Oil hit $120 a barrel today, and the financial pundit class is talking about $200 oil. To quote the wisdom of Mr. T: “My prediction… is pain.”

High oil prices and travel generally don’t mix. But is there any segment that stands to benefit?

Apparently so. Trains!

As the price of fuel skyrockets, more people are traveling to North Carolina’s major cities by train. Ridership on Amtrak is up as much as 40 percent on some routes compared to last year.

40%? Pretty substantial. Perhaps enough to offset the higher cost of diesel.

But how widespread is this as a trend? It’s more likely a phenomenon on shorter, regional routes that would otherwise have been driven. Except for a few diehards, and some gluttons for punishment, most aren’t choosing to take Amtrak from California to Chicago.

Trains becoming more a part of your travelin’ life? Hit the comments.

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Bad news for aficionados of roadside American kitsch. As pointed out by commenter Mark, the Spindle, a.k.a. the Car-ka-Bob, was torn down from it’s Berwyn, Illinois site.

The Chicago Tribune confirms the deed. You might remember the giant parking lot sculpture from the movie Wayne’s World. It could have been yours: They tried to sell it on eBay.

But it is no more. The video of the destruction is below.

Related:
- Save the Berwyn Car-ka-bob!
- Update: Join the movement to save the Spindle

There’s a cliché in detective dramas, where there’s a battle of jurisdiction. Say, the FBI swoops in and tells the local cops, “We’ll take it from here.” Bureaucracy always trumps justice. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s a similar battle within the federal government’s security apparatus.

America’s no-fly list is so extensive and full of errors, that even Federal Air Marshals are being kept off planes.

False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem.

Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) familiar with the situation say the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years — just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public.

Hey, at least they’re not being kept off because they’re carrying weapons.

But it’s nice to know that the people whose sole job is to protect passengers in flight are being kept off planes. Why, why, WHY can’t a Federal Air Marshal, showing federal law enforcement credentials get on the damn plane?

The no-fly list is still a disaster. How about this nugget:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said this week that one major air carrier reports roughly 9,000 false positive hits on the watch list every day.

Let’s savor that one for a moment: One single airline has 9000 false positives. Daily.

And some of those might be Federal Air Marshals.

Downgraded: American Airlines luggage policy
American Airlines is the latest to charge an extra fee for a second checked bag. For a while, they were a holdout. This will apparently affect 4% of their passengers. I actually expected that number to be higher. Understandable move, considering the airline is losing $3.3M per day.

Downgraded: Skycap tips
Upgraded: Vindictiveness
American Airlines is being completely petty in their legal dispute with skycaps. You may recall that the skycaps won their suit, in which they argued that they were being cheated when the airline imposed a $2 fee, which most passengers believed to be paid to the skycap. (It was paid to the airline.) So now the airline strikes back by banning tips to skycaps. Vindictive, and frankly begging for another lawsuit.

Downgraded: Spirit Airlines’ baggage handling
Why just lose a passenger’s luggage, when you can burn the luggage instead?

Downgraded: Airline credit ratings, thanks to mergers. What?
Airlines keep saying how mergers will be just fab for their bottom lines. But credit rating agency Moodys’ predicts that airlines would be downgraded if mergers happen. Why? Moody’s doesn’t believe the merger partners will meet their goals, and won’t see the promised synergies happen.

Upgraded: WC signs
Better signage for public rest rooms than these? I haven’t seen them.

Upgraded: Paperless boarding passes
The TSA and Continental have teamed up to expand the use of paperless boarding passes for travelers with smartphones. I like!

Upgraded: Viagra, caffeine, and naps
For those seeking to beat jet lag, Viagra can help. (Seriously.) But for those not looking to channel their inner Bob Dole, caffeine and naps work well, too. How… intuitive.

Upgraded: Tracking your past travels
If you’ve traveled internationally between 1996 and 2006, and if you used an American credit or debit card abroad, you’re eligible for a refund of some undisclosed fees, thanks to a class action settlement. But unless you’re a supreme dork (umm, like me…) who has all your year-end summaries or stacks of credit card statements, you’ll need to estimate your spending. To make that work out for you, you need to know when you were out of the country. (For supreme dorks like me, there’s the running spreadsheet of flights and miles…) Debbie Dubrow of DeliciousBaby writes in with her credit card settlement hack to help you figure out how much time you were abroad: Look at your digital photos and check the dates. For pre-digital images, just browse the photo albums. Brilliant! But it’s not foolproof. My photos aren’t organized into albums. And on business travel, who takes photos??

To see how the travel business really works, sometimes it takes a good old-fashioned lawsuit. Vanguard Car Rental, the parent company of Alamo and National, took Orbitz to court, because Orbitz wasn’t listing the Vanguard brands on the first page of search results when customers ran searches on the online travel megasite.

The suit, filed Friday in the Illinois Circuit Court of Cook County, alleges Alamo and National rental offers show up on a secondary page because Vanguard refused to increase the commission rate paid Orbitz for online bookings. That rate was established in a contract that runs through 2008.
[…]
Chicago-based Orbitz called the claims “baseless” in a news release, and said Vanguard was trying to sue its way to preferential placement on the website.

In addition to requesting the higher commission rate, Orbitz demanded $1.5 million in mid-April, Vanguard claimed.

Baseless? Orbitz panned the suit in a press release, but in the process, effectively admitted to doing what Vanguard accused them of, and exposed the nature of their business model: pay to play.

The bottom line is that Vanguard is trying to use a lawsuit to get a sorting result from Orbitz that Vanguard and Orbitz did not agree to. In short, Vanguard is trying to use its lawsuit to get something for nothing.

So the sorting of rental car prices isn’t based on price. Other sites are up front about this, by labeling the first set of results as “preferred vendors” or such. But Orbitz doesn’t do that. They just show results. And those results are driven by — let’s be blunt here — bribes.

So why did the judge throw out the case? After all Orbitz essentially agreed with Vanguard and admitted that they rank results according to who’s willing to pay for the privilege. But all this is seemingly legit, according to the contracts between the agency and the supplier.

At the end of the day, this illustrates that you really need to shop around. Never, EVER use just one site to search for fares or rates. You never know what secret deals are influencing the search results.

(Thanks to Budget Travel’s Sean O’Neill!)

Continental doesn’t like United anymore, but is sorta into the oneWorld alliance headed by American Airlines and British Airways. American Airlines is interested in that, too, but simultaneously also has its eyes on US Airways. United, having just been dumped by Continental, is looking to rekindle an old affair it had with US Airways, too, but now has to worry about American Airlines, which is sidling up. All the while, Delta and Northwest are not a done deal, and with unions getting crankier about the merger, who knows what will happen. And those two, already allies of Continental in SkyTeam, are feeling slighted that their longtime partner is considering joining another clique.

This is all so freaking high school.

I’m not a fan of these mergers, but I realize that this isn’t about consumers, and the fact that none of this will improve prices or service. It’s about companies with unsustainable business models trying to eke out enough corporate life to survive until the CEO retires with huge pay package.

Just get it over with.

Related:
- Mergers: Are your miles safe?
- Reader mail: What will airline mergers mean to consumers?

Eos Airlines, the all-business class class airline that actually approached all-first class service on the New York-London route, shut down abruptly today. Their homepage contains the now all-too-familiar declaration, as seen in the Maxjet and Skybus shutdowns, that future flights are canceled.

The business class wars, so heated just a year ago, are nearing an end. Who knows how long the remaining all-business class carriers — Silverjet and L’Avion — can hold on. The standalone niche all-business class airline just isn’t viable in a recessionary world of $120 oil.

Eos didn’t actually blame oil prices in their last-minute notice that they were shutting down. Instead, they blamed the credit markets.

This announcement is particularly regrettable since we have achieved so much, including having a term sheet in hand for additional financing. Clearly, even in today’s challenging economic and credit environment, investors believe in Eos. Unfortunately, some issues arose that prevented the parties from moving forward.

Nice spin. Maybe the airline’s investors held out hope, but hope is not a plan. And in today’s economic environment, the bankers didn’t see that plan coming together.

Of the three all-biz airlines on the NYC-London route, that now leaves Silverjet. They’re appealing to Eos ticketholders, saying they’ll “honour the price you paid to EOS, subject to seat availability and a minimum price paid” — a minimum of £600 / $1,200 plus taxes one-way or £1,200 / $2,400 plus taxes round trip. I note that they say they’ll honor the PRICE, not the TICKET. I’ve put in a question to Silverjet, to see if this means they’ll be accepting Eos tickets as-is, or if they will require a payment in the amount of the original fare. I’ll update if and when they respond. (Updated: See below.)

British Airways is offering reduced rates to Eos customers for business class fares. No word on how big a discount.

No word yet from Virgin, American, or anyone else on the NYC-London route as to how they’ll approach Eos customers.

If you can’t be rebooked, call your credit card and try to get a refund. With Eos’ pricing being on the higher end, you’ll want that money back.

UPDATE: Silverjet clarifies their policy. “This statement means you will need to purchase new flights from Silverjet and then claim any monies owed from Eos back from them, your credit card company or your travel insurance provider.” In other words, they’ll let you buy a new ticket at the original Eos fare, which, if it was purchased a while back, may be cheaper than a walkup fare today, but they aren’t honoring Eos tickets as-is.

My wife and I try to have at least one city vacation, one beach vacation, and one outdoorsy vacation every year. The latter usually means hiking of some kind, but hardly extreme sports. We’ve done some hikes in semi-precarious spots, in places where you look back afterward and think, “What the hell were we thinking?” Hey, it builds character!

But I don’t think I would have had the stones to do what’s pictured in this video. Filmed in the Makinodromo/El Chorro area of Andalucia, Spain, the clip is a first-person view along a century-old trail that hugs the side of steep cliffs. The trail is neither wide, nor consistently… there. I’m sorry, but two-inch wide pipe, hanging over a free fall into the deep, does not a trail make. I’d be too afraid to take my eyes off the trail, I’d likely miss the views.

Beyond terror, there’s comedy! I enjoy how the filming hiker passes other more timid hikers on the trail, with considerable dispatch.

In any case, enjoy. After seeing this video, I know it’s as close as I’ll ever get to that particular vista.

(Thanks, Michael!)

Flashback to 2001… Enron was making big money trading energy, and (not entirely coincidentally) California was experiencing blackouts. Hotels across the country, but especially in California, were tacking on energy surcharges of $2 or $3 every night, instead of raising the actual rates.

Thankfully, that practice slowly disappeared, as hotels raised rates to incorporate the higher energy costs. (Airlines, on the other hand, subsequently embraced the practice of fuel surcharges, but that’s another issue…)

At this point, there’s no sign of the hotel energy surcharge coming back. Largely, that’s a function of how electricity is priced: Despite increases in fuel costs, electricity costs haven’t gone up for consumers, due largely to state and local regulation.

But hotels are feeling the pinch of higher energy costs another way, it seems, since they’re resorting to fuel-themed gimmickry to attract customers. Apparently fearful of reduced bookings, they’re encouraging guests to stay (and burn fossil fuels to get there) by offering gasoline credits.

The conference and visitor bureau in Costa Mesa, Calif., home to popular Southern California beaches and Disneyland, is offering a $25 gas or airfare rebate for travelers staying at select Orange County hotels, plus a food voucher worth $25 per night, through its “Drive and dine on us” program.
[…]
In New Hampshire, the state visitor’s bureau has a whole page of “gas saving offers” on its Web site.

They include a gas credit of as much as $50 for drivers headed to the The Highlands Inn in Bethlehem - 25 cents a mile or 30 cents a mile if you drive a hybrid.

I realize that hotels run on electricity, not regular unleaded, but the different approaches to increased fuel costs, 2001 vs. 2008, are somewhat ironic.

That said, energy is getting more expensive across the board. And I wouldn’t be surprised if energy surcharges start to reappear on hotel bills in coming months.

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Upgraded: The Five-Finger Discount
Chris Elliott essentially accuses the TSA’s baggage screeners of systematically stealing things from travelers’ luggage. Watch your designer eyewear. (How’s the hate mail from angry TSA employees, Chris?TSA employees aren’t exactly quiet when they’re criticized on the internet…)

Downgraded: Pilots’ comfort zone
Several Continental 757s traveling over the Atlantic have been making fuel stops in Canada on the westbound route. As Jared Blank points out, this isn’t a case of running-on-fumes, but as a passenger, who the hell cares? I don’t want to add a stop in Newfoundland just for kicks. Granted, I’ve never been wild about 757s on trans-oceanic routes, but the low-fuel issue isn’t limited to those routes. Pilots have been complaining that airlines have been pressuring them to fly with less extra fuel than before. After all, fuel is heavy, so carrying more means burning more. But let’s not be penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Upgraded: Advice that no one is heeding
Bob Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines, and now working for an air taxi startup, argues in the New York Times op-ed pages that we “do not need to return to the over-regulation of the past, but some government intervention is required.” This includes blocking mergers and changing bankruptcy laws to prevent airlines from operating under chapter 11. Good luck, Bob.

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The financial wiseguys at Minyanville have nailed it. They’ve pinned down, to a tee, the future of air travel fees.

I like the “Arial Font Fee” best. Can I get a discount for Palatino?

It’s item 4 of the “Five Things You Need to Know” today. The full “ticket” is here.