Like a tie for dad, a kitchen appliance for mom, or socks for the kids, there’s no shortage of holiday gift clichés for travelers. Wheeled luggage, ticket holders and inflatable pillows come to mind.
November 2009
Terry Capps finds a $28 a night room rate at a Westin hotel in Orlando. Turns out the hotel made a mistake, and that the real price is $289 a night. What now? Should the resort honor the original price or can it change the rate and force Capps to pay?
And they were not tears of joy at having found a bargain. Elizabeth Hutton’s mother, Mary Ellyn, bought a round trip ticket from Cincinnati to Tallinn, Estonia, with stopovers in Newark and Stockholm. But something was wrong with the reservation, and she had to pay for another flight.
CheapoAir made my mother cry. Plus, confusing holiday forecasts, a car rental disaster and contagious niceness.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Like most travelers, Bette Waterstreet doesn’t expect much when she rents a car. A clean, running vehicle that’s in the same car class she ordered will do just fine. But that’s not what she got when she rented from Thrifty in Ontario, Calif., recently.
After a sharp drop last year, more Americans are expected to travel for the 2009 Thanksgiving holiday, although travel by air will decline. That’s how the play-it-straight AP played the just-released AAA Thanksgiving forecast.
United Airlines Captain Denny Flanagan had his 15 minutes of fame — and then some — when he was “discovered” by several prominent print and broadcast outlets two years ago and profiled for his many random acts of kindness. But long after the TV crews left, Captain Flanagan continues to do good at United. I caught up with him recently.
Pretend, for a minute, that car rental companies are high school students. The average class grade on a recet test is 73 percent, which is a C- and, truth be told, just a point away from a D.
Doris Weller booked a set of roundtrip tickets from Wichita, Kan., to Houston on AirTran recently. Her husband, Lawrence, needed to be in Houston for an important medical treatment. The airline sent her a confirmation. But it wasn’t the kind of confirmation she expected.
Do this before you travel for the holidays. Plus, taxes and hotels, car rentals and court and a shuttle launch.
Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of six astronauts blasted into space a few minutes ago. This was the view from my driveway.
Regular readers of this site are familiar with car rental companies’ no-rent lists. But did you know that there are other instances in which a company might refuse you a car — even if you have a completely legitimate reservation?
Next time you book a hotel room online, consider what happens to the taxes you’ve paid.
Don’t drink and fly. Words to live by, not just if you’re a pilot, but if you’re a passenger. Sandra Langer explains why: On a recent trip from Amsterdam to New York, she watched a good number of her fellow passengers get hammered. “Red-faced men blocked the aisles, puked in the bathroom and groped the [...]
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