What’s the first thing you look for in an airline ticket?
survey
A majority of airline passengers want to see an all-inclusive price for their tickets up front, according to a new survey.
Conventional wisdom says most airfare searches start at an online travel agency or airline website. But the conventional wisdom could be wrong.
How are you traveling in 2011?
The US airline industry, which has an unenviable record of failing practically every customer-service survey for the last generation, has a new rival: The Transportation Security Administration.
The merger between Continental Airlines and United Airlines, which became official at the beginning of this month, is the airline combination passengers would like to unravel the most, a new poll shows.
That’s not an academic question, given all the recent stories about excessive car rental claims on this site. And yes, it still is the weekend. I’m in another time zone. (But I’ll be back on the mainland tomorrow.) Here’s the link to the survey. I’m also interested in your comments. Should car rental companies go [...]
Uncomfortable beds, says a new survey by D.K. Shifflet & Associates. But that’s not the real story. Three out of the top five annoyances had to do with extra charges — fees that properties could easily eliminate.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Los Angeles. That’s according to a new survey by Inrix, which provides traffic and navigation services and produces a biannual traffic scorecard.
If you thought fees, or nonexistent customer service or high fuel prices were the biggest problems facing travelers, think again. It’s traffic, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Annual Urban Mobility Report.
We’re traveling down an uncertain road this year. Buckle up. “This kind of reminds me of the old sea maps from the 1300s that showed a coastline with the caption which read, ‘Here be Monsters,’” says Patric Douglas, the chief executive of Shark Diver, a tour operator in San Diego, Calif. “Trying to forecast this thing using any models from the past 20 years will be useless.”
It’s just the kind of pick-me-up news we needed to get the summer travel season started. Two new surveys — one released yesterday and one scheduled to be released tomorrow — suggest the state of travel has gone from bad to worse.

Elliott is consumer advocate
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