Merger discussions flare again

Delta seems to be back out doing the merger dance again, this time looking at both NorthWest and United as potential partners. The CEO is actually planning on talking to both other companies and planning on picking which one he thinks is better and then moving forward with the merger that way. I like the idea of having potential bidders competing for a "prize" (assuming that Delta is one), but it is certainly strange for a public company to admit that they are actively soliciting mergers with multiple parties.

Anyways, the most recent wave kicked off with Lufthansa buying in to JetBlue, and this one seems to be pretty serious. But most of these mergers are based on financial expectations and not the real world. In the real world the integration of airlines (and other unionized companies) has huge implications on union contracts and seniority and other things that all have to actually be worked out with real people, not just on a balance sheet, and that is one of those things that is a huge wildcard in any of these mergers. When USAir and America West merged a couple years ago they anticipated a quick and seamless integration of their reservations systems and their unions. The reservations systems merger resulted in a complete check-in kiosk system failure for ~5 days, and they are still negotiating their pilot contracts after almost two years. Easier said than done, I suppose.

OpenSkies takes flight

Following on the negotiation of an "open skies" agreement between the USA and the EU, allowing any carrier from either side of the pond to fly to any destination on the other side, British Airways has announced their intentions to launch a new carrier/subsidy in early 2008. The new carrier will be named - somewhat appropriately and somewhat stupidly - OpenSkies, and will provide service between New York City and either Brussels, Belgium or Paris, France. They haven't indicated which airport in the NYC area they'll use (JFK or Newark), nor if Brussels or Paris will actually be first, though they expect to have both in service by late 2008.

They're going to fly with a smaller plane (757) than many carriers use on transatlantic (TATL) flights, but they are also only going to have 82 seats on the plane. Of the 82, 30 will be coach seats and the other 52 will be split between business class and premium economy (24/28). This cabin configuration is a new one in the TATL market but very similar to what United offers in their p.s.-configured planes for transcontinental service within the USA. The cost of flying the plane across the pond remains pretty constant independent of the number of seats, so this means that OpenSkies/BA will need to drive a certain amount of revenue premium with the Business and Premium Economy seats in order to have a profitable service.

OpenSkies will also find themselves competing directly with a number of established US- and EU-based carriers on the routes they're going after, and without the ability to offer convenient connections on either end, so they're only going after point-to-point traffic, making their job even harder. On the plus side, they'll have the marketing and frequent flyer programs of their parent company, BA, on their side to help drive the business.

The all-premium class TATL market is still trying to break out, with one carrier having already failed. OpenSkies will get to benefit from fuel hedges of BA, which will help, and they'll have a few different price points to sell seats at, which should also help, but there are still no real guarantees (there never are).

I'm all in favor of more competition, as it usually means lower fares and I like that a lot. I just don't know if they'll be able to actually make a go of it long term.

By the numbers

I've started reflecting on some of the numbers associated with the New Zealand trip – and they are rather astounding, at least to me.

We flew ~23,000 miles and drove another 1,000. There was some train time some boat time as well as a couple buses. We flew on five different types of airplanes (Airbus 320 & 340-600 and Boeing 747-400, 737-300 & 737-800) and stayed in eight different hotels (plus the two nights on airplanes).

I carried three cameras (two digital and one film) and took over 2,000 pictures (almost all digital). About 10% of those were actually any good, and the collection of those, along with a bit of narrative, can be found here or (here and here, without the narrative.). And while I was taking pictures Linnea managed to read about 4000 pages in various books. Or, to think of it another way, every time I pushed the shutter button she flipped the page in her book.

I met at least 15 other people in the airports and on the planes who were traveling on the same deal that we got, which was actually more than I expected. On the flight to Sydney we made up ~20% of the business/first class passenger count, and both cabins were packed.

Oh, and there was the one missing digit in the price tag for the flights, which made this all possible :)

I can’t really enumerate how fantastic the trip was, but that’s a different problem I’ll have to deal with.

A hacker's "Dream"

Forget Internt access in the skies. It now seems like you might be able to access the details of the plane that you're actually on, thanks to an interesting choice that Boeing's engineers have made.

The new 787 Dreamliner would seem to have only a single wired network on the plane, connecting passenger Internet access options as well as the navigation and control systems. As an added bonus some maintenance systems are on the same network as well.

Boeing claims that they have software controls in place to keep the systems apart, but that's not all that comforting to the rest of the technically inclined world who pretty much all agree that software solutions aren't sufficient to meet the needs for true security of critical systems, especially flight control.

In the meantime the FAA has stated that this as an issue that needs to be addressed as the plane enters its final production stages, with deliveries expected to start in late 2008.

Dining Down Under

As was written in one of the guidebooks, the food isn't great, but at least it is expensive. I think this is a bit of an overstatement and generalization (on the quality side, not the cost side) but the many, many "pub food" meals definitely started to wear on us by the end of the trip.


We had a couple of the better meals of the trip in Auckland. We based our choices in part on the Metro magazine’s restaurants of the year list, so we were pretty much working with a good collection to start with. Christmas lunch at Hammerheads was quite good, and I can see why they are considered one of the best seafood restaurants in town. And the view didn’t suck either:




Once we left Auckland, however, the options slimmed down quite a bit. Te Anau had a pretty good Italian place called Cafe La Dolce Vita where we had a nice dinner one night. We also found a great winery called Amisfield just outside Queenstown on the recommendation of a friend and it was delicious. The west coast was where things really fell apart. There was pub food, “upscale” pub food, and a pizza place where the toppings were more random than Leonardo’s 706 (which is a restaurant in Gainesville, Florida, which means probably none of you have heard of it, but I assure you that the pizza toppings were strange – pumpkin and blue cheese, anyone??). We found a pretty good Indian place in Hokitika called Priya, and a reasonably good Japanese restaurant, Sala Sala, in Christchurch. We also ate well in Sydney, at a restaurant called Aria right on Sydney Harbor. The wait staff seemed to lose interest in us once they realized that we weren't going to be having the $250/person tasting menu and wine pairings (which was all just options off the regular menu – a terrible choice if you happen to be there), but we were able to linger and watch sunset over the harbor and enjoy ourselves quite a bit there.

The Hilton in Auckland gave us free breakfast based on my Diamond status, which was a great treat. Officially it was only supposed to be a continental breakfast, but it was Christmas day, where the breakfast in the restaurant was a special event, so we were allowed to take the credit for the continental breakfast for two and apply it to any room service breakfast order we wanted. That was a great deal. We had breakfast on our waterfront balcony and thanks to the Hilton HHonors credit and a possible clerical error didn't have to pay a dime for it. Just about every other breakfast we had on the trip was overpriced and not particularly great. Fortunately we had a refrigerator in almost every hotel room, so we were able to find our way to a local supermarket and stock our own breakfasts for most of the trip. Fresh local apples and PB&J sandwiches were a frequent occurrence.

So, with a few exceptions, the dining wasn't all that great, but that’s no reason to skip the trip. The rest of New Zealand more than makes up for it.

One. Lane. Bridge.

With about 1400 kilometers under our belts in the past 10 days (~900 miles), I’ve spent a certain amount of time behind the wheel driving and I have to say that it is absolutely nothing like driving in the USA, and not particularly similar to anywhere else we’ve been either.

For starters, driving is on the “other” side of the road. That’s actually not a significant issue for me it turns out because I drive so rarely in the US that I pretty much forget how to do it at all. So when I do have to drive on the left or the right it pretty much means just figuring out what the rules are in whatever town we pick up the car and going with it. There was one wrong turn late one evening when I was the only person on the road, and a mix-up in terms of right-of-way at one point, but no major problems and no real damage done.

There are also a number of road signs that seem to exist here but not elsewhere I’ve driven. The signs include Sneezing Mountain:

Sneezing Mountain with Extra Phlegm:

And this combination sign focused pretty much entirely on scaring the hell out of whoever approaches:

You’re welcome, I guess:

They do strictly enforce the speed limits here, which I discovered the hard way. The more I think about it I’m amazed that I could actually get the rental car we had up as fast as I was clocked (118 km/h or ~74mph) but I was definitely going that fast and the constable was pretty clear that there would be a mandatory fine issued. And there was. So now NZ Transit has ZND120 of my money, and I know not to speed (as much on roads that are highly patrolled). The speed limit is 100 across most of the highways here, and that is completely unreasonable in much of the south island. The roads are narrow and wind through the mountains and around rivers and lakes, so actually getting up to 100 most of the time is almost impossible. Google’s driving directions seem to just use the speed limit as how they calculate drive time, so depending on that isn’t particularly useful – a lesson we learned the hard way.

There are also a range of rental car companies, from “known” names like Hertz, Avis and Budget, to local brands like Jucy and Apex. With a significant cost savings we went with Apex. And we got a car that basically had no brakes. I’m not a mechanic, but I’m pretty sure that there aren’t supposed to be gouges in the brake pads like these:

It took us a couple hours in the repair depot waiting around while they sorted it all out, but they eventually gave us a replacement car instead of insisting that we wait for the repairs to be completed. The replacement car has been fine and I really have no complaints of note now that we got working brakes, but be careful and make sure that the car is actually functional before heading out on the road.

And that brings me to the title of this post. There are a few levels of road here in New Zealand, with State Highways being roughly the equivalent of the US highways (main roads but not limited access like interstates) and the most pervasive roads in the country. At every single crossing of a body of water there is a sign naming the crossing. And there are a lot of them, and they’re all named uniquely. Some of the names are fun (Stinky Creek), some are rather misleading (Blackwater Creek – the water was crystal clear) and some describe the area they’re in (Hairpin Culvert). I think that NZ Transit may employ the same folks who name paints to come up with the names for all the creeks, streams, culverts and other trickles of water that a road might cross. The significant bridges (mostly over rivers, but not always) are almost all one lane. So each time you come up on a bridge there is a chance that someone else is already on it, coming right at you. Some of the time there is a passing bay halfway down the bridge to allow you to pull aside and let the other cars pass, but much of the time you basically just sit there and wait to see if the other car is going to stop or not and then you get to pass. Suffice it to say that it adds some excitement to the travel process. And if you happen to come across a bridge that also has railroad tracks in the middle of the road, the train ALWAYS gets the right of way.

There are also scenic overlooks every few kilometers. There are so many that eventually we stopped checking what the view was at each turn off. Of course, we did still stop at a few, including this one on the highway to Arthur’s Pass (one of the more photographed viaducts there is):

And these few along the highway between Te Anau and Queenstown:


Finally, be careful when stopping, as the Kea (a local parrot) has a habit of getting close to cars. Very close. This guy was actually walking around on the hood of the car for a while and didn’t seem all that concerned when I opened the window to snap this shot:

Overall, a pretty easy country to get around in if you're comfortable on the road with a bunch of camper vans driven by folks who don't seem that used to driving large, top heavy vehicles on narrow, winding roads where everyone is trying to go faster than they should be given the conditions and is distracted by the amazing views!

We climbed a glacier today

And it was phenomenal!

We spent a full day on Franz Joseph glacier with Franz Joseph Glacier Guides, with about 7 hours of time on the ice. For anyone interested, absolutely do the full day - the half day stops well before the fun stuff really starts. They outfitted us with crampons (spikes to go on the bottom of our shoes) and rain coats, as well as ice axes about half-way into the trip to help us keep our balance in the less well groomed sections of the ice. Our guide (a crazy, crazy man) actually found a very, very small crevasse on the ice that no one had every transited previously. He took that on as a challenge for the rest of us. I don't have any pictures of us inside the crevasse because it was too small for me to get my hands into my pockets to pull out my camera. And many of you know how far I'll go to use my camera. It was incredibly tight. I had to help the guy in front of me back out at one point because his feet got stuck. Probably no more than 10-12" wide - definitely not for the claustrophobic. This is the view from outside:

The scale of glaciers is pretty hard to understand until you're actually on one. Even just looking at it from the ground you can tell that it is big, but until you get out onto the ice it is difficult to fathom just how huge they really are. We hiked up along side Exit Glacier in Seward, Alaska, and up to the face of Fox Glacier here in New Zealand, and we could tell that they were big, but getting on to one and hiking up for 5 hours to look up

and down

and realize just how little of it you've managed to cover is rather awe inspiring. And you definitely don't want to slip into one of the crevasses
or holes

though our guide offered some comfort with his observation that most of them are narrow enough that we'd just get stuck and make him have to pull us out, not that we'd actually have real injuries or death - very motivating he was.

If you have the opportunity and the inclination, I highly recommend finding one to hike at some point.

"Lake View" doesn't really always mean that

Some posts are going to be a bit out of order for a while since internet access is intermittent here and half the time I'm posting from my BlackBerry instead of the stuff I've written already on the laptop.

Anyways, we did a couple nights in Te Anau a couple of nights ago. We used it as a launching point for our tour of Milford Sound, which is actually a fjord, not a sound, but apparently noone wants to correct Captain Cook, so the name stuck. We tried to book in to a kayaking trip on the sound but everything was sold out for 3 days. We contented ourselves with a cruise on a boat powered by something other than our arms. It would seem that the full booking was something of divine providence, as it rained all day while we were on the sound. A lot of rain. So much that a number of waterfalls spontaneously established themselves on the cliff faces as there was nowhere else for the water to go. More on the Milford Sound trip later when I can add some pictures to a post.

Back to the idea of a Lake View" room in Te Anau. It turns out that the lake has trees lining it pretty much the whole length of town, and the trees are taller than all the buildings. So we could see the lake a little bit between the trees, but really only barely. And that was from our upstairs room. The downstairs rooms had nice little patios, and a view of the road and the trees, but not really the lake. And most of the other hotels along the strip seemed to be the same way. Long story short, don't pay extra for the view - you likely won't get your money's worth.

Scattered Showers

Sitting in the Koru Club at the domestic terminal of the Auckland airport right now and I have to say that this is definitely the nicest domestic lounge I've ever seen. There is a full spread of hot and cold breakfast foods out on buffet, as well as coolers full of drinks available for self-service. Free WiFi, plenty of room to spread out in comfy chairs, a massage chair, a business center with free computer/internet use and probably some other cool things I've not seen yet. They're actually announcing the flights, and the entire staff is supremely friendly, though I'm pretty sure that in at least one case it is just the guy flirting with the passenger.


Yesterday was spent walking around Auckland in the morning, getting to see one of the oldest cemeteries in the city (if not the oldest) on Symmonds road, as well as meandering through the Auckland Domain, their version of Central Park.


Then another park and on to lunch at Hammerheads, a great seafood place overlooking the harbor and downtown Auckland. I managed to be an hour off in my recollection of when our reservation was, so we had time for an extra drink at the bar. And despite the rain showers throughout the afternoon we still had some pretty impressive views.

We had some rain this morning, but the skies are clearing up now and it looks like it's going to be a great day.

Merry Christmas from MaxJet

MaxJet, one of the initial carriers offering an all-business class service between London and New York City declared banruptcy as a Christmas present this past Monday. They've blamed higher fuel prices as the main reason for their inability to continue operations, but it also seems that AA may have had something to do with it, competing directly with them on their JFK-STN route. As is typical for many upstart carriers, a little competition from the established providers can prove to be the death knell unless there is real differentiation in price, service or something else. In MaxJet's case, AA went for the jugular, and MaxJet didn't have sufficient resources or other routes (though they did also serve LAX and LAS) to help counter this.

I'm not all that sad to see them go, though I do know a few folks who used to use them on their trips to London, so not so good for them.

The timing is particularly unfortunate as it happened right at Christmas when many folks are traveling. Fortunately other carriers, including Continental, are accomodating the passengers on a standby basis, though there is no indication that they are all flying in business class like they originally booked. Merry Christmas indeed.

The first 12 hours weren’t so bad

I suppose it depends on which 12 hours you’re looking at. Our day started at 6am EST with a wakeup and ride to Newark to catch our first flight on the way to Auckland – Newark to San Francisco. For the Saturday before Christmas the airport was pretty much what I expected, which is to say bedlam. Seriously, it was pretty ridiculous. Even the Presidents Club was overrun with kids, all families on their way to somewhere warm for the holiday week. So a quick 5.5 hour flight to San Francisco and then we headed downtown to meet up with a former co-worker for lunch and a drink. The trip downtown got us up and moving around and helped to break up the 10 hour layover into something somewhat reasonable. As we headed to the BART station to go back to the airport we were treated to a nice view of moonrise and sunset over the Bay Bridge.

The other first 12 hours – that of the flight to Sydney were pretty good as well. We got on the plane in San Francisco around 10pm PST now having been awake for about 20 hours, but still determined to make it through the dinner and enjoy the service that we would receive in Business Class. Dinner was served very quickly, very much in contrast to the Alitalia flight we took last year for our New Years trip where dinner consumed about three of the eight hours in the air. This one was done in just under two hours, including dessert. And then it was time to put the seat into the sleep position and zonk out.

I’ve been in business class on a few airlines now (5, I think) and I have to say that the seats on United are the only ones I’ve ever experienced where all the adjustments are manual. There’s a “switch” but it serves more as a lock than anything else. So to recline you just lift the switch and lean back. No big deal for reclining, but when it comes time to sit up and eat the process involves some contortion as you lift the switch with one hand and reach behind yourself with the other in an effort to pull the seat forward to the desired position. Ditto for extending the leg rest, which involved reaching down and physically pulling the seat into position. I understand that there are a number of savings, including weight and mechanical difficulties in not having the electronics in the seats, but I still wouldn’t make that choice if I was running the airline.

After about 6-7 hours of sleep I came out of my slumber and noticed that the full moon was illuminating the clouds below in a rather surreal way. I tried to get a couple pictures but that didn’t work so well. Shortly thereafter sunrise came about. I’ve posted before about the glory of sunrise from the air, and I have to say that today’s flight was no exception. Scattered clouds add to the effect, and having the huge wing of the 747-400 and the two engines in the shot is pretty much the icing on the cake for me.

Out the other side of the plane the moon was still high in the sky, though working on setting. With both of these going on at the same time it was hard to choose which way to look.

It was right around hour 12 that things started to go badly. It was breakfast time and the flight attendants were working the cabin quickly to make sure that they could serve everyone and get everything cleaned up and packed away in time for our arrival. And they were rushing. So it wasn’t all that surprising to see the FA spill a glass of juice in the row in front of us. Even worse, it was right in to the guy’s laptop on which he was watching a movie, so that put her in a pretty frantic mood, and I’m pretty sure that she still hasn’t recovered. She got snippy with us because we were still watching a movie (Live free or Die Hard) and that was clearly interrupting her efforts to do whatever it is that she was trying to do. And then she gave us a lecture on manners and being polite. I actually managed not to attack her, which I think shows a lot of maturity.

We’re about an hour out from arrival now and then a 3 hour layover and another 3 hour flight to get to Auckland. It has been a pretty long day, and I’m sure there will be another nap at some point to help deal with that problem, but we’ll be at the hotel before too long and then on to more adventure.

Miles losing their value

Not a surprising development by any stretch, as inflation eventually takes over when the "currency" is available in such large volumes that the supply can't keep up with the demand, but in this particular case, a very significant devaluation just happened for Continental OnePass members. Long considered one of the best redemption values in the industry, CO miles for Qantas rewards have been "enhanced" and the new numbers are scary bad. A first class reward went from 135K miles to 285K miles, an increase of over 100%. Coach and business class rewards went up by similar amounts. The new prices are probably "fair" all things considered, but a first class around the world reward is only 280K (admittedly no actual F flights since Continental doesn't have access to the F seats on their partners) so the new reward level makes this the most expensive option out there. The new levels don't kick in until February, but good luck finding availability between now and then - it was always hard and this will make it worse with a race to cash in.

Slot controls are coming to JFK (and maybe Newark, too)

It is no secret that air travel in the northeastern part of the USA is a nightmare. Between weather delays, limited capacity airports with zero room to grow, local residents with a lot of money and lobbying clout and some of the most densely packed airspace anywhere in the world, flight delays and cancellations have become the norm rather than the exception. I've blogged about it before and clearly something had to give. Well, today that happened.

The US Department of Transportation has indicated that they are going to implement limits at JFK to better space the air traffic in and around the NYC area. Also known as slot controls, the rules effectively limit carriers from just deciding to show up at the airport and ask for a landing slot when they get there (it doesn't really work that way, but it is pretty close). Instead, all the airlines will have to get their schedules approved to ensure that the number of flights in any given hour is limited to 82-83. Since that is pretty much the maximum that the airprt can handle the fact that there are > 100 in some hours these days is a sure-fire way to delays. Even worse, the airlines blame the delays on "Air Traffic Control" rather than themselves (as though somehow the ATC folks are supposed to bend the rules of space and time to make more planes land on a runway than is physically possible), so the airlines aren't liable for accommodating passengers who misconnect. This ends up pretty messy for passengers rather often.

The problem with slot controls is that it presents a huge barrier to entry for airlines that want to establish new service. Buying landing slots isn't cheap. Some other major airports with slot controls/limits include Tokyo's Nartia (NRT) and London's Heathrow (LHR). With the recent Open Skies treaty many carriers are working to secure slots at LHR, with the price reportedly surpassing $10MM. That's a huge investment to make, especially considering that most carriers fly to a place more than once a day. Effectively the slot controls are a mint for the existing carriers, as they can sell their slots to the highest bidder if they want (and think they'd make more money that way than via actually operating flights). Indeed, BMed (now owned by bmi) has been operating "ghost flights" for some time in and out of LHR to ensure that they get to keep the slots at LHR, waiting for the Open Skies thing to happen so they can sell them for big money or actually operate flights and make money that way.

Of course, LaGuardia has been slot controlled for a while now - since shortly after the summer of hell in 2001 when it and Chicago's O'Hare were responsible for something like 40% of all delays nationwide. And some effort is being put in to making sure that the airlines don't all just move their problems across New York harbor to Newark airport, since there are already plenty of problems there, too.

So now Lufthansa has bought ~19% of JetBlue, one of the largest carriers at JFK. And they own a sizable stake in bmi, the second largest slot-holder at LHR. They could conceivably cause a lot of trouble in the trans-Atlantic market if they saw fit. Or just make a lot of money doing so.

Things are going to remain bad for a while until real change comes about in the FAA's navigation and air traffic routing plans, but hopefully this will help prevent carriers from pretending that they can actually operate the schedules that they're selling the public on, especially when they know full well that they have no chance of actually getting the job done.

A big bite of Blue

Lufthansa has announced intentions to take a $300MM stake in JetBlue, the darling of the LCC airline market in the USA. This move gives them a strange relationship with their previous US-based partners, United and US Air. Putting Lufthansa codes on the JetBlue flights would likely be a huge insult to the existing partners, though it would give them enormous access to connecting travel in/out of JFK. The other strange thing about this is that the JetBlue model is very, very, very different than the Lufthansa one. JetBlue has a single class of service. Lufthansa has three. There’s no way to buy a business/first class seat on JetBlue, so Lufthansa won’t be able to sell seats all the way through in the premium cabins, and that is where the real money is from passenger revenue, so that makes very little sense. There was a discussion of this on FlyerTalk at one point and the generally accepted theory (floated by me and confirmed by a JetBlue insider) is that JetBlue can’t really team up with other partners because they can’t offer matching cabin services.

In the end, a German carrier owning 19% of a US carrier isn’t such a big deal, especially when they are buying at a 40% discount thanks to the strong Euro versus the US Dollar. But the fact that they chose JetBlue, and that JetBlue needed the money to meet their short-term debt needs:

The cash infusion will come in handy for JetBlue, which has $433 million in current debt payable that it otherwise would have been "hard-pressed to fund from cash flow from operations or cash on hand," according to a note from William Greene, an analyst at Morgan Stanley & Co.

The fact that JetBlue is still the darling of the industry, at least among the public, for their service offering but that they cannot meet their debt needs is a very bad sign for them. They can’t sell another 19% to Lufthansa due to ownership regulations in the USA. Plus that would pretty much kill the value of JetBlue since they’d be proving that they can’t run themselves profitably enough to meet their future debt load. Of course, they may be proving that already. If they can’t operate to meet their debt burden with the fares that they’re charging that is a very bad sign. They’ve already sold off old planes once in conjunction with acquiring new ones so the net number of planes didn’t change but the maintenance costs remained low (same reason you keep leasing a car for 3 years but then dump it after that), but the costs for doing that are pretty high. Not a good sign overall for JetBlue.

Sunrise, Sunset

Not a Fiddler on the Roof reference, but the beauty that i sunrise and sunset from the air. There are a lot of magical things about flying. For one, a chunk of ridiculously heavy aluminum manages to travel 500 mph through the air. But, by far, the most beautiful part of flying to me is sunrise and sunset. I was treated to another fine showing this morning on the 6:30am Delta Shuttle flight from LaGuardia to DC. There is something about taking off right at dawn, breaking through the clouds and seeing the range of orange and purple hues fully span the skyline that is rather amazing. If you can manage to find an afternoon flight from Europe to the US or a west-bound transcon timed correctly you can watch sunset for hours, chasing the sun west across the globe.

I highly recommend it.