According to Wi-Fi Networking News, AT&T has apparently co-opted T-mobile’s deal with Starbucks to provide Wi-Fi access to coffee addicts.

This is a huge step up in the world of Wi-Fi for AT&T, who have previously been off the map as far as I’m concerned. I don’t typically do a whole lot of travel productivity at McDonalds.

In fact, I’ve always camped out at Tully’s when I need wi-fi; it’s free there.

He also adds:

T-Mobile HotSpot subscribers will still be able to access Starbucks locations. Starbucks posted a separate press release stating that T-Mobile will be a roaming partner onto the AT&T network through a side deal; no additional cost is involved. There’s some leverage here, because T-Mobile does have about 2,000 other locations, including some premium airports like San Francisco. Existing roaming/aggregation deals among Boingo, AT&T, and T-Mobile were partly predicated on the airport market, where millions of subscribers to each network pass through each year.

Which I cant quite decipher. It sounds like there’s some possibility that AT&T customers get to use T-Mobile hotspots at airports, and T-Mobile customers get to use AT&T hotspots at Starbucks?

Check out the post for more details.

According to the New York Times today, BA is planning to add a new, twice-daily business class route between London City Airport and either Kennedy or Newark.

The catch? London City Airport has a weight limit taking off. Which means on the way back to the States there’going to be a 40-minute stopover in Ireland to fuel up for the long haul. Not so nice.

The article has some interesting analysis of the placement and pricing of the new flight:

Two other things struck me as remarkable about the plan by British Airways, which already flies eight times a day between Kennedy and London Heathrow and three times a day between Newark and Heathrow.

One is the location: London City Airport. London City, which does not now have trans-Atlantic service, is six miles from the financial district and three miles from Canary Wharf, both home to rapidly growing international businesses.

Two is the audacity of the initial pricing. In recent years, three start-up all-business-class carriers — Eos and Silverjet (along with MaxJet, which is now defunct) — began offering New York-to-London business-class fares that were considerably lower than the major carriers. According to Mr. Harford, the new British Airways business-class service will charge the same as its existing business-class service, known as Club World, between New York and Heathrow.

In other words: this is where BA thinks there’s going to be international business growth, and BA thinks the demand for business class flights to London City is going to be inelastic. Given the recent trend towards low-cost, high-frequency airline flights, they could be betting the wrong way.

But crossing the Atlantic in style? That still has to be worth some dough.

According to the Wall Street Journal today, we’re now flying the friendly skies with the smallest number of fully certified air traffic controllers in years (…so we also use not certified air traffic controllers? apparently so).

The shortage is largely being attributed to the mass-retirement of air traffic controllers who were hired after the strike in 1981, and is also cited as a possible cause for delayed flights:

The FAA acknowledges that shortages in the control tower can cause delays, but that it happens infrequently. To stabilize the situation, the agency is hiring hundreds of trainees and offering bonuses of as much as $24,000 to retain wavering controllers. But the pace of departures is leaving fewer experienced eyes to watch over the skies.

The FAA, however, may actually be understating the issue:

Yet entry logs on FAA operations provided by the controllers’ union show the impact of short-staffed facilities on arrival times.

A Dec. 27 entry reads, “JFK GDP IN EFFECT DUE TO STAFFING,” indicating a ground-delay program was initiated because of a controller shortage. A Jan. 2 entry showing increased separation distances required between planes in Southern California bore this explanation: “OTHER: STAFFING.”

An interesting read, and if you’re flight is delayed for no apparent reason whatsoever, you might now have a good guess as to why.

photo ganked from severed dreams’ photostream on FlickR.

Peter Greenberg wrote an article for Best Life Magazine last November that’s got a hefty collection of useful tips for making sure that your travel goes as smoothly as possible.

Here are just a few:

Watch the calendar. Schedule air travel for the first 20 days of the month. That reduces the chances that your flight will be canceled because the pilot or crew has already hit the maximum monthly limit of 100 hours of work.

Avoid “direct” flights. The only good flight is a nonstop flight. Labeling a flight “direct” is an airline euphemism that means you’ll stop at least once, exponentially increasing your chances of being delayed.

Sign up for e-mail alerts. Many airlines offer this service, as do Travelocity and Expedia. Or you can go to flightstats.com, a free service that tracks flights and alerts you when things are going wrong. To have text messages sent to your cell phone alerting you to flight delays, sign up at flightstats.com. You can also find updates at fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp.

Several of these things I’ve already been doing accidentally - I like to fly nonstop whenever possible (who doesn’t?) so I usually check the details to see if there are any stops regardless of what the initial listing states.

The TSA recently launched a blog that seems to be aimed at covering common questions that travelers have, such as:

• Why do we have to take off our shoes?
• Why do they screen 80 year old ladies?, and
• What’s up with the restrictions on liquids?

Now, to be fair, the blog is “sponsored by the TSA,” not actually run/written by the TSA, so I wouldn’t expect them to know the answers to all of your questions.

But it’s a fair bet that if you’ve got some pressing and esoteric query, that’s as good a resource as any for getting it answered. The real question in my mind is, of course, will any of the feedback on the blog affect their service in the airport?

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.

I have to agree with Kevin Kelly on this one, most of the “money belts” I’ve seen are basically just after market pockets for your underwear. It’s pretty cool to see a money belt that is, in fact, an actual belt:

Sure, it won’t hold your passport, spare cards, or anything like that. But on the other hand, it might let you travel in comfort. Just make sure you don’t put anything metal in it before you roll through security.

The December 2007 Business Traveler Magazine but its reader votes together to line up the Readers’ Choice Best it Business Travel Awards , which, conveniently, lists the airline awarded the title “best airline in the world.”

What airline, you ask? Singapore Airlines.

And if you’re wondering how they got that title, check out some of the descriptions:

For business-class customers, Singapore offers 34-inch-wide seats that can be converted to fully-flat beds, which have 15.4-inch LCD entertainment systems with USB ports and up to 1,000 channels of movies, music, and other programming. The KrisWorld entertainment system also includes basic word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, so business travelers can work on projects stored on a USB drive. Seats are arranged in a 1-2-1 configuration, giving all passengers easy access to an aisle.

Yep, I think I might vote that pretty highly, too. The last international flight I took was on British Airways, which all in all is not a bad airline, but talk about leaping five feet above the bar.

And Singapore Changi Airport was named best business travel airport in the world.

Sounds like I need to go to Asia more often.

MSNBC yesterday wrote about a nudist holiday flight scheduled for July 5th:

German nudists will be able to start their holidays early by stripping off on the plane if they take up a new offer from an eastern German travel firm.

Travel agency OssiUrlaub.de said it would start taking bookings from Friday for a trial nudist day trip from the eastern German town of Erfurt to the popular Baltic Sea resort of Usedom, planned for July 5 and costing 499 euros ($735).

If you’re tired of being productive at 30,000 feet and thinking about being reproductive (oh, and you’re flying the right route), you might think about signing up for this flight.

Sure it’s a bit expensive, and you’re only allowed to be nude on the plane (not at the airports on either end of the trip), but how often do you get to fly in comfort like this?

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.

Have you heard about this?

There’s a company called Verified Identity Pass that operates a service called “Clear,” which, for a hundred dollars per year, gives travelers a “biometrically encoded identification card.” This card lets you use the adult equivalent of a Disneyland Fast-Pass lane.

The New York Times noted a few days ago that both Washington Dulles and Reagan National will have the system up and running in “a few weeks.”

What is Clear? Their web site describes the service and the premise behind it:

It’s basic risk management: someone who is pre-screened is less likely to be a threat than someone who isn’t. That’s the simple premise behind Clear. By participating in the government’s Registered Traveler Program at airports Clear Members will spend less time in security lines.

Essentially, the bet is that pre-screened people (who can prove they’re who they say they are) are less likely to pull anything while traveling. My guess is that they’re right.

It’s a little bothersome to me that it costs $100 per year (and a lot of privacy) for the ability to fly a little faster. But I guess the alternative is to have the government running a system like this…

What do you think? It is better to have that data in private hands or in the hands of the government? And are you going to sign up for Clear?

It seems like there are a few airlines who tend to “get it” more than others. For a while, I remember JetBlue being the savvy traveler’s airline of choice. There is also the highly-liked but not-as-often talked about Southwest Airlines.

And now there’s the newest contender: Virgin America. They recently gave out 80 free round-trip flights to geed gadget bloggers attending our CES It Won’t Stay in Vegas Blogger Party. I have no doubt that as bloggers start cashing in on those flights, we’ll be hearing about it on the internet.

While talking with the Virgin America people at our party, they were also excited about the fact that AirCell is going to equip their planes with wi-fi sometime in 2008. Couple that with their much-touted in-flight social consoles and it looks like we’re starting to see a plane company that’s trying to sell flights as an entertainment experience as well as a travel service.

Next order of business: make chairs that don’t make my neck cramp.

These things have probably been around for a while already, but I only just noticed them last Saturday when I traipsed through SeaTac at unbelievably early hours in the morning: Southwest Power Stations.

They’re this bar-stool toting fake granite slabs dotted around the Southwest terminal at probably most airports. All I know for sure is that you can find them in Seattle, Phoenix, and San Antonio.

I’m not sure why they decided bar stools were the best seat for computing, but I’m glad to find more and more places dedicated to sitting down and plugging in. I tend to do a lot of traveling where I have a layover that is at least 45 minutes.

A quick charge can go a long way, if you’ll excuse the pun.

I always like to write posts where I get to say, on some level, “I told you so.”

JetBlue recently ran a test flight with Wi-Fi for press types to try out, and they got plenty of buzz because of it. Unforutnately for them, it’s all pretty mediocre as far as I can tell. And the first words out of Cnet’s review are:

The biggest problem with JetBlue’s inaugural “BetaBlue” flight, equipped with Yahoo and BlackBerry e-mail and instant messaging, was the fact that there aren’t power outlets on board the aircraft.

Hmmmm. I told you so.

In-flight Wi-Fi is, like internet access most places, going to happen eventually. If I were running an airline, I’d be approaching my service offerings by asking myself a question: if someone put me in a room for six hours and allowed me to bring only what I could easily carry on my person, what would I want in that room?

The list is pretty short, and in order of importance:

• A bathroom
• A power outlet
• The internet
• Snacks

You got that, I’m happy.

JetBlue tend to be pretty forward thinking though, and I’ll be surprised if they ignore the feedback they’re getting.

For those of you who aren’t aware, The New York Times keeps a travel blog called JetLagged, which today has a piece that rips into the TSA:

If you are someone who suspects that what is billed as “aviation security” is often more show than substance, you are not alone. In fact, you are part of what Nixon aides used to call the “silent majority.” The security bureaucracy seems to think that as long as it is seen as doing something, and so long as another terror attack does not occur, the public will at least feel secure enough not to insist that it do whatever needs to be done actually to make us secure.

I won’t spoil the post for you, but the gist of it is that the TSA is all hat and no cattle. Myself, I’ve often complained about the way that buying expensive airline club memberships can speed you through security.

What sense does that make? If security is something that we all have to go through, why do rich people fly faster?

But I suppose that’s just me being jealous.

The last time I flew, I flew Southwest. Up until recently this mandated a certain process: check in online (which I hate), get in the best boarding group possible, show up early, stand (sit) in line, board plane.

But, and this is probably not news to many of you, Southwest recently announced that if you feel like it, you can up the cost of your ticket, and get a guaranteed spot in the line to board the plane (you can also get the same treatment if you fly 16 or more round trips in one year):

NEW YORK, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is now courting frequent business travelers by allowing them to pay a higher fare to board planes first, the company said on Thursday.

The “Business Select” class represents another change to Southwest’s policy of not assigning seats.

This works out well for those with extra cash. I can’t decide if that bugs me or not. I suppose I’ll find out the next time I fly in group A, but end up boarding behind 30 other people.

For your amusement today: the reason I can’t wait to fly Virgin American.

I’m sure many of you have seen this photo of the new Dreamliner interior floating around the internet. It’s definitely one of those succulent pictures that just speaks for itself.

But as cool and futuristic as that interior looks, it’s not going to help me much unless there are outlets in every seat where I can charge my laptop. Battery technology keeps getting better and better, which is great because now I can really make use of a four hour plane flight, but anything much longer than that and I’m in trouble.

I don’t doubt that Boeing is smart enough to throw outlets onto their newest dream plane. In fact, I haven’t even Googled to see if they’re in the specs. OK, that’s a little irresponsible, so hang on… a cursory Google search in fact turns up that Airbus has power outlets in every seat on their A380, but nothing mentioned about power outlets on the dreamliner.

That’s disappointing. Come on people. This is like having an audio jack in a car. Oh wait, nobody does that, either.

Just about every airport I end up in has at least one or two Wi-Fi networks available in the concourse. They usually cost between $5 and $7 dollars for 24 hours of access (I’m there for 30-45 minutes), and $20/month for unlimited access. About half the time it’s some sort of T-mobile hotspot, which is pretty good, but at least half the time the network is provided by a company named after some sort of exotic fruit.

Free Wi-Fi is what we all want. I’m sure that eventually that’s where we’ll end up. It’ll just be expected airport infrastructure.

But in the meantime, I don’t have a problem with paying for Wi-Fi access. It’s a service provided by a company, and I don’t want some weird frame in my window shoving ads down my face just so they can cover their costs. I’d pay somewhere between $10 and $20 a month if it meant I could get online at any airport in the country.

The problem is that nothing is everywhere. If I wanted to have Wi-Fi at every airport I might end up in (which I do), I’d probably have to subscribe to three or four different providers, at the least, and several of them would overlap in places. Boy does that sound like wasted money.

Someone should really make an effort to be everywhere. Because the value just isn’t there if you cover 60% of the airports.

American Airlines is hoping to become the first domestic carrier of inflight internet. American plans on working with AirCell, an Illinois based company that has been designing a system to provide onboard Wi-Fi from an antenna to the ground.

The service will probably not be free, and is expected to cost slightly more than comparable existing Wi-Fi HotSpots. It is also expected to run at DSL speeds and will be tested on American’s Boeing 767-200 planes.

However, if you are not willing to pony up for Wi-Fi, the service will still be quite useful, as American plans on offering free Wi-Fi for sponsored travel websites related to hotels, rental cars, restaurants, etc. American has not announced a date for the launch but hopes to do so soon.