First time here? Check out the site's "greatest hits" or read a random post from the archives. Feel free to ask a question, and consider subscribing to the latest posts via RSS or e-mail. Thanks for visiting!

Flying this weekend? Stuck in a middle seat? If your travels take you through Atlanta, Columbus, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston (both Hobby and IAH), New York-LaGuardia, Phoenix, or Seattle, you are eligible for a free (though not exactly Biggie-sized) $1 gift card from Wendy’s.

The idea is cute, since being in a middle seat stinks. Fattening you up won’t make the return flight any more comfortable, though.

Besides: won’t someone please think of the long-suffering regional-jet passengers? Though they’re not in middle seats, they deserve treats, too… Who will rise to the challenge?

(image)

Consumerist.com editor Ben Popken braved the airport crowds yesterday, witnessing this exchange between a dessert-toting passenger and an agent of the last line of our great nation’s defense:

A man waiting in line asked if it was okay to bring his pie on board.
“That ain’t a liquid,” said the TSA employee.
“Oh, good,” said the man.
We refrained from asking aloud whether cherry pie filling was considered a gel.
“Unless it’s sweet potato,” she said.
“It is,” he said.
“Then I’m gonna have to confiscate it!” said the TSA employee, to general laughter.

I’m not sure what it says about me, the TSA, or the times we live in, but I had to do a double-take, thinking to myself: “This TSA agent didn’t REALLY confiscate a pie because it was a semi-gelatinous sweet potato pie, did they?…” After all, sandwich condiments were once considered threats, so why not pie fillings? (Thankfully, the agent was kidding…)

So rest assured, the War on Liquids has not devolved into a War on Dessert. Carry on.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving gluttony.

(image)

I was going to write a post on improving your travels this Thanksgiving weekend, or during the holiday season more generally, but CondeNast Traveler’s Wendy Perrin has already done most of the heavy lifting and offers six good tips. I’ll add my comments and addenda in italics:

1. Check in online.
Indeed. Check in up to 24 hours in advance. And use this opportunity to pick better seats, if they’re available.

2. Check bags curbside.
If you’ve checked in online, some airlines and airports have dedicated bag check-in areas for passengers who have checked in electronically. In Chicago O’Hare terminal 1, for example, that desk is near the far left end of the terminal (if you’re dropping someone off by car, it’s at the last Terminal 1 entrance door).

3. Label your luggage with your name and address, inside and out.
Indeed, and also put a copy of your itinerary inside the suitcase. If the tag falls off on the outside, they’ll look for identification on the inside. Adding the itinerary helps them know where to look.

4. Follow the TSA rules for carry-on luggage to the letter.
Print the TSA’s rules (PDF) and bring them with you, in case you get into a dispute over whether something in your possession is permitted through security or not. After all, screeners aren’t necessarily consistent in their knowledge of the rules.

5. Don’t wrap gifts. TSA might unwrap them.

6. Wear easily removable shoes.

And here are a few extra:

7. Not all security lines are equally busy. Some airports have less-popular security lines, either in an adjacent (but connected) terminal, or at the far end of a terminal building. A few of these “shortcuts” are listed here. They can shave a few minutes off your airport hassle.

8. If you’re traveling with a laptop, download your airline’s timetable. If you’re making connections, having this information on hand is invaluable for approaching a customer service agent and getting booked onto alternate routings.

9. If you have elite status, and your airport has an elite-access line for security, this is the time to use it. Even if you’re traveling on a different airline than the one you have elite status with, you may be able to use the elite line. (Terminal 2 at Chicago O’Hare is an example of this.) A lot of infrequent travelers are passing through America’s airports this week, and some will forget to take off their belt, remove some coins from their pockets, etc. The elite line has the seasoned veteran flyers, and it’s bound to move faster, even if it’s the same length as the general-admission line.

Safe travels!

(image)

What do you do if you mistakenly sell something for less than you intended? If you’re US Airways, and you sold a gazillion tickets for $1.86 plus tax, as they did last summer, you take your lumps and honor the tickets. If you’re Travelocity, and you sell tickets to Fiji for $50, you honor the tickets. If you’re Alitalia, and you sell business class tickets for $39, you honor the tickets.
But if you’re cruise line Holland America, and you sell a $1399 cabin for $849, you send your customers a bill for the $550 difference. A month later.

For four whole days in September, the company sold the cabins at the lower rate. In October, customers started getting calls, telling them the price they paid wouldn’t be honored.

Passengers are being given the option of paying up or getting a refund, but they’re not sailing at the price they paid for. And this wasn’t even a $2 or $50 rate. $849, while cheap, is still within the realm of possibility. As I’ve argued before, you can’t blame people for taking advantage of low prices, since you can’t always know if a bargain is a sale or an error.

I could even have understood if the company had nixed the offer within a day or two of booking, but they waited an entire month. The passengers have then potentially already paid their credit card bills, and will have certainly made plans for airfare, pre-departure hotels, etc.

This is unacceptable. Complaints should be filed with the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and with the credit card company used to pay for the cruise. If booked through an agency or online travel site, you may have some protection there as well.

But above all, realize that Holland America not only has incompetent revenue management, whose mistake should have been caught more quickly than four days after publication. This company has disdain for their customers.

They obviously don’t want your repeat business. It sounds like they just don’t deserve your business in the first place.

Related:
- When are fare errors too good to be true?
- The morality of fare errors
- Too good to be true, or too good to pass up?

(image)

A few weeks ago, I expressed dissatisfaction at the seemingly arbitrary restriction placed on duty free liquor purchases at Munich Airport. (On October 13, the duty free shop refused to sell me a liter of anything, saying that it wasn’t permitted for flights to the United States.)

I wrote an e-mail to the Munich Airport, asking why this was the case, considering that there was no German or European law that I could find requiring such strict limitations, and since the TSA’s published rule only required duty free purchases to be made “after security,” which this was. (Although, as is common for U.S.-bound flights, there was another redundant — and mind-bogglingly slow — security check at the entrance to the gate area.)

This past Friday, a representative of the Bavarian State Ministry of Commerce, Infrastructure, Transportation, and Technology responded. In German. (I had written to them in English, with the notation that I intended to publish their reply on this blog.)

Luckily I can read German… so here is my translation of the relevant bits:

At the time of your inquiry, only the TSA placed any restrictions on duty-free goods, including the “delivery at gate” procedure. Implementation of such a process was not possible for the shop’s managers. A separate duty free shop solely for the United Airlines and US Airways gates does not exist at the airport.

Since then, the EU-wide regulations governing the transportation of liquids and the purchase of duty-free goods have taken effect. With the implementation of these rules, duty-free goods may once again be purchased.

Click here for the complete reply in the original German (pdf).

I’m sorry, but this still doesn’t explain the intra-European variation between airports. If the TSA’s rules were so clear, then the procedures should have been standard. Other airports were not requiring delivery of liquids to the gate. This sounds like buck-passing by local airport officials or state bureaucrats.

Thankfully, at the end of the day, the standardization of rules across the EU means that such incidents may be less frequent. And you’ve got it in writing, Munich allows duty free purchases for flights to the U.S. That’s good.

But the EU guidelines remain a minimum requirement. Any airport, and any airline, can impose stricter rules regarding carry-on bags. Here’s hoping they don’t.

(image)

Luke Mellor argues that hotels shouldn’t give internet access away for free, since doing so reduces their incentives to actually service the connection. I wholeheartedly disagree.

Unless upscale business hotels want to emulate some European ultra-discount airlines by offering a completely a-la-carte model for the provision of every hotel amenity, they should include such basic provisions as internet in the base room rate. Paying for wi-fi is fine at, say, a Motel 6, but not at, say, a Sheraton. (I know, the irony is that the lower-quality motel is more likely than the luxury hotel to offer the free amenities like phone calls and wi-fi.)

Which is why this following nugget makes me shake my head and mutter “unbelievable.” Shel Holtz recently paid $12.95 for wi-fi access at the Renaissance Toronto Hotel Downtown, only to be bombarded with banner ads that forced themselves onto his screen. He offered a rant on the subject on his blog.

Bad enough. But the real “crime” appears in the followup comments. Not only did these ads appear when Shel fired up the internet in his room. The ads similarly appeared the next day when he ran a wifi connection in the meeting room:

I’m in a meeting room doing a workshop. Here, I pay $25 per day for the wireless connection AND THE SAME DAMN ADS SHOW UP, which means my audience—people who paid to attend the workshop—have to see them. Unbelievable. Is anybody from Marriott paying any attention at all?

Unacceptable. In a business setting, after paying that kind of cash for a single day’s internet access (ridiculously high, by the way), there is no way you should be seeing ads.

I’m even willing to accept ads on a free internet connection, the same way I install NetZero on my laptop as an emergency backup ISP. (I admit, I haven’t used it in years, but it’s there, and I’ll put up with ads for the connection in a pinch.)

The Renaissance in Toronto, part of the Marriott chain, is not alone in this. It’s also not a chain-wide policy. The local franchisee apparently decided to milk a little more revenue out of the megabytes running through the hotel’s wires.

But forcing all paying customers to view ads for online poker while they’re conducting business in a public setting is out of line. Is it time for a Hotel Wi-Fi Hall of Shame Wiki ?

(image)

Upgraded: The five-star hotel, now with seven stars!
Much like video game point inflation, star-rankings are just getting silly. Following the success of their Palazzo Versace hotel on the Australian Gold Coast, the fashion powerhouse is joining forces with Australian developer Sunland Group to create 15 “seven-star” hotels. Seven stars!?! What makes a seven-star hotel better than a five-star, or the equally absurd (but unheard-of, at least to me) six-star hotel? Apparently, live exotic fish in the pool and “specially-cooled sand.”

Downgraded, potentially: Starwood Preferred Guest points
Seven seems to be the magic number for hoteliers today. Gary Leff spreads the rumor that Starwood is planning to add a tier to their point-redemption rules: Category 7. The ultra-expensive resorts (Bora Bora, Maldives, etc.) would likely end up in this top tier, but other hotels might try to bump up their categorization, thereby costing you more points for free-night redemptions.

Downgraded: TripAdvisor’s reputation
The Times of London sends reporters to hotels and restaurants, offering to write positive reviews on TripAdvisor in return for an unspecified payment. Several properties were amenable to the scheme. More widespread, though: Owners writing their own glowing reviews. (The flipside, not mentioned: Owners tagging genuine, but negative reviews as “unhelpful.”) At least they still work on a five-point scale… My tip: I’m more likely to trust detailed reports that include both the good and the bad (no stay is perfect) and user-generated photos.

Downgraded: L.A.’s image
Who will recognize the City of Angels without its palm trees? As they die, they’re being replaced with oaks, etc. Sunset Boulevard, R.I.P.

Downgraded: Travel guides, travelers’ brains
Pimp my vacation! Where would Christina Aguilera par-tay in Avignon? Where is the best place to get rip-roaring, fall-down-the-stairs drunk as you go city-hopping with your Eurail Pass? And where in Italy will you find the “most awesome ancient ruins”? (real quote) MTV and Frommer’s have joined forces to create travel guides that will point readers “to some of the world’s hottest party scenes and outdoor adventures.” Did Beavis and/or Butthead get a travel writing gig?

Downgraded further: Common sense
If you only have a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, instead of the required quart-sized bag, but you only fill it with 2 tiny 3-ounce bottles, which would obviously have fit into the smaller bag, does TSA let you pass through security at Boston’s Logan Airport? No. Go buy a freedom-inducing 1-quart bag from the newsstand for fifty cents, terror-boy!

Downgraded: Brazil
Not much has been heard in the American news media since the horrific mid-air collision that cost 154 people their lives. The American pilots of the surviving Embraer business jet are still being held in Brazil. Joe Sharkey, the New York Times columnist who was actually on board the luckier plane, has been relentlessly following the story on his blog. While lawsuits and the Brazilian government (and media) are pre-emptively assigning blame to the pilots and their use of the radio transponder, Joe argues that Brazil is trying to cover up their own (military-controlled) air traffic control system. Apparently control of the skies is filled with coverage gaps, language trouble, and overworked employees who take time off in large groups — ostensibly for psychotherapy. Let’s just say that my faith in the safety of air travel is Brazil is minimal at best.

(image)

Readers are always invited to send in questions, comments, or, as the case of Neale H. exemplifies, their rants. Neale is one unsatisfied Ryanair customer. His e-mail demonstrates that people don’t just want a cheap fare — sometimes absurdly cheap if you buy far enough in advance — they want to be treated with a modicum of respect.

Neale’s requests: The chance to sit together with his kids, and a pooled-luggage policy that doesn’t charge him the equivalent of $100 for going overweight. His e-mail, below the fold, outlines his objections in all their righteous detail.

Ryanair doesn’t come out smelling too clean after Neale is done with his assault. And he doesn’t even mention their skimpy legroom (photographic proof!). And indeed, it sounds like they don’t want kids onboard. But I disagree that Ryanair therefore appeals to the “lonely.” Hey, I’ve got no offspring, either, but that doesn’t mean I’m lacking affection or a social life…

Think Neale is right on? Think he’s being unreasonable? Sound off in comments. And if you don’t think this could happen in the U.S. of A., I have one word for you: Skybus. Click “Read more” to see Neale’s rant.

(more…)

The self check-in kiosk is already taken for granted by most airline passengers, and increasingly, for better or worse, by hotel guests. Car rental companies have been slow to adopt self-serve machines, though. (In part, this likely has to do with the distribution of keys, though you get around this by simply putting the keys in the ignition in the secured parking lot. Anyway…)

Alamo and National (both belong to the same company, Vanguard) are introducing kiosks nationally, after successful testing in Las Vegas, Dallas, and Jacksonville.

I’m all for it. I can say “no” to collision damage waiver, etc., as quickly and easily to a person as I could to a machine.

While some companies, like Hertz and Alamo, make it easy for their frequent renters to get in and out quickly, the “masses” are generally stuck waiting in line. I remember waiting for over an hour — at midnight! — at the Budget desk at LAX. Awful. I would have gladly used a kiosk.

Perhaps this will improve the companies’ ratings for customer satisfaction. As Chris Elliott points out, the industry essentially gets a grade of “C.” Maybe the kiosks can bump it up to a B-.

US Airways announced an $8 billion cash and stock bid to buy Delta out of bankruptcy. If it goes through, the new company will fly under the Delta banner.

It’s pretty remarkable that US Airways is doing this, since they’re not even finished digesting their previous merger (when America West bought the old US Airways and took over the older rival’s name.)

The merger would mean a 10% cut in capacity (i.e., fewer seats, higher prices, fuller planes) and inevitable job losses in cities served by both airlines. Consumers and employees are likely losers here.

Two questions on my mind:

1) Will the emergent Delta be a member of Star Alliance or SkyTeam? I’d put my money on SkyTeam, given Delta’s size and international presence, compared to US Airways.

2) Will this announced offer lead to more mergers? United+Continental has been talked about for some time, though the latest buzz has United going private. But airlines are making money, for now, and the impetus to merge has faded somewhat. US Airways is striking now, while Delta is still in bankruptcy court, and control of the company rests with creditors.

We’ll see what happens.

(image)

Welcome to the new home of Upgrade: Travel Better. Same blog, different address, more features (coming soon). The old site will no longer be updated.

If you haven’t subscribed to the feed, you’re invited to do so. You also have the option of receiving new posts via e-mail; there is a sign-up option in the “Syndicate” section of the right column.

In some ways, it was hard to leave the old site (and its Google PageRank) behind. All in all, Blogger and Blogspot.com have been generally good to me, and I feel a little bad moving the site away (especially after they named the site a “Blog of Note” a few weeks ago…) But the interface has its limitations, and I’ve been frustrated with repeated site downtime and general reliability.

For those who might care, this new site runs on WordPress and is hosted on BlueHost (affiliate/referral link), which I can recommend as a fantastic bang for the buck.

All the old content will eventually appear here. The posts (including your comments!) are all already here, but the graphics haven’t transferred. All in good time. I’ll be tinkering with layout, updating categories, transferring images, etc., for weeks to come, but the transition is underway. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and welcome (back).

‘Pods on a Plane
Apple announced a deal with United, Delta, Continental, Air France, Emirates, and KLM to link inflight entertainment systems with iPods. “Available starting mid-2007, the connections would power and charge iPods in flight. It would allow travelers to watch and listen to videos and songs of their choice, instead of having to watch airlines’ programming. Instead of using the small iPod screen, passengers will be able to watch TV shows or movies on larger seatback monitors.” No word on whether you’ll be able to download songs in-flight.

Cells on the Seas
All sorts of attention is paid to the possibility of cell phones on airplanes, but no one has expressed horror at the thought of getting calls on a cruise ship. The time has come. “I’m on a ship! A ship!” Yay.

Fondue on a plane?
Molten cheese, is there anything better? Swiss style fondue, Besides being social and delicious, can now earn you miles. Select prepackaged fondue cheese can earn you 500 miles on American Airlines. See here. (Beware the bombastic and loud audio/video that plays upon opening…) Alas, we can’t enjoy fondue at 35,000 feet yet. Via Gary Leff’s View from the Wing.

Delta guarantees you’ll be late
Delta Connection flight 5283 from New York-JFK to Washington National: late 100% of the time in September. Jeez. Book the earlier flight.

Marriott goes electric
Marriott hotels will now let all guests receive their final bills (”e-folios”) via e-mail. Saves trees, and provides an electronic record. As long as the accounting department accepts this for expense reports, then we’re good to go.