Canada not on sale any more
Remember when the US dollar got around $1.50 Canadian? Memories! (It’s around $1.12 as I type.) But it’s about to get more expensive for non-Canadians visiting the country. It has long been possible to get a tax refund at the border, including the GST paid for hotel stays. Effective April 1, 2007, no such refunds will be possible any longer. Bummer. Nice to get it while it lasted, of course, but honestly, the hotel stay tax refund never made sense to me.

US Airways shortens the life of a mile
Most airlines expire your miles after 3 years (you generally reset the clock with a flight, or any other account activity.) US Airways has now cut that time to 18 months. If you’re earning anything in your account, this is moot. But if you rarely earn miles, make sure to credit something small to your US Airways account to keep balances alive. Better yet, spend ‘em!

Maxjet marketers suck up to the boss
I’m all for fare sales. And a $999 roundtrip business class fare from New York to London is great. But to say that it’s in celebration of the CEO’s birthday? Asskissers. (Use code CEOBDAY to get the deal at maxjet.com.)

The 9/11 hijackers are on the no-fly list
Thank goodness they’re on the list now that they’re dead.

World’s best airport security? Sweden!
Rah, rah, Sweden. Biometrics in full effect, while safeguarding privacy.

US and EU reach deal on passenger data
Not much more information out there, other than the fact that a deal of some kind has been reached. But this means that airlines flying between the EU and US won’t be fined. I certainly hope the details don’t remain secret forever, though.

Slower blogging this week
Expect fewer posts this week. I’m at O’Hare as we speak, waiting for this specific plane to board. Happy travels to those on the road.

All-business class startup carrier Maxjet is running another fare sale. The deal:

$999 INCLUDING all taxes and fees for travel between London-Stansted and Washington-Dulles or New York-JFK, in business class. That’s a great deal.

Book before midnight on October 1, 2006 for travel between November 1, 2006 and February 28, 2007.
Use Promo code: ANNV06

Related:
- Another all-business class airline…
- All-biz airlines filling planes… and knife-wielding passengers’ stomachs
- Do we really need ANOTHER all-business class airline to London?
- MaxJet’s fatal flaw?

“Can you hear me? I’m on a plane! A plane!!!”
It’s official: Ryanair is allowing inflight use of mobile phones, with service provided via OnAir. The airline takes a cut of the roaming charge. For the notoriously no-frills airline, does this count as a frill?

Be productive, or be a tourist, in airports
Passing several hours at the airport? Not entering a lounge? Here’s a short guide to time-killing diversions at the busiest airports in the world. (If this had been in European media, I’d wager they’d be listing the Beate Uhse shop at Frankfurt Airport, and providing a list of smoking areas.) What I’d like to see more of at airports: Napping stations like they have in Vancouver.

Private travel gets faster
Lockheed Martin is developing a supersonic private jet that should be able to cross the United States in two hours, without the loud sonic booms that gave the Concorde a bad name. Though the QSST (quiet supersonic transport) will be fast, sales will probably lag microjets, which are rapidly gaining popularity (despite some models lacking a bathroom).

What happens onboard Maxjet stays onboard Maxjet
All-business-class discounter Maxjet is starting a new route: Las Vegas to London-Stansted. But will they offer inflight gambling, as Ryanair has proposed? Who will claim The Loosest Slots in the Sky??

Door Wars: The New York Times’ Joe Sharkey heeds the call
Welcome to the revolution, Joe. Like many travelers, Joe often can’t get enough sleep in hotels. Noise, especially hallway noise, is the enemy. I sympathize. But I’m glad to see that AmericInn is promoting quieter rooms. I’ve never stayed in one of their hotels, but this certainly sounds appealing.

Flying Maxjet or Eos?

Looking to choose the best seats on the plane?

SeatExpert now covers the two all-business class airlines. Seats are color-coded for good, bad, and so-so seating, but annotated comments are yet to come. See here for Eos, and here for Maxjet. (The odd shape of Eos’ seats on the map reflects their use of ottomans and privacy partitions in their seating units.)

Flying Southwest?
Savvy Southwest flyers have been checking in online 24 hours before their flight, to get that boarding pass in group A and assure themselves of early boarding. Many use automated check-in services that guarantee an A pass, since they’re cheap, or even free.

But legitimate “A” holders may be fighting for space with cheaters. Someone posted a method of hacking your boarding pass to change the B or C to an A. It’s astonishingly simple, and it’s frankly an embarrassment to Southwest that their boarding passes are so easily manipulated. (No, you can’t create a boarding pass willy-nilly and fly around the country for free… the barcode still contains the information about you and your itinerary.) A similar trick could be used to change the date and print yourself a boarding pass for security, if you wanted to accompany a friend to the gate. (It won’t let you on a plane.) This latter trick I have no problem with, since you’d just be using the boarding pass to enter security, not cheating your way into better seats.

I wonder how long it will take before the company changes the HTML of the passes to prevent this sort of hack. When 137 people line up with “A” passes, with no one in “B” or “C”? Start the clock. (Via digg, thanks to reader BJ!)

(images: Maxjet, ladygypsy)

Ok, maybe I’m just being lazy, but why reinvent the wheel? Other blogs have some good stuff up today, so I’m riffing off that.

- Jared Blank cuts through American Airlines’ PR for their new business class seats (which I first mentioned (with photo) here). It’s nice that the seat is being upgraded, and all, but Jared rightly takes this sentence from the Boston Globe’s coverage and demolishes it: “Hadden claims American’s new seat offers a combination of flatness, width, and adjustments that can’t be matched by other carriers.” Maybe that statement is true on it’s surface: other carriers can’t match their offerings DOWN to American’s level… But there are plenty of competitors whose business class seat is more horizontal, wider, and with better audio/video — in short, better than AA’s biz class. Nice try, though.

- Remember Ed Hasbrouck’s scuffle with the TSA (mentioned earlier here), when he was detained and had documents removed and photocopied, all because he questioned the legitimacy of a rent-a-cop’s authority? His correspondence with the TSA continues, and he has a followup.

- Gary Leff takes on the conventional wisdom that frequent flyer miles are impossible to redeem, and offers solid advice. Amusingly, his springboard is this past Sunday’s “Cathy” comic strip. Shorter version: Know ALL the flight options, on all possible partner airlines, and use the phone instead of the website. As I’ve said before, the mainstream media loves to beat the drum of how impossible it is to redeem miles. It isn’t always easy, and you don’t always get what you want on the first try, but I agree with Gary: You CAN redeem miles for excellent rewards if you plan ahead, know your options, and remain persistent. The bigger question is why “Cathy” is still being published. Or better yet: Why is Gary reading it!?

- Tricia Holly Davis of the Times of London is miffed at MAXjet, and the MAXexecutives at the corporate MAXoffice can’t be happy with what she wrote. Jared Blank (again!) thinks she went too far in calling the airline to the carpet like this. I disagree somewhat. Sure, mechanical delays happen, but the airline lied (or, more generously, offered completely false information) about their responsibilities to their customers, their agreements with other airlines, and the availability of alternatives. From the CEO down. On old-school airlines, if the carrier cancels or indefinitely delays a flight, you can invoke “rule 240″ to be reaccomodated on another airline at no cost to you. MAXjet’s contract of carriage doesn’t use the regulation-era rule 240 moniker, but it still has a rule 240-esque “failure to operate as scheduled” clause (see bottom p. 19 of the contract – PDF). The airline screwed up, plain and simple, and its customer service was rotten. It deserved the bad press it got. That said, the article *does* go too far in predicting the entire airline will fail, and Davis could have made the piece more of a consumer advocacy article by explaining passengers’ rights more explicitly.

Posh all-business class Eos Airlines did the unthinkable last month: It broke even. Business must be going well: The airline, which flies New York-JFK to London-Stansted in Boeing 757s configured with 48 seats, has been flying at 70% capacity and will add a second daily flight to the schedule in September.

All-biz competitor Maxjet has been showing similarly full planes, but hasn’t made any statements as to profitability. Maxjet, too, is adding flights and leasing more planes.

I still stand by my earlier comments that Maxjet, while providing a great value for a reasonably posh flight, is still not a serious business airline. It’s luxury class for tourists — and that’s terrific! Nothing wrong with that, but it ain’t business.

But let’s put aside gripes about the seat… what’s the food like? Enter AirlineMeals.net, the web’s repository for photos and menus of inflight dining, past and present. It’s an amazing resource, and worth your perusal, much like opening up a time capsule. But it also lets you see what various airlines around the world actually offer in terms of inflight service.

Maxjet’s food looks good. (Virgin Atlantic’s food looks nicer, though Virgin also charges two to three times as much for airfare… but check out that dessert at #117!)

Eos isn’t included in airlinemeals.net yet, but I found the adjacent photo on flickr. And they have real metal knives! (Gasp!) Someone alert the TSA!

(image)