They call it a “consumer guide to better airline travel,” and answer such questions as:
Which are the best seats in on United Airlines? (answer)
Which first class seats are good in American Airlines? (answer)
What is the seat legroom for British Airways 747-400? (answer)
» Get more air travel tips here.
» Check out their information on seat deals, [...]
If the answer to the above three questions is “yes, yes,” and “yes,” here’s a tip for you. When leaving your car in the parking lot, make sure your headlights are all the way off. According to the long-term parking-lot attendant who jump-started my car yesterday, almost all of the people who kill their battery had early-morning flights (in the Charlotte airport, that works out to 20 jumpstarts a day).
There are several ways you could remind yourself to turn off the lights: tie some string around your finger, tie a bow around your steering wheel, tape a post-it to your windshield.
I have never seen a flight-fare search program do this before: List the cheapest fares for one route for an entire month. This one does that, and it does more. Here’s a screenshot of the best deals when flying from Chicago to Denver in December:
You have to register before you can use it, and it’s free to use, and it’s well worth it. Check it out at http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch/
Check out TravelPost’s list of wifi access locations and cost — it covers 218 U.S. airports. Useful information … if you’re looking for internet, that is. It was updated two days ago, which means this is something they keep an eye on. It looks like he information is pulled from TravelPost editors and readers…
From last week’s New York Times (via TheLobby.com): Tips and strategy on what to do when you don’t make your flight.
This is a tip for the business and regular travellers out there who don’t want to buy toothpaste every time you fly somewhere: Put the stuff in your pockets. Yes, this won’t work if you don’t wear pants, if you have a metal container, and this won’t work if you get searched in the gate (which they hardly ever do anyway), but this will work most of the time.
Also, if you’re a smoker, go on and put your lighter in your pocket. Unless it’s a zippo it doesn’t have enough metal in it to trigger the metal detectors.
Business traveler Brad DeLong sleuths out some sketchy business practices on JetBlue’s Boston to West Coast flights: The planes don’t have enough gas to make it when the headwinds are strong:
Thus a six hour flight that would be turned into a six and a half hour flight by strong headwinds is instead turned into an eight hour flight by an involuntary refueling stop in Salt Lake City.
Avoid Delays takes flight arrival and departure information and turns it into something usable. It highlights information like the most-delayed flights, the airports with the longest delays, delays by date, month, just a heck of a lot of information.
They also have a place for you to file a complaint about your air travel experience, and they have some pretty generic advice about steps you can take to avoid delays.
Check out this wealth of information at http://www.avoiddelays.com/
The folks at Airport Public Transit Directory put together a list of public transit options for major and medium cities across the U.S. Take a look at the list here.
They also have a list of airports that don’t have public transit options:
They don’t have any information for the Greensboro, North Carolina, or Spokane Washington airports yet. I’m sure there are other cities missing too. Still, three cheers for people putting together useful information on the web.
This is cool: The Airline and Airport Duty Free Price Guide. Comparison shopping for duty-free goods.