Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Great Valentine’s Day Air Travel Massacre—a storm that took down JetBlue’s entire operation and ultimately their CEO, too.
travel
Frontier Waives $100 Ticket Change Fee Due To College Exam
By 2.12.08
Matt writes: “Back in December, we had booked a family trip in May for the four of us to Costa Rica to celebrate my sisters graduation from college (and also a long-overdue family vacation). Unfortunately, after booking the tickets, the final exam schedule for my college was posted, and of course I had an exam which conflicted with the travel dates. We needed to push the reservation back exactly one week, and had concluded that it would probably require the obligatory $100 change fee per ticket. Ouch.”
Customs Searching, Seizing, Gadgets
By 2.12.08
Amir Khan, a Pakistani-born US Citizen, has had his laptop searched by US customs agents on five separate occasions when returning to the US from overseas. It’s no longer just rifling through your luggage, Customs is now going through laptops, Blackberries, and other gizmos, sometimes confiscating them, and sometimes never returning them. Please bend over and spread your laptop. Transcript, inside…
Continental Raising Unaccompanied Minor Fee To $150
By 2.12.08
Broken homes, take note, starting February 17th, Continental is raising the unaccompanied minor fee to $150 round trip, or $75 each way, up from $50 one way. Tipster Barbara, who is sending two of her kids to visit family this weekend, writes that it’s, “almost cheaper for me to fly with them than to send them as unaccompanied minors!”
Delta To Ask Northwest To The Prom, United And Continental May Drunkenly Hook Up
By 2.8.08
Here’s the state of the airline merger party.
US Customs Helps Itself To Your Electronics And Private Data
By 2.7.08
A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. “This laptop doesn’t belong to me,” he remembers protesting. “It belongs to my company.” Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.
5 Airlines You Shouldn't Trust With Your Luggage
By 2.6.08
The Department of Transportation’s 2007 Air Travel Consumer Report is out. Here are the 5 airlines with the most baggage handling complaints per customer in 2007. Better luck next year!
By 2.6.08
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Flying JetBlue? Prepare yourselves to become guinea pigs for Kraft’s new low-fat cream cheese. [Marketplace]
6 Worst Travel Agents Of 2007
By 2.5.08
According to the Department of Transportation’s Air Travel Consumer Report the top 6 most complained about travel agents for 2007 are:
United Airlines To Charge $25 For Checking 2 Bags
By 2.4.08
Can’t fit it all in one suitcase? United is going to start charging passengers a fee for checking more than one piece of luggage, $25 per bag. Elite frequent flyers will skip the charge. The new policy begins May 5. It’s certainly one way to pass fuel costs on to passengers using more fuel, without raising up-front fare prices.
5 Things Airlines Don't Want You To Know About Weather Delays
By 2.4.08
When an airplane is delayed due to the weather, they get out of a lot of obligations, and there’s little oversight over what they get to call a weather-related delay. Elliot.org interviewed industry experts and came up with five interesting things the industry is keeping from you about weather delays…
By 1.31.08
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TSA can haz blog. [Evolution of Security]
By 1.31.08
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Man manages to stay at what he describes as the most ghetto Sheraton in the world. How bad was it? Well, it’s called the “Sheraton-Miami-Mart.” Yes, “Mart,” and it has the same high level of quality, cleanliness, and accommodations that you would expect from any place with “Mart” as a suffix. [Shankman]
Stuck On The No Fly List? Use Your Middle Name Instead
By 1.30.08
If you find yourself mistakenly on the terrorism no-fly or government watch lists and always get hassled at the airport, there’s a simple way to avoid the trouble: use your middle name when you buy your tickets. It’s certainly a lot easier than trying to use the Homeland Security’s Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP), which was set up to help people get off the no fly lists if they’re on there by mistake. Passengers complain that TRIP is slow to respond to requests and it doesn’t stop them from still getting taken aside for secondary screenings much more than other passengers. It’s a good thing the terrorists will never figure out this amazing and advanced alternate name technique.
Continental To Offer Free WiFi, Satellite TV For $6
By 1.29.08
Continental Airlines has announced that it will be offering Wi-Fi and satellite TV in some of its planes, thanks to a partner ship with LiveTV (owned by JetBlue.)
NYC's New High-Tech Public Bathroom Is Freaky, Robotic
By 1.26.08
For years, New York City was a grim place to be when you had to use the bathroom, since there are almost no public facilities (not counting Starbucks). But earlier this month the first of 20 high-tech pay toilets opened in the city, in Madison Square Park just north of 23rd Street. Now the next time you visit the city and need to answer nature’s call, grab a quarter and head over there to experience the strange combination of a $100,000 prison cell/car wash/elevator/Louvre. It’s the cheapest “experience” you’ll probably find in the city.
Launch A Virgin Atlantic EECB
By 1.25.08
Here are email addresses you can use to launch an executive email carpet bomb against Virgin Atlantic Airlines. Good for when you’ve made multiple attempts to resolve an issue with regular customer service but for some reason they just can’t get it right.
Is Expedia Censoring Negative Reviews?
By 1.24.08
Expedia flatly refused to post my review. I have followed their rules, but they have repeatedly told me they won’t post it because I’m not following the rules. They will not tell me which rule I didn’t follow.
