Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

"Ryanair Prime" costs £79 a year, and its benefits are – to be polite – modest. Rob Burgess, founder of the excellent Head for Points frequent-flyer website gave me his expert assessment as we walked together in Toulouse, southwest France.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

“Passengers don’t deserve to end up on random Atlantic islands,” says Matt Purton – group aviation services director at Air Charter Service – after last Friday's closure of Heathrow. He says we must have a national conversation about how to cope better next time.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

I'm talking today to Vanessa Hudson, chief executive of Qantas, about Project Sunrise – connecting London and Sydney nonstop.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

I've spent the weekend covering the airport shutdown. Around a quarter-million passengers who were due to fly to, from or via Heathrow on Friday and over the weekend saw their travel plans wrecked when the airport closed for nearly 24 hours.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Today the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions has released its figures for 2024 – showing a "slow but steady" increase in visitor numbers. But the backdrop is tough times for attraction providers, exacerbated by successive governments putting up the barriers to foreign visitors.I'll been catching up with ALVA director – and top tourism thinker – Bernard Donoghue.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

I've been talking to Sean Collins, chief executive of Uber Boat by Thames Clippers, about his shiny new ferry – and how it will transform travel across the river downstream of Tower Bridge in London.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Today, the German capital is a busy, fun and coherent city. But I first knew Berlin when the Wall carved through its streets, dividing families. Some of those oppressed in East Berlin were allowed to leave – along with curious tourists like me.The main way out was at Friedrichstrasse station, where the Tränenpalast – or Palace of Tears – is now the most powerful reminder of division.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Cheese dumplings, the castle of the princely family, a national trail and some excellent skiing. That’s some of the offering from one of Europe's blink-and-you-miss-it countries: Liechtenstein, a mountainous crumple of territory measuring 15 miles by four.I have been talking to tourism spokesperson Claudia Agnolazza.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Hope you don't get flashback anxiety – I have been looking back with many a shudder at the extraordinary tangle of travel restrictions that blighted our movements for two years from 17 March 2020.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.