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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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It’s been a tough few weeks, so the posting machine has been running a bit slow. Time to clear some of the backlog:

Survivor: Skybus edition
Jaunted’s Mark Johnson played anthropologist in the airline world last week, doing some participant-observation onboard ultra-cheap negative-frills airline Skybus. The whole saga, with videos and pictures, can be found here. Photo above is Mark’s pic of a $9/hour Skybus flight attendant selling goods (on commission). Ah, the ubiquitous Toblerone, official chocolate of 35,000 feet. But ice wine? And those crew uniforms look remarkably like the folks in those hotels.com TV ads…

Bonus: Skybus is adding three cities to their roster. “Hartford/Springfield” — which is really Westover Metropolitan (CEF), 19 miles from Bradley (BDL). “Jacksonville/Daytona Beach” — which is really St. Augustine/St. John’s County (UST), a whopping 42 air miles from Jacksonville (JAX). And San Diego. Yes, it’s really San Diego. One out of three ain’t bad.

At least he didn’t threaten the flight attendants
The TSA reportedly detained director Mike Figgis for five hours at LAX, after he told security screeners that he was in town to “shoot a pilot.” What, LAX employees never heard the television-industry parlance of “pilot”? UPDATE: This never happened. Mike Figgis himself says it’s BS. But it’s a good story, I tells ya.

Arthur Frommer had better watch out
Latest competitor to Fodor’s, Frommer’s, and Lonely Planet? Borat!

Canadian citizenship for Kip Hawley?
Even though the Canadian government has created their own security lists, Canadian airlines are still using American no-fly lists. Will TSA Director Kip Hawley freedom baggies be far off?

I’d rather pay for my mortgage with miles
Gary Leff wants to pay his mortgage by credit card, so he can earn points. And it will soon be possible, via American Express and a small set of lenders, who take a $395 fee up front. Years ago, I checked out a rental apartment that let you use Visa to pay your rent. (I didn’t rent it.) The apartment sucked, but think of the miles I left on the table!

Villa livin’
Wendy Perrin has written a great guide to finding an affordable villa or vacation home. But the prices she mentions are still not ultra-cheap. I’m already a villa convert: In December 2005, my wife and I rented a small beachfront house in Anguilla. The house had its own pool, looked across the strait to the beautiful, mountainous island of St. Martin (or St. Maarten, if you prefer), and cost a little over $200 per night. It had no butler service, and, while comfortable, it wasn’t “luxury,” but it was amazing value.

Spend green to go green?
The city of Denver wants passengers to buy carbon offsets when they fly out of DEN. They’re setting up kiosks that let you buy offsets just like you might buy that Mutual of Omaha travel insurance. At the same time, Republican Congressmen are, perhaps ironically, championing a greater role for the federal government: regulating carbon offsets. Might not be a bad idea. I’m all for supporting the environment, but I’m suspicious of the offset idea. This skeptical op-ed in the Times of London doesn’t help.

Explosive curry
Explosive curry damages a Boeing 747. Say no more.

Boxers = Boeing, briefs = Airbus
Great moments in headline writing: “Hong Kong tycoon buys B787 jet after seeing passenger in underpants.”

Yes, that hamster is happy to see you
Jetlagged? Try popping a Viagra. After all, it works for hamsters!

Downgraded: Presidential security
The Secret Service is overburdened. So they’re bringing in the TSA! If presidential candidates look like they haven’t washed their hair, because their shampoo was confiscated, this will be why. God help us all.

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Was there passport control at the Sea of Tranquility?
Annoyed you have to fill out customs declarations during international travel? Of course, it’s not personal. Even the Apollo 11 astronauts had to do it and had to declare the rocks they collected. It’s like leaving the Petrified Forest National Park. “Mr. Armstrong, did you take any rocks?”

500 free miles
Gary Leff, always on the lookout for a free mileage bonus, tracks down thanksagain.com, which offers 500 United, Continental, or Delta miles for signing up. The gist: Register a credit card and earn miles by shopping at local stores. In my area, it’s all dry cleaners for some reason, but none that I frequent. Is the free 500 miles worth the junkmail bombardment you’re bound to receive? You make the call.

TSA: A day in the life
Aviation Week’s Benet Wilson shadowed a TSA agent for a full day. I’m sure you’re jealous. It’s a worthwhile read.

The lowdown on watchlists
Wired has the backstory on where passenger watch lists (and no-fly lists) came from, how they’re maintained, and more. Well worth a read. A series, in three parts. Part one, part two, and part three.

Inflight cellphone use moves ahead
Air France has announced that their six-month trial of inflight cellphone use begins in July… on a single plane. This isn’t exactly a major rollout. I guess this is a baby step. The baby steps of a screaming, colicky child.

At the other end of the earth, Qantas will run a similar three-month test, but won’t allow voice calls, just SMS and e-mail. Passengers won’t know if their flight is cellphone-enabled until they board. Sounds like a variation on the Australian “mystery flight.”

All lounges, all the time
Seems like everyone is writing about ways of getting into airport lounges lately. There’s Joe Brancatelli’s debut column in the new business glossy Portfolio. The New York Times’ coverage of lounges brushes across the same issue. I’ll join you. Allow me to pimp a “vintage” post of mine which lays out the five ways to get into lounges: How to lounge in airports.

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Your newspaper smells delicious, did you stay at an Omni?
Hotels’ “scent programs” and aromatherapy trends may have just jumped the shark. In a cross-promotional marketers’ fantasy come true, Omni Hotels have started slapping berry-scented stickers advertising Starbucks muffins on copies of USA Today. And the Wall Street Journal is considering adding scents to their advertising pages. Hopefully these odors won’t interfere with the whiff of lemongrass and green tea that’s being pumped into lobby spaces at the chain. What’s next, pay-per-view Smellovision?

Predict the next threat? A TSA-inspired contest
Bruce Schneier is running a contest to conceive of an absurd, fictional terrorist plot that would cause the TSA to start banning yet another product from airports. The more ludicrous the product, yet oddly plausible the threat, the better. Why? “The purpose of this contest is absurd humor, but I hope it also makes a point. Terrorism is a real threat, but we’re not any safer through security measures that require us to correctly guess what the terrorists are going to do next.” Partially-digested food, tooth-fillings, and zippers are front-runners in my book.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car buys Alamo and National
Enterprise is buying Vanguard Car Rental, the parent company of Alamo and National. The combined company would have over a million cars on its lots. Will rentals at Enterprise become more automated, like at Alamo/National? Will Alamo/National start doing the long walkarounds, hard-sells on CDWs, and secretly-negotiable rates?

Wi-fly
After the shutdown of Boeing’s Connexion satellite-based inflight internet service, other companies have been slow to start up service, which was promised nearly a year ago. Scott McCartney checks in with possible providers, and we’re still not there. But it’s coming “early next year.” And rest assured, Skype calls won’t go through. They’ll be blocked, so your fears of cellphone conversations can be kept at bay. Onboard wi-fi — which is already approved for service by both the FCC and FAA — will cost around $10 per day, and packages that link with existing services like T-Mobile HotSpot, Boingo, and iPass will be available. No word on which airlines will be the first to bite.

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Over at Benet Wilson’s blog at Aviation Daily, TSA Director Kip Hawley has a guest post on the subject of security screening of airport employees.

The post itself reads like a barely-relaxed press release, but it’s still good to see a government official coming out and joining the blogosphere like this. Baby steps!

Comments on the post are open. Like a new blogger, perhaps Kip will be hitting F5 repeatedly, hoping to see some new comments on his latest post. Why not head on over, leave a note, and give him something to read?

No allergy medication necessary?
Growing trend in hotel rooms: Hypoallergenic rooms. Sure, fine. Of course, it could be directly canceled out by all the scents that hotels are pumping into their public spaces. Can we maybe get some quietly-closing doors first, please? (Yes, I’m flogging that horse again.)

The key to in-room power
Some European and Asian hotels have the presumably eco-friendly but otherwise irritating habit of requiring a key card to be inserted into a power socket in order to release the flow of electricity. However, you don’t need to use your key card — any card will do. Leave your room and charge your laptop with impunity. (via Gridskipper)

Update: Some readers wrote in, asking for more details or photos. Click here to see an example of the card-locked power sockets at a Hong Kong hotel.

Breakin’ all the rules
The Airbus A380 may have been on its American tour this week, but the FAA has certified only 11 airports nationwide as capable of handling the mega-plane. The airports: Anchorage, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Louisville (cargo only), New York-JFK, Memphis (cargo only), Miami, Ontario (California — cargo only), Orlando, and San Francisco. This means the A380 wouldn’t have been allowed to land at half the airports in the U.S. that it visited this past week. (Note that Chicago O’Hare and Washington Dulles aren’t on that list…)

Transit woes:
The ever-peripatetic Tyler Brûlé gets stuck at Miami Airport and misses his connecting international flight because he’s undergoing a lengthy TSA questioning. Even passengers who aren’t planning to actually enter the United States, and are only transiting, are treated as if they’re entering the country. Frustrating, but largely a function of airport design. Once you’re in the airport, you can easily leave the secure area and enter the country, after all. But the fact that this is the reality of transiting the U.S. makes American ports of entry less and less desirable. Bad for business!

Far stupider: I went through customs and immigration at LAX once on a domestic flight. It’s true! I traveled from Honolulu to Los Angeles, connecting to Newark. Why the passport control? I was flying Air New Zealand HNL-LAX. Domestic flight, but international airline. Idiotic. Almost missed my connection. (Luggage didn’t make it.)

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Upgraded: Poolside chairs
Honestly, this isn’t something I’ve ever struggled with, but at some resorts, pool chairs are at a premium. The result: Squatters. People actually get up crazy early to lay claim to their chairs. Now, hotels are fighting back against the “chair hogs.” Some have a waiting list. At others, you sacrifice your seat if you’re out of your seat for an hour. At the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok, you only have a measly 15 minutes. That seems a bit aggressive. Better not actually swim!

Downgraded: Booze
This just breaks my heart: From October to January, the TSA at Miami Airport confiscated NINE TONS of liquids in containers exceeding 3 ounces. Primarily liquor and perfume. And that’s just at Miami Airport. So much booze, much of it purchased at duty free shops in the Caribbean, sitting in a storage locker, with no one to drink it. This is a national tragedy. I weep. Folks: If you’re arriving in the US and connecting to a domestic flight, you have to put your duty free liquor in the checked luggage. Or simply not buy it. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I know.

Upgraded: No frills hotels
If no-frills flying is your cup of tea, then why not bring the discount airline vibe to your lodging? From the folks who brought you EasyJet and EasyCruise, the EasyHotel concept is expanding. Perhaps we’ll see it go the other direction someday. Motel 6 Airlines, anyone? (Or would that be Air 6?)

Upgraded: Movies on planes
It wasn’t just my impression: Airlines really are putting more unedited movies into the rotation. But it’s not just on the individually-controlled in-seat TVs, it’s hitting the old-school projectors, too. The key snippet, with a quote from United: “Since September, United has loosened its restrictions on what types of movies can be shown on jets equipped with overhead screens, which all passengers can see. When the airline played ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ in the fall, an R movie with some ear-curling rants by Alan Arkin, ‘We got a tremendous amount of positive feedback,’ Kovick said.”

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Great moments in border crossings: Switzerland accidentally invades Liechtenstein
Neutral? Not anymore! 170 Swiss soldiers wandered one mile into Liechtenstein territory when they got lost during military exercises. Getting lost isn’t limited to tourists anymore. Maybe they should have invested in the deluxe Swiss Army Knife with the compass.

Putting the “condom” back into “condominium”?
Hotels and restaurants in the Chinese province of Zhejiang are now required to make condoms available for sale (or for free) or face hefty fines. Sounds like they need to follow the lead of hotels that spice up their minibars with alternative offerings…

Converting public spaces to still-life photos: TouristRemover
There are times when you want to take a photo without the presence of human beings, and the TouristRemover application seems like a handy tool. But don’t overdo it! If you do this to all of your travel photos, you’ll be left with boring, sterile images that look like you’ve been touring the site of a neutron bomb explosion.

Coyote cleared for takeoff, runway 27 left
Two planes trying to land at Chicago O’Hare Airport had to abort because of coyotes on the runways. (Coyotes are perhaps one of the ten plagues that will strike airports. Are locusts next?) In fact, the FAA’s statistics show that, from 1990 to 2005, airplanes in the United States struck a total of 66,392 animals, mostly birds. More “exotic” species include 652 white-tailed deer, 198 coyotes, 14 alligators, 11 cats, and 3 moose.

Will travel for Guinness
Guinness is test-marketing a new beer: Guinness Red. If you’re in the UK, you’ll be able to try it locally. If you’re elsewhere, you’ll need to travel a bit if you want a taste. The list of pubs that will feature the new brew can be found here. (The site requires you to state an age and residency. If you’re not in the UK, lie. If you don’t say you live in the UK, you can’t read their site.) Reports from the field are welcomed here. Please let it be better than “New Coke.”

Behind that luggage scanner stands a human being doing
Gary Leff points to a great, in-depth piece in CondeNast Traveler, in which one of their writers, Barbara S. Peterson, applied for (and got) a job at the TSA. For two months, she worked at the agency, and her (LONG) report, is a great read.

All danger, all the time. Hide the kids!

Dangerous hotel: Hilton closes hotel due to norovirus
The Hilton near Washington Dulles Airport was closed last week due to an outbreak of the norovirus, which infected over 100 people in the hotel. What is this, a cruise ship??

Dangerous flight: Plane aborts takeoff, skids off runway
A Northwest DC-9 went off the runway in Milwaukee after pilots “discontinued takeoff” thanks to an engine problem. No one was hurt. An engine problem? On a Northwest DC-9? A plane that hasn’t been built since 1982, yet is still the workhorse of Northwest’s operation? Unheard of!…

Dangerous flight… for the pilot
A Continental Airlines pilot died in-flight en route to Puerto Vallarta from Houston. The copilot landed the plane at McAllen, Texas.

Dangerous security lines?: Does CLEAR actually hurt security?
Security guru Bruce Schneier has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times. He argues that the registered travel program and its increasingly popular iteration CLEAR actually damage security, because the background check provides a false (and easily exploited) sense of security. Go read.

Dangerous shirts. Again.
Remember the guy who was nearly kicked off a flight from London to Melbourne because of the “George Bush: World’s Number 1 Terrorist” t-shirt he was wearing? Looks like his month in Australia is over, and he decided to wear the same shirt on the flight back. This time, Qantas didn’t let him on board. I still think it’s a pretty silly restriction on the part of the airline, but the guy is clearly looking for publicity.

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Two updates on the airport security front. One good, one bad.

First, the no-fly list is being revised. Downward! While the actual length of the list is a secret, TSA chief “Kip” Hawley told a Congressional oversight committee that the list was to be cut in half. Considering how often you hear complaints about people being on the list by mistake, and then trying in vain to get their names removed, it’s good to hear that something at the TSA is moving in the right direction.

…And then there’s the bad news:

Hawley also came out in opposition to the bill approved by the House of Representatives which would mandate inspection of airplane cargo. As it stands now, your suitcases are screened, but other cargo isn’t.

Hawley commented: “If you spend all your resources opening boxes and not applying your resources more generally, that opens up another vulnerability,” Hawley told the Senate Aviation Subcommittee. “The adaptive terrorist will go there.”

The “thudding” sound you may hear in the background is me hitting my head against my desk. If cargo isn’t being screened at all NOW, isn’t THAT where “the adaptive terrorist” will try to stash the bad stuff? Why would the head of the TSA effectively declare that cargo is something the TSA does not intend to screen? It’s an invitation, nay, a dare, to potential terrorists seeking to actually smuggle a bomb (or even themselves) on board.

In the meantime, the TSA is thankfully searching passengers for contraband pies.

Related:
- Cavalcade of security news: Fingerprints, liquids, and suspicious looking devices
- Liquids liberated, but free speech still threatened in airports

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