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It’s not Halloween, it’s ‘Take Your Columnist To Work Day’!
The New York Times’ Joe Sharkey, apparently tired of writing about business travel for his business travel column, pays a visit to someone’s place of business instead. But it’s no ordinary cubiclefest, but the wacky offices of Vegas.com. Joe’s money quote that makes the whole article worthwhile, though, is this: “Once, for a newspaper story in Philadelphia, I went to the animal shelter to bail out a stripper’s boa constrictor that was part of her act (the job of the snake, who adored her, was to untie her bikini top on stage).” Baby, that’s journalism.

It’s not Earth Day, either
Environmentalists in the UK aren’t cutting KLM any slack. The airline is introducing coffee grown on “sustainable” plantations, but the announcement was greeted with scoffs. Since airlines pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a few acres of shade-grown coffee apparently don’t matter. Okay… but the airlines aren’t going to stop burning jet fuel overnight, and they have a choice TODAY regarding shade-grown vs. clear-cut-the-rainforests coffee. Give KLM a little credit.

Tehran is lovely this time of year
Iran is looking to attract tourists, and what better way to get them than to offer cash incentives? Iranian travel agents get a $20 bounty for every Western tourist they attract. Maybe they should start a rewards program for the visitors, though…

Air New Zealand goes ’round the world
Last week, Air New Zealand started flying from Hong Kong to London, making it the only airline to fly around the globe. (United gave up its Washington-London-Delhi-Hong Kong-Los Angeles-Washington circle in 2001, the previous holdout of single-airline RTW travel.) You can fly the loop for £801 (US$1521) including taxes for flights starting in London with stops along the way in Hong Kong, Auckland, and Los Angeles — cheap for a trip around the earth.

The life and times of (lost) luggage
Jane Engle follows the path of checked luggage. It’s a long but interesting tale, with some of the bags ending up at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Alabama. Her suggestions at the end for making your bags identifiable are good ones, classics of travel advice. One variation on her suggestions, which I keep meaning to employ in practice, but somehow keep neglecting, is to print out your itinerary and put it inside the checked bag. That way, if the tracking tag falls off, it’s presumably easier to reunite you with your luggage.

Better food on Continental
Continental Airlines announced revisions to its menus, featuring recipes concocted by the airline’s “Congress of Chefs.” Call me a skeptic, but a stable of celebrity chefs doesn’t necessarily make the food taste any better at 39,000 feet. It still tends to taste like airline food… But change is good, and I’m all for trying out new recipes, so good on ‘em!

First it was Somali taxis refusing to transport passengers who were carrying alcohol, because the drivers’ religious beliefs were offended.

Now, according to a growing message board thread on FlyerTalk, United Airlines staff at LAX has apparently been refusing to allow wine in checked luggage.

This is absolutely ridiculous.

While airlines are legally within their rights to impose tougher restrictions on passengers than the TSA demands, it is completely arbitrary to prohibit wine transport in checked luggage, and only at one airport in America. You’re not allowed to carry wine onboard in your hand luggage, so checked luggage is the only legal means. And other airlines clearly don’t have the same restrictions. (Consider these tips for packing and shipping wine when you travel.) Further lesson: Don’t “declare” that you have wine if checking in at United in LAX. And if you’re only carrying one or two bottles, be sure to pack them tightly.

(As an aside, I’ve had surprisingly good experiences shipping fragile/breakable liquids in checked luggage: Flying from Germany to the United States a few years ago, I transported multiple bottles of beer and a couple jars of jam in my suitcase. I had packed it well, using bubble wrap and newspaper. I cleared customs and connected in Detroit, where I had to re-check my suitcase. The TSA opened everything up and shifted the suitcase contents around. But to their great credit, they not only returned the beer and food to the suitcase — they lovingly wrapped things even more, using clear packing tape, and an artfully-placed single band of “TSA inspected” label tape. Photo above.)

As the Cranky Flier rightly suggests, the wine prohibition at LAX demonstrates one of the biggest problems in the relationship airlines have with their customers: Inconsistency. Whether the rules officially vary from airport to airport (e.g., check-in times, luggage policies…) or are seemingly invented by front-line employees (e.g., lounge privileges, wine transportation…), the customer still comes away feeling frustrated. Not a great way to make friends and influence people.

Back in April, Air Canada introduced $20 discount for passengers who agreed 1) not to make any changes to their itinerary and 2) not to check any luggage.

Now, the airline is expanding the “Go Discount” program, making the calculation of your airfare even more a la carte:

The carrier is offering four fare types (Tango, Tango Plus, Latitude and Executive) and gives passengers the option to add or subtract items based on individual preferences. The offerings include value-added car rental and hotel services, lounge access for Latitude customers for C$25 ($22.30), advance seat selection for Tango customers (C$15), a C$5 inflight meal voucher option for Tango and Tango Plus customers and options for Tango, Tango Plus and Latitude passengers to save C$5 by not checking baggage and for Tango passengers to save C$7 by agreeing not to change or cancel flights and C$3 by declining frequent-flier miles.

The airline is claiming that the new policy increases price transparency. True enough, and there are some people who can probably benefit from this. But the benefits have their limits.

Putting a price tag on seat assignments — and such a high price tag — is obnoxious. I know, it’s already common practice in Europe, especially among charter airlines, but it’s still conduct unbecoming a full-service airline.

The meal vouchers are reasonable, in comparison. I’m not sure how many people would prefer the airline’s catering to a sandwich purchased in the airport, but at least the price is competitive.

It’s the C$3 discount for declining frequent flyer miles that really gets me. Besides the fact that not earning miles is heresy if you’re under my roof, it’s valuing the miles far too cheaply. I understand that this is aimed at the very infrequent flyer who never collects enough mileage to be worth a free trip, but 3 Canadian bucks?? A flight from Toronto to Vancouver covers 2085 miles each way — even at a conservative 1 cent per mile, that’s over C$40 worth…

It will be interesting to see if any American airlines follow suit. American Airlines has toyed with various fees (like the $1 soft drink experiment) so they might try this. Southwest, JetBlue, and USAirways are all prime candidates for this sort of pricing, too. But it will be difficult to align a menu of flight options with Expedia, Orbitz, etc. And it will make apples-to-apples comparisons of fares even harder, going forward.

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James Gilden takes on the subject of hotel companies’ “guaranteed lowest rates,” and how it’s often difficult, as a traveler, to enforce this rule. Companies promise you that their rates are the lowest, and that you can get a refund if you find a lower rate for the same room at the same property. But Gilden describes the travails of a customer who tried, at first in vain, to get Choice Hotels to honor their guarantee, after he found a lower rate elsewhere.

The company’s initial response is instructive: They replied that they were “unable to verify that the room offered at the lower rate is the same as the room you have booked.” In other words, was it a room with two beds, one king, etc.?

Falling back on this kind of mumbo-jumbo does a disservice to the company’s reputation and makes the guarantee itself seem silly. So how do you beat the system?

First, try to make sure you’re booking a specific room type that you can easily compare between websites for an apples-to-apples comparison. If you’ve got a reservation for a room with a king bed, you won’t be able to invoke the price guarantee if you find a lower price for a room with two double beds. The problem lies in the common description of hotel rooms, especially on some discounters’ sites, as “standard rooms” or “run-of-the house” rooms. Try to avoid booking these in the first place, since you never know what you’ll be stuck with.

Second, be persistent. If the company denies your request, escalate your request to a higher supervisor. Bring in the Better Business Bureau if you don’t get resolution. Consider alerting your credit card issuer as well, if you feel a credit is due, though this could be harder to manage.

Finally, vote with your wallet. If companies are failing to honor their guarantees, write to them and tell them you won’t be staying with them again.

And feel free to use the internet — like leaving comments or e-mail with this blog — to voice your frustrations.

Passengers onboard Pakistan International Airlines flight 704 were grounded in Manchester, England, for 30 hours because pilots found a stray cat in the cockpit.

The flight landed in Manchester, “where a cat search operation was launched.” It obviously took a while.

The plane was grounded until the cat could be found, since nothing is supposed to get into the aircraft’s instruments. I guess this nixes my advice to American Airlines for their onboard rodent problems.

While the stray feline might not make the cut for the next volume of Animals Aloft, the cat was clearly on a mission. Perhaps tired of being cooped up in the cargo hold, and ready to take the controls? Toonces would be proud…

Related:
- The flying petting zoo vs. the war on allergens

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Delta is giving away a boatload of free frequent flyer miles. Every day, one winner gets 50,000 miles (enough for two domestic coach tickets, or one ticket to Europe). And one grand prize winner gets 2,500,000 bonus miles plus $25,000 in spending cash.

Click here to sign up.

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A few days ago, an Indiana University PhD student in computer science named Christopher Soghoian decided to post a fake boarding pass generator on his personal webpage. The site let you enter a name, flight number, etc., to make it appear like a genuine Northwest Airlines boarding pass, good enough to get through security. Soghoian suggested three purposes for such a fake:

1. Meet your elderly grandparents at the gate
2. ‘Upgrade’ yourself once on the airplane - by printing another boarding pass for a ticket you’re already purchased, only this time, in Business Class.
3. Demonstrate that the TSA Boarding Pass/ID check is useless.

Number 2 is just stupid and tantamount to stealing. You’ll never upgrade yourself or get on a plane for free by forging your boarding pass, since the barcode won’t register the correct flight or seat when it’s scanned. You’d be trying to rip off the airline, and you’d be escorted out by security rather quickly…

Number 3 is a fair point, but one that’s been made before. Pointing out that a print-at-home boarding pass could be “hacked” is nothing new. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York detailed the process by which boarding passes can be hacked at a press conference last year, and the issue has been raised in Slate and Schneier.com. Someone else posted a way to forge your otherwise legitimate Southwest Airlines boarding pass, so it always registers in group “A.” And as for number 1, there are people who have simply been using Adobe Acrobat for years to edit the date on an old boarding pass so they can gain access to the secure area of the airport to meet someone — after submitting to screening, of course.

Posting a boarding pass generator was stupid, and got the site shut down, along with a visit from the FBI. But it’s really nothing new, and, I contend, at no point was there ever a real threat to security. Every single person who has ever used one of these little tricks still had to submit to a screening. If the checkpoint is doing its job, then the name or date on the boarding pass shouldn’t matter.

So why NOT let anyone go to the gate, if they’re willing to pass through security? Why even bother with checking identification?

For starters, the airlines don’t want you forging boarding passes, since they don’t make tickets transferable, and they want to make sure the person buying the ticket is actually the person flying. If your friend wanted to fly on your ticket, you could check yourself in, give your friend your real boarding pass AND a fake one in his name. He would use the forged pass at security and the real pass (with your name) at the gate.

There’s also the matter of the no-fly list. The airline is supposed to catch people on that list at the time of check-in. But like the friend using someone else’s ticket in the example above, a fake boarding pass, a fake id, and a separate, real boarding pass in someone else’s name could let you bypass the no-fly list and get you through security and on board. But even then, you still would need to submit to security. (And let’s leave the fact that the no-fly list is riddled with errors aside.)

Airlines also try to make sure that passengers are supposed to travel on the same plane as their luggage. Therefore, boarding pass hand-offs are frowned upon. But again, if the luggage is screened, and the passenger is screened, then there really shouldn’t be a concern about matching bags to passengers.

Finally, security personnel don’t want more work than necessary, and airports want to reduce wait times and lines. Allowing anyone to go to the gate would increase manpower expenses or wait times. Neither option is appealing to airport managers.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the ability of security personnel to find weapons and detect threats. And if people truly believe that the security at TSA checkpoints is adequate, then the fuss about forged boarding passes is all a waste of time. If security isn’t adequate, then that needs to be fixed, but it still doesn’t make a difference whose name is on the boarding pass.

UPDATE 11/1/06: Someone has posted a mirror of the original site here. Nothing ever stays secret once it’s on the internet… And as others such as Mere Rhetoric have pointed out, a forged boarding pass isn’t going to make or break security. The screening at the checkpoint will. And the screening has a number of gaps. Big gaps. Filling those gaps is more important than busting a computer programmer in Indiana.

Everyone knows that you can map your driving route using MapQuest or Google Maps. No surprises there. But beyond simply telling you where to go, there are more and more so-called “mashups” that combine maps with other travel-relevant information. Consider:

• Heading to the airport? Find the cheapest airport parking lot first.

• Want to know the route you’ll fly? Run the airport codes through the Great Circle Mapper to see the shortest flight route between cities.

• Prefer to track flights in real-time and see where they are on a map? Try FlightAware for US-based flights or AeroSeek for many (not all) international flights.

• How about your hotel? TripAdvisor, which collects reviews from people around the web, has started mapping hotels and lets you sort them by “popularity” rating.

• If you’re a Priceline user who bids for your hotel room, check out BetterBidding.com’s hotel maps, which list the hotels people have actually won in the auction, as well as the prices they paid, in major American cities.

• Finally, when you get to a city, how about a good restaurant or wine bar? Or even better: a good liquor store and a BYOB restaurant! You’re in luck if you’re traveling to New York or Chicago: Annotated maps of New York wine shops and wine bars, and Chicago wine shops and BYOB restaurants.

Got other interesting map combinations of interest to travelers? Post about it in comments!

Related:
- Getting more accurate flight tracking
- World travel, graphically

JetBlue, the airline whose in-seat televisions pay you nice compliments, just announced their routes in the Chicago market, effective January 4, 2007. It’ll be the first time the airline has flown to the Windy City: 2 flights a day to/from New York-JFK, and 2 flights a day to Long Beach.

And of course there’s a fare sale to go with the new routes. $36 each way, plus tax. I priced out an itinerary from Chicago to Long Beach that’s $91.10 roundtrip, all-in. That’s quite cheap.

The legal mumbo-jumbo:

Service begins on January 4, 2007. Fare requires a 14-day advance purchase. Tickets must be purchased on or before October 27, 2006. Travel must be completed by February 15, 2007.

Now let’s just keep the pilot alertness experiments to a minimum, okay?

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Reader Dave S. writes in:

I read your “open letter” to Lufthansa with some interest. I’m also frustrated with Lufthansa, but for slightly different reasons. They keep deleting my seat assignments for a flight I’m taking in December. I am one of those people who carefully picks his seats in advance, and then obsessively looks up the seating chart every few weeks, and every time, the original assignment is cancelled. Sometimes the seats we chose are still blank (we have an aisle and a middle) but sometimes they put someone else in the aisle seat we reserved. I call them up and they tell me there’s nothing they can do. What am I doing wrong?

Dave, you’re not alone, and you’re not doing anything wrong. Just last month I heard some stories of people losing their seats repeatedly on Lufthansa.

Lufthansa may be worse than others, though I have no statistics to support that allegation, but it’s not alone, either. Most airlines offer seat reservations for longhaul routes, but won’t necessarily guarantee them, in a Seinfeld-ian way.

Some seat changes are understandable, especially if there is ever an equipment change. If the carrier swaps, say, an Airbus 340 for a Boeing 747, your seat assignments may be lost.

But you are right to try to pre-select and defend your seats. Smart seat selection is one of the easiest way to maximize your travel comfort, especially on long flights, so I advise readers to consult SeatGuru and SeatExpert for advice on choosing the best seat.

Then, stay on top of the airline. Some airlines let you view your seat assignments when you log in using your frequent flyer number. But to be sure, periodically run a search for your flights and look at the seatmap. (Try an agency like Orbitz or Expedia if the operating airline doesn’t make real-time seatmaps conveniently accessible.) If something looks suspicious, call and verify.

Not having a seat assignment can put you at a further disadvantage when you’re checking in: You’re stuck with the limited supply of seats that more proactive passengers have left you. Or even worse, you might be first in line to get involuntarily bumped off the flight, if the plane is overbooked and you’re without a seat.

Keep records of whom you spoke with if you made assignments on the phone, or print copies of reservations if changes are made online. If seats are deleted again, call their customer service number to complain. But there’s unfortunately no way to guarantee your seats aren’t taken away.

(Note: E-mail from readers is always welcome. Got a problem, a question, a complaint, or a compliment related to travel, for business or pleasure? Use the “contact” link at the top right of the screen and drop a line anytime.)

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Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is getting into the wedding chapel business. Though not the drive-through Elvis-impersonator 24-hour poker-chips-included wedding chapel style, alas.

The lucky couple can get hitched in several scenarios, either on the tarmac or in the airport itself. Some lovebirds might choose to hop on a flight right after exchanging their vows.

Unfortunately, duty free shopping limits still apply.

See the airports website for details in English, or with greater detail in Dutch.

Perhaps they’ll be rolling out the Elvis impersonator option next year.

(via Flight International)

Why has Orbitz gotten rid of its flexible search?

I’ve put in a call to Orbitz to find out, and I’ll post the response when/if they respond, but the bottom line is, their once-powerful fare engine has been severely limited. You need to know specific travel dates to do their flight search. Thumbs down.

Orbitz runs on ITA Software code in the back office. It’s a really powerful booking engine that I often recommend (click “login as guest” to use free), since it lets you control the variables like no one else. Two other sites that use ITA, continental.com and the recently released beta-version of united.com, are both more flexible. So why is Orbitz killing this feature?

One alternative is to use an aggregator, many of which do have good flexible-date searches. Among the aggregators, I generally recommend Kayak (see April 2006 reviews here), which recently introduced flex-searches (registration required, though).

Another aggregator, PriceGrabber, has a decent interface, too. Alas, no flexible search, but they just added a neat feature: a list of amenities on each flight, such as seat pitch, in-flight entertainment options, in-seat power availability, and on-time statistics. On the searches I conducted, the amenity information was correct, even for many codeshared flights. The site still has its downsides — its results didn’t find the lowest fare on any of the searches I conducted — arguably the ultimate test of a fare engine — but it’s getting better!

Related:
- Disaggregating fare aggregators
- Disaggregating the aggregators, Part 2: Rating the hotel metasearches
- Online travel search improvements
- Flexible-date search alternatives for international destinations