March 2007

British Airways has announced cheap summer fares from the United States to India. Fares may go as low as 800 dollars. British Airways encourages all interested in flying to India to check out their site, where you can choose seats, check-in, or take a look at their state-of-the-art inflight-entertainment.

After several months of intense compeition, United Airlines is becoming the first airline to offer non-stop flights from the US to China. The new route’s maiden flight will left Washington Dulles International Airport yesterday at 12:33pm, EST, and arrived today in Beijing Capital Internation Airport at 1:55, local time. The trip currently takes significantly less time than any other mutli-stop flights, and offers significant cabin space and service on the 347-seat B74.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that “airlines admit they do pay more attention to consumer complaints if travelers send them to the DOT, which categorizes and tallies complaints and publishes monthly rankings of airline performance.”

This is confirmed by a senior Transportation official, who said “We’re more than just a statistics- capturing office. Airlines are very sensitive to the complaints the department receives.”

Jim Ruppel, vice president of customer relations for Southwest echoed the assertion, he says they pay “huge attention” to internal reports based on DOT complaint data.

Send your complaints to: airconsumer@dot.gov

The United States has history’s most complicated system of tariffs, taxes, duties, and restrictions on what you can bring into the country when returning from a business trip of vacation. Can you bring that bottle of tequila back from Mexico, those fine chocolates from Germany, or those great snowshoes you bought in Vancouver? Can you mail them? And do you have to pay extra for it?

For those in the dark, here’s a list of the most common border concerns and issues.

I’m officially done with the snooze alarm. This past winter I used it an average of three times per morning. When I’m jetlagged, it’s been five. That’s twenty-five minutes. Needless to say, I’ve been late a few times this winter.

I wrote the other day about how I just purchased a SAD alarm clock. Its an UV light small enough to fit in a brief case, ideal for travel. I’ve been using it for two days now; the first two days this winter I haven’t hit the snooze button and wished I had some magical power to stop time. If you’re an early riser by circumstance but not by choice, then you really only have two choices: Snooze or SAD.

For those of you who travel regularly, jetlag is a part of life. For those who travel South to North, the lack of sun in the mornings can lead to fatigue, insomnia, and even depression. I personally found myself unable to rise before 10AM whenever I visited my fiancee is Seattle last year, having come from Florida. Had I needed to be up at 8AM for a presentation, well, let’s just say I would have needed a pitcher of coffee.

I recently purchased a SAD alarm. It is an alarm clock that turns on a UV light gradually over the course of an hour or so, slowly filling your room. It simulates a sunrise quite nicely, and makes your body think you are still in beautiful Southern Florida, instead of the rainy, depressing North. If you have any trouble waking up when you are on the road, the 80 dollars is worth a good night sleep.

The 550 passenger Airbus A380 Jumbojet made its first voyage into the US today, flying into JFK and LAX. The 239-foot plane is expected to hit the international markets in large numbers next year.

US airlines, however, have yet to order a single one of the new planes which Airbus claims can significantly decrease wait times and increase efficiency at major airports.

Both Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air have announced that they will allow one-way bookings using your Mileage Plan Award Points. You can either book just a one-way ticket or use different levels of awards (like their Saver and Peak) for the same round trip reservation–saving some miles in the process. As of this writing, a one-way Saver Award requires 10,000 miles and a Peak Award goes for 20,000.

As far as I know, this is a fairly unusual policy for any major airline….why don’t they all do it?

I have been using FareCompare.com recently in hopes of finding a unique approach to fare searches. One of the cool tools on the site is what is called the Getaway Map. Plug in your departure city and it will search for the lowest fares according to geographical destination–such as US/Canada, Asia, Europe, etc. Its a nice, easy to navigate layout and makes for some quick results. They also claim to be ‘one of the handful of companies worldwide who receive raw air ticket prices directly from the airlines’. Then if you are signed up on their email alert system, you will be notified minutes after the fare is released to them, presumably giving you a jump on that cheap airfare before your seat partner.

I just added it to my daily RSS feed and was able to get a quick heads-up on some great fares for an upcoming European trip planned for this summer.

But this site is most useful if you have a specific route in mind. They provide data such as ‘historical lows’ for the specific city pair as well as information about the lowest fare during the previous 30 days (displayed in a convenient graphical format), a volatility graph to see longer term trends for this fare and a chart showing the lowest fare for each of the previous 12 months including a star rating to help you size up how your current fare compares.

I have no idea if anyone but me does this, but since aircraft tray-tables are so small and too highly positioned, I often move my mouse down so it’s tracking on my pants leg when I’m flying coach. It doesn’t work very well, but I like the positioning better and my arm doesn’t cramp up quite so much. I also use my trackpad at times, but I don’t like it nearly as much as a mouse. Bottom line is that mid-air mousing has been a pain for me for years.

I just ran across the Logisys Optical Finger Mouse, and it may just be the solution to my problems. Strap it to your index finger, and this tiny gadget uses a laser to detect movement across almost any surface, including fabric(!) You use your thumb to scroll and click.

Needless to say, as soon as I finish this post, I am buying one. Thanks to coolhunting.com for their reporting on this.

Air Canada has recently announced plans to offer a flat rate for unlimited flights for a given length of time. To promote this, Air Canada is offering reduced rates of $1,657 per month for three to six months.

While the idea of unlimited flights on an airline might anger some environmentalists, I would have loved this option on Southwest or Delta last year, when I flew back and forth across the country so much that this might have actually saved me some money.

England’s Tory party has announced plans to add a “conservation tax” to replaced duties on flights with new per flight taxes based on the flight’s carbon emissions.

The new taxes are not supposed to increase costs for the occasional flier, but rather to put pressure on frequent travelers to fly less. Particularly those who flier overseas several times a year for vacations. The more one flies, the more the new taxes will come into effect.

This is potentially good news for environmentalist, bad news for business travelers in the US. If the measure gains support in the UK, it is likely to gain support in the US.

Ryanair has announced it will begin to block Lastminute.com, Ebookers, Flights Direct and Global Holidays from selling tickets on its airline. Apparently, Ryanair believes that these companies have been overcharging passengers by as much as 133 percent and offering misleading information on everything from terms and conditions to check-in times.

Lastminute.com director John Bevan insisted that the company provided competitive prices and did not mislead any of its customers. He also pointed out that his company includes taxation costs at the beginning of the booking process, while Ryanair includes them at the end.

Regardless of who is right and wrong, the moral of the story is, if you don’t shop around online, there is a strong chance you will pay too much.

Two baggage handlers used employee IDs to bring 13 handguns, an assault rifle, and 8 pounds of marijuana on a Florida flight to Puerto Rico. The two men were arrested getting off the flight after an anonymous tip was received by the Orlando Police Department.

The two men were not connected to any terrorist plot, but rather were a part of a weapons and drug trafficking scheme. However, the security breach did raise concerns about background checks on airport employees.

At least you generally can’t on the major carriers.

Scott McCartney, in his The Middle Seat column What Frequent-Flier Miles Really Get You writes that he recently checked available award seats on two dozen routes for several 2007 travel dates. Bottom line is that Delta and US Air redemptions tended to require more miles than other carriers–if seats were available at all.

This spot check on availability, while far from a comprehensive inventory, does show what consumers are up against when trying to score seats. In recent years, more miles have been chasing fewer seats. A resurgence of fare-paying customers has left fewer seats empty, yet there are more miles in circulation because airlines have found selling miles to credit-card companies can be lucrative.

Craig Bruya of Seattle tried unsuccessfully last week to find two business-class seats on United to Paris for a late April trip at United’s 80,000-mile “saver” price level. Curious, he looked for such seats all the way to the end of November and found none.

If “there isn’t a single open seat, then they really don’t have a ’saver’ program,” says Mr. Bruya, who ended up paying United 360,000 miles for two business-class tickets.

Five of the big six international carriers now have seat-availability calendars posted online that can help users spot cheap seats. Delta, the lone holdout, promises a calendar within a “few weeks.”…Calendars also can make it painfully apparent how little availability there is. For a Seattle-London trip checked on Feb. 22, US Airways had no seats at its lowest mileage level between April 30 and Nov. 23 — almost a seven-month drought.

One handy tip McCarney mentions is to “check for discounted business-class and first-class tickets, which sometimes can be better values and even lower-priced than unrestricted coach tickets.”

As a counter-point, I was able just an hour ago to redeem 2 “saver” seats on Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air to Sun Valley Idaho with less than 3 months notice for a meager 20,000 miles a ticket. Savings: $700.00. Maybe that will explain to UAL why I stopped using their United Visa and switched to an Alaska Charge card 5 years ago. I defected when first-class upgrades became almost impossible on UAL…

Airbus has scheduled trips for its new jumbojet A380 to JFK and LAX on March 19. This will be the American debut of the new planes, which are expected to decrease congestion at major airports because of the large number of passengers they can seat.

Air Canada launched its new in-flight entertainment program today, XM enRoute, which offers 10 music channels to fliers on the airline.

This follows a multi-year agreement signed by XM Canada and Air Canada. XM enRoute will works as part of the touch-screen, seat-back entertainment available on Air Canada’s flights.