Canadian-British trans-Atlantic discounter Zoom Airlines, which made waves when it started flying from New York to London, has canceled all flights and started bankruptcy proceedings.

Their homepage is yet another airline tombstone, a statement from the CEO that the airline is belly-up. (Technically, it’s two airlines, a British company and a Canadian company. Both are insolvent.)

From their statement:

For customers who have future travel plans involving a Zoom flight for which reservations and payment have been made, you should refer to your credit or debit card company to apply for a refund. We have set out details of other airlines who operate the same or similar routes to those flown with Zoom in the hope that this may assist you in making alternative travel plans to replace the flights that you had booked with Zoom.
[...]
We have been advised that British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are graciously offering special fares to assist Zoom customers that have been displaced by the suspension of our services.

As I write this, there is not yet any information about these special fares on either the British Airways or Virgin Atlantic websites. Note, however, that this sounds like replacement tickets, and does not suggest that BA or VS will accept Zoom tickets as-is.

If you are in the middle of an already-started itinerary, call these airlines to see what they can do for you. If your travels haven’t started yet, call your credit card company and seek a refund. Fast. Now. Get on it. Go!

Related:
- Trans-Atlantic low fare competition heating up: Zoom and Ryanair
- Zoom across the Atlantic: Low-cost airline coming London-New York?

Back in April 2008, the Department of Transportation rolled out new rules for bumped passengers. This past week, the New York Times got around to singing the praises of the recently-increased compensation for passengers bumped from overbooked flights. But they miss the bigger point: Getting a bigger payment for being bumped is all well and good, but finding a seat — any seat — on a later flight is getting nearly impossible. And I’m sure the higher payments still inadequately compensate passengers for their trouble.

First, a summary of the good news:

Travelers can now receive up to $400 if they are involuntarily bumped and rebooked on another flight within two hours after their original domestic flight time and within four hours for international. They are eligible for up to $800 in cash if they are not rerouted by then. The final amount depends on the length of the flight and the price paid for the ticket.

Big bucks, right? Almost.

First off: Note the phrase “up to.” The calculus for your compensation isn’t as simple as it sounds. They’ll double the value of the flight segment that you’re bumped from (not the value of the whole ticket), or give you the recently-hiked max value. The new rules (which went live May 18) doubled the caps on compensation, not the total compensation. And with ticket prices having risen significantly, it may not be a big payday.

Note also that this isn’t the same as voluntary denied boarding compensation. That’s when the airline asks for people to willingly surrender their seats in exchange for a voucher or cash, typically a free domestic ticket. See your contract of carriage for that airline’s particular rules for voluntary denied boardings. But beware the fine print: These vouchers tend to have restrictions on which booking class the seats must be in, advance purchase rules, etc. You’re effectively getting a coupon for a free ticket when the airline is having a fare sale.

Anyway, all the compensation for being inconvenienced isn’t worth squat if you can’t actually leave the airport for your destination. Planes are fuller than ever. The odds are good, the next flight is overbooked, too, so escaping that airport is getting harder. Longer and longer waits at airports mean snowballing inconvenience. Does that “doubled” compensation sound adequate anymore?

The one observation in the NYT piece that’s noteworthy is that, as per the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, involuntary denied boardings are increasing. On the one hand, fuller planes mean smaller margins for error, and thus greater overbookings. But the financial incentives have changed with the higher payouts, so one might have expected airlines to overbook fewer passengers, given the higher cost of accommodating them. The fact that denied boardings are rising indicates that the new rules aren’t deterring overselling. The cost of the compensation remains far smaller than the revenue from oversold tickets.

Added bonus: There are reports of airlines redefining what denied boarding actually is, so they don’t have to pay out. Shabby attempt at legal mumbo jumbo, but that’s the reality we’re living in.

Bottom line: Denied boarding is no picnic, especially if you’ve got nonrefundable travel plans at your destination. (Case in point.) Getting paid a couple hundred bucks for your inconvenience won’t necessarily cover your true costs, and no amount of positive media coverage will change that.

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A Ryanair flight from Budapest to Dublin had to make an emergency landing because of a can of leaking soup.

Insert joke about airline food here.

Ok, so this isn’t funny if you’re a passenger with life-threatening allergies to mushrooms, and if you’ve suddenly got mushroom soup dripping onto you from an overhead bin.

Perhaps THIS is the liquid security threat that TSA agents have been protecting us from so diligently.

Westin recently launched the WestinWorkout — whereby you can have a treadmill or spinning machine in your hotel room.

For some, this is a good thing. For me, it’s the antithesis of what I want in a hotel room. I don’t get the appeal of having a large piece of exercise equipment next to your bed. Aesthetically it’s all wrong, especially in a chain that pitches serenity and luxury. Much like I don’t like to sleep at the gym, I don’t like to use exercise machines in the bedroom.

I’ve worked out at hotel gyms, and they’ve never been crowded. It’s hardly a meat market. I guess it’s convenient to not have to take an elevator down a couple floors, but is that really so hard? I’m sure market-testing indicates a market niche here.

I’m reminded of two things. First, a theme in Robert Putnam’s somewhat alarmist book on the “collapse and revival of American community,” Bowling Alone: Activities that were once communal or social activities have become solitary and individual. We can’t even work out in a gym anymore when we’re away from home.

Second, it gives me the opportunity to tell a Bob Costas anecdote. And none of my Bob Costas anecdotes — none — are complimentary. Thankfully the Olympics are over, so I don’t have to see his arrogant mug on my television any longer. Hallelujah!

In my one and only job in the hospitality business, back in the mid-90s, I worked in the offices of a 4-star hotel in Chicago. Costas and other NBC Sports figures were regular guests, typically in town to cover Chicago Bulls games. The sportscasters and the visiting team typically stayed at the same hotel. Coworkers related stories galore about the ego trips that some of these celebrities went on, but it was always the sportscasters, never the athletes, who drew the employees’ ire.

In one of his more minor transgressions (and the reason why I’m mentioning him now), Costas insisted on having exercise equipment trucked up to his room, because he didn’t want to work out at the hotel’s attached health club. The same health club where visiting NBA teams regularly worked out. Good enough for the Seattle Supersonics, but not for Bob.

My favorite story, though: Costas complained to a staffer because the sun was waking him up, shining brightly into his face every morning. The reply: “Were the curtains closed?” (No.) Costas flies off the handle, screaming at the staffer for “questioning him.” He proceeds to insist that housekeeping come up to his room to cover the bedroom windows in his suite with black construction paper. Much to my chagrin, the hotel management agreed to do it.

Bottom line: Now Westin is letting us all be Bob Costas, hiding from public sight while we curl our dumbbells or ride our spinning cycles in the same rooms where we work and rest. Will they take construction-paper requests for windows soon, too?

Would this be a room you’d reserve? Hit the comments.

As has been noted here several times before, several airlines (American, Delta, Virgin America, for starters) are rolling out inflight wi-fi using technology from AirCell. But in each instance, there have been assurances that the option of doing voice-over-IP phone calls, such as Skype, would be blocked. And it is. But, of course, someone has found a workaround.

The workaround is an application called Phweet, which lets you make voice calls to friends who are linked to you on Twitter. Andy Abramson posts the details on his VoIP Watch blog, in which he describes a successful test of the workaround on an American Airlines flight:

I invited Joanna, she replied and once I figured out how to get Phweet to answer (I had to use Safari, not Firefox) Joanna and I were having a lovely conversation while she was on an Aircell flight. I don’t mean a five second hi, hello. I mean, a real conversation, as she held her Lenovo UMPC up to her face. I even heard the announcement from the flight attendants as she was about to land.

Here’s the logic. Flash audio is embedded inside Flash. Unless Aircell wants to block all Flash traffic, this is the way to talk.

Inevitably, other Flash-based systems will emerge, so phone calls won’t be limited to Twitter users.

Enforcing a “no calls” policy will now fall on the shoulders of the flight attendants. I don’t think the odds are good that they’ll be able to maintain that order for long.

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Canadian startup car-sharing company CityFlitz is rolling out $1/day car rentals, with rentals up to one week.

$1.00? Take that, Zipcar!

This isn’t Hertz, to be sure. The service is, at first, limited to the Toronto area. (Vancouver is in their sights.) Vehicles are small (easy to park!), such as Mini Coopers or Smart cars.

The catch? The cars will be covered with ads. You’ll be a driving billboard. And you’ll be expected to drive a minimum of 30km (18.6 miles). But the rental costs you a single loonie.

Friend of the blog Dr. Vino guest-posted about ad-supported rental cars in Paris a year ago. It’s spreading.

You may not want to use the service if you’re picking up a client and taking them to lunch. But for personal use in town, it’s certainly a cheap option.

Unlike, say, airlines that slather their seatback trays or interiors with ads, and yet charge you a hefty airfare, there’s a real discount here for putting up with advertising. And as long as you’re driving, you don’t even have to be subjected to the ads yourself.

Would you drive around in a mobile billboard for a dollar a day? Hit the comments.

The major airlines’ race downhill has shifted into overdrive. United, once an airline that tried to make the customer experience better, is making hypotheticals real. They’re charging for meals on flights to Europe, raising prices for stuff sold on board, and reducing the service offered in some domestic premium classes.

And all the while, they’re blaming oil prices and cynically saying this represents customer preference and expands choice. Could someone remind them that oil is off its highs? Alrighty then.

This comes as no surprise to regular readers of this blog. After all, United was polling some of its customers just two weeks ago to gauge their tolerance for international buy-on-board meals. Now those charges are reality. I guess they interpreted those survey results with impressive speed…

One thing that’s missing from the new pay-to-eat-while-trapped-in-an-aluminum-tube regime is an improvement in quality, which was implied in earlier surveys. You’ll recall that United’s poll included a “restaurant quality meal” as an option. That doesn’t appear to be on offer. Rather, you’ll be asked to pay good money for “fresh and snack box offerings” — read: shelf-stable snack boxes, as you already know them, or hockey-puck sandwiches. No price points are mentioned. Uh oh.

So who among you told United in the poll that you’d happily pay $30 for a meal? Fess up!

This is yet another embarrassment to the once-grand tradition of American aviation. United has become a pathetic, washed-up mess of an airline. Patriotism be damned, I’m a consumer: If United is the primary carrier on an international route I need to fly, I would bend over backwards to fly another airline, preferably a carrier without an American flag on the tail.

The internal United memo announcing the changes, confirmed by reputable sources, is below. Comments inserted.

Catering Changes Provide Value and Options

Cost reduction and revenue generating opportunities continue to be the focus of every division throughout the company. In the wake of high fuel prices and a challenging economic environment, we must continue to examine every aspect of our business and find new ways to improve our day-today operations through efficiencies that still meet our customers’ expectations.

Comment: Value. Choices. And the fuel excuse, again. And I ask you, does charging for crappy food meet your expectations? Browse over to non-US airlines and read about their onboard service. Let me know if your expectations are still being met. Back to the memo…

And we can expect this will continue to drive changes to the way we do business.

Comment: So the worst is yet to come?

Fleet and capacity reductions announced in June have already resulted in significant changes for our division, many of which were implemented in July and August. And there are more changes scheduled for September and October.

These changes are difficult, but necessary, and we do not make them lightly.

However, they enable us to reduce costs and generate additional revenue while preserving a differentiated product for our premium cabin customers both internationally and domestically. Our industry is changing, and in United’s ongoing efforts to offer overall value and competitive fares, we need to tailor our products and services to what the customer values and can choose from accordingly.

Comment: Which services is the customer valuing, or choosing? Choices are being taken away, not added.

The following is a general overview of the upcoming changes. You can expect detailed information in the coming weeks.

Effective Sept. 2

North America United Economy® (UE) -All Markets

• Expanding a la carte snacks for purchase to flights between 760 -1149 miles (approximately 2-3 hours in duration) as a result of successful testing in select markets. Along with the expansion, we’re removing complimentary biscoff and pretzels as data from those tests confirmed that the a la carte offering appeals to our customers and they are willing to pay for snacks of higher value.

Comment: No more Biscoff?? Noooooooooo… the last tasty freebie snack in the American sky, now gone…

• Continuing test of a fresh Buy on Board offering along with the current snack box on flights between 1440 – 2099 miles (approximately 3.5 – 5 hours in duration). Testing limited to ORD-LAX-ORD and DEN-IAD-DEN.

Effective Oct. 1

Increasing Buy on Board Prices

• Shelf-stable items increase from $5 to $6.

• Fresh items increase from $7 to $9.

Comment: Raising prices bothers me little, frankly, if these were already items being assessed a fee. Everything costs more at the supermarket, so why not in the sky. No problems here.

Offering Two-Class Service on North America Three-Class Airplanes

• United First® service remains the same.

• A combined BOB service will be offered in United Business® (UB) and United Economy® (UE).

• Customers in UB will receive complimentary beverages and BOB offering.

• Staffing will be adjusted to FAA minimums.

Comment: This is a real downgrade. Previously, on a 3-class plane traveling domestically, you’d have three classes of service. Not anymore. Now, the business-class seats get coach service, just comped. It’s like the Spirit Airlines “big front seat” model.

And the fact that they are cutting back on the number of flight attendants signals that there won’t be more attentiveness to customers in any cabin. This signals to premium-cabin customers that it’s not all that premium. United seems to think it’s all about the seat, and not the service. And that’s just sad.

Buy on Board Offered Out of IAD to Europe (except KWI)

• Replacing complimentary meals in UE with BOB fresh and snack box offerings.

• Economy staffing breakpoints for all aircraft will be adjusted to current North America BOB staffing guidelines.

Comment: There it is. The meal downgrade. Flights to Europe will be buy-on-board only, effective October 1. Folks on the flight to Kuwait should chow down for the rest of the flying public. Flights to Asia are safe for the time being, too.

Eliminate Second Service in p.s. Market

• Removing the pre-arrival snack service and replacing with a beverage service in response to flight attendant and customer feedback.

All in all, another notch down for the United customer experience. As stated earlier, United is giving its international competitors more and more advantage. No doubt other American carriers will follow suit on some or all of these changes.

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Unlike airlines, where improvements show up in premium classes, while the folks in steerage suffer, hotel chains are making positive changes for customers of their less-expensive brands. This is a great trend, worthy of praise.

Most suburban or roadside hotels are hardly interesting. Switch the sign on the front, and you’ll be hard pressed to tell brands apart. And let’s face it: When you turn off the lights, it’s hard to tell rooms apart. But that’s changing.

Hyatt Place was an early entrant, converting the mid-range Amerisuites brand to a more chic and luxurious space. (Early kinks were still being worked out when I experienced it.)

Starwood have rolled out two new mid-range brands, Element and Aloft, which are each trying to bring a little style to the ‘burbs. (Chris Elliott stayed at an Aloft, and offers his thumbs-up here. Rob Lovitt compares the two brands here.)

But those brands are not the bread-and-butter of the American interstate system. Motel 6 and Microtel doing upgrades, to “ncrease their coolness and give guests more functionality—without raising prices”? Now we’re talkin’.

The photo shows a sample room for Motel 6. Markedly different from the Motel 6 I’ve ever experienced (though it’s admittedly been several years since I’ve had the pleasure…)

Room upgrades are sometimes subtle, such as converting from boxspring to platform beds, while others are more striking, such as replacing old carpet with hardwood or laminate floors. (Stylish, but footsteps will resound below… ask for the top floor!)

The real challenge to these brands is keeping the price down. Flat-screen panel TV’s have dropped in price, but they’re still not free. With costs of just about everything going up, I’ll be surprised if the promise to not raise prices holds true.

But it’s nice to see the lower-tier brands thinking about the customer experience in ways beyond price and location.

While we’re at it, talking about renovations, can I put in a request for good sound insulation and quieter doors?…

Downgraded: Uses of college budgets
I know that baggage fees suck, but is refunding students who fly back to school their $15 or $25 baggage fees really the best use of college funds?

Downgraded: “Fakeproof” passports
I love stories like this: British authorities touted the safety and security of their “e-passport,” effectively a passport with an embedded radio-frequency chip. Hacker-proof, they claimed. It was cracked, cloned, and altered within minutes. Minutes. Not even hours, much less days, or weeks. Minutes. The computer researcher proved his point by changing the data to make the passport appear to be Osama bin Laden’s, complete with passport photo. Just awesome. (Recall that, as posted a couple years ago, the easiest way to destroy the chip inside your passport, if you’re wary of RFID scanners stealing your personal information, is with a hammer.)

Downgraded: American Airlines upgrades
A downgraded upgrade? Indeed. American recently rolled out copayment fees for many of its upgrade awards. See the changes on the award chart here. More evidence of the devaluation of miles, if you needed a reminder.

Upgraded: European booking war hilarity
Britain’s Thomson Holidays, part of the TUI Group, came under heat for offering vacation rentals in Greece or Turkey for £14 a week. At £2 a night, that’s some cheap sleeps. Why was this problematic? Competitors complained that Thomson was changing customer expectations, causing travelers to hold out and wait for the rock-bottom room rate, instead of booking early. Sounds like crybaby talk to me.

Upgraded: Alliance dalliance
It’s not really a surprise, given the urge to merge that’s rampant in aviation today, but American Airlines, British Airways, and Iberia are looking to link up. They’re already alliance partners within Oneworld, and this isn’t a merger (yet), but the three airlines are trying to get antitrust immunity, so they can collude and set fares together. There’s really no benefit to consumers in this, especially if you fly between London and the United States. AA and BA dominate those routes, and the companies want to expand their price-setting power.

Upgraded: Google Maps’ sense of humor
Remember how Google Maps gave directions from the U.S. to Europe which included the instruction to swim across the Atlantic? Those jokesters recently did it again, suggesting you kayak across the Pacific Ocean. (They took it down, alas.)

Upgraded: Your chance to speak your mind on aircraft interiors
Friend of the blog Addison Schonland is doing some market research on aircraft interiors, and what you want to see inside those aluminum tubes. Take his poll, which will hopefully filter through to airline designers and execs attending the Aircraft Interiors Expo show next month.

Upgraded: Stormy weather
Priceline is once again rolling out a cute promotion, which promises to pay the cost of your vacation package if your trip is rained out, through November 16, 2008. The “Sunshine Guarantee” kicks in if a half inch of measured rainfall is present on HALF of the days of your trip. That’s a lot of rain, so don’t count on any payout. Kerala monsoon holiday, anyone?

Thousands of travelers opened their hotel room doors this morning to find a USA Today headline announcing that fliers who had failed to show identification at TSA checkpoints at US airports found themselves on a TSA “list” – “a database of people who violated security laws or were questioned for suspicious behavior.”

The TSA began storing the information in late June, tracking many people who said they had forgotten their driver’s license or passport at home. The database has 16,500 records of such people and is open to law enforcement agencies, according to the TSA.

Asked about the program, TSA chief Kip Hawley told USA TODAY in an interview Tuesday that the information helps track potential terrorists who may be “probing the system” by trying to get though checkpoints at various airports.

Subsequently, TSA Director Kip Hawley announced that any such tracking would cease. But the fact that this was even a possibility is cause for concern, and damages the TSA’s credibility even more.

But wait: The TSA’s own blog goes one further, denouncing the USA Today report and its conclusions:

An August 13 USA Today article overstated the Transportation Security Administration’s interest in passengers who come to airport checkpoints without identification but cooperate in establishing their identity. The story gives the public the impression they might be put on a “list” if they forget their ID. That is false.

Passengers whose identity is confirmed will not be added to any watch list or face additional scrutiny during future checkpoint visits.

Alrighty then. But how are identities “established” when you don’t have identification, either out of principle or because you lost your wallet? You used to be able to simply submit to supplemental screening and be done with it. In fact, that was confirmed in writing by the TSA in a 2007 letter to Senator John Warner. But that’s no longer the case. Wired’s Threat Level has the skinny:

Now, those who left their license at home or had it stolen have to answer a series of questions relayed to the screener by employees in TSA’s operations center in Virginia, where employees have access to databases of public records, including those compiled by data giant Lexis Nexis.

The idea is for screeners to know that the person holding a boarding pass in the name of Buster Brown, actually is that person. For travellers without ID, they better hope that the notoriously inaccurate private dossiers about them are correct.

The process of comparing answers to public records already caused a flare-up after one traveler was asked whether he was registered as a Democrat or a Republican, which TSA spokesman Christopher White called a “day one mistake,” where a TSA employee looked at the available public records and asked a question off of the information in the files compiled by Lexis Nexis and others.

Another traveler recently reported that officials looked at the tax returns she was carrying with her, that the screeners had the Ohio DMV pull up her photo and that she was asked questions about her family, according to a story from the Lawrence Journal World.

The DMV photo detail struck TSA’s White as odd, saying that he didn’t believe the TSA had access to that data and that there were “much less invasive ways to verify identification.”

Even if the DMV photo anecdotes were false — and we have no real reason to believe they aren’t true — the fact that you’re now required to answer 20 questions about your personal life is disturbing. What does this have to do with airplane safety, exactly?

The TSA has yet to provide an adequate explanation for how checking identification actually enhances security. Yes, there are some bad people who want to blow up planes. But if you actually search them before letting them onboard, then they should be able to walk into the airport carrying a Mickey Mouse Club membership card and a smile and that should be that. Cockpit doors are locked, pilots have guns, and passengers aren’t about to take crap in the sky. But you’ll never get a straight answer out of TSA for why ID checks are necessary for domestic travelers. Instead, this is what you’ll get:

When it comes to security, identity matters. Positively identifying passengers is a critical tool in TSA’s multi-layered approach to security and one that has been bolstered significantly during the past 18 months. On June 21 enhanced identification requirements went into effect and passengers now have to be positively identified before proceeding past the checkpoint. This makes sense because our law enforcement and intelligence partners go to great lengths to identify people planning attacks on aircraft. It is our obligation to stop them once they have been identified.

Bolstered significantly during the past 18 months, how? Calling something critical doesn’t make it so. Evidence does. What evidence do we have that keeping individuals — who would presumably have passed security screening — off planes has increased security?

Some have even argued that identifying potential baddies on the no-fly list is counterproductive — that doing so makes clear to the potential perpetrators that the feds are onto their scheme. Better to let them fly, by that logic, and keep up the surveillance.

Either way, the system is broken. TSA uses the fearmongering language of “security” to justify intrusions into our personal lives, and then cries foul when they get called on it. I hope and pray that Inauguration Day 2009 will lead to changes.

Related:
- Security update: Shorter no-fly lists; air cargo won’t be screened, “for your safety”
- Your laptop is a suitcase: How the U.S. government is searching computers, phones, and other electronics at the border
- A handy guide for luggage inspectors
- TSA wants to know who’s flying 72 hours beforehand
- Your shoes remain a threat to security
- Would you pay a fee to reserve a time to pass through airport security?
- Dangerous shirts see their day in court
- The TSA: New uniforms, new rules!

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