Not to step on any toes over at What's the Deal, the travel blog run by my very good colleague Michelle, but I thought we would share with you news on how other airlines performed in the Department of Transportation's most recent consumer report on air travel.

Michelle already told you that BWI's on-time performance was almost tops in performance in May, saying, it was "the second-best airport for flight on-time arrival performance in May, second only to Salt Lake City. Nearly 87 percent of planes arriving at BWI were on schedule. On-time departures were not quite as high, about 86 percent, but still good enough to rank the airport in the Top 5."

That's good news for BWI. But if you're anything like me, I know you're wondering who was lousy and which airlines performed the worst. (Heh. I'm all about spreading the joy, aren't I?)

Continue reading "U.S. airline on-time performance improved in May" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Yesterday, the California Assembly passed legislation "requiring airlines to provide passengers with food, water, lights, air and working toilets when they're stuck on airport tarmacs for long periods of time," so says the San Jose Merc News.

The bill passed with a 54-16 vote. It now goes to the California Senate.

A big issue still being argued is whether the state even has the authority to regulate airlines since a very similar law  passed in New York was struck down by an appeals court in March.

At the time, we told you the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier. The court also said that only the feds can pass such a law.

Continue reading "Round 2: Airline Passenger Bill of Rights passes again" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Welcome to my good colleague, Michelle Deal, and her new travel blog that just launched today, "What's The Deal."

Do check her out. Lord knows there's plenty to discuss and complain about when it comes to traveling.

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

See how happy that couple looks about flying? Yea, not so much, right? That's because they're some of the very misfortunate thousands of people who missed their flights recently when American Airlines had to cancel more than 2,500 flights. Egads. What a headache.

Well, to try to improve the flight experience (for some reason, I kept chuckling while I was typing that line), U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters announced today a number of measures to strengthen passenger protections, improve consumer choice, reduce congestion, establish operational improvements to cut delays this summer and double the limits on compensation airlines must pay flyers bumped from oversold flights.

Under the new bumping rule, which goes into effect next month,

Continue reading "Flyers: Get paid more when you're bumped" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

I can't tell you how glad I am to be home. It's not that I didn't love Barcelona or wish I could have stayed over there for another week. It's just that the thought of sitting at airports and waiting and waiting because of delay after delay was really wearing on me.

We were supposed to fly out of BWI on April 1 at 2 p.m. They delayed our flight four times that day so that by the time we caught a 6:30 p.m. flight out to JFK , we missed our connecting flight to Spain.

Worse, we couldn't find anyone who could give us a straight answer about why so many flights were delayed, especially since the skies in Baltimore were clear as day. We knew and the gate attendants knew we were going to miss our connecting flight, but when we got up to JFK, not one person there knew what to do with our big group of people.

I'm not saying that we wanted to be waited on hand and foot, but it would have been nice if we had gotten a straight answer from someone at Delta, the airline we were flying. Instead, we were sent to Air France, a partner airline with instructions that Air France would accommodate us. When we got to Air France's check-in, they had no knowledge of us or our group at all. So they sent some of us back to Delta. For a couple hours there, our group kept wandering back and forth trying to find someone who would help us.

It was maddening.

Continue reading "Flying the Not-So-Friendly Skies" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

A federal appeals court struck down a New York state law yesterday that requires airlines to give food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers stuck in delayed planes. The reason? The measure -- the first of its kind in the country giving passengers a bill of rights --stepped on the Fed's toes.

According to the AP story, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier. The court also said that only the feds can pass such a law. The New York measure was challenged by the Air Transport Association of America, the industry trade group representing leading U.S. airlines. Allowing the law to stand, as ATA argued and the court agreed with, would allow each state to come up with a confusing "patchwork" of rules governing airlines.

Continue reading "Airline passengers' bill of rights goes down the tubes" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

So Southwest grounded 41 planes after admitting that it missed required inspections of some planes for structural cracks. Southwest puts three employees on leave. As a result of the missed inspections and safety violations, the Federal Aviation Adminstration fines the Houston company a $10.2 million civil penalty for continuing to fly nearly 50 planes after the airline admits to this very serious infraction. And now, Southwest says it will appeal the decision.

I understand they don't want to pay such a huge fine, but am I missing something here? The airline flew a lot of planes they shouldn't have, yes? They put a lot of flyers in possible danger, yes? They've owned up to the violation, yes? So shouldn't they suck it up and pay the fine?

Continue reading "41 Southwest planes grounded" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Southwest Airlines LUVs pretty people, but the Texas airline does not like rude, aggressive loudmouths -- regardless of how pretty some young women might think they are.

If you haven't heard, two 18-year-old women claimed that Southwest treated them rudely on a Feb. 14 flight from Tampa to Los Angeles and then banned them from future flights because they're too pretty. Click on that link to check out a photo of the young ladies.

I was sort of inclined to believe their story since this is the same airline that ended up apologizing to a passenger in October because they forced him to change out of a sexually suggestive T-shirt or risk getting thrown off the plane. The shirt used a sexual double entendre to promote a fictional fishing tackle shop that carried the words, "Master Baiter." And, this is the same airline that last July, had to apologize to a San Diego college student after an employee objected to her denim miniskirt and summer sweater over a tank top. The passenger was allowed to fly after agreeing to alter her outfit.

It would be easy to lump this third incident in with the other two, especially since Southwest's clothes police seem to have too much time on their hands. (By the way, the free-wheeling, cheery airline doesn't even have a dress policy).

But, Southwest wants to set the record straight by saying that the women in the February incident were NOT acting like ladies at all. In a statement the airline released yesterday about the incident, Southwest said:

Continue reading "Too beautiful for this Southwest flight?" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

If you're one of those people stubbornly avoiding e-tickets when you fly, brace yourself because come June 1, you'll have to say adios to paper tickets for good!

When the International Air Transport Association announced about four years ago that it would phase out paper tickets, only 18 percent of flyers world-wide were using electronic tickets. These days, e-ticket users make up 93 percent of flyers.

That's quite a transformation.

Airlines want to make the switch because, according to this Herald Tribune story, "Replacing paper tickets, and the elaborate global system that processed them, with electronic ticketing will save airlines $3 billion annually on the roughly 400 million tickets sold outside of the United States alone."

In the U.S., the move to e-tickets has been even more rapid.

Continue reading "Bye Bye Paper Tickets" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

If you're a notoriously bad baggage packer when it comes to flying, get ready to pay more to bring more. According to this AP story about United Airlines, the carrier said today that it will start charging domestic passengers $25 to check in a second piece of luggage if they are not part of its most-frequent-flier programs.

The change, which applies to tickets purchased on or after Monday for travel starting on May 5, is expected to generate more than $100 million in revenue, United says.

You know, I can understand passing along a surcharge for the rising cost of fuel. I can even almost understand charging us more to check more bags since it would prevent an over-packer from bringing along ten gigantic bags, I guess. But recently, I bought tickets on AirTran to fly to Florida and was fairly annoyed to remember that most airlines are now charging us money to pick your seat ahead of time. If that isn't nickel and diming fliers, I don't know what is.

Continue reading "Too much baggage blues" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

Do you hate flying? Do you love to vent? Do you want to share your angry thoughts about flying with someone who cares?

Well, don't do it here! We don't care!

Heh. Just kidding! We do care. We really, really do. We just don't have any power to do anything to help.

But check out the Transportation Security Administration's new blog, the evolution of security. Bob, Ethel, Jay, Chance and Jim want to hear what you have to say about liquids, shoes, and nail clippers.

There are some interesting comments to read, like this one:

I just want to report a potential security risk. On a flight last year, my mom was able to get on the wrong plane! She only discovered it when another passenger said she was in her seat. A flight attendant then looked at my mom's boarding stub and realized my mom's mistake.

But don't they scan the boarding passes to prevent people from boarding who don't belong there? And to keep track of who got on and who didn't? If my mom was a terrorist, then she could've left a bag or something on the plane before being removed!

It's things like this that make we wonder how secure we really are when flying.

And there are funny ones like this one, too:

Continue reading "Tell the TSA how you really feel about flying" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

In this job of mine, I get to hear a lot about bad businesses. I hear story after story about businesses that failed to fix things once a problem was pointed out to them. I am often drowning in stories about thoughtless, rude, inexplicable behavior from businesses toward their customers. So it's really nice to hear something nice about a business once in awhile.

Bargain Hunter Jerry must have known I needed an end-of-the-year pick-me-up because he shared this story with me:

Having an email provider that stores all my emails paid off today. Back in September, I booked flights for my mother during Southwest Airlines' buy-two-get-one-free promotion offering a free ticket to Rapid Rewards members for booking and completing two flights between qualifying cities before Nov. 15th. I managed to get her tickets between St. Louis and Baltimore and Kansas City and Tucson for just over $300 total, not shabby considering she was also getting a free ticket out of the deal.

Continue reading "Southwest owns up to mistake" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

(photo courtesy of Gus Sentementes)

Hope everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving with family and loved ones! I ate way too much and had trouble budging so forgive me for not posting until now.

Here's an idea next time you've got a hankering to travel over the holidays, but would rather have your wisdom teeth pulled before you deal with all the hassles of flying. Good Shopper Gus and his wife flew out Thanksgiving day. Here's his report:

We left baltimore at about 440am and arrived at the airport shortly before 5 a.m. Here is a photo of a bus at BWI at 5:10 am. at the Daily garage. It was packed with people. But there were still hundreds of parking spots at the garage. Only the ESP lot at the airport was full; the long term and daily lots were open.

We arrived at the AirTran desk and we waited in line for two minutes. No delay.

Continue reading "Migraine free and fast flying on Thanksgiving" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

I'm a lucky girl during the holidays. Why?

1. My little Vietnamese mother makes a mean bird for Thanksgiving.

2. I don't have to fly anywhere to fill up my belly or visit family.

Good thing since Expedia.com is already warning flyers to avoid Boston, Chicago-O'Hare, Detroit, New York (JFK and La Guardia), Newark and Philly -- the top airports for arrival delays in Nov. and Dec. 2006. The Air Travelers Association is also warning passengers "to prepare for the worst." Bring food, beverages and something to read in case you get stranded (some aspirin might be useful, too!).

There is hope, according to the story on...

Continue reading "Flying the @#$*%! skies this holiday" »

Posted by Dan Thanh Dang at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)