Soon You Can Use Electronic Devices During Most of the Flight, the FAA Declares
Posted on 10/31/2013, 11:00 AM
The FAA has decided it's safe to operate most electronics for the duration of a commercial flight. In a press release issued on Halloween, it said that although mobile phone use will still be banned, it will advise airlines that it's safe to allow other items. The exact wording of the announcement puts it like this: "Electronic items, books and magazines, must be held or put in the seat b...
A New Online Travel Agency Allows Users To Hold Airfares, Without Full Payment, For Up to 21 Days
Posted on 10/28/2013, 4:15 PM
It was only a matter of time, it seems, before someone applied the rules that have long governed the “art” of Wall Street trading to the highly unstable airfare market. That innovator/madman(?) is Robert Brown, the founder and CEO of OptionsAway.com, and if the algorithms he’s painstakingly crafted actually work, he may have succeeded in creating a new form of online travel agency. On the sur...
Low-Cost Carrier Norwegian To Tackle American Market with $584 Round-Trip New York to London
Posted on 10/24/2013, 7:30 PM
A new player for low-cost airfares from the United States to Europe is materializing. Norwegian Air, already the third-largest low-cost carrier in Europe, will launch 787 Dreamliner service next year, and the prices will surely give the legacy carriers a scare. Starting next July, Norwegian Air Shuttle will fly to London's Gatwick Airport (easily connected to the city by train) twice weekly...
In America, It's the Low-Cost, Bargain-Priced Vacations That Continue to Account for the Overwhelming Number of Leisure-Time Trips
Posted on 10/23/2013, 2:00 PM
Every day in my mail or computer monitor, I receive invitations to purchase luxury-priced travel. This cruise for $6,000. That African safari for $8,000. This or that tour of the mountain villages of Bulgaria for only $5,500 per person (based on double occupancy). Though all of us have only the highest regard for the long-established travel companies that operate and offe...
TSA Checkpoint in Dallas Outfitted with Couches, Music, Mood Lighting: Corporate Branding Brings Respect
Posted on 10/23/2013, 11:00 AM
People who use Terminal E in Dallas have experienced the change. Where the TSA checkpoint was once bleak and gunmetal grey, now there is music streaming from Pandora and lavender mood lighting. Hanging on pillars are new flat-screen signs that tell you how much longer you'll have to wait before being processed. No one is barking "Shoes off!" at you—a soothing recorded voice purrs it. And after ...
Book Review: National Geographic Issues a Delightful New Coffee Table Tome
Posted on 10/23/2013, 10:30 AM
Being in the right place at the right time. Some would say that’s the key to a good life, but the editors of National Geographic have a simpler formula: They think choosing the best season to travel will enhance your vacation immensely. Towards that end, they’ve issued a handsome coffee table book called Four Seasons of Travel: 400 Of The World’s Best Destinations in Winter, Spring, Summer ...
I Have Just Returned From a Visit to a Unique Peninsula-Island of America, Of Which I Had Never Heard: The "Eastern Shore" of Virginia
Posted on 10/18/2013, 2:30 PM
Because a young acquaintance of ours was getting married there, my wife and I recently ventured to a place of which I had never heard: the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Technically a peninsula, but looking more like a barrier island, this is a thin strip of land nearly sixty miles long out in the Atlantic Ocean along the coast of Virginia, forming Chesapeake Bay on its western side. It...
Was I Right or Wrong to Recommend That You Leave Your Passport in the Hotel Safe While Traveling Abroad?
Posted on 10/17/2013, 6:30 PM
No recent bit of travel advice has generated more controversy than my recent suggestion to leave your passport in the hotel safe when you leave to go sightseeing on a European trip. Will you need that document in your daily round of touristic activities? Only if you wish to change currency at a teller's window in a foreign bank, I responded to a reader's question. Otherwise, don't r...
Eureka! You Can Enjoy a Round-Trip Price of $566 between New York and Paris from November 4 until December 15 on That Reluctant Airline, "XL"
Posted on 10/16/2013, 2:45 PM
When you call to make a booking (to 877/496-9889), you often speak to a telephone reservationist whose command of French is better than her grasp of English. And because of that, they sometimes seem surprised to receive your English-language call. But if you persist in a booking requests made to XL Airways, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that this French upstart airline is char...
Three Hot New Travel Inventions Coming to You Soon Through Crowdfunding
Posted on 10/15/2013, 10:00 AM
The entire Internet is now an episode of Shark Tank. Inventors with a good idea no longer have to go the traditional route and sell out to VCs and banks—they can take the product right to the consumer and test the waters for investment. If you don't already know about the concept, it's called "crowdfunding." You work up a prototype for your product and float the idea out there, and if there a...
