Tourists Camp In Cemetery

A town in northern Australia is having to shoo people away from its cemetery, where some tourists were setting up tents and parking their campers, the Northern Territory News reports. The town of Katherine is now threatening violators with a $50 fine.

Convenience, Fees And Rental Cars

When the travel industry tries to sell us “convenience” or “peace of mind,” I think it’s  fair to assume that we are being hosed. 

My latest brush with “convenience” came in the form of a sticker on the windshield of an Avis rental car in Norfolk, Va.: “Your car is enabled with etoll. Just drive through!”  Smaller print revealed that we’d pay not just for the tolls but also $2.50 a day for every day we used the thing. Which we didn’t.

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DOT Steps In Where Congress Wimps Out

The Department of Transportation has fined three airlines for their roles in the stranding of passengers overnight aboard a regional jet at the Rochester, Minn., airport, the Associated Press reports.

This signals the DOT’s willingness to use its existing regulations to address these outrageous cases of passengers being forced to sit aboard planes for hours in unacceptable conditions. Meanwhile, Congress dithers, unable to pass an air passenger bill of rights, apparently seeking some kind of unnecessary compromise between basic human decency and corporate intransigence.

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Airline Frequent Flier Rules Questioned

I once tangled with a Delta Air Lines representative about a fee on my award ticket and he told me that I was getting the ticket “practically for free.”

Wrong. I was getting a ticket paid for with a currency called frequent flier miles. And I earned them.

Frequent flier miles are not gifts from the airlines, they are assets. Now Sen. Chuck Schumer wants to review consumer complaints about how airlines handle their mileage programs.

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Huge Cruise Ship Gets Mixed Reviews

There have been plenty of obsequious press reports about Royal Caribbean’s mammoth new Oasis of the Seas cruise ship, but not everyone is hopelessly in love.

Arthur Frommer has slammed the whole concept, Jim Walker at Cruise Law News has some pointed questions about security and pollution, and even some of the travel writers and bloggers now being feted on a special voyage for the press are not entirely smitten. Jason Cochran, while impressed by the ship, points out on WalletPop that “passengers who immerse themselves in this floating circus might as well not be at sea at all.”

I point this out for the sake of a little balance. In other words, just sayin’.

Another Air Traffic System Meltdown

It is so totally not acceptable for a “computer glitch” to seriously screw up air traffic around the country. Yet it has happened again, a week before the heaviest travel period of the year.

The cost of fixing this with more programmers, technical support, hardware, whatever it takes, can’t be greater than the economic toll of these meltdowns. Yet they continue.

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Australia’s Right To Get Spiffed

You gotta fight for your right to party, as the Beastie Boys so poetically informed us. Except in Australia.

In Australia, the right to party is vigorously protected by the Human Rights Commission, which has rejected attempts by the Carnival cruise line to prevent youthful binge drinking aboard its ships. Carnival wants to require passengers under 21 to be accompanied by a parent of guardian on voyages between Nov. 1 and Jan. 30, which corresponds to the summer break Down Under, The Australian reports. 

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Pay Late And Lose Your Miles

Let’s say you spend a lot on your co-branded Delta American Express one month and then forget to pay your bill on time.

You’re going to pay a hefty penalty and interest on the unpaid balance and, as of January, you’re going to lose the miles you earned during that month, the Associated Press reports. If you want the miles back, it will cost you $29.

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Passenger With Cell Phone Delays Flight

An AirTran jet returned to the gate in Atlanta, delaying its departure to Houston by more than two hours because a passenger refused to stop using a cell phone, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Sounds like another case of bad passenger, but it might be a bit more complicated than that. The passenger may have been using the phone as a camera and a language barrier might have contributed to a misunderstanding, the newspaper reported.

Bradley Doesn’t Cave To Bomb Threat

Better safe than sorry is an axiom that, like all others, can be carried to illogical extremes. There has to be some risk of sorry if one is ever to leave the safety of the house.

This is why I applaud the authorities for keeping Bradley International Airport open when somebody called in a bogus bomb threat on Friday, as The Hartford Courant reports.

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