Kayak Makes Airfare Searches Flexible

There are plenty of Web sites where you can search for the best airfares, but my favorite is Kayak.

Habit has something to do with this, no doubt. Kayak was among the first fully featured metasearch engine for airfares. And it remains among the strongest, particularly for flights originating in the United States.

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Photo Gallery: Palm Springs Area

This photo, with a massive California fan palm in the foreground and the snow-capped  San Jacinto Mountains in the background, was taken in March 2010 at Palm Canyon near Palm Springs.  (See the entire gallery.)

My daughter, Kate Symmonds, and I got a nice Priceline deal on a resort in Rancho Mirage and spent a few days exploring the area around Palm Springs. We were surprised at how beautiful and varied the western Mojave Desert can be, and we ended up spending a lot more time in the great outdoors and a lot less time poolside than we had expected.

 Many of the pictures in the photo gallery were taken in and near Palm Canyon, which is among the Indian Canyons near Palm Springs. Admission is $8, and well worth it. Some of the others were taken at The Living Desert zoo and gardens in Palm Desert, which costs $12.50 per person, a great bargain.

JetBlue Coming To Bradley?

JetBlue Airways is considering a move into Bradley, The Hartford Courant reports. The trendy budget carrier already flies from Boston, Providence and all three New York area airports.  I say bring it.

Airfarewatchdog: An Essential Site For Budget Travel

I’m preparing a presentation on the five best Web sites for budget travel, and it’s not easy to choose them. I use dozens of  sites to search for bargains, and they all have their good points.

But there’s no way that I could leave Airfarewatchdog.com off the list. At its core is a powerful database of the lowest fares from airports around the United States and Canada to destinations both domestic and foreign. Just go to the home page and type in your airport’s city or code and you’ll get a list of bargain fares.

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Do Air Passengers Have A Right To Daylight?

Are passengers in the window seat of an aircraft obliged to pull down the shade for the convenience of other passengers?

It’s now routine for flight attendants to ask passengers to pull down the window shade so that others can see their movie screens better. On a recent flight, a passenger across the airplane complained to the flight attendant that she couldn’t sleep because the glare from my window was getting in her eyes. When the flight attendant asked me to close the shade,  I did it — while the offended passenger stared daggers at me.

This issue doesn’t come up for me often because I much prefer an aisle seat, especially if I’m traveling alone, but it arises now and then. And despite the fact that I think people need to be especially cooperative and considerate when using mass transit, something in me rebels on the window issue.

Why should I seal off my contact with the outside world  to enhance the experience of others whose attention deficits require them  to absorb passive entertainment? What if I’d rather look out the window? What if I prefer to read by natural light? I’m just asking. What do you think?

On Exit Rows, Fees And Discrimination

Continental Airlines started charging passengers for exit row seats last month, an idea I hated even before a recent case in Britain  illuminated the conflicts that arise when an airline confuses a safety feature with a revenue source.

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Southwest Offers Double Rewards Credits

Do you have a lot of places to go in the next six weeks? If you go there on Southwest Airlines you can earn a free flight.

Southwest is offering double credit for flights before May 26, which means you can get a free flight after four round-trip flights if you complete them all by that time. Business select fares earn credit at a slightly faster rate.

If you have any Southwest flights coming up before May 26, be sure to sign up for this offer. You do need to register here.

Spirit Airlines To Charge For Carry-Ons

There are already so many reasons not to fly Spirit Airlines that it seems like overkill for the management to add another.

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The Value Of TripAdvisor

I’m preparing a presentation on the five most valuable Web sites for bargain travelers, and one of them is the hotel review site TripAdvisor.

I’m well aware of the controversy about the reliability of the reviews that TripAdvisor aggregates. No less an authority than Arthur Frommer has been leading the charge, criticizing TripAdvisor’s response to false reviews on its site. He and others, including travel ombudsman and blogger Chris Elliott, have raised reasonable questions about fraud and manipulation of reviews, questions that ought to be answered. 

And yet, despite these problems, TripAdvisor has accomplished something revolutionary. It has empowered the travel consumer to share experiences and to point the collective finger (whichever finger seems appropriate) at hotels that rip travelers off. The callous and casual exploitation of the stranger in town, an unfortunate tradition over the centuries, has been suddenly set back on its heels, thanks to the power of crowd-sourcing and the Internet. No fleabag hotel on this planet is safe from TripAdvisor.

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Bag The Hotel, Save Money

The CheapOair blog recently had a nice roundup on the various ways to get free lodging when you travel, including couch surfing, home swapping and work holidays. My niece just spent some time in New Zealand on a sort of farm internship / holiday and some friends of friends were out couch surfing last I heard. Anybody else out there tried any of these options?