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Reader Michelle sends in an e-mail she received from Expedia, in which she’s encouraged to pack her bags and depart frigid New York for warmer climes. Such as:

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Chicago??!

That’s some solid marketing right there. Maybe if this were sent as a fare alert to customers in Nome, Alaska. But New York?

Let’s take a quick peek at weather.com and see where things stand in Chicago right now. Hmm…

At least it’s sunny!

Downgraded: Boeing’s onboard computers
The Boeing 787, which has yet to actually fly, has been declared susceptible to hacking by passengers, because the planned inflight internet computers are “also connected to the plane’s control, navigation and communication systems.” Great. Boeing promises to fix the security gaps before the plane actually alights.

Upgraded, mostly: British carry-on luggage rules
After the alleged liquid bombing plot, British authorities limited carry-on luggage severely. Now, things are starting to get back to normal. Most — but not all — British airports allow two carry-on bags again. If flying to London, Heathrow and Stansted all two bags. Gatwick and Luton allow one. The BBC has the list.

Upgraded: The Evil Eye
Better not look too shifty and suspicious at airport security. The increased use of behaviorial profiling, known as SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique), hopes to capture more genuine baddies and let the innocents pass through security unharmed. The problem, of course, is that you might just set off someone’s hackles unintentionally. Is it working? “Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.” That’s 1% accuracy, folks. Nothing to be too proud of, yet. But it beats frisking nuns.

Downgraded: The Concorde
Upgraded: Tort law
Allstate Insurance has to pay out nearly a million dollars to a homeowner whose home was damaged five years ago by a low-flying Air France Concorde.

Downgraded: Airline blankets
Mmm… airline blankets… Reader J opines on his new blog about the fact that United doesn’t clean their blankets between flights. Yuck, indeed. Not to be an overly jaded buzzkiller, but that’s nothing new. Ditto for the pillows. Look for the plastic-wrapped blankets for maximum freshness. The pillows? Good luck.

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This was on “Mythbusters” the other night, but I couldn’t find a clip in English. So, here it is dubbed into Portuguese, instead. Why the heck not.

If you’re impatient, the final minute of the video has the payoff.

(If you’re reading this via the feed and can’t see the video, try clicking here.)

Reminds me of Maho Beach in St. Martin, located right at the end of the runway. Below you’ll see the photo I took of the awesome warning sign located just outside the SXM airport fence.

Downgraded: Monkey life-chances
I really can’t add more than this fine opening sentence: “A small monkey stashed in a man’s hat during a flight to New York has died, but federal health authorities don’t know why.”

Upgraded: Vengeful idiots
A passenger who missed his Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Hartford decided to tell the airline that a bomb was on board. How nice. After an emergency landing in Omaha, no bomb was found on board flight 1018. If ever anyone deserved to be put on the no-fly list, it’s this guy. Class act.

Downgraded: Skybus
Many airlines cancel flights due to mechanical issues, but when you don’t have a lot of planes to begin with, the effects are multiplied. No-frills upstart Skybus canceled 18 flights over two days, when two of its planes were grounded. 1000 people were affected.

Downgraded: United
United canceled hundreds of flights, mostly out of O’Hare, this past week, blaming the weather. The only problem is that the weather wasn’t the problem. According to the pilots’ union and media reports, it’s short-staffing. Other airlines weren’t hit the same way, on similar routes, so it’s fair to question the company’s weather-related excuses. For those travelers who were affected, though, this is one of those instances where your rights vary, depending on the reason for the delay. If it was staffing, then United should have rebooked passengers on other airlines (Rule 240). But if the airline can blame the weather, then passengers are out of luck. So guess which one the company is blaming?

Bonus: 180 passengers got evacuated after a United 757 got stuck in the mud when it made a wrong turn in Kansas City.

Upgraded: Malls, pretending to be airports
This past week, I visited the Natick Mall in Massachusetts, where I stopped in at the American Express Cardmembers’ Lounge. I had heard of these mall lounges before, but it was my first time seeing it live and in color. Sure enough, it’s like a medium-sized airport lounge, with free cofee drinks, snacks, magazines, internet access, and a phone charging station. But unlike airports, this lounge has free gift wrapping services. A nice complimentary perk for Amex cardholders, even those who aren’t paying annual fees. Unfortunately, the lounges close on December 31. I truly wonder what it ended costing Amex to run this thing.

Upgraded: The IRS
People apparently would rather pay their taxes than submit to airport security. The TSA ranked lower than the IRS in a satisfaction survey. (FEMA ranked even lower, after the Hurricane Katrina fiasco.)

Upgraded: The Dangers of Pie
Add another reason why the TSA isn’t winning the popularity contests. Once again, this holiday season, people transporting pies were given a hard time at airport security checkpoints. This happened before, and TSA Director Kip Hawley declared that pie was not a liquid. But apparently, it could still be a plastic explosive. I give up. (Thanks, Jess!)

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File this under PR that works, because it makes me laugh… FareCompare has decided to send a semi-crotchety member of its staff to every state in the continental U.S., dressed in a Santa suit. It’s a simultaneous homage to Christmas, a testament to mileage-running, and a test of their site’s low-fare search capabilities.

The travels and travails of Grumpy Santa, who gets to spend all day in planes for close to two weeks, are being tracked at FareCompare’s Santa site. I hope he’s on the clock while he’s doing this. And that he gets to keep the miles.

I joked to FareCompare CEO (and blogger) Rick Seaney that Richard Nixon had tried this once before, when he campaigned for president in 1960. He just didn’t care about saving money on airfare at the time. (For the political junkies out there: Nixon promised to visit all fifty states when he accepted the Republican nomination. He lost to Kennedy, and pundits have argued ever since that Nixon spent time flying to out-of-the-way places, just to cross off a state from his 50-state strategy, rather than campaigning in tossup states where his presence might have made a difference.)

So in the spirit of the other season we’re in — presidential election season — I requested a photo of FareCompare’s Grumpy Santa giving the Nixon “victory” farewell from the top of the air stairs. Ask for photo, get video. How’s THAT for service!

(Reading this in a feed reader? Click here to view the original post with video.)

A bizarre little video snippet from the heart of YouTube: A train cruises through the center of a Bangkok street market. The last few seconds are surreal.

Gives new meaning to drive-through…

How to add injury to insult: Five United Airlines employees at O’Hare Airport, who were working on the Thanksgiving holiday, seemingly got food poisoning from the airline-sponsored turkey dinner.

The likely culprit? Turkey that didn’t “smell quite right.”

(The airline-food joke is just too easy. It’s just sitting there. You’re thinking it, I know.)

On the bright side, perhaps the employees will get worker’s comp as well as overtime. Whoo.

It was a well-meant gesture on the company’s part, and an effort to mend fences with a thoroughly disgruntled group of employees. Well-played.

Despite their nausea, three of the five nauseous employees returned to work. Something tells me they weren’t picking at the leftovers in the staff lounge later that day.

(Thanks to reader J!)

Yes, I’m asleep, but yes I am happy to see you
The spectre of naked sleepwalking businessmen is haunting Europe. UK-based Travelodge reports a seven-fold increase in the number of cases of sleepwalkers, usually male, often in the buff. It’s become so much of a problem, the hotel chain has started issuing pamphlets to franchisees, giving guidance on how to handle a sleepwalker. “Have towels ready” in case of embarrassing nudity. Noted.

Sioux City, Iowa ROX
Sioux City’s three-letter airport code is rather unfortunate: SUX. But after years of objecting to code, and after considering the alternatives offered by the FAA (GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY), the city has decided to embrace the code. Paging Hubwear to create the appropriate t-shirts! (Thanks, Will!)

Meet the buyer of the world’s most expensive ticket
So the Airbus A380 took its first commercial flight, with all seats sold by Singapore Airlines as part of a charity auction. The winning bid for the pair of 1st class suite seats went to the fresh-faced 38-year old Julian Hayward of the UK, who spent roughly US$100,000 for the pair. Ouch. At least it was for a good cause, I guess.

Who knew commuter airlines flew to space?
Rocketplane, one of the companies hoping to bring suborbital space travel to the masses, is redesigning their spaceship. You might not know what weightlessness feels like, but the experience of the flight might seem all too familiar: In lieu of a refitted Learjet (!), they’re creating a new design, which looks astonishingly like a regional jet. I hope the legroom is better.

The movie seemed so nice, why is the guy in the uniform so unfriendly?
Nearly a year ago, the U.S. government commissioned Disney to help revamp the image of the United States as a travel destination. Thanks to the post-9/11 paranoia-driven fingerprinting, slow visa approvals, and the perpetually incomprehensible line “managers” and gruff INS agents at airports across the country, the reputation of flying to (or, heaven forbid, transiting through) the U.S. has been in the cellar. Disney’s first visible change: A seven-minute movie, depicting the diversity of American culture. Fine, and good. But until you train the passport checker in a little customer service, you’re still a long way away from people calling the U.S. a friendly place to enter.

For all those who hate regional jets, here’s another reason to dislike them: Your luggage might fall out of the cargo hold. Huh??

Berman’s garment bag—stuffed with University of Notre Dame sweaters, a vintage school jacket, Notre Dame drinking cups and other trinkets—was recovered from a Chicago-area rail yard after it slid out the open cargo door of an airliner that departed from Midway Airport on Sunday morning.
[…]
Meanwhile, the parents of a 9-year-old girl were trying to comfort their daughter over the loss of two newly purchased American Girl dolls that were inside a duffel bag that also fell out of the Delta Connection plane on Sunday. The duffel remained missing on Tuesday. “My little girl is devastated by this loss,” Patrick Telan, a litigation attorney from Orlando, said of his daughter, Abby Ann.

Thankfully, the devastating loss of her dollies wasn’t accompanied by the death of ground-based rail yard workers.

Upgraded: The jurisdiction for Southwest’s Fashion Police
Good to see that the memo that Southwest doesn’t have a dress code made it to every employee. Oh wait… “Southwest Airlines said it will apologize to a passenger who was told he would be removed from a flight if he didn’t change clothes, the second time in recent months the budget carrier has been forced to do so.” The shirt read “Captain Jack Hoff: Master Baiter.” Har har har. Those t-shirt auteurs… such cunning linguists! Well, considering how Southwest “apologized” the last time, we should expect a fare sale with a saucy name soon. But what will they call it? “The ‘No shirt, no shoes, no assigned seating!’ Sale” ?? “The Happy Hands Sale” ?? Speculate in comments.

Downgraded: Urns
The Indianapolis Airport was shut down and evacuated because a funeral urn hadn’t been screened properly and the owner couldn’t be found. Talk about adding insult to injury for the family of the deceased. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened with those newfangled security systems that somehow keep hitting the media but don’t actually show up in widespread use at airports. Or maybe it would happen anyway. This is the TSA we’re talking about, after all.

Upgraded: Olympic fever!
Looking to visit the Olympics in Beijing next summer? Over on Peter Greenberg’s site, Mike Day rounds up the ways to get tickets, get a room, and get around. Don’t forget your asthma medication.

Upgraded: Erosion
A 2002 flood created a new canyon in Texas in just three days. And then it took five years to open it to the public!

Upgraded: Quieter hotels
Longtime readers know that one of my pet travel peeves is the noisy luxury hotel, often courtesy of a crappy door with a giant gap at the bottom, allowing in all the noise from the hall. I’m happy to read that soundproofing materials are selling well as hoteliers build new facilities. Better walls, yay! But no mention of better doors. Nice try, people! The Door Wars are still on!

Upgraded: Bio-air-travel
Air New Zealand, Boeing, and Rolls-Royce engines will test a biofuel-powered 747. If you smell french fries in the wind, look up to see if a jumbo jet is passing by.

Downgraded: Alaska Airlines miles
Alaska Airlines is the latest to cut the lifespan of frequent flyer miles. “Effective April 1, 2008, accounts with no mileage activity for the previous 2 years will become inactive and the miles will be removed from the account. Any mileage earning or award redemption activity on your account will keep it active.” You’ve been warned. (Thanks, Boaz!)

Upgraded: Corporate excuses for illegal activity
Legal news: “The legal dispute between Hawaiian Airlines and Mesa Air Group took an unexpected turn this week when Mesa attorneys told a US Bankruptcy Court in Honolulu that CFO Peter Murnane mistakenly deleted files related to the case as he attempted to purge pornography from his computer.” What is this, the Homer Simpson defense?

Upgraded: The nanny state
Downgraded: Inflight entertainment for anyone over 12
Heath Shuler, Democrat of North Carolina, wants the federal government to regulate inflight movies, which he says have become too violent. I haven’t seen anything too violent on an overhead screen, so I don’t really know what he’s talking about. I have seen some saucy stuff on the in-seat TV’s. If he doesn’t like overhead movies, fly an airline that doesn’t have overhead movies. Like Southwest. But look at the upside: If this bill passes (which I don’t think it will) then the airlines might be incentivized to roll out more in-seat monitors. Maybe? Please? Fingers crossed?

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Even presidents fly coach. When they’re made of wax.

Old Abe flew on the Delta Shuttle from NY to DC to make his way to the Tussaud wax museum, naturally. Tussaud’s paid for the ticket.

But did he earn miles?

More pics here.

(Thanks, Kim!)

(Photo credit: Fair use is made here of a reduced-size crop from a larger image in MSNBC’s photoblog attributed to Stan Honda/AFP - Getty Images)