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What if you could arrive in a distant location and yet be assured that you wouldn’t suffer from miserable jet lag?

Pipe dreaming, perhaps. But it’s encouraging that hotel chains are working to help travelers in getting on the right time zone quickly and comfortably. For example:

[Westin] has partnered with Philips and a group of sleep doctors to create a “concept room” aimed at aiding sleep deprivation and cutting jet-lag recovery time in half. This hotel-room laboratory is currently being tested at the Westin Chicago River North […]

The concept room is equipped with Philips’ ActiViva lamps — revolutionary new blue-light lamps that provide high-quality lighting and directly affect the way people feel by supposedly making them feel more alert, awake and energized. […]

The lights, along with other cutting-edge amenities such as a guided-meditation TV program (it actually walks you through into a sleep experience) and a room-service menu filled with calming snacks such as a banana-milk smoothie, are being tested by Westin through a series of evaluations with travelers who have recently crossed two or more time zones. Window shades are custom blackout models. Other white-noise machines are also in the room. […]There are oscillating fans, calming tea, and [a shower with] a high-intensity light that its manufacturer claims will reset your body clock.

I appreciate the fact that hotels are thinking about this, and not just by offering customers cherry pie or offering jet lag advice like their airline counterparts. But this takes it up a notch. It’s very welcome.

And I kinda want those shower lights for home.

Staying awake until a “normal” time for the local time zone is often a struggle, so travelers need all the help they can get. These innovations are welcome, even if some of them, individually, are corny. (Talking meditation machine, anyone?) Anti-jet-lag features would especially be a great feature at airport hotels — particularly since airport hotels are rarely inspiring spaces.

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We’ve all been there. Running late for a meeting, perhaps stuck in traffic, and you wish you could just fly to your destination. (Skipping the TSA shoe-scanning frisk-a-thon, of course.) But leave it to an overzealous parent to make the dream a reality.

This is parenting in 2008: Your child is late for tennis practice. So you fly your personal plane, land it — on skis, mind you, since this is a northern suburb of Chicago, and the ground is covered in snow — illegally on a golf course, and hope no one notices. Like a modern-day Charles Lindbergh, you heroically fly in, delivering your offspring to an informal practice, scheduled before team tryouts later in the week. Seriously.

A Lake Villa man hopped in his Piper Clipper airplane Saturday, breezed above the congested roads and landed at a golf course across a highway from the tennis club, where skis on the underside of his four-seater glided across the snow-covered fairway.

Police received worried calls about a plane circling twice, then touching down at the Crane’s Landing golf course at the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort. Officials thought they might have a crash, with victims to attend to.

Instead, they found Robert Kadera, 65, and his 14-year-old son trudging through the snow, Prince racket and a bag of tennis balls in hand. They had parked on the 7th fairway, just 20 feet south of the retaining wall for Illinois Highway 22.

At least he stayed out of the sand trap.

Nice piloting, admittedly. Spoiled child, clearly. Obnoxious parent, most definitely.

Who thinks it’s okay to land a plane on someone else’s property — without requesting permission — just so your son can make it to tennis practice? Great lesson to be teaching the kids.

Parachuting in would have been a completely different matter.

(Sidebar: I’ve been on that road in Lincolnshire. There’s a great, classic miniature golf course practically around the corner: Par-King. Highly recommended.)

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For a few years now, there’s been abundant competition for business-class travelers on the trans-Atlantic route, with upstarts carving out all-business class niches to woo passengers away from the major airlines. But until now, there’s been no such movement on the trans-Pacific routes.

But it’s no upstart that’s offering this new service. It’s Singapore Airlines.

They’re converting their ultra-long-haul Airbus 340-500’s to all-business configurations, which means that “Executive Economy” customers are getting the boot. These widebody planes will go from 181 passengers to 100.

Others have already chimed in on the issue. Jared Blank thinks this will be a cash cow. The Cranky Flier is skeptical, calling it a “no-win,” and throwing some barbs at the aircraft for good measure.

Is this a great business move? I don’t know. But my thoughts are this: The supply of business class seats on Singapore Airlines — a truly top-notch airline — just went up big-time. Maybe, just maybe, the frequent flyer seat inventory went up, too. This could be a great opportunity to cash in frequent flyer miles and really get some bang for your proverbial buck.

After all, Newark to Singapore is 9535 nonstop miles, according to the excellent Great Circle Mapper. If ever there’s a flight where you really want to be in business class, it’s this one.

New York bedbugs, beware: The K-9 squad is on the prowl.

A company that employs dogs with keen noses says numerous New York hotels have called on them to sniff out bedbugs that have infested many businesses.

Carl Massicott, head of Advanced K9 Detectives, said his company’s six dogs have been kept busy by a high volume of requests from hotels seeking to rid themselves of bedbugs amidst a citywide infestation…

Alas, they’re not saying where the dogs have been sniffing. Or where they haven’t. But anything to combat New York’s bedbug surge is welcome. (Especially at the rates hotels are charging in NYC these days.)

For the first time, I think I might actually prefer to have had a dog in my hotel room before I move my stuff in.

Video of the Vomit Comet, also known as a Lufthansa Airbus A320 landing in severe crosswinds in Hamburg.

Notice the aircraft’s left engine winglet HITTING THE RUNWAY as pilots attempt to land. Then note the dust as the plane’s wheels seemingly hit the dirt outside the actual runway. Finally they wise up and go around.

Why, oh why, is anyone landing in this sort of weather?!

This particular flight has now hit the front page of CNN, with minimal additional explanation.

Related:
- Video: Airbus A380 landing in fierce crosswinds
- “Lost Lunch” in Short hops — June 2, 2006 — “Lost” edition

The merger insider
Holly Hegeman’s red phone rang, and a trusted insider gave her this update on the United-Continental merger rumors. It’s on.

…the bulk of the existing United Airlines brand will continue to be used internationally, but Continental will take over the domestic operation for the most part. Other details we were told included the fact that there has already been a transition team put together. The deal will be announced after Delta/Northwest goes public. There will initially be a holding company set up to run both airlines. This operation will continue for three-five years. This will allow for a “smoother transition” from the two airlines into one operation.

But what happens if Delta-Northwest doesn’t go through, as it’s now hit a labor-related snag?

The “holding company” concept is one I expected when merger speculation first arose. Much like Air France and KLM operate separately under one company, it looks like the same idea is in the cards for the United-Continental merger, at least to start. But the merger looks like it’s on. Oh well.

Is that “going #3″?
Best opening paragraph in a while:

A newborn baby girl survived an ignoble birth after slipping down the toilet bowl of a moving Indian train onto the tracks when a pregnant woman unexpectedly gave birth while relieving herself on Tuesday.

Bad karma? Or a moral social stand?
Fighting the trend of tipping in American society seems like a losing battle, but the WSJ’s Eric Felten argues against the tip jar at Starbucks. It’s a good read.

Less than 1 cent per mile? No thanks.
I was going to comment that Delta’s new policy that allows you to use SkyMiles to buy a ticket based on the cost of the ticket, rather than the origin and destination, was generally a bad deal, and that it was an other salvo in their devaluation of the mileage currency. But Gary Leff and Tim Winship have already argued this point forcefully, so I’ll let them speak for me. I’ll just nod in agreement.

Misspellings go multinational
My disdain for the name “SimplyWheelz” is not enough to stop the brand from spreading. Hertz’s low-cost car rental subsidiary is expanding beyond Orlando to Alicante and Malaga, Spain, with sales channels targeting British and German tourists.

An old favorite: Fly first class at coach prices
One of this blog’s longstanding favorite subjects, the Y-UP fare, which books into economy but seats you in first class, gets a fresh look from Rick Seaney. The usual caveat applies: Y-UP may be cheaper than walkup regular-economy fares, but they’ll rarely ever beat out a cheapo fare purchased months ago. Nonetheless, it’s always worth a search.

Unscheduled landings stink, but especially internationally
Being diverted to another airport? Never fun. Being stuck on the plane? Never fun. Being diverted, and then stuck on a plane, because you’ve just landed in a different country? Even less fun. Just ask the Qantas passengers who were stuck on the plane during an unscheduled mechanical pit stop in India. (Thanks, Rob!)