February 2007

Next time you hit the skies, here are a few tips to make your next flight a little more enjoyable.

If you are going to be receiving a lot of faxes while travelling, you can have all your faxes forwarded to you by Send2Fax for only $2 per month plus 15 per page.

SeatGuru has charts which reveal which seats have the most legroom, armspace, and in-seat power ports. Also, Exit Row seats almost always have significantly more legroom, if you feel willing to take on a small amount of extra responsibility.

Priority Pass, will get you hooked up with admission to over 500 lounges in 300 airports. Membership is $99 with a charge of $24 per visit.

JiWire.com will help you find Wi-Fi hotspots while traveling. And if the hotel you are staying at has Wi-Fi nearby, but not in your hotel room, a portable router such as Apple’s Airport Express can boost your signal the lobby signal enough that you don’t need to leave your bed to check your email.

For any readers out there who travel frequent to Canada, the NEXUS program is currently in the process of expanding to all major Canadian Airports.

NEXUS is a program where members sign-up before travelling and are pre-approved as low-risk travelers. They are then scanned by NEXUS iris scanners at partipicating airports instead of a passport and are shown a quicker and less hassled entry back into the United States.

The massive number of passport requests coming into the Department of Homeland Security have caused them to change the new passport requirements for minors. Starting January 2008, US and Canadian citizens 15 and younger, as well as those 16-18 under direct adult supervision, will be allowed to travel across the border with only a birth certificate.

On Friday, the Phoenix airport introduced a new scanner technology that allows security workers to see through people’s clothes and show body definition with a level of clarity not before seen. So much so, that the TSA adjusted the scanners so that body pictures can be blurred in certain areas while detecting.

If this idea of security workers seeing you naked makes you uncomfortable don’t worry. The new screening device is only being used as a secondary measure for those who fail standard screening with a metal detector, and opt to be scanned by the device instead of a pat-down search.

In order to be scanned passengers stand in front of a closet-sized X-ray with palms facing out, and then turn around. The process only takes about one minute. If the trial is successful, the TSA hopes to introduces them to LAX and JFK, the two busiest airports in the country, in an effort to speed up security sceening.

Out of fear of back to back PR disasters, JetBlue canceled 40 percent of today’s JFK flights a day in advance, as well as 32 flights to and from Dulles International Airport. The airline encouraged all passengers on canceled flights to rebook and waived all rebooking fee’s and fare differences.

Hmmm. Maybe flying in and out of Amsterdam is now the way to go…

The Wall Street Journal reports that:

Thanks to a new British ticket tax that took effect February 1, passengers who fly into or through London airports will pay new taxes and fees that can add as much as $154 to the cost of a ticket….The new tax comes on the heels of other highly publicized problems at Heathrow, including a breakdown in the baggage handling system and security delays. Consumeraffairs.com reports that one consequence is that more and more travelers are investigating Amsterdam as an alternative hub for discount flights in and out of Europe.

The storms on the East Coast and at JFK that led to a series of multi-hour delays and a quarter of JetBlue’s flights being canceled will ultimately cost the airline approximately 30 million dollars in refunds, vouchers, and overtime crews. The additional impact it may have on its customer base is another story. As I mentioned yesterday, JetBlue launched a “Bill of Rights” for customers, in order to deal with this PR fiasco.

Among the provisions: a $100 voucher for departure delays greater than three hours, which rises to the equivalent of your fare after four hours. $25 dollars for an arrival delay greater than 30 minutes. A full refund plus an equivalent voucher for any flights canceled within 12 hours of the departure time.

I wish Delta had this when I flew last year. I’d have at least $1000 worth a vouchers.

President Bush has decided he doesn’t want you paying a 7.5 percent federal tax surcharge when buy a plane ticket anymore. The money has been going towards paying for air-traffic control at our nation’s airports. In place of the ticket taxes, the planes themselves will be charged every time they fly, spreading more of the cost out onto cargo planes, private planes, and corporate jets.

JetBlue just had a very bad weekend. A Valentine’s Day storm forced the airline to cancel nearly a quarter of its flights this weekend. Some passengers were forced to spend up to ten hours waiting on the runway. Having spent a meager four hours on a runway this past summer, I can tell you that ten hours on the tarmac is probably what hell is like. Many of these planes ran out of food, heat, and clean toilets.

In lieu of this PR debacle, JetBlue’s CEO David Neeleman is introducing a self-imposed passenger’s “Bill of Rights” requiring the airline to impose penalties on itself and offer “major rewards” to customers who are significantly inconvenienced.

Rep. Michael Thompson, a California Democrat, is seizing on this opportunity to introduce a similar bill to Congress. The bill will require airlines to compensate passengers for delays, cancelations, lost luggage, etc. A similar attempt was made in 1999, following a major storm in Detroit, but the airline industry adopted voluntary customer service initiatives and the matter was dropped. The new bill appears more rigid and penalizing, and includes a cap on the amount of time passengers can spend on the tarmac.

The Air Transport Assocation has come out strongly against the bill, fearing that inflexible large scale standards might do more harm than good.

Want to capture a whiteboard, business card, contract, brochure (or even a wine list) and send it back to the team at home as a PDF (with extractable text?) Try the online photo to PDF service ScanR.

With ScanR, you e-mail your picture to the service and they send you back a PDF version of your picture. They straighten, tonally adjust, sharpen, and run OCR (optical character recognition) on the file.

Admittedly, the OCR is limited and white board images can’t easily be converted into text, but with a good source image the service can make a vCard accessible by a contact application from a good picture of a business card.

The better your phone can capture images, the better off you are. You can test your camera here. The best cameras tested so far are:

1. Sony Ericsson K790a/K800i
2. Nokia N73
3. Samsung A990
4. Sony Ericsson K750i/W800i/W810i

The personal air purifier unit called the Fresh Air Buddy, sold by EcoQuest International has suspended all sales of their personal air purifier unit. After a recent fire that was reported onboard a Continental Airlines flight, the company released a press release and

warning to its customers to stop using the device until further tests can be performed and the cause can be confirmed. EcoQuest suspects the fire was related to the lithium battery overheating in the product. At least one airline, Alaska Airlines, has announced it will not allow the units on its aircraft until further testing is completed.

Go here for the entire press release and warning to its customers.

Advantage won the third annual Business Travel Show Innovation Award for its GDS CAT35 initiative. CAT35 is a new feature which allows airlines to immediately upload all fares and related info onto a global distribution system which can transmit directly to agents or clients. 43 airlines are currently involved, and last year, Advantage members saved an estimated 2 million pounds in discounts and rebates.

The Nexus program, which launched today at Pearson’s International Airport in Toronto, allows members to check-in and screen themselves using automated self-serve kiosks. The program costs $50 and is only for low-risk, pre-approved travelers from Canada to the US.

The process allows members to move through security much faster, and will also be launched at the Calgary airport this summer. If the system is a success, we may begin to see iris scanners in US airports, which I have been waiting for ever since I saw Minority Report.

Apparently, holiday and travel companies have had a habit of including hidden costs. The Office of Fair Trading in Britain warned that tougher action will be taken against companies who advertising prices that differ significantly from those they actually offer.

I am hopeful similar actions may be taken soon in America. My recent flight purchases from Expedia and Travelocity appeared lower than the fares on Delta.com, until I actually came to the page where my credit card was charged.

I just wanted to give you all an update on the technical issues that have plagued this blog since the middle of last week.

Unfortunately, our MySQL databases encountered a problem involving memory on the server. They became inoperative and messed up our Movable Type install. The problem has now been resolved.

I would have gotten to work on it sooner, but I was out of the country on vacation last week and did not have the necessary access.

Thank you for your patience. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming…

Tired of not having a useful reading light (or no light at all) while on that evening flight?

Try out the I-Sight® by Synergy Lab. It’s an over-the-ear hands-free light with a high intensity LED that shines everywhere you look. The ear piece is flexible and fully reversible (to wear on either ear).

I’ve tried lots of lights that either tend to get too hot, don’t have a directional beam, are too bulky or not efficient (my I-Sight® is still going strong after a month’s usage–thanks mainly to the ultra bright LED)……especially irritating are the lights that are designed to attach to the book or reading material you are working on—-that type of design just doesn’t make sense to me.

With the ability to direct the light to my desired location, I have yet to hear a complaint when the lights go dim for another in-flight movie rerun.

I have friends that claim this is the most useful cool gadget they’ve seen.

I got mine at Hammacher Schlemmer for $25.

Amazon (via Cyberguys) also sells a model powered by 2 CR2032 lithium batteries, but I prefer the AAA version because I find these batteries are easier to find if I need a replacement during my travels.

A quick addendum to my post on the 29 Jan about the new international travel document requirements. After a bit of research, I was surprised to find out how few U.S. citizens are passport holders. Only 27% have a passport, compared to 40% of Canadians, 64% of U.K. residents, and 90% (!) of German citizens. That tells me one thing: there likely will be a large influx of passport requests over the next few months, as people realize they need that official document for travel to and from North and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda. Lets just hope the Passport Services Office is up to the task…….

JetBlue is offering a coast to coast sale, starting today and ending Thursday, for 99 dollars from JFK to Long Beach Airport. Only 69 dollars from Washington DC to Las Vegas. I paid about four times this much in August when I made similar trips. At prices this low, if I lived near a JetBlue hub, I’d be taking a trip over my upcoming mid-winter break.

In what many hope will become an international trend, Emirates will become the first airline to allow mobile phones for inflight use, beginning next month. The airline has done numerous safety checks and studies involving the allowance of cellphones on planes. Calls are expected to cost around three dollars per minute, which is well below the current cost for seatback phones.

The U.S. FAA announced today that it will be issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) later this year that will change the forced retirement age of US commercial airline pilots from 60 to age 65, embracing the change by the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization–a United Nations sanctioned organization) made last March.
The ICAO standard that requires at least one crewmember to be under the age of 60 will remain in effect, according to FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey. Which of course makes me wonder why if pilots above the age of 60 are safe to fly, then why the ‘at least one pilot under age 60′ requirement?

Administrator Blakey sited the fact that “Foreign airlines have demonstrated that experienced pilots in good health can fly beyond age 60 without compromising safety” as contributing to the rule change.

Surprisingly, the Airline Pilots Association has, since 1980, opposed any change in the Age 60 Rule, obviously concerned about the impact on junior pilots. ALPA has, however agreed to support the rule ‘as is’, according to ALPA president, Capt. John Prater. In contrast, its good to know that the Flight Safety Foundation has given the Proposed Rulemaking its blessing.

It will be interesting to see if any airline (especially the rare non-union one) does not embrace the rule change. No doubt it will be a scheduling headache to ensure that two 60 plus-pilots are not flying together in the same cockpit. Its all fine with me, as long as I don’t hear any announcements of a pending delay because the airline forgot that Captain Bob just turned 61 yesterday…..