Southwest Airlines to End Open Seating, So Why Fly It At All? There's Still One Reason
Posted on 07/25/2024, 6:00 PM
Social media is so infected with liars and bad actors that we can't trust it even to tell us the sky is blue anymore. But the minute Southwest Airlines announced that, after some 50 years, the carrier will do away with its open seating system, the online reaction seemed to repeat a certain point that rings true. You might hear it said that open seating was the best thing about flying Southwest. ...
DOT Secretary Forcefully Reminds U.S. Airline Passengers of Their New Refund Rights
Posted on 07/23/2024, 7:30 PM
Some airlines are still struggling to reboot their service in the wake of last weekend's cataclysmic CloudStrike software shutdown. On Monday, Delta Air Lines was still limping its way back to the runways. The airline announced it had to cancel another 800 departures on the first workday of the week, bringing the total of scrapped flights to more than 5,000 since Friday. It what must be the first...
Rome Jubilee in 2025 Means Tons of Construction in 2024: What Travelers Need to Know
Posted on 07/22/2024, 7:45 AM
Sorry, travelers, but getting that perfect shot of the Pantheon may require a return trip to Rome. (The photo above was taken earlier this month.) As we all know, Rome wasn’t built in a day. But as any recent visitor can attest, it sure looks like the city is being rebuilt—all day, every day. There are a staggering 3,200 public construction projects currently underway across the Eternal City, inc...
Airlines Are Shrinking Carry-On Sizes, Forcing Travelers to Pay Checked Bag Fees
Posted on 07/19/2024, 11:30 AM
Your carry-on hand baggage may not be small enough anymore. A new furor is unfolding in the skies as airlines are caught drastically reducing the maximum permitted size of carry-on bags on commercial flights. Unnoticed by many casual travelers, the volume of an allowed carry-on bag on some popular airlines has been cut as much as 55% since 2018, the BBC reports. The worst offender so far, accor...
The Cost of Visiting Universal Epic Universe Will Gut Your Bank Account—and Disney's
Posted on 07/08/2024, 5:00 PM
There's a famous event from the history of architecture that serves as a warning to companies that assume competitors could never catch up. In the late 1920s, the Empire State Building, 40 Wall Street, and the Chrysler Building were all being constructed in Manhattan. Architects for each of the three buildings were desperate to claim the title of the world's tallest skyscraper. The Chrysler and 40...
Dengue Fever Surges in the USA! Learn How to Prevent Mosquito Bites When You Travel
Posted on 07/02/2024, 8:00 PM
Just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning about the increased risk of dengue virus infections in the United States, Florida health officials released an alert this week about two confirmed cases of locally acquired dengue fever in the Florida Keys. The warning means the people affected by the virus didn't acquire it while traveling elsewhere. The CDC and Flori...
Frommer’s Maine Coast: Our Latest Guide to Acadia, Portland, and Other Seaside Stunners
Posted on 06/26/2024, 10:00 AM
“Maine is a beautiful place that I paradoxically want to hoard to myself and share with everyone I meet," humorist John Hodgman writes in his 2017 book Vacationland. On a recent episode of the Frommer's podcast, guidebook author Brian Kevin said he can relate to Hodgman's remark—though Kevin keeps precious little of the good stuff to himself in his brand-new edition of Frommer's Maine Coast, spil...
Bags Stolen From Baggage Claim: The Airlines' Big Luggage Security Problem
Posted on 06/21/2024, 8:15 AM
Many travelers won't know or remember this, but there was a time when airline passengers had to to present a claim check in order to pick up their luggage after flights.Until the early 1980s, it was standard for passengers to be asked by a security representative in the baggage claim area to match the code number on their checked-bag receipt to prove their checked bags belonged to them. In those da...
Online Passport Renewal is Back in the U.S.! Here's How to Get In On It
Posted on 06/12/2024, 5:30 PM
All right, Americans. Ready? This is online passport renewal, take two. The U.S. State Department today announced that it is once again accepting applications for online passport renewal. The U.S. government already tried this a few years ago—we even tested it out and found it was incredibly speedy—but for reasons that were, understandably, not disclosed to the public, the first test run, which ...
This Airline Is Mining Your Personal Information to Sell Things to You In Flight. Stop That!
Posted on 06/12/2024, 7:30 AM
Welcome to the spammy skies. United Airlines has launched a new ad serving platform that will exploit the personal travel information of its customers gathered from bookings, and the use of its app to allow a wide array of companies to peddle their wares to flyers. The platform is called Kinective. In a chilling, up-is-down and black-is-white statement, a representative of the carrier told indust...
