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Chris Elliott argues that airlines, hotels, and car rental agencies have gone too far with their kiosks and web-check-in.

Over-automating the travel business is bad news for people, though. Removing the personal touch forces us to work harder when we’re on the road. That’s exasperating, infuriating and sometimes embarrassing. And over the long term, it’s likely to drive us away from these companies that have poured money into technology at the expense of customer service. It’s time these airline, hotel and car rental companies realize there are still some things a machine can’t replace.

I’m not entirely in agreement. Sure, I like the personal touch as much as the next guy, and there’s lost opportunity to interact with our fellow humanity when kiosks are made ubiquitous, but does “removing the personal touch” really “force us to work harder when we’re on the road” ?? If anything, the opposite may sometimes be true.

I’m a big fan of some kiosk transactions (that is, when you can’t do it online…) Simple check-in for flights? Reprinting a boarding pass when I bone-headedly leave my online check-in printouts at my desk? (Like I did last week.) Love the kiosk.

I’m even a fan of the kiosk for the rental car transaction. I just used a kiosk a week ago at National Car Rental. It was quick, simple, and intuitive.

For hotels, I’m less of a booster. I’ve used the kiosk before, and it has spit out crappy rooms next to the elevator or the ice machine. The human may be better here.

But where kiosks aren’t available, and human help is the only option, it’s often far more time-consuming and tedious. Without a kiosk option, you have to wait for everyone in front of you to finish their business before you can conduct yours. The couple who’s never flown before, with the excess baggage? Enjoy your wait! What’s worse, pulling your own boarding pass, or waiting for others to be served?

I know that the travel companies, like banks, only put in the kiosks to cut their own costs. Especially their labor costs. And, especially in light of Monday’s Labor Day holiday, I recognize that there are people who lost their jobs to the machine. But in my opinion, throwing the kiosks out is not the answer, either. I’d argue that segmenting the market into those who need the human touch and those who don’t is good for customers — as long as those who need the human touch have the option.

So I put it to you: What’s your view of the kiosk? Vote in the poll below, or hit the comments with your kiosk tales…

Reader Joanna writes:

Is it worth paying an extra $20 to get an extra 1000 miles? United has a deal where you pay the fee and get bonus miles. My husband and I are hoping to fly to France next year, and we could use the extra miles. What do you think?

$20 for 1000 miles means two cents per mile… that’s about what miles should be worth. That’s my minimum-value target for cashing in miles, though I try for higher. Most folks get a lot less per mile than that, if they cash in their miles at all.

(See here for a breakdown of how miles are valued.)

United’s offer is a discount to their normal “miles-for-sale” offer, so it’s an upgrade from that. But it’s not really a steal.

A year ago, Northwest Airlines started an identical offer. (They called it “supersizing.”)

My advice: Only pay up for this offer if you KNOW you are about to cash in miles for something, and you’re just shy of the “free” ticket. And use it only — only! — as a last ditch effort to bump up the account. Don’t use it to hoard. It’s not always easy to cash in your points, so you don’t want to just pay money willy-nilly to an airline. And if you’re effectively pre-paying for that “free” ticket. For most people, the offer isn’t worth it.

(gratuitous image of Three Mile Island lamp… Three MILE… get it… har har har…)

Upgraded… or is it Downgraded?: Southwest boarding
Southwest Airlines has been test-marketing alternate boarding processes for a few weeks now. (Such as the family-only section test.) Now, in one of the latest tests, they are having passengers line up in the precise order in which they checked in. Not just Group A, B, or C. First person to check in is #1. This makes checking in early all the more important, since getting the last A pass is effectively the same as getting the first B pass. Seems like a major revision of their model (again, it’s only in a market test, not rolled out everywhere.) Reader Eric sent me this photo (I’m not sure of the original source), showing an example of the new lineup procedure. Is this really an improvement?? (Thanks, Eric!)

Downgraded: Ryanair check-in counters
I remember when First Chicago, now part of Chase, started charging a fee whenever bank customers used a real human bank teller. The fee was meant to force customers to use the ATMs. Now, it’s the web: Europe’s WalMart of the sky Ryanair is rolling out a new fee for customers who don’t check in online. Starting September 20, passengers will need to pay £2 or €3 (about US$4) if they check in at the airport. Swank.

Upgraded: The human touch
The counterpoint to the all-automated Ryanair way, perhaps: Scott McCartney has a nice feature on human touches that make the inflight experience more enjoyable. In this case, it’s United pilot Denny Flanagan, who hands out business cards with handwritten notes thanking customers for their business, orders takeout for passengers when there’s a diversion, and phones parents of unaccompanied minors when there’s a flight delay. Wow. Give that man a bonus. (Or maybe just his old pension back.)

Downgraded: Paper tickets
Rest in peace, muchachos. With e-tickets to become the international standard for all air travel on June 1, 2008, the International Air Transport Association placed its last giant order for paper tickets. 16.5 million of them will have to last through next May. Then they’ll be “collector’s items.” Stock up and save?

Reader Mara writes:

My husband and I are planning on flying to Milan from Houston later this fall using US Airways miles, and I’m wondering what the best option for connections would be. The agent tells me we can connect in Philadelphia, or there are Star Alliance flights we can take with Lufthansa, United, or Austrian. We know from reading your site that London Heathrow is bad for connections, and we would love some advice on where to change planes most conveniently. What should we avoid? Unfortunately there’s no Houston to Milan flight we can take! Thanks!

I applaud your strategizing, Mara, and I think you’re well on your way, simply knowing that Heathrow is a place to avoid. (Don’t believe me? Watch the video.)

There’s no nonstop Houston to Milan, so you’re going to be changing planes for this itinerary. So the question is, as you suggest, where to do it.

My general advice for travel to/from the United States: Try to avoid changing planes upon arriving in the US from overseas. You go through passport control and customs at your port of entry, not your final destination, so you have to claim your bags, possibly submit them to search, re-check those bags for your connection, probably change terminals, and hope you’ve left enough time to make the next flight. Not so in most of Europe: Connections are much, much easier in Europe, with customs inspections at your final destination rather than your entry point.

At the same time, the last thing I want to do after an overnight flight is to get onto another plane. Sure, I’ve done it, and sometimes it’s unavoidable, but my preference is always to have the overnight long-haul end at my destination. On overnight flights, try to arrive at your final destination, instead of at a hub requiring a connection.

So, practically, what does this mean for you? On your flight TO Italy, I would make connections in the U.S. and fly over the Atlantic direct to Milan. On the return, I’d make my connection somewhere in Europe and fly the long haul straight to Houston.

A caveat: These itineraries will usually involve different airlines on either end. That could get pricey for cash-money fares, even with codesharing. Try ITA’s search tool to find the best connections, and to get a sense of prices. Kayak.com may be of help, too, for mixed-airline itineraries.

But you said you’re using frequent flyer miles. Good! This is one of the less-celebrated benefits of the “free” ticket: You can mix your itinerary, with one airline going over and a different alliance member coming back. Use that flexibility to your advantage. And note: You won’t be able to view all the options online. You have to call the airline that you have the miles with — in your case, US Airways.

A quick search on arbitrary dates yields a flight from Houston to Philadelphia, and Philadelphia to Milan (all on US Airways). Coming back, consider Lufthansa from Milan to Frankfurt, and continuing from Frankfurt to Houston. Those flights follow the rules I set out, letting you avoid connections in Europe in the morning after your arrival, and skipping the tense fear that you might not make your connecting flight in the US, once you’ve dealt with Homeland Security’s passport control and customs inspections.

Either way you go, good luck, safe travels, and enjoy Milan!

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It was a quiet flight yesterday evening between Hartford and Washington-Dulles, and the seat belt sign was off. I got up to use the restroom, to be shocked when I opened the door to find someone sitting there already. Hey now! But the real shocker came seconds after I returned to my seat: Just as I was starting to buckle up again, our plane was jolted with severe turbulence. And not just jolted — jolted hard. The left wing tilted skyward, with the Boeing 737 at an apparent 45-degree angle. The pilots corrected our angle shortly thereafter and took us to a different altitude with dispatch, but it was a rough moment, even for seasoned travelers.

I was glad not to have been standing in the lavatory at that time, as I had originally planned… Or, perhaps better, the passengers and cleaning crew who would have followed me into there should be glad I wasn’t standing in there…

Grabbing my headphones, I tuned in to channel 9 on the audio system (on United, I’m a sucker for listening to the cockpit communications when I’m not reading or working) to hear what was going on. The first officer came on a few seconds later to inform the tower that we had encountered severe wake turbulence.

The culprit? Sixteen nautical miles ahead, a Virgin Atlantic Airbus A340 was barreling down the Eastern Seaboard on its way to Washington-Dulles, just like us. It took about two minutes for us to cross the same airspace as the Airbus.

Two minutes, I thought? Sixteen nautical miles? Well in excess of the minimum 5 nm separation between planes in our size classes. How could we get so powerfully smacked by turbulence from a plane so far ahead of us?

For an answer, take a look at this 1-minute video, filmed by NASA in the 1970s to test the effects of wake turbulence. A widebody L-1011 passes through a smoke screen, which indicates the waves that follow an aircraft. Note how long it actually takes for the violent swirls to actually appear:

And here’s a 30-second clip of a four-engine military C-5A, creating a lovely vortex. It’s like a vertical hurricane cloud, really impressive in its force:

Seeing that swirl eventually appear, the violent bumps we felt last night make much more sense. Thankfully, it was just a brief shake-up, and, other than surprising a fellow passenger in the lavatory, the only blemish on an otherwise pleasant, on-time flight.

In a little over an hour, my wife and I are traveling on a family trip to attend a wedding. But it occurred to me that, in the course of planning and booking this trip, I ignored just about every rule that I set for myself, and which I recommend to others. Here’s what I did wrong:

1) Flying at the end of the day.
The flights are the last ones of the day heading to our desired destinations (we have a connection). If either of these flights is canceled, we’ll be out of luck.

2) Connecting, instead of flying nonstop.
My wife and I will have the enormous pleasure (groan) of milling about Washington Dulles International Airport this evening, watching the moon buggies cross the airport grounds. Two flights means twice as many opportunities for getting stuck. (Non-stops were available, but at an extortionary premium, or from a distant alternate airport.)

3) Flying at the end of the month.
In this instance, this was impossible to avoid, since the wedding is happening this weekend, and there’s not much we can do about rescheduling other people’s nuptials. But late-in-the-month flights risk cancellation because of pilot shortages. Pilots are only permitted to fly a certain number of hours per month, so if they meet their quotas early on, they’re grounded at the end of the month. The last week of every month gets riskier.

4) Flying in regional jets.
To fly to Dulles, we’ll be sitting in a 50-seat Embraer 145. Not as miserable as the 50-seat Canadair Regional Jet, if you ask me, but no picnic. But putting comfort aside: A 50-seat flight is still more likely to get delayed or cancelled during irregular operations (such as bad weather) because they don’t move as many people around as the Boeings and Airbuses.

Looking for a silver lining? At least 1) we’re not checking bags (though our roll-aboard will be gate-checked on the regional-jet flight, since those RJ’s don’t have overhead bins that amount to anything), 2) we’re earning miles (…which we’ve got in spades), 3) we’re upgraded on the second leg of the trip tonight (a whopping 1-hour flight, but hey, it’s an upgrade), and, most importantly, 4) we’re going to the wedding and celebrating.

Wish us luck.

Foodie tourist traps, highbrow and low
Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed… museum campus? The Big Mac Museum is open for business. Not your speed? How about the uber-bombastic Napa Wine Castle? Sounds like the supersizing of wineries. (Thanks, Dr. Vino!)

“Secrets From the Tower”
Fox News Chicago has a short “tell-all” report featuring a former Chicago O’Hare air traffic controller. My favorite snippet: “ORD controllers still use slips of paper to control traffic.” But take heart, the controllers take delays “as personally as you do.” (Thanks, Steve!)

Delta starts a blog
Corporate blogs are actually remarkably rare in the travel business. (Of the biggies, Bill Marriott has a blog, and Southwest has their blog.) Delta Airlines now joins the fray. Welcome to the blogosphere!

The re-mystification of myths
The TSA keeps trying to play “Mythbusters,” which I’m sure has the folks at the Discovery Channel doing cartwheels of excitement, seeing their brand name attached to the TSA. The problem is, the myths aren’t really busted. Here’s their attempt to refute the ban on liquids. But as Chris Elliott busts the supposedly busted myth, you can’t just say that liquids are dangerous “because we said so.” There are plenty of others who disagree, after all, and who come back with science-based arguments. (More here, for example; or read most anything Bruce Schneier has written in the last six years.) The TSA simply has lost its credibility, and it’ll take more than a few decontextualized videos of stuff going “Boom!” to make me feel water is dangerous. Their mythbusting efforts? Busted.

Down the memory hole
A China Airlines plane recently blew up (no one was injured) but what does the airline do to manage their image? They white out their name and logo from the plane. China Airlines explosion? What China Airlines explosion? Full story and before-and-after photos here.

Upgraded, finally: Lufthansa economy-class entertainment
Lufthansa’s calculus has always seemed to be, “Should we give placate people in economy class with decent in-seat entertainment, or should we liquor them up for free? Let’s go with the liquor!” (Other airlines, say, Virgin Atlantic, have managed to do both, but let’s set that aside…) They’re finally reconsidering the entertainment options, if only on three routes. Still: Thank the heavens. My favorite real-world example of bad Lufthansa inflight video, broadcast on those overhead screens: A decade-old episode of the German crime drama “Derrick,” with an episode title that translated to “Rose on a Dump.” I’m not making this up. (Couldn’t they have shown the episode “Pornocchio” instead?)

Upgraded: Airbus A380 delivery dates
Singapore Airlines, the first airline to take delivery of its Airbus A380 mega-jumbo, is officially taking delivery of the plane on October 15, 2007. The first flight, from Singapore to Sydney, is scheduled for October 25.

Downgraded: The real Virgin America story
Virgin America knows how to play the PR game. No news there. But when the chips are down, they still need to figure out their schedule and customer service. But hey, the entertainment is decent. Mark Johnson of Jaunted flew a PR-free flight with Virgin America last week, and has the full report.

Downgraded: Charlotte security
Upgraded: Charlotte’s ability to bounce back
Charlotte Airport TSA agents let someone through security without screening. Flights delayed, passengers inconvenienced, etc., etc. But one thing I can tell you: The delays weren’t long-lasting. Later that same day, I caught a flight from Charlotte to LaGuardia, and it was all fine.

Downgraded: Hotel bathroom amenities
The China recalls keep rolling in. And now, hotel amenities are due for the seemingly inevitable report of poison. Gilchrist and Soames toothpaste is conveniently flavored with antifreeze. (I’ve seen G&C products, but never their toothpaste. My loss.) Better check that bag or box of mini-soaps, shampoos, etc. that the frequent traveler inevitably has stashed in their home. Toss the ‘paste.

Downgraded: Bellsouth/AT&T
It’s hard to blog without an internet connection. The BellSouth idiots first mistakenly shut down our dial tone but kept the DSL running. We called for service. They came, turned on dial tone, and shut down the DSL. Thanks. Great. Not once — not once — has BellSouth (now merged and rebranded AT&T) gotten one thing right on this phone line on the first try.

Last summer, Raed Jarrar was harassed by jetBlue employees for wearing a shirt with Arabic lettering on the front. In his ACLU-led legal team’s words, here’s what happened:

JetBlue and a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official, identified as “Inspector Harris,” would not let Raed Jarrar board his flight at John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his t-shirt, which read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic script. Harris told Jarrar that it is impermissible to wear an Arabic shirt to an airport and equated it to a “person wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber.’”

Lovely metaphor. Added bonus: Jarrar says that, after he relented and donned an additional shirt, jetBlue tore up his boarding pass, which had him seated near the front, and gave him a new boarding pass to sit at the very back of the plane. How nice of them — and how symbolic.

Jarrar threatened to bring a lawsuit. Consider it brought.

A discrimination lawsuit charges federal officials and JetBlue Airways with racial profiling for refusing to let an Iraqi man board an August 2006 flight at Kennedy International Airport because he wore a T-shirt inscribed with an Arabic phrase.

The incident is part of a discriminatory pattern at U.S. airports since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with officials targeting people perceived to be of Arab descent — particularly those displaying their ethnic background or religious faith, two civil liberties groups said Thursday in filing the lawsuit.

I say go get ‘em, Raed. It’s important to push back against fearmongering hysteria that erodes our civil liberties. He’s doing us all a favor, and representing what the country really stands for, by standing up to this sort of small-minded censorship.

Related:
- Would an anti-Tony Blair shirt get me in trouble in the U.S.?
- Short hops - August 23, 2006 - JetBlue rewards one flyer a free t-shirt (in exchange for his civil liberties)

Best list of posted rules ever.
(I want to know the rest of the rules!)

Christopher Elliott has apparently been reading my mind. I was going to write up a post regarding the stupidest rules in the travel world, the rules that need changing, but he’s beaten me to the punch.

He offers five great ones: 1) the prohibition against changing the name on an air ticket, 2) the rule against bottled water at TSA checkpoints, 3) the ban on throwaway and hidden-city ticketing, 4) rental car early-return surcharges, and 5) hotel resort fees. Go read the whole thing.

All good rules to grumble about. Chris nabbed some of the biggest ones. I’d add a few:

Anything can be blamed on the weather.
Airlines’ contracts of carriage generally offer some compensation if something under their control causes a flight to be canceled. (A maintenance related issue, for example.) But not if it can be blamed on the weather. And airlines have gotten very, very loose with what constitutes a weather delay. But, as a passenger, try getting sympathy if you missed your flight because it was raining hard when you left your home. (Try invoking the words “We had a flat tire” instead.)

Phone charges
If it’s impossible to book a flight on the website, I shouldn’t be charged $10, $15, or $20 “convenience charge” to make that booking over the phone with a live person. Codeshares or partner-airline awards fall into this.

Prices that don’t include all taxes
Don’t quote me the rate of a hotel room. Quote me the rate of that room plus all taxes, fees, convention center reconstruction surcharges, etc. Ditto airlines and rental cars. If a charge is mandatory, tell me what my total price will be.

Retroactive rule changes and expiration dates.
Things like United’s mileage expiration policy, which not only changed the lifespan of miles from 36 to 18 months, but started the expiration clock six months before the rule went live.

There are more, I’m sure. Which rules annoy you most? Hit the comments!

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A short piece in Travel Weekly, the industry trade magazine, points to a potential problem for U.S.-based travelers and consumers:

[Travel industry financial-services bigwig Airlines Reporting Corporation] has been working on an incentive program that would reward travel agencies when corporate travel buyers switch from credit cards to cash when paying for airline tickets.

Under the plan, ARC would pay a rebate to ARC-approved travel agencies and corporate travel departments if they switched air accounts of $1 million or more from credit card to cash payment. The amount of the rebate would be less than the fee the airlines pay to credit card companies.

The plan reflects an ongoing concern among carriers about credit card merchant fees. Airlines see those fees as the next distribution cost that must be tackled, following on travel agent commissions and GDS costs.

Uh oh.

Bottom line: Airlines don’t want you paying with a credit card, since they give a small percentage of each sale to the credit card processing company. Naturally they’d love to keep that money.

Europeans, for example, are already accustomed to this. Take Ryanair, which charges 2.50 euros per flight per passenger if booking with a credit card. That adds up fast. Other airlines have less onerous policies, but there’s still a “convenience fee” added on for using plastic.

But credit cards aren’t just a convenience for shoppers. (And I’m not just talking about earning miles or points.) Credit cards carry important consumer protections that would be lost if airlines and agencies started preferring cash or debit. When there are schedule irregularities or airline bankruptcies, credit card companies can get you your money back. And cards come with insurance coverages that cash never does. (During our honeymoon, my Visa covered all our expenses when a tropical storm delayed our departure by a full day. Try getting that with cash.)

So as a consumer, and as a red-blooded American, I love my plastic. I’m not alone. It may be hard to get Americans to switch to cash, but it sure looks like the airlines are going to try.

Update: The ARC cash “discount” program has been shelved, for now. But the idea remains in circulation, even if this specific proposal didn’t work out at this time. “The airlines’ concerns included technical ones and ‘political issues,’ namely their relationships with credit card companies,” according to TravelWeekly. This is an idea that will come up again. Consider yourself warned.

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As a longtime aficionado of roadside kitsch and a longtime (and now former) resident of Chicago, it is with great sadness that I read that the Spindle, a sculpture consisting of cars stacked on top of each other like a shish-ka-bob, will be torn down, to be replaced by a Walgreens.

A Walgreens? Anyone who’s been to Chicago knows that you can’t spit without hitting a Walgreens. They make Starbucks seem scarce and far-between… and that’s an accomplishment.

The 1989 sculpture was perhaps most prominently featured in the movie “Wayne’s World.” It’s in a shopping center at the corner of Cermak Road and Harlem Ave. in the suburb of Berwyn, if you’re keeping score or want to pay your final respects. It’s a shopping center that incidentally is chock full of late 1980s art. It’s an odd place in its own right. But the Spindle really makes the mall special. (As special as a strip mall can ever be.)

The fact that the sculpture, which features at least three models of car that my family owned at one point or another, will be removed, and likely destroyed, is bad enough. That it will be replaced with a Walgreens is unconscionable.

Save the Berwyn Spindle!

(image: Matthew Kulcsar, via Google Earth)