As business-class seats have consistently moved towards the luxury originally set aside for first class seats, European airlines have started phasing in a new level of ticket, often called premium economy.

The idea is to appeal to business travelers “on a budget” and people who are taking vacations but can spend a little bit extra on the tickets:

“It’s a smart business move because there’s been what I call class creep on an airplane,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Forrester Research. “What’s now called business class is almost what first class used to be. So premium economy is more like what business class used to be back in the 1980s, akin in many ways to U.S. domestic first class in terms of legroom.”

I’m sure it will change over time, but I’ve made my list of what I need to keep me happy on an airplane. Super cushy seats and high-class cutlery are not on the list.

For now, it looks like I’ll stick to the main cabin. Of course, if premium economy came with free wi-fi…

What luggage services? (you ask)

According to the Journal there are companies that offer to pick your bags up at your door and deliver them to your destination—the door, again—so that you don’t have to deal with airline surcharges, hassles of luggage claim, security, or anything else the FAA might invent between now and next Tuesday.

How did the tests go? Are the services worth it?

The good news: No service failed the point-A-to-point-B test. The bad: Prices were so steep, from $122.19 to $198.23, the services can’t really be considered practical for frequent fliers or families with lots of luggage. (Procrastinators should also take note: Even if you opt for the higher-priced overnight service, you’re still stuck with the issue of having to pack and ship your bags ahead of going to the airport.)

And the real surprise: Four out of the five companies sent Federal Express or UPS to pick up our bags. Which begs another question: Why not just call the carriers on your own instead of paying for a third party to handle the task? For example, for that same $198.23 fee that our priciest shipper charged for a suitcase weighing up to 55 pounds (and insured for up to $1,500), FedEx quoted us a rate of $38.58, and UPS, $70.08.

So if you’re thinking about skipping the $15 luggage surcharge, try a different airline first

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.

This week it’s the trains in Europe. Business Traveller reported recently that the York train station now boasts free Wi-Fi provided by National Express East Coast, which manages the station and also provides free Wi-Fi on all of its trains.

The quote from the station manager, Steve Soards, says it all:

“A major advantage of choosing the train over alternatives such as driving or flying is the ability to stay connected to the internet throughout the journey. For business passengers our wifi creates a productive mobile office, with the ability to send and receive emails as well as to access the internet. Staying online throughout a journey can mean the difference between clinching a deal or losing out.”

I’m think the airline industry needs to stop playing defense and start playing offense. Trying to tack little fees onto luggage and food is going to make people mad.

Offering productivity services, especially basic ones like free wi-fi (maybe you get to purchase extra or dedicated bandwidth?) is probably a much better approach to finding new revenue streams.

United Airlines said Thursday that it would begin charging many passengers on Friday to check their first bag, joining American Airlines in assessing a $15 luggage fee for passengers flying on the cheapest tickets.

It wasn’t that long ago that American announced the policy on their own airplanes, in an effort to recoup some of the costs of operating an airline in a sluggish economy with skyrocketing fuel prices.

While I certainly understand the sentiment (”we’re screwed! our costs are going through the roof and our revenue is not growing!”), there’s only so much to be accomplished by introducing “gotcha” fees to travelers.

The only way that’s going to work as a long term strategy is if the budget airlines follow suit, and I think companies like Southwest are savvy enough not only to avoid the $15 surcharge, but to use it as good fodder for advertising.

The new iPhone firmware is clearly aimed at co-opting a big chunk of the BlackBerry user base, with full ActiveSync and enterprise support that integrates with both Microsoft and Apple programs on Macs and PCs.

Essentially, Apple wants you to ditch the Blackberry and start carrying their phone instead.

I use an iPhone instead of a a blackberry or a Windows Mobile smartphone because of the web browsing. Most of the e-mail I send on my phone is short - the longer responses can usually wait until I’m back at my laptop and I can spit out a full response on a regular keyboard. And the iPhone is great for reading e-mail and checking out attachments.

But I know I’m in the minority here.

So here’s my question to you Blackberry touting road warriors - will faster network speed and full enterprise integration cause you to jump ship? Or are you sticking around for the keyboard?

Many Hotels and travel services like Travelocity are starting to pick up the slack in the travel experience by offering additional services or trying to provide information where the airlines have dropped the ball:

Affinia Hotels, with properties in New York, Chicago and Washington, recently began maintaining guest profiles so that its hotels can have things like yoga mats, laptop chargers and other items guests may want in their room but don’t want to lug on a plane. In response to American Airlines’ plans to charge $15 each way for the first checked bag, Loews Hotels is reimbursing guests this summer with bag fee receipts up to $30.

Or check out what Travelocity is doing to make sure you have a place to sleep:

After discovering a pattern of dropped reservations at certain hotels, Travelocity hired a company in India to call the hotels ahead of customer stays to make sure they were prepared for the guests. The company says this has reduced the incidence of dropped reservations in two years to less than 1 percent from as high as 20 percent.

The lesson here seems to be: If you can spare the change to do your booking through a service instead of just grabbing a credit card and heading to yourfavoriteariline.com, you’ll end up with a little extra padding for the bumps and hassles that almost inevitably go with air travel.

I actually didn’t know, until I read in the New York Times today, that air traffic delays account for such a huge drain on the industry:

Last year, “air traffic delays raised airlines’ operating costs by $19 billion,” counting fuel, crew, maintenance and other costs incurred by planes circling and waiting to land or sitting at gates or on tarmacs beyond departure times, the report said.

Officially, about a quarter of all flights arrived late last year. But airlines routinely build extra time into the schedule for many flights, which “significantly underestimates the problem,” the report said.

Have you ever glanced at the screen when your ticket is scanned at the gate? It looks like a program running in Windows 95.

Upgrading the systems might be an expensive one-time cost, but if airlines could stop writing down a few billion dollars a year in red ink they might be able to better cope with the high oil prices and, coincidentally, stop asking us to pay these silly baggage fees.

And beyond that, it takes time to shove overstuffed canvas into bins above your head (probably the un-cited cause of many a delayed flight), and everyone usually looks stupid doing it.

But I think I’m going to have to swallow my pride and look like an idiot the next time I fly on American Airlines: they’ve decided to charge $15 for one checked bag (with some exclusions):

Today, American introduced a $15 fee for the first checked bag, given the increasing costs of transporting checked baggage. This fee, which is effective for tickets purchased on or after June 15, does not apply to: American’s AAdvantage program members who have achieved AAdvantage Gold, AAdvantage Platinum and AAdvantage Executive Platinum level; those who have purchased full-fare tickets in the Economy, Business and First Class cabins; and those with international itineraries.

To be fair, American Airlines does cite ridiculous fuel prices and a sluggish American economy as reasons for introducing new fees and dropping a significant percentage of their “available seat miles flown.” And I’m sure they are hurting for those reasons. The real question is how much of their business the new fees will kill, given that other Airlines may not follow suit.

TerraPass has calculators for various flying scenarios and offers products to balance emissions. They leverage three types of projects: clean energy produced by wind power; farm power such as dairy farm methane digesters; and landfill methane capture.

EcoVerdance takes a different approach. Their primary method of carbon-dioxide reduction involves the purchase and donation of Accele-Gro-M, a plant growth enhancer that’s applied in developing countries with the help of non-governmental/charitable organizations.

The EcoVerdance folks have provided an entire year’s worth of registered carbon credits for each Future in Review participant, which means this reporter is covered for the next 364 days.

So, I’ve got that going for me…