Take this tech tool
If you had to choose between taking a cell phone, a personal digital assistant or a laptop computer on your next business trip, which would you pick?
It’s not a hypothetical question. Airlines now are strictly enforcing their “one-plus” rule for carry-ons, which limits you to a single bag plus a personal item like a briefcase [...]
LA savings are online
Jeff Hatch, a retiree from Truckee, Calif., turns to the Internet when he’s looking for a bargain on a hotel in Los Angeles. With good reason. He recently clicked on a website called California Riviera to find a room near the beach, and the booking service landed him a good deal. “They booked me a suite at Four Seasons in Newport Beach,” he recalls. “The price was so good that the desk clerk thought it was an error and put me in standard room.” Hatch fixed the problem with a phone call and got re-upgraded.
Too close a connection
Q: I will be flying from Buffalo, NY, to London via Chicago for a three-week graduate study course at Oxford. But I have concerns about the close departure times between flights, and wanted to check with you.
My travel agent booked me on an American Airlines flight leaving Buffalo at 6:36 p.m., arriving in Chicago at [...]
Big savings in the big D
Going to the Big D? Log on to the Internet before leaving for Dallas. A visit to the Web can save you lots of money. Hard to believe, considering that the ninth-largest city in the United States isn’t exactly known as a tourist destination. But the discounts are there - not as abundant as they are elsewhere, nor as easy to find. But they’re there.
Taking aim at the wrong target
Daniel Bopp, a management consultant based in Dallas, has been able to reduce the cost of his airline tickets by a total of $18,000 each year. How does he do it? Thousands of travelers like Bopp normally slip through the cracks every day using a creative booking practice called “back-to-back” ticketing, also known as “b-to-b.”
Can these miles be saved?
Q: I saw your article in which you helped someone get their American Express points they had lost. I was hoping you could help me.
I had two American Express accounts, a personal and a corporate card. In January my company switched to MasterCard. Some of the charges on my corporate account were not paid on [...]
Shutout on Sanibel
Rob stares at the bulge under Kari’s jacket, the only outward sign that she’s two months shy of having a baby, and there’s a pregnant pause. Our guide had been animatedly talking about what’s biting out in the flats near Sanibel Island, Fla., this time of year - snook, redfish and an occasional cobia - until his eyes settled on my fishing buddy’s midriff. “How far along are you?” he asks. “Seven months.” “You gonna be okay to fish?”
Capital savings in Washington
The nation’s capital is the only city in which I almost always end up getting lost, no matter how many maps or Internet driving directions I carry. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been a regular visitor to Washington since 1975, or that I lived just a short drive away, in Annapolis, for four years. D.C. confuses me. Bargain-hunters often feel the same way. Washington is a tourist town but it’s not dependent on the visitors for its livelihood to the same extent as Orlando or Las Vegas. So the deals can be harder to find. The Web makes that task a little easier. Although moneysaving Internet sites aren’t as evolved as they are for some of the bigger destinations, they are nonetheless useful guides for travelers looking to trim their expenses.
Blindsided by American’s fee
Q: I recently bought a ticket on American Airlines’ Web site using my frequent flier miles. After I approved the purchase, I noticed a $50 “expedite fee” that showed up in the fine print.
I thought there must be a mistake. I called the airline and a representative explained that the $50 fee was incurred because [...]
Theme park evolution
Not another theme park. That’s the first thing I thought when I saw the enormous construction site rising out of the scorched sawgrass fields in Orlando two years ago. The last thing we need here is another theme park.
Cut your luggage costs
Tim Dawson doesn’t like to travel with flimsy luggage. His tastes run to the high-end, ballistic nylon designer baggage by manufacturers such as Tumi, which he says serve him well on his frequent trips. “It’s got a solid reputation,” says the Frazer, PA, financial analyst, “but it’s also expensive.” So you can imagine Dawson’s surprise when he found two Tumi bags at Neiman-Marcus at 45 percent off the list price recently. “I paid $298 total plus tax. It was not a discontinued model, and it came with a full warranty,” he recalls. But now he wonders—could he have done even better?
Outrageous change fee
Q: I booked a one-way ticket on Continental Airlines from Newark to Atlanta recently. My original ticket cost about $80. However, I later learned I had to leave a day earlier. I thought I could just stand by for a flight but was told no. I then tried to change my ticket. But the $100 [...]
Flying high
The newest poster boys for airline terror have a strangely familiar face. Thomas Porter Cloyd and Christopher Scott Hughes, the America West Airlines crewmembers arrested this week for trying to fly an Airbus A319 from Miami to Phoenix while legally drunk, are two decades older and a shade lighter than the militant Islamists behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet, like the Al Qaeda operatives who leveled the World Trade Center, the crewmembers who were about to play fast and loose with the lives of 124 passengers did not act alone. Their instigators were the captains of the airline industry, the executives who are so intoxicated by their own power that they are oblivious to the danger they’re placing their companies, and perhaps even the nation’s economy in. Their drunken flying is the real problem.