It's been a busy week in travel, with several developments that will affect your travel life.
First, the pilots of American Airlines have ratified their new contract with the famous carrier, and have therefore ceased the work stoppages and sick-call-ins that delayed or forced cancellation of so many AA flights. This means you can now book American with confidence, and without fearing that your flight will be delayed or cancelled. American, it appears, is now operating with the same reliability (of the sort we now expect) as all the other big passenger airlines.
The next big thing in passenger air transportation? It's the possibility that you will be asked to affix luggage tags to your suitcases, instead of bringing them to an attendant to do the task. Apparently, Alaska Airlines out of Seattle, Delta in Atlanta and Las Vegas, and American in Austin, Orlando, and several other cities, have installed kiosks in which passengers obtain their own luggage tags and can then affix them to their baggage. (You still have to bring that luggage to a drop-off position where your I.D. will be checked by a live attendant). All this follows the widespread adoption of kiosks where passengers obtain their own boarding passes, and thus the day is hastened when the entire check-in procedure will be virtually free of airline staff. And who knows? Eventually we may be asked to bring that baggage to the airplane itself and place it in a freight compartment, just as people do (depositing them on a nearby cart) who fly on smaller planes.
Is your name Joseph? Is your name Mary? If that's the case, and you are also married, you can obtain a free, Christmas-season room for one night at Travelodge hotels in Britain. The low-cost hotel chain has thought up this publicity device for the current holiday period, and will extend the offer to Josephs and Marys who book the room prior to December 17. The reason for the offer? It's to assuage the guilt of the hotel industry, says the hotel chain, for failing to find a room at the inn for the famous couple. Only citizens of the U.K. may take advantage of the gimmick, and they must also agree to participate in publicity interviews after enjoying their free hotel room.
Crooks have apparently discovered a means for opening the doors of hotel rooms that normally respond to a plastic card in place of a metal key. After a computer expert had publicly announced the ease with which such locked doors could be opened, a young man actually went on a burglary spree, but then was caught when he sought to pawn a laptop he had lifted from one such room. Within the hotel industry, worried executives are now talking about the costly necessity of replacing the locks (the ones opened by inserting a plastic card) for hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms across the country. To the rest of us, it's a reminder that we should be extra careful not to leave valuables in our hotel rooms when we are not in residence.
A side note: the current violence on the streets of Cairo seems to confirm the view expressed in this blog several weeks ago that Egypt was not yet safe to visit. I came to that conclusion only reluctantly and despite the comments from several readers that this land of the pyramids and sphinx was acceptably secure. It clearly isn't yet.
