May 2007

Airline passengers on five international flights may have been exposed to an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis. The flights were Air France Flight 385 on May 12 to Paris from Atlanta, which was the longest and more important flight, and Paris to Athens on May 14; Athens to Thira Island May 16; Mykonos Island to Athens May 21; and Athens to Rome May 21. Anyone on any of these flights needs to check in with local CDC officials immediately.

The man knew he had tuberculosis when he boarded the flight from Atlanta on his honeymoon, but was unaware of how serious the strain was. This goes as a strong reminder not to ignore health warnings when flying.

Federal officials are still trying to track down all passengers on those flights.

One 7:05 AM flight from NY to LA and is expected to arrive 10:03 AM. The other is expected to get in at 11:28 AM. Both are on American Airlines. The difference? The first set of times are from 1997, the other is from 2007.

No, planes are not getting slower. In fact, they are faster. But, with all the recent anger of delays, some airlines have taken to the habit of planning on being delayed, and setting their arrival time based on a planned delay, What’s the advantage of this? The Department of Transportation gives their ratings based on whether or not flights ARRIVE on time. So if you add an extra hour, you’ll get in on time, and be rated low for delays, even if every flight you fly is delayed an hour.

When flying over to London or Tokyo for business or pleasure, the last thing on a lot of people’s mind is their domestic health care provider. But what happens to you when you get sick or injured in another country? Will your coverage pay the bill, or are your travel expenses about to triple?

The majority of health care providers, such as Aetna, Cigna and Humana, will cover you if your overseas care is classified as an emergency. This is good because unless you are overseas for quite a while, that’s all you really need. But what exactly is an emergency? While chest pains count as an emergency, non-life-threatening illness and diseases, such as Pinkeye or Poison Ivy, rarely do.

If you do have an emergency, however, most countries will expect you to pay the bill yourself, and get reimburst later. As far as gettiing reimburst goes, be prepared to be persistent and resubmit your request two or three times.

Overall, it’s a good idea to contact your provider before your next trip and find out exactly what their policy is. It could save you a few thousand dollars.

That is of course, unless are on Medicare or Medicaid; then you’re not covered overseas. Period.

Yesterday, China and the Unite States announced an aviation agreement which will more than double the number of daily passenger flights by 2012. Under the new agreement, US carriers are allowed to operate 13 more daily flights to China, and China also plans to lift all limits on transpacific cargo flights.

The agreement is pretty historic, and should increase significantly increase business travel and economic relations between the two countries.

Skybus launched its first flight yesterday, and tickets are now available. For 10 dollars. For cross-country flights. You heard right. 10 dollars from Columbus to Los Angeles. Of course, the ticket fare doesn’t cover the cost of baggage, snacks, and or any frills or service of any kind. And you have to pay more if you want a good seat. Or if you don’t buy the tickets way in advance. Plus Skybus mostly flies out of second-tier hubs.

Still, 10 dollars for a flight is insanely cheap and I usually sleep through most flights. For 10 bucks, I’ll fly over to Utah to watch the Jazz win the NBA Finals and bring only my toothbrush, crammed into the worst seat on the plane.

Virgin Group, the owner of the very sucessful Virgin Atlantic Airlines, announced today that its new Virgin America Airlines has been approved by the Department of Transportation and will begin flying from San Francisco International Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York this summer.

The airline also plans to serve San Diego, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport by the end of the year.

The President and CEO of the Air Transport Association, James C. May, testified before Congress today on the state of airline carbon emissions.

May was adamant that air travel is carbon efficient; it is responsible for only 2 percent of US carbon emissions while driving over 3 billion dollars in economic activity daily. He called air travel, “the greenest form of mass transportation.”

However, May also asked Congress to take the lead on making the industry more environmentally accomodating. May asked Congress to provide more environmental research funding for NASA and the FAA, as well as to support the International Civil Aviation Organization’s environmental efforts, and to provide funding for modernized air traffic control systems.

United Airlines and Delta have done a great job over the past few years emerging from bankrupty to move into a financially stable place with a solid bottom line. Unfortunately for them, cost-cutting and increased efficiency has hurt customer satisfaction.

University of Michigan’s customer satisfaction survey of 20,000 fliers ranked United last and Delta second-to-last. The industry’s overall satisfaction dropped as well, from 65 to 63 points on a scale of 1 to 100.

Southwest was a bright spot, not only finishing first, but increasing its customer service ranking from a 74 up to 76.

I was reading about a recent story where a passenger got massively overcharged by MAXJet Airways. Dwight Wolcczak and his wife missed their flight from New York to London, and were charged a $100 change fee, plus the fare differential for the new flight, which was over $2000 dollars. To boot, MAXJet accidentally charged their card twice, bringing the total cost to $4000.

To add insult to injury, Dwight and his wife weren’t even late because they overslept or left late for their airport; their lateness was weather-related.

Fortunately for Dwight, MAXJet ended up issuing a refund for the overcharge. But, needless to say, his trip was ruined.

For those of you on the road, if you miss your flight, it should NOT be a big deal. I have missed a few flights, and the airline should offer you a reasonable fare differential, throw on the change fee, and have you feeling like you want to fly with them again. That’s how Delta and Southwest were when I missed flights.

However, if your airline does screw you like they did Dwight, don’t leave. Don’t accept what they are offering, stay there and talk to someone with some authority. They will try to make you happy. In an era of blogs and online wiki-review boards, smart companies would rather swallow a few hundreds bucks and do the right thing then screw you over and have a Jeff Jarvis on their hands (blogger who ruined Dell’s reputation).

Also, ALWAYS check your credit card receipts before signing them in case you are charged twice. But that should go without saying.

Up until now, business travel programs have done a great job of covering you for the big three of business travel: airfare, hotels, and car rentals. Lots of great programs to find, book, and bill. But those are usually only about three-fourths of a business trip, what about dining, ground transportation, parking, meals, etc.

The new program, AXIOM, is designed to help you with ALL aspects of a business trip. It hooks up with other programs such as TicketMaster, StubHub, Razor Gator, Open Table, FedEx, and UPS, to cover all needs and costs of your next trip. Its linked to American Express and can charge everything directly to your card. I suggest checking it out the next time you are on the road.

Global trade keeps increasing and more US companies are going national at an astounding rate. Great news for businesses, stock holders, and consumers; bad news for business travelers.

International travel costs increased $180 dollars this year and are expected to keep increasing exponentially. Airline flights are becoming more compacted, delayed, and stressful. This summer overall travel is expected to be especially high. A recent study found that half of regular business travelers had “maintenance-related travel delays or cancellations” within the previous six months.

To help combat these delays and cancellations, Kate Hanni has founded The Coalition for an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights, and is fighting to get her bill through Congress. Until then, build in some extra time for delays, cancelations, and a stress-relieving massage when you get home.

Want to fly first class at a coach fare? “Yup.”

That’s the fare code designation, also sometimes called “Q-up”, for flights that have cheap first class bump up. You can find these special fares at FareCompare.com, which has an online search tool designed specifically for these fares.

American Airlines has announced it will be offering Personal Media Players on transcontinental flights and some domestic flights. The PMP’s will be free for first and business class, and available at a fee for coach passengers. The PMP’s come with fifteen full-length feature films, twelve hours of television shows, fourteen music channels, and mp3’s from over fifty artists.

The current program is a test to see if theft will be an issue. If it is not, AA plans on launching the program on all of its flights.

Apparently, large airports with several security checkpoints will receive bottlenecks regularly at some checkpoints, but not others. For example, wait time at Sunday morning at Newark Airport’s Terminal C, Checkpoint 2 is an average of 11 minutes at , compared to a mere two minutes at checkpoint 1.

To speed yourself through, you can check average checkpoint wait times by the hour at every major US airport at the TSA’s checkpoint website http://waittime.tsa.dhs.gov.

Great news for airlines; many of them have emerged from serious financial problems and are now expected to start becoming profitable again. However, this may not be particularly good news for fliers this summer. Much of the predicted profitably comes from the fact that your flights this summer will be more crowded than ever. Also expected are more fees as airlines continue to bring up their bottom line:

Seat assignment fees: carriers such as AirTrans Airways, Southwest Airlines, and American Airlines are planning on charging for reserving seats with more legroom, reserving seats in advances, or changing seat assignments.

Checking bags: as flights get fuller, fuel gets more expensive, and the weight of the average American continues to increase, carriers are trying to decrease the amount of baggage weighing down the plane. Spirit Airlines and Skybus are already planning on charging per bag; expect many more carriers to start doing the same.

Fuel fees: British Airways is increasing its tacked on fuel fee by $6, starting today. Expect other airlines to follow as gas prices rise during the summer.

Standby fees: Northwest just added a $25 standby fee, with other airlines considering adding a standby fee.

Fees for everything: RyanAir, a low-cost European carrier, charges fees on just about everything you can think of. Skybus, the new American low-cost carrier, plans to do the same.