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Flight delayed? Sue!
A judge in India has ruled that passengers whose Go Air flight was canceled were due the equivalent of US$380 each because of the mental anguish they suffered. Is this a trend? Where can I sue for suffering through flight delays inside a regional jet?

Get on the bus
The American Bus Association wants you to feel green about hitting the road: They claim that buses — ahem, motorcoaches — are more environmentally friendly than passenger cars, trains, and planes. According to their numbers, a bus gets 184 passenger miles per gallon, while commuter rail comes in at 86 and planes only make 42. I’ve sat behind some black soot-spewing buses, and I find this claim hard to believe. And what about all the electric rail out there? Nonetheless, one thing is indisputable: Buses are more efficient than passenger cars.

Which airline has the healthiest snacks?
Domestically, it’s United and their $5 snackboxes according to Charles Stuart Platkin of dietdetective.com. See his post for the lowdown on the various airlines’ snacks.

Business class shootout!
Reader Gianugo has personally tested three of the all-business class airlines that cross the Atlantic. In his tests, Silverjet comes out on top, with L’Avion and Maxjet trailing. (No test of Eos Airlines, but they’re generally at a much higher price point.) The L’Avion review certainly jives with previous reports from the field (here and here). Read his detailed post for the breakdown of what makes these discounted business class airlines tick.

No more being charged extra fees for returning your car with a full tank
Consumer victory! One of the very first posts on this blog — in its first week of inception, in fact — railed against Budget Rent-a-Car’s practice of levying a $9.50 charge if the odometer registered fewer than 75 miles upon return. This is one of those “what are they thinking” fees that gives the travel industry a bad name. I’m pleased to report that the Federal Trade Commission has clamped down and told Budget to stop. (via Consumerist)

Shameless self-promotion, part one
Chris Elliott, consumer advocate, National Geographic ombudsman, and general thorn in the travel industry’s side, compiled his list of the seven “most influential” travel bloggers. You’re reading one of them. Huzzah! The others: Paul Brady at Jaunted, Arthur Frommer, Holly Hegeman at PlaneBuzz, CondeNast’s Wendy Perrin, Ben Popken at Consumerist (where I’ve been a guest blogger on several occasions), and FareCompare’s Rick Seaney. Nice company to be in, to be sure, and a good starting point for your other blog-reading needs. There are seven runners-up, too, so go read the whole thing. Consider other blogs, like the Travvies winners from earlier this year. (Or heck, the finalists!) And peruse the blogroll in the pulldown in the right sidebar for more great blogs that I read regularly.

Shameless self-promotion, part deux
Upgrade: Travel Better goes audio: You can hear a few snippets of me commenting on recent frequent flyer mile devaluations on Marketplace, which aired this morning on public radio. If you didn’t wake up to the “dulcet tones” of my voice on your clock radio this morning, you can hear the clip and read the transcript here.

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How to add injury to insult: Five United Airlines employees at O’Hare Airport, who were working on the Thanksgiving holiday, seemingly got food poisoning from the airline-sponsored turkey dinner.

The likely culprit? Turkey that didn’t “smell quite right.”

(The airline-food joke is just too easy. It’s just sitting there. You’re thinking it, I know.)

On the bright side, perhaps the employees will get worker’s comp as well as overtime. Whoo.

It was a well-meant gesture on the company’s part, and an effort to mend fences with a thoroughly disgruntled group of employees. Well-played.

Despite their nausea, three of the five nauseous employees returned to work. Something tells me they weren’t picking at the leftovers in the staff lounge later that day.

(Thanks to reader J!)

Thanksgiving is almost upon us. And I’m giving thanks that I’m not traveling this holiday. But in the spirit of the season, how about an upgrade/downgrade cornucopia:

Downgraded: Hooters Style
Kyla Ebbert, the Southwest miniskirt bandit, has posed for Playboy. Glad to know she wasn’t in it for the publicity. Nah, never… What took her so long?

Upgraded: Carry-on rules for UK travel
The UK may — may — allow passengers to have more than one carry-on item again, if airports demonstrate their ability to handle the load. If they pass muster, airports will be greenlighted starting January 7, 2008.

Upgraded: Weight-based airfare proposals
An Australian doctor is proposing airfare based on your weight. Not a particularly practical policy for advance purchases, but heck, hotels have tried it, so why not.

Downgraded: American Airlines’ flight tracking
What did AA do to keep up with the list of 130 diverted flights on December 29, 2006? It kept a list on a legal-sized notepad. Way to work the high tech! (via Consumerist)

Upgraded: Elitism on Greyhound
Greyhound, taking a page from the Skybus playbook, is charging $5 for early boarding on its buses. It’s not a bus with free wifi, but it’s a start, I guess.

Downgraded: Merger Mania
Yes, Delta and United are in play for a merger. Sure, Delta said the airlines weren’t talking. But their stockholders (hedge funds) were. So who the heck knows if this will actually happen. We’ve seen this thing before (United-Continental? US Airways-Delta?) and it hasn’t happened. Bottom line: airlines are making record profits, despite record fuel prices, and yet they still keep arguing for a need to cut capacity and raise fares, which is most easily effected through a merger. This makes no sense on so many levels. I remain opposed to airline mergers, like a broken record.

Downgraded: Hotel-room glasses
I’m always a little wary of those glasses in hotel rooms, but now we’ve got hidden-camera proof that we shouldn’t be using them — or washing them ourselves before every use. Fox Atlanta planted cameras in several hotels, including Holiday Inn, Sheraton, and the Ritz-Carlton. In each hotel, housekeepers don’t remove the glasses for cleaning in the dishwashers downstairs. At best, they simply rinse them. At worst, they spray them with poisonous household cleaners, handle them with the same gloves they wore when cleaning the toilet, or dry the rinsed glassware with the same towel you used as a bathmat that morning. Disgusting. (Thanks, James!)

Upgraded: Ways to contact Skybus
Skybus, the notoriously hard-to-reach airline that tries to tell its customers that there’s no working phone number at the airline, has been exposed. How to contact Skybus, according to Skybus? Write an e-mail. After seeing far too many boilerplate e-replies that don’t address the problem, Chris Elliott has posted the executives’ contact information, including e-mails.

Upgraded: Advertisers’ unwitting sense of irony
Skybus again: CapitalOne is shelling out the big bucks to paint pigs all over a Skybus A319. It’s a savings account ad — a piggy bank theme — plus a riff off “When pigs fly,” leaving you, the consumer, with hijinks and hilarity. But if you’re an airline, do you really want your plane looking like a pig? Skybus, the flying pig? Wallow aboard!

Upgraded: Paris wine
Where to find a good wine bar or wine retailer in Paris? Look no further. Dr. Vino hits the scene with yet another installation of his wine maps. The Paris wine map features both stores and bars.

Upgraded: Getting on the bump list
The Cranky Flier notes that United has started asking for volunteers on overbooked flights at the time of check-in. Talk about getting in front of the problem. Unfortunately, the net effect for travelers is negligible, because you can’t (yet?) be guaranteed a bump by registering for one online. You still have to drag your butt to the airport and wait at the gate. Registering online only gets you an early spot on the list, if that’s your bag.

Upgraded: Smokin’ hot suitcases
The joke luggage insert (ahem, the Citizen’s Insertable Swiftness Manifest) posted last week included several jokes about smoking luggage. Now life imitates art. Phoenix SkyHarbor Airport was actually shut down after a smoking suitcase was discovered.

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Facing record fuel prices, United Airlines and others are considering flight cancellations and grounding large parts of their fleet. Apparently, it’s necessary to resort to threats like this when low-cost carriers make price hikes difficult.

United’s CFO Jack Brace offers this wisdom:

“Either the industry passes on the higher fuel prices or we’re going to have to lower capacity, but you have to make the equation work,” he said in comments to a Goldman Sachs conference in New York.

Brace said United has a little more than 100 aircraft unencumbered by debt, including 50 Boeing 737s, “that we could ground whenever we needed to if the demand environment were such that it didn’t make sense to fly those planes.”

But hold on: Airlines have already been raising prices, and the price hikes have been sticky. So grounding planes in an environment where prices are rising and planes are already packed to the gills is a curious move.

It strikes me as an effort to spur the industry to really sock it to consumers. I know it’s not a perfect analogy, but I’m reminded of Enron’s actions during the California energy crisis. Energy supply low? Turn off another power plant to drive prices up further! Bring on the gouging!

But is the threat to ground planes credible? It seems highly unlikely that any airline would unilaterally ground a fifth of its fleet, as United is suggesting (and others are supposedly considering, according to the linked article above). Competitors would fill the vacuum, step up with more flights — albeit at higher prices.

Bottom line: United can talk and talk about grounding flights. But will they do it? I doubt it.

Next thing to worry about in flight: Ozone
Like “sick building syndrome,” you can now start worrying about the plane’s air. But not because of the germs. It’s the ozone. Not holes in the ozone layer, either, but ozone levels in the cabin. Most interestingly, narrow-body flights are more prone than wide-body planes to higher ozone levels. Yet another reason to love the jumbos.

Korean Air shows off its Airbus A380 interiors
Singapore Airlines may be the first airline to fly the A380 mega-uber-hyper-super-jumbo-jet (and tickets are finally on sale for Sydney-Singapore flights, which start October 25, by the way), but you can get a photo tour of Korean Air’s A380. Lavender??! Who’s their interior designer? Yuck! (Thanks, Jeff!)

First class fare sale… if you’re traveling tomorrow
I know that airlines like to put out the e-fares and net-savers for weekend travel, but this offer from United struck me as odd. First class fares are on sale for travel on Saturday, September 15 only. Fly there in first, fly back in coach, savor the difference? Fares are less than regular paid first, but the bulk of fares are for really short flights where paying cash money for first class is bonkers.

Business class fare sales to Europe
All-business class L’Avion is flying Newark to Paris for $1398 roundtrip, pre-tax. Maxjet is doing London to New York or DC for $998, also roundtrip, also pre-tax. Both are through the end of 2007, but not every date may be available. (Thanks, Michelle!)

More dangerous shirts
I don’t know what to make of this. “Your liver is evil. It must be punished.” Har har har. But Continental Airlines wasn’t laughing when they kept Edna and Frank Taylor from getting onboard, because of that shirt. What’s with this “What Not to Wear” airline trend?

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Upgraded: Your luggage in 25 minutes or less or your pizza is free
United’s revised customer commitment (the “promise” which airlines keep revising to try to head off a passenger’s bill of rights) has been changed, with the airline pledging to get customers their checked bags within 25 minutes of arriving at the gate. Of course, there are no consequences for missing that deadline, but still, glad to hear that they’re setting a benchmark. Beats American Airlines’ technique of simply tacking 7 minutes onto every scheduled flight time, to make flights look more “on-time.” Classy!

Separately: One thing I’m happy to see survive the revision at United: the 24-hour penalty-free cancellation policy.

Upgraded: Passengers’ bravado
Speaking of luggage, a Tacoma, Washington, couple has sued British Airways for losing its luggage. And that suit could gain class action status, representing “American British Air [sic] travelers who flew internationally between Sept. 5, 2005, and Wednesday [September 5, 2007].” (via Consumerist)

Upgraded: Helicopter fares to the airport
Downgraded: Helicopter business plans
U.S. Helicopter isn’t making the fat bank that they were hoping for. Their SEC filings include the warning that they may not be able to continue as a “going concern.” So what do they do? Fare sale! New Yorkers rejoice: $99 to JFK or Newark. Faster than a cab, for (nearly) the same price.

Upgraded: Memories of Hooters Air
Remember Hooters Air, the airline that featured flight attendants AND Hooters Girls onboard? If you think I’m kidding, you’re wrong. It existed. Seriously. 23-year old student and Hooters waitress Kyla Ebbert got kicked off a Southwest plane for wearing a skirt that was too short for the flight attendant. A bit overzealous? And now she’s milking the notoriety: She was on the freakin’ Today Show. Slow news day. So she showed a bit of leg (and maybe a little more). Note that Southwest flight attendants often wear shorts, and that’s usually more leg than I want to see from my front-line airline staff. (Thanks to reader J!)

Downgraded: The letter V
CondeNast writer Sarah Kerr offers her “awards” for the best travel related movies. And she calls her awards the “Travies.” Not to be confused with the “Travvies,” the travel blog awards. One letter V makes all the difference. I hereby insist that the film awards be pronounced “TRAY-vees.” See you in court, Sarah! (I kid, I kid.)

Upgraded (or Downgraded?): Silverjet wants to fly to Heathrow
Silverjet, the all-business class airline (a la Maxjet or L’Avion) already flies Newark to London-Luton. Now they want to fly to Heathrow. But to do that, they’ll need to merge or partner with another airline. This could be interesting: It would be the first of the all-business class airlines to merge with another party — presumably a legacy airline. Might be a way for a down-on-their-luck American carrier to pick up some sassy trans-Atlantic action?

Upgraded: FlightStats
FlightStats.com, which offers the most comprehensive suite of real-time flight information on the web, has added live-updating Google maps. Now, I still think that FlightAware’s maps are a little sexier for those looking to track a flight graphically. But FlightStats’ gate-arrival information is more relevant to travelers. I’ll still keep both sites in the toolkit.

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I’ve been encountering US Airways a bit lately, and it hasn’t always been fun. A function of my recent move to North Carolina, perhaps. Hard to avoid US Airways in these parts. But having previously observed that United-US Airways codesharing and cooperation aren’t living up to their hype, I’m still convinced that these two Star Alliance partners aren’t working well together, and need to shape up their cooperation.

The breakdown of cooperation starts with the little things, right at the time of purchase: Why can’t the US Airways website allow me to enter my United frequent flyer number in the reservation? They’re both in Star Alliance, and other Star Alliance carriers let you choose from a range of different frequent flyer options.

Update: The option to add other airlines’ frequent flyer numbers is back on the US Airways site. Not sure what was missing when I booked, but it’s there now. Yay!

Admittedly, other sites have similar issues, especially third party booking sites — Orbitz, I’m looking at you. I bought a ticket on Orbitz recently when no one else would sell me that particular itinerary at a lower price. Again, no option to enter a partner airline’s frequent flyer account. I could enter a US Airways account number, or nothing at all. This limitation isn’t isolated to Star Alliance, either. If you, say, book a British Airways ticket, you can only enter a British Airways frequent flyer number, and not an American Airlines number. (Expedia is much more flexible with frequent flyer accounts.) Alliances and partnerships aren’t new, people! Give us the option!

The cooperation breakdown continues at check-in: My wife bought a United-coded ticket for an all-US Airways flight on United.com (the UA-coded ticket was cheaper) but when she got to the airport to check in, she was told that the ticket wasn’t paid for. Apparently, United hadn’t transmitted the funds to US Airways, and the ticket was still listed as reserved, not issued. Her United receipt (and credit card statement) showed that it was indeed paid, but until the ticket number was manually entered into the computer record, she wasn’t getting a boarding pass.

This is stupid. I know there are incredible complexities that arise when large organizations attempt to integrate or link their data systems, but if the increasing frequency of these kinks is any indication, the problems are getting worse with time, not better.

Related:
- Star Alliance out of alignment: Are United and US Airways fighting codeshare wars?
- Update: US Airways and United codeshare conundrums
- Confused by codeshares? Sue!

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Whom or what would they kill to get an upgrade?
Nepal Airlines mechanics sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, after they just couldn’t quite fix the problems in their Boeing 757. How many goats does it take to get a 757 to arrive on time at LAX? Slaughtering livestock isn’t limited to Himalayan aviation: Longtime readers may recall that Turkish Airlines maintenance workers killed a camel to celebrate the disposal of a regional jet last year.

$100K isn’t a good flight value
I know it was for charity. But paying $100,000 to fly on the inaugural Airbus A380 flight on Singapore Airlines seems a bit much. Most importantly, will they earn miles?

Shocker: Motel 6 really won’t leave the light on for you
To conserve energy, the ultra-budget chain doesn’t really leave lights on. So says their folksy pitchman Tom Bodett. So you know it’s true.

Delta’s apparently not afraid of the competition
Inside baseball, maybe, but still: Looking over the blogroll at Delta’s blog, I noticed that they link to their competitors: Southwest’s blog. That’s pretty gutsy for a corporate blog!

United names dates and planes for new business class rollout
The first plane to receive the long-awaited upgrade of 180-degree lie-flat seats in the business class cabin: a Boeing 767. It’s scheduled to travel between Washington and Frankfurt on October 29, 2007. Saver awards are unavailable at press time.

US Air Force tags nuclear warheads to wrong airport
Next time your luggage heads to Ketchikan, Alaska instead of Kansas City, take heart: The Air Force does it too. A B-52 bomber mistakenly carried six nuclear warheads from Minot, North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Oops. Just better hope it doesn’t end up at the Unclaimed Baggage Center.

Courts: Entering an airport means you’re subject to searches
This is old news, but I admit I just got wind of it now. If you’re at an airport in the U.S., you can’t turn around and leave the premises if you want to avoid being searched. “Citing threats of terrorism, the court ruled passengers give up all rights to be free of warrantless searches once a ‘passenger places hand luggage on a conveyor belt for inspection’ or ‘passes though a magnetometer.’ […] In 1973, the circuit court ruled that airport searches were valid ‘only if they recognize the right of a person to avoid search by electing not to board the aircraft.’” Not anymore. Offer to leave all you want, they can still search you. For the law-dogs out there, the case is United States v. Aukai, 04-10226. (via Wired’s Threat Level)

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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…)

Like trying to determine the bottom in a sliding stock market, trying to figure out precisely when an airline’s in-flight service has hit rock-bottom is difficult, if not impossible, especially when you’re in the middle of the turmoil. Months or years later, you can look back and wisely nod, “Yes, that’s the precise moment when they could go no lower.” But when you’re in the moment? Much, much trickier. But I think I’ve found the indicator that signals the bottom:

Shampooing the carpets.

Hear me out.

Every so often, an airline announces that it has found religion, so to speak, and that it will start cleaning its planes more often. With minor fanfare, airlines announce that they are ramping up their “deep cleaning” schedule. It’s only worth mentioning when things have gotten so bad that passengers start to revolt. It’s sad that it comes to that point, where budget cuts make these cleanings so rare that the space between the seats looks like a miniature landfill.

Delta made such an announcement last October, and that was around the time that things started improving. Sure enough: Improvements to in-flight service started being announced, new premium cabins, etc.

Now, just days after it’s United’s turn, smaller Biscoff packages notwithstanding. It’s buried in this short blurb — which also points to an improvement, actually — about the airline’s video entertainment:

United Airlines plans to put digital entertainment systems on some planes and clean its aircraft more often to attract customers on U.S. flights. e carrier will replace the video systems on 269 planes used in the United States with digital servers by the second quarter of 2009, Tom Abraham, director of in-line maintenance, told employees Friday. United also will increase “deep-clean” services like shampooing carpets by 20 percent, he said.

So I’m calling a bottom here. Not in the stock — I’m not making any stock picks here, ever! — but in the service. It’s not going to go up overnight, and like the stock market, there will be volatility, but the trajectory at United customer service is looking back up.

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It’s official: United Airlines has rolled out their next-generation business class seats, and they look good. (They rolled out a first class prototype a few months ago.) The new seats will be fully lie-flat, which is great news. They’ll also alternate forward and rear-facing seats, much like British Airways’ ClubWorld.

Some videos introducing the new seats, with some fanfare, can be found at United’s press release. See also their promotional site for the new business class: suitedreams.united.com. Better yet: An anonymous tipster forwarded this internal company “employee q&a” memo (MS Word doc) — it’s still a sales pitch, but it’s pretty detailed.

So what to make of the new UA business class? Four thoughts:

First, the seats themselves look very good. 180-degree lie-flat. Proper. Screw those angled flat seats — gravity always wins, people! Nice big screen. Wider (23.5″) than the current-generation first seats. On its own, it looks like other new-generation seats out there, with larger screens. But they’re the best looking seats offered by an American airline right now.

Second, the alternating forward- and rear-facing seats will be an adjustment for many people, but British Airways has been doing it for a while, and they’re still selling tickets. (Interestingly, the promo photos show two parallel seats…)

Third, the service is supposed to improve along with the seat. But “service” is really “features.” That is, new food from chef Charlie Trotter, and better in-flight entertainment. (Movies and games.) But what’s missing from the company’s PR pitch is the actual service in flight. A great restaurant is more than a tasty-sounding menu and a nicely decorated room. It’s how the customer is treated that makes a world of difference. The same is true of an airline, and United’s in-flight customer service has been hit-or-miss lately. It’s not clear that the company realizes this, either. The promotional materials focus on the hardware, and not the human “software” that really makes or breaks the experience.

Fourth, and from the customer’s point of view, the question remains: How much is this going to cost? And how much more difficult will it be to get an upgrade (or free frequent flyer ticket) into these swank new seats? The airline says it’s not raising prices, or changing upgrade policies, but it’s easy to limit award supply or to blame “market forces” for a price hike.

At any rate, the new seats are a step forward for the airline. The new seats will only be on internationally-configured three-class Boeing 747, 777, and 767 planes, and the rollout will take thirty months to complete. I’m hoping to try them on for size some day soon.