Five clicks to a car deal
Before she discovered Hotwire, Anna Blackman routinely reserved her cars through a rental company website. She says she did it for the frequent flier mileage credit and because the rates were better. But she recently snagged a great price on Hotwire for a one-week rental in Baltimore - a brand-new midsize car from National Car Rental for $22 a day - that made her forget about her miles. “It was much cheaper than my reservation with any other car rental company,” says the El Sobrante, CA, executive.
Turn off your phone?
Noel Ward thinks the ban on using cell phones in flight is pointless, so he sometimes doesn’t bother powering his handset down when he’s on a plane. “I’m not sure it matters,” says the Web publishing consultant from Amherst, N.H. “I generally lose a good signal somewhere around 10,000 feet, anyway.”
Is Delta out of ‘line’?
Q: I was flying from New York to Orlando on Delta Air Lines when I had an unpleasant experience. We arrived at the airport two hours before our flight was scheduled to leave. My four children and I waited patiently on the line for a security check.
As we were waiting, a Delta employee monitored the [...]
Something for nothing
United Airlines wants $1.8 billion. US Airways is asking for $900 million and Amtrak needs $100 million. And who are they hitting up? You. The airlines are going to the Air Transportation Stabilization Board while the National Railroad Passenger Corporation is requesting the money from Congress, but the bottom line is: that money could come out of your pocket when you pay your taxes.
Size does matter
Oversize airline passengers, meet your dietician. Its name is Southwest Airlines. The no-frills carrier last week began enforcing a rule that compels overweight customers to buy a second ticket if they can’t fit in the standard 18 3/4-inch-wide seats. As you might expect, every advocacy group from the International Size Acceptance Association to the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance is piling on the criticism. They say Southwest is discriminating against portly passengers and are threatening to take the carrier to court.
The worst of Best Western
Q: Recently my daughter and I drove to Charleston, S.C., to visit relatives. We had reservations for four nights at the Best Western Sweetgrass Inn near James Island. But when we arrived, we were told that no reservation existed for us and that no rooms were available. Eventually, the assistant manager found a room.
That’s when [...]
Angel Fire’s aliens
There’s a road sign along U.S. Highway 434 that looks so ordinary, so official, that you’re tempted to ignore it. By the time you realize what you’ve seen - an image of a cow being sucked into a spacecraft - it’s disappeared in your rearview mirror. There are the extraterrestrial-looking rock formations. Canyons that could pass for a backdrop in any science fiction movie. Darkness hides these surreal geological formations at night, but as the road curves up the mountain the moon emerges from behind a cloud and illuminates their chiseled, otherworldly surface. And there’s the name itself: Angel Fire. Every alien invasion site should be this clearly marked.
A winning ticket strategy
Finding an airfare at the last minute may seem simple for Enda Carey, a computer systems analyst for a brokerage firm in New York. But the actual process is far from it. “In order to plan trips based on what’s available at the last minute, I use a variety of sources,” he says.
Is your laptop available for a steal?
On a recent trip to Portland, Ore., Mary White and her husband, Greg, lost “everything” on a single afternoon. No, they haven’t opened a new casino in town.
Throw out the rulebook on tickets
Forget everything you know - or think you know - about finding a cheap airline ticket on the Web. Sites that sell so-called “last-minute” tickets constantly add and remove inventory. But now the pace of those changes is accelerating beyond what most travel experts believed possible. The old rules no longer apply with these dot-coms on steroids, meaning that you’ve got to think quicker, act more decisively, and learn to play the airfare game better when you’re ready to buy.
The last cruise
The USS Spiegel Grove is the biggest, priciest, and most controversial artificial reef in the world. And maybe, the most fun. How else to describe an audacious plan to sink a 510-foot retired Navy landing dock ship that’s had more cost overruns than a Navy fighter jet project and more plot twists than a David Mamet movie?
Hotel fee relapse
Are hotel surcharges dead? If you’ve been following the news recently, you might be forgiven for thinking so. A few weeks ago, The New York Times breathlessly reported that because of customer backlash and a slump in business travel, many properties have dropped fees on everything from minibars to room safes. The story suggested that guests would finally pay the actual room rate they’d been quoted rather than being handed a bill with lots of surprise extras on it. Only a few days later, as if to underscore the point, USA Today published a story that revealed Wyndham International hotels had eliminated phone charges for its best business customers. The newspaper called the move a “radical shift” in an industry best known for adding charges. Members of Wyndham’s frequent-stayer program can now make free unlimited, local and domestic long-distance calls, make copies and surf the Internet at no charge.
Not paying $20
Q: I recently tried to obtain a receipt for air travel on Alaska Airlines in order to get reimbursement from a client. Trouble was, I had purchased an EasyPak of tickets which are often (though certainly not always) cheaper than available airfares. I had used one in order to save my client money.
When I asked [...]
Marking the miles
Bill Ford believes the 160-mile journey between Miami and Key West is “just about the only decent road trip in the entire state of Florida.” And he ought to know. Ford used to run Harley-Davidson motorcycle tours from Orlando to the Southernmost City, and he says there’s “a real cult aspect” to the drive. Maybe it’s the feeling that when you’re crossing the spans of the Overseas Highway, you’re riding on water. Maybe it’s the legendary hangouts where crusty locals mix with weekend tourists - weathered institutions like Alabama Jack’s near Key Largo, Lorelei’s in Islamorada, and Sloppy Joe’s in Key West. Then again, maybe it’s the danger.
Have we learned nothing?
So now airlines are removing passengers for no reason other than that they look Middle Eastern. That’s the charge against four carriers made by the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit filed last week, a case that has unsettled, if not surprised many travelers. It’s only human to be troubled by charges that these government-subsidized businesses purged innocent passengers from flights after Sept. 11 because of objections from other travelers or flight crews rather than legitimate security concerns. But surprise?