May 2006

When traveling abroad, you’re probably thinking of a million things: jetlag, passports, customs, the language and cultural barriers to doing business and what kind of food you’ll eat while you’re on the road. Japanese encephalitis, malaria, even good old tetanus might not be foremost in your mind. But they should be.

Getting properly vaccinated before traveling to another part of the world is one of the most important steps you can take to make sure your trip goes off without a hitch. But it’s also one of the most unexpectedly expensive. The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) had a few excellent suggestions for those with impending international travel plans:

• Be prepared. Check with the CDC to find out which vaccines are recommended for the part of the world you’re traveling to. Some doctors may overlook certain important vaccines.
• Get specialized. Go to a special travel health clinic instead of to your general internist. In the Seattle area, the University of Washington has a great travel clinic.
• Use your HSA or FSA. Oftentimes, insurance companies won’t cover the costs of preventative medicine for world travel. The theory is that if you can afford to go to Africa, you should be able to afford a malaria vaccine. Using pre-tax money from your company’s flexible spending account or from your health savings account may be the best way to defray some of the costs associated with pre-trip medical care. And if you’re traveling on business, don’t be shy about asking your employer to cover the cost of your vaccinations.

Oh yeah, and try to stay away from birds.

If you’re good at planning ahead, you can check out I Love Free Wifi from your computer before you leave for your destination, so you know where all the free hotspots are located.

And if you’re like me - totally unprepared and running around like a chicken with her head cut off - you can just text the site and get a message back with the locations of the 6 closest hotspots.

Via Travel Post Insider.

When you’re on a business trip to Southeast Asia or South America, sometimes it’s best to avoid drinking the tap water. The last time I traveled to Indonesia, I didn’t even brush my teeth with the filtered water at the hotel.

That’s why this little gadget might come in extremely handy during your next trip abroad. If you stir this little UV wand around in a glass of foreign water, it’s safe to drink in minutes. Just think of the money your company will save on Evian.

Gizmodo reports that some hardcore gaming options may soon be coming to your iPod Nano.

The news comes in the form of a human resources-related rumor. Apparently Apple has been heavily recruiting programmers with gaming backgrounds.

I wonder whether the iPod’s scroll wheel is really optimal for gaming. I’m by no means an expert in hardware-software interfaces, but I’m a little skeptical that serious gamers would be at all satisfied. Of course, simple interfaces are all the rage these days, just look at the salivating masses waiting for the release of Nintendo’s new Wii gaming system.

In the article Got 50 Bucks? Fly to Fiji, Wall Street Journal reporter Steve Strecklow reports that big travel savings are available to those who stay on top of the commentary running on several key travel sites.

There’s a loose network of obsessives who keep apprised of prices not just on mainstream travel sites like Travelocity, but also on a growing number of other sites that specialize in detecting “unusual” prices across the Web. Many are mistakes, from a round-trip Los Angeles-to-Fiji excursion for $51 to a Holiday Inn resort room in Thailand for three cents a night.

Some remarkable deals are profiled in the article. Strecklow says you can stay on top these of unusually low fares and pricing glitches by surfing flyertalk, FareAlert.net, Airfarewatchdog.com, and freetraveling.com.

Apparently the City of New York will be opening free wireless networks all over the five boroughs, starting with Central Park in July. For those busy Manhattanites not lucky enough to escape to the Hamptons for the hot weather, and business travelers who want to catch a little bit of fresh air while e-mailing between meetings - it’s a must-use.

Via FlyAway Café.

Gizmodo has word that a new external hard drive is coming to the market. It has a special sensor that lets it know when it’s about to experience a sudden impact, it then takes automatic steps to protect its key components, reducing the risk of data loss.

I know I’m always dropping things in the airport. It would be nice to know that my data would survive the fall.

In the Economist article Frisked, frazzled and fed up (subscription required,) reporter Richard Walker describes how airlines are working to minimize the hassles of security checkpoints by creating their own private “passport” systems. The problem is that despite all the amenities being offered to business and first class travelers, (special lounges, massages, etc.) “the biggest threat to the mental equilibrium of the passenger is not the airline check-in queue, but the security investigations that lie in wait just out of sight.”

Some European airlines have decided the solution is to cut special deals with airport security agencies—deals that the airlines can pass on to premium-paying customers. First-class and business-class passengers of British Airways at Heathrow and Gatwick airports are now conducted through “fast track” security and immigration procedures. Actually, the procedures are exactly the same as for passengers in economy: the difference is that there is a much shorter queue (and less bad temper). Passengers on BMI (British Midland International) can pay for the same service at Manchester as well as Heathrow.

The trend is spreading to Britain’s minor airports, too. If you have the right ticket, you can skip the queue at Leeds-Bradford and Southampton airports. And while British carriers have pioneered this new category of privilege, others are getting in on the act: Air Canada now offers security fast-tracking in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

In Amsterdam, the Privium fast-track identity system at Schiphol Airport uses an iris scan to verify the identity of travelers and allows them to pass through security with relative ease. Biometric systems such as the Verified Identity Pass and the “Registered Traveller” program are being tested in the U.S. The article says we should expect national “fast-track” cards to become available later this year.

If all goes as planned, we should see these fast-track cards being used at sports events and other large-scale public gatherings.

Josh Bancroft over at Tiny Screenfuls is looking for a new Bluetooth headset. He’s got some good reviews of a couple of models he’s tried and is looking for more comments. This post could be a good hub for those who are getting into the market for a new Bluetooth device.

We’ve already seen what can happen when snakes get loose on a plane. Let’s hope this is the last time with parrots.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Southwest Airlines execs are upgrading the airline’s reservations system which may, for the first time, make assigned seating possible aboard the bargain airline.

One major concern is how it will affect the airline’s load times. As we all know, airplanes only make money when they’re in the air, which is why airlines try to keep the turnaround time between landing and departure as short as humanly possible. As we blogged just a few weeks ago, Southwest has some of the fastest boarding times in the industry because of its first-come, first-serve approach. To keep their turnaround times low, they would likely need to employ one of several strategic models already in use by other major airlines.

Via TravelOrbis.

Walter Mossberg compares the H-P Compaq NC2400 and the Lenovo 3000 V100. Both are small (4 lbs or so, 12 inch diagonal screen) laptops with DVD drives, and coincidentally cost $1,649 in a full-featured configuration. Here are some key differences he cites:

“Based on “speeds and feeds,” the raw specs of a computer, the Lenovo offers much more than the H-P. But based on the key components of road-warrior mobility — weight, size and battery life — the H-P crushes the Lenovo.”

“The H-P also has a smaller footprint for a desktop or airline tray — 11.1 by 8.38 inches vs. 12 by 8.9 inches for the Lenovo.”

Using his “harsh” battery test (all power-saving features off, and keeping the hard disk working, Mossberg found that the Lenovo’s battery lasted two hours, 41 minutes while the H-P Compaq nc2400 “blew away” the Lenovo with a life of four hours, 27 minutes. Mossberg thinks that in a conservative power usage scenario, H-P could allow you to work for six hours straight without a recharge.

The extra battery life is likely attributable to the slower processor used in the H-P (an Intel Core Solo processor running at 1.2 gigahertz,) but Mossberg didn’t find the H-P sluggish at the “typical, mainstream tasks” he threw at it.

Gizmodo reports that the FCC has begun the process of auctioning licenses to companies that want to provide in-flight cell phone access to travelers.

To track the bidding process, click here.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index gives airlines the lowest score since Sept. 11, 2001. Flight cancellations and delays are the main complaint.

Southwest Airlines scored the highest in satisfaction with 74. Northwest Airlines dropped to 61, putting them in last place.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Expedia’s corporate travel site (available as a for-pay service), now allows searches for flights by connection city, by frequent-flier membership and by specific two-hour time windows. Site59.com, has added new categories “food and wine,” “golf” and “offbeat” to their travel packages.

Remember those creepy cattle car style seats the whole blogosphere was buzzing about a few weeks back? Well, this isn’t as bad - but I think Gridskipper is right when they say that they, “envision airline execs seeing all that space between rows of flipped-up seats, then calculating how many more rows they could squeeze in if they just moved those rows a leetle bit closer together.”

I’m not sure I like the idea of a flip-up seat on a long flight. They’re very uncomfortable in movie theaters, what makes them less so on airplanes? One thing’s for sure - I don’t want to sit in one for 5+ hours to New York.

Via Gridskipper.

I know, I know, I’m linking to a press release, sue me. Still, it looks like the growth of the super-swanky Eos Airlines may be ushering in a new era in air travel: a veritable Long Tail of niche market-serving airlines that provide either superior service or lower prices depending on the priorities of the clientele they serve.

If this is the case, we may not see any of the big, broad-based airlines with a traditional first class/business class/coach cabins in business for too much longer.

While perusing Maryam Scoble’s blog, I came across this hilarious list of things that flight attendants and pilots have said over the airplane loudspeakers to crack up their passengers.

My favorites:

• On a Southwest flight (SW has no assigned seating, you just sit where you want) passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a flight attendant announced, “People, people we’re not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”
• As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at Ronald Reagan, a lone voice came over the loudspeaker: “Whoa, big fella. WHOA!”
• Part of a flight attendant’s arrival announcement: “We’d like to thank you folks for flying with us today. And, the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you’ll think of US Airways.”

Happy Friday, everyone!

Next time you book your ticket, you might want to see if your carrier uses Naverus.

In the Wall Street Journal article Cleared for Landing: New Technology Lets Planes Arrive and Depart Airports With Fewer Delays, Diversions, reporter Susan Carey describes how the Required Navigation Performance system (RNP) by Naverus Inc. is now providing technology originally developed for Alaska Airlines to several carriers. RNP leverages light-management computers, cockpit avionics and GPS to enable aircraft to “to take off and land in poor weather, even at airports near mountains or other obstacles on the ground.”

The system can eliminate delays while enabling more planes with more passengers to reach their destinations.

“Besides safety, efficiency and customer satisfaction are also powerful incentives for the carriers to participate. JetBlue in January started using a procedure designed by Naverus for its departure from the Burbank, Calif., airport. JetBlue’s Mr. Spain says that airport is bounded by hills on both sides, and there are buildings and a flagpole nearby. By flying on a precise departure path controlled by the on-board computer, the plane can take off fully loaded with passengers and fuel, he says. Before, when it had to maneuver on a less precise path, JetBlue had to fly with 50 fewer passengers or stop on the way to the East Coast for fuel — neither a good option.”

In what appears to be a vote of no confidence in the Transportation Security Administration, the Israeli airline El Al has asked to bring its own baggage screening equipment and screen all luggage on its flights.

“El Al knows our security isn’t worth a hoot,” aviation industry consultant and longtime TSA critic Michael Boyd told Haaretz Daily. “It’s a heck of an indictment for the TSA when a foreign airline says they want to screen their own luggage. It says they don’t trust us.”