Delta Drops Phone Booking Fee
Posted on 04/22/2016, 7:15 AM
Delta Air Lines has dropped one of its most onerous fees: the $25 it collects to allow you to make a booking by telephone. Now, people who do not book using the Web—because they don't have a computer, for example, or can't use one—will not be penalized with higher prices. Along with that surcharge, it dropped the $35 to make a booking in person at a Delta counter, something relatively few ...
New App is Uber for Last-Minute Homestays
Posted on 04/20/2016, 3:30 AM
A new app has been launched that helps travelers find a last-minute place to crash. It's called Overnight, and to use it, you use it to post that you're in town and what brings you there. That's broadcast to the area and would-be hosts read your listing and ideally, offer you space in their place. Users register with their Facebook profiles, pay via the app (adding a degree of protec...
River Cruising Comes to Southern Africa
Posted on 04/11/2016, 2:00 PM
River cruising is huge in Europe and growing in Asia, but there's one place it hasn't made deep inroads: Southern Africa. That may be about to change. CroisiEurope, the largest river cruiser in Europe, is poised to expand by begin sailing through the safari grounds along the Chobe and Zambezi rivers on the border between Namibi's Caprivi Strip and Botswana. It joins Fred Olsen's high-end AmaW...
Congress Votes On Airline Seat Sizes
Posted on 04/08/2016, 2:15 PM
Descheboard/Flickr Sorry, America: No space for you! The United States Senate has voted down an amendment that would have told the airlines that they are no longer permitted to keep reducing the amount of room passengers get. New York's Charles Schumer had attempted to add the regulatory measure to the FAA reauthorization bill, noting that passengers have lost half a foot of space in r...
New Issues (And Fixes) for iPhone Data Usage
Posted on 04/05/2016, 8:30 AM
It's not your imagination. Your iPhone is using more data lately. That's because in a recent update Apple quietly added a little feature that will use cellular signals rather than Wi-Fi if the Wi-Fi signal becomes weak. And it will do so even if the Wi-Fi signal is perfectly usable. Most alarmingly: Your phone will indicate that it's pulling from Wi-Fi even when it's also drawing cell sign...
Study Proves It: Museums Change Lives
Posted on 04/04/2016, 12:00 PM
Hard to believe that no one had looked into this before, but now someone has: Exposing your kids to museums will enrich them forever. A few high-powered museums, including New York's Whitney and Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art, wanted to know whether their youth programs were valuable. So they got together and commissioned a study. As Smithsonian reports: "They recruited over...
New App Turns Any Window Seat Into a Tour
Posted on 04/04/2016, 11:30 AM
Ever look out an airplane window and wonder what you're seeing way down there on the ground? What are those weird shapes in the fields? What's the name of that tiny island? Which lonely Interstate is that? For too many, the learning process of travel is on pause while they're in the air. But now there's a cool new travel app for that: Partly funded by the University of Minnesota and the Na...
Free US National Parks for a Week in April
Posted on 03/29/2016, 11:45 AM
It's the 100th birthday of the establishment of the U.S. National Park system—but this month, it's the public who'll receive the gift. National Parks in the United States are granting free entry for an entire week in April. From April 16 to 24, over National Park Week, the American government will not charge fees to enter its parks. Private concessionaires—and there are increasingly more of...
Amtrak Now Grants 15% Student Discount
Posted on 03/23/2016, 2:15 PM
America's under-funded national rail network is doing a little something for Millennials: It has announced a 15% discount for students aged 17 to 25, valid anytime around the year. The student discount deal is good for 15% off "Value" or "Flexible Fare" tickets that are booked at least three days ahead, and it requires that you show valid student I.D. on the train. The permanent deal joins ...
After Brussels: Changing Your Flight
Posted on 03/23/2016, 2:00 PM
Because of damage and tensions resulting from the bombings in Brussels, some airlines are loosening their change fee rules for travelers heading to Europe in the coming week. Even though the bombing did not affect its departures hall in Brussels, American Airlines (800/679-8215) will grant a one-time change fee waiver for passengers on its flights and on its codeshares with British Airways an...
