Flying Like A Senator

If you’re wondering why your senators don’t care enough enough about you – the ordinary air traveler – to enact a meaningful air passengers’ bill of rights, here’s the explanation. They’re getting what they need from the airlines.

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Airline Bans Sex On A380

So, wait, Singapore  Airlines pimped its brand-new A380 double-decker out with cabins with double beds and then forebade the passengers to join the mile-high club? I just don’t see that working out.

WaPo Rates The Fare Trackers

The Washington Post had a very helpful rundown Sunday of several online fare watching services, which allow you to track the lowest fare on a specified route and then pounce when it drops.

The conclusion: Farecast’s Farecast Alerts ranks highest  –  but none of the services are a  substitute for poking around the Net for low fares until your eyes cross.  That’s my usual method.

Anyway, I think this fits nicely with my Sunday blog entry about when to buy airfare. That’s why I brought it up.

When Disaster Strikes

When disasters happen, do we feel worse if we’ve been to the place where it happened?

I got to thinking about this after a colleague said that she felt particularly connected to the wildfires in Southern California because she had been vacationing in San Diego recently.

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When To Book Airfare

When friends and relatives come to me for help booking air travel, I often tell them they started looking too late, or that they’re trying to book too early. They find me really annoying.

The best time to book airfare is, generally speaking, between three months and three weeks before departure. But there are exceptions, and ways to work around those restrictions.

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Foliage In My Hometown

I took the back roads on my way to work yesterday, just so I could show you the foliage in my town:

Can You Steal A Gideon Bible?

A guy was arrested at a hotel in Beaumont, Texas, and charged with stealing a Bible from one of the rooms. It’s not exactly clear from the story, but it appears that he was not a guest. Still, aren’t the Bibles usually placed there by the Gideons for guests? Do they really belong to the hotel? Just saying …

The A380 Has Landed – With Passengers

The A380 has completed its maiden flight, from Singapore to Australia. That’s the first commercial flight with passengers. I want to remind everyone that we saw one three weeks ago in Connecticut.

Of course, when we saw it, there weren’t any seats inside. So if you’ve been dying to have a look at the Singapore Airlines A380 that took that maiden flight, the LiveNews site in Australia has a fun video and some photos.

Learning About Membrillo

Years ago my mother was visiting an acquaintance in Costa Rica when she noticed that grapefruit by the basketloads had fallen from a tree in his yard and were rotting on the ground. Try as she might, she could not interest him in the idea of eating one.

Perhaps some Spanish or Portuguese people passed by my house over the years and thought the same thing when they saw the quinces that had fallen off my tree. I used to chuck them into the woods.

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Another Warning On Dynamic Currency Conversion

Carol Pucci at the Seattle Times has raised afresh some warnings about dynamic currency conversion. This is the practice, which I’ve mentioned before, of converting a purchase in a foreign currency into your home currency.

Sounds handy, but the fees are a total rip-off.

Pucci’s column also mentioned another pet peeve of mine, the AAA Visa TravelMoney prepaid card, which charges an outrageous 7 percent fee on foreign currency transactions. She reports that AAA will be getting a new vendor and that fee will drop to 3 percent in February.

Better. Still not great.