Zoom, Zoom, Splat

This morning I was sitting in a cafe beside Rossio Square on another beautiful sunny day in Lisbon, Portugal, lamenting that I did not feel like checking the Internet. "Why not?" asked my travel companion.

"I'm not ready to deal with my life," I replied. "Nor should I have to; I'm on vacation." Yet it's always good to have one foot, or at least a toe, stuck back in reality, so I decided to spend an hour or so on the Web.

I didn't check my bank account or my work e-mail first...of course I checked Facebook. Of all ways to find out the bad news that Zoom Airlines had gone bankrupt on Friday, I suppose Facebook was the best way to soften the blow.

There on my wall my mother had written, "I hope the Zoom thing doesn't spoil your trip at all."

What Zoom thing? Scroll down a bit - which is always a challenge on a sticky overseas public keyboard - and another friend of mine, someone in the tourism industry, had written to tell me that Zoom went under and that I should contact VISA right away about a refund.

I can't say I'm all that surprised. This is the third budget airline I've traveled on to go under...

First it was Jetlink back in the late 80s, and then Canada 3000 not long after 9/11. With the former, my father made a big stink about it, which landed my whole family looking sour-faced on the front page of the Calgary Herald. That stink got Air Canada to step up to the plate and offer stranded passengers a hand out. With Canada 3000, luckily we had flown back home just days before they landed for the last time.