Flight Blog
News and Tips about Air Travel, Business / Industry, Flying, Airplanes, and other fun

Now, with the internet, there will soon be an information-niche for everything. The Guide to Sleeping in Airports has their territory staked out loud and clear. No need to guess what you’re going to get from them, no. Cheap? Homeless? Can’t afford a hotel? Check out their tips and lists of airports to sleep in … but what brings this post here is their list of the Worst Airports to Sleep In.

There are plenty of international entries on this list: Bombay India, and Egypt’s Cairo place first and second on the worst-sleepers list. Chicago’s O’Hare has the dignity of third place, and the United States’ only representative on the worst-of list.

For reference, no american airports made the best airports to sleep in list … unless you count Vancouver, Canada, and who counts Canada?

If you don’t know, now you know. Airfarewatchdog and the Washington Post each have their break-down of the costs associated with checking your luggage on your trip — whether it’s one bag, two bags or more. Wired breaks down the strategy, which goes a little like “if you’ve got more than one bag to check and you’re not a business traveler, the postal service / UPS is your best bet.”

The Post has a pretty checked-baggage-cost chart up here, and the AirfareWatchDog has their price chart here.

SilverJet enters the deep and dark deathpool:

All 420 workers at Silverjet, the troubled business-class airline, lost their jobs yesterday after an attempt to get the airline flying again collapsed.

A rescue deal for the airline had been suggested this week by Kingplace, an Irish shell company managed by Heritage, a Swiss investment group. However, talks broke down yesterday because of problems in raising sufficient cash to satisfy the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the regulator.

Okay, so last weekend I was at the airport in Denver, waiting for my plane, taking advantage of the free wifi. Only, nothing’s free, and DIA pays for some of the cost of providing free wifi by displaying ads with every page you load. I did my American duty and clicked on some of the ads — and then made a few more clicks into those sites, just to pretend like I was interested. But that wasn’t enough for the adserver. It kept giving me the ads. Annoying. But there’s a way around it, and this is how to get your pages to display without any ads when using the Denver airport’s free wifi.

First, you must have a tab-based browser. No, IE6 doesn’t cut it, sorry. Next, go to a page that has a link to the page you want to open. This page will have ads, that’s fine. What you do here is control-click the link you want to open, twice. Yeah, twice. Control-clicking will open those pages, each in a new tab. It’s likely one of those tabs will have an ad, and it’s likely the other tab won’t. Problem solved. (Note: this is most useful for articles you know you’ll want to read on the plane, and for apps that don’t load new pages, like GMail).

This is for folk who travel into the United States — which also applies to U.S. residents who travel internationally. Bruce’s words are below:

So your best defence is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can’t read what you don’t have. You don’t need five years’ worth of email and client data. You don’t need your old love letters and those photos (you know the ones I’m talking about). Delete everything you don’t absolutely need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you’re at it, delete your browser’s cookies, cache and browsing history. It’s nobody’s business what websites you’ve visited. And turn your computer off - don’t just put it to sleep - before you go through customs; that deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they’ve entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it.

Read the full article from The Guardian, Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first.

According to the BusinessTravelLounge, a Southwest Airlines passenger used their cell phone while the plane was airborne, wouldn’t stop using their cell phone, and got charged with disorderly conduct after the plane landed in Dallas.

As much noise as we’ve all heard about legalizing cell phone use in flight, it is still an FAA regulation that cellular phones are not to be used during flight. For those of you who wonder why, like Mr. Jones apparently did, it is because there is some concern about interference with the navigation system. To be honest, I didn’t even think they would work on a flight.

It turns out airlines can be fined up to $25,000 for allowing cell phone use, while passengers also can be fined. Keep that in mind next time you just have to make one quick call.

Read the full post here.

The New York Times’ article, Beating the Bushes for a Bargain Ticket, breaks down nine tips for finding cheap flight deals in today’s air travel world. A few of them are no-brainers, but heck, there’s a large no-brain market out there.

Here’s the Times’ advice, with my notes after:

1. Book Directly With The Airline
2. Sign Up For Private Price Cuts — Essentially: “Find your favorite airlines and sign up for their newsletter.”
3. Buy One Ticket At A Time — If you’re flying with a partner or your family, it may be worth putting “1″ in the “Number of People Travelling” field.
4. Make Your Computer Do The Work
5. Buy A Package Deal
6. Search For Flights At Alternative Airports
7. Be Flexible — A day or two can make more than a dollar’s worth of difference…
8. Timing Is Everything — Check the fare charts on Kayak.com, Farecompare.com and (my favorite), farecast.com
9. Don’t Wait If You See A Deal

On the news radar this week came this article about a pilot and a flight attendant, arrested naked in the woods, where they had gone to go do it. This highlights the important issue of the difficulty airline pilots have joining the mile high club … well, no it doesn’t. It’s just a silly article.

Excerpt:

HARRISBURG, Pa. - An airline pilot was found hiding behind a shed wearing only flip-flops and a wristwatch as a nighttime romp in the woods with a flight attendant ended with both under arrest, police said.

Jeffrey Paul Bradford, 24, and Adrianna Grace Connor, 24, both employees of Pinnacle Airlines Inc., were at a diner on the outskirts of Harrisburg on Sunday night before they apparently decided to walk into the woods, police said.

“They told the officer they wanted to go do it in the woods, essentially,” said Lower Swatara Township police Sgt. Richard Brandt. “That’s the best answer they had.”

Share your positive stories about Alaskan Airlines / Horizon Air travel here.

Read the rest of the Flight Blog “Praise the Airlines” series here (or check out the complaints series here).

Did U.S. Air treat you right recently? Got something great you want to share about a customer service encounter or some trip you took with them? Share it here.

» Read the rest of the Flight Blog (unofficial) Praise-This-Particular-Airline series here.