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Golden Age, Golden Books: Travel back in time through the power of kids’ books
Children’s book protagonist Gordon experiences the magic of 1961 air travel: “Gordon ate steak and baked potatoes and lots of dessert — the things he liked best. ‘Food tastes good when you’re high in the sky,’ he said.” Cut to 2007, and little Gordon is a bitter man who can’t get an upgrade, but insists on calling the flight attendant “stewardess.” (Thanks, Brownlee!)

Sweet spot: Buy tickets in advance, but just not TOO far in advance
FareCompare.com CEO Rick Seaney busts a myth: That buying WAY far in advance is a great way to save money. Rarely true. Instead, the best time to really start shopping is about four months before your flight. One big reason: While most airlines sell tickets up to 11 months in advance, Southwest Airlines only sells tickets 4 to 5 months ahead. And since Southwest has enormous pricing power, their competitors don’t even bother trying to compete.

Your 15 minutes were over 20 minutes ago
Richard Branson never met a camera he didn’t love. Apparently neither did Kyla Ebbert, Southwest’s miniskirt bandit. Branson used Ebbert as a PR prop for Virgin America’s new service to Vegas. Classy. But hey, goofy photos result. Why is Branson dressed like a priest? Oh, screw it. It’s only egging him on.

Ryanair-style airline coming to transatlantic travel
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary plans to start a discount airline that connects Europe and the U.S. It won’t be Ryanair, just a lot like it. Always the opportunist, O’Leary plans to wait until other airlines are in trouble, and then buy their aircraft on the cheap.

Skybus dropping West Coast?
Skybus looks like it might drop its flights to California and Washington, focusing instead on its shorter flights. Maybe that’s a good thing. Do you really want to deal with 29″ of seat pitch for a cross-country flight?

How to cut to the front of the security line
This isn’t advice I want to try out, knowing that the TSA has the habit of compiling dossiers on travelers. But Christopher Soghoian, of fake-boarding-pass generator fame, posts his tip on how to get to the front of the TSA line: Refuse to show ID. Instant supplemental screening (SSSS)! And to those wondering, yes, you can refuse to show ID and still legally fly. Print-and-save (pdf).

Your hard drive is a weapon
Since when are external hard drives a threat to security? Sigh.

Sad news on the airport security front, especially for those who ponied up $99 a year for Clear, the “registered traveler” program that promised faster trips through security and the ability to keep your shoes on. No dice. You’ll still need to remove your shoes and feel the cold terminal floor on the soles of your feet as you shuffle through the metal detector in American airports. Here’s why.

The Transportation Security Administration said yesterday that it had rejected the use of a General Electric shoe-scanning machine that was supposed to provide a central benefit for members of the Clear version of the Registered Traveler program: the ability to pass through security with their shoes on. The machine would instead have scanned the shoes electronically for weapons or explosives.

Funny, these apparently ineffective machines have been in use for months now at Clear-equipped airports, so who knows what horrors the flying public has been exposed to…

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If your kids ask if they can take their remote control toys with them on your next trip through the airport, better tell them to leave the RC’s at home. Why? The TSA, of course.

Airport screeners are giving additional scrutiny to remote-controlled toys because terrorists could use them to trigger explosive devices, the Transportation Security Administration said Monday.

Fantastic. You just KNOW that some overzealous TSA officer is going to cause some kid to weep when he confiscates the toy, and we’ll hear about it all over the news.

You may want to check them (the toys, not the kids) in luggage, as opposed to carrying them on, but who knows how far “scrutiny” will run.

And what does this “scrutiny” involve, anyway? Taking things apart? Cellphones can be used to trigger explosive devices, too, but we’re not scrutinizing or banning THEM.

Skepticism and tut-tutting over inconsistent policy aside, a few observations:

Fewer RC toys in airports is really a good thing
Maybe Kip Hawley just finds radio-control toys annoying. I know I do, when I’m in public places. I’ve seen kids playing with them in airport terminals, which just wasn’t appropriate. In the middle of the B-Concourse at O’Hare, no less. Not every place is your personal play-space, kid. Welcome to the real world. Lose the RC.

If you get busted, stay cool
If you get hassled, and your child’s toy gets taken away, stay calm, take names, be annoyed, but whatever you do, please, PLEASE don’t lose your cool like this woman did. Though not at a TSA checkpoint, she was arrested for disorderly conduct after throwing a fit when she was denied boarding. The Phoenix police put her in cuffs, possibly “manhandled” her, and now she’s dead, seemingly choked to death, though it’s unclear how. It wouldn’t have happened if she had kept her cool.

Leave the big guns at home
Though it might seem appropriate to bring to the airport, don’t bring your human-sized radio-controlled Airbus A380 model through the checkpoint. Now THAT’S a bad-ass radio controlled toy. Watch it fly in the video here.

The TSA is proposing a system that would allow travelers to book a specific time to pass through security checkpoints, much like they would make a reservation to dine at a restaurant. The system is designed to guarantee a short wait and create a “smoother flow.”

I’ll admit, I didn’t see this one coming, especially not from the TSA. But is it really a good idea?

Travelers reserving checkpoint slots probably would have to arrive earlier than usual, perhaps by as little as 20 to 30 minutes, [TSA Director Kip] Hawley said. They also would probably have to pay — either a fee for each reservation or an annual subscription for unlimited reservations at participating airports.

Frequent business travelers would happily show up earlier if they “had a specific time at the checkpoint and weren’t going to have to waste time standing in line,” Hawley said.

Why would a person with a reservation need to be at the airport even earlier than before? If the TSA is giving away off-peak reservations, then those “slots” are already available to those who simply show up earlier. No reservation required.

Further, is it philosophically wrong for the TSA to sell access to security? Until now, the TSA hasn’t gotten into the crowd control business at all: TSA doesn’t control the lines, they’ve argued — just the security checkpoints themselves. The airlines and airports control the lines, which is how elite-security lines are justified. (Rightly, in my view.) That would be changing, with this plan.

Arguably, this is also a shot across the bow of services like Clear, which purport to get people through security faster, or at least get them to the front of the line faster. But for this really to work, and really appeal to frequent travelers, the TSA needs to offer reservations during peak times, with a separate line for people with reservations. I don’t think the TSA’s resources or the airports’ physical space will allow for that. But who knows.

So I wonder if Kip Hawley is right, and business travelers would happily show up earlier at a specified time if they knew they would pass through security more quickly. In theory, it leaves you more time to do work at the gate or in the lounge, but you’re still at the airport longer than otherwise.

And thus the question goes to you:

If you’re willing to pay, how much? Is this a reservation you’d make? Hit the comments!

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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.

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)

TSA agents apparently want more respect from the traveling public, and their white-shirted uniforms are being replaced this fall with more police-like regalia. The blue shirt, the badge… makes it a little harder to mouth off when you see that uniform, eh smart guy?

Beyond the cosmetic change, you’ll also face some changes if you’re traveling through America’s airports. As of this past weekend, you’ll need to pull “large video game consoles and DVD players” out of your carry-ons for separate screening, much as it’s been necessary to pull out your laptop for a while now.

Who travels with their Xbox? I guess some people do.

“Small electronic items, such as cellphones, MP3 players, iPods and portable video game systems do not have to be removed from passenger’s carrying cases.” …but how many frontline TSA agents will be requiring those items to be removed anyway? Who’s making book on that?

The new rules went into effect on Friday without prior warning, and some airlines sent out alerts to their customers.

How is it that the TSA can impose new restrictions with no advance warning, and yet it takes several weeks for long-standing restrictions on lighters to be rescinded? The argument that it takes a while for information to disseminate should apply to both new restrictions and rule revisions, don’t you think? I just don’t get it.

More things to pull out of your luggage generally means slower security lines. It’ll be a few days before I travel again, so in the interim, reports from the field are welcome. Is there a noticeable change on the front lines?

(image via Benet Wilson’s Towers & Tarmacs)

Downgraded: Any last smidgen of credibility for inflight radio interviews
If you’ve ever flipped through the inflight audio dial on American Airlines, you’ll know that there’s a channel (#9) devoted to “interviews.” University of Chicago economist and Freakonomics author Steve Levitt was invited to participate… for the low, low price of $3995.00. I honestly never gave those interviews advertorials much of a listen, but the participants pay-to-play? And for that much?? Wow. ZERO credibility. (Thanks, Dr. Vino!)

Upgraded, possibly: The international airport welcome wagon
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill expanding the “model airport” program to other international ports of entry.

In April, the DHS designated Houston’s Bush International Airport as the first “model” port of entry, adding multilingual signs and informational videos narrated in Spanish, French, German and English to guide arriving travelers through the customs and immigration process. Arriving visitors are also presented with a “Welcome to the U.S.” brochure.

Unclear if general tone of the arrivals halls will feel any less like a police station, what with the fingerprinting and generally gruff attitude of every employee, but here’s hoping it helps.

Downgraded: British Airways’ standing among royal Qataris
Members of Qatar’s royal family were kicked off a British Airways flight for not following safety procedures, when they refused to take their seats. Why wouldn’t they sit? “After boarding, the women complained about the seats they had been allocated because they were next to men they did not know.” Setting aside the culture clash: None of this would have happened if British Airways would actually allow advance seat assignments for passengers on fares lower than the most expensive tickets. (Given their seating concerns, I imagine the royals flew discounted business business class.)

Downgraded: Your privacy (who knew it could be downgraded more?)
Under an expanded security agreement between the US and the EU, gobs and gobs of personal data can and will be shared with governments. If asked, airlines will be required to hand over any information they collect from you. Ask for a king-size bed as part of your package? Homeland Security will know. (Via Consumerist)

Upgraded: TSA Chief Kip Hawley’s internet presence
Downgraded: Logical explanations
Security guru Bruce Schneier is running a multi-part interview with TSA Director Kip Hawley this week. The first part is here. Bruce questions the logic of the 3-ounce liquid restrictions, etc. I’m happy to see Hawley reaching out again, but some of the answers just don’t cut it. For example: “If a TSO finds you or the contents of your bag suspicious, you might get interviewed and/or have your bags more closely examined. If the TSO throws your liquids in the trash, they don’t find you a threat.” Huh? What? Read the whole thing.

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The TSA has ruled that lighters will once again be legal to take onto airplanes, effective August 4. Not Zippo lighters or other “torch” lighters, just “common” lighters.

Amazing. Bottled water is still illegal, but a container containing a flammable liquid is permissible. That’s freedom, baby.

And why the two week delay? Do lighters’ magical terrorist powers somehow expire at midnight on August 3?

Sounds like a big step forward in the expansion plans of all-smoking airline Smintair!

Speaking of Smintair, the tobbaco-laden German/British airline with the absurd claim that its air will be healthier than nonsmoking airlines’, looks like it’s actually making headway. They recently put up a timetable (pdf) that has them flying Dusseldorf to Tokyo and on to Shanghai starting October 28. The countdown is on.

The Smintair website remains one of my favorites, for sheer comedy. Everything from the poorly translated English, to the 1970s porn-esque styling, to nuggets like this line from the employment page: “Allergics to any kind of smoke or aviation specific conditions, militant Anti-Smokers, or people with other social deficiencies are kindly asked to not apply.”

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As a peripatetic wine writer I often get asked the question: can you take wine on a plane? In this day and age of the Global War on Toiletries, the short answer is no.

However, the good folks at Reef sandals may be on their way to helping plane travelers in need of a nip. They have a pair of sandals known as “the dram” (aff) that has a 1.5 ounce reservoir in each sole. Three ounces? That sounds like the TSA magic number for liquids to me!

The only catch is that you would have to have feet small enough so that the sandals fit inside the infamous one-quart plastic bag. Oh, and the fluid would have to be less than 140 proof (as the TSA helpfully elaborates, that includes 150 proof rum and 95% grain alcohol).

Tyler Colman checked wine in the hold and has some tips from his experience.

Downgraded: Odds of seeing pole-dancer art on London-Gatwick approach
First it was the Kentucky Fried Chicken ad featuring a Colonel Sanders image visible from space. Now, a website’s advertisement featuring a giant chalk outline of a poledancing stripper is causing controversy in the UK. The image, in a field below a common approach path for flights to London’s Gatwick Airport, is only visible from the air, but is still causing an affront. It’s likely to be removed soon. But thanks to news reports and posts like this one far more people will see it online than ever would see it from a plane. (Yes, I’m guilty of supporting their marketing machine… I know…)

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.

I’m not sure why this isn’t getting more play, but the TSA is rolling out liquid explosives detection equipment at six airports. But don’t throw away those 1-quart plastic bags just yet. All the existing prohibitions on liquids, and all the procedures for bagging and scanning your 3-ounce liquid containers, are still very much in place.

This hit the news last week, but our inside man at the TSA nudged us out of complacency with this reminder:

On Tuesday (22/05), the TSA announced operational pilot testing at a number of large airports of the technology capable of screening sealed bottled liquids for explosives. The first unit ready for testing is the ICx Technologies Fido PaxPoint. Because the technology has performed well in initial testing, TSA anticipates deploying up to 200 bottled liquid scanners to the nation’s busiest airports by October. The device is currently being used by the U.S. government domestically and overseas, but this is the first time the system is being deployed in an airport environment. Bottled liquid scanners have been or will be piloted at Miami (MIA), Newark Liberty (EWR), Detroit (DTW), Los Angeles (LAX), Las Vegas (LAS) and Boston Logan (BOS).

The handheld ICx scanner can supposedly sense the presence of explosives or components for making an explosive device through glass, plastic, or metal.

I’m a little confused as to why these devices are being deployed, given the other restrictions that already exist on liquids. If 3-ounce bottles are deemed harmless, then a liquid scanner isn’t necessary. Or, if a liquid scanner is in place, then the 3-ounce limit on liquids would no longer be necessary. But why keep both?

Hopefully this test will prove successful and allow the TSA to eventually rescind the 3-ounce rule. I’ll happily offer my liquids for scanning, if that means I can carry a larger container on board.

Boston Logan Airport apparently got the first allocations of the scanners. Has anyone witnessed liquid scans in action? If so, hit the comments! Let’s hear about it.

Related:
- Japan and China introduce liquid-explosive detectors: Why can’t the US?
- Update: TSA compresses 100ml to 3.0 fluid ounces
- Are unlabeled bottles legal through airport security, and how do you deal with agents who make up rules?
- TSA apparently prefers its water in aerosol form

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