alaska Airlines incident). A U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure report also pointed to the FAA’s practice of delegating some of its inspection functions to Boeing’s own engineers, noting that this structure “creates inherent conflicts of interest that have jeopardized the safety of the flying public.”

The grounding of the MAX 8 cost Boeing 21 billion dollars. Still, the 737 MAX 8 and 9 still have 4500 orders combined so far but it seems like Boeing’s push to make a profit – which that haven’t done since 2019 – has lead to cutting corners in their race to compete with Airbus. Travelers can only hope there are no more accidents before oversight of Boeing, investigations, and changes both to personnel and production are implemented.

The post The Problem With Boeing Planes appeared first on foXnoMad.

This post is part of Geek Takeover Week 2022.

Many of you have been following this site for years know my goal is to visit every country in the world. One question that comes up often from people who hear this story is, “how many countries are there?” Well, the broad answer is a big “it depends” but there are a few specific numbers you can count on, based on who’s counting.

United Nations (Sort Of)

One way to count the number of countries in the world is to use the United Nations (U.N.) member states. Currently, there are 193 member states of the U.N. Add to that 2 observer states (Palestine and Vatican City) and now you have 195 but you can already begin to see how these numbers can get muddled up, based on who recognizes whom. In practice, U.N. members can only be sovereign states and doesn’t include nations such as Kosovo, for example.

Blurred Borders

One other way to count the number of countries in the world is to use the International Olympic Committee (IOC) list, which includes territories (like Guam) and de-facto states like Taiwan. The number of countries recognized by the IOC is 206. A bit more than 195 and while there is a good deal of overlap between the U.N. and IOC lists, they both don’t include places like Antarctica. Yes, it’s not a country but it’s an entire continent, which should be worth something on any self-respecting travel list.

More Lists

There are other lists which include places like the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus which might not be an official country but on the ground, it certainly behaves as one. Same thing goes for Puerto Rico. Tibet is not it’s own nation and as much as China tries to suppress its identity through ethnic cleansing, lines on a globe don’t tell the whole story.

When you travel to a place, you may feel a stark difference between cultures. Chamula in Mexico behaves like a separate entity. Islandia? The Luhansk People’s Republic is a proclaimed territory within Ukraine, would it make your list?

Why Keep A List?

So how many countries there are changes with time based on who’s counting and how. There’s politics involved. It can be controversial. For many though, 206 is a solid number. Using the IOC list, it includes Taiwan and Kosovo, for examples. Personally, this is the list I lean toward since it’s relatively stable and contains a widely agreed upon list of nations.

But why keep a list at all? For me, it’s a goal post. A target to aim for. Having the journey to visit every country on Earth has lead me to places I never would have thought to visit. It can take me out of my comfort zone. But it’s never really been solely about the list. I go back to places and I’m in no rush to check every country off the list. I’m over 100 countries now and could have been done a long time ago but ultimately, I want to travel the world. See its natural beauty and cultural diversity. Neither of which lines on a map could ever entirely encompass.

The post How Many Countries Are There In The World? appeared first on foXnoMad.

Ukraine has been on the news a lot recently due to the war with Russia and you may have heard its capital, Kyiv and other cities, being pronounced multiple ways. Due to all of that variation from “keev” to “keyee” from journalists, it can be confusing to know how to properly say these places. To help answer those questions as well as the history behind the names of Ukrainian cities and spellings, Irena Chalupa recently joined me on an episode of the foXnoMad Podcast. Irena is a journalist specializing in broadcast from northeastern Poland who spent 23 years working for Radio Free Europe in Germany, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic as the director of the Ukrainian Service. She has also worked for the Atlantic Council think tank and was a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine during 2016-2017. She is currently an editor at StopFake.

You can watch a clip from our discussion in the video above or listen to the full podcast here.

The post How To Pronounce Kyiv And Why It’s Not Spelled Kiev appeared first on foXnoMad.

As someone who’s made a career that began from a quest to visit every country in the world, I’ve often thought, could I see more? Could I see every city with a population of over 500,000 or all the world’s countries, UNESCO sites, best and worst cities? It’s a question we’ve tackled here before but in the video above I show just how difficult such a feat would be.

For those of you who love traveling and want to see it all, the answer to the question – can you see the world in a lifetime – will either be discouraging or profoundly inspiring. The choice is a big one and all yours to make.

The post Could You Visit Every Place On Earth In A Lifetime? appeared first on foXnoMad.