It’s not clear if it’s coincidence or providence, but United is “celebrating” by offering a free alcoholic beverage to each passenger in Economy Plus from August 6 to 16.

But don’t let the free drinks distract you. The real issue is the merger going forward, and what that means for customers. And while there are no concrete changes being announced, there are telegraphed changes through the shifts in the management lineup.

While the Continental CEO will be at the helm of the combined firm, the frequent flier program will be managed by a United executive. United execs also take the COO and CIO position. (I just hope that the CIO adopts more of continental.com than united.com…)

So, in all likelihood, the mileage program will look more like MileagePlus than OnePass. Gary Leff has speculated some on the direction that the program will take under the merged airline, and I agree fully with his assessments. Most importantly, during a transition period immediately following merger, the two programs will likely feature the best of both worlds.

Check out Gary’s comments for a glimpse into what will likely happen on the mileage front.

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Wait, what?

I’m hardly a teetotaler, but selling hard liquor in a styrofoam cup to drivers just doesn’t seem appropriate. But here it is:

I’m not sure what’s worse, though: The fact that drunk driving is actively encouraged this way, or the fact that the guy in the video neither called his brand, nor drank the drink he paid for. Amateur.

(If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you might not see the video. Click here to visit the site to view the moving pictures…)

Upgraded: Political mayhem that leads to free travel
The recent political turmoil in Thailand has left travelers wary of visiting, so Air Asia is offering 100,000 free tickets to Thailand from other Asian destinations. Air Asia seems to offer free tickets rather frequently. The drop in Thai tourism isn’t just because of the financial crisis. It’s largely a function of the political struggle between the existing government and the monarchists. (Some decent background on the crisis, which led to airport shutdowns, is here.)

Upgraded: Bugatti rentals
I never knew this: The cars at many ultra-luxury car rental operations (the places that rent out Lamborghinis and Bugattis, not the stuff Hertz has on offer) are loaners from cash-strapped owners. Jalopnik has the primer on renting an uber-luxury car.

Downgraded: Canadian pet mobility
Upgraded: JetBlue pet mobility and frequent flyer miles
Canada’s top airlines — Air Canada and Westjet — aren’t transporting pets during the holiday season. They stopped accepting animals for travel on December 15. The ban runs through January 6 on Westjet, and January 7 on Air Canada. Why? They’re blaming fuller planes and fuller cargo holds. In contrast: JetBlue isn’t just transporting animals, they’re giving their owner bonus miles.

Downgraded: Being a flying bartender
Angling for a lawsuit, anyone? “A husband and wife are suing United Airlines for “negligently” overserving alcohol during a flight from Osaka, Japan, to San Francisco, saying the carrier’s drinks fueled the domestic violence involving the two shortly after their plane landed.” The couple contends they got served wine every twenty minutes. Whom do I have to threaten to sue to get that kind of service on UA?

Upgraded: Car sharing
The car-sharing phenomenon in major cities was launched by small operators. Now that the model has proven itself viable, the big firms are stepping in. Enterprise and Hertz are both entering the space, with Hertz launching in Paris, London, and New York this week. “Connect by Hertz” will be a membership program much like Zipcar, but with far fewer locations (Hertz starts in NYC with 10 sites, vs. Zipcar’s 300). But Parisian entrepreneurs are plotting to be one step ahead: electric short-term mini-rental cars, much like one finds public-use bicycles.

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Last week, TSA Director Kip Hawley briefed a group of travel journalists, and friend-of-the-blog Benet Wilson of AviationWeek asked the Kipster about that pet peeve of mine, restrictions on transporting duty free liquor.

My long-standing take: If it’s deemed safe for purchase behind security lines in one airport, it should be considered safe for transportation to — and through — other airports.

But that’s not the way it works in reality. You might buy booze (or perfume, or anything liquid) in one airport, fly from one city to the next, and have the liquids confiscated when trying to board your next flight. Idiotic. (Though not nearly as idiotic as the limits within the same airport, a la Munich…)

If you think that there’s a solution at hand, you’re wrong.

Hawley said that everyone is looking for a private sector solution where there is an assured supply chain, one way or the other. “If they can find an appropriate supply chain bringing the duty-free goods to the airport and protecting it along the way, we’re open to it,” he said. “But as of today, there’s not a bag that is commonly agreed to that meets all of our standards.”

This is essentially a private sector opportunity to adjust their business model to meet security requirements, said Hawley. “But we won’t spend taxpayer dollars on finding ways to make it easier to buy duty-free liquids,” he warned.

Protecting the duty free goods along the way? Like a Secret Service motorcade? Or an armored car?

Something tells me that the food and drink served up at airport restaurants isn’t subjected to the same demands for protection. But the (hopefully non-explosive) sandwich you buy after security is safe to carry between airports. Double standard.

Sigh. So buyer beware. If you’re changing planes on an international itinerary, you might have trouble bringing duty free liquids into the United States.

Once again, we’re dealing with security theater, not real security. Makes me want to pour a stiff (duty-free) drink.

Related:
- Duty free liquids allowed on board, except when they’re not
- Update: Munich Airport responds to questions about its duty free policy
- Traveling with booze: Policy clarifications and changes
- Duty free liquids soon to be liberated?

Upgraded: JetBlue joining Star Alliance?
German carrier Lufthansa bought a 19% stake in JetBlue, a $300 million investment in the original luxe discount carrier. There’s no talk of merger, or even alliance. Yet. But the companies Lufthansa invests in have the tendency to join Star Alliance.

Upgraded: Star Alliance, again
So JetBlue’s membership is pure speculation. But Star Alliance *did* invite Air India into the alliance for eventual membership. And just yesterday, Air China and Shanghai Airlines officially joined the alliance.

Upgraded: Silverjet, at Maxjet’s expense
Maxjet’s woes, Silverjet’s joy? “Silverjet, which operates all-business-class flights from London to New York and Dubai, said that through Tuesday, the carrier had seen a 20 percent surge in bookings since MAXjet’s announcement.”

Upgraded: Planepooling
With a major treaty to be signed in Lisbon, some EU member states’ prime ministers are flying there together, carpool style, in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint. (Thanks, Dr. Vino!)

Upgraded: Editors’ hateful laziness
Who came up with this headline? “French rude and their hotels smell.” Top shelf editorial work, team!

Downgraded: Traveler’s IQ, and traveler’s brain cells
If you packed a one-liter bottle of vodka in your carry-on, and airport security says you can’t take it onboard, what would you do? If you said, “Open the bottle and chug the entire contents before going through the metal detector,” then you might be the now-hospitalized 64-year old resident of Dresden, Germany who proved he couldn’t hold his liquor at the Nuremberg airport. He should have just checked the booze.

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But the fact that this is a local law, and not a federal one, is absurd. Will we now need a separate contract of carriage for every possible way station on our trips? I’m all for states taking the initiative when the federal government won’t act (think California emissions), but laws like this one or the Chicago bill just indicate how broken the system is, from top to bottom. Those “customer service plans” that the airlines have offered up as a self-regulation alternative haven’t done the job, and Congress hasn’t acted quickly enough to address the systemic problems — air traffic control as well as passenger rights. We’ll see if this lights a fire under the collective asses of our legislative branch.

How to make Amtrak fun again: Free booze!
Drunken passengers are happy passengers. So says Amtrak, which is offering $100 in free drink vouchers for long-haul sleeper car trips. Sponsored in part by “Night Train”?

Virgin America debuts tomorrow
Tomorrow is Virgin America’s first flight. Anyone out there flying them on day one? (or heck, week one?) Hit the comments and tell the tale!

Upgraded: Kayak.com introduces alliance-based search
Aggregator Kayak.com tweaked its search tools ever so slightly, allowing you to sort by alliance (Star, oneworld, Skyteam) and not just by airline. But you can only sort it that way AFTER you’ve the basic search. (You can search preferred airlines up front, so why not alliances? Meh.) Orbitz has allowed alliance search for some time, but this is the first aggregator that I’m aware of that’s doing this.

Upgraded: Hertz’s environmentalist credibility
Last September, Hertz rolled out its “Green Collection” of rental cars and I was thoroughly unimpressed. Buick LaCrosse? Come on. Where were the hybrids? Well, it took nine months, but Hertz finally got around to buying more genuinely eco-friendly vehicles, with a purchase of 3,400 Toyota Priuses (or is that Prii?). That’s more like it.

Upgraded: Wine in coach. Viva jetBlue!
JetBlue is serving up some slightly more interesting wines than usual the usual coach fare. Thanks to a partnership with Best Cellars, the airline is giving their all-economy class passengers a slightly better guzzle. Choosing wine for coach can be challenging, since it has to be a) cheap, b) in tiny ready-for-sale bottles, unlike in premium cabins, and c) pair-able with a wider range of foods. I hadn’t thought about that last one before: After all, the wine in business and first can presumably be paired with the menu (though that’s not always obvious). But in coach, a wine demands “versatility in pairing with a wide assortment of airport meals people bring on planes, including pan pizzas from Pizza Hut and Taco Bell burritos with chicken and mole sauce.” (Taco Bell has a mole sauce? Really?) Either way, good for jetBlue, and good for their wine-imbibing passengers. (Thanks Tyler!)

Downgraded: US Airways right to serve any wine
Unlike jetBlue… US Airways, which got into trouble for selling booze without a license in New Mexico a few months ago, and which has been serving the sauce with a temporary scrip since then, was denied an extension of its license this past week. Tough break. BYOB, anyone?

Upgraded: Marriott; Downgraded: Ian Schrager (or is it the other way around?)
Look, I happen to like Marriott hotels for what they are: Consistent, clean, competent, and overall comfortable spaces to spend the night. (4 C’s!) They usually don’t have too much bling or pizazz, though some of their big-city properties have that 1980s glitz that has an odd appeal to my mid-to-late-30s, graying-gracefully, receding-hairline self. So when I hear that they’re teaming up with Ian Schrager, king of the boutique hotel, to create a new boutique-y brand, I’m skeptical. It seems like a late-to-the-game attempt to create a “W” chain within a chain. If it adds a little funk to the Marriott decor, great. (Bye bye brass fixtures, please!) But it also smacks of desperation. And isn’t Ian Schrager past this? Seems like he’s here to cash in while the cashin’ in is good.

Upgraded: WestJet’s honesty; Downgraded: Little old ladies’ pensions
Canada’s WestJet (hearts) little old ladies. Not because they’re nice grandmas, but because they’re walking piggy banks, and the airline’s got a hammer. Consider this nugget from the airline’s president:

“There would be a little old lady coming up and she’d have a table and she’d have a chair and she’d have six or seven bags and we’d say ‘Yeah, take it on the plane. No problem.’ Now we’re actually going to charge a little bit of money for taking that table and chair and those extra bags on board. And that incremental revenue that we extract from that little old lady is very, very profitable to us. Some 85% goes to the bottom line.”

Good for him, for saying publicly what other airline executives discuss privately. So I guess the business traveler isn’t the company profit center; the rarely-traveled senior citizen is. Bank it.

Upgraded: Amputees and their TSA experience
Got a prosthetic? The TSA wants to make your security checkpoint experience kinder and gentler. Good! On the other hand…

Downgraded: Sippy cups, and TSA cinema verité
A former Secret Service agent reports that she was harassed when she accidentally carried her child’s sippy cup of water through security. Stupid enough, but it gets more absurd: The TSA actually released a silent security tape of the incident, labeled “Mythbusters,” in their own defense. Feel free to view the videos, read the incident report, review the embarrassed mother’s story, and decide for yourself.

Upgraded: Demolition
Let me make myself perfectly clear: I want to help destroy this hotel. I’ve never been to it, but I want to help Spanish hotel chain NH Hoteles wreck the Alcala Hotel in Madrid. The company is holding a contest to see who can take a sledgehammer to the joint. Only 30 lucky few will get to play rockstar-cum-wrecking ball. Let the spirit of Keith Moon guide you.

For those of us in the United States, Monday, May 28 is Memorial Day, commemorating those who died in military service. For many people, it also means picnics, barbeques, and travel, so the media are once again pitching the predictable, dog-bites-man story that the roads will be busy with travelers. What a shocker! But why does Memorial Day fall on a Monday?

The backstory comes to us from Eric Felten’s always-informative spirits column in the Wall Street Journal. Leave it to a boozehound to give us a civics lesson:

Memorial Day wasn’t always on a Monday. Inaugurated shortly after the Civil War, the holiday was originally known as “Decoration Day,” and came to be observed in most states on May 30 of each year. Come the 1950s, NATO started militating for Memorial Day — and a slew of other holidays, including the Fourth of July — to be moved to Monday. This particular NATO, Frank Sullivan noted in a 1955 New York Times Magazine article, was not the defense alliance, but rather the National Association of Travel Organizations, a lobbying group that wanted to boost the number of three-day weekends.

Fantastic! So now we know to not only honor fallen soldiers, but travel agents of yesteryear as well. The three-day weekend is clearly a goal to which all Americans can raise their glass. Perhaps even in Mr. Felten’s recommended cocktail for the holiday: The Tom Collins.

1½ oz gin
Juice of ½ lemon
¼-½ oz simple syrup, or 1-2 tsp. sugar
2-3 oz soda water.
Build on the rocks in a short highball glass (what was once called, appropriately enough, a “Collins glass”). Garnish, if you like, with cherry, and orange or lemon slice.

Enjoy your picnics and barbeques, and cheers!

Thanks Dr. Vino!

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“Hey, they have chairs with wheels and here I am using my legs like a sucker!”
– Homer Simpson

Travel better? How about travel like a really lazy slob?

Increasingly, travelers to Vegas are renting scooters designed for the handicapped, even if they themselves are perfectly healthy, or even downright fit. Why?

“It was all the walking,” 27-year-old Simon Lezama said on his red Merits Pioneer 3. Lezama, a trim and fit-looking restaurant manager from Odessa, Texas, rented it on day three of his five-day vacation, “and now I can drink and drive, be responsible and save my feet.” (emphasis added)

Lazy and hooked on the sauce. Nice. Try doing THAT on a Segway!

So not only are these folks lazy, they’re tying one on and then tooling around the sidewalks and casino carpets. Watch for traffic next time you’re in Sin City.

Truly, the bar has been raised. And these people are limbo-ing below it at 5 mph.

Go read the whole thing.

Reader Barbara writes:

I purchased some Bailey’s on a Southwest flight. I got it without a cap in a small bottle. I asked for the cap so I wouldn’t spill it during the flight. The flight attendant grudgingly gave it to me. After I was done, I wanted to take the EMPTY bottle home with me. I showed her it was empty. She required/demanded that I throw it away. No explanation. Is this an FAA regulation, or is Southwest just overly obsessive about alcohol and containers?

Perhaps she really cared about recycling?

I think you’ve got an overzealous flight attendant interpreting “open container” laws in an overly strict fashion. I’m pretty sure there’s no FAA, TSA, ATF, FTC, IMF, or CIA rule banning empty mini-bottles on airplanes. I sure hope not.

Heck, next time, you could always bring your own under-3 ounce mini bottle on board (loaded in a one-quart plastic bag, of course, for security screening). You’re not technically allowed to drink your own alcohol on board a flight in the U.S., but you can argue that the bottle was yours, and you’re keeping it.

But hopefully that was the worst thing to happen on that flight, and you weren’t hitting the sauce to take your mind off the rest of your in-flight experience…

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