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.
From the category archives:
The Travel Critic
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 females — [...]
Ask Bonnie Friedman about her worst customer service experience, and she won’t hesitate to tell you about the time she checked in for her flight from Venice to Frankfurt.
Thinking of throwing a tantrum the next time things don’t go your way when you travel? Consider what happened to Gary Zeune before you do.
The thought of spending 11 hours in a locked and upright position didn’t put Elyse Weiner in a good mood. But you wouldn’t have known it.
From the outside, the Puerto Rican inn that Pablo Solomon checked into looked like it belonged on the cover of a slick vacation brochure. The landscaping seemed immaculate, the lawn was freshly trimmed, and the pool an inviting shade of blue.
If I were a bettin’ man, I’d put some money on a big airline filing for bankruptcy protection in the not-too-distant future.
The travel industry wants you back.
But before you say “yes,” listen to Laura Salisbury, a teacher from San Jose, Calif. She mistakenly typed the wrong return date when she booked a vacation for her and her mother through Expedia.
“All I wanted to do was give my mom a trip of a lifetime to celebrate the [...]
How long is a day?
It’s however long your car rental company wants it to be.
That’s what Peter DeForest, a risk management consultant from San Francisco, discovered when he picked up a car from Hertz in Austin recently. A flight delay had made him three hours late to the rental counter. He asked if the agency [...]
Kenneth Miller thought he had squirreled away more than 100,000 Delta Air Lines frequent flier miles, which he planned to use for a special 20th anniversary trip. He thought wrong.
When it comes to “gotcha” fees, the cellular phone industry makes travel companies look like rank amateurs.
The travel industry, hammered by the worst economic downturn in more than a generation, is taking a hard line in an effort to contain costs and preserve profits. A post-9/11 airline policy referred to as “no waivers, no favors” seems to have been adopted by almost everyone shortened to “no.”
Sidestepping this year-old airline rule was pretty easy up to this point. Flight attendants and gate agents routinely waved passengers with too much luggage through, hoping to avoid a confrontation. But now that baggage fees are generating serious money — they accounted for $1.5 billion in 2008, according to the Transportation Department — airlines are less likely to let the surplus bags slide.
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