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Having prohibited stuff in your bags doesn’t just risk confiscation: You might be risking a TSA fine.:

Most passengers don’t realize that if they take banned items through airport security – knowingly or unknowingly – they could face as much as $10,000 in fines. Usually the threat is obvious, such as being caught with a loaded gun. But try to pass through metal detectors with a large pair of scissors and a bad attitude and you could be out as much as $1,500.

$1,500 for a pair of scissors? Yowza! The agency collected over $1.5 million last year, which really isn’t that much, considering how many items they confiscated.

The agency also admits that it fines people for “interference with screening” — both physical ($1,500 to $5,000 fine) and nonphysical ($500 to $1,500) interference. That latter category is ripe for abuse.

Perhaps more interestingly, the fines aren’t coming in proportionally from airports across the country. Phoenix, though only ranked 6th in terms of passenger traffic, was #1 in terms of fines collected.

The article suggests that the revenue is related to the number of gun owners in the state, but that doesn’t sound right to me. I’d bet that there is a bit of subjectivity involved: The person who’s apologetic and smiles a lot gets their gun confiscated but pays no fine, while the person who mouths off pays the big bucks. It’s much like talking your way out of parking ticket. And it seems the TSA agents in Phoenix are less likely to be sweet-talked.

So don’t say you weren’t warned that you could be fined. And go read the whole thing.

UPDATE: The TSA’s fines are in fact detailed on their website, but it takes some searching. The list of fines is here (PDF). And even better, the “Enforcement Sanction Guidance Policy” is here (MS Word). Be sure to check page 10 of the latter document, with its list of “aggravating factors,” such as “attitude of violator.”

Upgraded, eventually: Plane cleanliness on Delta
Investigative journalism at its finest: The NYT reports that planes aren’t cleaned as often as they used to be. What a surprise! Delta was letting as long as 18 months pass — instead of the traditional 30 days — between deep cleanings of its planes. Thankfully, Delta is going back to monthly cleanings. Hooray for the status quo.

Upgraded: Cheap fares between London and Hong Kong
Startup Oasis International Airlines, previously mentioned here, is officially starting service between London and Hong Kong at deep, deep discounts. $130 each way in coach, $850 in business, taxes extra. Great fare.

Upgraded, barely: United.com
United.com, long overdue for an update, is live beta-testing its new site. The changes are incremental, and nothing new for other airlines’ customers, but still mostly positive. Welcome to 1999! Positive changes: award search is better, with a full-month award availability chart, and you can change seats for booked flights. Negatives: You can seemingly only buy UA-coded flights, and the award booking engine still doesn’t cover partner airlines. Yawn.

Downgraded: Lounges at LAX
The couches and cocktail tables have given way for the wrecking ball. Lounges in the Tom Bradley international terminal at LAX were demolished, and all airlines’ customers are being herded into temporary mega-lounges (one for first, one for business). Moo.

Upgraded: Airline snack resources
Looking for more information about the minimal snacks on board flights these days? You’re in luck. CheapFlights has collected the price of ham sandwiches and gin-and-tonics on European airlines. Compare and save. And if you prefer the free bags of peanuts, pretzels, or snack mix, then you’re in luck. Someone has a review site devoted to these little freebies. Viva the internets.
(via Road Gladiator)

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Fly with JetBlue last year? You may have been a passenger on a test flight: An experiment to see how long pilots can actually control a passenger jet before fatigue sets in.

You don’t remember filling out a consent form? Oh, that’s because the airline pulled a fast one: They convinced low-level FAA officials to bend the rules for their little experiment. Instead of limiting their flying to the legal limit of 8 hours per day, pilots spent as much as 11 hours at the controls.

It wasn’t until someone called in the experiment to some FAA higher-ups that the experiment got canned. The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription only):

The two-pilot crews were equipped with specially designed motion detectors on their wrists to measure activity, and participated in tests with hand-held computing devices that issued random prompts and then recorded the speed of responses. All told, JetBlue says 29 pilots, including the backup aviators, participated in more than 50 data-gathering flights during May 2005. All of the flights were domestic, and a big portion were coast-to-coast trips.

The carrier says it proceeded under the assumption that local FAA officials had the power to approve the company’s plans under so-called supplemental flight rules. Those rules specify that airlines flying longer distances must have at least one extra pilot on board so no single pilot flies more than eight hours in total. However, in the JetBlue test, even though each flight had a third pilot on board, the original crews stayed at the controls for more than 10 hours a day. None of the reserve pilots ever replaced a regular crew member.

Thankfully nothing seems to have gone wrong, and 2 to 3 hours of overtime is probably not that much of a stretch. But it’s simply not acceptable that the company or its pilots play these kinds of games with passengers. Passengers should not be made unwitting co-test-subjects in a corporate experiment. Unless there is an experimental “informed consent” clause in the JetBlue contract of carriage?

It’s apparently not enough that so many airline pilots sound like legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager when they’re welcoming you onboard over the intercom. No, these guys actually wanted to BE test pilots.

Experiments are fine, but not with a plane full of unwitting subjects. And what were the results of those tests, anyway? As members of the “research team,” doesn’t the public have the right to know?

UPDATE 10/23/06: Full text of WSJ article now available here. Not sure how long it’ll be there, but read it and weep.

(Thanks, Dr. Vino!)
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Update: No kowtowing to teetotaling taxicabs
Remember the cabdrivers who were refusing to transport passengers from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport if they suspected the traveler was carrying alcohol? The airports commission has wisely reversed its earlier plans to label taxis as “wet” or “dry.” If a cabbie refuses a fare for any reason, he now has to go to the back of the line. Good. If you don’t want to transport people whom you find objectionable for whatever reason, don’t be a cabdriver. Simple enough.

Economy Parking, Premium Skycaps
Chicago’s O’Hare airport is getting skycaps at Economy Parking Lot E. The new service, run by BAGS, Inc., will allow parkers to check in and drop off their bags ($5 fee) before they head back to the terminal via the train. But you’re expected to drop off the bags a whole 2 hours before your flight. That seems like a stretch.

More airlines lower fuel surcharges
Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines are rolling back fuel surcharges for longhaul flights. Good for them, and for us.

Singapore Airlines’ gift from above
A large metal bolt fell off a Singapore Airlines 747 and hit an Australian man’s house. (He should be glad it wasn’t a DC-10 overhead.)

Behind the scenes at American Airlines
Peter Greenberg spent a week checking out American Airlines’ operations behind the scenes. The result is a CNBC special which aired Wednesday. I missed the first showing, but it’s being re-run on Sunday. Plus, clips from the show are available for download here. Will there be coverage of the mice that seemingly infest their planes?

Europeans: ask for your travel records
Privacy advocate Ed Hasbrouck advises Europeans to find out what’s in their travel records. In Europe, you own the rights to your data. In the U.S., the company that holds the data owns the rights. Might as well have a look, to see if there are errors. Much like looking at your credit report to look for fraud…

Ryanair revises fine print, battles its own employees
Britain’s Office of Fair Trading is forcing Ryanair to change the fine print in its ticketing contract. The changes make it easier to file a claim against the airline for lost, damaged, or delayed luggage, as well as expenses due to flight cancellation. This comes on top of employee actions, including unionization threats, promises of a strike by baggage handlers in Spain, and the refusal of Italian crew to sell food on board. (See here for the unionization campaign’s homepage.)

Terrifying liquid
Via Boingboing: a liquid whose name deserves all the TSA scrutiny it can handle. Best to pack this on in your carry-on, if you absolutely, positively need to bring central American cleaning supplies through an airport.

Terrifying lawns
Taking his work home with him? A Los Angeles plane mechanic has turned his front lawn into a mock airplane crash site for Halloween. It uses real aircraft parts from a Gulfstream. Considering it’s in LA, trick-or-treaters might be unfazed and think he’s running a filming location for “Lost.”

Sharkey strikes back
NY Times travel columnist Joe Sharkey, who survived the midair collision in Brazil a few weeks ago, and whose blog was peppered with hate-filled comments after he posted a short statement of concern for the fates of the pilots of his aircraft, lashed out against his (largely Brazilian) critics in a recent post. The investigation into the accident and the surrounding controversy has become quite the drama. Thusfar no word on his site on whether or not he is, in fact, Robin Leach.

Just two weeks ago, we learned that US Airways was halving the life of an earned frequent flyer mile from 3 years to 18 months. (Of course, you can still extend your miles’ lifespan by having any activity on the account.)

Now Air Canada does one worse. As View From the Wing reports, the maximum life of an Aeroplan mile, even if you keep adding miles diligently to your account, will be limited to 7 years. On top of that, your account can be closed down if you don’t have activity for 12 months. As Gary Leff writes, that is indeed “draconian.” It makes United Airlines’ recently-effected reshuffling of the Mileage Plus program seem like an upgrade (which it isn’t, so don’t get any ideas).

This should serve as just another reminder to spend your miles. Don’t hoard. You’ll only get burned.

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A couple readers grumbled via e-mail that yesterday’s post about Singapore Airlines’ improvements to business and first class cabins glossed over the improvements to coach, which most people will actually be flying. In my defense, I was at least discussing scheduled, commercial travel, and not the mega-bling of private jumbo-jets, as was on the front business page of the New York Times yesterday.

So allow me, as a Man of the People, to give economy class its due.

No doubt, Singapore’s economy-class seat is a big step up from the average aircraft seat. In-seat power. A 10.6 inch video screen with on-demand video, computer games, and access to Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice suite. (Bring a USB key, I guess.) Seats are redesigned to offer more room at the knees without actually moving the seats any further apart (32 inches of pitch). Small footrests fold out from the seat in front of you.

I’m not quite sure about the reading lamp (I hope and assume that the overhead lamp remains an option). And the option of a word processor at every seat doesn’t seem like it would be too necessary, if you have in-seat power for a laptop.

Cathay Pacific’s new economy seat appears on its surface to have less sexy features than the Singapore counterpart, but it has the potential to be more comfortable. The seat has a few interesting redesigns, including a hard-shell seatback which prevents the passenger in front of you from leaning back into you. Recline stays within the shell, much like a business class pod. The Cathay literature describes features like active back support. An odd feature: The seatback pocket is moved to the seat itself, behind your calves. This has the potential to be odd or uncomfortable.

But while Singapore is limiting the new seats to their newly-purchased planes, Cathay Pacific is rolling this new seat out across the fleet. We’ll see who “wins.”

Finally, Virgin Atlantic is in the process of redesigning their coach seating. Don’t expect any announcements yet, but the design process and mockups of the seats under discussion are described in detail in this article from Fast Company.

Naturally, any of these improvements would be welcome in the U.S. market.

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Singapore Airlines is rolling out new seats in all three cabins — first, business, and economy. The economy seat improvements are nice, but the premium cabin improvements, especially in business, are game-changing.

The photo above shows the forthcoming seating in business class on a Boeing 777. This isn’t a private jet. It’s a 1-2-1 configuration with 30-inch wide seats, WAY more generous than anything else out there. On other airlines’ comparable aircraft, you’re lucky if you get 2-2-2 seating. (2-3-2 is more common.) And a 30-inch wide seat is a huge leap from the 20 to 22 inches that most business class seats offer.

This isn’t just raising the bar, it’s grabbing the bar and throwing it like a javelin. (I guess that makes the other airlines the equivalent of the track-and-field judge who “caught” a javelin with her foot.)

Part of me wonders (however briefly) who really needs that much width in the seat. It’s nice, sure, but are we all getting that fat and wide that we need 30 inch-wide seat? (Oh, wait, we ARE getting that wide.) The new first class is even wider: 35 inches wide. Practically a meter wide!

The revisions to the Krisworld inflight entertainment system are also impressive, though I’m not sure why it’s necessary to have a word processor and spreadsheet. Won’t people who need to create a spreadsheet be firing up their laptop? And how do you transfer a file from the onboard system to your own system, especially since Boeing’s Connexion isn’t operational after January 1? (And why the heck is it called Krisworld anyway? I’ve never understood that.)

This comes after a slew of business-class news. It’s been a big couple of weeks: Delta announced it was installing flat beds by 2008. Upstart Silverjet made it official and announced it would start flying all-business class Boeing 767s between London-Luton and Newark on January 25, 2007. Similarly, all-biz French newcomer Elysair announced that it was planning to fly between Paris-Orly and Newark beginning in December. And Fortune Magazine ran through their favorite business class seats.

But Singapore’s news blows all that out of the water. Delta going lie-flat by 2008? Puh-leeze. I mean, sure, it’s nice to go lie-flat, and it’s great that Delta is doing it, but Singapore is basically a decade ahead of anyone else. It reminds you how pathetic the premium offerings of U.S.-based carriers really are right now.

Hats off to Singapore. I’m left wondering what this will cost. And if any seats in the improved business class cabin will ever be available for frequent flyer mile redemptions…

Related:
- Singapore Airlines (aff)

Discount intra-European airline SkyEurope is one-upping the Ryanairs and Easyjets of the world by offering tickets at NEGATIVE base fares. They claim to be the first airline to pay the passenger to fly with them.

And indeed, I was able to price out a one-way ticket from London to Bratislava on November 23 with a base fare of -₤1. Taxes and fees come on top of that of course, making it a ₤19.19 one-way ticket, so you’re still paying something for the flight. It’s a marketing gimmick, but still, that’s pretty cheap.

Book by midnight Sunday, October 22.

(Thanks to reader Lar!)
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Last week, returning to the United States, I connected via Munich. It’s a great airport in many respects, much nicer than its rival Frankfurt. Heck, it has its own brewery, AirBräu.

But Munich is a maddening place for one reason: Local airport authorities appear to be making up their own double-secret security policies regarding flights to the United States.

In particular: They’ve created a stricter liquids ban than European or American airport security rules demand.

As in many European airports, flights to the United States get especially zealous security, with extra bonus checkpoints, gates set apart from other flights, and a game of 20 questions before boarding. (New question for me this time was “Are you carrying any electronic items, and when did you last use them?”)

But Munich goes a step further, making things illegal that aren’t illegal elsewhere. Travelers on my flight grumbled that their stick deodorant had been taken away, despite being an opaque solid. But even worse, the perennial bugbear of liquids:

The ban on liquids purchased in the secure area of the airport has already been reversed, making it possible to buy duty free liquor or a bottle of water after security. But not in Munich, if you’re flying to the United States.

When the duty free shop denied my effort to buy a liter of hooch, they told me it’s because of American rules. But that’s not true. It’s not the European rule, either. No details at all on the Munich Airport website. Either the revised rules aren’t trickling down to Bavaria, or, much like in Britain, airport operators are making up the rules as they go along.

I suspect the latter. Consider yourself warned if traveling through Munich.

Related:
- Cavalcade of security news: Fingerprints, liquids, and suspicious looking devices
- Making sense of the new TSA liquids policy
- Liquid ban relaxed in the United States

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While Boeing has thrown in the towel on its satellite-based Connexion inflight internet service, there is a short-lived silver lining on this cloud.

Until the lights are turned off, you can use the service for FREE through the end of the year.

You need to sign up for the service in order to use it. See here.

As reported earlier, Panasonic is considering reviving the service in 2007, but it won’t be immediate or seamless. Milk the free internet while you can, though.

(via inflighthq)

Around the world, the issue of fuel surcharges has been getting a bit of press, and increasingly, its day in court.

In New Zealand, Qantas got nailed with a fine for false advertising, thanks to 122 convictions of “not disclosing the full cost of a fare, or imposing extra charges such as a fuel surcharge which should have been included in the price.” Air New Zealand was already convicted of similar charges months ago.

In Germany, on the other hand, consumer protection groups lost a battle. The discount airline Hapagfly (part of the TUI travel conglomerate) was found not guilty of charges fundamentally similar to the Qantas case in New Zealand. (Link is in German… keepin’ it local!) That decision contradicts another German court’s ruling against the carrier LTU which was found guilty of false advertising by virtue of excessively small print in newspaper advertisements. The Hapagfly case is going to a higher court.

Here’s hoping the tide is turning in favor of more accurate and transparent pricing.

Sure, when you’re traveling, it’s nice to hear a friendly voice on the end of the phone when you’re ripped from jetlagged slumber at an early hour.

So I think that Hyatt has a great idea with their new wake up call service that allows friends and familymembers to record a wake up call for you. Instead of a generic greeting, you get the personalized touch. Nice.

To introduce the service, the hotel chain is offering wake up calls from Christie Brinkley. Christie Brinkley? Billy Joel’s onetime uptown girl? The one whose recent surgeries apparently make her look like she had a somewhat jarring wake up call herself? Isn’t that particular choice of celebrities a tad… retro?