No airport is perfect. Each one has its flaws, whether it’s Palm Beach International Airport’s confusing access roads, Juneau International Airport’s maddening fog or Las Vegas airport’s omnipresent cigarette smoke.
Frequent travelers understand that. They deal with it.
But when an airport is so imperfect that we go out of our way to avoid it, when we [...]
From the yearly archives:
2002
The turtle eggs drop like marshmallows into a neat pile on the sand. Plop, plop, plop. After each fall, the six-foot-long loggerhead, half-buried in a dune above, waves her enormous back fins as if she’s swimming away. “I can’t bear to watch this,” groans a woman holding a newborn baby, who is standing a safe distance from the midnight birthing scene. “One of these is enough for me.” During sea turtle nesting season at Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge near Vero Beach, Fla., which happens from March to September, thousands of marine turtles take the beach here, laying up to one hundred eggs each under cover of darkness. The new mom among us cringes when she hears that number. One hundred eggs.
What’s the difference between a registered voter and a parrot? In Key Largo, not much. We’ve been foiled by the talking birds a few times during the campaign. We knock on someone’s front door – candidate Kari Haugeto, our five-month-old son, Aren, and me – and the bird answers through an open window, “Hello?” Kari then steps up to the mosquito screen, unable to see through the heavy storm shutter, and says, “Hi. My name is Kari and I’m running for the Key Largo Wastewater Board. I’m…”
Rolling dunes and towering cliffs with nary a soul in sight. Waves crashing on the shore. A posh room for two in a historic hotel, a spicy omelet of smoked turkey, chipotle, and cheddar cheese for breakfast, and complimentary Christmas candies – for only $149 a night. That’s what Peter Flynn, a Saugus, Mass., attorney, will enjoy on his winter getaway.
Airport stopovers are as inevitable these days as cramped economy class seats, annoying security checkpoints and nitpicky ticket agents. But unlike the other realities of flying, you’ve often got a choice about the terminal you’re trapped in.
Which airport should you pick? J.D. Power and Associates tried to answer that question a few years ago when [...]
The books just closed on another miserable quarter for the airline industry. American Airlines led the flock with a loss of $924 million, followed by United Airlines, which is $889 million in the red. Delta Air Lines hemorrhaged $326 million, while Northwest Airlines and Continental Airlines bled $46 million and $37 million, respectively. The only standout? No-frills Southwest Airlines, which posted a profit of $74.9 million. “Why can’t the other airlines take a hint from Southwest?” wonders Wanda Spataro, a Monterey, Calif., consultant and frequent traveler.
If you’re like most business travelers, you probably don’t pay much attention to the price of your rental car.
Bad idea. If you’re not careful, your bill could get run up with surcharges, extra fees and other surprises.
That’s what happened to Sylvia Perryman, who rented a car at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., recently. [...]
Criticizing the airline industry is almost second nature to us. We repeat disparaging comments like a tired mantra today. Bad service! Onerous ticket restrictions! Undeserving of government subsidies! Southwest Airlines, the no-frills carrier that has defied the industry’s sad decline, is most often mentioned as the only exception among major airlines. Passengers rave about its low fares, on-time performance and irreverent attitude, and rightfully so.
Reformatting a laptop computer’s hard disk drive – erasing all the data on it – is usually the last resort when a portable PC doesn’t work. Not for travelers.
People frequently ask me about what they can do to have a better trip. One thing I’ve been telling them lately is to carry the right cards.
I’m not talking about credit cards here, but rather the kind of cards that fit in your laptop computer. They’re called PCMCIA cards – that’s shorthand for Personal Computer [...]
The airline industry’s current malaise is no laughing matter. Or is it? Yeah, things are bad. The nation’s carriers could lose more than $8 billion this year. They’re hitting up Congress for billions in aid, and they’re cutting flights and adding onerous new fees to their tickets. At a time like this, the whole industry should feel dejected. So what’s with all the jokes?
Q: We have had no luck in resolving an appalling and deeply disturbing experience at the Radisson Hotel Portland. On April 25, 2002, we traveled to Portland, Ore., so that our two children could participate in a national chess tournament for elementary school children.
Our two connecting rooms were burglarized on April 27. Two laptop computers [...]
A flotilla of powerboats hovers above a Technicolor reef, tied together like a fleet of mothballed warships. “We’re almost ready,” says Bill Becker, who is in command of the lead pontoon vessel. He turns his radio up a notch. “OK,” he says. “Here we go.” Becker signals to the scuba divers waiting at the stern. One by one they step off the side of the boat, plunging into the transparent Atlantic off Looe Key, Fla.
I’ve seen the future of travel technology and it’s on a key chain.
Just in time, too. With airline gate agents now holding a measuring tape to each suitcase, and government security screeners giving every carry-on a once over, smaller is better for the jet set.
And cheaper. In an effort to collect more money from us, [...]
Sign up for my 
Lighten up
November 8, 2002
Are airline flight attendants too fat? Possibly. Passengers, crewmembers and several studies suggest that these airline employees have been packing on the pounds lately. Not that it’s any of our business. How much someone else weighs is a private matter – unless their mass affects the safety of our next trip. And then it does, indeed, become an issue. We already know that flight attendants are prone to eating disorders.
Be the first to comment