Inside a flight attendant's not-so-glam life

• Story Highlights
• Once considered glamorous, job now involves long hours, crowded planes
  
• Cost-cutting measures mean fewer flight attendants taking care of more passengers
  
• Flight attendants often battle hunger as airlines eliminate meals on shorter flights
  
• They're not paid for one of the hardest parts of their job: the boarding process

(CNN) -- As you encounter flights that leave you frustrated, hungry and tired this summer vacation season, chances are the person who greets you with a smile when you come on board could be feeling the same way.

A flight attendant serves beverages to passengers. A duty day can last up to 14 hours on domestic routes.

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The glamour has long faded from the job of a flight attendant, but the occupation still captures the imagination of a public fascinated by the constant travel and work above the clouds.

Still, many people know little about the realities of a flight attendant's life, changed by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the efforts of a troubled airline industry to stay afloat and the recent economic downturn.

"When my mom was a stewardess in the 1950s, they wore white gloves and they learned to serve lobster thermidor table-side," said Rene Foss, a flight attendant for 25 years and the spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants.

"Instead of wearing white gloves, I'm wearing rubber gloves; and instead of learning to serve lobster thermidor, I'm learning to put handcuffs on passengers."

The chance to see the world while offering an important service still lures many men and women to the job, and the flight attendants who spoke with CNN said they enjoy what they do. But they also described work that can be draining and sometimes given little respect. Read how flight attendants deal with screaming babies, difficult passengers

Long days

Many flights are now full as airlines park planes to save money, leaving passengers spread over fewer aircraft in the system. At the same time, layoffs, furloughs and other cost-cutting measures mean fewer flight attendants taking care of more people on board. See flight attendants' biggest pet peeves »

Meanwhile, pay cuts are forcing many to work more hours to offset the difference.

"I made more money in 1998 than I make today," said Kim Kaswinkel, a flight attendant for 22 years who holds a legislative committee chair position at the Association of Flight Attendants.

Flying realities

• About 99,000 flight attendants work in the United States

• Their mean annual wage is $39,840

• The Atlanta area has the highest concentration of workers in this occupation

• Major airlines are required by law to provide flight attendants for the safety and security of the traveling public

• Flight attendants must be certified by the FAA

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The days can be long -- up to 14 hours of duty time on domestic routes and even longer on international trips -- and the layovers short, sometimes shorter than the workdays.

Flight attendants say they often battle hunger as airlines eliminate meals for passengers on shorter flights, which also means fewer food options for them.

"There are days, specifically domestically, you go 7, 8, 9 hours and have not gotten anything to eat because there's no food on the airplane; and when they're trying to turn these airplanes around quickly, there's no time to run off and get food," Kaswinkel said.

She carries protein bars and apples with her to help fend off hunger.

Flight attendants fly 70 to 100 hours a month, but they're only paid when a plane's engines are running, Foss said. So they receive no compensation for one of the hardest parts of their job: the boarding process.

It's now more aggravating than ever as passengers bring more carry-on bags to avoid paying fees for checked luggage, sometimes resulting in confrontations and delays when there is no space to accommodate them. Kaswinkel called the carry-on situation "out of control."

Don't Miss

• How flight attendants deal with life on board

Frustrated passengers often take it out on the crew and sometimes each other. As she tries to enforce rules and resolve conflicts, Foss said she sometimes feels like a police officer, a baby sitter and a referee.

Flight attendants say they try to create a friendly atmosphere, but sometimes get little response.

"A lot of passengers complain that flight attendants don't smile, but I can't tell you how many times I've stood at the boarding door with a smile on my face greeting people and they will just ignore me," said Heather Poole, a flight attendant for 14 years who writes for the travel Web site Gadling.com.

'Cart toe'

Seniority determines many aspects of a flight attendant's life, including what routes they fly and whether they work in economy, business or first class. Surprisingly, some flight attendants consider economy easier even though they serve many more passengers. Coach usually requires only a drink service, while flight attendants in the other cabins work almost nonstop serving meals and drinks.

Shoes wear out quickly at this pace. Poole, who mostly works in business class, says she buys a new pair every three months. A particular problem is "cart toe," leather that wears out on the nose of the shoe where she pushes the brakes on the carts that hold drinks and meals.

There are many tales of strange passengers. Foss recalled waiting on the tarmac to take off from Tokyo, Japan, when a woman suddenly took off all her clothes and began running up and down the aisles. The plane had to return to the gate, where police were waiting to remove her.

Kaswinkel is amazed that people still try to smoke on planes and recalled a recent incident in which a passenger offered her $5 to not write her a warning after she caught her sneaking a cigarette in the lavatory.

Poole still remembers the passenger who removed a fire extinguisher from the plane to take as a souvenir.

With all the travel they do, you might wonder how flight attendants choose to spend their vacations. Some continue to fly even in their free time, while others cherish "staycations" or find ways to globe-trot without getting on a plane.

Poole was a frequent traveler until she got married and had a child. Now that her son is 3, she's ready to start jetting off with him on vacation.

Foss considers it a joy to sleep in the same bed for a few nights, but also likes train travel.

Kaswinkel's ideal vacation after being away from home for 16 to 18 days a month is also staying put. But that's not fun for her family, so she does travel occasionally during her time off.

"We enjoy cruising the most because I can relax and do nothing by the pool with a frozen drink, while they go tour the destination ports of call. It's a great compromise," Kaswinkel said.

source: cnn

Apple Tablet iTunes Against Amazon.com

How an Apple Tablet Could Pit iTunes Against Amazon.com

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With rumors piling up about a forthcoming Apple tablet, it appears more and more likely that such a device will emerge soon.

But what’s still unclear is how this gadget will set itself apart from Apple’s multimedia-savvy product line, including the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the scores of failed tablet PCs that have come and gone. Judging from the company’s past moves, we’re betting that Apple’s tablet will be a media-centric device, focused — at least in part — on shaking up the publishing industry.

Apple is already prepared to blow Amazon and other e-book makers out of the water with one key weapon: iTunes. Having served more than 6 billion songs to date, the iTunes Store has flipped the music industry on its head. It also turned mobile software into a lucrative industry, as proven by the booming success of the iPhone’s App Store, which recently surpassed 1.5 billion downloads. Apple has yet to enter the e-book market, and making books as easy to download as music and iPhone apps is the logical next step.

What can Apple do better with e-books? For textbooks or anthologies, Apple can give iTunes users the ability to download individual chapters, priced between a few cents to a few bucks each. It would be similar to how you can currently download individual song tracks from an album. It might even have the same earthshaking potential to transform an entire industry by refocusing it on the content people actually want instead of the bundles that publishers want them to buy. (Of course, Apple would likely offer the à-la-carte purchase model in addition to the option to purchase the entire book as one download — a more attractive option for shorter works such as novels.)

College students would love this: Teachers rarely assign an entire textbook, so they would save hundreds of dollars by downloading only a few chapters of each textbook. Apple is already popular in the education sector, so here’s even more money to milk from students, with the textbook industry worth an estimated $9.8 billion.

Sci-fi fans might only want one story from an anthology, or a historical researcher might target certain subjects. All Apple has to do to secure the book publishers’ enthusiastic cooperation is to offer them a generous cut of the revenues, like the 70 percent it currently offers app developers.

Other than having the upper hand with digital distribution, an Apple tablet can compensate for other e-book readers’ shortcomings. In a previous story, Wired.com polled students on their interest in Amazon’s large-format Kindle DX reader. Several of them said they couldn’t imagine ditching textbooks for a Kindle DX, foreseeing challenges with tasks such as notetaking, highlighting and switching between books while writing essays.

Assuming its computing powers and interface design are anything like the iPhone’s, a touchscreen tablet would make these student-oriented tasks as easy as a few swipes and taps — far more pleasant than clunking around with the Kindle’s cheap buttons and sluggish interface. Plus, we would imagine students would be able to type their papers on the tablet.

Then there’s the obvious: An Apple tablet would have color, making it better for displaying magazine pages, which could also be purchased through the iTunes Store. It wouldn’t be saddled with a slow e-ink screen, so it could display video and browse the web with aplomb.

Let’s not forget to mention the multitude of other tasks an Apple tablet will likely be able to perform if developers decide to code applications for it. Think along the lines of an interactive remote control to enhance the movie-viewing experience on your TV, or a music video player to accompany the tunes blasting from your stereo. Or, heck, even an album-cover display screen for you to gaze at while listening to music. (For more on an Apple tablet’s advantages versus current e-book readers, see Dylan Tweney’s story “Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives.”)

There’s huge potential in a tablet if Apple can pull this off. The challenge lies in establishing the right partnerships. If Apple weaves e-books into the iTunes Store, will book publishers hop on board? Given Apple’s success in numbers, we think so.

As for a data provider, it would be even better if Apple could work with a carrier such as Verizon to subsidize the tablet, bringing it closer to $500 — a more attractive price point for students. Because the device presumably would not feature a phone, the monthly plans could be priced significantly lower than an iPhone — $30 to $40, perhaps, for an unlimited 3-G internet connection.

What do you think an Apple tablet would need in order to be compelling? Add your thoughts in the comment section below.

(An aside: We’re aware, as some of our colleagues have pointed out, that an à-la-carte e-book model is an idealistic prediction. A more conservative guess would be that e-books will be available, in full, in iTunes, which would nonetheless be advantageous against Amazon given the enormous amount of iTunes users. We are, however, hopeful that Apple would be the company to drive radical change with e-book pricing models, given its proven ability to twist partners’ arms.)

source: wired

9 places to party like it's 1929

• Story Highlights
• The Velvet Tango Room in Cleveland was a speakeasy during the '20s
  
• The Violet Hour in Chicago mixes cocktails with eight kinds of ice
  
• In Boston, The Beehive presents jazz, cabaret and burlesque performances

(Budget Travel) -- Prohibition-style bars and speakeasies have been popping up all over, but these lounges go beyond the gimmicks in their near obsessive devotion to the art of old-time cocktails and decor.

The perpetually packed Beehive in Boston is known for its Beehive julep and champagne cocktails.

The Edison, Los Angeles, California

The 1920s scene at legendary watering holes like the Cocoanut Grove and Ciro's of Hollywood inspired this cavernous lounge, where current industry players mingle in their best vintage cocktail dresses and blazers. The Edison is in the basement of a former power plant; leather furniture surrounds preserved industrial elements like furnaces and power generators. Silent movies play on brick walls, and a circus troupe performs weekly. On Soup Kitchen Fridays, drinks mixed from house-made Bath Tub Gin are 35 cents from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and come with free grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. edisondowntown.com.

The Violet Hour, Chicago, Illinois

Luxurious floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains create intimate spaces inside the Violet Hour, discreetly hidden behind an unmarked, wood-paneled door. Circles of high-backed leather chairs and the warm glow from crystal chandeliers and working fireplaces encourage conversation. So does a strict no-cell-phones policy. Eight kinds of ice -- shards, crushed and cubes of varying shapes -- are tailored to specific drinks, which gives an idea of how seriously this bar takes its cocktails. A favorite is the Juliet and Romeo, Beefeater gin with mint, cucumber and rosewater ($12). theviolethour.com. Budget Travel gallery: See the bars

APO Bar + Lounge, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Look for the pharmacy cross marking the entrance to APO, short for apothecary -- a place where ingredients like gin and bitters were put to medicinal use way before the cocktail was born. Inside the sleek, green-hued lounge, barkeeps sporting '30s-style suits serve cocktails spruced up with creative, unusual ingredients. The Booty Collins, for instance, is green-tea-infused gin with brandied cherries, passion fruit and homemade seltzer, finished with agave nectar, cayenne pepper and fresh valerian root ($10). The bar recently introduced a simpler recession-proof menu of $6 drinks that lose the exotic accents and just mix fine spirits with fresh fruit juices. apothecarylounge.com.

Flatiron Lounge, New York City

In a landmark 1900 building in Manhattan's Flatiron District, this lounge evokes jazz-age glamour with velvet bar stools, red circular booths and an entire wall covered in blue vintage mirrored-glass tiles. The anchor is the 1927 mahogany bar salvaged from The Ballroom, where Frank Sinatra partied. Painstakingly crafted drinks range from fresh-fruit-infused cocktails ($13) to daily martini flights -- three mini cocktails with a common theme, such as the Flight Back in Time, featuring a Sazerac, a Sidecar and an Aviation martini ($22). flatironlounge.com.

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• Budget Travel: 7 secret hideaways

The Beehive, Boston, Massachusetts

Named for a Paris café des artistes that once hosted artists Marc Chagall and Amadeo Modigliani, this Moulin Rouge-esque supper club presents jazz, cabaret and burlesque performances on a shimmering stage draped with theatrical red-velvet curtains. At round stage-side tables, diners feast on stick-to-your-ribs comfort food like gravy-smothered poutine. Chandeliers hang among exposed pipes over the perpetually packed bar, known for champagne cocktails and Beehive juleps ($10.50). beehiveboston.com.

Velvet Tango Room, Cleveland, Ohio

This funky 1800s brick house was a speakeasy during the '20s, and it feels like not much has changed since then, as evidenced by the well-used jazz piano and the secret room hidden behind a two-way mirror. Bartenders measure ingredients on scales to ensure exact proportions go into cocktails ($15) made with throwback mixers like frothy egg whites, fresh-brewed bitters and homemade ginger soda. velvettangoroom.com.

Illusions Magic Bar, Baltimore, Maryland

With custom-made chandeliers above the cherry wood bar and jazz and swing played on the piano, Illusions gives the impression of being like any other roaring '20s-themed jazz club. Not so on Friday and Saturday evenings, when the stage -- cut into the middle of the bar -- hosts a one-hour vaudeville-style magic show ($5 cover). House magician Spencer Horsman escapes from a straitjacket while hanging upside down from the ceiling, a feat best appreciated while sipping a multilayered "magic" martini of Hpnotiq liqueur, Stoli raspberry vodka, pineapple juice and Chambord ($12). The low-key second-floor lounge has leather sofas and retro magician posters that go nicely with Magic Hat beers ($3). illusionsmagicbar.com.

Shanghai 1930, San Francisco, California

China's largest metropolis was known as the Paris of the Orient during the pre-WWII era, when diplomats, artists and expats mingled at over-the-top Chinese dining palaces. That decadent ambience is re-created at this supper club, which has dark wood booths, art deco red-velvet chairs and ornate Chinese rugs. After feasting on opulent dishes like minced roast duck in lettuce petals ($13) guests retire to the backlit Blue Bar for live jazz and absinthe-spiked cocktails ($9-$14). shanghai1930.com.

Sazerac Bar, New Orleans, Louisiana

The fabled bar that first popularized the Ramos Gin Fizz and its namesake Sazerac reopened on July 1 in the revamped Roosevelt Hotel. Paul Nina's original art deco murals adorn the walls of the bar, which has been closed since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Also inside the hotel, the legendary Blue Room supper club -- where Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Durante cut their chops -- will once again host periodic evenings of Dixieland jazz and big band music. therooseveltneworleans.com.

souce: Budget Travel

Top Travel Tricks 2009

T+L’s Top Travel Tricks 2009

Launch Slideshow

Photo: Courtesy of kayak.com

Looking to spend less on airfare or skip a long check-in line? T+L comes on board with our top travel tips.

My passport is just two years old and I’ve already run out of pages. I travel. A lot. More to the point, I am what you might call a parsimonious traveler. I do not part with my time or my money easily, unless I’m getting a good value.

So you won’t be surprised if I tell you I have done some peculiar things to save money. Once, on a trip to Cologne, Germany, I booked my family into a nursing home. For less than the price of a hotel room, we got a one-bedroom apartment, including a small kitchen, just a few blocks from the Dom Cathedral.

In fact, you often can save money or get larger quarters for the same price as a hotel by staying at alternative properties like condos, apartments, urban B&Bs, and other non-hotel lodgings. You’ll save even more if your accommodations come with a kitchen, which will help keep your meal costs down. Alternative lodgings like these are more popular overseas than in the States, so try booking through an international website like London-based apartmentservice.com or German-based hotel.info. City tourist offices throughout Europe are also good sources.

• See our slideshow of T+L’s Top Travel Tricks 2009.

When it comes to dining on the road, I save money by eating where the locals eat and steer clear of hotel restaurants and room service. In Thailand, shophouses that have family-run restaurants are authentic, popular, and cheap. Hawker stands in Singapore (my favorite is Maxwell Food Centre, near Chinatown) provide memorably good food for next to nothing. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t recommend you visit dodgy restos. But if a place is clean and crowded, chances are you’ll be fine—despite the lack of English on the menus or linens on the tables. The same rule of thumb is true around the world, from Mexico City to little towns in Bavaria: small, inexpensive, and authentic places will leave you with better memories—and often better food at a better price—than you’ll find at fancy American-style restaurants.

I also aim to be an efficient traveler. I hate wasting time. That’s why I recently signed up for the Trusted Traveler Global Entry program, which allows members to bypass the long lines at U.S. Customs when returning from overseas. I generally travel solely with carry-ons to eliminate the wait at the baggage carousels and minimize the chance of lost luggage. (My record is 15 days in Asia with just a single carry-on and a briefcase.)

Some of these strategies can shave off a little time and money, while others can save you hundreds of dollars or hours of aggravation. But even the most peripatetic among us knows only so many of these tricks. So I recently asked some serious road warriors—travel photographers, account execs, journalists, tour operators, and others—for their hard-earned advice and added it to my own favorite tips. Here are the best tricks they and I have learned along the way.

source: travel & L.

100 Stories on Travel and Tourism

100 Stories on Travel and Tourism

Private space pioneers: We're inheritors of Apollo legacy

Richard Garriott had more reason than most to dream the Apollo moon landings would rapidly expand space travel. His father was a NASA astronaut, as were many of his neighbors near Texas' Johnson Space Center.

updated Mon June 22, 2009

Sexual assaults on the high seas come under scrutiny

It's the midst of peak cruising season, and millions of travelers are eagerly embarking on exotic vacations without thinking they could ever fall victim to a crime at sea.

updated Tue June 16, 2009

Search for missing cruise ship passenger unsuccessful so far

A cruise ship resumed its voyage to Cozumel, Mexico, on Tuesday after the Coast Guard released it from the search for a 50-year-old woman believed to have fallen overboard late Monday.

updated Tue June 16, 2009

Fortune: Bulls vs. Bears: Continental Airlines

As the summer flying season begins, some analysts are getting bullish on airlines with healthy balance sheets like Continental Airlines. Jet fuel prices have declined by more than half from the same time last year -- when the company lost $585 million -- and some say the 51% drop in its stock this year is an overcorrection.

updated Thur June 11, 2009

How to handle online travel purchases gone bad

The round-trip airfare from Brussels to New York on the European online travel site eDreams was 337 Euros -- until Alisa Schlossberg clicked on the "buy" button. Then it jumped to 592 Euros, creating an eNightmare.

updated Sun May 31, 2009

How to safeguard your data as you travel

With Wi-Fi access at airports, hotels, and aboard airplanes, business travelers don't have to look very hard for a wireless Internet connection.

updated Thur May 21, 2009

Nepali man summits Everest for record 19th time

Like many Nepalese guides, Apa Sherpa started trekking to the top of Mount Everest in the shadow of more famous climbers -- including the son of the late Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb to the top of the world's tallest peak.

updated Thur May 14, 2009

Layoff worries keep many from taking vacations, experts say

Cindy Goodman was having dinner with a group of girlfriends one night when the conversation took a surprising turn.

updated Fri May 1, 2009

Adding vacation time to a business trip

If you've got to be there for work anyway, why not live it up?

updated Fri May 1, 2009

Five ways passengers are getting even with cruise lines

Cruising isn't what it used to be. Just ask Steve Roberts, who recently sailed from Costa Maya, Mexico, to Nassau, Bahamas on the Carnival Glory.

source: cnn

Foreclosure inn: Luxury hotels default

Missed loans payments are on the rise, but what is hurting hotels is good for consumers as owners slash room rates by as much as 12%.

Foreclosure Inn

Luxury hotels are defaulting on their loans as the economy kills off business travel. But what is ailing the hotel industry is good for consumers as room rates fall.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- There's plenty of room at the inn. So much, in fact, that many high-end hoteliers are bleeding cash and defaulting on their loans.

"The industry is clearly in a downturn," said John Fox, a vice president with PKF Consulting, an advisor to the hotel industry. "It's across the board with the luxury end of the business hit a little harder than the moderate end."

The epicenter of this default plague is California, with the number of hotels in default jumping 125% during a two month period ending in June, according to Atlas Hospitality, a commercial real estate broker.

The Four Seasons, a five-star hotel in the heart of San Francisco was the latest casualty. In early July it defaulted on a $90 million loan. Before that, the four-star Renaissance Stanford Court Hotel on Nob Hill went into receivership after defaulting on an $89 million loan.

The owners of the upscale W Hotel in San Diego failed to make the mortgage payment in June. The St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort outside Los Angeles -- notorious for hosting AIG Group executives almost immediately after the company received a federal bail out -- defaulted on a $70 million loan in June.

But California isn't the only place facing high-level defaults. Fitch Ratings reported that 13 hotel loans worth $596 million went delinquent in June. Three hotels in Phoenix, Las Vegas and New York City account for a majority of that amount.

Defaults of convenience

The defaults do not always result in foreclosure or sale of the business; at times, defaults are used tactically to force concessions from lenders. "[Often] there has to be a default before the terms of the loan can be renegotiated," he said. "And the loan is a lot higher than the property is worth."

That means that some of the defaulting properties, such as the Four Seasons, are in little danger of shuttering; their owners just want to force their lenders to make the terms of their loans a bit more attractive.

And even if some of the owners do lose their properties, the lenders will undoubtedly resell many of the hotels at prices low enough for the new owners to operate at a profit

There's no doubt, however, that the hotel business has slowed. PKF has revised its occupancy rate forecast for the year downward to 55.4% for the year from a forecast of 57.6% back in December.

"Essential travel is strong," said DeAnne Dale, global sales and account management vice president for Travels Business. "But non-essential travel has decreased a lot."

It's not just a decline in travel that's driving those occupancy rates down. Lots of new hotels, planned during the boom years, have opened recently, increasing the supply of hotels rooms by 3%. That puts additional pressure on management to discount prices.

And it's one reason why Smith Travel Research, which provides data to the hotel industry, revised its revenue forecast last week; it's now predicting a decline in revenue per available room of 17.1% for 2009.

Their pain, your gain

0:00 /2:20Why Louisville, Colo., is No. 1

Hotels have slashed room prices to attract business customers, with luxury lodgings offering the biggest discounts. According to Smith, the average daily rate for a luxury hotel room fell 12.1% to $253.71 this year through May compared with all of 2008.

The average rate for the next level of hotel rooms, the upper upscale, dropped 7.8% to $147.60; upscale rooms fell 7.3% to $110.89; and budget and mid-scale rooms both dropped about 7%.

That has turned industry profits to losses, according to Sageworks Inc., which offers financial analysis to many different industries. It reports that publicly traded lodging companies have compiled net losses equal to 0.78% of revenue over the past 12 months. In 2006, by contrast, net profit margins were 7.69%.

Privately held hotel companies have done better during the slump. Their net margins only decreased from 5.41% in 2007 to 3.63% during the past 12 months. "Privately held hotels can be more flexible and can accommodate change more efficiently," said Jackie Peluso, a spokeswoman for Sageworks.

Many hotels have been keeping their rooms filled by slashing prices for corporate partners, according to Travels' Dale. Vacationers are also saving as hotels discount rooms. That's apparently encouraging leisure travelers to not give up holiday plans this summer, according to Travels.

source: cnn money

Guide to Hidden Airline Fees

Launch Slideshow

Airlines are now charging for everything. Here’s what to expect on 14 major carriers.

Planning to attend your annual family reunion in Chicago, you spend hours searching online for the best available plane fare. Finally, success: on a discount-booking site you find a round-trip ticket on US Airways for less than $180. Done deal.

At the airport, though, you discover that checking your two suitcases (one heavy with presents for family members) will set you back $50. Then, on the plane, a flight attendant informs you that a pillow and blanket will cost you another $7. Headphones to screen out the crying baby in the next row: $5. Same price for a can of beer to help you take the edge off. By the time you’ve reached your destination, your wallet’s lighter by about $70—almost half the price of your original ticket.

• See our slideshow of the Guide to Hidden Airline Fees.

The extra fees that airlines now charge passengers—for everything from in-flight snacks to choosing a window or aisle seat—can accrue alarmingly fast. And when you can easily find yourself bumped from an overbooked flight, or sitting inexplicably on the tarmac for hours without taking off, they can seem like insult added to injury.

But there are things you can do to keep the nickeling-and-diming under control, says George Hobica, who runs the online airfare monitoring site airfarewatchdog.com. ”It would be great if the carriers had fee charts that laid out all these costs in a full-disclosure way,“ he says. ”But since they don’t, passengers need to be proactive.“

Among Hobica’s suggestions for avoiding unexpected fees:

• Consider shipping your luggage. Ground transport via UPS, FedEx, or even Express Mail can cost less than checking at the airport—and makes tracking lost bags much easier.
• Leave Fido at home. A good pet-sitter is often more economical than the stiff fees (usually more than $100 per one-way flight) required to bring animals on board.
• Always book online. The good old-fashioned method of calling an airline to reserve by phone can now cost up to $35.
• Bring your own snacks, travel blanket, and pillow in your carry-on. And if you shell out once for a set of headphones, keep the adapter plug to bring with you on your next same-carrier flight.
• Don’t discount the ”discount“ airlines. Southwest Air, for example—long considered a budget option—is actually one of the only domestic carriers that doesn’t charge any extra fees. The reason, according to Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz: ”What used to be considered ‘no frills’—like peanuts and sodas rather than full meals—are now considered amenities. Since we’ve always offered those things for free, we still do.“

source: Travel & L

America’s Best and Worst Airports 2009

Launch Slideshow

Photo: © Andre Jenny / Alamy

What are the odds your next flight will be delayed? Depends on what airport you’re flying from.

We all know the drill: you show up at the airport with plenty of time to spare, only to discover that your flight’s been delayed and now you have hours to kill. Or worse yet, you’ve already boarded your flight and now you’re stuck on the tarmac.

Where is this most likely to happen? You can’t eliminate delays, of course, but you can play the odds—some airports have better track records than others (as do some airlines, which is why we rank the best and worst airlines for on-time performance). So, as we do every year, Travel + Leisure gathered statistics from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics on flights that departed more than 15 minutes behind schedule (in this instance from April 1, 2008, to March 31, 2009) and found out the best—and worst—airports for on-time performance.

There is some good news overall: the worst airport (there’s a new winner this year) improved on its delays by 3 percentage points. It was also the only airport to have 30 percent or more of its flights delayed; last year, four airports broke the 30 percent barrier.

• See our slideshow of America’s Best and Worst Airports 2009.

This upward trend meant that even though some airports improved their on-time performance, their ranking may not have changed much. Dallas decreased its flight delays by a lot—6 percentage points—but it remained at the No. 4 spot in the top 10 worst airports. And JFK—despite decreasing its delays 11 percentage points over the past 2 years—tied with Dallas for that No. 4 spot.

Some of these airports will come as no surprise: the skies around New York City continue to be congested, backing up traffic at all three area airports. And other hubs like Atlanta and Chicago remain on the list of offenders.

But both the best and worst lists have some newcomers this year. Philadelphia—on neither list in 2007 or 2008—showed up in the top 10 worst airports (22 percent of flights were delayed). Orlando had sunnier news, breaking into the 10 best list with just 18 percent of its flights delayed (good news, of course, for visitors to Disney World). Detroit, too, joins the ranks of the elite, with 17 percent of its flights delayed.

And of course some airports have disappeared from the lists. That’s unfortunate for Seattle, which was one of the 10 best in 2008. It’s better news for Chicago Midway (MDW), which at 25 percent was one of the 10 worst in 2008.

So consult this list before you book your next ticket: if you can fly out of an alternate airport like Midway, the odds are better that you’ll arrive at your destination on time. And these days, on-time arrivals are just about the only thing airlines aren’t charging extra for.

source: Travel + Leisure

Airline has 9 seats for $9 on each flight - Video

Airline has 9 seats for $9 on each flight

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

By Chris Anderson 02.25.08

FEATURE

Webmail Windfall

How Can Air Travel Be Free?

How Can a CD Be Free?

How Can a DVR Be Free?

How Can Directory Assitance Be Free?

How-To Wiki

How To Make Money Around Free Content

The March 2008 "issue for free" offer is now closed.

At the age of 40, King Gillette was a frustrated inventor, a bitter anticapitalist, and a salesman of cork-lined bottle caps. It was 1895, and despite ideas, energy, and wealthy parents, he had little to show for his work. He blamed the evils of market competition. Indeed, the previous year he had published a book, The Human Drift, which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent something people use and throw away.

One day, while he was shaving with a straight razor that was so worn it could no longer be sharpened, the idea came to him. What if the blade could be made of a thin metal strip? Rather than spending time maintaining the blades, men could simply discard them when they became dull. A few years of metallurgy experimentation later, the disposable-blade safety razor was born. But it didn't take off immediately. In its first year, 1903, Gillette sold a total of 51 razors and 168 blades. Over the next two decades, he tried every marketing gimmick he could think of. He put his own face on the package, making him both legendary and, some people believed, fictional. He sold millions of razors to the Army at a steep discount, hoping the habits soldiers developed at war would carry over to peacetime. He sold razors in bulk to banks so they could give them away with new deposits ("shave and save" campaigns). Razors were bundled with everything from Wrigley's gum to packets of coffee, tea, spices, and marshmallows. The freebies helped to sell those products, but the tactic helped Gillette even more. By giving away the razors, which were useless by themselves, he was creating demand for disposable blades. A few billion blades later, this business model is now the foundation of entire industries: Give away the cell phone, sell the monthly plan; make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games; install fancy coffeemakers in offices at no charge so you can sell managers expensive coffee sachets.

Chris Anderson discusses "Free."

Video produced by Annaliza Savage and edited by Michael Lennon.
For more, visit wired.com/video.

Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything "free" was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You'd get one thing free if you bought another, or you'd get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It's as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?)

You know this freaky land of free as the Web. A decade and a half into the great online experiment, the last debates over free versus pay online are ending. In 2007 The New York Times went free; this year, so will much of The Wall Street Journal. (The remaining fee-based parts, new owner Rupert Murdoch announced, will be "really special ... and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive." This calls to mind one version of Stewart Brand's original aphorism from 1984: "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive ... That tension will not go away.")

Scenario 1: Low-cost digital distribution will make the summer blockbuster free. Theaters will make their money from concessions — and by selling the premium moviegoing experience at a high price.

Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore's law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

source: wired

New York: Party für Lady Liberty

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New York: Party für Lady Liberty

Riesenfest in New York: Am Unabhängigkeitstag ist die Krone der Freiheitsstatue erstmals seit Jahren wieder begehbar. Seit den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001 war die symbolträchtige Aussichtsplattform aus Sicherheitsgründen geschlossen. mehr...

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