Tips

One of the biggest hassles when traveling on business can be getting the Visas lined up for multiple country trips. It costs money, it takes weeks, and you usually end up having to give up your passport while everything gets approved.

For a business traveler going anywhere other than Japan, Canada, or Mexico, this can be a real pain in the rear. But it turns out that there’s a service for this, too:

There are about a hundred passport and visa agencies nationwide, most of them single-office operations and some family run, Mr. Smith said. The two biggest are CIBT, based in McLean, Va., and Travisa in Washington. Like all larger visa expediters, they court major corporate clients, offering double-digit discounts for high-volume foreign travel.

These agencies specialize in getting Visas lined up quickly and painlessly, although they can be a little bit pricey with the cheaper Visas costing around $150 and the more expensive ones on the order for $400.

But if you need it done quickly and you’ve got the cash, this could be a good solution.

Not every business traveler is flying on a fat corporate account. For those of you running your own small business, or traveling on a fixed (small) budget, there are plenty of resources to help you snag the cheapest fare when you travel.

In the past, I’ve had pretty good luck just logging into Kayak and cruising the results, but there are a lot of options for the real deal-hunter.

Sally over at Travelhacker has compiled a pretty comprehensive list of the top 50 resources for finding cheap flights. I’ve never used many of them myself, but it never hurts to have options.

I remember reading an article by Douglas Adams that, he claimed, was composed in the bath tub on his PDA. The wave of the future, he said, as long as the keyboards got better.

I know that even using an iPhone or a Blackberry, my typing speed on anything smaller than a regular keyboard is reduced by a good 300%. What’s the solution? Laser keyboards, of course.

ThinkGeek has this Bluetooth Laser Keyboard, which can also makes clicking noises when you type with it, for $150. Not too shabby.

I’ve heard about these existing, and I’ve never used one (although if they sent me one to try out, I wouldn’t complain), but it does look freaking cool. If you’re looking for a productivity device that will make people ask if you’re from the future and you’ve come back in time to save Sarah Conner, this might be the one.

Milemaven is a Web site that lets you search for bonus mile promotions that are available based on the route you’re taking. I just checked it for a rather obscure flight to remote Idaho that I’m contemplating, and sure enough, no fewer than 8 bonuses on 2 different airlines were displayed.

These included (from Alaska Airlines…) Retain your MVP Status by Flying 4 Segments, Retain your MVP Gold Status by Flying 8 Segments, 1,000 Bonus Miles when Booking Online with Alaska Airlines Card, etc….

My friend Tris Hussey noted a service called Parking Hunter earlier this month on MapleLeaf 2.0.

In concept, it’s a pretty cool idea. If you’re traveling to a busy city and you’re going to need parking space in areas that are normally pretty expensive, you can use Parking Hunter to rent parking space from local people who’ve got it (driveways, etc.)

Apparently the price varies from free to “what the market will bear.” So a quick google search might be in order, just to make sure you aren’t getting ripped off, but my guess is that it’ll turn out to be cheaper and more convenient than hunting for parking garages in many cases.

Katherine Boehret at the Wall Street Journal writes today about two online travel services that can save you headaches: TripIt and Groopvine.

From what I can tell, the big helper here is TripIt, and the killer feature is being able to e-mail your scrambled-up confirmation itineraries to them for de-scrambling:

I started using TripIt by forwarding an Expedia email reservation to plans@tripit.com. Less than a minute later, I received an email from TripIt that included a link to my itinerary of flights, local weather forecasts for the duration of my vacation and maps related to where I was going.

Their system apparently works pretty well with the confirmation emails from most of the major booking sites - so Expedia is a go, etc.

It also lets you retrieve information via e-mail by sending in commands like “Get Flight Tomorrow,” which apparently works on blackberries (or, for that matter, any phone with e-mail).

I don’t think I’ve ever actually tuned in to the pilot chatter channel on any of my flights. In fact, it’s been years since I plugged my headphones into the seats instead of my iPod or my laptop. Between the two of them I’ve got music I like better and movies I actually want to see.

But there are plenty of people who enjoy tuning in to the pilot/control tower chatter through the channels built in to the seats. According to the Wall Street Journal, it turns out you sometimes get some useful information out of it:

Listening to air-traffic control communications while flying across the country on United Airlines, Hugh Coppen heard the flight’s captain receive a warning of turbulence ahead. A seasoned traveler, Mr. Coppen acted quickly before the captain alerted passengers. “I knew to run to the bathroom, because you may not be able to go for the next hour,” he said.

I’m not sure it’s worth it to me, given that I don’t care too much myself about pilot chatter, to listen the whole flight just to make sure I use the bathroom at the opportune moment.

But if you’re not otherwise using your ears, it might be a useful way to keep tabs on your bathroom breaks.

I almost always check my bag. I’m taunting fate, some say, but really, I’m just trying not to be a hypocrite.

It’s one of my biggest pet peeves when people bring overstuffed suitcases onto a plane and spend two minutes trying to shove it into an overhead bin that was built for purses and briefcases, not the library of alexandria.

Man, that annoys me.

But you can’t ignore the statistics. According to Travel & Leisure, more than 1 million bags were lost or stolen between May and July (I can only assume they mean 2007).

So what can you do besides brainlessly shoving overstuffed baggage into the overhead compartments? Travel & Leisure has a few suggestions on that front as well: put identification inside your luggage, in case a tag falls off and try to avoid short layovers. If you can’t get between the gates, how is your baggage supposed to?

They also have a few tips on filing a claim if your bag disappears anyway. Go check it out.

Deep in the hidden corners of the internet you occasionally run across little gems like this August 2007 article from the Times Online talking about a spy device designed for tracking cars via GPS technology. It turns out that this little goodie is also an excellent tool for finding lost luggage in a jiffy:

Within moments, the gadget’s global-positioning system (GPS) has acquired three satellite signals, triangulated its exact position and transmitted it back to the PDA. A map pops up, and within 15 seconds – faster than a weary BA clerk can say “Your luggage isn’t lost, sir, it’s merely been mislaid” – a flashing red dot on the screen says your bag’s in Limassol.

The good news is that it apparently does work. The bad news is that the now re-named Potratrak device still costs three arms, your left toenail, and an eyelash.

The company that makes the device, Spycatcheronline, recently created an option to rent the Portatrak (warning: their site loads at geological speeds), but it’s not much of a deal - you have to buy it at full price, and they refund you the difference of the rental cost when you return it.

All in all, it’s a pretty snazzy device, and I’m sure it would be fun to see the poor baggage clerk’s face when you tell them where their handlers put your bag, but I’d guess it’s probably not worth the cash for most travelers. I know it’s not for me.

Yes. And they don’t seem to plan on changing the policy any time soon. I sometimes forget the exactly restrictions, worry that my bottles are not the right size, and then try to sneak them through security in my sweatshirt when they are in fact too big.

However, if you are not interested in the thrill of trying to sneak a 4oz container through security, I recommend the travelon 1-Quart Zip-Top Bag with Plastic Bottles. For only six dollars, you can pack exactly the amount allotted by the TSA, in exactly the manner they have specified. Then you can breeze through security without worry.

The last time I flew, my laptop’s lithium ion battery was on it’s last legs, getting only about 30 minutes when fully charged. So rather than downloading a few episodes of 24 and enjoying my trip, I just closed my eyes and slept (sort of).

However, if it’d been a little more knowledgable, I might have selected a seat in advance that happened to have a power jack. For example, if you fly on one of Continental’s Boeing 767, you will have access to a power jack in rows 16-23. On their 777’s, however, you find row 16 powerless. Next time you have a long flight it’s worth checking out if you will have power or not. If it’s real long, it might even before worth arranging your flight around.

As the number of delays and cancellations increase, it’s important to know what you are entitled to, should this happen to you. The rules are different for almost every airline, and there are no federal laws or rules for how the airlines are required to compensate you. However, each airline has a set of rules they have promised to abide by, called Rule 240.

These rules, however, are often not fully understood by the airline representative working the counter, who will most likely offer you nothing (at least that’s what happened the last time my flight was delayed two hours because of a flight staff shortage). However, if you print your airline’s rules before you leave (or look them up on your iPhone at the airport) they will have no choice but to give you fair compensation.

A woman flying into East Midlands Airport on Tuesday thought she hilarious when she joked that a bomb was on the plane. However, the pilots didn’t think it was too funny. Nor did the police who were called in to investiage. The women is currently is jail awaiting charges. In case anyone is still currently unaware of this, joking about bombs is prohibited in planes and airports and can lead to felony charges.

Northwest Airlines canceled 192 flights yesterday as of 6pm, or 14 percent of their total scheduled flights. For the month of June, they have canceled 2,100 flights, 7 times as many as June of 2006. The majority of these cancellations have occured in Detroit, the Twin Cities, and Memphis. According to the Air Line Pilots Association, the reason for the unusually large cancellation numbers, the highest in the industry, is a shortage of pilots and flight staff. NWA has not commented.

Since this has been the worst year for commercial travel since 1996 in terms of delays, and airport security has been increasingly frustrating to deal with, charter jet services are on the rise.

Virgin Group, which owns a commerical airline in Britain and a new one coming to the US, is currently launching an online service, Virgin Charter, to help reserve, review, and rate charter jets, as well as view safety audits of the plane and pilot.

Because corporate jets fly empty so often, the service plans to connect empty flights with moderately wealthy fliers, who may not otherwise have the cash to rent a plane, at a discounted price. Virgin Group’s owner, Richard Branson, called the current practice “incredibly inefficient.”

The Virgin Group is also working with Boeing to begin using biofuels on planes. It also is planning on using ultra-light planes, such as Textron Inc.’s Cessna Citation Mustang, to decrease carbon emissions.

I just found a great new site. Shows every major airport, and the current weather-related delay status. Green means that there are no ground departure delays above 15 minutes, yellow is over 15 minutes, and red means that flights are being grounded. Its infinitely quicker than actually looking up your flight number.

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.

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.