PreCheck to Ease Airport Security Lines
Accept some red tape now to cut security lines when you fly The security infrastructure at airports and the staff to monitor, supervise and sometimtes stand around is enormous and costly. After a decade-plus of annoying travelers at great national expense ($8.1 billion in 2011) and reportedly without ever stopping a terrorist incident, the Transportation [...]
Cancun, Here Comes Colorado!
AirTran adding US-Mexico flights Just in time for mud season in the mountains, Southwest Airlines’ wholly owned subsidiary AirTran Airways announced plans to operate new service between Denver International Airport and Cancun International Airport. Daily roundtrip service is to operate April 16 through July 7. Beginning on July 8 thorugh August 12, flights operate on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Saturday and [...]
A Homeward Odyssey
The good, the bad & the unexpected during a long journey When I headed for Israel for the Society of American Travel Writers Freelance Council meeting, I knew the journey would be long, requiring an overnight near Newark International Airport (EWR). El Al is the only airline I can think of whose transatlantic flights leave the East Coast in the early afternoon, [...]
New Rules Set to Reveal Hidden Fees
New regulation to require total ticket cost set for next month US airlines have reportedly collected $48 billion in add-on fees since 2007– yes that’s billion with a B. The checked-bag fees that most of the airlines now levy have gotten a lot of press, but other than those, passengers often aren’t aware of other extra [...]
QANTAS Grounds Its Fleet
Who’ll blink first? The airline or the unions? An ugly labor dispute between Australia’s QANTAS Airways and several unions from pilots on down became uglier. The issues include such cost-cutting measures as job-cutting, outsourcing and cancellation of orders for new Airbuses. Following strikes, stoppages and/or slowdowns, the airline has taken a hard line and grounded its fleet, CEO Alan Joyce informed [...]
Dreamliner Makes 1st Commercial Flight
All Nippon Airways now flying the long-delayed Boeing 787 Once again indicating that the balance of investment, if not always in innovation, has shifted eastward. An American aircraft company developed a state-of-the-art, high-tech passenger airplane, but an Asian airline was the first to put it into commerical service between two Asian countries. Japan’s All Nippon Airways was the [...]
Bargain Winter Trip to Italy
Winter visitors can enjoy Rome & Florence for a song Rome and Florence, Italy’s two most popular cities for visitors, can be brutal in summer – beautifully brutal to be sure, but hot, crowded and absent of many actual Italians except those in the tourist industries. Winter, on the other hand, is a real joy. Be prepared [...]
Airlines’ Mileage Programs Compared
Blog research compares & contrasts ease of frequent flier mileage redemption Do frequent flier programs frustrate or even anger you? They do most of us. We rack up miles in order to get free flights or perhaps upgrades. And what happens when we try? We thought we’d be able to redeem 25,000 or 30,000 points [...]
Icelandair to Inaugurate DIA in Spring
Traditional low-fare favorite flying Reykjavik-Denver beginning in May. Hooray! Once upon a very long time ago, international airlines all quoted the same air fares for the same routes on the same dates. All except one — Icelandic Airlines, which did not belong to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) that effectively cast fares in concrete. [...]
Do Airlines Issue Refunds When Fares Drop?
The current “tax holiday” on federal airline taxes has again shown the spotlight on airlines that keep moneys that rightly belong to passengers, as recently posted here. But wait! There’s more! Air Fare Watchdog has been keeping an eye on another way that airlines keep revenues that they shouldn’t — namely, fares that dropped after pssengers [...]
