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

Guess it had to happen. Now that airport check-in security can make or break a closely-timed connection, there’s a new company out there with a card to help you avoid the hassle. It’s called “Clear,” and this is what they say it does:
Travelers who join the Clear® Registered Traveler program are pre-screened for security and [...]

Hey, in case you didn’t know, Flight Club is an online community for air travelers. Flight Club (the parent of this blog) has online tools that help members meet other members on airplanes and in airports — basically, we’re fun people that make travel more exciting. Business travelers, recreational travelers, if you fly for fun or for work, if you fly just once a year, Flight Club has a spot for you.

Membership is booming, so if you haven’t thought about joining before, then now is a good time. Registration takes about a minute and you can do it at this page. It’s free, it’s a fun site, uh huh oh yeah.

Virgin Atlantic Airways , yes, they have a sense of humor. It’s good to see large corporations with a sense of humor, so I can give them a pass on their latest promo: Who’s the top Jetrosexual. You read that right.

They just coined the worst coined phrase.

But, like we know, they have a sense of humor. They came up with the eleven commandments of Jetrosexuals. Here they are (written in regular english, not that “thou shalt” speech they have on their site):

1. You will have your passport ready to go at moment’s notice.
2. You will have a favorite airport and a good explanation about why it’s your favorite.
3. You will not talk your seatmate’s ear off.
4. You will never hold up the security line.
5. You will be able to order beer in at least six different languages.
6. You will spend no more than five minutes in the airplane bathroom.
7. You can pack a week’s worth of clothes in one carry-on bag.
8. You don’t own an inflatable neck-pillow.
9. You have at least one passport stamp from a country that now goes by a different name.
10. You travel Economy sometimes, just to stay humble.
11. You fly to move business and culture forward.

I was thinking of putting together an online poll that allows you to rate how many of these you match up with. Stay tuned.

USA Today and the New York times wrote stories on May 10 that look at airline frequent flier programs. USA Today did what you would expect (their headline was “Airlines keep VIP clubs to keep fliers,” well, duh.) They wrote a rote story on the current state of the frequent flier business.

The NY Times went way beyond that….

The New York Times covered a report that Consumer WebWatch did last month. It takes an in-depth look into the mechanisms of booking first-class flights online, and they come up with a couple problems. One was “fare jumping,” when the price quoted would jump hundreds of dollars when the customer clicked to check-out. The other was false labeling: certain sites came up with first class tickets for low-cost airlines which don’t have first-class seats.